"Eawr Folk": Language, Class, and English Identity in Victorian Dialect Poetry

Author(s): Larry McCauley

Source: Victorian Poetry , Summer, 2001, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Summer, 2001), pp. 287-301
Published by: West Virginia University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40002680

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 aEawr Folk": Language, Class, and
English Identity in Victorian
Dialect Poetry
LARRY McCAULEY

INTRODUCTION TO THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF SAMUEL LAYCOCK,

one of the most popular Victorian working-class dialect poets, com-
ments that Laycock wrote "for the elevation, the enjoyment, and th
consolation of . . . the 'toilers and moilers' of Lancashire's towns and
villages."1 Such poetry - the literary fruits of an expressive impulse aris-
ing from the conditions of working-class life, aimed at the betterment of
that life and formed in the very idiom of that life - would seem to offer
much promise to the contemporary reader and scholar. One might hope
to find here a poetic engagement with the material conditions of the
Victorian working class and perhaps a significant counter-voice to the
dominant middle-class discourse of Victorian England. Yet scholars who
write on Victorian dialect poetry often seem disappointed, their commen-
taries ranging in tone from apologetic to overtly critical. Brian Maidment,
for instance, characterizes Victorian "homely rhyming" as predominantly
"conciliatory and conservative,"2 while Susan Zlotnick argues that "after
the failure of Chartism, the working class and its writers turned inward by
turning indoors, embracing the ideology of domesticity, and participating
in an apotheosis of the home and family similar to that of the Victorian
middle classes."3 Generally, the alleged failings of dialect poetry are as-
cribed at least in part to the influence of middle-class patronage,4 but
whatever the cause, two conclusions are prevalent: first, dialect poetry
tends to re-inscribe rather than resist middle-class ideology, and second,
this poetry is ultimately stylistically conservative - written in a conven-
tionalized poetic idiom with a tenuous relationship to the actual speech
of its writers.
These critics may have in mind such poems as Laycock's "Homely
Advice for the Unemployed":

While th' wealthy are feastin' we're starvin',

An' for this, lads, ther' must be a cause;
Aw know pratin' Tom ull put this deawn

287

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288 / VICTORIAN POETRY

To injustice an' the badness o'th' laws.

Well, ther' may be some truth i' what Tom says,
But aw know what th' real cause is aw think:
For while Tom's woife an' childer are starvin',
He's spendin' his earnin's o' drink.

Yo' may prate o'er yo'r wrongs until doomsday,

An' blame what are coed th' upper class;
But ole yo'r complaints will be useless,
Till yo'n th'e sense to tak' care o' yo'r brass.
Turn o'er a new leaf, fellow-toilers,
An' let common-sense be yo'r guide;
If ther's one happy spot under heaven,
Let that spot be yo'r own fireside.

Get a ceaw, if yo'con, an' three acres,

An' i' future, employ yo'r spare heawers
I' readin' good books; an' yo'r windows,
Fill these up wi' plants an' wi' fleawers.
Get yo'r wives an' yo'r childer areawnd yo',
Sing an' whistle among 'em loike mad;
An' if this doesn't mak' yo' feel happier,
Throw th' blame on "A Lancashire Lad." (pp. 111412)

This poem begins by invoking class division and class inequity but rather
than addressing any systematic social or economic wrongs, the speaker
focuses on the behavior of the poor themselves as the implicit source of
the problem. The escapism of such "homely advice" is striking. While
thrift and temperance are laudatory and sensible practices in the face of
poverty, advising the urban poor to get "a ceaw, if yo'con, an' three acres"
borders on absurdity, while to gather one's family and "whistle among 'em
loike mad" would indeed seem insanity. Thus rather than invoking the
conditions of Victorian urban working-class life and advocating a realistic
course of social activism, this poem suggests a simple change in attitude
and seeks consolation in the vision of a mythical agrarian past. As critics
suggest, this seems less a valid construction of working-class identity than
the grafting of middle-class domestic ideology onto working-class culture.
At the heart of negative critical responses, then, is disappointment
that dialect poetry fails to project a distinct cultural identity and author-
ity for the working classes. Patrick Joyce responds to these critics in part,
pointing out that they base their judgment on the assumption of "a realm
of 'real' or 'authentic' class or personal experience anterior to its verbal

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 LARRY McCAULEY / 289

significations, rather than seeing that language itself is constitutive of

this experience," and suggesting that such critics "deal in anachronistic
and idealised notions of class consciousness, measured against which dia-
lect literature is seen to represent inadequate forms of social outlook."5
Ultimately, Joyce advises that we "attend to what dialect had to say, to
the actual historical form in which society got talked about and imagined"
(p. 267)- My intent in this essay is to heed that advice. In doing so, I
begin with the premise that any attempt to read these poems fruitfully
must begin with a careful consideration of the signifying force of dialect
itself to these poets and to their audience. Thus I will pay close attention
to the ways in which dialect is talked about by the Victorians. Further,
rather than considering the failure of these poems to express our own
reconstruction of Victorian class consciousness, I would like to attend
more closely to what they do express. I will illustrate my argument with
examples from a handful of poets active in the Lancashire area in the
mid-Victorian years. I choose to focus on these writers because of their
popular success and because for a variety of reasons the Lancashire dialect
seems to have attracted considerable interest at the time - both literary
and scientific.
The poem above, despite its failure to confront directly the actual
conditions of working-class life, does construct working-class culture in a
very specific way - a way quite common to much dialect poetry of the
time. In the absence of details of actual working-class life, the poem
nonetheless very clearly projects a set of values which one may find valo-
rized time and again in dialect poetry. Temperance and thrift are most
obviously preached here, but also at issue are common sense, industry,
self-reliance, stoicism, and group unity, both community and family. While
elements of middle-class ideology may be active here, the distinction drawn
between rich and poor, the address to "fellow toilers," and the aversion to
relying on "what are coed th' upper class" all testify to an attempt to
construct a distinct working-class voice - a voice from which the working
community may draw strength in time of hardship.
Of course, the dialect form itself is a most immediate characteristic
of this distinct voice. Through non-standard orthography, dialect first
and foremost declares its difference and thus by implication distinguishes
not only the poet but those people for whom he projects a representative
voice. To understand what type of identity is being projected here, though,
we must look beyond the mere fact of difference to ask what type of differ-
ence dialect signified to the Victorians. Throughout the Victorian era,
interest in dialect was widespread and various. Apart from interest in
dialect literature in many forms in all classes, there was widespread inter-
est in dialect speech itself.6 Even before philological advances recognized

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290 / VICTORIAN POETRY

the importance of vernacular speech to linguistic growth and change,

British dialects had been an object of much scholarly and amateur in-
quiry. When the English Dialect Society was founded in 1873, one of the
first tasks it undertook was to compile a bibliography of materials on
dialect already extant. This bibliography lists over fifty general works on
dialect published in the first half of the nineteenth century alone. More
impressive, however, is the county-by-county compilation of dialect ma-
terials which runs to over 130 pages.7 This includes glossaries, word- lists,
treatises, and lists of published works written in dialect. While a few of
those gathering this material were actually language scholars - some with
university positions - the vast majority were amateurs: clergymen, school-
masters, writers, or gentry with an interest in collective scientific inquiry
and a belief in the importance of English dialects.
Significantly, as this lexicographic and philological activity contin-
ued throughout the century, the motives behind it changed. Early in the
century, study of the vernacular was essentially antiquarian; its aims were
to preserve disappearing elements of the nation's linguistic heritage, both
for posterity's sake and as an adjunct to literary study. With the rise of
comparative philology at mid- century, however, dialects came to be granted
more than mere historical significance or perhaps historical significance
of a different nature. To illustrate, on the title page of John T. Brockett's
1825 A Glossary of North Country Words we find this epigraph from the
Mirror for Magistrates: "It were pity that such particulars should be lost."
The epigraph (from King Henry V) for Skeat's 1912 edition of English Dia-
lects, however, reveals a changed attitude toward dialect: "English in the
native garb."8 By the turn of the century, dialect experts were not merely
salvaging remnants of the past, they were seeking that which was particu-
larly English in the English language. If we look at Victorian language
scholarship, we find this attitude enabled first by changes in understand-
ing of the nature and importance of dialects in general.
We may see the beginnings of this change early in the Victorian
era.9 In Richard Garnett's 1836 essay "English Dialects," rural dialects are
clearly understood as something more than merely debased variants of a
true or standard language: "The language of our northern counties, though
obsolete, (i.e., discontinued in written compositions,) is not barbarous."10
Not long after this, we find English dialect discussed in even more salu-
tary terms. William Barnes, unique in his joint capacity of philologist and
dialect poet, began publishing essays on the English language, its history,
and the nature of dialect as early as the 1830s, and by 1847 we find him
actively promoting Dorsetshire dialect in an essay included with his own
volume of dialect poetry:11

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 LARRY McCAULEYI 29 1

Some people, who may have been taught to consider [the Dorset dialect] as
having originated from corruption of the written English, may not be prepared
to hear that it is not only a separate offspring from the Anglo-Saxon tongue, but
purer and more regular, than the dialect which is chosen as the national speech.12

As an early champion of dialect as a poetic medium, Barnes's influence

may have been limited at the time. However, by 1860, the linguistic va-
lidity of dialect is argued even more strongly by Max Miiller in his
popular public lectures:

It has been one of the most fatal mistakes in the science of language to imagine
that dialects are everywhere corruptions of the literary language. Even where
there has been a literary language, dialects are by no means mere modifications
of it. In England, the local patois have many forms which are more primitive
than the language of Shakespeare, and the richness of the vocabulary surpasses,
on many points, that of the classic writers of any period. Dialects have always
been the feeders rather than the channels of a literary language; anyhow, they are
parallel streams which existed long before the time when one of them was raised
to that temporary eminence which is the result of literary cultivation.13

Finally, the wider currency of dialect's scientific respectability may be in-

dicated by the appearance of similar views in J.W. Hales's 1867 essay, on
"English Dialects," in the weekly Good Words: "Let us then carefully
remember what is meant by calling the provincial languages of England
English dialects - that, in calling them so, we acknowledge them to be of
as good blood and birth as that language to which we now arrogate the
name of English."14
Clearly, there is more than scientific respect at stake here. Rather
the "blood and birth" of dialect reflects very directly on the cultural en-
franchisement of dialect speakers. As dialects become acknowledged as
valid idioms rather than corruptions of correct English, a stigma is re-
moved from the dialect form in literature. It is no longer a sign ascribing
ignorance or inferiority to its speakers. And significantly, the arguments
of linguistic legitimacy above have their counterparts in many dialect
poems arguing for social legitimacy. Samuel Laycock's "A Respectable
Man" is a useful example:
Between these shoe soles an' this hat,
Stonds a very respectable mon;
An' nob'dy ull contradict that,
An' why? Becose nob'dy con.

Ther's noan o' yo're hypocrites here,

Deceivin' o th' fold 'at they see;

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292 / VICTORIAN POETRY

Aw'm nowt nobbut what aw appear,

Ther's noan o' yo're durt abeawt me.

Ther's Joe Dandy, Tom Vain, an' Bob Breet;

These think weel o' the'rsels, one may see;
But they winno stond bringin' to th' leet,
An' comparin' wi' someb'dy loike me.

Aw know aw'm noan donn'd up so smart,

An' yo' wouldn't give much for this hat;
But aw hope aw've a good, honest heart,
An' it's summat t' be preawd on, is that.

Aw con boast noather heawses nor londs,

An' wealthy relations aw've noan;
But aw've getten mi brains, and mi honds,
An, thank God! Aw con co these mi own.

Aw've no patience wi' dandified gents!

One's sick o' so mitch o' this pride;
They're soakin' wi' hair oil an' scents,
But ther' isn't mitch else beside!

As in "Homely Advice," the working-class speaker distinguishes himself

from the rest of society, and again the values of self-reliance and industry
are at issue, but the key claim here is one of authenticity. Laycock's
working-class man is genuine - exactly as he appears to be. Laycock and
other dialect poets characterized their work as "homely rhymes" and here
in both subject and form, we see similarly valorized that which is not
showy or fancy, but simple and humble. Substance is valued, not surface.
The claim to superiority based on authenticity recalls some of the linguis-
tic citations above in which dialect is not only granted respect but seems
to be valorized over standard English. While the antiquarian interest in
dialect demonstrates dialect's expressive force as a sign of the past, in
Skeat ("English in the native garb") and Barnes (a "purer and more regu-
lar" offspring of the Anglo-Saxon tongue [p. 12]), we can see that dialect
is also construed as a sign of a genuine or authentic English past. Linguis-
tically speaking, the Victorians recognized their authentic past in their
Anglo-Saxon roots and scholars of the day found those roots flourishing
most actively in dialects, especially those of the Lancashire region.15
Anti-latinate linguistic prejudice was pervasive in nineteenth-cen-
tury England, recognizable at least as early as the Saxon jester Wamba's

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 LARRY McCAULEY 1 293

discourse on Norman linguistic tyranny at the opening of Scott's Ivanhoe.

Latinate elements of the language were popularly construed as remnants
of the tongue of the foreign-born nobility in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon
elements which supposedly had their long roots in the experience of the
true British people.16 The writings of Victorian language scholars tended
to reinforce this view, characterizing the Germanic elements as originary
and integral and the Latinate elements as belated and supplemental. Thus
Miiller discusses English in terms of the "Saxon base" and the "Norman
superstructure" (1:85-86), while Milner approvingly cites De Quincey's
comment that "because the Saxon is the aboriginal element ... it com-
prehends all the ideas that are natural to the heart of man, and to the
elementary situations of life" (p. xvii).
Perhaps the most erudite champion of Anglo-Saxon linguistic pu-
rity was William Barnes, whose philological treatises and grammatical
handbooks outlined a program for purging the language of unnecessary
Latinate impurities while his poetry sought to enact that very program of
purification.17 Barnes suggests that Latinate words are generally affecta-
tions whose derivations reveal exact synonymy with the rustic phrases to
which they are commonly thought superior. On this point he provides a
catalogue of paired terms such as "cast down" versus "dejected," "dejected
being formed from de-jacto, to cast down" (Poems, pp. 13-14).
Clearly, we may see the same dialectic of authenticity and affecta-
tion acted out here in lingustic terms that we see at play in Laycock's
"Respectable Mon." The working-class dialect is, like its speaker, direct,
natural, and honest. The upper classes are superficial, affected, and false,
and so is their language. In this excerpt from Thomas Blackah's "We May
Be Lo," we can see how the skilled dialect poet may construct class con-
flict linguistically as well as thematically:

We may be lo', we may be poor,

An' hev' hard and' lang to toil,
Contented still we jog along,
An' we'y pleasure till the soil.
The rich may romp an' roose away,
An' be spending heaps o' treasure;
The gay their gaudy duds display,
When they 'er oot for pleasure.18

Here the use of unsophisticated language works to deflate upper class

pomposity while the alleged rationality of the linguistically sophisticated
is quite obscured by their pursuit of fleshly pleasure. "Romp" and "roose"
(from solid Anglo-Saxon stock), for instance, trivialize the diversions of

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294 / VICTORIAN POETRY

the wealthy. There is also a mocking tone in the juxtaposition of down-

to-earth language and aristocratic pursuits in hybrid phrases - "heaps o"7
"treasure"; and "'er oot for" / "pleasure." And the most self-consciously
poetic line - complete with alliteration, poetic inversion, and a clever
pun - very strategically uses the unpretentious "duds" to let the air out of
itself. The poem asks the reader to recognize the importance of basic
working-class values. Meanwhile, the interplay of high with low diction
and the tension between dialect and poetic convention reinforce the class
distinction being drawn.
We can see that dialect poetry is in some sense a logical outgrowth
of the nineteenth-century trend away from elevated style and toward com-
position in "the real language of men." It should not be surprising, then,
also to find some writers who claim that dialect speech was not only more
honest and natural, but more expressive as well. Two discussions of po-
etry and language that draw together dialect, poetry, and valorization of
Anglo-Saxon roots are "The Poetry of Provincialisms," an essay on dia-
lect glossaries which appeared in the Cornhill Magazine in 186519 and George
Milner's "On the Dialect of Lancashire Considered as a Vehicle for Po-
etry." The author of "The Poetry of Provincialisms" praises the meta-
phorical nature and vividness of rural speech - "provincialisms form the
unwritten poetry of a nation" (p. 38) - illustrating his points with dialect
terms such as "mould-warp" (mole), "flittermouse" (bat), and "windflower"
(anemone), claiming that "all these names have been given from close
observation, and are instinct with the poetry of truth" (p. 36). Also
familiar here is the assertion that rustic speech is more vital, bearing the
stamp of nature - "living out of doors, their words breathe an out-of-door
air" (p. 3 1 ) - and a belief in linguistic debasement caused by upper-class
society - "our artificial life in large towns is emasculating our speech. The
strong metaphor has become faded. The colour is washed out with rose-
water" (p. 31). Thus the class distinction is drawn along familiar lines.
We also see the authority of the past invoked in Milner's essay: "In poeti-
cal composition the nearer we are to the roots of language the safer we are
from jarring notes and false associations" (p. xvi). And finally, while prais-
ing the poetic force of direct and simple language, the native-versus-for-
eign contrast is invoked as well: "No one would now argue that cerulean is
a better word for poetical use than the simple adjective blue, or that empy-
rean is better than sky" (p. xvii).
The more one looks at these discussions of dialect, the clearer it
becomes that questions of national identity are involved here. "Our speech"
and the "poetry of the nation" (my emphases) are at issue. Additionally,
even though these texts locate linguistic, literary, and social authority in
a mythic Anglo- Saxonized past, these arguments are not really about the

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 LARRY McCAULEY / 295

past. As Clare Simmons writes, Victorian language scholars "not only

wished to establish the history of the English language, but also sought to
use the evidence of language to determine the significance of being En-
glish" (p. 202). So while valorization of dialect and the popularity of
dialect literature were certainly gestures toward the past - both a rapidly
receding agrarian one and a distant mythic one - such a gesture reflects
the Victorian need to validate a certain vision of their present and project
for themselves a particular future. Lancashire dialect poetry reflects this
need just as immediately as does Tennyson's Idylls of the King, To under-
stand fully how the valorization of dialect was a forward-looking gesture,
it is necessary once again to look at the writings of language scholars.
Ultimately, comparative philology's respect for vernacular speech
resulted primarily from a new understanding of the mechanisms of lin-
guistic growth and change. In effect, the enlightenment model of lan-
guage - a human construction that human endeavor elevated to new
heights of complexity as human thought became more sophisticated -
was replaced by the new model of language as an organism, continually
regenerating itself according to its own internal laws. Muller writes, "We
might think as well of changing the laws which control the circulation of
our blood, or of adding one cubit to our stature, as of altering the laws of
speech, or inventing new words according to our own pleasure" (1:39).
Richard Trench, one of the moving forces behind New English Dictionary,
prefers the vegetable to the animal metaphor:

A language has a life, just as really as a man or as a tree; as a man, it must grow to
its full stature, being also submitted to his conditions of decay; as a forest tree
will defy any feeble bands which should attempt to control its expansion so long
as the principle of growth is in it; as a tree too will continually, while it casts off
some leaves, be putting forth others.20

As comparative philologists developed models for "the laws of speech,"

those mechanisms by which language grew and changed, they concluded
that oral dialects played a central role in language growth. Following the
work of Jakob Grimm, Muller argued that "dialectic regeneration" was the
most important mechanism of linguistic change. Especially in literate
cultures where language use has become extensively codified and regu-
lated, dialectical regeneration is necessary to renew a language that would
otherwise become unresponsive to the needs of its speakers:

It may be more accurate to compare a classical literary idiom to the frozen

surface of a river, brilliant and smooth, but stiff and cold

they are called, the vulgar dialects, which had formed a kind
rise beneath the crystal surface of the literary language, and sw

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296 / VICTORIAN POETRY

waters in spring, the cumbrous formations of a bygone age- ... As soon as a

language loses its unbounded capability of change, its carelessness about what it
throws away, and its readiness in always supplying instantaneously the wants of
mind and heart, its natural life is changed into a merely artificial existence.
(1:76-77.)

Of course, the argument is not with literature itself, but rather with
the inevitable regulation and codification of language which literate soci-
eties seemed to promote. Here, too, class issues are implicit: the lettered
classes - grammarians and other guardians of the propriety of the written
idiom - actually interfere in the natural progress of a language and finally
even contribute to the ossification and eventual irrelevance of their own
preferred idiom. More important here, though, is the valorization of
"capability of change." The Victorian world was one of rapid, often bewil-
dering change and so required a language that could change too - always
ready to supply "instantaneously the wants of mind and heart." The alter-
native here, stasis, is antithetical to Victorian England's understanding of
itself.
If poetry is one possible remedy for linguistic ossification - "it is no
small part of the work of a great imaginative writer to enrich, and at the
same time, to keep pure the literary language of his country" (Milner, p.
xxvi) - dialect poetry offers an even stronger cure: "Our language requires
both enriching and purifying. And we can best do this by drawing on our
rich mines of dialects" ("The Poetry of Provincialisms," p. 40). Thus the
linguistic and poetic ideals of the nation intersect in the realm of dialect
poetry, which is potentially purifying in its faithfulness to its Saxon roots
and enriching in its specificity, its roots in nature, and the imaginative
power of its coinages. One builds a truly English future by mining the
authentic English past.
Of course, current assessment of the power of dialect poetry has not
been so kind. It has been argued that as written expression, dialect poetry
succumbed to the very process of linguistic ossification for which some
had claimed it to be the remedy. Hollingworth cites "the rapid and tran-
sient movement of dialect poetry at this time from an oral tradition in
which it was already well established, though poorly recorded, into a writ-
ten form where it became more permanent but quickly lost its vitality."21
Maidment argues that the demise of dialect speech itself was a factor:
"With universal education and the growth of national mass communica-
tions, the oral vigour of dialect speech, if it had ever existed, became a
literary and cultural myth" (p. 356). In considering such comments, we
must first be mindful that dialect and dialect poetry are different things
and that as the latter developed, its distance from the former increased.

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 LARRY McCALJLEY / 297

Even so, the power of dialect poetry was not as reliant on the accuracy of
its recreation of dialect speech as on its ability to invoke for its audience
those things they associated with dialect. In spite of our own reserva-
tions, both the longevity and the social breadth of dialect poetry's popu-
larity testifies to its continuing signifying force.
Further, while agreeing in part with Hollingworth and Maidment
and also recognizing the romanticization of vernacular speech in work
such as "The Poetry of Provincialisms," one can still grant that some
dialect poetry successfully invokes the "vitality" and the "oral vigour of
dialect speech." In some cases one can even observe the organic processes
of language generation and change at work. In "Eawr folk" by Edwin
Waugh, for instance, we do not find the faithful recreation of a dying
idiom but rather a sense of the linguistic ferment occurring in mid-cen-
tury manufacturing centers such as Manchester:

Er Johnny gi's his mind to books;

Er Abram studies plants, -
He caps the dule for moss an' ferns,
An' grooin' polyants;
For aught abeawt mechanickin',
Er Ned's the very lad;
My uncle Jamie roots i' th' stars,
Enough to drive him mad.

Er Matty helps my mother, an'

Hoo sews, an' tents er Joe;
At doin' sums, an' sich as that,
My feyther licks them o;
Er Charley, - well, - there connot be
Another pate like his, -
It's o crom-full o' ancientry,
An' Roman haw-pennies! (Hollingworth, p. 15 )

Apart from maintaining a fluent interplay between formal regularity and

speech rhythms, these verses contain a notable linguistic mixture of old
and new, highbrow and lowbrow. Woven together are archaisms such as
"aught" and "Hoo" (from the Anglo-Saxon for "she"), vernacular tropes
such as "gi's his mind to" and "caps the dule" (beats the devil), and im-
ported terms new to the working-class lexicon such as "polyants" and
"mechanikin'." We must note that to read these latter terms as humorous
dialect corruptions is to miss an important point. Rather, this represents
a very regular aspect of the process of language growth - when lexical
items are imported from one idiom to another, they then become subject

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298 1 VICTORIAN POETRY

to the rules of their new idiom- The Lancashire dialect would have no
such singular/plural construction as polyanthus/polyantha, so "polyants"
is a reasonable formation. The word "mechanikin'" logically follows the
tendency of English to form verbs and gerunds from names of occupations
or roles. "Nursing" and "piloting" are well- assimilated examples of this
but formations such as "cowboying" and the more recent "parenting" may
be more in the spirit of "mechaniking." Finally, even though much of the
poem deals with the intellectual pursuits of this working-class family, the
language in which those aspirations are imagined is very much grounded
in the physical world. Thus Charley is not simply knowledgeable, his
"pate" is "crom-full" while Uncle Jamie is not merely fascinated by as-
tronomy, he "roots i' the stars." Granted, it is arguable to what extent
Waugh's poetry embodies "natural" linguistic change as idealized by some
comparative philologists. However, there is no question that in the liter-
ary and oral amalgamation enacted in poems like "Eawr folk" we witness
language evolving - seeking to grow into its future self by drawing upon
its roots in the past.
One could not disagree with current critics who find in this poem
an avoidance of the very real and disturbing conditions faced by the Vic-
torian industrial poor. However, once again, we should attend less to the
failure of these verses to project a working-class identity we presuppose
and more to the possible identity they attempt to construct. Much as the
linguistic ethos is a very mixed one, the variety of the family 's pursuits -
scholarly, agricultural, mechanical, and domestic - suggests not a clearly
stratified society but a society in flux. By poetically rejecting the bonds of
the factory and tenement, Waugh projects a movement reminiscent of
Miiller's description of dialectical regeneration as frozen class hierarchies
are swept away by a rising tide from below. We see, then, in this poem, as
in dialect poetry in general, not the expected cry for economic enfran-
chisement but a strategy for cultural enfranchisement. Seen one way, this
might be construed as the working class imitating middle-class values;
seen another it can be seen as the working class claiming itself as the true
seat of those values.
To conclude, the image of dialect speech in Victorian dialect poetry
functions as a very complex sign. It is first and foremost a sign of those
people who speak the dialect. It is also, as critics suggest, a sign of a
vanishing agrarian past. As I believe I have demonstrated, however, to
reduce it to a sign of nostalgia is misleading, for dialect poetry also very
pointedly evokes a mythic Anglo-Saxon past that was central to the Vic-
torians' imaginative construction of their future. Further, dialect is the
sign of a set of values that the working-class identified with themselves -
honesty, self-sufficiency, industriousness, and group loyalty - and that the

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 LARRY UcCAULEY 1 299

English people as a whole valorized as central to their preeminence among

nations. In 1855, John Davies described to the British Philological Soci-
ety speakers of the Lancashire dialect as "the race by whose activity and
enterprise the wealth and the power of England have been raised to so
marvellous a height" (p. 242). Such a comment might encourage us to
consider the resonance of the title of Waugh's poem above. "Eawr folk"
applies obviously first to the family group described, then to the working
people of Lancashire and to a broader English working class. But if we
read the dialect as ultimately a sign of what the English people thought
they were, we can construe a much broader reference - the "folk" as a
mythic, trans-historical, classless construct by which the English people
understand themselves. Victorian dialect poetry constituted an implicit
argument that, at that historical moment, the best material approxima-
tion of that ideal existed in the working classes. Ultimately, then, dialect
poetry was at least as concerned with English identity as it was with work-
ing-class identity.

Notes

1 Samuel Lay cock, The Collected Writings of Smuel Lay cock (Manchester: John
Hey wood, 1900), p. viii. A note on the use of the terms "dialect" and "dialect poetry"
is in order at the outset. The Victorians, much as we do, understood dialects to be
mutually comprehensible forms of the same language. They identified dialects prima-
rily based on distinctions in pronunciation, vocabulary, and use of figurative lan-
guage. For my purposes here, it seems simplest to consider "dialect poetry" to be any
in which the poet seeks to suggest orthographically non-standard oral vernacular
usually associated with the working classes.
2 Brian Maidment, The Poorhouse Fugitives: Self Taught Poets and Poetry in Victorian
England (Manchester: Carcanet, 1987), p. 16.
3 Susan Zlotnick, "Dialect, Domesticity, and Working-Class Women's Poetry," VS 35
(1991): 9.
4 See, for instance, Martha Vicinus, The Industrial Muse: A Study of Nineteenth-Cen-
tury British Working-Class Literature (London: Croom Helm, 1974), pp- 228-229.
5 Patrick Joyce, Visions of the People : Industrial England and the Question of Class , 1 848-
1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 267, 266.
6 Vicinus and Joyce are both invaluable studies of the nature and promulgation of
Victorian dialect literature.

7 English Dialect Society, A Bibliographical List of . . . Works .... Illustrative of the

Various Dialects of English, ed. W W Skeat and J. H. Nodal (London, 1873, 1875,
1877).
8 Walter W. Skeat, English Dialects from the Eighth Century to the Present Day (London:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1912).
9 Maidment argues, "It was only late in the nineteenth century that the work of
linguists like Max Miiller gave theoretical justification for treating dialect as expres-

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300 1 VICTORIAN POETRY

sive and complex language on a par with standard English

placing of dialect in the evolutionary processes of language, and

given to variation and deviation in language as indication of growt
widely until the 1870's and 1880's" (p. 357). As evidence here in
underestimates the widespread currency of these ideas not long af
10 Richard Garnett, "English Dialects,"77ie Philological Essays of
Garnett, of the British Museum (London, 1859), p. 41.
1 1 Some of Barnes's earliest philological publications are "On E
Gentleman s Magazine, June 1831; "On the Structure of Diction
Magazine, August 1831; and "The English Language," Gentleman
1833.

1 2 William Barnes, Poems of Rural Life , in the Dorsetshire Dialect, w

Glossary (London, 1844), p. 12.
13 E Max Miiller, The Science of Language: Founded on Lectures D
Institution in 1861 and 1863. 2 vols. (New York, 1891), 1:58-59.
14 J. W. Hales, "English Dialects," Good Words 8 (1867): 558.
1 5 See George Milner, "Introductory Essay on the Dialect of Lanc
a Vehicle for Poetry," in Edwin Waugh, Poems and Songs (Man
liam Gaskell's 1854 lectures treat the matter extensively (Willia
tures on the Lancashire Dialect [London, 1854]). Additionally,
John Davies draws on a linguistic analysis of Lancashire dialect t
race whose genius and energy have swelled the resources of Eng
extent is not much indebted to Norman influences" ("On the Ra
indicated by the Local Names and the Dialect of the County," T
Philological Society 13 [1855]: 282).
1 6 For a discussion of the development and importance of theorie
Saxon heritage, see Claire A. Simmons, "'Iron-worded Proof:
and the Old English Language," Studies in Medievalism 4 (1992
17 Se Gefylsta - The Helper: An Anglo-Saxon Delectus (London, 18
est book advocating the enrichment and purification of English
Anglo-Saxon elements found in dialects such as that of Dorsets
tion of this work appears in An Outline of English Speechcraft
of the most interesting aspects of these works is the way in which
his principles in his own writing. Thus he begins with a "for
introduction, and he writes of "free breathings" (vowels), "bre
sonants), "thing-names" (nouns), and "speech-trimming" (dic
1 8 Thomas Blackah, Songs and Poems , Written in the Nidderdale Dia
p. 9.
19 "The Poetry of Provincialism," Cornhill Magazine 12 (1865): 30-47.
20 Richard Chenevix Trench, On the Study of Words: Lectures Addressed (Originally) to
the Pupils of the Diocesan Training-School, Winchester ( 185 1; New York, 1866), p. 159.
2 1 Brian Hollingworth, ed. , Songs of the People : Lancashire Dialect Poetry of the Industrial
Revolution (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1977), p. 4.

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 LARRY McCAVLEY / 301

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