Some Odd Words for Yorkshire Day

August 1 = Yorkshire Day! The white rose is Yorkshire's symbol, the red rose is Lancashire's - hence the Wars of the Roses, when two royal houses fought for the throne of England. Friendly rivalry exists to this day between Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Female lines of my family history, on both sides, are rooted in Yorkshire, stretch back there for as far as records reach, and at least into the 1500s but for sure, undocumented, well beyond that. People didn't move around a lot back then - at least not yer humble peasant class. I was born, bred and lived in Yorkshire for much of my life, so although the male lines of my family (via both grandfathers) are rooted in the south of England, I can still lay claim to being a Yorkshirewoman.

Hat-tip to photocartoon

 

I'll not waffle on about Yorkshire history - there's a perfectly adequate Wikipedia page for that. Enough to say that Yorkshire, in many ways, equates to Texas in the USA. It's the biggest county, it has lovely landscapes, beautiful coastline, a thriving port, interesting cities, a tradition of industry, sadly mostly long gone (cotton and wool mills, coal mines, steel mills, fishing trawlers, farming). Locals once gave it the nickname "God's Own Country".

My roots are in East and North Yorkshire. The area has strong links to the Vikings who came along after the Romans, Angles, Saxons and Jutes had done with us, sometime around around 793 AD. (See more on that HERE)

The Viking influence lives on, even now, in some local dialects. I found reminders of it at this website: Yorkshire Dialect Words of Old Norse Origin. I remember clearly my grandmother, and my parents, using these terms, plucked from the much longer list available at the link above. I guess a few of these old Norse words could possibly have bled through into parts of the USA too, arriving with early immigrants.

sken: to look at something/someone with screwed-up eyes, peer intently - Swedish sken (to glare), Norwegian skinne (to glare).

slocken: to quench thirst, to drink greedily - Norwegian slokke (to quench), Swedish sluka (to swallow); also Icelandic slökkva (to extinguish, put out) in the sense of quenching. (I also understood this as meaning to have eaten or drank too much and sickened oneself - "I was slockened")

sile, siling : to rain heavily, as in "It's siling down" - Norwegian dialect sila. Also Norwegian and Swedish sila (strain, filter). There is a suggestion here of liquid running quickly through a strainer or filter.

sackless: ineffectual, simple-minded, lacking in energy or effort; also innocent of wrong intent - Old Norse: saklauss.

When I noticed this word I LOL'd. Very early in my time in the USA, in a supermarket with my husband, at the checkout he was asked by the check-out lady if he had a sack ready (sack in US supermarket lingo meaning brown paper or plastic bag). He said "No, I'm sackless"....and I started to giggle, had to wander off outside. I later had to try to explain what had amused me so much - was never quite sure that he understood though.

throng/thrang : very busy. From the Icelandic þröng(narrow, tightly pressed; compelled, forced). Swedish trång (narrow, tight); probably related to the Standard English throng (crowded, to form a tightly-packed crowd, etc.)

thwait(e) village or small settlement - Old Norse tveit. Found now as an element in place names (e.g., Linthwaite, Micklethwaite, etc) . Also thorp(e), t(h)rop village or small settlement - Old Norse þorp Now an element in place names (e.g., Priesthorpe, Knostrop, etc) and as a family surname.

lop :flea - Danish and Norwegian loppe ( flea)

laik, leck : to play. Old Norse: leika. The verb laikin' is used in some parts of Yorkshire (West Yorkshire mainly) for days off work or having no work to do ("He's laikin' today" = "He's not working today").

I well remember this word coming up from a witness at employment tribunal hearings during my 23 years working in that Department, in Leeds, West Yorkshire, and the tribunal chairman gleefully pouncing upon the word and explaining its meaning to those assembled for the hearing.

gimmer: an immature female sheep (before it first gives birth to lambs). Old Norse: gymbr.

I've heard this also used as a rude term to describe an elderly female.

gaum, gawm : heed ("Ee taks noa gawm" = "He takes no heed, pays no attention"); common sense (gormless = lacking in sense) - Old Norse: gaumr

Ah well, I'd best get me sen thrang skenning a few news stories - no more laikin' today.

VARIOUS

I was interested to read (SEE HERE) that the late Hugo Chavez was a great fan of the writings of Victor Hugo, especially of his famous novel, Les Misérables. I'm almost halfway through that huge tome myself, enjoying it a lot.

From above link

As Daphnée Denis wrote the other day on Slate:

"[Chávez] spent a great deal of time quoting and analyzing Hugo's social novel, the story of the wretched of France -- Cosette, the orphan, Fantine, the prostitute, Jean Valjean, the well-intended convict -- at the beginning of the 19th century... He often evoked the book to defend his policies, reminding the public that his government was devoted to the lower classes, "those who spent much of their life in total misery, as Victor Hugo would say."

Senator Rand Paul can be hailed as be a hero for his stand (but for this stand only) : the anti-drone filibuster. His motives were dubious however. Democrats, even the best of 'em, all except Ron Wyden are war criminals for following in the blood-stained steps of our President.





Some DNA ancestry services akin to 'genetic astrology'
piece by by Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News. "Some customers want to find Viking ancestry, but almost every Briton has some, say researchers....." - and Roman too! We knew that already though, didn't we?


Scientists have described some services provided by companies tracing ancestry using DNA as akin to astrology.Huh? Not sure I get that drift.






Another "Talking Picture" and caption from the husband's vintage collection:



Caption and a comment:

Halderman Seldom knew where he was.
Whenever Halderman spotted someone with a camera, he always managed to get into the picture. Here, while Myra and her mother, Philo and her Aunt Cadbury, posed on the steps of the family summer home, Halderman quietly slipped into the frame. He always smiled so no one ever objected. Someone at the Seldom household next door always came to get him and return him to his lawn-chair lookout position.

Comment: from ed ed (64 months ago): Myra's eyes are cast down. Aunt Cadbury looks stern. Myra's mother chortles. I am wondering if there is a rip in the seat of Halderman's pants?

anyjazz65 (64 months ago, in reply): Oh dear. Do you suppose? There was always the rumor that Halderman had no pockets either.

During my early teenage years, in a small English market town , I would regularly haunt the local library. It was there that I discovered a few books by some American writers whose style I admired greatly - enough to start dreaming of emulating them, and becoming a journalist or newspaper reporter myself. "Dream on" was the message of my headmistress (paraphrased) at a brief career interview. I guess she was right, for opportunities were few and far between.

Those writers who had so impressed me had something in common, something which I discovered later when looking more deeply into astrology. They were all born with Pluto in Gemini.

Sinclair Lewis 7 Feb. 1885 Sauk Center, Minnesota
Dorothy Parker 22 Aug. 1893 West End, New Jersey
James Thurber 8 Dec. 1894 Columbus, Ohio
Ogden Nash 19 Aug. 1902 Rye, New York
S.J. Perelman 1 Feb. 1904 Brooklyn New York
H. Allen Smith 19 Dec 1907 McLeansboro, Illinois.

Gemini and its ruler Mercury represent communication in all its forms. In writers it links to an abstract curiosity, seeking to form a picture of the world and to share perceptions with others. Pluto's transit through Gemini (1883-1912) brought a long period of intense energy to those engaged in this area. I'm tempted to go on about Gemini being basically lighthearted, carefree, but must not forget who else was born into the same generation: Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Ayatollah Khomeini. These men too were communicators, but of a far darker persuasion. Not all writers born with Pluto in Gemini leaned towards light humour and satire either : T.S. Eliot, J.R.R.Tolkein, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, John Steinbeck all were of this same generation. Excellence in writing was a definite feature throughout Pluto's visit to Gemini, these authors were fortunate to have been born under what could be described as "a writer's sky".

Gemini connects also to transportation and other forms of communication as well as writing. During Pluto's transit of Gemini there were many fantastic achievements. The first subway was built in London, the first automatic telephone switchboard was introduced, Marconi invented radio telegraphy, and Zeppelin built his airship.