Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/250

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. n. SEPT. 10, im.

I was told that some trees in my garden were catch-crop trees i.e., they were self- sown and had not been planted there. Here crop seems to mean "seed." I have had one of them cut down, though I was warned that the trees "made the house leer ; not so bream as it would be without them." This word leer is the comparative of lee, warm, usually pro- nounced lay, as " You can get your dinner under that lee (lay) wall." It seems to be the O.N. hlyr, warm.

One day I found that the roof of an out- building on my privilege, which had only lately been repaired, was leaking. I asked a man what was to be done with it, and he said, " Th' mortar's too rad" meaning porous and loose. On making inquiry from others I found that rad mortar contains too much sand and too little lime. The word is more frequently applied to loosely- woven texture of any kind ; thus, stockings are rad when they are too lightly knitted. A woman here said of a coarse piece of woven stuff, " It wa' that rad that hens could pick oats through it."

The best way of getting rare or unrecorded words used in agriculture is to help farmers in their work. Acting in this belief, I have helped to make hay. One day as a fox terrier which I had taken with me ran and jumped about in the mown grass, a man said, '* He's a cumpersome little dog." I find that playful kittens are said to be cumpersome (the u being sounded as in full) ; so are horses which jump over fences and will not be kept within bounds, and so are sportive boys. Another day, when I came late into the field, a farmer laughed and said, " We shall quarter you this morning." He meant "deduct a quarter's wages," such apparently having once been the custom.

As the sky began to grow dark with clouds somebody said, "It bokes like rain." This phrase, I find, is in common use, arid means forebodes, threatens. For two days we had alternate sunshine and rain the worst thing possible for the hay. When we returned to the field, after the sun had shone a few hours, a man said, "Th' hay's brewing." When I asked for an explanation I was told that brewing was the same as " weathering," and had nothing to do with fermenting. Wet hay in a stack sweats; it does not breiv. When hay is breived it is turned brown, as I was told, by the sun and rain, and so spoiled or damaged. I asked whether a man's face could be breived by the sun and rain, but was told that the word was only applied to hay.

The hay was raked into long rows called .casts t otherwise kesses, apparently from the O.N. koslr, a pile. These in their turn are

raked up into winrows, and you may hear a man say, " Put another cast into that ivin- row" In making a winrow, one windy day, we had heaped up an irregular line, when a man called out," You 're going out o' th' ranget altogether." A day or two afterwards the same man came to set some edging-stones in my garden. He did this correctly, and when I remarked that the stones were " out oS rangel," he instantly denied it. The word, no doubt, means "line," but the curious thing is, whilst everybody knows the phrase " out of th' rangel," nobody can tell me that a line is called a rangel. I do not find, for example, that they speak of a rangel of peas or beans* A year or two ago I saw in a newspaper an advertisement of a " wrangle farm " in Lincolnshire, whatever that may be. The swathe rake which is used for pulling the hay into winrows is called a bonny or bonny- rake. The side-boards of the cart in which the hay is taken from the field are called trippers. The act of gathering the last wisp of hay or straw and putting it on the waggon was called the hare-catching, and I am told that such phrases as "We're goin' to catch th' hare to-day " and " They 've catched tb' hare and put it i' th' barn" were used. The explanation belongs to a highly interesting branch of folk-lore.

The stone floors of cottages are decorated round their edges with diagonal lines drawn with pot-mould, here known as idol-back. Apparently this means "image-mould. 771 Formerly a serpentine line, bending in and out, with a dot in each fold, used to be drawn on the tops of the whitewashed walls^ where they join the ceiling. It looks like an endless snake, and was known as " the wild worm pattern," which is about as hard to- understand as "wild guess." The colour used was archil, which may still be bought in Tides well. It is a rich dark blue, like that on some old china.

To cramble is to halt or walk lame. One- day I heard a child say that her doll's arm? was " not cracked but crapeledS I noticed that there were little fissures in the enamel, which was, in fact, cracked, though the arm was not broken. You may hear it said of a tenant that "he canno' pay his rent and; scores " (taxes). This word occurs frequently in an account book, dated 1750, belonging to- a farmer here, where it is often written cores* as well as scores. To give the pronunciation of the last quotation correctly, I ought to say that the pronouns he and we are sounded nearly like hay and way, or more strictly like the ^ in the French ete. Pay is sounded* exactly like pea.