| Photo by] | [C.W. Mason |
| The Entrance to the ‘Old Harbour.’ | |
Stand on the Victoria Pier at Hull on a clear day, and watch the ships of the Humber. Of all sizes and shapes and speeds they are. There we see the keel, with its one square sail, making its way slowly along, the peaceful descendant of the square-sailed long-ship of Viking days. There are the schooners and barques that are survivals from the days when all ships depended on the wind for their motive power. There is a tug-boat taking out to its moorings the light-ship on which the safety of many other ships will depend.
There also are the ‘fast-sailing’ steam trawlers and carriers coming from, or going to, the fishing-grounds off Iceland and north of the White Sea—the representatives of the whalers of a hundred years ago—there the scurrying pilot boats and revenue cutters. And there is a great ocean liner riding at anchor and waiting the turn of the tide to allow it to enter the dock and discharge the cargo it has brought from the other side of the world.
XXVIII.
FOLK-SPEECH OF THE EAST RIDING.
There is a tale told of a Yorkshireman on a visit to London that he fell into argument with a bus conductor over the correct way of pronouncing the simple word ‘road.’ The cockney bus-conductor had, in his usual way, called out ‘’Toria Rowd; ’Toria Rowd!’ and the Yorkshireman was highly displeased with this obvious murder of the King’s English. ‘Rowd!’ said he in his disgust; ‘whah dooant ya speeak English? R-o-a-d—that’s hoo it’s spelt, beeant it? Whah dooant ya ca’ it Roo-ad?’
The story will serve to illustrate the fact that a man born and bred in the heart of England’s biggest shire, and one born and bred in the heart of England’s biggest city, do not sound all their words in the same manner, though they may at the same time spell them alike. Moreover, neither of the two will perhaps sound his words in the way in which custom says it is correct to sound them.
Such differences are to be found in many parts of the country. The Northumberland miner, the Sheffield steel-worker, the Nottingham lace-worker, the Norfolk grazier, and the ‘Zummerzet’ farm-labourer all speak ‘English’; but yet they would have no little difficulty in making one another understand what their respective English words meant. In other words, the districts to which they belong have each a Dialect or Folk-Speech of their own.
Let us see what are some of the peculiarities of the Folk-Speech of our East Riding:—
(1) An East Yorkshireman sounds his vowels in his own peculiar way. With him I is pronounced as ah, warm as wahrm, night as neet, road as rooad, cow as coo, know as knaw, pound as pund, come as coom, and ought as owt. He is, moreover, very fond of the EEA sound; for he makes cake into keeak, meat into meeat, home into heeam, sure into seear, school into skeeal, look into leeak, enough into eneeaf, and plough into pleeaf.