With the spread of education, and the ever-increasing means of rapid locomotion throughout the length and breadth of the land, the area where pure dialects are spoken is lessening year by year. It used to be Mam and Dad and Porridge, and then ’twas Father and Mother and Broth, but now ’tis Pa and Ma and Soup, is a saying concerning farmers’ children in the Midlands. In the words of an old North-country woman: T’young ’uns dizn’t talk noo leyke what they did when ah wer a lass; there’s ower mich o’ this knackin’ [affected talk] noo; bud, as ah tells ’em, fooaks spoils thersens sadly wi’ knackin’. An’ then there’s another thing, when deean, they can mak nowt bud mashelshon [mixed corn] on’t. There is a very old proverb in Cheshire, applied to any one who goes out of the country for improvement, and returns without having gained much; such a one is said to have ‘been at London to learn to call a streea a straw’. It is not often now that one could hear it said: Ah deean’t gan bauboskin’ [straying away] aboot leyke sum on ’em, ah sticks ti t’heeaf. The place where a mountain or fell sheep is born, and where it continues to live and pasture, is called its heaf, and the word is often in the Northern counties thus picturesquely used in a figurative sense. When one looks at the placards announcing in large letters the extraordinarily cheap day trips offered by the Great Western or the Midland Railway, or sees hoardings decorated with garish posters portraying the arid sands and cloudless skies of Blackpool or Morecambe, how dim and distant seem those past days when in their stead he who runs might read an advertisement such as this: ‘The York four-days Stage Coach begins on Friday the 12th of April. All that are desirous to pass from London to York, or from York to London, or any other place on that road, let them repair to the Black Swan in Holborn, or to the Black Swan in Conney Street in York, at both which places they may be received in a Stage Coach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which performs the whole journey in four days (if God permits), and sets forth at five in the morning.’ Small wonder if people then stuck to their heaf, and dialects remained pure and unadulterated. But even to-day one can still find country places where our great cities are known only by name. The inhabitants may ask us casually: Hoo’s traade doon London waay?—but you feel, in so doing, they merely wish to make polite conversation. Two or three years ago we lunched at a small village inn not far from Skipton in Yorkshire, and before leaving the landlord asked us to write our names in his visitors’ book. When we had finished, he read over the entry, and said, ‘Ah, you come from Oxford, perhaps you know London?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ we said, ‘we go to London sometimes.’ ‘Then you’ll happen know my brother,’ was the confident rejoinder. This last summer we stayed at a most primitive inn—with a courtesy title of Hotel—on the moors under the shadow of Penyghent. The landlord fetched us and our luggage from the station, and as he was uncording a box of books he observed, ‘You come from Oxford then.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, feeling proud of my connexion with that ancient Seat of Learning. ‘Oh!’ said mine host of the Golden Lion, ‘How’s hay down there?’

To gain the full benefit and enjoyment of a sojourn in a country village, it is an immense advantage to be able to speak the dialect yourself, or at any rate to be able to understand and respect it. That is why we prefer the West Riding of Yorkshire to any other part of England, for there we are at home with the native, and are not looked upon as ‘foreigners’. The name Yorkshire has become a synonym for acuteness not unmixed with a touch of unscrupulousness. In Lincolnshire, for example, when anything is done which is very clever, sharp, or unscrupulous, they say: That’s real Yerksheer. To put Yorkshire on a person means in Lancashire to cheat, trick, or overreach him; in Lancashire and Lincolnshire a sharp overreaching person is called a Yorkshire bite. Even in his own country the Yorkshireman has this reputation. It was a native who told us the following story. Two Yorkshiremen, whom we will call A. and B., were accustomed to send their horses to the same Show. A.’s horse always won prizes, and B.’s never did. One day B. complained to A. ‘I can’t think why Mr. So-and-so (the judge) never gives me a First Prize; my horse is every bit as good as yours.’ ‘Well,’ said A., ‘I tell you what you had better do before the next Show; you send Mr. So-and-so a good big ham.’ The day came, and this time it was B.’s horse that won the First Prize. A. was both angry and astonished. He went to B. and asked: ‘Did you send that ham?’ ‘Yes,’ said B., ‘but I sent it in your name, not mine.’ Another Yorkshireman on his death-bed found satisfaction in the thought that he had outwitted an Insurance Company. ‘Ah’ve dun ’em, Joe, ah’ve dun ’em. T’doctor says ah’m bahn [I am going] to dee, an’ ah wor nobbud insiured six munths sin,’ he boasted to a sympathizing friend. It would, however, be grossly unfair to judge the Yorkshireman on the strength of this proverbial characteristic. He has very many other qualities equally characteristic and much more desirable, but which become famed in phrase and story only when found in an exaggerated form, as for instance the tenacity of purpose shown by that celebrated Yorkshire Oddity William Sharp, popularly known as Old Three Laps, who died in the year 1856. When a young man of thirty he became engaged to be married. The wedding-day was fixed, but when the appointed hour came, only the bridegroom appeared in church. At the last moment the bride’s father, dissatisfied about the marriage settlements, refused to allow his daughter to marry the man of her choice. The disappointed bridegroom returned to his home, went to bed, and vowed he would stay there, and never speak again to any one. He kept his word up to the time of his death, forty-nine years later, when he is said to have exclaimed shortly before his end, ‘Poor Bill! poor Bill! poor Bill Sharp!’ A Yorkshireman has a very strong sense of his own dignity, and some ‘South-country’ people mistake his attitude of independence for impertinence, and because he will not brook a condescending manner or a dictatorial speech, and because he says exactly what he means, they style him rude. Many stories are told of a certain grocer in Settle noted for his treatment of impertinent customers. A lady one day walked into his shop and inquired very abruptly: ‘What are eggs to-day?’ ‘Eggs,’ was the prompt reply. At Kettlewell once a man and his wife, evidently on a cycling tour from ‘down South’, came into the inn, and demanded tea in such peremptory tones, that the landlady turned her back on them, and we heard them muttering: ‘She’s bound to give us something.’ If you want to be well served at a Yorkshire inn, the first thing to do is to take note of the name over the door before you cross the threshold; then you can address the landlady as ‘Mrs. Atkinson’ (pronounced Atkisson), for you will need her name constantly, if you wish your conversation to be agreeable to her. ‘Down South’ we are very chary in our use of proper names in conversation; we can talk to an acquaintance or a friend by the hour addressing him only as ‘you’. In the North, we should intersperse our remarks freely with ‘Mr. Brown’ if he is an acquaintance, or ‘John’ if he is a friend. It is a noticeable fact that in the North men call each other by their Christian names, where in the South they would use the surname without the formal Mr. But to return to inns. Having duly passed the time of day with the landlady, you will next have to converse with her serving-maid, whose name has yet to be discovered. We have adopted a plan of addressing her always as ‘Mary’, till she gives us better information. The last damsel we thus met told us her name was Dinah, and further, that she was ‘a Lancashire lass’. In Yorkshire if you ask a person his or her name you must say: ‘What do they call you?’ You might not be understood if you said: ‘What is your name?’ The first question in the Catechism has often met with no response other than a vacant stare from children in Sunday Schools. A story is told of a clergyman near Whitby who went one day into the village school, and seeing a new face among the boys, said: ‘Well, my lad, and who are you?’ Boy: ‘Aw, ah’s middlin’; hoo’s yoursen?’

The Kettlewell landlady was so charmed by our greeting, and our use of her name and her dialect, that on our very first visit she treated us to her old family silver tea-spoons, and on the next occasion we not only had the tea-spoons, but we had a real old Queen Anne silver teapot as well, and a perfect feast of cakes, laid out in the private parlour where the foot of the tripper never trod. We came upon an inn full of trippers once, and though we were shown to a seat at a table, we could get no further attention, for nobody seemed to have time to fetch us any lunch. At last we secured the ear of the daughter of the house, and we pleaded our cause in her native tongue, whereupon she quickly fetched her parents, and the table was laid, and spread with ample fare in the twinkling of an eye.

In a seventeenth-century Tract—Of Recreations—in which are put forth the delights of ‘riding with a good horse and a good companion, in the spring or summer season, into the country’, the author goes on to tell us: ‘And if you happen, as often it falleth out, to converse with countrymen of the place; you shall find them, for the most part, understanding enough to give you satisfaction: and sometimes country maids and market wenches will give as unhappy answers as they be asked knavish and uncivil questions. Others there be, who, out of their rustical simplicity, will afford you matter of mirth, if you stay to talk with them.’