Part 1 (2/2)

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 Yorks.h.i.+re Dialogue in its pure Natural Dialect as it is now commonly spoken in the North Parts of Yorkes.h.i.+re, and A Scould between Bess and Nell, two Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re,” which he had previously sent to Ray,(1) together with a collection of Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re; 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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+reman.(3) Popular in its day, this opera is now forgotten, but its song, ”An Honest Yorks.h.i.+reman” has found a place in many collections of Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re.

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 Yorks.h.i.+re dialect poetry. The songs which follow in our anthology-- ”When at Hame wi' Dad” and ”I'm Yorks.h.i.+re, 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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re Garland. This is the first attempt at an anthology of Yorks.h.i.+re poetry, and the forerunner of many other anthologies. All the poems have a connection with Yorks.h.i.+re, but none of them can, in the strict sense of the word, be called a dialect poem.

In the year 1800 the composition of Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re town and village. We have the song of the peasant girl impatiently awaiting the country fair at which she is to s.h.i.+ne 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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re, 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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re Dialect, and consisting largely of the dialect poems of Browne. These circulated widely in the country districts of Yorks.h.i.+re, 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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re dialect poetry it has always been the life of rural Yorks.h.i.+re 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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 Yorks.h.i.+remen; in other words, these almanacs furnish us with just such a mirror of nineteenth-century industrial Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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.

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