There also are the ‘fast-sailing’ steam trawlers and carriers coming from, or going to, the fishing-grounds off Iceland and north of the White Sea—the representatives of the whalers of a hundred years ago—there the scurrying pilot boats and revenue cutters. And there is a great ocean liner riding at anchor and waiting the turn of the tide to allow it to enter the dock and discharge the cargo it has brought from the other side of the world. XXVIII. FOLK-SPEECH OF THE EAST RIDING. There is a tale told of a Yorkshireman on a visit to London that he fell into argument with a bus conductor over the correct way of pronouncing the simple word ‘road.’ The cockney bus-conductor had, in his usual way, called out ‘’Toria Rowd; ’Toria Rowd!’ and the Yorkshireman was highly displeased with this obvious murder of the King’s English. ‘Rowd!’ said he in his disgust; ‘whah dooant ya speeak English? R-o-a-d—that’s hoo it’s spelt, beeant it? Whah dooant ya ca’ it Roo-ad?’ The story will serve to illustrate the fact that a man born and bred in the heart of England’s biggest shire, and one born and bred in the heart of England’s biggest city, do not sound all their words in the same manner, though they may at the same time spell them alike. Moreover, neither of the two will perhaps sound his words in the way in which custom says it is correct to sound them. Such differences are to be found in many parts of the country. The Northumberland miner, the Sheffield steel-worker, the Nottingham lace-worker, the Norfolk grazier, and the ‘Zummerzet’ farm-labourer all speak ‘English’; but yet they would have no little difficulty in making one another understand what their respective English words meant. In other words, the districts to which they belong have each a DIALECT or FOLK-SPEECH of their own. * * * * * Let us see what are some of the peculiarities of the Folk-Speech of our East Riding:— (1) An East Yorkshireman sounds his vowels in his own peculiar way. With him I is pronounced as _ah_, warm as _wahrm_, night as _neet_, road as _rooad_, cow as _coo_, know as _knaw_, pound as _pund_, come as _coom_, and ought as _owt_. He is, moreover, very fond of the EEA sound; for he makes cake into _keeak_, meat into _meeat_, home into _heeam_, sure into _seear_, school into _skeeal_, look into _leeak_, enough into _eneeaf_, and plough into _pleeaf_. (2) He finds it too much of an effort to sound the whole word ‘the,’ and therefore clips it into _t’_; so that with him ‘the cow is in the close’ becomes _t’ coo is i’ t’ clooase_. If he is a Holderness man even that effort will probably be too great for him, and what he will say is _coo is i’ clooase_.