uldn't bide blowed."

[Sidenote: THE SHEPHERD'S PERILS]

In the foregoing examples Mr. Parish has perhaps made the Sussex
labourer a thought too epigrammatic: a natural tendency in the
illustrations to such a work. The following narrative of adventure from
the lips of a South Down shepherd, which is communicated to me by my
friend, Mr. C. E. Clayton, of Holmbush, is nearer the normal loquacity
of the type:--"I mind one day I'd been to buy some lambs, and coming
home in the dark over the bostal, I gets to a field, and I knows there
was a g[macron e][macron a]t, and I kep' beating the hedge with my stick
to find the g[macron e][macron a]t, and at last I found 'en, and I goos
to get over 'en, and 'twas one of these here gurt ponds full of foul
water I'd mistook for the g[macron e][macron a]t, and so in I went, all
over my head, and I tumbles out again middlin' sharp, and I slips,
'cause 'twas so slubby, and in I goos again, and I do think I should ha'
been drownded if it warn't for my stick, and I was that froughtened, and
there were some bullocks close by, and I froughtened them splashing
about and they began to run round, and that froughtened me; and
there--well, I was all wet through and grabby, and when I got home I
looked like one of these here water-cress men. But I kep' my pipe in my
mouth all the time. I didn't lose 'en."

[Sidenote: SUSSEX WORDS IN AMERICA]

The late Mr. F. E. Sawyer, another student of Sussex dialect, has
remarked on the similarity between Sussex provincialisms and many words
which we are accustomed to think peculiarly American. One cause may be
the two hundred Sussex colonists taken over by William Penn, who, as we
have seen, was at one time Squire of Warminghurst. "In recent years we
have gathered from the works of American comic writers and others many
words which at first have been termed 'vulgar Americanisms,' but which,
on closer examination, have proved to be good old Anglo-Saxon and other
terms which had dropped out of notice amongst us, but were retained in
the _New_ World! Take, for instance, two 'Southern words,' (probably
Sussex) quoted by Ray (1674). _Squirm_:--Artemus Ward describes 'Brother
Uriah,' of 'the Shakers,' as '_squirming_ liked a speared eel,' and,
curiously enough, Ray gives 'To _squirm_, to move nimbly about after the
manner of an eel. It is spoken of eel.' Another word is 'sass' (for
sauce), also quoted by Artemus Ward.... Mrs. Phoebe Earl Gibbons (an
American lady