F. W. Moorman

“ Thus, at the close of the Middle Ages, narrative, lyric and dramatic poetry seemed firmly established among the people. Not unmindful of romance, it was grounded in realism and sought to interpret the life of the peasant and the artisan of fifteenth-century England. The Renaissance follows, and a profound change comes over poetry. The popular note grows fainter and fainter, till at last it becomes inaudible. Poetry leaves the farmyard and the craftsman’s bench for the court. ”

“ The loss on either side has been great, though it is only now beginning to be realised. “A literature which leaves large areas of the national activity and aspiration unexpressed is in danger of becoming narrow, esoteric, unhealthy. Areas of activity and aspiration unlit by the cleansing sun of art, untended by the loving consideration of the poet, will be dungeons for the national spirit, mildewed cellars in which rats fight, misers hoard their gold, and Guy Fawkes lays his train to blow the superstructure sky-high.” ”

“ There was a time when poetry meant much more to the working men of England. In the later Middle Ages, above all in that fifteenth century which literary historians are fond of describing as the darkest period in English literature, the working man had won for himself what seemed a secure place in poetry. Narrative, lyric and dramatic poetry had all opened their portals to him, and made his life and aims their theme. ”

“ Our English non-dramatic poetry from the Renaissance onwards is second to none in richness of thought and beauty of diction, but it lacks the highest quality of all—universality of interest and appeal. Our poets have turned a cold shoulder to the activities and aims of the working man, and the working man has, in consequence, turned a cold shoulder to the great English classic poets. ”

“ The first is that literature may be used as a mighty weapon in the furtherance of political justice and social reform, and that the pied pipers of folk-song have the power to rouse the nation and charm the ears of even the Mother of Parliaments. ”

“ The twentieth century has already, in its short course, done much to remove this prejudice, and the minor poet is no longer expected to be apologetic; his circle of readers, though small, is sympathetic, and the outside public is learning to tolerate him and to recognise that it is as natural and wholesome for him to write and publish his verses as it is for the minor painter to depict and exhibit in public his interpretation of the beauty and power which he sees in human life and in nature. ”

“ It maybe argued that it should be the aim of our schools and universities to educate the working classes to appreciate what is best in standard English poetry. I do not deny that much maybe done in this way, but let us not forget that something more will be needed than a course of instruction in poetic diction and metrical rhythm. Our great poets depict a world which is only to a very small extent that of the working man. ”

“ Class-consciousness—a word often on the lips of our democratic leaders of today—has held far too much sway over the minds of poets from the Elizabethan age onwards. Spenser writes his Faerie Queene “to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline,” and Milton’s audience, fit but few, is composed of scholars whose ears have been attuned to the harmonies of epic verse from their first lisping of Virgilian hexameters, or of latter-day Puritans, like John Bright, who overhear in Paradise Lost the echoes of a faith that once was stalwart. ”

“ Let democracy look to William Morris, poet, artist and social democrat, for inspiration and guidance, and take to heart the message of prophecy which he has left us: “If art, which is now sick, is to live and not die, it must in the future be of the people, for the people, by the people.”
In the creation of this poetry “of the people, by the people” dialect may well be called upon to play a part. Dialect is of the people, though in a varying degree in the different parts of the wide areas of the globe where the English language is spoken ”

“ It may be that for some of the more elaborate kinds of poetry, such as the formal epic, dialect is useless; let it be reserved, therefore, for those kinds which appeal most directly to the hearts of the people. The poetry of the people includes the ballad and the verse tale, lyric in all its forms, and some kinds of satire ”

“ The second is that the working man needs something more to sustain him than bread and the franchise and a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. Democracy, having obtained for the working man a place in the government of the nation, is now asserting his claim to a place in the temples of poetry. The Arthurian knight, the Renaissance courtier, the scholar and the wit must admit the twentieth-century artisan to their circle. ”

“ Moreover, the provincial note in poetry or prose is far from being a bad thing. In the Idylls of Theocritus it gave new life to Greek poetry in the third century before Christ, and it may render the same high service to English poetry to-day or to-morow. The rise of Provincial schools of literature, interpreting local life in local idiom, in all parts of the British Isles and in the Britain beyond the seas, is a goal worth striving for; such a literature, so far from impeding the progress of the literature in the standard tongue, would serve only to enrich it in spirit, substance and form. ”

“ There are at the present time clear signs of a revival of popular poetry and popular drama. The verse tales of Masefield and Gibson, the lyrics of Patrick MacGill, the peasant or artisan plays which have been produced at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, may well be the beginning of a great democratic literary movement. Democracy, in its striving after a richer and fuller life for the people of England, is at last turning its attention to literature and art. ”

“ It was the aim of Addison in his Spectator essays to bring “philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffeehouses”; and, in like manner, it should be the aim of the writer of dialect verse to bring poetry out of the coteries of the people of leisure and to make it dwell in artisans’ tenements and in cottagers’ kitchens. ”

“ The opposition between courtly taste and popular taste is hard to analyse, but we have only to turn our eyes from England to Scotland, which lost its royal court in 1603, in order to appreciate the reality of the opposition. In Scotland the courtly poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries soon disappeared when James I exchanged Holyrood for Whitehall, but popular poetry continued to live and grow. ”

“ The working man or woman finds a place in this charmed world only if his occupation is that of a shepherd, and even then he must be a shepherd of the Golden Age and answer to the name of Corydon. Poets, we are solemnly assured by Pope, must not describe shepherds as they really are, “but as they may be conceived to have been when the best of men followed the employment of shepherd.” ”

“ The folk-song gathered power and sweetness all through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, till it culminated at last in the lyric of Burns. Popular drama, never firmly rooted in Scotland, was stamped out by the Reformation, but the popular ballad outlived the mediaeval minstrel, was kept alive in the homes of Lowland farmers and shepherds, and called into being the great ballad revival of the nineteenth century. ”

“ Most of them are character-sketches or dramatic studies, and my wish is to bring before the notice of my readers the habits of mind of certain Yorkshire men and women whose acquaintance I have made. For ten years I have gone up hill and down dale in the three Ridings, intent on the study of the sounds, words and idioms of the local folk-speech. At first my object was purely philological, but soon I came to realise that men and women were more interesting than words and phrases, and my attention was attracted from dialect speech to dialect speakers. ”

“ In like manner, the Shepherds of the Nativity plays are conceived and fashioned by men who, fortunate in that they knew nothing of the seductions of Arcadian pastoralism, have studied at first hand the habits and thoughts of English fifteenth-century shepherds, and paint these to the life. ”

“ Wheer men grind their hearts to guineas,
an’ their mills are awlus thrang,
Turnin’ neet-time into day-time,
niver stoppin’ th’ whole yeer lang.
Cambodunum up on th’ hill-tops,
Huthersfield down i’ yon dale;
One’s a place for free-born Britons,
t’other’s ommost like a jail.
Here we live i’ t’ leet an’ sunshine,
free as larks i’ t’ sky aboon;
Theer men tew [2] like mowdiwarps [3]
that grub up muck by t’ glent o’ t’ moon.
See yon motor whizzin’ past us,
ower th’ owd brig that spans our beck;
That’s what fowk call modern progress,
march o’ human intelleck. ”

“ Bailiff’s doughter at t’ Hollins, shoo’s Breed, an’ shoo’s Life, an shoo’s Art,
Bred frae a Westmorland statesman out o’ a Craven lass;
Carries hersen like a queen when shoo drives to markit i’ t’ cart:
Noan o’ yon scraumy-legged [2] painters sal iver git howd o’ her brass.
Picturs is reight enough for fowks cluttered up i’ Leeds,
Fowks that have ne’er hannled beasts, can’t tell a tup frae a yowe ;
But the art for coontry lads is the art that breathes an’ feeds,
An’ t’ finest gallery i’ t’ worrld is a Yorkshire cattle-show. ”

“ Weant tak advice frae lads that talk farm-twang;
If t’ coontry goes to t’ dogs, it’s ’cause they’ve sent
Ower mony city folk to mend what’s wrang.
They’ve taen our day-tale men [7] to feight for t’ land,
Then tell us we mun keep our staggarths [8] full.
What’s lasses, gauvies, [9] greybeards stark [10] i’ t’ hand,
To strip wer kye, an’ ploo, an’ tew wi’ t’ shool? [11]
But theer, I’ll nurse my threapin’ while it rains,
An’ while my rheumatiz is bad to bide;
I mun step heamwards now, through t’ yatts [12] an’ lanes,
Wheer t’ owd lass waits for me by t’ fireside. ”

“ Thou’s gotten facts an’ figures, plain as t’ leet,
An’ argiments to slocken [2] owd an’ young.
But what are facts an’ figures ’side o’ truths
We’ve bowt wi’ childer’ tears an’ brokken lives?
An’ what are argiments o’ cockered youths
To set agean yon groans o’ caitiff [3] wives?
’Twere “hungry forties” when I were a lad,
An’ fowks were clemmed, an’ weak i’ t’ airm an’ brain;
We lived on demick’d [4] taties, bread gone sad,
An’ wakkened up o’ neets croodled [5] wi’ pain.
When t’ quartern loaf were raised to one and four,
We’d watter-brewis, swedes stown out o’ t’ field ”

“ O’ beech trees, lowpin’ leet frae beugh to beugh.
Fowers! Why, thou’d fill thy skep, [3] lass, in an hour,
Wi’ gowlands, paigles, blobs, [4] an’ sike-like things;
We’ve daffydills to deck a bridal bower,
Pansies, wheer lady-cows [5] can dry their wings.
Young childer often bathe, when t’weather’s fine,
Up yonder, wheer t’ owd miller’s bigged his weir;
I like to see their lish, [6] nakt bodies shine,
An’ watch ’em dive i’ t’ watter widoot fear. ”

“ Nea mair he’ll ride to t’ soond o’ t’ horn,
Nea mair he’ll fettle his sickle for t’ corn.
Nea mair he’ll coom to your skep of a morn,
Bees, bees, murmurin’ low.
Muther sits cryin’ i’ t’ ingle nook,
Bees, bees, murmurin’ low ;
Parson’s anent her wi’ t’ Holy Book,
Bees, bees, murmurin’ low.
T’ mourners are coom, an’ t’ arval is spread,
Cakes fresh frae t’ yoon, [1] an’ fine havver-bread.
But toom’ [2] is t’ seat at t’ table-head,
Bees, bees, murmurin’ low. ”

“ Sings his loudest song when t’ winds do beat an’ lesh;
Robins, throstles follow,
An’ when cooms the swalloww,
All the birds ’ll chirm to see our woodlands green an’ nesh.
Fieldfares, bonny fieldfares, I’ll be gone ’fore you;
I’m sae weak an’ dowly, hands are thin an’ blue.
Pain is growin’ stranger,
As the neets get langer.
Will you miss my face at whiles, when t’ owd yeer’s changed to t’ new?
[1] Wharfdale.
[2] Peewits.
[3] Huddle.
[4] Upset.
[5] Light-hearted.
A Song of the Yorkshire Dales A song I sing o’ t’ Yorkshire dales,
That Winnd frae t’ moors to t’ sea ”

“ Reet bonny are our dales i’ March,
When t’ curlews tak to t’ moors,
There’s ruddy buds on ivery larch,
Primroses don their floors.
But bonnier yet when t’ August sun
Leets up yon plats o’ ling;
An’ gert white fishes lowp an’ scun, [2]
Wheer t’ weirs ower t’ watter hing.
O! Swawdillls good...
By ivery beck an abbey sleeps,
An’ t’ ullet is t’ owd prior. ”