Page:The English Peasant.djvu/109

 maybe he'll be taken away, sin' his father's but a puir man.' There was Barker's son, he went te college, and was teacher at the free schule up here; he was his schulefellow; the tweeah went to schule together, and now they are both deead."

Consumption killed the son—a disease, I fear, common amongst these miners, since inhaling the noxious vapour and the lead-dust must make havoc with the lungs, and, moreover the occupation is hereditary.

My friend paid £13 a year for his little cottage, and something besides for poors' rates and taxes. He had no vote, and seemed rather to deprecate the privilege than to desire it.

"If I'd a vote they might summon me te York on a jury; besides, I know many a man who has a vote who daren't use it." He hoped they would pass the bill for vote by ballot.

He was a Wesleyan, but he thought "we should never be asked what we'd been." A man one instinctively took to, when the time came for parting it was with mutual regret.

An old tale was told me, setting forth the quaint simplicity of these dalesmen. A miner, going into a little Roman Catholic church in the dale, was present at the Mass. He stared for a long time at each successive action in the ceremonial, until at last he saw the priest raise the chalice, hold it aloft, and drink from it himself without offering it to the other communicants. Then his patience fairly gave way, and he exclaimed, "Eh, lad, I thought thee'd take it all theesel' in the end."

The dialect of these dalesmen is not easy to understand, for they not only use a great many words a stranger has never heard of before, but they use common words in a strange sense. Thus a sick person is said to be "silly." Some old English words are used—to bray, is to bruise. They have their own way of naming some things—thus red currants are "wine berries." In many words, however, it is only the pronunciation, as "lili-uns " for children, that is, little ones; while the youngest is called the "le-le-ist." At the inn at which I stopped this difference of pronunciation led to a curious mistake. I asked for fruit, and they understood me to ask for trout, which they call "troot." Going into the kitchen, and seeing the mistress engaged in making preserves, I put the question to her.