Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century which are No Longer in Use, Or are Not Used in the Same Sense. And Words which are Now Used Only in the Provincial Dialects, Volume 1

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Page 62 - ... in the warm latitudes. It is thus managed: A large tub is filled with water, and two stools placed on each side of it. Over the whole is thrown a tarpaulin, or old sail: this is kept tight by two persons, who are to represent the king and queen of a foreign country, and are seated on the stools. The person intended to be ducked plays the Ambassador, and after repeating a ridiculous speech dictated to him, is led in great form up to the throne, and seated between the king and queen, who rising...
Page 49 - Two persons are chosen, previously to the meeting, to be lord and lady of the ale, who dress as suitably as they can to the characters they assume. A large empty barn, or some such building, is provided for the lord's hall, and fitted up with seats to accommodate the com pany.
Page 168 - Then he sets off to catch them. Any one, who is taken, cannot run out again with his former associates, being accounted a prisoner, but is obliged to assist his captor in pursuing the rest. When all are taken, the game is finished ; and he, who was first taken, is bound to act as catcher in the next game.
Page 167 - ... the couple condemned to this division to catch the others, who advanced from the two extremities ; in which case a change of situation took place, and hell was filled by the couple who were excluded by preoccupation from the other places : in this catching, however, there was some difficulty, as, by the regulations of the game, the middle couple were not to separate before they had succeeded, while the others might break hands whenever they found themselves hard pressed. When all had been taken...
Page i - DICTIONARY OF OBSOLETE AND PROVINCIAL ENGLISH, Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century which are No Longer in Use or are Not Used in the Same Sense, and Words which are Now Used Only in the Provincial Dialects Edited by Thomas Wright Defines thousands of obsolete words used from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century.
Page 198 - Next to that is the musk-rose. Then the strawberry leaves dying, with a most excellent cordial smell. Then the flower of the vines : it is a little dust like the dust of a bent, which grows upon the cluster in the first coming forth.
Page 195 - From all mischances that may fright Your pleasing slumbers in the night, Mercie secure ye all, and keep The goblin from ye while ye sleep. Past one aclock, and almost two ; My masters all, good day to you.
Page 180 - A principal compartment or division in the architectural arrangement of a building, marked either by the buttresses on the walls, by the disposition of the main ribs of the vaulting of the interior, by the main arches and pillars, the principals of the roof, or by any other leading features that separate it into corresponding portions.
Page 170 - London : they were sold piping hot, in booths and on stalls, and ostentatiously displayed, to excite the appetite of passengers. Hence a Bartholomew pig became a common subject of allusion: the Puritan railed against it, For the very calling it a Bartholomew it so, is a spice of idolatry, B.
Page 394 - I'll be sworn, Master Carter, she bewitched Gammer Washbowl's sow to cast her pigs a day before she would have farrowed : yet they were sent up to London and sold for as good Westminster dog-pigs at Bartholomew fair as ever great-bellied ale-wife longed for.

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