Chapter VI: Peculiarities of Character, Dialect, and Pastimes

The primitive Lancashire character--industrious, frugal, sanguine, persevering, inflexible in determination--has already been sketched in brief. Some additional features, observable more particularly among the operatives and away in the country, deserve notice, the more so since it is in a people's average temperament that the key is usually found to their pursuits in playtime--after the songs, the most interesting chapter in a local history. The sum total of the private morals of working Lancashire probably does not differ _pro rata_ from that which would be disclosed by a census of any other county. So with the manners and customs, for although in Lancashire the suavity of the South is soon missed, and though there is little touching of the hat or saying of "Sir," the absence of a courteous spirit is more apparent than real, and in any case is amply compensated by a thoroughness of kindly sentiment which more polished communities do not always share. The "factory-folk," the colliers, and others, are usually considered turbulent and given to outrages. They are not so by nature. Though often rough, self-willed, and obstinate, the working population as a whole is too thoroughly Saxon for the riotousness one looks for while in the presence of the Celt. Social conflicts, when they arise, are set on foot by mischief-makers and noisy idlers whose personal interest it is to promote antagonisms. Save for these veritable "disturbers of the peace" the probability is that there would be few or none of the "strikes" and "turn-outs" which bring so much misery to the unfortunate women and children who have no say in the matter. The people who "strike" are in the mass more to be pitied than held chargeable with love of disorder, for, as a rule, they have been cruelly misled into the notion that it is the master's interest to pay as little as possible for their labour, the truth being that for his own sake he pays them the utmost the business will justify, so that they shall be strong enough, healthy enough, cheerful and good-tempered enough, to work with a will, thus augmenting his personal profits. Every master of common-sense understands the principle, and _does_ so pay. It may be useful to remind the reader that the profits made by a Lancashire "cotton-lord" differ totally in their composition from the payment received for his work by an artist, a physician, or a barrister. The cotton-manufacturer's profits consist of an infinite number of particles, an atom per head on the work of 500, and often 1000 assistants. To the outside and afar-off public, who hear of contentions over pennies, the sum seems nothing, and the man who refuses the penny a sordid fellow. But to the employer it very soon means hundreds of pounds, and represents perhaps half a year's income.

In Lancashire, whatever may be the case elsewhere, the people who "strike" are deceived in no slight measure through their own honesty and sincerity of purpose. One of the original characteristics of the county is to be fair and unsuspecting; no people in the world have a stronger dislike of deceit; one of the reasons why a genuine Lancashire man can usually be trusted is, that he is so little inclined to overstate or misrepresent. The very circumstance that wins our esteem thus renders him vulnerable. Disposed to be honest themselves, the operatives fall so much more readily a prey to unscrupulous agitators. It is amusing, at the same time, to note how soon, when he detects an impostor, a Lancashire man will put him out of countenance; and how quick he is, in excellent balance, to perceive the meritorious, either in person or subject, and, perceiving, to appreciate.

A remarkable instance of the promotion of strikes by mischief-makers occurred at the commencement of the spring of 1881, when the colliers stood out for six weeks, at a loss to themselves of no less than £250,000 in wages, such as otherwise they would have earned. The chairman of the London and North-Western Railway Company explained it at the shareholders' meeting on 24th July, pointing out at the same time the immense collateral harm inflicted:

"They might remember that at the beginning of the year there
was a settlement made with the colliers of Lancashire and their
employers with regard to a mutual insurance fund against
accident; but a Member of Parliament went down and persuaded
these poor, unhappy people that they had better not accept it,
but take care of themselves. He also persuaded them to make a
strike, the result of which was disaster to every one. Prices
did not go up, and unless prices went up wages could not; and
the men afterwards suffered great distress. From this cause
they estimated that the Company had lost traffic to the amount
of about £100,000."

Another result was the permanent loss of an important market to the local colliery proprietors. Many thousands of tons of Lancashire steam-coal were previously being sent weekly to Birkenhead; but during the stoppage of the Wigan collieries the coal masters of North and South Wales obtained possession of the market, and the quantity now sent to Birkenhead is confined to only a few hundreds of tons. The general question as to strikes, and of the kind of grievances that may sometimes be not unreasonably complained of, is no doubt a very large and complex one. But whatever may be the case elsewhere, it is impossible for the "strikers" to deny that in the aggregate, and in the long run, the tendency of the Lancashire masters' doings is to create and diffuse social happiness among the employed. It is the master's interest that his people should be not only strong and healthy and good workmen, but good men. Comfortable homes are prepared for their families. Schools were provided by innumerable Lancashire masters long before they were required to do so by law. Many an employer is noted for the pains he takes, and the money he spends, with a view to the operatives' enjoyments.

During the continuance of these ill-advised "strikes," and when the depression of trade--quite as distasteful to the master as to the man--involves "short time"--four or five days' work in the week, or even less, instead of six, another capital feature of the Lancashire character comes to the front. No people in the world are capable of profounder fortitude. Patience under suffering never fails. Though pinched by hunger, such is the manly and womanly pride of the Lancashire operatives that they care less about privations than to be constrained to surrender any portion, however trifling, of their independence. That the large-hearted and intelligent among mankind are always the last to complain in the hour of trial no one needs telling. People of this character are probably more numerous everywhere than may be thought, for the simple reason that they are the least likely to be heard of; but it is worth putting on paper that no better illustrations are to be found than exist in plenty in working Lancashire. It is refreshing also to note the hearty kindness of the Lancashire operatives one to another in time of distress. Not upon "Trades' Union" principles, but upon the broad and unselfish basis of strong, natural, human sympathy, familiar to the friendly visitor; and which, when elevated, as it often is, by religion, and warmed and expanded by personal affection, becomes so beautiful that in its presence all short-comings are forgotten. These good qualities are unfolded very specially on the occurrence of a terrible accident, such as a coal-pit explosion. In the yearning to be foremost in help to rescue; in the gentleness, the deference to authority, the obedience to discipline, the resignation then exhibited,--this last coming not of indifference, but of calmness,--a capacity is plainly shown for the highest conceivable moral development.

_The Dialect._--The original county dialect of Lancashire is of twofold interest. Still heard among the rustics, it is peculiarly valuable to the student of the English language. "Our South Lancashire speech," says its most accomplished interpreter, "is second to none in England in the vestiges which it contains of the tongue of other days.... To explain Anglo-Saxon there is no speech so original and important as our own South Lancashire _patois_."[26] To the ears of strangers who know nothing about it the sound is often uncouth and barbarous. That it is far from being so is proved by the use long made of this dialect for lyric poetry and for tales both racy and pathetic.[27] There is conclusive evidence also of its sweet and meaningful pathos in the resorting to it in times of deep emotion by people of the highest culture, who then unconsciously throw aside the learning and the vocabulary of school and college for the simplicity that never fails to touch the heart. The titles of the stories hold a conspicuous place in Mr. Axon's list of the no fewer than 279 publications illustrative of the general subject of the Lancashire dialect;[28] the literature of which, he justly remarks in the introduction, is richer than that of the popular speech of any other English county. This is so much the more noteworthy since, with the famous manufacturing epoch of 1785, everything belonging to primitive Lancashire began to experience change and decay. In a certain sense it may be said that the dialect has not only survived unhurt, but has risen, during the last thirty or forty years, to a position worthy of the native talent; and that the latter, in days to come, will have no better commemoration than the metrical literature. Two particulars at once arrest attention. No English dialect more abounds in interesting archaisms; and certainly not one is so little tainted with expressions of the nature of slang.[29]

[26] _On the South Lancashire Dialect_. By Thomas Heywood,
F.S.A. Chetham Society. Vol. lvii. pp. 8, 36.

[27] _Vide_ Mr. George Milner, "On the Lancashire Dialect
considered as a Vehicle for Poetry," _Manchester Literary Club
Papers_, vol. i. p. 20. 1875.

[28] _Vide_ Mr. George Milner, "On the Lancashire Dialect
considered as a Vehicle for Poetry," _Manchester Literary Club
Papers_, Appendix to the vol. for 1876.

[29] The modern slang of great towns is of course quite a
different thing from the ancient dialect of a rural population.
Affected misspellings, as of "kuntry" for country, are also to
be distinguished _in toto_ from the phonetic representation of
sounds purely dialectical.

Rochdale occupies the centre of the most distinctively Lancashire-dialect region. As ordinarily employed, the phrase vaguely denotes the rural speech of the manufacturing districts. But beyond the Ribble, and more particularly beyond the Lune, there is unmistakable variation from the genuine Lancashire of "Tim Bobbin"; and in Furness there is an echo of Cumberland. In genuine Lancashire we have first the old-accustomed permutations of the vowels. Then come elisions of consonants, transpositions, and condensations of entire syllables, whereby words are often oddly transformed. Ancient idioms attract us next; and lastly, there are many of the energetic old words, unknown to current dictionaries, which five centuries ago were an integral part of the English vernacular. The vowel permutations are illustrated in the universal "wayter," "feyther," "reet," "oi," "aw," "neaw," used instead of water, father, right, I, now. "Owt" stands for aught, "nowt" for naught. Elisions and contractions appear in a thousand such forms as "dunnoyo" for "do you not," "welly" for "well-nigh." "You" constantly varies to thee and thou, whence the common "artu" for "art thou," "wiltohameh" for "wilt thou have me." A final _g_ is seldom heard; there is also a characteristic rejection of the guttural in such words as scratched, pronounced "scrat." The transpositions are as usual, though it is only perhaps in Lancashire that gaily painted butterflies are "brids," and that the little field-flowers elsewhere called birds' eye are "brid een."

The old grammatical forms and the archaic words refer the careful listener, if not to the Anglo-Saxon of King Alfred, at all events to the _Canterbury Tales_; they take us pleasantly to Chaucer, and Chaucer in turn introduces us agreeably to Lancashire, where "she" is always "hoo," through abiding in the primitive "he, heo, hit;" and where the verbs still end in _n_: "we, ye, they loven," as in the Prologue--

"For he had geten him yet no benefice."

Very interesting is it also when the ear catches the antiquated _his_ and _it_ where to-day we say _it_ and _its_. Often supposed to correspond with the poetical use of "his" in personifications (often found in the authorised version of Scripture), the Lancashire employment of _his_ is in truth the common Shaksperean one, _his_ in the county palatine being the simple genitive of the old English _hit_, as in _Hamlet_, iv. 7--

"There is a willow grows aslant the brook,
That shows _his_ hoar leaves in the glassy stream."

So with the obsolete possessive _it_. When a Lancashire woman says, "Come to it mammy!" how plain the reminder of the lines in _King John_--

Do, child, go to _it_ grandam, child;
Give grandam kingdom, and _it_ grandam will
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig;
There's a good grandam.

Archaic words are illustrated in many a familiar phrase. A Lancashire girl in quest of something "speers" for it (Anglo-Saxon _spirian_, to inquire). If alarmed, she "dithers"; if comely and well conducted, she behaves herself "farrantly"; if delicately sensitive, she is "nesh"--

It seemeth for love his herte is tendre and neshe.

So when the poor "clem" for want of food--"Hard is the choice," says Ben Jonson, "when the valiant must eat their arms or clem." Very many others which, though not obsolete in polite society, are seldom heard, help to give flavour to this inviting old dialect. To embrace is in Lancashire to "clip"; to move house is to "flit"; when the rain descends heavily, "it teems"; rather is expressed by "lief" or "liefer," as in _Troilus and Cresseide_--

Yet had I levre unwist for sorrow die.

_Pastimes and Recreations._--The pastimes and recreations of the Lancashire people fall, as elsewhere, under two distinct heads; those which arise upon the poetic sentiment, the love of purity, order, and beauty, and those which come of simple desire to be entertained. Where poesy has a stronghold, we have never long to wait for the "touches of sweet harmony"; hence a characteristic of working Lancashire, immemorial as to date, is devotedness to music. In all Europe it would be difficult to find a province where the first and finest of the fine arts is better understood, or more reverently practised. High-class sacred music--German music in particular--fills many a retired cottage in leisure hours with solace and joy; and very generally in villages, as well as in the large towns, there are clubs and societies instituted purely for its promotion. "On the wild hills, where whin and heather grow, it is not uncommon to meet working-men with their musical instruments on their way to take part in some village oratorio many miles distant.... Up in the forest of Rossendale, between Derply Moor and the wild hill called Swinshaw, there is a little lone valley, a green cup in the mountains, called Dean. The inhabitants of this valley are so notable for their love of music that they are known all through the neighbouring country as 'Th' Deign layrocks.'"[30] In many of the large country manufacturing establishments--the printworks, for instance--the operatives have regularly organised "bands,"--the employers giving encouragement,--the value of which, in regard to moral culture, is shown in the members being usually the trusted men.

[30] _i.e._ the larks, or singing birds, of Dean. Edwin Waugh,
_Sketches_, p. 199.

The same primitive inclination towards the poetic would seem to underlie the boundless Lancashire love of flowers and gardens. Not that the passion is universal. The chief seat, as of the intrinsically best of the dialect, is the south-eastern part of the county: the portion abutting on Yorkshire is unfavourably cold, and though in the north occur fine examples of individual enthusiasm, there is little illustration of confederated work. Societies strong and skilful enough to hold beautiful exhibitions are dotted all over the congenial parts of the cotton district. They attend as diligently to the economic as to the decorative; one never knows whether most to admire the onions, the beans, and the celery, or the splendid asters, dahlias, and phloxes--in many parts there is ancient renown also for gooseberries. After the manner of the wise in other matters, the operative Lancashire gardeners, if they cannot grow the things they might prefer, give their whole hearts to liking those they have at command. The rivalry and ambition in regard to gooseberries is unique. While the fruit is ripening upon the bushes it is sacrilege for a stranger to approach within a distance of many yards. On cold and hurtful nights the owner sits up to watch it, like a nurse with an invalid, supplying or removing defence according to the conditions, and on the show day the excitement compares in its innocent measure with that of Epsom. The exhibitors gather round a table: the chairman sits with scales and weights before him, calling in turn for the heaviest red, the heaviest yellow, and so on, every eye watching the balance; the end of all being a bright new kettle for the wife at home.

Many of the operative gardeners are assiduous cultivators of "alpines," the vegetable _bijouterie_ of the mountains; others are enamoured of ferns, and these last are usually possessed of good botanical knowledge. The beginning would seem to date from the time of Elizabeth, thus from the time of Shakspere, when other immigrations of the Flemish weavers took place. Things of home too dear to leave behind them, they brought with them their favourite flowers, the tulip and the polyanthus. These early growers would doubtless for a time be shyly looked upon as aliens. Nothing is known definitely of the work of the ensuing century, but there is certain proof that by 1725 Lancashire had already become distinguished for its "florists' flowers," the cultivation lying almost entirely in the hands of the artisans, who have never for an instant slackened, though to-day the activity is often expressed in new directions.

It is owing, without doubt, to the example of the operative Lancashire gardeners of the last century and a half that floriculture at the present moment holds equal place with classical music among the enjoyments also of the wealthy; especially those whose early family ties were favourable to observation of the early methods. More greenhouses, hothouses, and conservatories; more collections of valuable orchids and other plants of special beauty and lustre exist in South Lancashire, and especially in the immediate neighbourhood of Manchester, than in any other district away from the metropolis. Orchid culture was practised here, as in Macclesfield and Birmingham, long before what orchids are was even a question in many parts. The name of one of the noblest species yet discovered, the _Cattleya Mossiæ_, commemorates an old Liverpool merchant, Mr. John Moss, one of the first to grow these matchless flowers; while in that of the _Anguloa Clowesii_ we are reminded of the beautiful collection formed at Higher Broughton by the Rev. John Clowes, which, after the decease of the possessor, went to Kew. A very remarkable and encouraging fact is that orchids, the queenliest and most fragrant of indoor flowers, can, like auriculas, with skilful management be brought to the highest possible state of perfection in an atmosphere in which many plants can barely exist--the smoky and soot-laden one of Manchester. The proof was supplied by the late Dr. R. F. Ainsworth of Cliff Point, to whom flower-show honours were as familiar as to Benjamin Simonite of Sheffield, that astonishing old florist whose auriculas are grown where the idea of a garden seems absurd.

These very practical proofs of the life and soundness of the poetic sentiment in working Lancashire prepare us for a county feature in its way quite as interesting and remarkable--the wide-spread and very deep-seated local taste for myth, legend, and superstition, which, in truth, is no other than the poetic sentiment uncultured and gone astray. Faith in "folklore" is by no means to be confounded with inane credulity. The folk-lore of a civilised nation is the _débris_ of the grand old spirit-worship--vague, but exquisitely picturesque, and figuratively significant, which, in the popular religion of the pre-Christian world, filled every sweet and romantic scene with invisible beings--Dryads, who loved the woodland; Naïads, that sported in the stream and waterfall; Oreads, who sat and sang where now we gather their own fragrant _Oreopteris_,[31] and which assigned maidens even to the sea--the Nereids, never yet lost. "Nothing," it has been well said, "that has at any time had a meaning for mankind ever absolutely dies." How much of the primeval faith shall survive with any particular race or people--to what extent it shall be transformed--depends upon their own culture, spiritual insight, and ideas of the omnipresence of the Almighty, of which the fancies as to the nymphs, etc., declared a dim recognition: it is affected also very materially by the physical character and complexion of their country. This has been illustrated in the completest manner as regards the eastern borders of Lancashire by the accomplished author of _Scarsdale_[32] already named: the influence of the daily spectacle of the wild moor, the evening walk homewards through the shadowy and silent ravine, the sweet mysteries of the green and ferny clough, with its rushing stream, all telling powerfully, he shows us with perennial grace, upon the imagination of a simple-hearted race, constitutionally predisposed towards the marvellous, and to whom it was nourishment. Nobody is really happy without illusions of some kind, and none can be more harmless than belief in the mildly supernatural. The local fairy tales having now been pretty well collected and classified,[33] it remains only to recognise their immense ethnographical value, since there is probably not a single legend or superstition afloat in Lancashire that, like an ancient coin, does not refer the curious student to distant lands and long past ages. Lancashire, we must remember, has been successively inhabited, or occupied, more or less, by a Celtic people,--by Romans, Danes, and Anglo-Saxons,--all of whom have left their footprints. No one can reside a year in Lancashire without hearing of its "boggarts"--familiar in another form in the Devonshire pixies, and in the "merry wanderer of the night," Titania's "sweet Puck." Absurd to the logician, the tales and the terrors connected with the boggarts carry with them, like all other fables, a profound interior truth--the truth for which, as Carlyle says, "reason will always inquire, while half-reason stands indifferent and mocking." The nucleus of the boggart idea is, that the power of the human mind, exercised with firmness and consistency, triumphs over all obstacles, and reduces even spirits to its will; while, contrariwise, the weak and undetermined are plagued and domineered over by the very same imps whom the resolute can direct and control. So with the superstitions as to omens. When in spring the anglers start for a day's enjoyment, they look anxiously for "pynots," or magpies, _one_ being unlucky, while _two_ portend good fortune. The simple fact, so the ornithologists tell us, is that in cold and ungenial weather prejudicial to sport with the rod, one of every pair of birds always stays in the nest, whereas in fine weather, good for angling, both birds come out. Illustrations of this nature might be multiplied a hundred-fold, and to unabating advantage. Time is never ill-spent upon interpretation of the mythic. The effort, at all events, is a kindly one that seeks--

To unbind the charms that round slight fables lie,
And show that truth is truest poësy.

[31] _Lastrea Oreopteris_, "sweet mountain-fern," abundant in
South-East Lancashire.

[32] The late Sir James Philips Kay-Shuttleworth, Bart.

[33] _Lancashire Folk-lore._ By John Harland and T. T.
Wilkinson. 1867.

The dialect itself is full of metaphor, images of great beauty not infrequently turning up. Some of them seem inherited from the primevals. That light and sound are reciprocally representative needs, for instance, no saying. From the earliest ages the idea of music has always accompanied that of sunrise. Though to-day the heavens declare the glory of God silently, in the beginning "the morning stars sang together":--old Homer's "rosy-fingered morn" is in Lancashire the "skryke" or cry "of day."

Though much that is deplorably brutal occurs among the lowest Lancashire classes, the character of the popular pastimes is in general free from stain; and the amusements themselves are often eminently interesting, since in honest and _bona fide_ rustic sports there is always archæology. The tales they tell of the past now constitute in truth the chief attraction of the older ones. The social influences of the railway system have told no less upon the village-green than on the streets of cities; any picture that may now be drawn must needs owe its best colours to the retrospective. Contemplating what remains of them, it is pleasant, however, to note the intense vitality of customs and ceremonials having their root in feelings of _reverence_; such, for example, as the annual "rush-bearing" still current in many parts, and not unknown even in the streets of modern Manchester. That in the olden time, prior to the introduction of carpets, the practice was to strew floors and indoor pavements with green rushes every one knows. Among the charges brought against Cardinal Wolsey was his extravagance in the too frequent and ostentatious spreading of clean ones. Employed also in churches and cathedrals on the anniversary of the feast of the saint to whom the building was dedicated, when renewed it was with special solemnity. In an age when processions full of pomp and splendour were greatly delighted in, no wonder that the renewal became an excuse for a showy pageant; and thus, although to-day we have only the rush-cart, the morris-dancers, the drums and trumpets, and the flags--the past, in association, lives over again. Small events and great ones are seldom far asunder. In the magnificent "rush-bearing" got up for the delectation of James I. when at Hoghton Tower, Sunday, 17th August 1617, lay one of the secret causes of the Stuart downfall. Sports on the Sabbath day had been forbidden by his predecessor. James, admitting as argument that the cause of the reformed religion had suffered by the prohibition, gave his "good people of Lancashire" leave to resume them. The Puritans took offence; the wound was deepened by Charles; and when the time of trial came it was remembered.

"Pace-egging" (a corruption of Pasche or Pasque-egging) is another immemorial Lancashire custom, observed, as the term indicates, at Easter, the egg taking its place as an emblem of the Resurrection. Perverted and degraded, though in the beginning decorous, if not pious, the original house-to-house visitation has long had engrafted upon it a kind of rude drama supposed to represent the combat of St. George and the Dragon--the victory of good over evil, of life over death. So with "Simnel-Sunday," a term derived from the Anglo-Saxon _symblian_, to banquet, or _symbel_, a feast, a "simnel" being literally "banquet-bread."[34] This corresponds with the Midlent-Sunday of other counties, and, particularly in Bury, is a time of special festivity. The annual village "wakes" observed everywhere in Lancashire, and equivalent to the local rush-bearings, partake, it is to be feared, of the general destiny of such things. Happily the railway system has brought with it an inestimable choice of pleasure for the rational. The emphatically staple enjoyment of the working Lancashire population to-day consists in the Whitsun-week trip to some distant place of wonder or wholesome gratification, the seaside always securing the preference. In Lancashire it is not nearly or so much Whitsun-Monday or Whitsun-Tuesday as the whole of the four following days. In the south-eastern part of the county, Manchester particularly, business almost disappears; and very delightful is it then to observe how many little parties of the toiling thrifty are away to North Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and even to France. The factory system always implies _masses_. The people work in masses, and suffer in masses, and rejoice in masses. In Whitsun-week, fifty miles, a hundred miles away, we find in a score of places five hundred, perhaps a thousand. There are salutary home-pleasures ready besides. Manchester does wisely in holding its principal flower-show during this great annual holiday, drawing, in fair weather, some 50,000 visitors. The example is a good one, since with the growing disposition of the English people to enjoy their holidays, it behoves all those who have the management of places of healthy recreation to supply the most humanising that may be possible, and thus mitigate the influence of the hurtful ones. The staple game of muscular Lancashire was formerly that of bowls. A history of Manchester would be incomplete without plenty of lively chat about it; and in regard to the more modern pastime, the cricket match, it is no vaunt to add that while the chief cricketing in England lies in the hands of only nine out of its forty counties, the premiership has once at all events, say in 1879, been claimed as fairly by Lancashire as by its great rival on the banks of the Trent. Nottinghamshire, moreover, had held its position without half the difficulties in the way that Lancashire had to contend with.

[34] In the Anglo-Saxon version of the Old Testament there are
many examples of derivative words. In Exodus xxiii. 15, 16,
feasting-time is _symbel-tid_; xxii. 5, a feast-day is
_symbel-dæg_. In Psalm lxxxi. 3, we have _symelnys_, a
feast-day.