Tales of the Ridings | Page 4

was perhaps never so happy, in all senses of the word, as when, released from the "idols of the lecture-room," he was seeking to awake, or keep alive, in others that love of imaginative beauty which counted for so much in his own life and in his discharge of the daily tasks that fell upon him: speaking freely and from his heart to men and women more or less of his own age and his own aspirations; "mingling leadership and camaraderie in the happy union so characteristic of him," and "drawing out the best endeavours of his pupils by his modest, quietly effective methods of teaching and, above all, by his great, quiet, human love for each and all."(5)
It is clear that such work, however delightful to him, meant a considerable call upon his time and strength: the more so as it went hand in hand with constant labours on behalf of the Yorkshire Dialect Society, for which he was the most indefatigable of travellers--cycling his way into dale after dale in search of "records"--and of which, on the death of his friend, Mr Philip Unwin, he eventually became president. Nor was this all. During the last seven years or so of his life the creative impulse, the need of embodying his own life and the lives of those around him in imaginative form was constantly growing upon him, and a wholly new horizon was opening before him.
At first he may have thought of nothing more than to produce plays suitable for performance either by the students of the University or by young people in those Yorkshire dales with which his affections were becoming year by year increasingly bound up. But, whatever the occasion, it soon proved to be no more than an occasion. He swiftly found that imaginative expression not only came naturally to him, but was a deep necessity of his nature; that it gave a needed outlet to powers and promptings which had hitherto lain dormant and whose very existence was unsuspected by his friends, perhaps even by himself. The May King, Potter Thompson, the adaptation of the Second Shepherds' Play from the fifteenth-century Towneley Mysteries followed each other in swift succession; and the two first have, or will shortly have, been performed either by University students or by school children of "the Ridings."(6) This is not the place to attempt any critical account of them. But there are few readers who will not have been struck by the simplicity with which the themes--now pathetic, now humorous, now romantic--are handled, and by the easy unconsciousness with which the Professor wears his "singing robes."
The same qualities, perhaps in a yet higher degree, appear in the dialect poems, written during the last three years of his life: _Songs of the Ridings_. The inspiration of these was less literary; they sprang straight from the soil and from his own heart. It was, no doubt, a scholarly instinct which first turned his mind in this direction: the desire of one who had studied the principles of the language and knew every winding of its historical origins to trace their working in the daily speech of the present. He has told us so himself, and we may readily believe it. But, if he first came to the dales as learner and scholar, he soon found his way back as welcome visitor and friend. The more he saw of the dalesmen, the more his heart went out to them: the more readily, as if by an inborn instinct, did he enter into their manner of life, their mood and temper, their way of meeting the joys and sorrows brought by each day as it passed. And so it was that the scholar's curiosity, which had first carried him thither, rapidly gave way to a feeling far deeper and more human. His interest in forms of speech and fine shades of vowelling fell into the background; a simple craving for friendly intercourse, inspired by a deep sense of human brotherhood, took its place. And Songs of the Ridings(7) is the spontaneous outgrowth of the fresh experience and the ever-widening sympathies which had come to him as a man. The same is true of _Tales of the Ridings_, published for the first time in the following pages.
The last five years of his life (1914-1919) had, to him as to others, been years of unusual stress. Disqualified for active service, he had readily undertaken the extra work entailed by the departure of his younger colleagues for the war. He had also discharged the semi-military duties, such as acting on guard against enemy aircraft, which fell within his powers; and, both on the outskirts of Leeds and round his Lytton Dale cottage, he had devoted all the time he could spare to allotment work, so as to