I DEDICATE
THIS VOLUME TO THE
YORKSHIRE MEMBERS OF THE
WORKERS’ EDUCATIONAL
ASSOCIATION
Abut two years ago I published a collection of Yorkshire dialect poems, chosenfrom many authors and extending over a period of two hundred and fiftyyears[1]. The volumewas well received, and there are abundant signs that the interest in dialectliterature is steadily growing in all parts of the county and beyond itsborders. What is most encouraging is to find that the book has found anentrance into the homes of Yorkshire peasants and artisans where the works ofour great national poets are unknown. I now essay the more venturesome task ofpublishing dialect verses of my own. Most of the poems contained in this littlevolume have appeared, anonymously, in the Yorkshire press, and I have nowdecided to reissue them in book form and with my name on the title-page.
A generation ago the minor poet was, in the eyes of most Englishmen, an objectof ridicule. Dickens and Thackeray had done their worst with him: we knewhim—or her—as Augustus Snodgrass or Blanche Amory—an amiablefool or an unamiable minx. The twentieth century has already, in its shortcourse, done much to remove this prejudice, and the minor poet is no longerexpected to be apologetic; his circle of readers, though small, is sympathetic,and the outside public is learning to tolerate him and to recognise that it isas natural and wholesome for him to w