Brian Stevens, Dialect Recorder

Posted 6^`h March 2010

Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen please find herewith my Dialect Recorder's Report for March 2010. Firstly, I am much obliged to George Pritchard and Pauline Hope for their energies in helping to make the new Dialect website so informative, also, the new additions from time to time, which broadens the selections of Dialect from areas around our County.

For this report West and North Cornwall have come to my rescue to provide Dialect selections so I am most indebted to these Recorders.

Penzance Old Cornwall Society's Recorder, Cedric Appleby, has forwarded a most interesting dialect story written and published in October 1816 to me. This surely must be one of the earliest pieces of dialect, for I myself have not discovered, as yet, anything that far back. However, thank you Mr Les Gillard a member of this society for such gleanings.

It is entitled,

"The History of a Day" by Humphrey Clodpole
A Cornish Dungdabber

It was published in THE WEEKLY ENTERTAINER - 1816 and printed by

J. Langdon & Sons, Sherborne.

It is in the Dialect of the very north of Cornwall, Camelford area, St. Evel!!! There are a number of sayings and words which I should imagine few, if indeed any living today, could interpret into today's meanings. For this purpose I will quote one or two in the hope that some  of our North Cornwall members might-be-able to assist.

"---clayn doulas shart---my new nab coat

"---pairt of two mugs of bumbo."

"---sun looked a little waterish, and zoomed raps of rain vell at the same time, zo I thort the cuckles was at breakfast."

"---a fine flock of gooze chickens."

"--- fine boozom of veers in the pigs houze."

"---a fine passel of dumble dories and oakwebs."

"Arter super we had some flip and hot pot, but I wudden have any black strap."

"---a good deal of blink." 

And a couple of sayings which I have not heard before:‑

"----what's got over the devils back, will go under his belly, Is, sez Uncle Diggory, a penny ill got will went like style."

Dialect Recorder Zip Roberts of'Madron Old Cornwall Society has furnished our archives with a few sayings and words:‑

Bra cry in the camp - excessive reaction to misfortune.

Never teach pig to sing. You won't succeed and you'll only upset the pig - advice. 

That's to they - nothing to do with me.

Three words from Sennen :- Merse - guillemot. Screecher - mistle-thrush. Stave - starling.

Recently when my wife said to an elderly St. Ives lady, that we were most ready for the Museum's volunteers' lunch, she replied "so you're all se'day en?" Never heard that before, Beatrice. "My, you aben, why that's what the owld people use to saay when they were all set to go anywhere."

From Dave Bartlett of Wadebridge OCS a collection of "Old Cornish Sayings" written by Edna Burden nee marker included:-

Wild as an Urn - Heron.

Anyone who was seen driving up in a large car - "He drove up in a car like a liner." (At St. Ives we say - "as big as a ferryboat")

Streamed our washing not rinsed - word associated with miners when they streamed for tin.

If Edna Burden's Mother was asked if she liked going somewhere like shopping in a big town, she would say -"I would rather be up in the craft (croft) picking up sticks" to light the fire.

Mr R.M. Heard, the new Dialect Recorder for Bude-Stratton OCS has provided me with the correct version for the word I had down in my last report to you as Milky Diesel. It is Milky­Dashel or Deshel and is the particular yellow flowered thistle with no prickles that is collected by children for pet rabbits etc.

I will close with a little weather rhyme that I came across whilst at the Morrab Library in Penzance recently. It was in a magazine of 1868-69 called `One and All'.

SPRING WEATHER
March will search, April will try,
May will tell ye if ye'1l live or die.

Please keep Dialect alive and our local sayings. Write or telephone me or e-mail George with your contributions. The next Cornish Dialect Recorder's Report is up to you all, so a few fragments gathered up before they are lost, would be most appreciated.

Thank you One and All

Brian Stevens

FOCS

Dialect Recorder

Spring 2010

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Posted 27th February 2010

There have been a lot of additions to the dialect website. Go to http://cornishdialect.oldcornwall.org/  to see them

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Brians report to the AGM Meeting October 2009

Brians report to the Spring Meeting February 2009

I am grateful to various Society members and others who have donated words or expressions to me. This report contains entries from Mousehole to Cawsand, so perhaps come my next report, we can go a little further down west and a little more up towards the borders with England.

Leon Pezzack has given me a most comprehensive printed list of Mousehole dialect. Unfortunately I have forgotten the name of the compiler. 

The cuttlefish, whose bone is used between the bars of bird cages is called `Shegeen' (R. M Nance omits the `n' and spells it as 'Shegee'. BS_) `Murfles' are freckles,

`Timmynoggy' referred to as an odd - shapeless item, (in fact, R. M. Nance gives it four other descriptions for nautical uses. BS.)

Joy Stevenson has passed on to me a few papers of interest, and amongst the dialect therein are:

'Twecking' - pulling,  

`Gone cluck' -- gone quiet, 

and one I noticed most appropriate from the article in the .Spring 2008 Old Cornwall Journal, "A Nineteenth Century Conjuror's Archive from North Tamerton by Jason Semmens", `She's conjuring' - working something out.

Zip Roberts, Dialect Recorder for Madron OCS, provided a number of words, one is:- 'Bow-di-go' for the discretion of a person dressed like a tramp. (Many years ago I worked with a labourer Who said to a fellow workmate, "The'art dressed like a ditty-guy" which, he informed me, referred to Irish men who worked on road works and were dressed summer and winter in rubber boots, overcoats and trilby hats. BS.)

Also of Madron OCS, Audrey Thomas sent a list of her dialect recollections: `Like Great bunt ,laane, don' want nobody weth 'er and don' want to he left 'lone'.

`Faace like a rusticock' - is person with a red face.

When presumably a person was asked with regards to his health the reply was:-'I eats well and I sleeps well, but when it comes to work I shivers all over'.

Daniel Green of Redruth contributed 'Hildahoop' for the colour purple. 

Cornish riddle:- 'No bottom or top, holds gallons of water and never leaks a drop'- referring to a brandis, a three legged stand placed over afire to support a container of water.

A certain man who was praised for fathering two pretty daughters replied, 

`The uglier the ram the prettier the lamb'.

Another man who was told to make more haste in his work in the Camborne - Redruth area would reply `The Bassetts are dead old pal' meaning that the days when the Bassets of Tehidy, who owned both property and workforce, were no more.

Bill Glanville of St. Columb OCS, forwarded to me a page or two from a most interesting 1898 publication entitled:- `The Cornish in Southwest Wisconsin'. That particular USA state had a large Cornish population connected with the mining, and it was said that for other nationalities it was nigh impossible to understand two Cornishmen talking. Dialect went with them and continued in their communications. A list of words and sayings is contained in these writings. A sample is:

`Crabit' for scarf,

`Kicklish' for tottering'

`'E cla 'naw tin' - a wise man who could discern the difference in tin and iron ores,

"E da 'naw prils from 'elvins' - prils -good ore, 'elvins - deads or waste. Then there is the interpretation of the saying, `cream 'pon pilchards'. I quote: "As cream is the height of luxury in Cornwall, while pilchards are common food-----the expression means luxury heaped upon commonplace. If an ordinary man affects too much, dresses above his means, lives too high, or is vain, he is likened to `cream 'pon pilchards'."

Some dialect was passed on to me whilst with members of the Chacewater OCS a few months ago. Father Jim Vincent mentioned a Camborne saying, `Gabby Lark' for a talkative person.

Dr John Chesterfield brought to my attention three from Cawsand in East Cornwall:

`Coucth' - clobed up job, ('clobed' - dialect for cadged' most probably. BS) `.

fakes' - not quite as many,

`Scarlon - crawling around. 

(With regards to the latter, I was brought up saying the word as 'scrowen around'. This illustrating how certain words sound different by the time they reach the foot of Cornwall. BS.)

Please keep dialect, likes and anything Cornish, coming along to provide me with another report soon.

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