Rural Speech— It has often occurred to me as a
surprising fact that more or less un- educated country folk habitually use words which the literary have begun to avoid as affectatious. " Slay " is one of these. It is a country common- place for kill, but shunned as, what shall I say? too literary for the conversation of the more highly educated. " Asunder " is another. It comes naturally to the lips of the labourer armed with a saw. The literary might with advantage go to the village for scores of vivid local, half-technical words ; but their ignorant avoidance of these is less sur- prising than the neglect, as too literary, of a number of still popular words. Both recent experience and an extract in a charming little Country Life anthology (by A. F. Scott, Macmillan, 6s.) have recalled the subject. No one has ever done for English rural speech quite what Singe has done for rural Irish idiom.
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