Poetry and Other Literature
Many poems exist in the dialect, and the Lancashire Society prints such poems regularly. One example of very old-fashioned dialect is the poem Jone o Grinfilt, which was written during the Napoleonic Wars. Another is "The Oldham Weaver", which is dated at around 1815:
- Oi'm a poor cotton-weyver, as mony a one knoowas*,
- Oi've nout for t'year, an' oi've word eawt my clooas,
- Yo'ad hardly gi' tuppence for aw as oi've on,
- My clogs are both brosten, an stuckings oi've none,
- Yu'd think it wur hard,
- To be browt into th' warld,
- To be clemmed, an' do th' best as yo' con.
(taken from Kirkpatrick Sale, "Rebels Against the Future", p. 45)
- The word knoowas may have just been used to force a rhyme with clooas. The Oldham area has traditionally pronounced the words knows as knaws. Alternatively it could be a dialect rendering of the word knowest.
Samuel Laycock (1826–1893) was a dialect poet who recorded in verse the vernacular of the Lancashire cotton workers. Another popular 19th Century dialect poet was Edwin Waugh whose most famous poem was "Come whoam to thi childer an' me", written in 1856.
Read more about this topic: Lancashire Dialect And Accent
Famous quotes containing the words poetry and, poetry and/or literature:
“A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Our noble King, King Henery the eighth,
Ouer the riuer of Thames past hee.”
—Unknown. Sir Andrew Barton. . .
English and Scottish Ballads (The Poetry Bookshelf)
“Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)