Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

To-night it is the New Year’s night, to-morrow is the day,
And we are come for our right and for our ray,
As we used to do in old King Henry’s day:
Sing, fellows, sing, hag-man, ha!

If you go to the bacon-flick cut me a good bit;
Cut, cut, and low, beware of your maw.
Cut, cut, and round, beware of your thumb,
That me and my merry men may have some:
Sing, fellows, sing, hag-man, ha!

If you go to the black ark, bring me ten marks;
Ten marks ten pound, throw it down upon the ground,
That me and my merry men may have some;
Sing, fellows, sing, hag-man, ha!

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

The year assigned is that preceding publication, but I suspect the song to be much older. The pinder (someone in charge of impounding stray animals) is added by Robert Bell several years later (Bell 1857). Hogmanay is of course first recorded in a Latin entry in 1443 in the West Riding as hagnonayse (OED contributors 2021). “Rey” < rea, a low-denomination Portuguese coin cognate with the Spanish real.

Take the warning in verse 2 seriously: a good guitarist I know in Barcelona started slicing ham while drunk, and took off his left thumb. On the same hand, the damage Django Reinhardt suffered to the fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand was caused by a caravan fire, not a love of pork.

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Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Animal pound (3) W/G ·
• Ballad (18) W/G ·
• Henry VIII (1491-1547) (16), ruled 1509 until his death, initiator of the English Reformation, separating the Church of England from papal authority and introducing the theory of the divine right of kings, dissolved convents and monasteries, invested heavily in the navy W/G ·
• Hogmanay (1) W/G ·
• North Riding of Yorkshire (51) W/G ·
• Poetry (75) W/G ·
• Richmond, North Yorkshire (3) W/G ·
• Richmond (2) W/G ·
• Song (20) W/G ·

All tags.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

The year assigned is that preceding publication, but I suspect the song to be much older. The pinder (someone in charge of impounding stray animals) is added by Robert Bell several years later (Bell 1857). Hogmanay is of course first recorded in a Latin entry in 1443 in the West Riding as hagnonayse (OED contributors 2021). “Rey” < rea, a low-denomination Portuguese coin cognate with the Spanish real.

Take the warning in verse 2 seriously: a good guitarist I know in Barcelona started slicing ham while drunk, and took off his left thumb. On the same hand, the damage Django Reinhardt suffered to the fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand was caused by a caravan fire, not a love of pork.

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Similar

15 March 1715: Frustrated lovers Martha Railton and Roger Wrightson of Bowes (North Riding) are buried together

1 December 1851: John (65) and Betty (73) of Wibsey are at long last united in a “funny wedding” at Bradford

29 September 1684: It being Michaelmas, the Jolly Pinder of Wakefield (in song) deserts his beasts and pound and joins Robin Hood in the greenwood

27 June 1743: Tom Brown of Kirkleatham’s heroics against the French today at Dettingen (Bavaria) lead his general, George II, to grant him a silver prosthetic nose, immortalised in ballad and portrait

20 September 1635: Angry villagers bear William Hodshon on a pole into Sunday service at Appleton Wiske (Northallerton), assisted by a bagpiper and a churchwarden

22 August 1572: The head of Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland and leader of the Catholic Rising of the North, is impaled on Micklegate Bar, York, where it stays for two years

14 May 1673: Long after the longbow’s demobilization, the Scorton Archers agree to shoot annually for a silver arrow

15 December 1888: Leeds’s most popular wassailing song, according to Frank Kidson

15 December 1888: Frank Kidson longs for Leeds’s musical Christmasses past

19 February 1557: At a tithe hearing, Ralph Dicconson (60) of Malton recalls his visits 40 years ago as a pedlar to Kirkham Priory before its dissolution in 1539

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

This broad balk is presumably a portion left untouched between ploughed portions as boundary, path or waste – see e.g. this beautiful medieval ridge and furrow at Pickering. I’m guessing it’s the boundary with Welburn land on the east of the plot shown on this satellite image – but this may help clarify. Also historical mapping.

Ra.: Radulphus, Ralph?

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