haggler/higgler a dealer who travels from place to place selling wares or goods, such as fruit.
wold old (dialect).
Women’s club-walking A procession by the members of a local club or clubs: esp. the annual festival of a benefit club or friendly society.
vamp trudge, tramp, walk (dialect).
Cerealia celebration in honor of Ceres, Roman goddess of the harvest.
Old Style days the time before 1752 when Great Britain replaced the Julian Calendar, old-style dating, with Gregorian, or new-style dating.
Market-niche the amount of alcohol that he would normally drink on a market day.
Uncribbed, uncabined after murdering Banquo, in Macbeth (3.4.24–25), Macbeth refers to himself as “cabined, cribbed, confined.”
Whitsun Holidays the time around the seventh Sunday after Easter, Whitsuntide or Whit Sunday. Club-walking and other festivities were held in parishes at Whitsuntide.
clipsing and colling hugging (dialect).
diment diamond (dialect).
Cubit’s Cupid’s.
fess pleased (dialect).
poppet [Obs.] a doll, or puppet.
Sixth Standard in the National School the highest level available in school supported by government funds run by the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church. The first schools were established in 1811.
Mommet a term of abuse or contempt (dialect).
larry commotion, disturbance (dialect).
Oliver Grumble’s Oliver Cromwell[‘s].
plim swell (dialect).
vlee fly; a one-horse hackney-carriage (dialect).
Mampus crowd (dialect).
rafted disturbed, unsettled (dialect).
outhouse a building separate from but near a main building. In nineteenth-century British usage, outhouse probably does not refer to a privy.
Revised Code reference to the Education Department’s Revised Codes of 1862 and 1867, which linked the funding for schools to their size and to student performance on standardized assessment examinations.
“Nature’s holy plan” from Wordsworth, “Lines Written in Early Spring” (line 22).
limed caught with birdlime; here, Abraham is compared to a bird ensnared in bird-lime.
off-license without a license; here, Rolliver’s is not licensed to sell alcohol for consumption on the premises.
gaffer a foreman of a group of workers.
sumple supple (dialect).
“green malt on the floor” the expression refers to pregnancy before marriage.
nater nature (dialect).
Stubbard-tree a kind of apple tree.
