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shewhomustThe Guardian last week carried an article about a new book, Pitmatic: The Talk of the North East Coalfields. Pitmatic combined regional dialect features with the technical vocabulary of the mine, and no doubt it was impenetrable enough, but I thought the Guardian was overstating matters when it opened its report: "A dialect so dense that it held up social reforms has been rescued from obscurity by the publication of its first dictionary."
This was based on the comments of the parliamentary commissioners who visited the area in 1842, who were felt to be sympathetic to the miners and the campaign for better working conditions. Their report stressed the arduousness of their task: "The barriers to our intercourse were formidable. Numerous mining technicalities, northern provincialisms, peculiar intonation and accents and rapid and indistinct utterance rendered it essential for us to devote time to the study of these peculiarities ere we could translate and write the evidence." Fair enough; but "Educated gentlemen do not immediately understand local accent" is not quite the same as "dialect so dense ... it held up social reforms".
I have a booklet called Pit Talk in County Durham written by Dave Douglass in 1973, and published as a History Workshop Pamphlet. It's a fine mixture of the author's reminiscences (and those of his father), earlier published glossaries, songs and stories (including the Radio Ballad The Big Hewer and the High Level Ranters' repertoire). A taste of the glossary section:
ELEPHANT FEET: Great iron base plates for attachment to hydraulic props with the intention of stopping them sinking into soft bottom. In fact they usually do sink all the same, and are more difficult to get out again, with elephant feet beneath them. Knowing this, the men often don't use them at all, but bury them illegally somewhere out of the way. When I started as a ripper, I was told 'never shovel what you can lift, and never lift what you can bury'. A maxim never found in the Coal Board's manual.
GAUDY DAY: In the earlier days of mining, this was the name given to any day [on] which the workers made into a holiday. It might be the day the first cuckoo was heard, or the turnips were ready in the fields. If the truth were known, the custom is still observed although on a more individualist basis. Often workers will say 'bugger it, let's have one off for the queen'. This seems to me a modern equivalent of the 'gaudy day' of old.
KEEKER: This was the owners' 'checkweighman'. He looked over the tubs as they came to bank, checked and weighed them for the owners. He also had the task of laying them out, or confiscating the tubs which were not full to the brim or had stones in. The men would pay their own 'checkweighman': he was there to try and prevent the workers being excessively robbed; he was elected and paid by the men to look after their interests at bank. My grandfather became a keeker at Wardley, but in the first place he had not been a miner. He was a fish curer by trade, and was good at hawking fish around the doors, having his own little pony and flatcart.
This was based on the comments of the parliamentary commissioners who visited the area in 1842, who were felt to be sympathetic to the miners and the campaign for better working conditions. Their report stressed the arduousness of their task: "The barriers to our intercourse were formidable. Numerous mining technicalities, northern provincialisms, peculiar intonation and accents and rapid and indistinct utterance rendered it essential for us to devote time to the study of these peculiarities ere we could translate and write the evidence." Fair enough; but "Educated gentlemen do not immediately understand local accent" is not quite the same as "dialect so dense ... it held up social reforms".
I have a booklet called Pit Talk in County Durham written by Dave Douglass in 1973, and published as a History Workshop Pamphlet. It's a fine mixture of the author's reminiscences (and those of his father), earlier published glossaries, songs and stories (including the Radio Ballad The Big Hewer and the High Level Ranters' repertoire). A taste of the glossary section:
ELEPHANT FEET: Great iron base plates for attachment to hydraulic props with the intention of stopping them sinking into soft bottom. In fact they usually do sink all the same, and are more difficult to get out again, with elephant feet beneath them. Knowing this, the men often don't use them at all, but bury them illegally somewhere out of the way. When I started as a ripper, I was told 'never shovel what you can lift, and never lift what you can bury'. A maxim never found in the Coal Board's manual.
GAUDY DAY: In the earlier days of mining, this was the name given to any day [on] which the workers made into a holiday. It might be the day the first cuckoo was heard, or the turnips were ready in the fields. If the truth were known, the custom is still observed although on a more individualist basis. Often workers will say 'bugger it, let's have one off for the queen'. This seems to me a modern equivalent of the 'gaudy day' of old.
KEEKER: This was the owners' 'checkweighman'. He looked over the tubs as they came to bank, checked and weighed them for the owners. He also had the task of laying them out, or confiscating the tubs which were not full to the brim or had stones in. The men would pay their own 'checkweighman': he was there to try and prevent the workers being excessively robbed; he was elected and paid by the men to look after their interests at bank. My grandfather became a keeker at Wardley, but in the first place he had not been a miner. He was a fish curer by trade, and was good at hawking fish around the doors, having his own little pony and flatcart.
