which, as we said before, was universally spoken by the inferior
classes, excepting the Norman soldiers, and the immediate
personal dependants of the great feudal nobles. But to give
their conversation in the original would convey but little
information to the modern reader, for whose benefit we beg to
offer the following translation:

"The curse of St Withold upon these infernal porkers!" said the
swine-herd, after blowing his horn obstreperously, to collect
together the scattered herd of swine, which, answering his call
with notes equally melodious, made, however, no haste to remove
themselves from the luxurious banquet of beech-mast and acorns on
which they had fattened, or to forsake the marshy banks of the
rivulet, where several of them, half plunged in mud, lay
stretched at their ease, altogether regardless of the voice of
their keeper. "The curse of St Withold upon them and upon me!"
said Gurth; "if the two-legged wolf snap not up some of them ere
nightfall, I am no true man. Here, Fangs! Fangs!" he ejaculated
at the top of his voice to a ragged wolfish-looking dog, a sort
of lurcher, half mastiff, half greyhound, which ran limping about
as if with the purpose of seconding his master in collecting the
refractory grunters; but which, in fact, from misapprehension of
the swine-herd's signals, ignorance of his own duty, or malice
prepense, only drove them hither and thither, and increased the
evil which he seemed to design to remedy. "A devil draw the
teeth of him," said Gurth, "and the mother of mischief confound
the Ranger of the forest, that cuts the foreclaws off our dogs,
and makes them unfit for their trade!* Wamba, up and help me an
thou be'st a man; take a turn round the back o' the hill to gain
the wind on them; and when thous't got the weather-gage, thou