Many of the humours of Arcady have been moulded into enigmatical sayings and metaphors which may still be heard on the lips of the Dorset rustic:
Tea with a dash of rum is called "milk from the brown cow"; the dead are "put to bed with a shovel"; a noisy old man is a "blaze wig"; a fat and pompous fellow is a "blow-poke"; the thoughts of the flighty girl go a-"bell-wavering"; the gallows is the "black horse foaled by an acorn." The Dorset rustic has devised many names for the dullard: "billy-buttons," "billy-whiffler," "lablolly," "ninnyhammer," and "bluffle-head" are some of them. The very sound of such names suggests folly.
"Leer" is a curious word still heard in Dorset and Devon. It is used to express the sense of craving produced by weakness and long fasting. Perhaps Shakespeare used _Lear_ in a metaphorical sense. I remember once hearing a Sussex labourer speak of taking his "coager" (cold cheer?), a meal of cold victuals taken at noon, but I am told the mouthful of bread and cheese taken at starting in the morning by the Dorset rustic rejoices in the still more delightful name of "dew-bit."
"Crowder" (a fiddler) is a genuine British word, used up to a few years ago, but I was unable to trace anyone using it in Dorset this year. In Cornwall the proverb, "If I can't crowdy, they won't dance" (meaning, "They will pass me by when I have no money to feast and entertain my friends"), was commonly quoted fifty years ago.
Another tale regarding unconscious humour is told of by a Dorset rector who was holding a Confirmation class. He was one of the old-fashioned parsons and made it his solemn duty to call at the village inn and drink a pint of ale with his flock every evening. One of the candidates for Confirmation was the buxom daughter of the innkeeper, and when he came to ask her the usual fixed question, "What is your name?" the girl, holding her head on one side, glanced at him roguishly, and said:
"Now dawntee tell me you don't know. As if you diddent come into our place every night and say, 'Now, Rubina, my dear, give me a half-pint of your best ale in a pint pewter!'"
The story of village sports and the way in which the rustic was wont to enjoy himself is always interesting. One of the most singular forms of contest once in common practice in the west of England was _whiplegs_. The procedure of this pastime consisted of the men standing a yard or so apart and lashing each other's legs with long cart whips till one cried "Holt!" The one who begged for quarter of course paid for the ale. The rude leather gaiters worn by tranters or carters fifty years ago would, of course, take much of the sting out of the whip cuts.