Hollow Earth

The latter part of our Journey from the entrance of Wiltshire into Salisbury was very rough and abounded with Jolts, the Holes we were obliged to go through being very many and some of them Deep; and so it was with much Relief that we left the Coach at Salisbury and hired two Horses for the road across the Avon to the Plain and Stone-henge. When we came to the edge of this sacred Place. we tethered our Horses to the Posts provided and then, with the Sunne direct above us, walked over the short grass which (continually cropt by the flocks of Sheep) seemed to spring us forward to the great Stones. I stood back a little as Sir Chris. walked on, and I considered the Edifice with steadinesse: there was nothing here to break the Angles of Sight and as I gaz'd I opened my Mouth to cry out but my Cry was silent; I was struck by an exstatic Reverie in which all the surface of this Place seemed to me Stone, and the Sky itself Stone, and I became Stone as I joined the Earth which flew on like a Stone through the Firmament.

This section is as much about cadence, but there are other passages thicker with relinquished vocabulary ("harlot", "phrensy", "magick", "coxcomb", "tavern", "jakes" etc) but you get the picture. Anyway thinking about this brought back to me the time when I was studying English Language, most specifically Pidgins and Creoles. One of the things that used to fascinate me was that Jamaican Patois was built upon English of just this same era. Rather than advance in sync with its mother-tongue however, patois evolved independently from this point in time - an analogy perhaps for the population's abandonment on this island.

It's not just the preponderance of biblical language, we seem to assume this is wholly owing to the people's religious inclination, but perhaps it was as much to do with the 18th century's argot employing it. But think about those other words: bloodclot ("bloody clothe"), bredrin ("brethren"), cuvitchous ("covetous"), dally, ear-sey ("hearsay"), evilous, gorgon, hitey titey ("hoity toitey"), hush you mout ("hush your mouth"), pon, raggamuffin (my favorite!), renk ("rank"), slackness, sufferation, vex, yard. And that's just off the top of my head (winks). There's a load more which I'd be tempted to include but which might stretch the case.