Stroll, Soodle or Stroam

Soodle – it means means to walk in a slow or leisurely manner; to stroll, saunter.

With so many alternatives to the word ‘walk’ it seems superfluous to promote more.

But “soodle” just seems so right especially for this time of the year when it takes effort to move at all when the heat is high and the humidity stifling.

Soodling has such a lovely dawdling lazy idle sound and pace to it. John Clare knew the word and used it. And so – typically – did W.H.Auden who loved to discover and use archaic words. 

In this poem Auden uses “soodling” to describe the lazy slow motion of a river in dry summer time and  contrasts it with the “balter” of a full torrent in winter. The poem is Under Sirius  – Sirius being the dog star and these the dog days of summer.

Here’s how it begins.

Under Sirius

The Soodling Boy

Auden loved to mine the OED for obscure and archaic words but my guess is he actually took this from John Clare who uses it on several occasions. It’s right there on the first page of his Shepherd’s Calendar for January where the soodling boy is doing his chores.

from The Shepherds Calendar for January

While whining hogs wi hungry roar
Crowd around the kitchen door
Or when their scanty meal is done
Creep in the straw the cold to shun
And old hens scratting all the day
Seeks curnels chance may throw away
Pausing to pick the seed and grain
Then dusting up the chaff again
While in the barn holes hid from view
The cats their patient watch pursue
For birds which want in flocks will draw
From woods and fields to pick the straw
The soodling boy that saunters round
The yard on homward dutys bound
Now fills the troughs for noisy hogs
Oft asking aid from barking dogs
That tuggles at each flopping ear
Of such as scramble on too near
Or circld round wi thirsty stock
That for his swinging labours flock
At clanking pump his station takes
Half hid in mist their breathing makes

– John Clare

What a carefully observed description of the activity of the farmyard!  The hungry pigs at the kitchen door, the knowing watching cats, the scratting hens, the tuggling dogs.

John Clare was born to a farm laboring family in Northamptonshire and his education did not extend much beyond basic reading and writing, At the age of seven he was herding animals. Clare knew his farm and countryside well. And he knew his words and local dialect.

And another soodling – this time from Rural Morning  (1821) where the “horse boy with a soodling gait” is determined to go for a ride.

Soon as the twilight through the distant mist
In silver hemmings skirts the purple east,
Ere yet the sun unveils his smiles to view
And dries the morning’s chilly robes of dew,
Young Hodge the horse-boy, with a soodly gait,
Slow climbs the stile, or opes the creaky gate,
With willow switch and halter by his side
Prepared for Dobbin, whom he means to ride;

Stroam

Another alternative that has some very specific potential is stroam which the OED defines as as follows:

It’s a portmanteau word that like brunch and smog is made up from two associated words – in this case stride and roam.

And to me stroam (or strome) it has a rather predatory feel – a rather deviously purposeful false stride disguised as idle roaming.

I think of the wicked Wickham in Pride and Prejudice stroaming the ballroom looking for gullible Bennett girls. 

Is this mysterious woman soodling or stroaming with her cat?

But this Suffolk lane looks like a pleasant place for a country soodle on a hot day.