Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/466

 312 NOTICES OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL PUBLICATIONS. (gatewards); adiant (headland); sithe (sigh); and many others in Dr. Evans's list, are of this origin. Cnse (coarse) f drug (drag, or sledge) ;^ sclwol (shoal of fish),'' are familiar examples in other parts of the country. Whether many of this kind are entitled to a place in a glossary, may well be doubted ; and we know of no other guide to determine the admissibility of them than the degree to which the process of disfigurement has con- cealed the latent original. Yet even this is not always a safe test ; for who would on that ground admit the claims of such words as ashup (ash- heap) ; dufus (dove-house) ; or ellus (alehouse) ? ^ VII. The cases in which known words of universal occurrence have ob- tained a local meaning, differing from the common one, furnish another stock of provincialisms. To this class belong such words as brief, for rife f the use of young in the sense of unmarried ;' of uncle and aunt with reference only to the advanced age, and not the relationship, of the parties so called.® To the same head also may be assigned the habitual interchange or misap- plication of prepositions and other parts of speech, which a Devonshire domestic exemplifies, when he tells us that John Puddicombe, who " bides to {i. e. at) the Wrastler's Arms, handy Okinton," is going to " ride up at [i. e. to) Exeter." We are far from supposing that the above enumeration exhausts all the peculiarities of local speech, but it probably embraces nearly all that we expect to find in a mere book of tcords. If the diligent observer can find leisure to expatiate in a wider field, and can tell us of the favourite forms of speech, — the habitual expletives, — the accents, — the sound and power of vowels and consonants, among their rustic neighbours, and the melody or air to which their sentences are set, — his labours will, of course, be still more instructive ; but we are well disposed to accept, with grateful acknow- ledgment, a much more limited contribution to this humble but interesting department of philology. It is, indeed, becoming daily a more urgent duty to exert ourselves to perpetuate the living testimony of those " winged words " which are hastening to decay ; for it cannot be doubted that the tendency of education, and of the increased facility of intercourse that is now placed within our reach, is to obliterate distinctions and to assimilate both habits and language. With regard to the execution of the particular work before us, we have every reason to be satisfied. It neither displays, nor professes to display, any elaborate philological research. There is in it less of etymological pretension, and therefore fewer infelicitous conjectures, than we too fre- quently find in works on the same subject. A few critical observations occur to us ; but they are of little importance, and they chiefly refer to that which is no essential ingredient in a collection of this kind, namely, the etymological part of it. The word ester is unquestionably identical with ostre, or aistre, the astruni of Bracton, Fleta, and the old lawj^ers, and the auster of Somerset and Gloucestershire, and it imports, primarily, a hearth, and, in a secondary sense, a house : the " feu et lieu," " focus et locus," of Media3val records. The lasfsyllable of cowgate certainly means ^ Devon. •■' Hants, &c. ■» Cornwall. / Cornwall, ^cmim, ** Specimens of CoiniBh Pioviuc. Dialect. London, 1846.
 * Forliy's Vocab. of Kast Angl. ; Introd., p. 104. •■' Chcshiic, Lcirestershirc, &c.