"The Meaning of Life - A Yorkshire Dialect Rhapsody" by Ian McMillan (poetry reading)

Comedy based on "the enjoyment of ill health" is traditional in Yorkshire, going back through a succession of comedians to George Formby, snr: who would say on stage, "Coughin' better toneet" when he was dying of consumption. Yorkshire wit is dry as dust.

Reg Dixon used as his catch-phrase on the Music Halls, "I've not been well. I've been poorly - proper poorly." Poorly just means generally unwell. It can also be used as a noun to mean a sore or injury, usually by children, as in, "I've got a poorly on my knee."

When Yorkshire dialect is written, the definite article "the" is contacted to "t'", as in "Wilt tha come ter t'pictures?" which means "Will you come to the cinema?" This contraction is misleading - the "t'" doesn't sound like a letter T or like anything at all - it's a glottal stop, an brief absence of sound, a hiatus.

In Yorkshire "thee and thou", the singular forms of you, are still used like the French "tu". The archetypal working man in Yorkshire is taciturn and succinct, he keeps pigeons or ferrets or whippets, he rides a bike and he attempts to grow more enormous leeks than his neighbours.

"Up a ladder wi' a pigeon and a brokken neck". They are carrier pigeons and they are flown competitively. Sometimes kindly folk would find exhausted pigeons wandering about and return them to the owner whose the name was tied to their leg. They didn't realise that the owner would thank them kindly, then wring the pigeon's neck as soon as their back was turned. What use is a homing pigeon that can't find its way home? (Did you ever see Ghost Dog? It's my favourite movie.)

A double-decker is a bus with seating upstairs.

What's the poem about? It's nonsense, or surrealism, but there are hints at hidden sense. My guess is that it's about what the poet can recollect of a Yorkshire collier, probably an older relative or friend of the family, who died in in an accident down a coal-mine. Nobody but miners "come up from a double'un" (a double shift) or wear "lit-up hats". A cave-in would crack heads like eggshells.

When I was a kid we used to play "Collier's Golf". It's a homemade game using a short stick sharpened at the ends and a longer stick to hit it with. A downward strike on one end causes it to fly up in the air, then a swing drives it at the chosen target. I believe that it's as old as time and in previous centuries it was called "tip cat". Who needs a memory these days? I just googled it:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/596709/tip-cat

There aren't any coal mines in Yorkshire now. I'm not sure there are literally none, but not anywhere near as many as there were before the Miner's Strike of 1984.
http://tinyurl.com/odrqnn

The photograph came from this site which is mostly about Yorkshire Collieries, with plenty of pictures:
http://yorkshiremain.webs.com/

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Entertainment

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• Meaning
• of
• Life
• Yorkshire
• Dialect
• Rhapsody
• Ian
• McMillan

[mahonriwilson]

a still speyk like taht nah, cummin from barnsley that knows.

[SpokenVerse]

@mahonriwilson Ahm frum Sheffied Lane Top mesel'. Good on yer, Chuck.

[mikepalomino]

Potentially silly question: Is this poem using English "rhyming slang" or just some rural dialect I'm not familiar with?

[SpokenVerse]

It's not rhyming slang - that's usually cockney and it rhymes - as in "china" for "mate" i.e. "china plate"....

This is the way working class people speak in Yorkshire - especially a generation or two ago

[mahonriwilson]

Spent many an appy hour or two at lane top listening to frank white at the pheasant!!

[dfarmbrough]

Thanks for uploading. I might just play this to some of my American friends!

[donpearson61]

For non-UK viewers, the Yorkshire dialect is regional rather than just rural and, Yorkshire being a large county, both the accent and the dialect vary from one part to another.

[jeremyshambles]

i ve heard many a good things about ghost dog, i think may just have to give it a watch, cheers from san diego

[mikepalomino]

@SpokenVerse Gotcha. Thank you for answering the question. :)

[soapmode]

Love it.