Lancashire Humour Part 3

"Resign yourself under your affliction, Ma'am," one of our friends not long ago said to a sick paris.h.i.+oner, "be patient and trustful; you are in the hands of the good Physician, you know."

"Aye, sir," she replied innocently, "Dr Jackson is said to be a skilfu' man."

We are a.s.sured that the following incident occurred to a Manchester clergyman in one of his visits to an old woman in her sickness. He had been to Oldham and afterwards called on his patient. She was a person on whom he could make no impression whatever, but remained uninterested and impa.s.sive under all his efforts to rouse and instruct her. A thought suddenly came into his mind that he would try a new method with her; so, after stating that he had been at Oldham and thus detained a short time, he began by giving her the most glowing description of the new Jerusalem as portrayed by St John in the Apocalypse; when at length she seemed to be aroused, and looking earnestly at him, she said with a degree of emotion never before exhibited by her,--

"Eh, for sure, an' dud yo see o' that at Owdham? Laacks, but it mon ha' been grand! Aw wish aw'd bin wi' yo'!"

The late esteemed Bishop of Manchester, Dr Fraser, whose genial and kindly disposition was well known and appreciated, was one day walking along one of the poorer streets in Ancoats, and seeing two little gutter boys sitting on the edge of the pavement busy putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to a mud house they had made, stopped, and speaking kindly to the urchins asked them what they were doing.

"We've been makin' a church," replied one of them.

"A church!" responded the Bishop, much interested, as he stooped over the youthful architect's work. "Ah, yes, I see. That, I suppose, is the entrance door" (pointing with his stick). "This is the nave, these are the aisles, there the pews, and you have even got the pulpit! Very good, my boys, very good. But where is the parson?"

"We ha'not gettin' muck enough to mak' a parson!" was the reply.

The answer was one which the good Bishop would much enjoy, for he had a happy sense of humour. Patting the heads of the urchins he bade them be good boys and gave them each a coin. As he strode along the street the unconscious humour of the artists in mud must have greatly tickled him.

Yet another clerical anecdote:

In her charming little volume of "Lancas.h.i.+re Memories,"[5] Mrs Potter gives a racy story of the new vicar of a Lancas.h.i.+re Parish in an encounter with one of the natives. She remarks: "There is a quaint simplicity about the country people in Lancas.h.i.+re, that wants a name in our vocabulary of manners, as far removed from the vulgarity of the lower orders in the town on the one hand, as from the polished conversationalisms of the higher cla.s.ses on the other; a simplicity that a.s.serts itself because of its simplicity, and that never heard, and if it did, never understood 'who's who.' Imagine the surprise of the new vicar of the parish, fresh from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in all the dignity of the shovel hat and garments of a rigidly clerical orthodoxy, accustomed to an agricultural population that smoothed down its forelocks in deference to the vicar, but never dreamed of bandying words with him: imagine him losing his way in one of his distant parochial excursions, and inquiring, in a dainty south-country accent, from a lubberly boy weeding turnips in a field, 'Pray, my boy, can you tell me the way to Bolton?'

[5] "Lancas.h.i.+re Memories," by Louise Potter. Macmillan & Co., London, 1879.

"'Ay,' replied the boy. 'Yo' mun go across yon bleach croft and into th' loan, and yo'll get to Doffc.o.c.ker, and then yo're i' th' high road, and yo' can go straight on.'

"'Thank you,' said the vicar, 'perhaps I can find it. And now, my boy, will you tell me what you do for a livelihood?'

"'I clear up th' s.h.i.+ppon, pills potatoes, or does oddin; and if I may be so bou'd, win yo' tell me what yo' do?'

"'Oh, I am a minister of the Gospel; I preach the Word of G.o.d.'

"'But what dun yo' do?' persisted the boy.

"'I teach you the way of salvation; I show you the road to heaven.'

"'Nay, nay,' said the lad; 'dunnot yo' pretend to teach me th' road to heaven, and doesn't know th' road to Bow'ton.'"

Certain shrewd remarks are sometimes made which imply a good deal more than they express. The following will ill.u.s.trate what I mean. As justifying the regrettable fact that men who have risen from the ranks, and, having attained to opulence, are often found to change their politics, we have heard a "Radical" defined as "a Tory beawt bra.s.s." This is akin to John Stuart Mill's specious saying, that some men were Radicals because they were not Lords.

Alluding to the recent death of a person of wealth whose character was not of the best, a Lancas.h.i.+re man remarked:

"Well, if he took his bra.s.s wi' him, it's melted by this time!"

Waugh used to tell the story of a man having run to catch a train, and was just in time to see it leaving the railway station, puff, puff, puff. He stood looking at it for a second or two, and then gave vent to his injured feelings by exclaiming: "Go on, tha greyt puffin' foo, go on! aw con wait!"

The girl at the Christmas Soiree was pressed to take some preserves to her tea and bread and b.u.t.ter: "No, thank yo'," she responded, "aw works wheer they maks it."[6]

[6] "The image-maker does not wors.h.i.+p Buddha; he knows too much about the idol."--Chinese saying.

Old stingy Eccles was talking one day to his coachman, who he was trying to impress with his own super-excellent quality, though he had never used his old Jehu over-well in the matter of wages.

"John," he said, "there's two sorts of Eccleses; there's Eccleses that are angels, and Eccleses that are devils."

"Ay, maister," responded John, "an' th' angels ha' been deod for mony a yer!"

A temperance meeting was being held in a Lancas.h.i.+re village, and one of the speakers, waxing eloquent, not to say pathetic, exclaimed:

"How pleased my poor dead father must be, looking down on me, his son, advocating teetotalism from this platform!"

One of the audience, interrupting him, rose and interjected:

"Nay, nay, that'll do noan, mon; if aw know'd thi feythur reet when he're alive, he's moar like lookin' _up_ than deawn!"

I was amused with the answer given by a working man to an acquaintance. He was hurrying to the railway station with a small hand-bag on "Wakes Monday morning."

"Wheer ar't beawn, Jack?"

"Aw'm fur th' Isle o' Man."

"Heaw long ar't stayin'?"

"Thirty bob," was the laconic reply, meaning that the length of his stay would depend on the time his money might last.

Lancas.h.i.+re Proverbs are numerous and much to the point, and they generally inculcate their lesson with a touch of dry humour.

An expressive saying is that: "_He hangs th' fiddle at th' dur sneck_"

applied to a person who is all life and gaiety when with his boon companions, but sullen and sour of temper at home.

Another proverb has it that "_There's most thrutching where there's least room_." Hence, probably, the Lancas.h.i.+re fable: "The flea and the elephant were pa.s.sing into the Ark together, said the flea to his big brother: 'Now then, maister! no thrutching!'"

There is quaint wisdom in the saying, "_It costs a deal more playing than working_."

"_Th' quiet sow eats o' t' draff_," is another Lancas.h.i.+re proverb of deep significance as applied to any one who speaks little, but appears to take in all that he hears, and uses it to his own advantage.

When one gets married "_he larns wot meyl is a pound_."

The safe rule as to food for children, is, "_rough and enough_."

In choosing a wife the swain is warned that "_Fine faces fill no b.u.t.teries, an' fou uns rob no cubbarts_."