Imagine it is the morning of a DRST (Devon Rural Skills Trust) hedge-laying course (and yes, we all hope to be running them again sooner rather than later): you are a vorenune-varmer (early starter), you look out of the window as a scat (a short, spiteful shower) of rain passes and an ickymal (blue tit) starts singing from a nearby tree. Before too long and with breakfast eaten the long-sleeve clock (grandfather clock) chimes, telling you it is time to be on your way.
The, to our ears, slightly odd words and phrases above are from the delightful pamphlet A Collection of Devonshire Dialect Words in Use, compiled in 1969 by May Adams, Mary Hooppell and a Miss T Woodmason, of the Bigbury Women’s Institute. Some of the words and phrases they recorded are familiar, some less so. Some were not solely confined to Devon and are found elsewhere in the south-west, some, or variants of them, could be heard in other parts of the country too, particularly the names of plants and animals. The ‘in use’ included in the pamphlet’s title is interesting, suggesting as it does the words and phrases the trio collected were still commonly to be heard in the deep South Hams a half-century ago.
A dialect, they say, is a language without an army, and in our more homogenised world this rich, informal vocabulary has withered. But many of these words have staying power: mizzle (light rain or drizzle) is a word I would use just as many of my west-country forebears would have done, as is deeving (thawing), although I would spell and pronounce it as heeving. Thawing, incidentally, seems an inadequate description of a day when the soaking landscape appears to be sweating-out the overnight frost. Ope (a narrow alley, mostly in towns) is a word I have barely heard since childhood – although the pronunciation was always a more straightforward op. Moot (a tree stump) reminded me that my Father always referred to a digger as a moot-axe. Zour-zabs (sorrel), meanwhile, is a phrase my Cornish-born Mother often used for sorrel and docks. So these words and phrases are not simply lexicographical museum pieces, some of them have had the tenacity to have survived into the 21st Century. They are part of the society that made us but for how long the survivors continue to be part of a localised vernacular is an open question.
The pamphlet’s authors make the point that a dialect is an unwritten language, and spellings are individual, phonetic and variable, often differing slightly from town to town, village to village, or even from family to family. Below is a selection of some of the words and phrases that seem the more relevant to rural skills and being in the countryside, with spellings rendered as the Bigbury Women’s Institute published them at the end of the 1960s.
Tools
Bar-iron/Bar-ire – Heavy crow bar for making post holes
Slodge – Sledgehammer
Visgy – Mattock
Biddle/Bittel – Heavy wooden mallet
Biddex – Bud-axe
Prang/Prong – Two-pronged long-handled fork
Tich-crook – Pronged implement for handling dung
Eaval/Eavel – Light long-handled fork for pitching hay
If you were tempted to reach for a scythe you might be a proper dabster (expert exponent), and from time to time you would be seen reaching for a barker (whetstone) to rag (sharpen) the blade.
Hedges, Fields and Walls
Broil – Hedge parings
Scatting abroad a moot – Chopping the root of a tree
Moo-gits – Tree stumps (plural of moot?)
Mommet/Mawkin – Scarecrow
Buddle-hole – A hole at the bottom of a hedge to drain surface water from the road into the field
(Putting up a) Vreth/Vreath – Placing stakes into a gap in a hedge
Splatt – To split hazel into spars (possibly confined to thatching)
We are all familiar with the word shiner, recorded here as a large, flat stone placed vertically at the base of a wall or hedge.
Plants and Animals
Alse – Hazel
Sucky/Zucky – Sycamore
Bullums – Sloes
Egglets – Haws
Guzegobs – Gooseberries (Strubbing is to pick every gooseberry from the bush)
Urts – Whortleberries
Brimbles/Brimmels – Brambles
Vuz-bush – Gorse bush
Devil’s guts – Wild clematis
Floppydop/Flop-top/Flat dock/Cow-flop – Foxglove
Bouncing Bess – Valerian
Withywink – Bindweed
Tibby-lambs – Baby lambs
Yaffers and Yaws – Heifers and ewes (The yaws are yawning is when the ewes are lambing)
Fitch – Weasel
Hedga-boar/Hedgy-bore/Fuzz pig – Hedgehog (Fuzz pig is a handwritten addition; furze-pig is a more familiar rendering)
‘Oodwall/Oubal – Woodpecker
Home-screech – Mistlethrush (variations of this were common throughout the south-west)
Tiddley-tope – Jenny wren
Vuz-chit – Whinchat (furze chat was common from Cornwall to Sussex for whinchat and stonechat)
Carbender/Carpenter/Chizzlebal/Gammer-sow/Sow-pig/Granfer Grigg – Woodlouse (why so many names?)
God-A’mighty’s-cow – Ladybird
Tummy taylor – Cranefly
Weather
Playing wild-giglets – Stormy
A foxy morning – A deceptive one, too bright to last
Pusky – Close
Lew – Sheltered or out of the wind (giving the rather pleasing phrase ‘as lew as a cupboard’)
Thick as a bag – Dense fog or mist
Cockabels/Conkerbils/Icybells – Icicles
Bivver – Shiver with cold
The imagined hedge-laying course has been going for an hour or so and the instructor decides it is time for vorenunes (elevenses). If you are unfortunate your mid-morning snack is zam-zoggy (food or hot drink that has been waiting too long and has gone tepid). Even worse, later on your lunch turns out to be little more than a dibbet (a small helping). Early in the afternoon, hungry and thirsty, you watch a kit (buzzard) soaring overhead and, later, a vildvare (fieldfare) feeding in the field as the light begins to fade and get dimpsy/dimsey (twilight). It’s been a long winter’s day – but the hedge you have been laying looks great! – and it’s soon drapping dark (dusk) and you leave by the light of the parish lantern (the moon).
I could not let this go without mentioning the vether-bed varmer (a late starter) – the temptation is always there!
(Written for the Winter 2020/21 issue of the Devon Rural Skills Trust’s members’ newsletter.)