me' (Shakespeare), 'friendsome',
'longsome' (Bacon), 'quietsome', 'mirksome' (both in Spenser),
'toothsome' (Beaumont and Fletcher), 'gleesome', 'joysome' (both in
Browne's _Pastorals_), 'gaysome' (_Mirror for Magistrates_), 'roomsome',
'bigsome', 'awesome', 'timersome', 'winsome', 'viewsome', 'dosome'
(=prosperous), 'flaysome' (=fearful), 'auntersome' (=adventurous),
'clamorsome' (all these still surviving in the North), 'playsome'
(employed by the historian Hume), 'lissome'{158}, have nearly or quite
disappeared from our English speech. They seem to have held their
ground in Scotland in considerably larger numbers than in the south of
the Island{159}.

{Sidenote: _Words in '-ard'_}

Neither can I esteem it a mere accident that of a group of depreciatory
and contemptuous words ending in 'ard', at least one half should have
dropped out of use; I refer to that group of which 'dotard', 'laggard',
'braggard', now spelt 'braggart', 'sluggard', 'buzzard', 'bastard',
'wizard', may be taken as surviving specimens; 'blinkard' (_Homilies_),
'dizzard' (Burton), 'dullard' (Udal), 'musard' (Chaucer), 'trichard'
(_Political Songs_), 'shreward' (Robert of Gloucester), 'ballard' (a
bald-headed man, Wiclif); 'puggard', 'stinkard' (Ben Jonson), 'haggard',
a worthless hawk, as extinct.

Thus too there is a very curious province of our language, in which we
were once so rich, that extensive losses here have failed to make us
poor; so many of its words still surviving, even after as many or more
have disappeared. I refer to those double words which either contain
within themselves a strong rhyming modulation, such for example as
'willy-nilly', 'hocus-pocus', 'helter-skelter', 'tag-rag', 'namby-pamby',
'pell-mell', 'hodge-podge'; or with a slight difference from this,
though belonging to the same group, those of which the characteristic
feature is not this internal likeness with initial unlikeness, but
initial likeness with internal unlikeness; not rhyming, but strongly
alliterative, and in every case with a change of the interior vowel from
a weak into a strong, generally from _i_ into _a_ or _o_; as
'shilly-shally', 'mingle-mangle', 'tittle-tattle', 'prittle-prattle',
'riff-raff', 'see-saw', 'slip-slop'. No one who is not quite out of love
with the homelier yet more vigorous portions of the language, but will
acknowledge the life and strength which there is often in these and in
others still current among us. But of the same sort what