Mary Mecca
The Local Preacher
The Courting Gate
Fieldfares
A Song of the Yorkshire Dales
The Flower of Wensleydale



I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME TO THE YORKSHIRE MEMBERS OF THE WORKERS'
EDUCATIONAL ASSOCITION



Preface

About two years ago I published a collection of Yorkshire dialect poems,
chosen from many authors and extending over a period of two hundred and
fifty years(1). The volume was well received, and there are abundant
signs that the interest in dialect literature is steadily growing in all
parts of the county and beyond its borders. What is most encouraging is
to find that the book has found an entrance into the homes of Yorkshire
peasants and artisans where the works of our great national poets are
unknown. I now essay the more venturesome task of publishing dialect
verses of my own. Most of the poems contained in this little volume have
appeared, anonymously, in the Yorkshire press, and I have now decided 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
object of ridicule. Dickens and Thackeray had done their worst with him: