Yorkshire Dialect Poems (1673-1915) and traditional poems

by F. W. Moorman

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" entitled, The Sheffield Dialect.' Be a Shevvild Chap, passed 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 illustrate the new note which is heard when we pass 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.

Returning once more to the North Riding, we must first of all draw attention to the poet, John Castillo. In the country round Whitby and Pickering, and throughout the Hambledon Hills, his name is very familiar. Born near Dublin, in 1792, of Roman Catholic parents, he was brought up at Lealholm Bridge, in the Cleveland country, and learnt the trade of a journeyman stone-mason. Having abjured the faith of his childhood, he joined, in 1818, the Wesleyan Methodist Society and acquired great popularity in the North Riding as a local preacher. His well-known poem, "Awd Isaac," seems to have been first printed at Northallerton in 1831. Twelve years later it occupies the first place in a volume of poems published by the author at Whitby under the title, Awd Isaac, The Steeplechase, and Other Poems. Like most of his other poems, "Awd Isaac" is strongly didactic and religious; its homely piety and directness of speach have won for it a warm welcome among the North Yorkshire peasantry, and many a farmer and farm-labourer still living knows much of the poem by heart. As "Awd Isaac " is too long for an anthology, I have chosen "The Lucky Dream" as an illustration of Castillo's workmanship. Apart from its narrative interest, this poem calls for attention as a Yorkshire variant of an ancient and widely dispersed folk-tale, the earliest known version of which is to be found in the works of the thirteenth-century Persian poet Jalalu'd-Din. Castillo died at Pickering in 1845, and five years later a complete edition of his poems was published at Kirkby Moorside.

Less popular than "Awd Isaac," but often met with in collections of dialect verse, is the poem entitled "The York Minster Screen." This was the work of George Newton Brown, a lawyer by profession, who lived at Nunnington in Ryedale. The poem, which is in the form of a dialogue between two Yorkshire farmers, was first published at Malton in 1833. The conversation, which is of the raciest description, is supposed to take place in York Minster and turns on the repairs which were made in 1832 to the famous organ-screen which separates the nave and transepts from the chancel. The question of altering the position of the screen is debated with much humour and vivacity.

Before leaving the North Riding, reference must be made to Elizabeth Tweddell, the gifted poetess of the Cleveland Hills. Born at Stokesley in 1833, the daughter of Thomas Cole, the parish-clerk of that town, she married George Markham Tweddell, the author of The People's History of Cleveland, and in 1875 she published a slender volume of dialect verse and prose entitled Rhymes and Sketches to Illustrate the Cleveland Dialect. In her modest preface Mrs. Tweddell declares that the only merit of her work lies in "the stringing together of a good many Cleveland words and expressions that are fast becoming obsolete"; but the volume has far deeper claims on our gratitude than this. There is much homely charm in her rhymes and sketches, and the two extracts which find a place in this collection are models of what simple dialect-poems should be. Above all, Mrs. Tweddell has the gift of humour; this is well illustrated by the song, "Dean't mak gam o' me," and also by her well-known prose story, "Awd Gab o' Steers." Her most sustained effort in verse is the poem entitled " T' Awd Cleveland Customs," in which she gives us a delightful picture of the festive seasons of the Cleveland year from " Newery Day," with its "lucky bod," to "Kessamus," with its "sooard dancers."

The western portion of the North Riding, including Swale and Wensleydale, has been less fruitful in dialect poetry than the eastern. Apart from the anonymous "Wensleydale Lad" already noticed, it is represented in this anthology only by the spirited poem, "Reeth Bartle Fair," the work of a true lover of dialect speech, Captain John Harland, who published for the English Dialect Society a valuable glossary of Swaledale words (1873). The Craven country, the dialect of which differs materially from that spoken in the manufacturing districts of the West, Riding, is not without its bards. These include James Henry Dixon (1803-1876),—a local historian and antiquary of scholarly tastes, who edited for the Percy Society the delightful collection of folk-poetry entitled, Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England (1846). Mr. Dixon wrote comparatively little poetry himself, but his song, "The Milkin'-time," has the lilt of the best Scottish folk-songs and well deserves its inclusion here. In a longer poem, "Slaadburn Faar" (1871), he gives a humorous and racy description of the adventures of a farmer and his wife on their journey from Grassington to Slaidburn to attend the local fair. In general idea it resembles Harland's "Reeth Bartle Fair," which appeared in the preceding year.

But the typical poet of the Craven country was Tom Twistleton, a farmer near Settle, whose Poems in the Craven, Dialect first appeared in 1869, and soon ran through several editions. He was a disciple of Burns, and his poem "The Christmas-Party" (see below) daringly challenges comparison with the immortal "Halloween." His description of the dancing in the farm-house kitchen, and of the adventures of the pair of lovers who escape from the merry throng, is singularly vivid, and illustrates the author's ready humour and keen observation of rustic life and character.

Reference has already been made to the Nidderdill Olminac which ,vas produced by "Nattie Nidds" between 1864 and 1880 and published at Pateley Bridge. Among the contributors to it was Thomas Blackah, a working miner of Greenhow Hill, who in 1867 published a volume of dialect verse entitled Songs and Poems in the Nidderdale Dialect. In their truth to life, homely charm and freedom from pretentiousness, these dialect poems resemble those of Mrs. Tweddell, and deserve a wider recognition than they have so far won.

After this excursion into the dales of the North and West Riding, where, apart from mining, the life of the people is largely spent on the farm, we must turn once again to the industrial Yorkshire of the south-west, and see to what extent dialect poetry has flourished in the smoke-laden air of chimney-stacks and blast-furnaces, and with what success the Yorkshire dialect poets of the towns and cities have interpreted the life and thoughts of those who work in the mill or at the forge. As we have already seen, the first attempts to interpret in dialect poetry the life of industrial Yorkshire were made at Sheffield early in the nineteenth century by Abel Bywater. As the century advanced, the movement spread northwards, and the great artisan communities of Bradford, Leeds, and Halifax produced their poets. Among these pre-eminence belongs to Ben Preston, the Bradford poet, who stepped swiftly into local fame by the publication of his well-known poem, "Natterin' Nan," which first appeared in a Bradford journal in 1856. This is a vigorous piece of dramatic realism, setting forth the character of a Yorkshire scold and grumbler with infinite zest and humour. But it is in pathos that the genius of Preston chiefly consists. In poems like "Owd Moxy," "T' Lancashire Famine," and "I niver can call her my wife," he gives us pictures of the struggle that went on in the cottage-homes of the West Riding during the "hungry forties." In "Owd Moxy" his subject is the old waller who has to face the pitiless winter wind and rain as he plies his dreary task on the moors; but in most of his poems it is the life of the handloom-weaver that he interprets. The kindliness of his nature is everywhere apparent and gives a sincerity to the poems in which he portrays with rare discernment and sympathy the sufferings of the artisan, toiling from morning to night on eight shillings a week. His pathos has dignity and restraint, and in the poem "I niver can call her my wife" it rises to the heights of great tragedy. This is Ben Preston's masterpiece, and, though scarcely known outside of the county, it deserves to take a place side by side with Hood's " Song of the Shirt" by reason of the poignancy with which it interprets the tragedy of penury.(5)