Yorkshire words of the week

IN our family, “smithing” means something catching – like a cold. Very small flies were known as “little willies”.

When my son got married, his bride’s granny said: “They’ve tied a knot with their tongues they’ll not undo with their teeth.” Love the sayings, keep them coming.

From: PH Mitchell, Rufford Avenue, Yeadon, Leeds.

FURTHER to Diana Priestley’s letter (Country Week, August 20), my father also had a favourite version of the ‘Daniel’ verse. It went like this:

Daniel in the lion’s den,

Chewing baccy by ‘issen,

Did ‘e ever wesh his neck?

Did ‘e ummer, did ‘e ‘eck.

In a similar vein was another poem:

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,

‘O’d that ‘oss, while I get on.

From: Margaret Beech, Haxby, York

Every week someone suggests at least one word that prompts a memory of words and phrases that came from both my mother and father (born 1906 and 1904).

My mother kept bread in a ‘pancheon’ and if she had had a bad night would wake saying she felt as if ‘her eyes had been sewn in with red wool’ (so descriptive). If she was given a very small portion of something good she would say it ‘was like giving elephants comfits’. ‘Callifudging’ meant cobbling something together.

My father, if he saw an uncut cake on the table would ask if it was ‘a plush monkey’. I was always told that in the days when people could not afford to provide a cake for visitors they might borrow one from a neighbour.

It was uncut and the visitor would be too polite to ask for a piece and it could be returned whole to the kind person who had lent it.

As for threatening skies we always said ‘it was looking black over Bill’s mothers’ - who was Bill ?

Thank you for this much enjoyed column. A compilation of this treasury of words would be wonderful.

From: Jose Barnes, Hessle.

Recently, two writers have sent in words for a piece of gristle; our word was “tiff-tag.” Dorothy Penso (Country Week, July 16) wrote that “stifled” to her meant to feel very hot. We said we were “mafted” when feeling exhausted by the heat - the opposite of “nithered” in cold weather.

One expression which may be peculiar to our family which was used by an exasperated adult to a thoughtless child was: “oh, you John Willy Daggintop, why did you?” (or didn’t you?) Does anyone know a John Willy Daggintop?