Yorkshire Words Of The Week

further to the recent correspondence about string or band, this brings back recollections from being brought up on a North York Moors farm.

I can well remember my grandfather referring to baler band as “charlie turner”. This would be well before plastic baler band. As we were in an areas bordering Thirsk, Northallerton, Stokesley and Helmsley, I wonder if it was connected with twine purchased locally at agricultural merchants Sam Turner’s in Northallerton? I also remember that anyone who was a bit ham-fisted at doing anything being told that they were “framing like a man made out of band”.

Other terms remembered are a “gripe” (a four-tined fork) and a “gerbleck” (a large heavy metal pointed bar for making fence post holes).

Any senior farmers remember a cow medicine called Revival ? My grandad swore by it.

From: WH Bradley, Woodthorpe, York.

I WAS recently loaned a copy of a book entitled Goodies and Other Stories in a Yorkshire Dialect by Walter F Turner of Fridaythorpe, published in 1912 by St Catherine’s Press.

Its 130 pages contain 23 anecdotal stories and the title comes from the first story about watching a woman in church who turns out her pockets to find a sweet, describing all the objects she pulls out and replaces.

All the stories are written in broad local dialect, some parts of which anyone, even from a different part of Yorkshire might not find easy to read, but the speech of the area rings true.

Anybody who has spent time in that part of the world will be able to hear the voices. The phonetic spelling reflects local pronunciation well with words such as “thowt” for thought, “leeaned” for learnt and “joost” for just.

A local vicar is described as “a despert man for bookes and stoddy. He wraate bookes issen.” Mention is made of a local gentleman who placed a £1,000 bet on Blink Bonny in the 1857 Derby and won £30,000. He was said to have “slockened t’bank at Pocklington” when he paid the money in, presumably meaning swamped.

A few of the more obscure words and phrases are explained in the preface.

For example, a young mother proud of her baby is “despert cruse of ‘er bairn”. A housewife beating an egg “joops it oopp”, a habitual reader is “a warrant body for reeading” and “not varry jannock” means not quite up to the mark.

I wonder if any of your Yorkshire Wolds readers know of this book, or of Mr Walter F Turner of Fridaythorpe, and if the words and phrases are still familiar to any of them?