John Keble's Parishes

Chapter 15

WORDS AND PHRASES

Before entirely quitting the parish, a few of the older words and forms of expression may be recorded, chiefly as remembered from the older generation, for "the schoolmaster" and the influx of new inhabitants have changed much that was characteristic of the genuine West Saxon. Nor, indeed, was there any very pronounced dialect, like a separate language. The speech is slow, and with a tendency to make o like aa, as Titus Oates does in Peveril of the Peak. An Otterbourne man going into Devonshire was told, "My son, you speak French." No one ever showed the true Hampshire south-country speech and turn of expression so well as Lady Verney in her Lettice Lisle, and she has truly Hampshire characters too, such as could once easily be matched in these villages.

The words and phrases here set down are only what can be vouched for by those who have grown up to them

WORDS

VILLAGE SPECIFICS.

Cure for Epilepsy

To wear round the neck a bag with a hair from the cross on a he- donkey.

Or,

To wear a ring made of sixpences begged from six young women who married without change of name.

Cure for Whooping Cough

An infusion of mouse ear hawkweed (Hieracium Pilosella), flavoured with thyme and honey. This is really effective, like other "yarbs" that used to be in vogue.

Cure for Shingles

Grease off church bells.

For Sore Throat

Rasher of fat bacon fastened round the neck.

For Ague

To be taken to the top of a steep place, then violently pushed down.

Or,

To have gunpowder in bags round the wrists set on fire.

Powdered chaney (china), a general specific.

PHRASES

Singing psalms to a dead horse, exhorting a stolid subject.

Surplice, smock-frock.

"Ah! sir, the white surplice covers a great deal of dirt"--said by a tidy woman of her old father.

"And what be I to pay you?"

"What the Irishman shot at," i.e. nothing--conversation overheard between an old labourer and his old friend, the thatcher, who had been mending his roof.

"Well, dame, how d'ye fight it out?"--salutation overheard.

CURATE. Have you heard the nightingale yet?

BOY. Please, sir, I don't know how he hollers.

Everything hollers, from a church bell to a mouse in a trap.

A tenth child, if all the former ones are living, is baptized with a sprig of myrtle in his cap, and the clergyman was supposed to charge himself with his education.

If possible, a baby was short-coated on Good Friday, to ensure not catching cold.

The old custom (now gone out) was that farmers should send their men to church on Good Friday. They used all to appear in their rough dirty smock frocks and go back to work again. Some (of whom it would never have been expected) would fast all day.

The 29th of May is still called Shick-shack day--why has never been discovered. There must have been some observance earlier than the Restoration, though oak-apples are still worn on that day, and with their oak sprays are called Shick-shack.

On St. Clement's Day, the 23rd of November, explosions of gunpowder are made on country blacksmiths' anvils. It is viewed as the blacksmiths' holiday. The accepted legend is that St. Clement was drowned with an anchor hung to his neck, and that his body was found in a submarine temple, from which the sea receded every seven years for the benefit of pilgrims. Thus he became the patron of anchor forgers, and thence of smiths in general. Charles Dickens, in Great Expectations describes an Essex blacksmith as working to a chant, the refrain of which was "Old Clem." I have heard the explosions at Hursley before 1860, but more modern blacksmiths despise the custom. At Twyford, however, the festival is kept, and at the dinner a story is read that after the Temple was finished, Solomon feasted all the artificers except the blacksmiths, but they appeared, and pointed out all that they had done in the way of necessary work, on which they were included with high honour.

St. Thomas's Day, 21st December, is still at Otterbourne held as the day for "gooding," when each poor house-mother can demand sixpence from the well-to-do towards her Christmas dinner.

Christmas mummers still perambulate the villages, somewhat uncertainly, as their performance depends on the lads willing to undertake it, and the willingness of some woman to undertake the bedizening of them with strips of ribbon or coloured paper; and, moreover, political allusions are sometimes introduced which spoil the simplicity. The helmets are generally made of wallpaper, in a shape like auto-da-fe caps, with long strips hanging over so as to conceal the face, and over the shirts are sewn streamers.

Thus tramp seven or eight lads, and stand drawn up in a row, when the foremost advances with, at the top of his hoarse voice:

(Alas! too probably. Thanks to the schoolmaster abroad.)

Then either he or some other, equipped with a little imitation snow, paces about announcing himself:

So far from "claiming peace," St. George waves (or ought to wave) his wooden sword, as he clumps forth, exclaiming:

On this defiance another figure appears:

To which St. George responds, in the tone in which he would address a cart-horse:

And the doctor, taking to prose, replies:

"I'm not like those little mountebank doctors that go about the streets, and say this, that, and the other, and tell you as many lies in one half-hour as you would find in seven years; but what I does, I does clean before your eyes, and ladies and gentlemen, if you won't believe your own eyes, 'tis a very hard case."

The king agreeing that it is, the doctor goes to the patient, saying:

"I have a little bottle that I call golden foster drops. One drop on the root of this man's tongue and another on his crown, will strike the heat through his body, and raise him off the ground."

Accordingly the Turkish knight slowly rises and decamps, St. George exclaiming:

"Arise, arise, thou cowardly dog, and see how uprightly thou can'st stand. Go home into your own country and tell them what old England has done for you, and how they'll fight a thousand better men than you.

This last speech may have been added after the Crimean War, as the drama was copied out in 1857; but the staple of it was known long before, though with variations, in different villages, and it always concludes with little Johnny Jack, the smallest of the troup, with a bundle of dolls on his back, going round with a jingling money-box, saying:

Before Christmas carols had to be reformed and regulated lest they should be a mere occasion of profanity and rudeness, that curious one of Dives and Lazarus was occasionally heard, of which two lines could never be forgotten -

And when Lazarus afterwards sees "Divers" "sitting on a serpent's knee."

May Day too survived in a feeble state, with the little voices singing:

Mr. Keble improved the song into:

We cannot but here add an outline of a village character from Old Times at Otterbourne:-

Mr. William Stainer was a baker. His bread was excellent, and he was also noted for what were called Otterbourne buns, the art of making which seems to have gone with him. They were small fair-complexioned buns, which stuck together in parties of three, and when soaked, expanded to twice or three times their former size. He used to send them once or twice a week to Winchester. But though baking was his profession, he did much besides. He was a real old-fashioned herbalist, and had a curious book on the virtues of plants, and he made decoctions of many kinds, which he administered to those in want of medicine. Before the Poor Law provided Union doctors, medical advice, except at the hospital, was almost out of reach of the poor. Mr. and Mrs. Yonge, like almost all other beneficent gentlefolks in villages, kept a medicine chest and book, and doctored such cases as they could venture on, and Mr. Stainer was in great favour as a practitioner, as many of our elder people can remember. He was exceedingly charitable and kind, and ready to give his help so far as he could. He was a great lover of flowers, and had contrived a sort of little greenhouse over the great oven at the back of his house, and there he used to bring up lovely geraniums and other flowers, which he sometimes sold. He was a deeply religious and devout man, and during an illness of the clerk took his place in Church, which was more important when there was no choir and the singers sat in the gallery. He was very happy in this office, moving about on felt shoes that he might make no noise, and most reverently keeping the Church clean, and watching over it in every way. He also continued in the post of schoolmaster, which at first he had only taken temporarily, and quaintly managing it. He was found setting as a copy "A blind man's wife needs no paint," which he defended as "Proverbs, sir, Proverbs." Giving up part of his business to his nephew, he still sat up at night baking, for the nephew, he said, was only in the A B C book of baking, and he also had other troubles: there was insanity in his family, and he was much harassed. His kindness and simplicity were sometimes abused. He never had the heart to refuse to lend money, or to deny bread on credit to hopeless debtors; and altogether debts, distress, baking, and watching his sisters all night, and school keeping all day, were too much for him. The first hint of an examination of his school completed the mischief and he died insane, drowning himself in the canal. It is a sad story, but many of us will remember with affectionate regard the good, kind, quaint, and most excellent little man.

A few lines, half parody, half original, may be added as picturing the old aspect of Otterbourne, about 1830:-

OLD REMEMBRANCES