_Miserable._--_Miserable_ is very commonly used in Devonshire in the
signification of _miserly_, with strange effect until one becomes used to
it. Hooker the Judicious, a Devonshire man, uses the word in this sense in
the _Eccl. Polity_, book v. ch. lxv. p. 21.:
"By means whereof it cometh also to pass that the mean which is virtue
seemeth in the eyes of each extreme an extremity; the liberal-hearted
man is by the opinion of the prodigal _miserable_, and by the judgment
of the _miserable_ lavish."
_Few._--Speaking of broth, people in Devon say a _few broth_ in place of a
little, or some broth. I find a similar use of the word in a sermon
preached in 1550, by Thomas Lever, Fellow of St. John's College, preserved
by Strype (in his _Eccles. Mem._, ii. 422.). Speaking of the poor students
of Cambridge, he says:
"At ten of the clock they go to dinner, whereas they be content with a
penny piece of beef among four, having a _few pottage_ made of the
broth of the same beef, with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else."
_Figs, Figgy._--Most commonly _raisins_ are called _figs_, and plum-pudding
_figgy_ pudding. So with plum-cake, as in the following rhymes:--
"Rain, rain, go to Spain,
Never come again:
When I brew and when I bake,
I'll give you a _figgy_ cake."
_Against_ is used like the classical _adversum_, in the sense of _towards_
or _meeting_. I have heard, both in Devonshire and in Ireland, the
expression to send _against_, that is, to send _to meet_, a person, &c.
The foregoing words and expressions are probably provincialisms rather than
Devonianisms, good old English forms of expression; as are, indeed, many of
the so-called Hibernicisms.
_Pilm, Farroll._--What is the derivation of _pilm_=dust, so frequently
heard in Devon, and its derivatives, _pilmy_, dusty: it _pilmeth_? The
cover of a book is there called the _farroll_; what is the derivation of
this word?