“A large ham on the table…” (March 15, 1814)

There’s a saying in Northamptonshire: 

“Bread and cheese, take your ease. Ham and eggs, mind your legs.”

Luis Egidio Meléndez, Still Life with Ham, Eggs, and Utensils, ca. 1750–1775, ©Museo Nacional del Prado

In her review of An Independent Heart for the Historical Novel Society, Katherine Mezzacappa highlighted "the nuanced speech of the servants and the country people". This goes to show what a careful reader she is, because the book actually has very little direct speech in dialect. It’s quite hard to do, and it’s hard on the reader, too. With memories of struggling through pages of heavily apostrophized dialect in the novels of Walter Scott, I decided to present these scenes from the point of view (or point of listening) of my heroine. The Northamptonshire dialect is unfamiliar to Claire, so while she roughly understands what is being said, she would not be able to repeat the exact words. That is why the country people’s speech is mostly paraphrased in the novel.

I can’t remember exactly where I found the proverbs, but to make sure I dropped the right aitches I consulted the following:

Fred Archer, Country Sayings, Stroud 1990

Manfred Görlach, English in Nineteenth-Century England: An Introduction, Cambridge 1999

Marian Pipe, Tales of Old Northamptonshire, Newbury 1990

Peter Trudgill, The Dialects of England, Oxford 1990

Thomas Sternberg, Dialect and Folk-lore of Northamptonshire, 1851 (also available in e-format)

 “Some people turn up their sleeves at work, others turn up their noses.”