Being known in these parts for a friendly soul, and trusted, moreover,
I have fallen into the position among the peasantry which the parson
used to hold, and does still when he takes the trouble to qualify for
it. If I can't always tell them what to do I may be able to put them
in the way of the man who can. One learns how to make a dictionary of
life as one gets on in it. Another use which they can have of me: I
can tell them how to put their requests or demands. They have no sense
whatever of a written language.
I must not betray confidences, or I could relate some curious matters
on this head. I know, for instance, a farmer who is worth a couple of
hundred thousand at the least, and who can neither write nor read.
He has learned somehow a cross between a scratch and a blot which is
accepted as a signature to cheques--but no more than that. And there
is no harm in saying that I often need an interpreter. I had a
case the other night when a man I know brought in a friend for
consultation--a youth of the round-headed, flaxen, Teutonic type,
rather rare here, who came from a village still more remote from the
world than this one. Not one word of his fluent and frequent speeches
could I understand. It was largely a question of intonation I
believe--but there it was.
He had the wild, inspired look of a savage. He again could neither
read nor write, though he must have been at school within the last
ten or twelve years; but, as I think I have said elsewhere, it is not
uncommon for boys to go through the school course and fail to pass
the standards. There are here two families in particular, admirable
workmen, who for two generations have left school without having
acquired either writing or reading. One wonders deeply what kind of
processes go on in the minds of these fine young men, steady workmen,
as they are, good husbands, kind fathers, useful citizens oftener
than not. What is their conception of God, of human destiny? How does
Religion get at them? Or does it? Shall we ever know? Not if Mr. Hardy
cannot tell us. No other poet of peasant origin has done so--neither
Clare, nor Blomfield, nor even Burns. Mr. Hardy has told us something,
and might have told us a good deal more if by the time he had learned
his craft, he had not learned to be chiefly interested in himself.
That is the way of poets.
Then there's _The Shropshire Lad_, a fake perhaps, since its author
was not a peasant, but a divine little book. _The Shropshire Lad_ is
morbid, unless lads are so in Shropshire--in which case they, too, are
morbid; but it is a golden book of whose beauty and felicity I never
tire. Technically it is by far the most considerable thing since _In
Memoriam_: "Loveliest of trees, the Cherry," makes me cry for sheer
pleasure. But it is haunted by the fear of death and old age; it is
afraid of love; it is sometimes cynical--none of which things are true
of youth in Salop or Salonika. The young peasant is a fatalist to the
core; but fatalists are not afraid of death. Youth is ephemeral and so
is the young peasant. He is always happy when the sun is out.
As for love, it is truly the hot-and-cold disease with him. He is
himself his "own fever and pain," like the rest of us; but I think
love is a physical passion, until marriage. After marriage it may grow
into something very beautiful indeed, and the more beautiful for being
incapable of bodily utterance. I have a pair often under my eye down
here who are, I know, all in all to each other; yet their conversation
is that of two old gossips. But at fortunate moments I may induce one
of them to tell of the other, and then you find out. My _Village Wife_
was no imagination of mine. She lives and suffers not so many miles
from where I write. Indeed, you may say of our peasantry very much
what French people will tell you of their marriage custom, that love
at its best follows that ceremony. It is not bred by romance, but by
intimacy. The romantic attachment flames up, and satiety quenches it.
The other kind glows red-hot but rarely breaks into a flame. You may
have which you choose: you are lucky indeed if you get both.
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
meäd" 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?