And jee! the door gaed to the wa';
An' by my ingle-lowe I saw,
Now bliezin' bright,
A tight, outlandish Hizzie, braw,
Come full in sight."

These quotations will clearly show that "sneck" or "snick" applies to
a door; and that to _sneck_ a door is to shut it. I think, therefore,
that Sir Toby meant to say in the following reply:--

"We did keep time, Sir, in our catches. Sneck up!"

That is, close up, shut up, or, as is said now, "bung
up,"--emphatically, "We kept true time;" and the probability is, that
in saying this, Sir Toby would accompany the words with the action of
pushing an imaginary door; or _sneck up_.

In the country parts of Lancashire, and indeed throughout the North
of England, and it appears Scotland also, the term "sneck the door"
is used indiscriminately with "shut the door" or "toin't dur." And
there can be little doubt but that this provincialism was known to
Shakspeare, as his works are full of such; many of which have either
been passed over by his commentators, or have been wrongly noted, as
the one now under consideration.

Shakspeare was essentially a man of the people; his learning was
from within, not from colleges or schools, but from the universe and
himself. He wrote the language of the people; that is, the common
every-day language of his time: and hence mere classical scholars have
more than once mistaken him, and most egregiously misinterpreted him,