"Our echoes roll from soul to soul."
--_The Princess_.

Compulsory education has eliminated many of the old words and phrases
formerly in general use in Worcestershire, and is still striving to
substitute a more "genteel," but not always more correct, and a much
less picturesque, form of speech. When I first went to Aldington I
found it difficult to understand the dialect, but I soon got
accustomed to it, and used it myself in speaking to the villagers.
Farrar used to tell us at school, in one of the resounding phrases of
which he was rather fond, that "All phonetic corruption is due to
muscular effeminacy," which accounts for some of the words in use, but
does not alter the fact that many so-called corrupt words are more
correct than the modern accepted form.

It is difficult to convey the peculiar intonation of the
Worcestershire villager's voice, and the _ipsissima verba_ I have
given in my anecdotes lose a good deal in reading by anyone
unacquainted with their method. Each sentence is uttered in a rising
scale with a drop on the last few words, forming, as a whole, a not
unmusical rhythmical drawl. As instances of "muscular effeminacy," two
fields of mine, where flax was formerly grown, went by the name of
"Pax grounds"; the words "rivet" and "vine," were rendered "ribet" and
"bine." "March," a boundary, became "Marsh," so that
Moreton-on-the-March became, most unjustly, "Moreton-in-the-Marsh."
"Do out," was "dout"; "pound," was "pun"; "starved," starred. The
Saxon plural is still in use: "housen" for houses, "flen" for fleas;
and I noticed, with pleasure, that a school inspector did not correct
the children for using the ancient form. Gilbert White, who died in