Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/209

 io« s. iv. AUG. 26.1905.) NOTES AND QUERIES. 171 The modern schoolmaster for the most part understands not our local speech, for he can find little or nothing about it in his text-books, so sometimes he wages relentless war upon it; but this is far better, inasmuch as it stimulates opposition, than the con- tempt of certain others, who regard it as " ungenteel" to use any words not to be found in their pocket dictionaries. To people of both these classes I would commend the words of Sir Thomas More, as quoted by Abbot Gasquet in his 'Eve of the Reforma- tion': "It ever was, and still is, lawful enough to call anything in English by whatever word Englishmen by common custom agree upon " (p. 268). EDWARD PEACOCK. Wickentree House, Kirton-in-Lindsey. Perhaps a few notes may be permitted npon the excellent article on the Yorkshire dialect at the above reference. Being from home, I cannot compare it with the 'English Dialect Dictionary,' but I feel confident that this monumental work has recorded very fully all the information noted in the article, and a very great deal more, for it all seems extremely familiar to me. ^It is a very common saying that "the Norman invasion has not affected the dialects." I have always maintained the con- trary, because the facts prove it. I note, for example, that amongst the words cited are " parlous," literally " perilous " ; " insult," in the sense of "assault"; "notches," in the sense of runs at cricket; " stattus," a local name for statute fairs ; " rotten," a rat; " looance," an allowance; " carrion," a carrion- crow ; " chimbly," a chimney ; " corves," coal- boxes ; " otchin," an urchin. Surely some at least of these are of Norman origin. Such is notably the case with respect to bullocks; they are not called by the English name of "bullocks," but by the French name of "beasts'": and I believe that in many parts the t in "beasts" is dropped. Whether medi- cine is called by the name of " medicine'' or of "stuff," in either case the name is French. If a Yorkshireman says " I 've no objection," it can hardly be maintained that "objection" is either of English or of Scandinavian origin. In fact, the old and long-established fancy that our dialects contain no Norman words is due to pre-scientific days, when assertions were made without reference to research. There is no difficulty as to goatttock. A yote is a ditch, and a stock is a log of wood ; so a gotestock is a piece of wood laid across & ditch. Bat I donbt if Queldrick can mean " ridge of quail," precisely because quail is Norman ; and Micklegate means great street rather than little street. WALTER W. SKEAT. I am afraid that MR. J. J. DUNNINGTON- JEFFERSON'S patriotic contention that York- shiremen do not drop the h would have to be relinquished if he were to widen the circle of his acquaintance in " the shire of broad acres." The spread of education by the help of London-trained teachers may have had something to do with the fact that at present the aspirate is by no means un- failingly respected, though the untouched yokel may still treat it as your correspondent represents. One hot day lately a girl, probably schooled at the cost of the ratepayers of York, remarked to a friend of mine : " It's not the kind of weather for anti-'atting"; by which she meant, I suppose, that there was too much sun for the cerebral safety of some reformers at Leeds and elsewhere who are leagued against the wearing of headgear. MR. DUNNINGTON-JEFFERSON will pardon me for objecting to his interpretation of Micklegate as "the little street." It is, rather, the big street—that which is called the High Street in places further south. Consultation of the ' E.D.D.' will justify my saying. I used to fancy that in Ogleforth (formerly Uggleforth), a narrow lane in one of the oldest parts of the city, there might be a remanet of a Celtic High Street; but I have never found much to substantiate the supposition. Dr. Langwith, says Drake (p. 316), " imagines it might come from the British uchel, nigh, and porth (pronounced forth), a gate; some grand entrance having been anciently this way into the close, the regal palace being near it." The goat in " goatstock " is no doubt the word spelt also gote and gowt. It means a sluice, a drain, or a watercourse in various dialects, and is allied to gutter. At Lincoln we have the church of St. Peter-at-Qowts. "Stock" is the pile or other support by which the road is borne in its passage over the ditch. Is what Mr. W. S. Gilbert has dubbed " the gay Sally Lunn " ever in any sense of the word sad 1 and is it a Yorkshire cate 1 I think she or it first saw the light in the south-west of England—at Bath, for choice — and that when welcomed in the North it is as a foreign delicacy. Now girdle-cake it quite at home there, and it would " fullock " an ostrich if ho yielded to its temptations. "To have your fulth"=to have your fill, is an effective expression. I was told not long ago by somebody who had come into Yorkshire as to a terra