Poetry > Ballads in the Cumberland dialect

178
NOTES.
Tuesday—because on these two days collops and
pancakes form the chief repast of the country people *
—a custom derived from our ancestors, who gave full .
indulgence to their appetites a day or two before the If
arrival of that long and meagre season—the Quad? u
ragesimal Fast.
Note 9, p. 28.
Hud tou seen her at kurk, <Ssc.
From the levity of air which distinguishes some of!
my fair countrywomen during the hours of public;
worship, it would not be uncharitable to suppose that
they attend church from the same view as they do;
fairs. What can we think of a young woman whose;
eye is continually roving from one part of the audienc^
to another, observing every dress, and examining
every countenance with the minuteness, if not with
the penetration of a Lavater ? What can we think,
but that she is destitute of those soft, retiring graces,
which so much adorn her sex, and give so much
attraction to beauty?
Note 10, p. 29.
The dumb weyfe was tellin their fortunes.
A person, born without the faculty of speech, is
thought, by the illiterate part of the Cumbrian |
peasantry, to possess the gift of prescience; and this |
supposed extraordinary endowment gives him so much ;
confidence and veneration with that class of the com- j
munity, that, if he possess not common honesty, it •
becomes the means of drawing pence from their |
pockets.
Fortune-telling—the most lucrative part of vaticina- '
tion—is often professed by women, who, having no
settled abode, travel from village to village, all of
them really or pretendedly dumb; for the most
voluble tongue among them can submit to a tem¬
porary restraint, when the credit of their profession,