" "Our Bob has ligabed sin'
Monday." "The moon wor _ligging_ behind a cloud, so they couldn't see
keepers coming." To _lorp_ is to move awkwardly or idly, and the word
suggests a noble line for the alliterative poet:
Lo, lazy lubbers loutish, lorp and loll.
In the days of my boyhood I was perplexed conjecturing by what process
of the rustic mind moles had changed their names into _Mouldi-warps_;
but I have since discovered that in this instance, as in countless
others, the bucolic brain was not so mollified by beans and bacon as
some would have us believe. The _mould_--and very fine mould it is--is
_warped_, turned up by the mole; and this reminds me of a mole-catcher,
whose principles were warped also, and whose occupation was gone awhile
in our parts, when it was discovered that he carried a collection of
dead moles about with him, with which, the morning after his traps had
been set, he made a grand display on some contiguous hedge, inducing his
employer fondly to imagine that his enemies (as he thought of them) had
been all destroyed in a night.
Flying onwards--for this is a very fugitive piece--I would ask
admiration for the adjective _muggy_, as exquisitely descriptive of
weather, not uncommon in this climate, where a fog gives one the idea,
suggested by Dickens, that nature is brewing on an extensive scale
outside, and there's dampness everywhere, taking the curl from ringlet
and whisker, and causing our adhesive envelopes to fasten themselves on
our writing-table, as though practising the duties of their post.
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