PERSPECTIVE UKNORTH
People and their profiles: dukes, archbishops, actors, writers, monks, oddbods, the garish, the gregarious - here they are in single file, chosen by chance, by inclination, or by necessity ... and all reflecting, one hopes, the essential, but indefinable, spark that makes one human being interesting to many. Geoffrey Mather
Know ye that this day, November 27th in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Four, the 53nd year of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Duke of Lancaster, is Lancashire Day.Know ye also, and rejoice, that by virtue of Her Majesty's County Palatine of Lancaster, the
Throughout the County Palatine, from the Furness Fells to the River Mersey, from the Irish Sea to the Pennines, this day shall ever mark the peoples' pleasure in that excellent distinction - true Lancastrians, proud of the Red Rose and loyal to our Sovereign Duke.
I once stood up, at the place where the last Lancastrian king stayed and was betrayed, and raised a glass to the county's last saintly monarch.
Henry V1 was a curious soul: pious, gentle, tall, slender. He was "neither a fool nor very wise" and he was occasionally mad. But I like the sound of him. He gives the impression of being a decent sort of chap. Not exciting. But decent. The one who, as a child, you would allow to be stumper so long as he loaned his bat. Not much use at back-stabbing I would have thought. And back-stabbing in his era (1431-1471) was an art form.
He founded both Eton and King’s College, Cambridge (indeed, the only two portraits of him are at Eton and the National Portrait Gallery). He said grace before meals "like a monk" and his strangest expletive was "Forsooth and forsooth," though when very emphatic, he would swear "By St John."
He dressed simply, with long cloak and round cap - "like a townsman" - and on great days, he would wear a hair shirt beneath splendid robes.
It so happened that people I know bought Waddington Hall, near Clitheroe, and that is where he was betrayed. Not in their time, I might add. The Wars of the Roses were on. He was recognised by a monk while sitting at dinner. News of his whereabouts leaked out, and he was arrested at Brungerley Bridge nearby.
Then he was taken to London, his legs tied to the stirrups of his horse, his face towards the tail. Off he went to the Tower (1465) and he never emerged alive. He was murdered.
Edward 1V, the Yorkist choice, became king.
I made a record of all this and attached it to a framed picture of Henry V1, which I got from the National Portrait Gallery. The owners of Waddington Hall hung the picture in the dining room. Now the place is occupied by other owners. I hope they have retained this reminder of history on that spot.
I raised my glass there, I toasted the king, and no-one even noticed. I rather enjoyed that.
And now... a modern view:
County pride is a fine thing, (and nowhere is it more marked than in Yorkshire), but it is commodity with diminishing returns. Once, Lancashire was a forest of chimneys, the powerhouse of an industrial revolution, and people came from far away to share the work it provided. I could not say the prosperity it provided, for prosperity was reserved for those who owned the chimneys. The incomers - my grandfather, from Cornwall, among them - found their proper place in society, which was in a terraced house close enough to the mill to get them there before the gates closed in early morning. If they were not there on time, the gates were shut. A manager stood there holding a large pocket watch.
These workers ground their way through the thirties and poverty was never far away. For a child of that era, there was a roast potato in the street, a jam buttie after school, rows at tiny desks with inkwells, and you were caned as a matter of course. I was one of those.
So what was this Lancashire of which we are all supposed to be so proud? A tool. A county of engines with people as fodder. Fodder for the mills, fodder for the front when the nation went to war. Not as much crime then because people were too tired through hard work to commit it. My grandmother's household was in bed at 9pm ready for the challenges of the next day. You walked, or you moved by tram. Criminals did not travel 30 miles down wide roads in comfortable cars to break into the big houses.
If they had criminal tendencies in their own communities they were both known and marked and they paid the price. You respected the police, otherwise you got a clip round the ear from a swung cape. You respected the preacher and the doctor and nobody bothers to respect them now. All they talk about now are their rights. So -
Lancashire was a land of discipline, strict at home, harsh at the workplace, and nobody knew what made it a County Palatine. That was left to teachers and history books. The accent was thick. If you wrote down the spoken words they looked like the names of foreign footballers. Estigettenit? Wheersthimam? It was all right for its time, but people who grow misty-eyed about it now have selective memories. Truth is, it marked the society indelibly as something restricted, poorly rewarded, subservient, and, as it turned out, required to reinvent itself.
Because these forests of chimneys beneath which lay the forests of factories were viable only so long as people abroad with even lower expectations of life did not have them. Once Lancashire exported its machinery and its knowledge, the county had sown the seeds of its own industrial destruction. My father said - rightly - that the end was in sight when the mills got canteens. The workers were full of expectations they had been taught not to have.
All changed, and rapidly. The West was into cars at every home, and foreign holidays, and internationalism, with instant communication through telephones, and radio, and TV. The world shrank. Lancashire as a county lost its meaning. Britain's bread no longer hung by its thread (as posters told us it did during the war).
So where does that leave us? It leaves us exposed to our own past in a way that can be positively detrimental. Our young must take on neutral accents if they are to compete in the marketplace with children of the more affluent south. The accent is a relic. A hindrance. A brake on progression. Preserve it by all means in folk song and memory, but I trust Lancashire will see it for what it is: something that belonged to parents and grandparents, defunct as the mills in everyday life.
It deserves only to lie peacefully in its grave.
The country is too restricted for these small prides. It has found a common ground. The accents of television now are many but pared down for the bigger audience..The trans-Atlantic influence through the media favoured Lancastrians because people used the vowel sounds familiar in Manchester and New York. Enough then. The contest is equal. Truce.
If I were a young man starting out with ambition, I would be at great pains to rid myself of a local accent. Any prides I have in Lancashire would be a matter between me and my memories and my ancestors.
Lancashire Day is fine in its way - a day to remember those from the county who died in great swathes for their country or who, through their intellect, made their mark on national or international life.
The latter did it in spite of, not because of, their background. And they did not go around crying, "Ee, by gum."
Having said all that, a memory of -
My Grandmother
My grandma never cud remember,
T' names of childer she'd hed.
Edie, Meda, Lilly, she'd say -
Then Florrie, Harry, Ted.
She'd say one after t'other -
All them as were about,
Until she'd get to t' reight un,
By which time they'd gone out.There were one son's name she never said,
Not as I recall,
And that were Joe's, who went to t' war
And never came home at all.
Joe were just a snap to me,
Fadin' in his frame,
Summat I saw from th' owd settee.
To me he had no name.He fell and de'ed on t' Western Front
Theer wi' t' Pals in t' mud..
"Your country needs you," Kitchener said.
All t' lads went as could.
So I never saw him, 'eard his voice,
Or sat wi' 'im at t' table.
But my grandma, she could see him yet
An' as long as she was able.He lived beneath her long, black shawl,
He lived with every day.
He lived when t' gas lamp were turned down.
He never went away.
So there, you see, the Joe who left,
He never de'ed at all.
Not till my grandma went as weel.
Stilled in 'er long, black shawl.I think they'll be together neaw
In some nice, tranquil place.
An' t' rest of 'em will be there, too,
In their starched 'igh collars an' lace.
She'd be 'appy there, I dare say,
Gathered with her throng,
But as for t' names. I bet you yet
She'll allus get 'em wrong.'cept Joe's. I reckon his name's safe
Whatever me gran's illusion.
Because t' Pals gave him a number, too,
In case of any confusion.
Geoffrey Mather © 2004
19 August, 2009