Yorkshire Dialect Poems Part 1

Yorkshire Dialect Poems.

by F.W. Moorman.

Preface

Several anthologies of poems by Yorkshiremen, or about Yorkshiremen, have pa.s.sed through the press since Joseph Ritson published his Yorkshire Garland in 1786. Most of these have included a number of dialect poems, but I believe that the volume which the reader now holds in his hand is the first which is made up entirely of poems written in "broad Yorkshire." In my choice of poems I have been governed entirely by the literary quality and popular appeal of the material which lay at my disposal. This anthology has not been compiled for the philologist, but for those who have learnt to speak "broad Yorkshire" at their mother's knee, and have not wholly unlearnt it at their schoolmaster's desk. To such the variety and interest of these poems, no less than the considerable range of time over which their composition extends, will, I believe, come as a surprise.

It is in some ways a misfortune that there is no such thing as a standard Yorkshire dialect. The speech of the North and East Ridings is far removed from that of the industrial south-west. The difference consists, not so much in idiom or vocabulary, as in p.r.o.nunciation--especially in the p.r.o.nunciation of the long vowels and diphthongs.(1) As a consequence of this, I have found it impossible, in bringing together dialect poems from all parts of the county, to reduce their forms to what might be called Standard Yorkshire. Had I attempted to do this, I should have destroyed what was most characteristic. My purpose throughout has been to preserve the distinguishing marks of dialect possessed by the poems, but to normalise the spelling of those writers who belong to one and the same dialect area.

The spelling of "broad Yorkshire" will always be one of the problems which the dialect-writer has to face. At best he can only hope for a broadly accurate representation of his mode of speech, but he can take comfort in the thought that most of those who read his verses know by habit how the words should be p.r.o.nounced far better than he can teach them by adopting strange phonetic devices. A recognition of this fact has guided me in fixing the text of this anthology, and every spelling device which seemed to me unnecessary, or clumsy, or pedantic, I have ruthlessly discarded. On the other hand, where the dialect-writer has chosen the Standard English spelling of any word, I have as a rule not thought fit to alter its form and spell it as it would be p.r.o.nounced in his dialect.

I am afraid I may have given offence to those whom I should most of all like to please--the living contributors to this anthology--by tampering in this way with the text of their poems. In defence of what I have done, I must put forward the plea of consistency. If I had preserved every poet's text as I found it, I should have reduced my readers to despair.

In conclusion, I should--like to thank the contributors to this volume, and also their publishers, for the permission to reproduce copyright work. Special thanks are due to Mr. Richard Blakeborough, who has placed Yorkshiremen under a debt, by the great service which he has rendered in recovering much of the traditional poetry of Yorkshire and in giving it the permanence of the printed page. In compiling the so-called traditional poems at the end of this volume, I have largely drawn upon his Wit, Character, Folklore, and Customs of the North Riding.

F. W. Moorman

1. Thus in the south-west fool and soon are p.r.o.nounced fooil and sooin, in the north-east feeal and seean. Both the south-west and the north-east have a word praad--with a vowel--sound like the a in father--but whereas in the south- west it stands for proud, in the north-east it stands for pride,

Preface (To the Second Edition)

The demand for a second edition of this anthology of Yorkshire dialect verse gives me an opportunity of correcting two rather serious error's which crept into the first edition. The poem ent.i.tled "Hunting Song" on page 86, which I attributed to Mr. Richard Blakeborough, is the work of Mr. Malham-Dembleby", whose poem, "A Kuss," immediately precedes it in the volume.

The poem on page 75, which in the first edition was marked Anonymous and ent.i.tled "Parson Drew thro' Pudsey," is the work of the late John Hartley; its proper' t.i.tle is "T' First o' t' Sooar't," and it includes eight introductory stanzas which are now added as Appendix II.

Through the kindness of: Fr W. A. Craigie, Dr. M. Denby, and Mr. E. G.

Bayford, I have also been able to make a few changes in the glossarial footnotes, The most important of these is the change from "Ember's" to "Floor" as the meaning of the word, "Fleet" in the second line of "A Lyke-wake Dirge." The note which Dr. Craigie sen't me on this word is so interesting that I reproduce it here verbatim:

"The word fleet in the 'Lyke-wake Dirge' has been much misunderstood, but it is certain1y the same thing as flet-floor; see the O.E.D. and E.D.D.

under. FLET. The form is not necessarily 'erroneous,' as is said in the O.E.D., for it might represent ,the O.N. dative fleti, which must have been common in the phrase a fleti (cf. the first verse of 'Havamal').

The collocation with 'fire' occurs in 'Sir Gawayne' (l. 1653): 'Aboute the fyre upon flet.' 'Fire and fleet and candle-light' are a summary of the comforts of the house, which the dead person still enjoys for 'this ae night,' and then goes out into the dark and cold."

F. W. Moorman

INTRODUCTION

The publication of an anthology of Yorkshire dialect poetry seems to demand a brief introduction in which something shall be said of the history and general character of that poetry. It is hardly necessary to state that Yorkshire has produced neither a Robert Burns, a William Barnes, nor even an Edwin Waugh. Its singers are as yet known only among their own folk; the names of John Castillo and Florence Tweddell are household words among the peasants of the Cleveland dales, as are those of Ben Preston and John Hartley among the artisans of the Aire and Calder valleys; but, outside of the county, they are almost unknown, except to those who are of Yorkshire descent and who cherish the dialect because of its a.s.sociation with the homes of their childhood.

At the same time there is no body of dialect verse which better deserves the honour of an anthology. In volume and variety the dialect poetry of Yorkshire surpa.s.ses that of all other English counties. Moreover, when the rise of the Standard English idiom crushed out our dialect literature, it was the Yorkshire dialect which first rea.s.serted its claims upon the muse of poetry; hence, whereas the dialect literature of most of the English counties dates only from the beginning of the nineteenth century, that of Yorkshire reaches back to the second half of the seventeenth.

In one sense it may be said that Yorkshire dialect poetry dates, not from the seventeenth, but from the seventh century, and that the first Yorkshire dialect poet was Caedmon, the neat-herd of Whitby Abbey. But to the ordinary person the reference to a dialect implies the existence of a standard mode of speech almost as certainly as odd implies even.

Accordingly, this is not the place to speak of that great heritage of song which Yorkshire bequeathed to the nation between the seventh century and the fifteenth. After the Caedmonic poems, its chief glories are the religious lyrics of Richard Rolle, the mystic, and the great cycles of scriptural plays which are a.s.sociated with the trade-guilds of York and Wakefield. But in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the all-conquering Standard English spread like a mighty spring-tide over England and found no check to its progress till the Cheviots were reached. The new "King's English" was of little avail in silencing dialect as a means of intercourse between man and man, but it checked for centuries the development of dialect literature. The old traditional ballads and songs, which were handed down orally from generation to generation in the speech of the district to which they belonged, escaped to some extent this movement towards uniformity; but the deliberate artificers of verse showed themselves eager above all things to get rid of their provincialisms and use only the language of the Court.

Shakespeare may introduce a few Warwickshire words into his plays, but his English is none the less the Standard English of his day, while Spenser is sharply brought to task by Ben Jonson for using archaisms and provincialisms in his poems. A notable song of the Elizabethan age is that ent.i.tled "York, York, for my Monie," which was first published in 1584; only a Yorkshireman could have written it, and it was plainly intended for the gratification of Yorkshire pride; yet its language is without trace of local colour, either in spelling or vocabulary. Again, there appeared in the year 1615 a poem by Richard Brathwaite, ent.i.tled, "The Yorkshire Cottoneers," and addressed to "all true-bred Northerne Sparks, of the generous society of the Cottoneers, who hold their High-roade by the Pinder of Wakefield, the Shoo-maker of Bradford, and the white Coate of Kendall"; but Brathwaite, though a Kendal man by birth, makes no attempt to win the hearts of his "true-bred Northern Sparks" by addressing them in the dialect that was their daily wear. In a word, the use of the Yorkshire dialect for literary purposes died out early in the Tudor period.

As already stated, its rebirth dates from the second half of the seventeenth century. That was an age of scientific investigation and antiquarian research. John Ray, the father of natural history, not content with his achievements in the cla.s.sification of plants, took up also the collection of outlandish words, and in the year 1674 he published a work ent.i.tled, A Collection of English Words, not generally used, with their Significations and Original, in two Alphabetical Catalogues, the one of such as are proper to the Northern, the other to the Southern Counties. Later he entered into correspondence with the Leeds antiquary, Ralph Th.o.r.esby, who, in a letter dated April 27, 1703, sends him a list of dialect words current in and about Leeds.(1)

Side by side with this new interest in the dialect vocabulary comes also the dialect poem. One year before the appearance of Ray's Collection of English Words the York printer, Stephen Bulkby, had issued, as a humble broadside without author's name, a poem which bore the following t.i.tle: A Yorkshire Dialogue in Yorkshire Dialect; Between an Awd Wife, a La.s.s, and a Butcher. This dialogue occupies the first place in our anthology, and it is, from several points of view, a significant work. It marks the beginning, not only of modern Yorkshire, but also of modern English, dialect poetry. It appeared just a thousand years after Caedmon had sung the Creator's praise in Whitby Abbey, and its dialect is that of northeast Yorkshire--in other words, the lineal descendant of that speech which was used by Caedmon in the seventh century, by Richard Rolle in the fourteenth, and which may be heard to this day in the streets of Whitby and among the hamlets of the Cleveland Hills.

The dialogue is a piece of boldest realism. Written in an age when cla.s.sic restraint and cla.s.sic elegance were in the ascendant, and when English poets were taking only too readily to heart the warning of Boileau against allowing shepherds to speak "comme on parle au village,"

the author of this rustic dialogue flings to the winds every convention of poetic elegance. His lines "baisent la terre" in a way that would have inexpressibly shocked Boileau and the Parisian salons. The poem reeks of the byre and the shambles; its theme is the misadventure which befalls an ox in its stall and its final despatch by the butcher's mallet! One might perhaps find something comparable to it in theme and treatment in the paintings of the contemporary school of Dutch realists, but in poetry it is unique. Yet, gross as is its realism, it cannot be called crude as a work of poetic art. In rhyme and rhythm it is quite regular, and the impression which it leaves upon the mind is that it was the work of an educated man, keenly interested in the unvarnished life of a Yorkshire farm, keenly interested in the vocabulary and idioms of his district, and determined to produce a poem which should bid defiance to all the proprieties of the poetic art.

Eleven years later--in 1684--appeared two more poems, in a dialect akin to but not identical with that of the above and very similar in theme and treatment. These are A Yorkshire Dialogue in its pure Natural Dialect as it is now commonly spoken in the North Parts of Yorkeshire, and A Scould between Bess and Nell, two Yorkshire Women. These two poems were also published at York, though by a different printer, and in the following year a second edition appeared, followed by a third in 1697. To the poems is appended Francis Brokesby's "Observations on the Dialect and p.r.o.nunciation of Words in the East Riding of Yorkshire," which he had previously sent to Ray,(1) together with a collection of Yorkshire proverbs and a "Clavis," or Glossary, also by Brokesby. The author of these two poems, who signs himself" G. M. Gent" on the t.i.tle-page, is generally supposed to be a certain George Meriton, an attorney by profession, though Francis Douce, the antiquary, claims George Morrinton of Northallerton as the author.

"G. M." is a deliberate imitator of the man who wrote the Dialogue Between an Awd Wife, a La.s.s, and a Butcher. All that has been said about the trenchant realism of farmlife in the dialogue of 1673 applies with equal force to the dialogues of 1684. The later poet, having a larger canvas at his disposal, is able to introduce more characters and more incident; but in all that pertains to style and atmosphere he keeps closely to his model. What is still more apparent is that the author is consciously employing dialect words and idioms with the set purpose of ill.u.s.trating what he calls the "pure Natural Dialect" of Yorkshire; above all, he delights in the proverbial lore of his native county and never misses an opportunity of tagging his conversations with one or other of these homespun proverbs. The poem is too long for our anthology,(2) but I cannot forbear quoting some of these proverbs:

"There's neay carrion can kill a craw."

"It's a good horse that duz never stumble, And a good wife that duz never grumble."

"Neare is my sarke, but nearer is my skin."

"It's an ill-made bargain wh.o.r.e beath parties rue."

"A curst cow hes short horns."

"Wilfull fowkes duz never want weay."

"For change of pastures macks fat cawves, it's said, But change of women macks lean knaves, I'se flaid

The excellent example set by the authors of the Yorkshire Dialogues was not followed all at once. Early in the eighteenth century, however, Allan Ramsay rendered conspicuous service to dialect poetry generally by the publication of his pastoral drama, The Gentle Shepherd (1725), as well as by his collections of Scottish songs, known as The Evergreen and Tea Table miscellanies. Scotland awoke to song, and the charm of Lowland Scots was recognised even by Pope and the wits of the coffee-houses. One can well believe that lovers of dialect south of the Tweed were thereby moved to emulation, and in the year 1736 Henry Carey, the reputed son of the Marquis of Halifax, produced a ballad-opera bearing the equivocal t.i.tle, A Wonder, or An Honest Yorkshireman.(3) Popular in its day, this opera is now forgotten, but its song, "An Honest Yorkshireman" has found a place in many collections of Yorkshire songs. It lacks the charm of the same author's famous "Sally in our Alley," but there is a fine manly ring about its sentiments, and it deserves wider recognition. The dialect is that of north-east Yorkshire.

In 1754 appeared the anonymous dialect poem, Snaith Marsh.(4) This is a much more conventional piece of work than the seventeenth- century dialogues, and the use which is made of the local idiom is more restricted. Yet it is not without historic interest. Composed at a time when the Enclosure Acts were robbing the peasant farmer of his rights of common, the poem is an elegiac lament on the part of the Snaith farmer who sees himself suddenly brought to the brink of ruin by the enclosure of Snaith Marsh. To add to his misery, his bride, Susan, has deserted him for the more prosperous rival, Roger. As much of the poem is in standard English, it would be out of place to reprint it in its entirety in this collection, but, inasmuch as the author grows bolder in his use of dialect as the poem proceeds, I have chosen the concluding section to ill.u.s.trate the quality of the work and the use which is made of dialect.

From the date of the publication of Snaith Marsh to the close of the eighteenth century it is difficult to trace chronologically the progress of Yorkshire dialect poetry. The songs which follow in our anthology-- "When at Hame wi' Dad" and "I'm Yorkshire, too "--appear to have an eighteenth-century flavour, though they may be a little later. Their theme is somewhat similar to that of Carey's song. The inexperienced but canny Yorkshire lad finds himself exposed to the snares and temptations of " Lunnon city." He is dazzled by the spectacular glories of the capital, but his native stock of cannyness renders him proof against seduction. The songs are what we should now call music-hall songs, and may possibly have been written for the delights of the visitors to Ranelagh or Vauxhall Gardens.

"The Wensleydale Lad" seems to be of about the same period, for we learn from the song that the reigning monarch was one of the Georges. Its opening line is a clear repet.i.tion--or antic.i.p.ation--of the opening line of "When at Hame wi' Dad"; but whereas the hero of the latter poem, on leaving home, seeks out the glories of Piccadilly and Hyde Park, the Wensleydale lad is content with the lesser splendours; of Leeds. The broad humour of this song has made it exceedingly popular; I first heard it on the lips of a Runswick fisherman, and since then have met with it in different parts of the county.

In the year 1786 Joseph Ritson, the antiquary, published a slender collection of short poems which he ent.i.tled The Yorkshire Garland. This is the first attempt at an anthology of Yorkshire poetry, and the forerunner of many other anthologies. All the poems have a connection with Yorkshire, but none of them can, in the strict sense of the word, be called a dialect poem.

In the year 1800 the composition of Yorkshire dialect poetry received an important stimulus through the appearance of a volume ent.i.tled, Poems on Several Occasions. This was the posthumous work of the Rev. Thomas Browne, the son of the vicar of Lastingham. The author, born at Lastingham in 1771, started life as a school-master, first of all at Yeddingham, and later at Bridlington; in the year 1797 he removed to Hull in order to engage in journalistic work as editor of the recently established newspaper, The Hull Advertiser. About the same time he took orders and married, but in the following year he died. Most of the poems in the little volume which his friends put through the press in the year 1800 are written in standard English. They display a mind of considerable refinement, but little originality. In the form of ode, elegy, eclogue, or sonnet, we have verses which show tender feeling and a genuine appreciation of nature. But the human interest is slight, and the author is unable to escape from the conventional poetic diction of the eighteenth century. Phrases like "vocal groves," "Pomona's rich bounties," or "the sylvan choir's responsive notes" meet the reader at every turn; direct observation and concrete imagery are sacrificed to trite abstractions, until we feel that the poet becomes a mere echo of other and greater poets who had gone before him. But at the end of the volume appear the "Specimens of the Yorkshire Dialect," consisting of three songs and two eclogues. Here convention is swept aside; the author comes face to face with life as he saw it around him in Yorkshire town and village. We have the song of the peasant girl impatiently awaiting the country fair at which she is to shine in all the glory of "new cauf leather shoon" and white stockings, or declaring her intention of escaping from a mother who "scaulds and flytes" by marrying the sweetheart who comes courting her on "Setterday neets." What is interesting to notice in these songs'is the influence of Burns. Browne has caught something of the Scottish poet's racy vigour, and in his use of a broken line of refrain in the song, "Ye loit'ring minutes faster flee," he is employing a metrical device which Burns had used with great success in his "Holy Fair" and "Halloween." The eclogue, "Awd Daisy," the theme of which is a Yorkshire farmer's lament for his dead mare, exhibits that affection for faithful animals which we meet with in Cowper, Burns, and other poets of the Romantic Revival. In the sincerity of its emotion it is poles apart from the studied sentimentality of the famous lament over the dead a.s.s in Sterne's Sentimental Journey; indeed, in spirit it is much nearer to Burns's "Death of Poor Mailie," though Browne is wholly lacking in that delicate humour which Burns possesses, and which overtakes the tenderness of the poem as the lights and shadows overtake one another among the hills. The other eclogue, " The Invasion," has something of a topical interest at a time like the present, when England is once more engaged in war with a continental power; for it was written when the fear of a French invasion of our sh.o.r.es weighed heavily upon the people's minds. In the eclogue this danger is earnestly discussed by the two Yorkshire farmers, Roger and Willie. If the French effect a landing, w.i.l.l.y has decided to send Mally and the bairns away from the farm, while he will sharpen his old "lea" (scythe) and remain behind to defend his homestead. As long as wife and children are safe, he is prepared to lay down his life for his country.

The importance of Browne's dialect poems consists not only in their intrinsic worth, but also in the interest which they aroused in dialect poetry in Yorkshire, and the stimulus which they gave to poets in succeeding generations. There is no evidence that the dialogues of George Meriton, or Snaith Marsh, had any wide circulation among the Yorkshire peasantry, but there is abundant evidence that such was the case with these five poems of Thomas Browne. Early in the nineteenth century enterprising booksellers at York, Northallerton, Bedale, Otley, and ,Knaresborough were turning out little chap-books, generally bearing the t.i.tle, Specimens of the Yorkshire Dialect, and consisting largely of the dialect poems of Browne. These circulated widely in the country districts of Yorkshire, and to this day one meets with peasants who take a delight in reciting Browne's songs and eclogues.

Down to the close of the eighteenth century the authors of Yorkshire dialect poetry had been men of education, and even writers by profession.

With the coming, of the nineteenth century the composition of such poetry extends to men in a humbler social position. The working-man poet appears on the scene and makes his presence felt in many ways. Early in the century, David Lewis, a Knaresborough gardener, published, in one of the chap-books to which reference has just been made, two dialect poems, "The Sweeper and Thieves" and "An Elegy on the Death of a Frog"; they were afterwards republished, together with some non-dialect verses, in a volume ent.i.tled The Landscape and Other Poems (York, 1815) by the same author. A dialogue poem by Lewis, ent.i.tled The Pocket Books," appears in later chap-books. It cannot be claimed for him that his poetic power is of a high standard, but as the first Yorkshire peasant poet to write dialect verse he calls for notice here. His "Elegy on the Death of a Frog" is perhaps chiefly interesting as showing the influence of Burns upon Yorkshire poets at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In idea, and in the choice of verse, it is directly modelled on the famous "To a Mouse."

The reader will doubtless have noticed that in this historic review of Yorkshire dialect poetry it has always been the life of rural Yorkshire which is depicted, and that the great bulk of the poetry has belonged to the North Riding. What we have now to trace is the extension of this revival of vernacular poetry to the densely populated West Riding, where a dialect differing radically from that of the, north and east is spoken, and where, an astonishing variety of industries has created an equally varied outlook upon life and habit of thought. Was the Sheffield cutler, the Barnsley miner, the Bradford handloom-weaver, and the Leeds forge-man to find no outlet in dialect verse for his thoughts and emotions, his hopes and his fears? Or, if dialect poetry must be concerned only with rustic life, was the Craven dalesman to have no voice in the matter?

Questions such as these may well have pa.s.sed through the minds of West Riding men as they saw the steady growth of North Riding poetry in the first forty years of the nineteenth century, and pa.s.sed from hand to hand the well-thumbed chap-books wherein were included poems like "Awd Daisy,"

"The Sweeper and Thieves," and the dialect-songs. The desire to have a share in the movement became more and more urgent, and when the West Riding joined in, it was inevitable that it should widen the scope of dialect poetry both in spirit and in form.

A West Riding dialect literature seems to have arisen first of all in Barnsley and Sheffield in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century.

Between 1830 and 1834 a number of prose "conversations" ent.i.tled, The Sheffield Dialect.' Be a Shevvild Chap, pa.s.sed through the press. The author of these also published in 1832 The Wheelswarf Chronicle, and in 1836 appeared the first number of The Shevvild Chap's Annual in which the writer throws aside his nom-de-plume and signs himself Abel Bywater.

This annual, which lived for about twenty years, is the first of the many "Annuals" or "Almanacs" which are the most characteristic product of the West Riding dialect movement. Their history is a subject to itself, and inasmuch as the contributions to them are largely in prose, they can only be referred to very lightly here. Their popularity and ever-increasing circulation is a sure proof of their wide appeal, and there can be no doubt that they have done an immense service in endearing the local idiom in which they are written to those who speak it, and also in interpreting the life and thought of the, great industrial communities for whom they are written. The literary quality of these almanacs varies greatly, but among their pages will be found many poems, and many prose tales and sketches, which vividly portray the West Riding artisan. Abundant justice is done to his sense of humour, which, if broad and at times even crude, is always good-natured and healthy, as well as to his intense love of the sentimental, which to the stranger lurks hidden beneath a mask of indifference. Incidentally, these almanacs also present a faithful picture of the social history of the West Riding during the greater part of a century. As we study their pages, we realise what impression events such as the introduction of the railroad, the Chartist Movement, the Repeal of the Corn Laws, mid-Victorian factory legislation, Trade- Unionism, the Co-operative movement and Temperance reform made upon the minds of nineteenth-century Yorkshiremen; in other words, these almanacs furnish us with just such a mirror of nineteenth-century industrial Yorkshire as the bound volumes of Punch furnish of the nation as a whole. Among the most famous of these annual productions is The Bairnsla Foak's Annual, an Pogmoor Olmenack, started by Charles Rogers (Tom, Treddlehoyle) in 1838, and The Halifax Original Illuminated Clock Almanac begun by John Hartley in 1867. The number of these almanacs is very large; most of them are published and circulated chiefly in the industrial districts of the Riding, but not the least interesting among them is The Nidderdill Olminac, edited by "Nattie Nidds" at Pateley Bridge; it began in 1864 and ran until 1880. Wherever published, all of these almanacs conform more or less to the same pattern, as it was first laid down by the founder of the dialect almanac, Abel Bywater of Sheffield, in the year 1836. Widely popular in the West Riding, the almanac has never obtained foothold in the other Ridings, and is little known outside of the county. The "Bibliographical List" of dialect literature, published by the English Dialect Society' in 1877, mentions only two annuals or almanacs, in addition to those published in the West Riding, and both of these belong to Tyneside.

Abel Bywater finds a place in our anthology by virtue of his "Sheffield Cutler's Song." In its rollicking swing and boisterous humour it serves admirably to ill.u.s.trate the new note which is heard when we pa.s.s from rural Yorkshire to the noisy manufacturing cities. We exchange the farm, or the country fair, for the gallery of the city music-hall, where the cutler sits armed with stones, red herrings, "flat-backs," and other missiles ready to be hurled at the performers "if they don't play'

Nancy's Fancy' or onay tune we fix."

We are not concerned here with the linguistic side of Yorkshire dialect literature, but the reader will notice how different is the phonology, and to a less extent the vocabulary and idiom, of this song from that of the North Riding specimens.