DIALECT VERSE

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 21010, 11 November 1933, Page 15

DIALECT VERSE

■I ' Koslcv Hill Fair. Isy J. M. Dcnwood. Jarrolds. (5/- net.) Through Whitcombc and Tombs Ltd. Mr Dcnwood, who will be remembered as the author of "Red Ike," chosen by the Book Soeiety in 1931, has now collected several pieces of his verse in the Cumbrian dialect; and those readers of his prose who detected a poet at work will not be surprised by what they find. The language in which Mr Denwood versifies, like most North Country tongues, is earthy and redolent of its native wild, lie has managed to preserve its quality in cold print, and, at the same time, has contrived to say something individual and memorable in the dialect. This is in spite of his modesty, which prompts him to declare at the beginning of "The Haymakers": Ther speech is heamly as aw t'warld's .should be. An' what they mean they say in manner free. But listen an' Ah'll let them speak thersels In t'tongue that's daily spok 'mang Cumbrian fells. He expounds an honest pantheism, which diffuses itself occasionally in bursts of Rabelaisian jest and homily but as often results in fine natural descriptions and human interpretations. The title piece, "Rosley Hill Fair," is a long dialogue that carries the reader through scenes now rare but once common enough in Cumbrian parts, and then a perfect microcosm of peasant life. All this. of course, will be of great value one day when I Cumbria is no longer lone and wild; but in the meantime much of it has its own value as poetry, and this supports the saying in the North Country, that in Mr Denwood a new Burns has arisen.