Farther north, Mr. G. H. Cowling has given us in his A
Yorkshire Tyke (1914) a number of spirited and winsome studies of the
life and thought of the Hackness peasant. The wold country of the East
Riding has found its interpreter in Mr. J. A. Carill, whose Woz'ls
(1913) is full of delightful humour, as readers of "Love and Pie" will
readily discover for themselves. "The File-cutter's L'ament " (see
below), which I have selected from Mr. Downing's volume, Smook thru' a
Shevvield Chimla, will show that the Sheffield "blade" is doing his best
to carry on the tradition set by Abel Bywater eighty years ago. Airedale
still has its poets, among the most ambitious of whom is Mr.
Malham-Dembleby, who published in 1912 a volume of verse entitled,
Original Tales and Ballads in the Yorkshire Dialect. Mr. F. J. Newboult
has deservedly won fame as a prosewriter in dialect; his dialect sketches
which have for some years appeared in The Yorkshire Observer are full of
broad humour and dramatic power, and his dainty little lyric "Spring" (p.
87) is a sufficient indication that he has also the dower of the poet.
In Alderman Ben Turner of Batley Yorkshire possesses a courageous
advocate of the social betterment of the working man and woman, and in
the midst of a busy life he has, found' time to give utterance to his
indignation and his faith in dialect-poems which appeal from the heart to
the heart.
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