Yorkshire Dialect Poems | Page 6

Sally Water?Diller a dollar?Hagmana Song?Round the Year
New Year's Day
Lucky-bird, lucky-bird, chuck, chuck, chuck!?Candlemas
On Can'lemas, a February day?A Can'lemas crack?If Can'lemas be lound an' fair,?February Fill-Dike
February fill-dyke?Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday, palm away;?Good Friday
On Good Friday rist thy pleaf?Royal Oak Day
It's Royal Oak Day,?Harvest Home and the Mell-Sheaf
We have her, we have her,?Here we coom at oor toon-end,?Weel bun' an' better shorn?Blest be t' day that Christ was born,?Guy Fawkes Day
A Stick and a stake,?Awd Grimey sits upon yon hill,?Christmas
I wish you a merry Kessenmas an' a happy New Year, Cleveland Christmas Song?A Christmas Wassail?Sheffield Mumming Song?Charms, "Nominies," and Popular Rhymes
Wilful weaste maks weasome want?A rollin' stone gethers no moss?Than awn a crawin' hen?Nowt bud ill-luck 'll fester where?Meeat maks?The Miller's Thumb
Miller, miller, mooter-poke?Down i' yon lum we have a mill,?Hob-Trush Hob
"Hob-Trush Hob, wheer is thoo?"?Gin Hob mun hae nowt but a hardin' hamp,?Nanny Button-Cap?The New Moon
A Setterday's mean?I see t' mean an' t' mean sees me,?New mean, new mean, I hail thee,?Eevein' red an' mornin' gray?Souther, wind, souther!?Friday Unlucky
Dean't o' Friday buy your ring?An Omen
Blest is t' bride at t' sun shines on?A Charm
Tak twea at's red an' yan at's blake?A gift o' my finger?Sunday clipt, Sunday shorn?A Monday's bairn 'll grow up fair?A cobweb i' t' kitchen,?Snaw, snaw, coom faster?Julius Caesar made a law?A weddin', a woo, a clog an' a shoe?Chimley-sweeper, blackymoor?The Lady-bird
Cow-lady, cow-lady, hie thy way wum,?The Magpie
I cross'd pynot,(1) an' t' pynot cross'd me?Tell-pie-tit?The Bat
Black-black-bearaway?The Snail
Sneel, sneel, put oot your horn,?Hallamshire
When all the world shall be aloft,?Harrogate
When lords an' ladies stinking water soss,?The River Don
The shelvin', slimy river Don
Preface to Etext Edition
This is a mixture of the First and Second editions as noted.
The name of the author has been inserted after every title, so that it will be included when poems are copied individually.
The footnotes have been renumbered and placed at the bottom of each individual poem.
The sequence of the poems in the second edition has generally been adhered to, and the contents list has been built on this basis. The Indexes have been omitted because of the lack of pagination in etext. Computer searches also make them redundant,
Dave Fawthrop >
Preface
Several anthologies of poems by Yorkshiremen, or about Yorkshiremen, have passed through the press since Joseph Ritson published his Yorkshire Garland in 1786. Most of these have included a number of dialect poems, but I believe that the volume which the reader now holds in his hand is the first which is made up entirely of poems written in "broad Yorkshire." In my choice of poems I have been governed entirely by the literary quality and popular appeal of the material which lay at my disposal. This anthology has not been compiled for the philologist, but for those who have learnt to speak "broad Yorkshire" at their mother's knee, and have not wholly unlearnt it at their schoolmaster's desk. To such the variety and interest of these poems, no less than the considerable range of time over which their composition extends, will, I believe, come as a surprise.
It is in some ways a misfortune that there is no such thing as a standard Yorkshire dialect. The speech of the North and East Ridings is far removed from that of the industrial south-west. The difference consists, not so much in idiom or vocabulary, as in pronunciation--especially in the pronunciation of the long vowels and diphthongs.(1) As a consequence of this, I have found it impossible, in bringing together dialect poems from all parts of the county, to reduce their forms to what might be called Standard Yorkshire. Had I attempted to do this, I should have destroyed what was most characteristic. My purpose throughout has been to preserve the distinguishing marks of dialect possessed by the poems, but to normalise the spelling of those writers who belong to one and the same dialect area.
The spelling of "broad Yorkshire" will always be one of the problems which the dialect-writer has to face. At best he can only hope for a broadly accurate representation of his mode of speech, but he can take comfort in the thought that most of those who read his verses know by habit how the words should be pronounced far better than he can teach them by adopting strange phonetic devices. A recognition of this fact has guided me in fixing the text of this anthology, and every spelling device which seemed to me unnecessary, or clumsy, or pedantic, I have ruthlessly discarded. On the other hand, where the dialect-writer has chosen the Standard English spelling of any word, I have as a rule not thought fit to alter its form and spell it as it would be pronounced in his dialect.
I am afraid I may have given offence to those whom I should most of all like to please--the living contributors to this anthology--by