As I said in On the Sea Cliffs of Cleveland, my last blogpost, one of William Stott Banks' great interests was Yorkshire dialect.
He began his walks in Cleveland rather disappointed:
16 July 1864 Wakefield Free Press
Walks in Yorkshire X: Cleveland - Upper Eskdale - over moors to Lewisham Station
A first journey anywhere is always open to doubt; but it is necessary to begin somewhere, and so we decide upon starting off with Roseberry Topping in Cleveland, that sweet green cone, from childhood believed to belong to Margery Moorpoot and associated in one's head to a broad north Yorkshire dialect supposed to be spoken by men and women with laughing mouths opening from ear to ear across great red cheeks; but, sad to say, our little-boy's dream will not come true, for these things will seem to have quite gone out if they ever were in; nobody will as a matter of course call Ayton "Canny Yatton," though many still think Roseberry "b'biggest hill i' all Yorkshur, aboon a mahle an a hawf heegh an as cawd as ice at t' top on't i' t'yattist day i' summer," which it is not; nor will any peculiarity of face be seen, nor the farmers be found in any sense to come under the denomination bumpkins.
Margery Moorpoot was a character from farce who, when asked where she came from, declared
Ah was bred and boorn at Canny Yatton aside Roseberry Topping
and when asked where that was, replied
Ah thowght onny feeal hed knawn Roseberry. – It's biggest hill in all Yorkshire. It's aboon a mahle and a hawf heegh an' as cawd as ice t' top on't i' t' yattest day i' summer; that it is.
And that is why William Stott Banks writes of a "little-boy's dream" and "great red cheeks". He must have been remembering going to a theatre to see a farce played, complete with heavy stage makeup and comic country 'bumpkins'.
Margery Moorpoot was the creation of a Stockton man, the playwright and poet Joseph Reed (1727-83).
There is a wikipedia entry for Reed, drawing on the Dictionary of National Biography entry, and there is an account of Reed, with his own comic description of his early life, on page 85 of The Local Records of Stockton and the Neighbourhood by Thomas Richmond (1868), which can be read online here.
Joseph Reed succeeded to his father's business as a ropemaker, but was always devoted to literature and in 1757 he moved his business and family to London. In 1761 he made a great hit with 'The Register Office: a Farce' in which Margery Moorpoot, a Yorkshire servant looking for work at a register office in London, featured and which was popular for years. In one revival, the part of a female author called Mrs Doggerell was played by the celebrated comic actor Mrs Jordan – mistress of William IV and mother of Amelia Fitzclarence, wife of 10th Viscount Falkland, whose memorial can be found in Hutton Rudby church, (see The People behind the Plaques)
The text of dialogue between Gulwell of the register office and Margery Moorpoot can be found transcribed here on Genuki. It's from Specimens of the Yorkshire Dialect (1808) *.
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| Roseberry Topping – from this angle it still looks like a cone |
William Stott Banks deplored the loss in Yorkshire of the old ways of speech and dialectal words. He might not have come across anybody referring to Canny Yatton, but he did find that Snick Gate was pronounced Snek Yat, Stokesley was Stowsleh and Raindale was Raindil, and on the next walk he was reassured:
20 August 1864 Wakefield Free Press
Walks in Yorkshire X: Bilsdale - Ryedale - Hambleton Hills
To answer a doubt which lately arose and moreover not to overstate things, we have been under obligation of inquiring whether the striking peculiarities of dialect, not heard on our last walk, but put down in books as characterising Cleveland 30 or 40 years ago, have ceased to the extent supposed; and it may be said, so far, that while what was noticed before is generally true, there are here as all over persons whose manners and speech have not yet undergone the changes that schooling, quick travelling and more extended intercourse with other places and people are everywhere bringing about.
And in that walk he included pronunciations such as Wainstones (pronounced wean or wearn) and he reported the speech of people he met.
At the end of the walk he reaches Gormire and the White Horse of Kilburn. As the wikipedia article on the White Horse explains, while some say that the horse was made by the schoolmaster, his pupils and some volunteers, a tablet near the carpark gives the credit to one Thomas Taylor.
The tablet was put in place after a restoration following a public appeal in 1925. The Horse had been renovated after a public appeal a generation earlier:
29 June 1896 Bradford Daily Telegraph
The notable Yorkshire landmark, the White Horse of Kilburn ... was originally completed on the 4th of November, 1857, by the projector, Mr Thomas Taylor, a native of Kilburn and for many years a resident in London ... The projector dying something like a quarter of a century ago, the figure was neglected and got from bad to worse, and at the commencement of the year was so overgrown with weeds that it was found necessary to ask for outside aid for its renovation, or otherwise to allow it to become obliterated altogether.
In 1925 it was the Yorkshire Evening Post that raised the funds and on 15 August 1931 the newspaper proudly reported – along with an account of the money spent on the 'grooming' of the horse that year – that it was in "fine fettle" and that
The history of the White Horse is set forth in the following inscription on the tablet which is let into the ground near the back of the statue:-
The Kilburn 'White Horse'This figure was cut in 1857,on the initiative ofThomas Taylor,a native of Kilburn. In 1925a restoration fund was subscribedby readers ofThe Yorkshire Evening Post,and the residue of £100 wasinvested to provide for theTriennial 'Grooming' of the figure.
The wikipedia article quotes Morris Marples in his book White Horses and Other Hill Figures (1949 and still available secondhand from a 1980s reprint) as giving the credit to Taylor, a native of Kilburn, who was a buyer for a London provision merchant. "He seems to have attended celebrations at Uffington White Horse in 1857, and he was inspired to give his home village a similar example."
A report in the Northern Echo of 2 July 2004 reveals that both schools of thought are right – the horse was the idea of Thomas Taylor and it was carried out by his friend, the village schoolmaster John Hodgson with the schoolchildren. The newspaper's source was one of the Hodgson family – and he held a copy of the original drawing, with all the measurements, that Thomas Taylor sent to John Hodgson. It had been passed down in the family over the generations and the only other copy is in the Yorkshire Museum in York. There is a photograph of the drawing on this website.
When William Stott Banks and his walking companions came to the White Horse it was less than 10 years since it had been cut. He begins by describing the scene. The white mare he refers to can only mean White Mare Crag.
Just below Whitstone cliff is the lake Gormire covering about sixteen acres, and here, as in Berkshire, we have a white horse newly chalk't every year, and a white mare too.
There they encountered a Kilburn woman who lived between Whitstone Cliff and Roulston Scar, and what she told them is interesting, not only for the dialect, but also for the details she gave them of the creator of the White Horse.
T'wite mare is under Wissuncliff an' t'wite 'orse is just a back at'bank facin t'toon o' Kilb'n. T'wite 'orse wodn't shew itself aboon as it wod below. It's clean'd a' brack'ns ivery year and chalk't oot. Tommy Taylor at's gone tuv Australia 'ed it pick't oot for a memorandum not so very monny years sin; may be ten years mebbe. Taylor wur born at Kilb'n an 'e got a taumst'n put up for all t'family livin an' deead an' put their names on, a particular sort of a man. Ther's none on 'em left noo. Ther's 'unerds an' thoosans comes to Gormire. I's gawin that rawd in a minit.
I think that Thomas Taylor must be the cheesefactor (that is, he would be buying cheese from the makers to be sold in the London markets) who is to be found in the 1851 census living with his wife Ann and their six children at Kilburn Cottage, Central Hill, Lambeth. He was born in Kilburn in about 1808 and we can see his attachment to his birthplace in the choice of a name for his house. As to whether they all went to Australia at some point, I don't know! In the 1861 census Thomas and Ann and two of the children were in Central Hill, Lambeth, but I know no more than that. As to the tombstone that Thomas Taylor had made, I have no idea!
Dialects constantly change and language adapts over time and place. There has been noticeable 'levelling' of dialects across Europe and in North Yorkshire I expect we have all noticed the slow disappearance in some areas of the old ways of speaking. So William Stott Banks' transliteration of the people he heard as he walked in North Yorkshire in 1864 is to be treasured, and it is always a joy to listen to the old lilting speech to be heard in the voice of the late Maurice Atkinson in the videos on the Hutton Rudby and District Facebook page.
And, with words dating from long before Banks' time, the Yorkshire Historical Dictionary of historic terms from early documents (1100 to c1750) is great!
*There is an ebook of Specimens of Yorkshire Dialect or you can read it online from this link, which Blogger won't let me edit so it is very long:
