And I cannot omit a
short story here on this subject. Coming to a relation's house,
who was a school-master at Martock, in Somersetshire, I went into
his school to beg the boys a play-day, as is usual in such cases (I
should have said, to beg the master a play-day. But that by the
way). Coming into the school, I observed one of the lowest
scholars was reading his lesson to the usher, which lesson, it
seems, was a chapter in the Bible. So I sat down by the master
till the boy had read out his chapter. I observed the boy read a
little oddly in the tone of the country, which made me the more
attentive, because on inquiry I found that the words were the same
and the orthography the same as in all our Bibles. I observed also
the boy read it out with his eyes still on the book and his head
(like a mere boy) moving from side to side as the lines reached
cross the columns of the book. His lesson was in the Canticles, v.
3 of chap. v. The words these:- "I have put off my coat. How
shall I put it on? I have washed my feet. How shall I defile
them?"
The boy read thus, with his eyes, as I say, full on the text:-
"Chav a doffed my cooat. How shall I don't? Chav a washed my
veet. How shall I moil 'em?"
How the dexterous dunce could form his month to express so readily
the words (which stood right printed in the book) in his country
jargon, I could not but admire.
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