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Page 7
To return, however, to dialect, intonation, as I say, has much to do
with it. It is attractive, and in poetry can be very touching. I have
had the advantage of hearing Barnes's poems read by a lady who has the
accent perfectly. One does not know Barnes or Wessex who does not
hear him read. That is true of all poetry, no doubt--but Barnes is
uncommonly dull to read. As for words, we have enough of our own to
support a small lexicon, which I used to possess, but have just been
hunting, in vain. Perhaps after the pattern of the arrow, I shall find
it again in the shelf of a friend. I remember that we call the roots
of a tree the _mores_; that a dipper is a _spudgell_; that we say
"_dout_ the candle" when we mean extinguish it. We say "to-year" as
you say "to-morrow," and call the month of March "Lide." February used
to be "Soul-grove," but I have never heard it called so. The pole of
a scythe is the _snead_; the two handles are the _nibs_. They are
fastened by rings called _quinnets_. Isaac Taylor says that the few
remaining Celtic words we have in use (other than hill or river
names) are words for obscure parts of tools. We have some queer
intensives--"terriblish" or "tarblish" is one, and "ghastly," meaning
ugly, is another. "A terrible ghastly sight" we say, meaning that a
thing looks rather ugly.
Our demonstrative pronoun is _thic_, or more properly _dhic_; "dhic
me�d" means "that meadow." _Suent_ means pleasant or proper--really
both. It always has a sense of right consequence, of one thing
following another as it ought. "Suently" would be "duly." But that
now is common to the West, and will be heard from Land's End to
Hengistbury Head, as well as in every one of Mr. Phillpotts' novels.
Doubtless it is too late to protest--since I am upon words--against a
current barbarism which is at least ten years old, and against which
I have publicly cried out at least twenty times. For the twenty-first
time, then, let me object to "wage" for "wages." _Is_ the wages of sin
death, or _are_ they? Do you give a man an alms, or an alm?
Shall we read--
Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's _rage_,
and so on? Go to. But I shall not so easily convert Trade Union
orators, Members of Parliament, Mr. Sidney Webb, or the _Times_. To
them a wages is a wage, and an alms an alm, a man's riches his rich,
and his breeches his--at least I suppose so. I wish that we could call
a man's speeches his speech, and find it was perfectly true. It is a
terrible thought, "a terrible ghastly thought" indeed, that we have
not so long ago chosen over seven hundred persons of both sexes, each
of whom will conceive it his right to make a speech in Parliament
every day. Think of it. It is fair to suppose that every one of them
will make one speech every year, many of them, no doubt, one every
week, some certainly every day. I am thankful that I wasn't a
candidate, for I might have been successful. Then I should have been
compelled to listen, and perhaps tempted to reply, to some or all of
those speeches. "In the end thereof despondency and madness."
CHURCH AND THE MAN
At our Peace Celebration the other day that happened which in my
recollection never happened before. The entire village was in the
parish church, sang _Te Deum_, prayed prelatical prayers, and shared
_Hymns Ancient and Modern_. The Congregational Minister, in a black
gown, read the Lesson, the Vicar, in surplice and stole, preached. All
that in a village where more than half the people are Nonconformists,
and done upon the mere motion of that particular section of us.
No experience since the War has touched me more; and I believe it is
strongly symptomatic. Akin to it was the streaming of the people in
London to Buckingham Palace, just when war was declared, and again on
the day of the Armistice: both matters of pure instinct. For what do
these things show except that we are children who, when we are moved,
run to our mother to tell her all about it? What are we, when we are
stripped to the soul, but one great family? A man told me once that he
was present at a trial for murder where there were half a dozen in
the dock, men and women, principals and accessories. The verdict was
"Guilty," and the wretches stood up to receive the death-sentence.
As they did so, by one common instinct, they all joined hands, and
so remained until they were led away to the cells. A strangely moving
scene.
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