Singing the praises of Yorkshire’s rich tapestry of life

TODAY marks the 38th occasion on which Yorkshire Day will have been celebrated by the wearing of white roses. Last year Yorkshire had plenty to celebrate on its special day: finishing 12th in the Olympics medal table, above countries like Spain, Brazil and South Africa. Quite some achievement for an area that measures just 6,000 square miles, even if it is labelled England’s Texas, (a US state that is forty times Yorkshire’s size).

But why do we have this celebration and what is this “Yorkshireness” that supposedly unites people from Wombwell to Wetherby, and from Whitby to Wharfedale? It must be a powerful concoction because the good citizens of Hull and Middlesbrough were practically in revolt when local government reorganisation threatened to deprive them of white rose status back in the 1970s.

Survey after survey has revealed that people trust a Yorkshire accent, but given the size of the county and the range of accents it contains, which Yorkshire accent is the trusted one? A Dalesman (where sheep are “shee-yup”) would struggle to be understood in South Yorkshire and Hullensians with their ungrammatical “I aren’t” and pronunciation of phrases like “I don’t know” (I durnt nur) are truly out on a limb.

Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights is probably more responsible than any other character in literature for introducing a Yorkshire accent to the world, although Billy Casper in Barry Hines’ A Kestrel for a Knave put South Yorkshire on the map in the late 60s.

Even incomers pick up Yorkshire slang. It’s unavoidable. Southern speakers with their “grass” and “bath” soon sharpen up the “a” sound, while the shortening of the definite article (from “the” to “t”) was a source of much humour in Monty Python’s Flying Circus. A broad Yorkshire accent goes hand in hand with comedy because Yorkshire folk are not averse to a bit of self-mockery. “Nay, lad, don’t take thee sen too seriously.”

The attributes of commonsense, thrift, loyalty and reliability are bound up with Yorkshire speech too. Sentences are kept short and meaty. Maybe it’s the climate that influences people and makes them stick to the point and just plain “get on with it.”

Yorkshire is very much a cricket county and now that the team are serious contenders for the county championship after years in the doldrums, pride is restored. Nothing hurt more than the predictability of defeat against the red rose county in recent times. Our sporting excellence is not confined to the Brownlee brothers, Joe Root and Johnny Bairstow; with Jessica Ennis-Hill and Nicola Adams among those inspiring the next generation.

The importance of music to Yorkshire is still apparent at the Scarborough Spa even though the Max Jaffa years have gone. Brass bands like Black Dyke and Brighouse and Rastrick still command full audiences while brilliant entertainers like Kate Rusby spread not only the popularity of Yorkshire folk music but the working class culture and heritage of Barnsley and Sheffield.

In the past 200 years, farming and industry have been the bedrock of Britain’s ascendant global position and Yorkshire’s central role in them cannot be questioned. Coal mining, railway building, steel making, hill and dairy farming; there is no escape from the importance of hard work.

Dealing with the harsh realities of life and escaping that reality at weekends through hard play became the Yorkshire way of life. Not that Yorkshire folk aren’t prone to a little bit of tribalism. What neutral would want to be around Sheffield when United and Wednesday clash; or Leeds when Bradford are in town? The occasional “Wezzies go home” signs have also appeared when tourists flock to the east coast during the holiday season.

But for the most part Yorkshire stands by Yorkshire in all its manifestations. It has its quirks, where else would you get place names like Giggleswick, Wetwang and Land of Nod? Only humour at its most ironic could come up with Brightside for one of Sheffield’s grimmest landscapes or Meadowhall (known as Meadowhell by long suffering non-shoppers) for a shopping centre that lacks more than a hint of surrounding greenery.

The real jewel in the Yorkshire crown, its true cause celebre, has to be the city at its very centre. York is rich in colour and character, steeped in history, both ecclesiastical and political.

So wear your white rose for Yorkshire’s diversity of sea and city, moor and mountain, and its successful mix of 5.3 million people both indigenous and ethnic in origin.