Produced by sp1nd, Mebyon, Matthew Wheaton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) _Lancashire Humour_ _First Edition, December 1900_ _Second Edition, April 1901_ _All rights reserved_ [Illustration: TWO DEYGHN LAYROCKS] LANCASHIRE HUMOUR BY THOMAS NEWBIGGING WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. AYTON SYMINGTON LONDON J. M. DENT & CO. 1901 TO MY DEAR WIFE A GRADELY LANCASHIRE LASS "Thae knows, that wherever aw roam, Aw'm fain to get back to th' owd ground." Vile potabis modicis Sabinum Cantharis, Græca quod ego ipse testa Conditum levi ... * * * * * Cæcubum et prelo domitam Caleno Tu bibes uvam: mea nec Falernæ Temperant vites, neque Formiani Pocula colles. _Hor. Lib. I. Car. xx._ PREFACE In the present volume I have included a number of Anecdotes and Sketches which I had previously introduced into my _History of the Forest of Rossendale_, and also a subsequent book of mine, entitled _Lancashire Characters and Places_. I felt that it was admissible to do this in a volume dealing specifically with the subject of Lancashire Humour, and I am in hopes that readers who already possess copies of the works named will not object to their being reproduced here. They were worth giving in this connection, and, indeed, their omission could scarcely be justified in a book of humorous Lancashire incidents and anecdotes. * * * * * There is surely a want of discernment shown by those who object to the use of dialect in literature as occasion offers. A truth, or a stroke of wit, or a touch of humour, can often be conveyed in dialect (_rustice loqui_) when it would fail of effect in polite English. All language is conventional. Use and wont settles much in this world. Dialect has its use and wont, and because it differs from something else is surely no reason for passing it by on the other side. I don't know whether many of my readers have read the poems of T. E. Brown. They are chiefly in the Manx dialect, not Manx as a language--a branch of the Keltic--but _Manx dialect English_. Here was a man steeped to the eyes in classical learning; a Greek and Latin scholar of the first quality, as his recently published Letters testify. But he was wise as well as learned, and his poetry, not less than his Letters, will give him a place among the immortals, just as the dialect poems of Edwin Waugh will give _him_ a like place. Brown did not shrink from using the speech of the common people around him if haply he could reach their understandings and their hearts.