English language -- Dialects -- England -- Lancashire -- Texts; Lancashire (England) -- Fiction; Short stories
"Well, well," said the old woman, laughing, and laying her knitting
down, "aw never yerd sich a tale i' my life."
"Stop, Nanny," said Skedlock, "yo'st yer it out, now."
"Well, yo seen, this mak o' wark went on fro week to week, till
everybody geet weary on it; an' at last, th' chapel-wardens summon't a
meetin' to see if they couldn't raise a bit o' daycent music, for
Sundays, beawt o' this trouble. An' they talked back an' forrud about it
a good while. Tum o'th Dingle recommended 'em to have a Jew's harp, an'
some triangles. But Bobby Nooker said, 'That's no church music! Did
onybody ever yer "Th' Owd Hundred," played upov a triangle?' Well, at
last they agreed that th' best way would be to have some sort of a
barrel-organ--one o' thoose that they winden up at th' side, an' then
they play'n o' theirsel, beawt ony fingerin' or blowin'. So they ordert
one made, wi' some favour-ite tunes in--'Burton,' and 'Liddy,' an'
'French,' an' 'Owd York,' an' sich like. Well, it seems that Robin o'
Sceawter's, th' carrier--his feyther went by th' name o' 'Cowd an'
Hungry;' he're a quarryman by trade; a long, hard, brown-looking felley,
wi' e'en like gig-lamps, an' yure as strung as a horse's mane. He looked
as if he'd bin made out o' owd dur-latches, an' reawsty nails. Robin,
th' carrier, is his owdest lad; an' he fawurs a chap at's bin brought up
o' yirth-bobs an' scaplins. Well, it seems that Robin brought this
box-organ up fro th' town in his cart o'th Friday neet; an' as luck
would have it, he had to bring a new weshin'-machine at th' same time,
for owd Isaac Buckley, at th' Hollins Farm. When he geet th' organ in
his cart, they towd him to be careful an' keep it th' reet side up; and
he wur to mind an' not shake it mich, for it wur a thing that wur yezzy
thrut eawt o' flunters. Well, I think Robin mun ha' bin fuddle't or
summat that neet. But I dunnot know; for he's sich a bowster-yed, mon,
that aw'll be sunken if aw think he knows th' difference between a
weshin'-machine an' a church organ, when he's at th' sharpest. But let
that leet as it will. What dun yo think but th' blunderin' foo,--at
after o' that had bin said to him,--went and 'liver't th'
weshin'-machine at th' church, an' th' organ at th' Hollins Farm."
"Well, well," said Nanny, "that wur a bonny come off, shuz heaw. But
how wenten they on at after?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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