Moreover, though many of the old popular beliefs and rites
have vanished before the advance of education and industrialism, the
Yorkshireman still clings to the past with a tenacity which exceeds that
of the people farther to the south. For example, nowhere in England does
the old folk-play which enacts the combats of St. George with his Saracen
adversaries enjoy such popularity as in the upper waters of the Calder
Valley and in busy Rochdale over the border. This play, known locally as
"The Peace [or Pasque, i.e. Easter] Egg," was once acted all over
England. Driven from the country-side, where old traditions usually live
the longest, it survives amid the smoke-laden atmosphere of cotton-mills
and in towns which pride themselves, not without reason, on their love of
progress and their readiness to receive new ideas. It is, for our
purpose, unfortunate that this fine old play preserves little of the
local dialect and is therefore excluded from this anthology.(7) Apart
from "The Peace Egg," it is the remote Cleveland country in the North
Riding in which the old traditional poetry of Yorkshire has been best
preserved. This is the land of the sword-dance, the bridal-garter, and
the "mell- supper," the land in which primitive faiths and traditions
survive with strange tenacity.
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