croodle

Updated: May 24, 2025

"Oh, it's a gander reet 'nough. But I thought it were a goose to begin wi'. It were the biggest o' th' clutch, an' the prattiest, an' so I called it Victoria, an' it geet to know th' name, an' to coom when I called it eh, it 'ud coom runnin' up an' croodle down aside o' me, turnin' its yead o' one side that knowin'! Eh, dear, theer never was sich a bird.

M.E. (Mrs. Francis Blundell) Francis - North, South and over the Sea

I will confess to you, though, that in those first heats of youth, this little England or rather, this little patch of moor in which I have struck roots as firm as the wild fir-trees do looked at moments rather like a prison than a palace; that my foolish young heart would sigh, 'Oh! that I had wings' not as a dove, to fly home to its nest and croodle there but as an eagle, to swoop away over land and sea, in a rampant and self-glorifying fashion, on which I now look back as altogether unwholesome and undesirable.

Charles Kingsley - Prose Idylls, New and Old