Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

He was working at a gap in a wall which had so often needed repairs in the same spot that popular opinion had pronounced “t’ deevil’s in the lile bit o’ wall.” “It’s been down,” declared the artist, “nobbut a dussin times it’ yeear, an’ nane on em can mak ‘t stand. If it win’t haud efter me, then it isn’t i’ men et dry-walls ti mak ‘t stand… Naay, thur’s nae fawt i’ t’ steans; but it mun be t’ waay t’ thrufs been laid. Hy’e that ‘s it – it ‘s t’ thrufs – if it tummels efter me, then thur ‘s nae dowt thur ‘s sumat unnateral abowt it.” The next day I found myself on the same spot, but when my old friend espied me over the wall he shouted with all the force of his mountain-air-primed lungs: “Ah ‘ve fun’t it, ah ‘ve fun’t! Fules! How cud t’ wall stan’ wi’ a fairy-stean in ‘t?” and he held up a long rounded stone, a splendidly weathered encrinite, which I at once appropriated. “Now yer ‘ll see t’ wall ‘l stand reet eneugh!” The next few weeks will test the point whether t’ deevel amang t’ steans has been removed.

Comment

Comment

Via Beach Combing.

More Wensleydale satanism in Richard Brathwait’s Drunken Barnaby:

Thence to Wenchly, valley-seated,
For antiquity repeated:
Sheep and shepherd, as one brother,
Kindly drink to one another;
Till pot-hardy, light as feather,
Sheep and shepherd sleep together.
(Brathwait 1762)

Something to say? Get in touch

Original

A correspondent of The Yorkshire Herald, 22 October, gives an account of a recent interview with an aged man whom he calls the king of dry stone-wallers in Wensleydale. He was working at a gap in a wall which had so often needed repairs in the same spot that popular opinion had pronounced “t’ deevil’s in the lile bit o’ wall.”

“It’s been down,” declared the artist,

nobbut a dussin times it’ yeear, an’ nane on em can mak ‘t stand. If it win’t haud efter me, then it isn’t i’ men et dry-walls ti mak ‘t stand… Naay, thur’s nae fawt i’ t’ steans; but it mun be t’ waay t’ thrufs been laid. Hy’e that ‘s it – it ‘s t’ thrufs – if it tummels efter me, then thur ‘s nae dowt thur ‘s sumat unnateral abowt it.

“The next day,” says the narrator,

I found myself on the same spot, but when my old friend espied me over the wall he shouted with all the force of his mountain-air-primed lungs: “Ah ‘ve fun’t it, ah ‘ve fun’t! Fules! How cud t’ wall stan’ wi’ a fairy-stean in ‘t?” and he held up a long rounded stone, a splendidly weathered encrinite, which I at once appropriated. “Now yer ‘ll see t’ wall ‘l stand reet eneugh!” The next few weeks will test the point whether t’ deevel amang t’ steans has been removed.

257 words.

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.

• Brathwait(e), Richard (1588-1673) (3), Kendal-, Oxbridge-, London-and Catterick-based poet and landowner ·
• Devil (1) ·
• Doggerel (8) ·
• Dry stone (1) ·
• Fairy (1) ·
• Narrative poetry (9) ·
• Poetry (70) ·
• Sheep (27) ·
• Stone wall (1) ·
• Superstition (14) ·
• Wensleydale (4) ·
• Yorkshire dialect (20) ·
• Zoophilia (1) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 20 June 1881: John Tutin of Hull visits Hart-leap Well, the subject of Wordsworth’s anti-hunting poem
• 13 December 1795: A smoking-hot meteorite weighing 25 kg imperils labourer John Shipley at Wold Cottage farm, Muston (ER)
• 24 August 1870: Fakesong by an army captain about the sights of the St. Bartholomew’s Fair today at Reeth, Swaledale
• 30 May 1415: A native God creates the first Yorkshireman and -woman in the York mystery plays
• 18 December 1802: A stereotypical comedy Yorkshireman – “heir to a wealthy clothier” – sings during tonight’s Covent Garden première of Thomas Dibdin’s “Family Quarrels”
• 1 April 1641: Henry Best of Elmswell (Driffield) weighs his wool for a purchaser from Beverley
• 21 September 1874: Amidst urban railway tourists, the young of Nidderdale and Wharfedale celebrate Craven Lass’s victory in the Pateley Bridge Races
• 3 August 1874: The mayor of Grassington addresses the humorist and miner Thomas Blackah and the other eight Pateley Bridge antiquarians during their summer outing around Craven
• 30 July 1825: The Bridlington bellman Dickey Fletcher cries two keys found on the resort’s North Sands
• 12 September 1680: Francis and Mary Huntrodes are buried together at St. Mary’s, Whitby with a poetic epitaph