Yorkshire Words Of The Week

From Mrs Ruth Rawson, Kilham, Driffield.

FURTHER to the correspondence from WH Bradley about Goodies and other stories in a Yorkshire dialect, I too have a copy of this book.

My grandfather Charles Middlewood purchased it at Alan Sokell Bookseller and Stationer, Driffield (still trading). It was passed down to my father Harry Middlewood. Both were farmers in Kilham.

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My father used to read it to myself and my two sisters, favourites being Me Faather’s Troosies and Goodies. I love the beginning of Goodies: “It fair caps me what for fooaks want te it goodies i’ Choch”. Also the reference to prickly-backed ochins (hedgehogs) in Jimmy Watterfield.

My father told us that Mr Walter F Turner was a vicar at Fridaythorpe – verified in a Kelly’s Directory of 1913. It is a very amusing book, and my copy was published by ETW Dennis and Sons Ltd of London and Scarborough – no date though.

From: B Simpson, Middleway, Silsden, Keighley.

I FOUND G Page’s recollections on baler band (Country Week, February 4) very interesting. My recollections are that Charlie Turner band is named after a Charles Turner, a threshing contractor from the Yarm area who had several machines operating in the 1930s-1950s.

The twine used was much thinner than that used in balers, it was used on an attachment on the threshing machine called a tier or trusser which tied the straw after threshing into trusses, battens or logings, depending upon which area you come from.

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The same twine was used for tying sheaves in harvest when cutting the corn with a binder.

Farmers saved the twine (Charlie Turner) from the battens and used it for tying sacks, corn and potatoes, and many other uses.

Another name used in some areas for the twin was Billy Band. Does anyone know of that origin?

From: A M Bulwer, Riverside Avenue, Otley.

FURTHER to letters on the subject of band, I come from a long line of Worths variously named in census records as rope, twine and cotton band manufacturers in Leeds.

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My parental great grandfather, William Worth, was a master rope maker at Burley Mills in Kirkstall and his nickname was “Bandy Worth”. Family legend relates that my grandmother, Annie, inadvertently greeted her mother-in-law to be with, “Good morning Mrs Bandy”, before realising, somewhat red-faced, this was a nickname. It didn’t stop her marriage to the son, but it did not enhance family relationships which remained frosty throughout her life.

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