A Yorkshireman (the story is told of Birstall) who had a scolding wife met a mate one morning who looked rather sad, and asked him what was the matter. The other said, "I've lost my old missus." To this the former replied, "I'll swop my wick un for your dead un, and pay t' funeral expenses too!"
Another Birstall story:
When the present incumbent was appointed to Birstall, a man there said, "We've had no Harvest Festival this time, as there was no vicar, but now a new one is appointed I dare say we shall have a lot of them!"
A very wealthy manufacturer whose works were in the Wakefield diocese was asked for a donation to a charitable object, and said they might put down his name for two guineas. It was pointed out to him that his son had already given twice that amount, and he might not like his name to appear for less than his son's. "Oh, it's all right," he said; "you see he has got a well-to-do father, and I haven't."
Two men went round a parish in Yorkshire, house to house, collecting a fund for the repair of the churchyard wall. Presently they came to a house where the man had just come in from work and was washing himself in the back kitchen. Hearing the men in the front room he called out, "What dost a want? Dost a want some o' ma brass? Nay, thee'll noan get ma brass for yon job." One of the men replied, "Why, t' wall wants mending badly." "Nay, man," answered the man in the back room, "them as is in t' churchyard weant get out, and them as isn't in doant want to get in. Tha, man, let it bide."
A clergyman in Yorkshire, visiting a dying man, observed him putting his hand out of the bed and eating something from time to time, so he said he was glad to see he could eat a little, when the man with a funny look said, "They're my funeral biscuits. The missis went to the town and bought them, and she's out to-day, and I'm eating them."
A poor woman at Halifax talking of her husband, said he had tried everything—he had been a churchman, then a Wesleyan, then a Baptist, and now he was a Yarmouth bloater. (She meant Plymouth brother, but had got her seaports mixed.)
A girl in Hebden Bridge came to the vicar to put up her banns of marriage. When all was done she lingered at the door and the vicar said, "Well, Mary, is there anything more?" To this she replied rather shyly, "Please, sir, will t' same spurrings do for another chap?" (Spurrings is a Yorkshire word for banns, and is really speerings or inquirings.)
At Thornhill an old woman lost her brother and went continually to talk to him at his grave. One day she was overheard saying, "Eh, William, t' pigs turned out well. We'd a bit o' spar rib yesterday, and a wish thee could ha' tasted it. And a've sold t' hams, William."
A former vicar of Dewsbury at a funeral in a cemetery, where the grave was under the wall of the chapel, remarked to the widow, "It's a nice sheltered spot." "Ah, yes," she answered, "my poor husband never could bear a draught."