up the 'arth"; and there was his schoolmate, who said that "America was discovered by British Columbia." There was old Mullinger of Earl Soham, who thought it wrong of fooks to go up in a balloon, as that fare1 so bumptious to the Almighty." There was old X., who, whenever my father visited him, would grumble, talk scandal, and abuse all his neighbours, always, however, winding up piously with "But 'tis well." There was the boy whom my father put in the stocks, but who escaped by unlacing his "highlows," and so withdrawing his feet. There was the clergyman, preaching in a strange church, who asked to have a glass of water in the pulpit, and who, after the sermon, remarked to the clerk in the vestry, "That might have been gin-andwater, John, for all the people could tell." And, taking the duty again there next Sunday, he found to his horror it was gin-and-water: "I took the hint, sir-I took the hint," quoth John from the clerk's desk below. There was the Monk Soham woman who, when she got a letter from her son in Hull, told the curate that "that did give me a tarn at fust, for I thought that come from the hot place." There

was the manufacturer of artificial manures who set up a carriage and crest; and a friend asked my father what the motto would be. "Mente et manu res," was the ready answer. There was the concert at Ipswich, where the chairman, a very precise young clergyman, announced that "the Rev. Robert Groome will sing (ahem!) 'Thomas Bowling."" The song was a failure; my father each time was so sorely tempted to adopt the new version. There was the old woman whom my father heard warn

There

ing her daughter, about to travel for the first time by rail, "Whativer yeou do, my dear, mind_yeou don't sit nigh the biler." was the old maiden lady, who every morning after breakfast read an Ode of Horace; and the other maiden lady, a kinswoman of my father's, who practised her scales regularly long after she was sixty. She, if you crushed her in an argument, in turn crushed you with, • "Well, there it is." There was much besides, but memory fails, and space.

From country clergyman to country archdeacon may seem no startling transition; yet it meant a great change in my father's tranquil life. For one thing it took him twice a-year up to London, to Convocation; and in London he met with many old friends and new. Then there were frequent outings to Norwich, and the annual visitations and the Charge. On the first day of his first visitation, at Eye, there was the usual luncheon, and the usual very small modicum of wine. Lunch over, the Rev. Richard Cobbold, the author of 'Margaret Catchpole,' proposed my father's health in a fervid oration, which wound up thus: "Gentlemen, I call upon you to drink the health of our new archdeacon, to drink it, gentlemen, in flowing bumpers." It sounded glorious, but the decanters were empty; and my father had to order (and pay for) two dozen of sherry. At an Ipswich visitation there was the customary roll-call of the clergy, among whom was a new-comer, a Scotchman, Mr Colquhoun. "Mr-, Mr-,' faltered the apparitor, coming unexpectedly on this uncouth name; suddenly he rose a-tiptoe and to the emergency,-"Mr Cockahoon."

In one of the deaneries my father found a churchyard partly sown with wheat. Really, Mr Z-," he said to the incumbent, "I must say I don't like to see this." And the old churchwarden chimed in, "That's what I säa tew, Mr Archdeacon; I säa to our parson, 'Yeou go whatin' it and whatin' it, why don't yeou tater it ?"" This found its way into Punch,' with a capital drawing by Mr C. Keene, whom my father met often at FitzGerald's. there is another unrecorded story of an Irish clergyman, the Rev. "Lucius O'Grady." He had quarrelled with one of his churchwardens, whose name I forget; the other's was Waller.

But

So my father went over to arbitrate between the disputants, and Mr "O'Grady" concluded an impassioned statement of his wrongs with "Voilà tout, Mr Archdeacon, voilà tout." "Waller tew," quoth churchwarden No. 1; "what ha' he to dew with it?" And there was the visit to that woful church, damp, rotten, ruinous. The inspection over, the rector said to my father, "Now, Mr Archdeacon, that we've done the old church, you must come and see my new stables." "Sir," said my father, "when your church is in decent order, I shall be happy to see your new stables." And "the next time," he told me, "I really could ask to see them."

Two London reminiscences, and I have done. A former Monk Soham schoolmistress had married the usher of the Marlborough Street police court. My father went to see them, and as he was coming away, an officious Irishman opened the cab-door for him, with "Good luck to your Rivirince, and did they let you off aizy?" And once my father was waiting on one of the many platforms of

Clapham Junction, when suddenly a fashionably dressed lady dropped on her knees before him, exclaiming, "Your blessing, holy Father." "God bless me !" cried my father, then added quietly, "and you too, my dear lady."

So at last I come to my father's own Suffolk stories. In 1877-78 I made my first venture in letters as editor for the 'Ipswich Journal' of a series of "Suffolk Notes and Queries." I had a goodly list of contributors · all friends of my father's-as Mr FitzGerald, Mr Donne, Captain Brooke of Ufford, Mr Chappell, Mr Aldis Wright, Bishop Ryle, and Professors Earle, Cowell, and Skeat. Of them I was duly proud; still, my father and I wrote, between us, twothirds of the whole. He was the “Habitans in Alto" (High Suffolk, forsooth), alias "Rector," alias Philologus," &c.-how we used to laugh at those aliases. Among his contributions were three papers on the rare old library of Helmingham Hall (Lord Tollemache's), four on Samuel Ward, the Puritan preacher of Ipswich, three on Suffolk minstrelsy, and these sketches written in the Suffolk dialect. Of that dialect my father was a past-master; once and once only did I know him nonplussed by a Suffolk phrase. This was in the school at Monk Soham, where a small boy one day had been put in the corner. "What for?" asked my father; and a chorus of voices answered, "He ha' bin tittymatauterin,” which meant, it seems, playing at see-saw. I retain, of course, my father's own spelling; but he always himself maintained that to reproduce the dialect phonetically is next to impossible-that, for instance, there if a delicate nuance in the Suffolk pronunciation of dog, only faintly suggested by dawg.

I.

OLD TIMES.

Fooks alluz säa as they git old,
That things look wusser evry day;
They alluz sed so, I consate;

Leastwise I've h'ard my mother säa,

When she was growed up, a big gal,

And went to sarvice at the Hall, She han't but one stuff gownd to wear, And not the lissest mite of shawl.

But now yeou caan't tell whue is whue; Which is the missus, which the maid, There ain't no tellin'; for a gal,

Arter she's got her wages paid,

Will put 'em all upon her back,

And look as grand as grand can be ; My poor old mother would be stamm'd1 Her gal should iver look like she.

And 'taint the lissest bit o' use
To tell 'em anything at all;
They'll only laff, or else begin

All manner o' hard names to call.

My father used to repeat one stanza of an old song; I wonder whether the remainder still exists in any living memory. That one stanza ran :

"The roaring boys of Pakefield,

Oh, how they all do thrive ! They had but one poor parson, And him they buried alive." Whether the prosperity of Pakefield was to be dated or derived from the fact of their burying their “ poor parson" is a matter of dangerous speculation, and had better be left in safe obscurity; else other places might be tempted to make trial of the successful plan. But can

one

any one send a copy of the whole song ?

From the same authority I give a stanza of another song:

"The cackling old hen she began to collogue,

Says she unto the fox, 'You're a stinking old rogue;

Your scent it is so strong, I do wish you'd keep away;'

The cackling old hen she began for to say."

The tune, as I still remember it, is as fine as the words-for fine they certainly are, as an honest expression of opinion, capable of a large application to other than foxes.

I cannot vouch for a like antiquity for the following sea-verses; but they are so good that I venture to append them to their more ancient brethren :

"And now we haul to the 'Dog and Bell,'

Where there's good liquor for to sell; In come old Archer with a smile, Saying, 'Drink, my lads, 'tis worth your while.'

Ah! but when our money's all gone and spent,

And none to be borrowed nor none to be lent;

In comes old Archer with a frown, Saying, 'Get up, Jack, let John sit down."

Alas, poor Jack and John Countryman too, when the like result arrives. J. D.

III.

ONE OF JOHN DUTFEN'S 'QUEERIES.' I am werry much obligated to yeou, Mr Editer, for printin' my lines. I hain't got no more at spresent, so I'll send yeou a queery instead. I axed our skulemaster, "What's a queery?" and he saa, "Suffen queer," so I think I can sute yeou here.

When I was a good big chap, I lived along with Mr Cooper, of Thräanson.3 He was a big man; but, lawk! he was wonnerful päad over with rheumatics, that he was. I lived in the house, and arter I had done up my

good wife she ha' bin to me. But Susan coon't git on with her. She'ed dew 1 what she was towd, but 'twarn't done pleasant, and when she spook she spook so short. My wife was werry patient with her; but dew all she could, she nivver could git on with Susan.

"I'd a married sister in London, whue cum down to see us at Whis-suntide. She see how things fared, and she saa to me, 'John,' sez she, 'dew yeou let Susan go back with me, and I'll git her a good place and see arter her.' So 'twas sattled. Susan was all for goin', and when she went she kiss't me and all the bors, but she nivver sed nawthin' to my wife, 'cept just 'Good-bye.' She fared to git a nice quite 2 place; but then my sister left London, and Susan's missus died, and so she had to git a place where she could. So she got a place where they took in lodgers, and Susan and her missus did all the cookin' and waitin' between 'em. Susan sed arterwards that 'twarn't what she had to dew, but the runnin' upstairs; that's what killt her. There was one owd gentleman, who lived at the top of the house. He'ed ring his bell, and if she din't go di-reckly, he'ed ring and ring agen, fit to bring the house down. One daa he rung three times, but Susan was set fast, and coon't go; and when she did, he spook so sharp, that it wholly upset her, and she dropt down o' the floor all in a faint. He hollered out at the top o' the stairs; and sum o' the fooks cum runnin' up to see what was the matter. Arter a bit she cum round, and they got her to bed; but she was so bad that they had to send for the doctor. The owd gentleman was so wexed, he sed he'ed paa for the doctor as long as he could; but when the doctor sed she was breedin' a faver, nawthing would satisfy her missus but to send her to the horspital, while she could go.

"So she went into the horspital, and laa five weeks and din't know nobody. Last she begun to mend, and she sed that the fooks there were werry kind. She had a bed to her

1 Do.

self in a big room with nigh twenty others. Ivry daa the doctor cum round, and spook to 'em all in tarn. He was an owdish gentleman, and sum young uns cum round with him. One mornin' he saa to Susan, 'Well, my dear,' sez he, 'how do yeou feel to-day?' She sãa, 'Kind o' middlin', sir.' She towd me that one o' the young gentlemen sort o' laffed when he hard her, and stopped behind and saa to her, 'Do yeou cum out o' Suffolk?' She saa, 'Yes; what, do yeou know me?' She was so pleased! He axed her where she cum from, and when she towd him, he saa, 'I know the clargyman of the parish.' He'ed a rose in his button-hole, and he took it out and gov it her, and he saa, 'Yeou'll like to hev it, for that cum up from Suffolk this mornin'. Poor mor, she was so pleased! Well, arter a bit she got better, and the doctor saa, 'My dear, yeou must go and git nussed at home. That'll dew more for yeou than all the doctors' stuff here.'

2 Quiet.

"She han't no money left to pãa for her jarney. But the young gentleman made a gatherin' for her, and when the nuss went with her to the station, he holp her into the cab, and gov her the money. Whue he was she din't know, and I don't now, but I alluz sãa, 'God bless him for it.'

"One mornin' the owd parson-he was yar father-sent for me, and he saa, John,' sez he, 'I ha' had a letter to say that Susan ha' been in the horspital, but she is better now, and is cummin' home to-morrow. So yeou must meet her at Halser,3 and yeou may hiv my cart.' Susan coon't write, so we'ed nivver hard, sin' her aunt went away. Yeou may s'pose how I

felt! Well, I went and met her. O lawk, a lawk! how bad she did look! I got her home about five, and my wife had got a good fire, and ivrything nice for her, but, poor mor! she was wholly beat. She coon't eat nawthin'. Arter a bit, she tuk off her bonnet, and then I see she han't no hair, 'cept a werry little. That wholly beat me, she used to hev such nice hair. Well, we got her to bed, and for a whole week she coon't

3 Halesworth.