Ben o' Bill's, the Luddite: A Yorkshire Tale

by D. F. E. Sykes; George Henry Walker

Now Mr. Chew was our new vicar, Mr. Wilson being not long dead.

“Oh, Mr. Chew. It ’ad seem him better if he washed th’ powder out o’ his own yed i’stead o’ puttin’ stuff an’ nonsense into other folks!”

“If yo mun talk your own business ovver wi’ all th’ countryside why can’t you go to Mr. Webster, as is well known to ha’ more o’ th’ root o’ th’ matter in him than all th’ clergy, an him a weaver hissen, too.”

“Why, and so I will,” exclaimed my father, rising to wind up the clock, a solemn act that, in our house, served, except on Sundays, instead of family prayers, and sent us all to bed.

The very next Lord’s Day my father and mother, Mary, and myself, with Martha and ’Siah, must go to Powle Moor in the afternoon to hear a discourse by Mr. Webster, my father and I walking side by side, a thing which I liked not so much as to walk with Mary. But it chanced that on this very Sabbath my father explained to me what I had often pondered upon, why we should trudge a good two miles across the moor by a rude footpath to the Baptist Meeting House, when the Church lay on a broad and good road almost at our feet, and we had there a large pew, our own freehold, which had been used aforetime by my grandfather and my great–grandfather. Whatever the reason was it had not been apprehended by our old collie, for such is the sway of long habit, that every Sunday when the cracked bell chimed for morning service at the church, it would rise from the hearth, yawn, and stretch itself, look about it as though enquiringly and reproachfully, and then sedately descending the hill, would enter the church, walk decorously to the old pew, now generally empty, and stretch itself by the door, in the aisle. Nor, I confess, was I much wiser than the old dog, for my father’s explanation of our desertion of the church of our fathers. “You see, Ben,” he said to me, when pressed on the point, speaking slowly, for he breathed with some difficulty in our way up the hill,—“you see, blood is thicker than water.”

Now this is a truth there is no gainsaying.

“And I shall allus hold,” continued my father, “I shall allus hold ’at Parson Wilson had no reight to stir th’ magistrates up to refuse th’ license to th’ ‘Silent Woman’ because some o’ th’ Baptists ’at belonged to th’ Nook Chapel used to go theer o’ wet neets to sing an’ pray an’ expound for mutual edification, an’ if one or two on ’em did happen tak’ too mich ale at times, it’s well known talkin’s dry wark. Then about them hens o’ your mother’s half–cousin, Sammy Sutcliffe, Sam–o’–Sall’s. Tha’ knows it were agin all natur’ for Parson Wilson to gi’ it in as he did, an’ it were but nateral we should side wi’ our own kin.”

Now it was about these hens I wished to learn, for it was because of them that it has ever been said that schism was hatched in Slaithwaite—that th’ dissenters layed away like Hannah Garside’s hens, and had laid away ever since.

“Yo’ see it wor this way,” explained my father, “Hannah were allus a very fractious woman, more particular as, do what she would, could never get wed, an’ such drop o’ th’milk o’ human kindness as God had ge’en her to start wi’ seemed to ha’ soured on her. Her an’ Sam–o’–Sall’s lived neighbour, an’ it were like enough ’at her hens strayed into Sammy’s fowd, and into th’ shippon too. Hens is like other folk, they’ll go’ wheer they’re best off, an’ if Hannah threw th’ fowls nowt but bacon swards yo’ needn’t blame ’em if they went wheer they could get out o’ th’ reach o’ her tongue an’ a grain of meal an’ corn as weel. Onyway she pulled Sammy up afore Parson Wilson for th’ eggs, an’ Parson Wilson gave it agen yor’ mother’s cousin. An’ what I say is,” said my father, pausing to’ get his breath, and striking his stick into the ground by way of emphasis, “What I say is, there’s no swearin’ to eggs. Moreovver Hannah gloried ovver th’ decision to that extent it wer’ more nor flesh an’ blood could bear, an’ when she cam’ an’ set i’ church, reight i’ th’ front o’ yor’ aunt, wi’ a Easter egg fastened i’ her bonnet, Sammy saw no way for peace but to join th’ Baptists. An’, as I said afore, blood’s thicker nor water, an’ yor’ mother an’ me havin’ prayed on it, and yor’ aunt sayin’ beside ’at no money o’ hers, an’ it’s well known she’s tidy well off, should ever go to th’ Erastian idolators, our duty seemed clear both to yo’r mother an’ misen. Not but what aw liked th’ owd Parson well enough, tho’ he wer’ a Tory, an me a Whig.”

We were by this time in the road that strikes across the top of the hill towards Salendine Nook, and by the side of which the Powle Moor Chapel was built, with the house and outbuildings for the minister. We could see the men quitting the burial ground and the little public—house hard by, and, all in their Sunday clothes, folk were coming from every part for the afternoon service, not hurrying, and with no air of business, but solemnly and seriously, talking little, and with thoughts, like their faces, set Zion–wards. When we exchanged greetings, as we did with most, it was in grave tones, for it was not counted decent in my young days to be over cheerful on the Sabbath Day. And tho’ as I have said, we at home had not felt the pinch of the hard times more than we could bear, there were few there so well off. Most that went to th’ Powle were hand–loom weavers, with here an’ there a little shop–keeper, and tho’ meal was neither so bad nor so dear as it had been in Barley time, nor work so scarce as it became later, yet most knew the pressure of want, and the shadow of worse things still to come seemed to brood over us all.