Dorset is only one of the several cider-making counties in Wessex. The good round cider is a warming and invigorating drink that is in every way equal to a good ale, and sometimes--especially if it has been doctored with a little spirit and kept in a spirit cask--is considerably stronger, and is by no means to be consumed regardless of quantity. And one must be cautious in mixing drinks when taking cider. But the cider which is consumed by the Dorset rustic is, to use a local word, rather "ramy" or "ropy" to the palate of a person unaccustomed to it. That is to say that it is sour and often rather thick. Of course the rustic knows nothing, and would care nothing, for the so-called cider sold in London which resembles champagne in the way it sparkles. Such stuff is only manufactured for folk out of Wessex. A Dorset rustic, on being reproved by a magistrate for being drunk and disorderly, explained that his sad plight was the result of taking his liquor the wrong way up; for, said he, "Cyder upon beer is very good cheer, Beer 'pon cyder is a dalled bad rider!" The worthy magistrate, not to be vanquished by the poetic tippler, told him to remember-- "When the cyder's in the can The sense is in the man! When the cyder's in the man The sense is in the can." "I wish," said an old shepherd to me, with regret in his voice, "that you might taste such beer as my mother brewed when I was a boy. Bread, cheese and ingyens [onions] with a drop of beer was parfuse [ample] for a meal in those days, 'ess fay! But this beer they sell now is drefful wishee-washee stuff. I'll be dalled if I'll drink it; 'tez water bewitched and malt begridged [begrudged]." In Hodge's uncouth speech are found many words and usages of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, though it is not now relished by fastidious palates. William Barnes, the Dorset poet, enumerates the chief peculiarities of the Dorset dialect in his books on speech lore. He loved the odd phrases of children, and it is easy to see why. For a child, not knowing the correct method of describing a thing and seeking to express its meaning, will often go back to the strong old Anglo-Saxon definitions. The child can often coin very apt phrases. As, for instance, the Dorset child who spoke of honey as "bee-jam." Barnes was delighted, too, with the boy "who scrope out the 'p' in 'psalm' 'cose it didn't spell nothen." Many of the humours of Arcady have been moulded into enigmatical sayings and metaphors which may still be heard on the lips of the Dorset rustic: