72 NOTES ON ESSEEX DIALECT AND FOLK-LORE.
boards and railways are fast sweeping away every vestige of old
beliefs and customs which in days gone by held such prominent
places in social and domestic life. The folk-lorist has also to deal
with remote periods, and to examine the history of tales and tradi-
tions which have been handed down from the distant past and have lost
much of their meaning in the lapse of years. But as a recent writer
has said, "Folk-lorists tread on no man's toes. They take up
points of history which the historian despises, they prosper and are
happy on the crumbs dropped from the tables of the learned, and
grow scientifically rich on the refuse which less skilled craftsmen
toss aside as useless." The tales with which a nurse wiles her
charge to sleep provide for the folk-lore student a succulent banquet,
for he knows that there is scarcely a child-story that may not be
traced back to the boyhood of the world, and to those primitive races
from which so many polished nations have sprung.
Around every stage of human life a variety of customs and
superstitions have woven themselves, most of which, apart from
their antiquarian value as having been bequeathed to us from the
far-off past, are interesting in so far as they illustrate those old-world
notions and quaint beliefs which marked the social and domestic life
of our forefathers. Although many of these tales and phrases appear
to us meaningless, yet it must be remembered that they were the
natural outcome of that scanty knowledge and those crude concep-
tions which prevailed in less enlightened times than our own.
Probably if our ancestors were in our midst now, they would be able
in a great measure to explain or account for what are often looked
upon nowadays as the childish fancies of the nursery.
Many of the old traditionary beliefs and practices associated with
the nursery are relics of what the Scandinavian mothers taught their
children in days long ago. The familiar fairy tales of our own
childhood still form the nursery literature or "baby classics" in
most homes, and are of unusual interest as embodying not only the
myths and legends of the ancient Aryan race, but also their concep-
tions of the world around them.
Our task, however, is not concerned with the large subject of the
fairy tales of the infant world in general, but rather with the local
traditions, superstitions, and common beliefs of our Essex county
and peasantry.
It may be useful to say something of the dialect of Essex, the
greatest peculiarities of which occur north of Chelmsford, especially