Page:Glossary of words in use in Cornwall.djvu/507

 146 THE DIALECT OF Water bowl (pronounced vfotter howl). J. M., when a lad, thonght if he oould get up to the top of the hill above Famley Wood, he could touch the sky. ' Au thowt it looked lawk a gret waUer howl. Well, we gate up theer — ^me and Dick Mallinson — ^and we wur fuider off nor lyyer. That wur a Sunday aftemooin job, that wtir.' This belief is bv no means confined to rustics. Emerson, in his Conduct oj Lyft^ thus alludes to it : 'In childhood we fiincieid our- selves walled in by the horizon, as by a glass bell, and doubted not by distant travel we should reach the baths of descending sun and stars. On experiment the horizon flies before us, and leaves us on an endless common sheltered by no fflass bell' (ch. vii.). This, making due allowance for difference of Ltnguage, is a perfectly parallel passage. Waterfirling, or Waterparkin, an oaten cake baked without fermentation. Wattles (pronounced to rhyme with tattle; gL wat'lz), the red appendages on a fowl's head. Wani^ pronunciation of toife, A carious instance of misupderstand- ing the vowel sounds occurred on one occasion when H. L. (personally known to me) went to Hunter's Nab delivering St. Thomas's ticketsi He aeked L. K. if one Mr. William Sykes lived there. She said she did not know, ',but if yo'll wait a bit Au'U ax Bill Sawks' wau/,' who, thus appealed to, said, ' Doesn't he live here, think' st ta P ' Wanghmiln, or WoflBiailn, a fulling milL ' It smelt waugh^ i. e. as a lulling miU does. [But see Woaf.— W. W. S.] Waur, worse. Occurs in The Death of Party Reed, ver. 5 : ' And Crosier says he will do ufaur. He will do waur, if vniur can be.' A woman and her servant were trying to catch a horse which con- tinually eluded their efforts. A man coming by said, * Ho ! mistress, yon galloway has a bad fault ; yo canna catch him.' To whom she replied, ' Ah, maister, he's a waur nor that ; he's nowt when he is catched.' Wave, past tense of to weave, which is also c^ed wave. Wax, to grow. Common amongst old people but the word thrive is perhaps more used now.. Weak (pronounced weak; gl. wi'h'k), to squeak: said of a man who speaks in a squeaking voice. Figs weak, Weam, or Weme, ^uiet ; tidy, &c. ' A weme woman in a house is a jewel.' ' A nice httle weme packet' One speaking of a bicyclist said, Wear (pronounced as usual), to spend (money) : commonly used instead of spend. [ Ware is the better mode of spelling, as it is so spelt in old books, when it has the sense of spend. — W. W. S.] Weet, pronunciation of wet. See Pike. Weeting, t. e, wetting. Stale urine is so called, because in the pro- cess of manufacture the cloth is wetted with that liquid when sent to the mill, the object being to bring out the grease. Weeting is also called lecking, I have been told of persons using this substance
 * He went daan t^ hill as weme and as nauce (nice) as possible.'