Almanacks
Now is the time when those delightful local almanacks and annuals written in dialect appear on some of the railway bookstalls and in the humble tobacconist and newsagent shops of provincial towns. But this year there will be one less. Dotclge's Western Annual has ceased publication. No longer will we have those Devon dialect stories in the manner of the veteran Eden Philpotts, no longer the poems and puzzles and lists of fairs and photographs of the Mayor and Aldermen of Plymouth: no longer will we unfold the colour plate, that sweet reminder of cottage art, showing Lustleigh Combe or a clapper bridge on Dartmoor. But I was thankful to buy, on Chesterfield station this week, John Hartley's Original Clock Almanack for 1955, originally published ninety years ago and still printed in a Victorian style in Bradford. Everything in it is in deepest dialect, except for the advertisements for things like Himalayan Brain Food, Nepha the Mystic, and Nerve Control remedies and other medicaments. The clothing of dialect certainly looks odd on a serious essay on the local descriptive poet John Nicholson (1790-1843) in the current number. You will notice the abrupt change of style from the essayist to his subject: ' One of the most popular poems called " Airedale " took thee on a journey reyt dahn t'Dale throo Malham Cove to Leeds Bridge. Listen nah to what he bez to say abaht Gordale Scar :— " Lead me, 0 Muse, along Aire's winding course To sing of Gordale—its tremendous source— There terror sits, and scorns the poet's pen."
etc.'
JOHN BETJEMAN
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