Chapter M : Rounding-Up

1 : Character

Reference has been made to their insularity, their
alleged unfriendliness, and their unwillingness to
open their mouths (because of the severe climate!).

Certainly they are defensive. Outsiders, who have
breached their insularity in past centuries, have
not always been friendly.
Norfolk's mild paranoia leads them often to
answer a question with another, in much the
same way as the Jews.

Conversely they like to lay traps for foreigners :
attempting to prove that the superior attitudes
often displayed towards the "natives" are based on
falsehoods (perhaps on both sides).
The strong dislike of arrogance and presumption
extends to local folk; mainly those in authority
(the Bosses and the Gentry)
- especially if they happen to be both!.

Major Buxton, an inveterate collector of stories (yarns),
said that Norfolk people have a way of building-up a
story, only to let it fall to earth with a bump.
(e.g. Story H.2)
Perhaps this is related to the more famous habit of
extreme under-statement; a delight in opposites
which would do credit to the Irish.

For instance, Skipper highlights the use of
the word doubt to mean certainty :
If a person is quite sure that his friend will
not go somewhere he says - Oi doubt E 'oon(t) goo.

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2 : Dilution

The whole Section on agriculture bears witness to the
devastating effects of replacing horses with tractors,
and other labour-saving ideas (e.g. spraying, man-made
fertilisers) - and I don't mean the effects upon the
environment! No more muck-spreedin'.

Writing in 1973, Mardle mentions the survival of the
word dwile, because labour-saving in the home was lagging behind.
Not any more. Plenty of "domestic" terminology
is finding a place on the scrap-heap.

Standard words, e.g. frog (for fresher etc.) had already
permeated into the urban area by the 1930's, probably
without the aid of the then "new-fangled" rairdioo.

Ordinary people, in the main, had long since been able
to read newspapers; which were unlikely to report the
summer temperature in the swale, but in the shade!.

Although the expression "pig in a poke" was
(and is still) used, I have never heard the single word
poke used in the City; where it was known by the
more general term bag.
The related word pouch, however, lived on
while anyone still indulged in poipe-smookin'!

We have seen how (real) foreigners, from across the
North Sea, were assimilated into the E. Anglian
community, over hundreds of years.
Although contributing to the dialect, they
(ultimately) adopted what they understood
to be (the local version of) English.
This still tends to happen with the small proportion
of immigrants who speak no English on arrival.

U.K. citizens (and other fluent speakers of standard
English), coming into the Region, can make a conscious
decision whether to mow-in with the local dialect, or retain theirs.
Usually the decision is in the negative.

For their offspring, it can be a more complex situation;
but can we pin any hopes on bi-lingual inhabitants?

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3 : Regression

• in current use OR
• dredged from their memories of childhood.

Either way, as the people died out, generation by
generation, the words fared (q.v.) to be lost in the
proverbial mists of time.
Unless (despite all the phonetic difficulties)
somebody bothered to write them down . . .

Probably the same was true of some
expressions and patterns of speech.

All this is usually summed-up in the term
Oral Tradition.
This conveys a warm, comforting feeling of
rich continuity; but, in fact, adds nothing to
the chances of actual dialect-survival.
Only where the tradition has been acknowledged
and respected (e.g. as in Folk Music) can we be
sanguine about the present and future.

Going back to the days before so-called "State"
schooling, there were two hurdles for ordinary
folk (farm labourers etc.) to overcome,
each one pretty insuperable :-

(a) general literacy i.e. could or would they write at all;
(b) the "Mardle" effect. The latter is described thus :-

People who spoke [ Norfolk ] as their Mother
Tongue . . . were unconscious of speaking it.
When they had occasion to write at all,
they wrote in the standard English of their time.
If East Anglian words or phrases slipped in,
it was by accident!
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4 : Prognosis

Fears had been expressed as early as Forby (the 1820s),
and have regularly surfaced since; quoting each new
threat (schooling, railways, cinema, radio etc.) as it came along.

Pre-1950, further population influxes were not given
much thought. By the time demography became
relevant, so was the ultimate weapon : television
(the tally)!

Our authors' de-bunking of the Mark Twain-like
forecasts is both impressive and thorough.

The doubts, still lingering, are well illustrated
by the statutory "small print" which adverts for
Financial Services are obliged to mention :
Past performance is no guide to the future.

The factors for dilution (outlined in 2. above) seem
to grow ever stronger and more pervasive. Standard
English is busy taking over the whole world;
in commerce, technology and diplomacy.
Genuine foreigners may well arrive here
speaking better English than the natives.
The odds are heavily stacked, but the processes of
attrition (like the Mills of God) grind very slowly.

Some things in Norfolk will be
a mighty long time dying.
I can't imagine the time when he does; when there
is no thass, no go you; when present-participles
don't keep a-gorn.

When will we ever order a pint of beer?;
or stop holding-hard?

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5 : Tidying-Up

Tha(t) wan(t) a good fye-ou(t)!

As before, we should note the avoidance of
the word needs.

Rubbidge is, not surprisingly, Norfolk for
rubbish; but this includes weeds.
More interestingly, and harking back to the
days of the Truck Acts, unwanted and/or
worthless items are still called truck.

Lood-a ow'd truck is the tangible alternative to . . .
squi(t). "Will not entertain" is rendered as -
(h)avin(g) noo truck with. [ Use as a quasi-verb ]

There seems to have been a great dealing of shaking
(a whole lot?!) going on in Norfolk; for what purposes
we can only speculate (mats etc., sauce-bottles??).
Judge for yourself from the following vocabulary :-

Shig or shug - to shake, scatter or wave about;
Jibbuck - to shake up and down;
Ja(tt)er - to shake or knock

The task need not have been done by anyone present;
perhaps by a manufacturer half a world away :-

Har new ha-a-a(t) [ hat ]
- tha(t) woon'(t) 'alf a jo-o-ob!

To amaze or astonish a person is to stam them.

Oi wuz fair stammed!

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6 : Buildings

That is to say, before the age of steel,
concrete and plastics arrived . . .

Foundations have the nice Norfolk name of groundsels
(not a weed!). These go underneath the building
(of course!) - in Norfolk unean it. A tapering
course of bricks, designed to level-up the wall, is a pig.

A plancher is a wooden floor (from the French).

The only form of stone widely available
in Norfolk is flint.
A centuries-old craft is that of flint-knapping,
where to knap is simply to knock. In this case,
the flints are knocked with a hammer into
squarish and more regular shapes.
Galletin(g) is the use of some of the resulting flakes
to help fill the (mortar) gaps; to improve the overall
appearance, and assist weather-proofing.

Flints or other stones weighing about 15cwt.
comprise a jag. The layer of large flints,
occurring naturally in chalk, is the sase.

Shortage (hence cost) of stone, and cost of fired-bricks,
has made primitive "clay-lump" construction
a feature of the area. Lumps of chalk, clunches,
have also been pressed into service.
Parts of West Norfolk have access to carr-stone,
one variety of which is "shell-carr" (shall carr).

Walls in many parts of the country are wooden
frameworks, infilled with "wattle and daub",
brick etc. - as seen in many (late 20th C. ?!) pubs.
Noggin is the brickwork filling the timber gaps.
What other places call rafters are called spars,
in Norfolk - as in ships.

Specific parts of dwellings include:

• Soller - a loft
• Lucam (from the French) - attic window, or
      high-level opening for a hoist (e.g. granary)
• Wicket-hole - anything resembling a "serving-hatch"
• Rally - a shelf built into a wall.
• Petty - outdoor lavatory
      (so probably not part of the dwelling, literally)

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7 : Food For Thought

• Bargood - simply yeast
• Beezlins - first milk from a cow, after calving.
      Special quality used in old rural recipes!
• Coquilles - spiced buns for Easter or Shrove Tuesday
      (esp. around Norwich)
• Cruckle - a crust (but, in Suffolk, to grate or creak)
• Dannock - a small dough-cake
• Froise (as in fry) - a pancake
• Suslams - a mixture, such as a trifle.

Eggs with a soft shell, or other watery or
soft food is lash or lashy (vide 'lashings of').

One of the Morton's Fork type of "saying", which
Norfolk people love to inflict on children, foreigners
etc., relates to food (esp. if in short supply) :-

(a) Them as ax (ask) dorn(t) gi(t) :
          in other words, bad manners go unrewarded,
BUT --
(b) Them as dorn(t) ax, dorn(t) wan(t) :
          if you really were hungry, you would say so.

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8 : Hobgoblins

Less malevolently, he may be quackled
(choked or strangled) by as little as a tight collar . . .
the effect also termed squackled or quaggled.

Stark is normally a rather gloomy word, but in
Norfolk simply means : tight or stiff (as in starch).
That is what could have been wrong with the collar!

Ghosts are called haun(t)s, instead of
the thing they do(!!); or hoighsproi(t)es.

Other phantoms, somewhat restricted to
the Hethersett area, are called faines.

Fairies are, bizarrely, pharisees.
Is this some genuine mistake?

People who are crimblin' may frighten others,
as it means creeping about sneakily.

To pample is not always so bad :
it means going on tiptoe.

One of the shortest, of our famous antique
past-participles, must be for frightened - namely fri(t).

The rather scary game of face-pulling is known,
Up North, as gurning. The Norfolk use
of gurn (gaan) is related, but more harmless -
it just means grin (re-arranging the letters instead!).

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9 : Who wouldn't be confused?

• What : Woo(t)
• What is : Wooss
• Was : Wooz
• Wasn't : Woon'(t)
• Wouldn't : Woon'(t) (Similarly : Shoon'(t))
• Won't : Oon'(t)  < N. B.
• Wholly : (W)hoolly
• Only : Oolly