Page:The Life of the Fields, Jefferies, 1884.djvu/170

156 describing the weight and lumpiness of the youngster, and winding up with the declaration, "He's a regular nitch." A chump of wood, short, thick, and heavy, is said to be a "nitch," but it seems gone out of use a good deal for general weights, and to be chiefly used in speaking of infants. There is a word of somewhat similar sound common among the fishermen of the south coast. Towards the stern of a fishing smack there is a stout upright post with a fork at the top, into which fork the mast is lowered while they are engaged with the nets at sea. It is called the "mitch," or "match," but though I mention it as similar in sound, I do not think it has any other affinity.

Of old time, crab-apples were usually planted in or near rickyards or elsewhere close to farmhouses. The custom is now gone out; no crab-apples are planted, and so in course of years there will be but few. Crab-apple is not nearly so plentiful as anciently, either in hedges or enclosures. The juice of the crabapple, varges, used to be valued as a cure for sprains. The present generation can hardly understand that there was a time when matches were not known. To such a period must be traced the expression still common in out-of-the-way places, of a "handful of fire." A cottager who found her fire out would go to a neighbour and bring home some live embers to light up again. When the fire chances to be nearly out, the expression is still heard both in cottages and farmhouses, "There is hardly a handful of fire." Such a mere handful is of course easily "douted." An extinguisher "douts" a candle; the heel of a boot