Yorkshire Dialect Poems | Page 7

tampering in this way with the text of their poems. In defence of what I have done, I must put forward the plea of consistency. If I had preserved every poet's text as I found it, I should have reduced my readers to despair.
In conclusion, I should--like to thank the contributors to this volume, and also their publishers, for the permission to reproduce copyright work. Special thanks are due to Mr. Richard Blakeborough, who has placed Yorkshiremen under a debt, by the great service which he has rendered in recovering much of the traditional poetry of Yorkshire and in giving it the permanence of the printed page. In compiling the so-called traditional poems at the end of this volume, I have largely drawn upon his Wit, Character, Folklore, and Customs of the North Riding.
F. W. Moorman
1. Thus in the south-west fool and soon are pronounced fooil and sooin, in the north-east feeal and seean. Both the south-west and the north-east have a word praad--with a vowel--sound like the a in father--but whereas in the south-west it stands for proud, in the north-east it stands for pride,
Preface (To the Second Edition)
The demand for a second edition of this anthology of Yorkshire dialect verse gives me an opportunity of correcting two rather serious error's which crept into the first edition. The poem entitled "Hunting Song" on page 86, which I attributed to Mr. Richard Blakeborough, is the work of Mr. Malham-Dembleby", whose poem, "A Kuss," immediately precedes it in the volume.
The poem on page 75, which in the first edition was marked Anonymous and entitled "Parson Drew thro' Pudsey," is the work of the late John Hartley; its proper' title is "T' First o' t' Sooar't," and it includes eight introductory stanzas which are now added as Appendix II.
Through the kindness of: Fr W. A. Craigie, Dr. M. Denby, and Mr. E. G. Bayford, I have also been able to make a few changes in the glossarial footnotes, The most important of these is the change from "Ember's" to "Floor" as the meaning of the word, "Fleet" in the second line of "A Lyke-wake Dirge." The note which Dr. Craigie sen't me on this word is so interesting that I reproduce it here verbatim:
"The word fleet in the 'Lyke-wake Dirge' has been much misunderstood, but it is certain1y the same thing as flet-floor; see the O.E.D. and E.D.D. under. FLET. The form is not necessarily 'erroneous,' as is said in the O.E.D., for it might represent ,the O.N. dative fleti, which must have been common in the phrase a fleti (cf. the first verse of 'Havamal'). The collocation with 'fire' occurs in 'Sir Gawayne' (l. 1653): 'Aboute the fyre upon flet.' 'Fire and fleet and candle-light' are a summary of the comforts of the house, which the dead person still enjoys for 'this ae night,' and then goes out into the dark and cold."
F. W. Moorman
Introduction
The publication of an anthology of Yorkshire dialect poetry seems to demand a brief introduction in which something shall be said of the history and general character of that poetry. It is hardly necessary to state that Yorkshire has produced neither a Robert Burns, a William Barnes, nor even an Edwin Waugh. Its singers are as yet known only among their own folk; the names of John Castillo and Florence Tweddell are household words among the peasants of the Cleveland dales, as are those of Ben Preston and John Hartley among the artisans of the Aire and Calder valleys; but, outside of the county, they are almost unknown, except to those who are of Yorkshire descent and who cherish the dialect because of its association with the homes of their childhood.
At the same time there is no body of dialect verse which better deserves the honour of an anthology. In volume and variety the dialect poetry of Yorkshire surpasses that of all other English counties. Moreover, when the rise of the Standard English idiom crushed out our dialect literature, it was the Yorkshire dialect which first reasserted its claims upon the muse of poetry; hence, whereas the dialect literature of most of the English counties dates only from the beginning of the nineteenth century, that of Yorkshire reaches back to the second half of the seventeenth.
In one sense it may be said that Yorkshire dialect poetry dates, not from the seventeenth, but from the seventh century, and that the first Yorkshire dialect poet was Caedmon, the neat-herd of Whitby Abbey. But to the ordinary person the reference to a dialect implies the existence of a standard mode of speech almost as certainly as odd implies even. Accordingly, this is not the place to speak of that great heritage of song which Yorkshire bequeathed to the nation between the seventh century and the fifteenth. After the Caedmonic poems, its