Yorkshire Words Of The Week

This was a quite common expression in my youth and I think probably came from the noun “dotage”. The lady who wrote recently and referred to being “at the end of her band” was not I think being musical, but rather at the end of her tether and ready to snap!

It reminded me of a substance used to light fireworks when I was a boy known as “millband”.

This was a tape like substance which came from the weaving mills and had been impregnated with something that made it smoulder for a long period without bursting into flame.

One ignited, it could be carried round and used to light the blue touch paper on the penny bangers or rip-raps which were very popular with the boys.

The latter would jump and crackle for a good few seconds and usually ended up being thrown behind a group of girls to see the panic.

From: Sheila Westmoreland, Scarborough.

My mother-in-law is now 95 years of age and one of her favourite memories is of the time she used to walk up Wood Street in Wakefield as a teenager. It seems that the boys walked up one side and the girls the other.

She used to go with her sister in identical blue coats.

Two of the boys shouted across the road, “Hykem and mykem, they look alikem” which still brings peals of laughter.

Have any of your readers ever heard this old saying?

From: Linda Revis, Woodhouse Lane, Emley, Huddersfield.

ON December 3 you printed a letter of mine.

Unfortunately it was misread or more probably, according to my husband, you were unable to read my writing.

The two words my grandma used were “piecan” and “tripehound” as in “you are a piecan” or “don’t be a tripehound.”

I rather like the word you came up with “piecanamora” – it has a certain ring to it.

I think you have invented a new word!

From: Mrs E Glover, Highmoor Close, Dringhouses, York.

MY dad Bill Shillito (a river man) used to say “a whistling woman and a crowning hen brings the devil out of den!”

The sayings bring such a lot of memories and make me smile – I was born on the river, grandma owned a barge, St Paul.

She lived in the skip yard at Selby, just below the locks.

Happy memories.