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Description: | Rupert describes the family farm before mechanisation and mains drainage. He recalls the first tractor on the farm and his father’s reluctance to use it for harvesting. Miserden is a village just to the west of Winstone and Birmingham a large city in the West Midlands to the north. The Fordson Standard tractor was produced in Dagenham, England from 1940.
The Co-op refers to the Co-operative Wholesale Society: a family of businesses whose activities range from food to finance and from farms to funerals. The first retail co-operative was founded in Rochdale in 1843 and by 1863 a group of retail societies had registered the North of England co-operative Society with the aim of supporting the growing retail consumer co-operative movement. Land Rover refers to the four-wheeled drive vehicles manufactured in the UK since 1948.
lexis
hot = to heat; copper = large vessel for boil washing laundry; cause = because; swath = space covered by a sweep of the mower's scythe; bodkin = evener on horse-drawn plough; sheaf = bundle of corn; stook = to stand sheaves of corn together in field for drying; hine = him; tallet = hay-loft
phonology
H-dropping; rhoticity
PRICE [VI ~OI]; MOUTH [EU ~ @U]; THOUGHT [A:]; NORTH [O`: > A`:]; PALM [a:]; START [A`: > a`:]; NURSE [@`:]; BATH [a:]; STRUT [U > @]; LOT [A]; lettER [@`]
note also bottom [bAd@m], often [A.ft@n], one [wOn], year [j@`:], (be)cause [kUz ~ bIkUz], there [DE`: ~ D@`:], our [A`:], only [Oni], little [lId=L/ > lIt=L/], Saturday [sad@`di], by [bI], gentleman [dZEn=L/m@n], them [Um], half past [a: pa:st] and practically [pr/akli]
grammar
gender assigned to it (he’s (=house) still standing today; he (= house) had a flush toilet and a bathroom; he (= range) got rather dilapidated; father and mother didn’t use him (= range) very often; he (= binder) cuts it and it goes up; when he (= binder) kicks it out it’s got a piece of string tied round it; he had him (= tractor) in the spring; he bought hine (= binder) new in 1920; you ain’t going to put a tractor on him (= binder))
zero relative pronoun (there’s a tank _ held about three hundred gallons); relative pronoun ® as (the chap as worked for father in them days; some people as only cut a narrow swath; the binder is the machine as cuts the corn)
determiner, those ® them (in them days; them three horses were put on at nine o’clock)
never as negative auxiliary (we never had the water laid on = we didn’t have the water laid on)
third person plural was (they was filling the trench for the water in; they was, like, day men); second person was (if you was cutting oats or barley)
preterite come (I come home; whether the electric come ’47 and the water ’48; when he come to Winstone)
multiple negation (it’s no school no longer)
adjective as adverb (they didn’t do it very swift)
preterite done (we done all the work on the farm with the horses; all he done)
second person be + negative particle ® ain’t (you ain’t [Ent] using my binder, he said, behind a tractor; you ain’t [Ent] going to put a tractor on him)
masculine object pronoun ® hine (he bought hine new in 1920)
zero indefinite article (had to have _ oil can)
there was + plural complement (there was no Land Rovers or these three-wheeled motorbikes in them days)
note the construction I never know a man swing a scythe like it = I’ve never known a man swing a scythe like it | License: | http://www.bl.uk/services/copy/permission.html | Rights holder: | British Library | Source: | Collect Britain | Creator: | BBC | Identifier: | http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/personal... | Language: | en-GB | Go to resource |
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