3), 'Is it a boy or
a child?'--where, by the way, every actor tries to make a point,
and the audience invariably laughs--the word 'child' is used, as is
sometimes the case in the midland districts, as synonymous with
girl; which is plainly its meaning in this passage, although the
speaker has used it just before in its more common sense of either
a boy or a girl."
In fact, the _English Dialect Dictionary_ cites the phrase "is it a
lad or a child?" as being still current in Shropshire; and duly states
that, in Warwickshire, "dirt collected on the hairs of a horse's leg
and forming into hard masses is said to _bolter_." Trench further
points out that many of our pure Anglo-Saxon words which lived on into
the formation of our early English, subsequently dropped out of our
usual vocabulary, and are now to be found only in the dialects. A good
example is the word _eme_, an uncle (A.S. _{-e}am_), which is rather
common in Middle English, but has seldom appeared in our literature
since the tune of Drayton. Yet it is well known in our Northern
dialects, and Sir Walter Scott puts the expression "Didna his _eme_
die" in the mouth of Davie Deans (_Heart of Midlothian_, ch.
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