Field and Hedgerow: Being the Last Essays of Richard JefferiesJefferies, Richard
History
Field and Hedgerow: Being the Last Essays of Richard Jefferies
Jefferies, Richard
England -- Description and travel; Natural history
'There a' sets' is a constant expression for there it lies. A dish on the
table, a cat on the hearth, a plough in the field, 'there a' sets,' there
it is. 'No bounds' is another. It may rain all day long, 'there's no
bounds;' that is, no knowing. 'I may go to fair, no bounds,' it is
uncertain, I have not made up my mind. A folk so vague in their ideas are
very fond of this 'no bounds;' it is like the 'Quien sabe?' of the
Mexicans, who knows? and accompanies every remark. An avaricious person
is very 'having;' wants to have everything. What are usually called
dog-irons on the hearth are called brand-irons, having to support the
brand or burning log. Where every one keeps fowls the servant girls are
commonly asked if they can cram a chicken, if they understand how to
fatten it by filling its crop artificially. 'Sure,' pronounced with great
emphasis on the 'su,' like the 'shure' of the Irish, comes out at every
sentence. 'I shan't do it all, sure;' and if any one is giving a
narration, the polite listener has to throw in a deep 'sure' of assent at
every pause. 'Cluttered up' means in a litter, surrounded with too many
things to do at once. Of a little girl they said she was pretty, but she
had 'bolted' eyes; a portrait was a good one, but 'his eyes bolt so,
meaning thereby full, staring eyes, that seem to start out of the head. A
drunken man, says the poor wife, is not worth a hatful of crab apples.
The boys go hoop-driving, never bowling. If in any difficulty they say,
'I hope to match it out to the end of the week,' to make the provisions
last, or fit the work in. Most difficult of all to express is the way
they say yes and no. It is neither yes nor no, nor yea nor nay, but a
cross between it somehow. To say yes they shut their lips and then open
them as if gasping for breath and emit a sort of 'yath' without the 'th,'
more like 'yeah,' and better still if to get the closing of the lips you
say 'em' first--'em-yeah.' The no is 'nah' with a sort of jerk on the h;
'na-h,' This yeah and nah is most irritating to fresh ears; you do not
seem to know if your servant has taken any notice of what you said, or is
making a mouth at you in derision.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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