Dialect

HARDEN FEE--Gerald Bullett--Knopf ($2.50). "And the next I do knaw, us be noaten across the grass, and there afront of us, setten on our green downs, neighbors, be a parcel of blessed angels. Hugy gurt baastards they be, twenny feet or more from crown to anklebone, and some of 'em as black as coal. . . ."--thus honest Yokel Mykelborne holding forth in the taproom to his fellow-worthies, who listened chopfallen, goggle-eyed. Such fine and pungent talk was to be had almost any evening in the inn at Marden Fee, and it is the chorus of talk, not the incidental pastoral melodrama you will remember from Author Bullett's book. The story opens in prehistoric England, in the "squat" (hut-settlement) of Koor. Koor, hitherto invincible patriarch, is aging, and the young hunters are beginning to mutter to each other. Soon the inevitable happens. The tale suddenly skips to 1750; Koor's squat is now the drowsy village of Marden Fee, its people outwardly a placid yokelry. But in many of them still runs the blood of Koor. When Gipsy Noke kills the highwayman he instinctively tries to placate the ghost as his ancestors did. And nothing could be more prehistoric than the love-making of Tom Shellett and his half-sister Charity. The Squire marries, gaffers die, murder is done and bastards begotten, but every evening the village worthies gather at the inn to have their tankards and their talk. And here, Author Bullett implies, is Life; the rest is mere incidental History.

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