Fox Hunting and the Point-to-Points

GOLDEN YEARS OF THE ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY

I feel compelled to add a little to my earlier posts on the history of dairy farming in South Cheshire.

First, I think that I need to explain a little more about the role of the aristocracy and the integral part that its members played in the area's social and economic development in the 19th century. And second, this provides a context for understanding the importance of fox hunting and horses in local culture.

As Mark Overton explains, the 19th century was like no other in that Malthusian constraints on population growth fortunately failed. Thanks to the Industrial Revolution (and the accompanying intensification of international trade), England faced an unprecedented and continuous increase in demand for agricultural commodities:

“In 1750 English population stood at about 5.7 million. It had probably reached this level before, in the Roman period, then around 1300, and again in 1650. But at each of these periods the population ceased to grow, essentially because agriculture could not respond to the pressure of feeding extra people [within a closed system].

Contrary to expectation, however, population grew to unprecedented levels after 1750, reaching 16.6 million in 1850, and agricultural output expanded with it”.

These developments also constituted a enormous opportunity for landowners. Whereas in the past rents had tended to stabilize and then fall on a cyclical basis, from 1750 or so onwards they tended upwards as product markets firmed, accompanied by increasing innovation and specialization.

As I have mentioned previously, some 400 km2 of Cheshire was held by aristocratic landlords in the mid-1800s, with 287 km2 (71,000 acres) being held by the four largest. This meant that as rents increased from say £1 13s 4d per acre in 1840 to £2 per acre 1870, the four largest landowners received an additional £47,000 per year (worth nearly £4 million per year in today’s money).

This extra cash funded the construction of extensive Gothic Castles and Jacobethan Great Houses, and the enjoyment of lavish lifestyles. However, the recipients also funded farm consolidation and farm house and building reconstruction, which reinforced the adoption of innovations and larger scale production by their tenant farmers.

From the fortunate larger farmer’s point of view, this was no bad thing. As cattle became relatively more expensive and cheese-making more demanding, it was sensible for all to ensure that costs should be shared between those who provided the capital in the form of land and those who provided the capital in the form of cattle (and who also bore the operating costs).

The New Zealand ‘Share Milking’ system is very different in form but has a similar underlying logic.

So there were two upshots from a social stance. The aristocracy had plenty of money and leisure – and they had created a relatively powerful class of large holding tenant farmers. And what kept both classes together in no small measure was the interest that emerged, and that they then both shared, in fox hunting and horse racing.

We have some interesting insights into the emergence of these trends in the form of a poem or ballad called ‘Farmer Dobbin’ written by Rowland Eyles Egerton-Warburton in 1853.

I have taken the liberty of straightening it out a bit and changing the surname references to the locals (Dobbin not being a Cheshire name). A shortened version is given below. Almost certainly, it was first recited in the Swan Inn in Tarporley, Cheshire around 1850.

FARMER DUTTON

‘Owd man, it’s well-nigh milking time, wherever hast thee bin
There’s slutch upon they coat, I fear, and blood upon thy chin?’
‘I’ve been to see the gentlefolk of Cheshire ride a run
Owd wench! I’ve been a-hunting and I’ve seen some rattling fun.

Our owd mare was at the smithy, when the huntsman he trots through
With Black Bill still hammering, the last nail in her shoe.
The woods lay weam and close, and so jovial seemed the day
Says I, “Owd mare, we’ll take a fling and see them go away”.

And what a power of gentlefolk did I set eyes upon
A reining in their hunters, all blood horses every one.

I seed that great commander in the saddle, Captain White
And the pack that thronged around him was indeed a gradely sight
The dogs looked smooth as satin, and himself as hard as nails,
And he gives the swells a caution not to ride upon their tails.

Says he “Young men of Manchester and Liverpool, come near,
I’ve just a word, a warning word, to whisper in your ear
When starting from the cover side, you see bold Reynolds burst
We cannot have no hunting if you gentlemen go first”.

Tom Rance has a single eye, worth many another’s two
He held his cap above his yed to show he had a view;
Tom’s voice was like the owd raven’s when he skriked ‘Tally-ho!’
For when the fox had seen Tom’s face, he thought it time to go.

Eh my! A pretty jingle then went ringing through the sky
Hounds Victory and Villager began the merry cry
Then every mouth was open from the owd’un to the pup
And all the pack together took the swelling chorus up.

Eh my! A pretty skouver then was kicked up in the vale
They skimmed across the running brook, they topped the post and rails
The did’na stop for razor cop - but played at touch and go -
And them as missed their footing there, lay doubled up below.

I seed the hounds a-crossing Farmer Fearnall’s boundary line
Whose daughter plays the piano and drinks white sherry wine
Gold rings upon her fingers and silk stockings on her feet
Says I “It won’t do him no harm to ride across his wheat!”

So tightly holding on by the yed, I hits the owd mare a whop
And ‘oo plumps into the wheat field going neck and crop
And when ‘oo floundered out on it, I catched another spin
And Missus that’s the occasion of the blood upon my chin.

I never risked another hap but kept the lane and then
In twenty minutes time, they turned on me again
The fox was finely daggled and the hounds were out of breath
When they killed him in the open and owd Dutton seed the death.

Now Missus, since the markets be doing moderate well
I’ve welly made my mind up to buy a nag myself
For to keep a farmer’s spirits up when things be getting low
There’s nothing like fox-hunting and rattling ‘Tally-ho!’

[adapted from ‘Farmer Dobbin’ by Rowland Eyles Egerton-Warburton, 1853]

COMMENT

The original is much longer and is marred for modern readers by its deliberately antique spelling and comedy turn dialect.

It was clearly written to entertain the members of the Tarporley (Cheshire) Hunt Club by providing a parody of the argot spoken by the farmers that they met on their estates – and a good deal of the poem consists of catalogue or ‘Who’s Who’ of the important members of the Hunt and local high society.

However, there are some interesting social insights to be drawn here.

In the first place, it is notable that the farmer is now welcome enough on the hunt and that by the 1850s he felt that things were going well enough to buy himself a ‘hunter’ (i.e. part thoroughbred horse).

Secondly, there is mention of the ‘young men of Manchester and Liverpool’ whose wealthy merchant and mill-owner fathers were happy to see hunting so that they could rub shoulders with the establishment – and maybe make a match with the daughters of the nobility.

Third, there is some attempt to mock the wealthy independent farm owner whose daughter ‘plays the piano and drinks white sherry wine’ (in the original the Farmer is called Farmer Flare-up). Obviously, not being beholden like the tenants he would very much resent the Hunt crossing his land.

One has to doubt though whether Farmer Dutton / Dobbin would capriciously ride across his neighbour’s wheat – this seems much more the sort of thing that the aristocratic or parvenu huntsmen would do.

And it is sobering to reflect on how new and synthetic Cheshire's fox hunting culture really is. As we will see later, the original Hunt Club that was founded in 1762 in Tarporley started off with hare coursing. It was only prosperity, farm consolidation and the widespread introduction and proper maintenance of hawthorn hedges that made fox hunting viable.

For all the social nuances, my Darlington family was totally enamoured with fox hunting and point-to-point / steeple chase horse racing – which of course went very much hand in hand. Point to point horses got a lot of their training in full cry, and riding to hounds was equally a way of testing a rider’s mettle.

I have therefore dropped in a photo of my grandfather Herbert Darlington’s pride and joy – Catherine the Great - who was a successful race horse and brood mare – and who, as we were never allowed to forget was half-sister to Russian Hero who won the Grand National in 1949!




THE CHESHIRE HUNT AS IT IS NOW

“Welcome to the online home of the Cheshire Hounds and the Cheshire Hunt Supporters Club.

The Cheshire Hunt was founded in 1763. The area hunted encompassed the whole of Cheshire. This vast area was subsequently divided between the Cheshire and the South Cheshire Hunts in 1877, and the two portions were then reunited in 1907. This separation occurred again from 1931 until 1946.

The country now hunted is about twenty five square miles with the main centres around Tarporley and Nantwich, with Chester, Kelsall, Whitchurch and Malpas at its boundaries.

The Hunt meets on a Tuesday and Saturday at 11am from November until mid March, with a bye day being held once a fortnight on a Thursday at 12noon.

Cheshire is predominantly a dairy county with miles of grass, fenced by hedges and ditches.

The Hunt uniform is a scarlet coat with hunt buttons. A green collar is worn by Hunt Staff, Masters, and by invitation of the Tarporley Hunt Club.

The kennels are situated in the North of the country. Thirty five couple of hounds are kept and the pack will vary from either a bitch or a mixed pack depending on the meet. Hounds are bred for speed and endurance, and many miles will be covered in a day’s activities”.

THE TARPORLEY HUNT CLUB [from Wikipedia]

‘The Tarporley Hunt Club is a hunt club which meets at Tarporley in Cheshire, England. Founded in 1762, it is the oldest surviving such society in England, and possibly the oldest in the world. Its members' exploits were immortalised in the Hunting Songs of Rowland Egerton-Warburton. The club also organised the Tarporley Races, a horse racing meeting, from 1776 until 1939. The club's patron is Charles, Prince of Wales.

At first the club organised hare coursing, but its focus had already begun to switch to fox hunting within the first few years. Membership was limited to twenty in 1764, expanded to twenty-five in 1769 and later to forty.] The club's headquarters soon became the Swan Hotel, which dates from 1769. In the founding set of rules, members were required to drink "three collar bumpers" after both dinner and supper, and, in the event of marriage, to present each club member with a pair of buckskin breeches.

The club used the first pack of foxhounds in Cheshire, whose master was John Smith-Barry, son of the fourth Earl of Barrymore, of Marbury Hall. Among the hounds was the famed Blue Cap, which had beaten the hound owned by Hugo Meynell, founder of the Quorn Hunt, in a race held in 1762. After Barry's death in 1784, the hunt used a pack kept by Sir Peter Warburton of Arley Hall, which later became known as the Cheshire Hounds.

Members of the Egerton, Cholmondeley, Grosvenor and other prominent local families joined not long after the club's foundation. Among the many early members who were important in county or national affairs were Sir Philip Egerton of Oulton Park; Richard Grosvenor, first Earl Grosvenor, of Eaton Hall; Field Marshal Stapleton Cotton, first Viscount Combermere, of Combermere Abbey; Thomas Cholmondeley of Vale Royal; and his son, also Thomas Cholmondeley, first Baron Delamere.

Rowland Egerton-Warburton, president in 1838 and later one of the club's few honorary members, was known as the club's poet laureate. He immortalised some of its members' exploits in his Hunting Songs, and also wrote a history of the club to accompany an edition of the verses.

George Wilbraham, one of the club's original founders, purchased an estate in Delamere Forest including Crabtree Green, which had been used as racecourse since the mid-17th century. In 1776, the club held a sweepstake there with seven runners, and the contest became an annual event.

In the 1800s, the Tarporley Races became a permanent fixture in the Racing Calendar. Originally, only horses owned or nominated by members could enter, but in 1805 or 1809, a silver cup was awarded for a "farmers' race". The members' race was ridden in hunting costume.

THE MODERN LOCAL POINT TO POINT RACE

As the website explains for the 2010 season:

“The Cheshire Hunt Point to Point will take place on Sunday 18 April 2010 at Alpraham, Nr Tarporley. The first race starts at two o’clock, although many visitors choose to arrive early to set up for lunch - candelabras and full dining sets have appeared in previous years!

There will be seven races and a parade of hounds later in the day. Those with a weakness for the odd flutter will be well-served by onsite bookmakers....

Various catering outlets, trade stands and amusements for the children will be available around the site, and there's every reason to make a day of it.

2010 will mark the fiftieth year of racing at this particular course at Alpraham and a celebration lunch will take place to mark the occasion. The lunch will be held adjacent to the paddock and tables will be retained all day so that guests can enjoy the racing from the comfort of their chairs.

A champagne reception will be held prior to lunch, and afternoon tea is included to ensure that a memorable day is had by all. Full details of how to obtain tickets can be downloaded here.

Admission – car parking costs £20, £30 or £35 for reserved forward parking. Tickets for the celebratory lunch cost £50 in addition to car parking charges.

Further details will be published as the event draws near.....”

The Native Son Downunder

I have always had a soft spot for the story told by Beatrice Tunstall in her Romantic Novel ‘The Shiny Night’ (1931).

A CHESHIRE LAD WRONGED / GONE WRONG

Quite apart from anything else, The Shiny Night presents a cameo portrait of Cheshire dairy farming in the period 1840 – 1885, recounting the struggles of a farmer through such events as the 1865 – 1866 Rinderpest Epidemic.

It is told quite largely in Cheshire Dialect such that the hero, Seth Shone, having entered the cow shippons for the morning milking, and having been devastated to find that his cattle have died overnight during the outbreak, sobs to his wife that ‘t(he) kine an gone jed’’.

But the story is also interesting for its links to witchcraft – and Australia. It starts with Seth standing near Beeston Castle watching the fire on the crag and the bonfires that have been lit across the countryside to mark the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837.

Seth has recently returned to England from Van Diemen’s Land following a seven year sentence of Transportation for poaching. It is suggested that he was wrongly accused and convicted to defraud him of his rights of succession to the family farm.

Facing a hostile establishment, with the help of a friend, he establishes squatter’s rights to a cottage that he builds on the village Common. Having built it overnight and met the condition that smoke should be seen from the chimney at daybreak, he is free to keep it and graze a few young stock.

He then sets about rebuilding his fortunes and recovering the family farm. But not before cursing the three people who he believes conspired to deprive him of his freedom and farm. These include the local Squire who was the sentencing Magistrate; a rival for his betrothed; and his Derbyshire relatives who want to move down from the moors to the fat pastures of Cheshire.

The story is set in Bunbury, Cheshire (called Clock Abbot in the book) and draws on the local legend of the Image House. This house is known for the sandstone images that have been attached to the brick frontage. The images are taken to represent people who were cursed by the house’s original inhabitants, following a local dispute.

The main theme of The Shiny Night is the unfolding of the curses – and their eventual undoing of Seth himself – but not before he has risen to prosperity and respectability, and settled the old farm successfully on his son Yedmunt (Edmund).

SETH DOWN-UNDER

Well, from the ‘facts’ we can deduce that Seth probably spent about 10 years in Australia, with seven of these at ‘his Majesty’s pleasure’ and remainder working to pay for his fare home. He would have been sentenced then around 1827, probably at around the age of 20. He was therefore born around 1807 - and was 58 when he lost his dairy stock to the rinderpest and had to start all over again.

A typical surviving record is the one referring to his ‘Shropshire Cousin’, Samuel Shone, who was one of 130 convicts transported on the ship the Sir Charles Forbes, 23 November 1824. Samuel had been sentenced for a term of 7 years at Shrewsbury Quarter Sessions. Like Seth, his ‘Place of Arrival’ was Van Diemen’s Land.

Governor Philip (1788-1792) had founded a system of convict labour in which people, whatever their crime, were employed according to their skills - as brick makers, carpenters, nurses, servants, cattlemen, shepherds and farmers.

Educated convicts were set to the relatively easy work of record-keeping for the convict administration. Women convicts were assumed to be most useful as wives and mothers, and marriage effectively freed a woman convict from her servitude.

The discipline of rural labour (for which Seth would have been well-placed) was seen to be the best chance of reform. This view was adopted by Commissioner Bigge in a series of reports for the British Government published in 1822-23. The assignment of convicts to private employers was expanded in the 1820s and 1830s, the period when most convicts were sent to the colonies, and this became the major form of employment.

In the mid-1830s only around six per cent of the convict population were 'locked up', the majority working for free settlers and the authorities around the nation.

Even so, convicts were often subject to cruelties such as leg-irons and the lash. Places like Port Arthur or Norfolk Island were well known for this.

Convicts sometimes shared deplorable conditions. One convict described the working thus:

'We have to work from 14-18 hours a day, sometimes up to our knees in cold water, 'til we are ready to sink with fatigue... The inhuman driver struck one, John Smith, with a heavy thong.'

However, good behaviour meant that convicts rarely served their full term and could qualify for a Ticket of Leave, Certificate of Freedom, Conditional Pardon or even an Absolute Pardon. This allowed convicts to earn their own living and live independently.

For the period of their sentence though, they were still subject to surveillance and the ticket could be withdrawn for misbehaviour. This sanction was found to work better in securing good behaviour then the threat of flogging.

Governor Brisbane (1821-1825) codified the regulations for eligibility. Convicts normally sentenced to seven year terms could qualify for a Ticket of Leave after four years, while those serving 14 years could expect to serve between six to eight years. 'Lifers' could qualify for their 'Ticket' after about 10 or 12 years. Those who failed to qualify for a pardon were entitled to a Certificate of Freedom on the completion of their term.

THE AUSTRALIA OF THE TIMES

The colony of Van Diemen's Land was established in its own right in 1825 and officially became known as Tasmania in 1856. In the 50 years from 1803-1853 around 75,000 convicts were transported to Tasmania. By 1835 there were over 800 convicts working in chain-gangs at the infamous Port Arthur penal station, which operated between 1830 and 1877.

Australia's first census was held in November 1828 in the colony of New South Wales. Previous government statistical reports had been taken from "musters" where inhabitants were brought together for counting. In 1828, the white population was 36,598 of whom 20,870 were free and 15,728 were convicts. 23.8% of the population were born in the colony. 24.5% were women. There were 25,248 Protestants and 11,236 Catholics. Indigenous Australians were not counted.

Of the 36,598, 638 were living in what is now Queensland. There were also 18,128 people in Tasmania.

SOME TIMELINE EVENTS

1829
April 13 - Melbourne's first post office opens.
June 18 - Official proclamation of the Swan River Colony (Western Australia)
August 12 - Mrs Helen Dance, wife of the Captain of the ship Sulphur, cuts down a tree to mark the day of the founding of the town of Perth, Western Australia.

1830
September 20 - The Port Arthur penal settlement was established.
September 23 - The Bathurst Rebellion begins outside of Bathurst, New South Wales, following the escape of a group of convicts known as the 'Ribbon Gang' under the leadership of convict-servant Ralph Entwistle. Ten of the rebels are later captured and publicly hung after being tried and found guilty of murder.
October 7 - The 'Black Line' campaign of the Black War begins in an attempt to capture all Tasmanian Aborigines. The campaign lasts 7 weeks and only succeeds in bringing two Aborigines to the authorities.
Economy in 1830 - Wool exports from Australia reach 2 million pounds.

SOME NOTES

SETH'S SURNAME

Shone (pronounced ‘shown’, as in ‘I was shown the picture’) is an interesting surname. However, it is not common in south and western Cheshire in my experience and Tunstall may have chosen it partly because it rhymes with Done (pronouced 'D-Oh-an)– a very venerable local surname (the Dones were the hereditary keepers of Delamere Forest). My only personal memory of the name is that it was held by one of the reasonably prominent amateur jockeys in the ‘Point-to-Point’ horse racing circuit in the 1955-65 period.

Shone is originally a Welsh surname. Like Jones and Johnson, it is a patronymic of John. The spelling and pronunciation though have a more Celtic ring and direct affinities with the Irish Gaelic forms Sean (John), McShane (son of John) and O’Shea (grandson of John).

Until the 15th Century, cascading patronymic naming predominated in Wales, with a person's baptismal name being linked by ap, ab (son of) to the father's baptismal name back to perhaps the seventh generation. For example, Evan son of Thomas would be known as Evan (ap) Thomas; Evan's son, John would be John (ap) Evan; John's son Rees would be Rees (ap) John; and David's son, James, would be James (ap) David.

In areas where English influence was strong, like the borders of Shropshire and Cheshire, cascading patronymics were abandoned in favour of fixed surnames at an earlier date as settlers melded into the local population and acquired property that they wished to bequeath to descendants.

Overall, the stock of Welsh surnames is very small, which is partly attributed to the reduction in the variety of baptismal names after the Protestant Reformation. The typically Welsh surnames Jones, Williams, Davies, Evans and Thomas were all found in the top ten surnames recorded in England and Wales in 2000. However, some of these names originated in England in the 14th century or earlier, long before they arose in Wales.

LANGUAGE

Seth’s conversations in The Shiny Night appear completely uninfluenced by his exile in Australia. This seems unrealistic. Almost certainly, he would have picked up and incorporated some of the emerging Australian argot.

Apparently as early as 1827 Peter Cunningham, in his book Two Years in New South Wales, reported that native-born white Australians of the time—known as "currency lads and lasses" — spoke with a distinctive accent and vocabulary, with a strong Cockney influence.

Also there were borrowings from the aboriginal languages like 'cooee', hard 'yakka' and 'bung'. The first is used as a high-pitched call, for attracting attention, which travels long distances. Cooee is also a notional distance, as in ‘if he's within cooee, we'll spot him’.

Hard yakka means hard work and the word bung means broken or pretending to be hurt. A failed piece of equipment may be described as having bunged up or as "on the bung" or "gone bung". A person pretending to be hurt is said to be "bunging it on". A hurt person could say, "I've got a bung knee".

Perhaps its worth commenting here though that 'being bunged up' is a common local description of constipation in Cheshire - and one that obviously derives from bunging or sealing a bottle.

Remembered Cheshire Dialect

Some South Cheshire Dialect - mostly dairy farming terms

Adland – headland – uncultivated area left at the end of a furrow where the mower / plough turns
Aind - hound - as in 'up comes 52 bloody ainds' in Blaster Bates' well-quoted monologue 'A Shower of Shit over Cheshire'
Atchen – acorn (nickname for Keith at primary school ‘atchen yed’)
Asker – newt (small amphibian like a damp torpid skink)
Avarous - avaricious
Backend – Autumn – hence ‘backender’ – a heifer or cow that will calve late in the year when feed is scarce but milk prices are high
Bear - no bears in Cheshire when I grew up either wild or for baiting - but a memory in the saying 'as brown as a bear's arse'
Beast - the first milk let down after calving - colostrum
Bletch - the dirty oil on a machine (e.g. bike chain), from Crewe Railway Workshops -originally in complaint about the state of locos sent up from the linked North Western Railway workshop in Northamptonshire at Bletchley
Bonk – bank – frequently used to describe farms, as raised areas were better drained sites for farm houses
Boozy – trough at the head of each cattle stall or tying
Bowk – bucket
Bread and cheese - local term for the earliest green shoots of the hawthorn in the Springtime - widely eaten by children (probably a good source of vitamen C)
Brook - stream
Bugger - omnipresent in conversation - same in rural New Zealand as illustrated by a recent Toyota light truck / utility / ute advertisement where the ute pulls out a tree stump that destroys the chook house and the cockie rubs his head and says 'Bugger Me'. I personally believe that use of the the word in rural areas has nothing do do with buggery or the 'Bulgarian Atrocities' of the late 19th Century. Much more likley, it seems to me, is that it is related to 'beg', as in 'Begger me' or 'begger my neighbour'.
Bull - verbally abuse - to give someone a 'good bulling' about a problem or issue - not always polite or to be used a tea with the vicar as it can refer to mating cattle - probably related to standard English 'bully' / 'bullying'
Byng – corridor at the head of tyings in the shippon from which stock are fothered
Chimbley – chimney - 'the owd dog shot up bloody chimbley' - dog seeking warmth and catching the fire's smoke
Clem - starve
Conna – cannot (my nickname for Pete)
Cowd – cold
Cratch – side of a wagon (‘a good cratched ‘un’ – someone who can eat a lot)
Cut – canal (Cheshire is intersected by canals linking the industrial Midlands and industrial North of England – a great way to see the countryside)
Dabber – inhabitant of Nantwich (from leatherworking, stemming from the local abundance of salt and hides – hence Dab-town)
Diggly – sex, as in ‘having a bit of diggly’
Dunna – do not (my nickname for Matt)
Ess ole rooter - someone who hugs the fire (i.e. the ash-hole) and baulks from work
Feggy – rank and overgrown
Five gallon a day beast – good milking heifer (or well-endowed young lady)
Fother – fodder (often used as a verb)
Gradely – fine – as in ‘oos a gradely little wench’ (i.e. she is a fine young woman)
Gur – diarrhea
Jed – dead
Kench – wedge of hay or silage – also scrunched up, as in being ‘kenched wi cowd’ (doubled up with cold)
Korves - calves - see below - cry to get calves to come for bucket-feeding, 'cub, cub korv'
Kyat - cat - typical of the distorted pronounciation of standard English words
Ligger - liar
Lommer - another word sometimes used in relationship to hard physical labour - if the Inuits have 32 words for snow, Cheshire farmers had a raft of words for punishing work - this one though most frequently referred to 'on-heat' heifers mounting or lommering each other
Look up – check stock by walking among them in the fields or walking down the byng in the shippon
Mard – spoilt – i.e. ‘marred’ – schoolyard taunt ‘mardy custard’
Maul – strain in doing something / make a nuisance of oneself (e.g. maul one’s gorbey [guts])
Miss Muffet - not strictly dialect but a 'dirty' version of the rhyme that I have never heard elsewhere - 'Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, her nickers all ragged and torn. It wasn't the spider that sat down beside her but Little Boy Blue with his horn'
Mither – be a nuisance
Mixen – midden (‘better to marry over the mixen than over the moor’ i.e. marry all girl from Cheshire whose dad has lots of cows and cow shit, rather than marry into the poor sheep farmers of Derbyshire)
Mizzle – half-way between drizzle and mist
Mow'd - mowed - widely used in regard to sufficiency and relating to the importance of restricting mowing to the amount that can be dried and harvested successfully as hay - 'mowd up wi work' (overstretched), 'oer mowd' (over-mowed - too much on to be able to cope)
Munna – must not (nickname for Sam?)
Muxt - mess - as in 'tha's made a muxt on it lad' (you have made a mess of it)
Nesh – unable to stand cold or pain
Nowt - naughty child - naught / nothing, as in 'tha's a reet nowt'
Oawa up - morning cry to cows to 'come up' from the fields for milking (How up?)
Oo - she - as in 'Oo inna jed is oo - noeweh, oos corbelsed - ah a mun get vet' (i.e. she is not dead is she - no, she's collapsed - I must get the vetinerary surgeon - referring to treating a 'downer' cow that is suffering from 'milk fever' / calcium deficiency)
Owd – old –e.g. as in someone being decrepit and ‘owd an feggy’
Pit – pond – a vital part of the old cheese-making economy, providing water for the stalled cattle in the winter and the means for swilling out the shippons
Pather – bring wet and mud into the house by not cleaning one’s shoes
Pikel - pitchfork
Poll Evil - infection of horses / cows head
Pommer – attractive girl, as in ‘a reet (right) pommer’
Practical - handy, dextrous - the ultimate accolade
Rawnge – sprain / strain – ‘rawnge, maul and mither’ – the actions of particularly troublesome children (probably variant of standard English 'wrench' i.e. 'wrawnge')
Reens and bawks – the corrugations – about 3 metres apart that were dug to drain boggy fields in the 18th century) – hence ‘reen-warted’ – like a sheep or cow that has sunk down on its back in the reen and cannot get up – colloquially, someone who has eaten too much or who is getting too fat
Rit – runt – e.g. the rit of the litter
Scrag – grab and beat up (schoolyard term)
Scrumping - stealing apples - a common sport for kids in Autumn
Seg – callous (on the hand)
Shippon – cow shed
Snap - snack (used particularly for the lunch that farm labourers took to work with them in their 'snap tins' - along with their dry tea for a 'brew'. After work, they cycled home with their brew can on their handlebars filled with 'free' milk from the farm for their families)
Snig - Eel - 'as fat as a snig'
Spadger – sparrow (‘Like a Northwich spadger – all twitter and shit’, i.e. garrulous)
Stirk - type of 'cattle-beast' - steer?
Straighten – tidy up something or oneself - as in 'yeah lads mun get tha'sens straightened an go skoo' (you boys must get dressed and go to school)
Strap - extra licence / credit (presumably from lightening the straps on cart / carriage horses)
Yarn – heron
Tha - 'you' singular - universal in conversation - as in 'tha's a bugger to coo' (innocent report in 1930s of kid to his female schoolteacher of his father's opinion of the singing capabilities of his recently purchased parrot - received strong condemnation for the use of the 'b' word)
Thripper – gate on the end of a cart to hold on the load
Thrutch – squirm
Tice - to actively seek involvement in mischief (i.e. 'entice')
Tight – drunk, also miserly e.g. ‘as tight as a duck’s arse – and that’s water tight’
Tine - prong (as in the 'tines on a pikel')
Tying - chain at cattle stall
Underdone – not looking well (as opposed to ‘prosperous’ = looking well)
Wid – duck (from Welsh ‘hwaed’ = duck – presumably because the junior cheese-maids from Wales generally called up the ducks off the pit – “wid, wid ..wid”)
Wom – home – as in wom bonk (as in the saying ‘a cock feets (i.e. fights) best on (h)is wom bonk’)
Wunna - will not (nickname for Theo?)
Yed - head

WORD ORIGINS - THE INFLUENCE OF BRYTHONIC / CUMBRIC

The Reverend William Gaskell (husband of Elizabeth Gaskell, author of 'North and South', 'Mary Barton' etc) contributed a fascinating appendix to 'Mary Barton' on the Lancashire Dialect (based on 2 lectures that he gave in Manchester in 1848). He makes a strong case for deriving many dialect words from a Brythonic / Cumbric / Welsh-variant vocabulary substratum. This in turn being related to the fact that Lancashire (& Cheshire)once formed part of Celtic-speaking Yr Hen Ogledd (the Old North).

Among the examples that he discusses are:

Camming – wearing out of shape – Welsh ‘cam’ = bent, awry. Gammy is a variant
Cob – lump – Welsh ‘co’ = mass; to cob = break into small pieces , Welsh ‘cobiaw’ = strike, thump
Bragget – drink of malt and meat – Welsh ‘bragawd’
Pobs – bread soaked in milk – Welsh ‘pob’ = baking
Sad – stiff, dry – Welsh ‘sad’ = firm
Kecks – stems of wild hemlock – Welsh ‘cecys’ = hollow stalked
Griddle – bakestone – Welsh ‘greidyl’
Tad and Mam – Dad and Mum (Welsh equivalents).

These certainly seem very familiar to me. Horace used to have (and I still tell my boys about him having) 'pobs' (stale bread, with hot milk and sugar) for breakfast.

Gaskell also makes the point that:

'As Celtic and Gothic (the ancestor of Anglo-Saxon) are stocks of the same tribe of languages (i.e. Indo-European), they have many words in common, scarcely if at all, different in form, and this sometimes renders it difficult to say which may claim the immediate parentage of a current term.'

I am reminded here also that Caesar could not send messages written in Latin to his commanders in the field as the Gauls could easily read them if they captured the message-bearers (no doubt one reason that modern French is not quite as 'Latin' say as Spanish, as it is a mutation rather than the product of colonization).

It seems to me that many modern commentators, like Stephen Oppenheimer in his 'Origins of the British', completely lose sight of the overlap issue. This leads Oppenheimer to insist on the likelihood of widespread pre-Roman use of a Germanic language in South Eastern England - even though no words have ever been recoverd.

That is not to deny though that, for example, there may well have been some Friesian coastal settlers in the area controlled by the Iceni - or that late-Roman London and Middlesex may have been dominated by demobilised Roman soldiers / colonists from Batavia, the Rhineland and northern Belgium.