s familiar to my youth was as follows:

'Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on;
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels at my head;
Two to watch and one to pray,
And one to carry my soul away.'

An M.P., who shall be nameless, supplies me with an apt illustration of
East Anglian dialect. It was at the anniversary of a National School,
with the great M.P. in the chair, surrounded by the benevolent ladies and
the select clergy of the district. The subject of examination was
Christ's entry into Jerusalem on an ass's colt. 'Why,' said the
M.P.--'why did they strew rushes before the Saviour? can any of you
children tell me?' Profound silence. The M.P. repeated the question. A
little ragamuffin held up his hand. The M.P. demanded silence as the apt
scholar proceeded with his answer. 'Why were the rushes strewed?' said
the M.P. in a condescending tone. I don't know,' replied the boy,
'unless it was to hull the dickey down.'

Roars of laughter greeted the reply, as all the East Anglians present
knew that 'hull' meant 'throw,' and 'dickey' is Suffolk for 'donkey,' but
some of the Cockney visitors present were for a while quite unable to
enjoy the joke.

It is to be feared the three R's were not much patronized in East Anglia,
if it be true that some forty or fifty years ago, in such a respectable
town as Sudbury, it was the fashion for some fifty of the leading
inhabitants to meet in the large bar-parlour of the old White Horse to
hear the leading paper of the eastern counties read out by a scholar and
elocutionist known as John. For the discharge of this important duty he
was paid a pound a year, and provided with as much free liquor as he
liked, and there were people who considered that the Saturday
newspaper-reading did them more good than what they heard at church the
next day.

In some cases our East Anglian dialect is merely a survival of old
English, as when we say 'axe' for 'ask.' We find in Chaucer:

'It is but foly and wrong wenging
To axe so outrageous thing.'

In his 'Envious Man,' Gowing made 'axeth' to rhyme with 'taxeth.' No
word is more common in Suffolk than 'fare'; a pony is a 'hobby'; a thrush
is a 'mavis'; a chest is a 'kist'; a shovel is a 'skuppet'; a chaffinch
is a 'spink.' If a man is upset in his mind, he tells us he is 'wholly
stammed,' and the Suffolk 'yow' is at least as old as Chaucer, who wrote:

'What do you ye do there,