THE OLD NORTHERN WAY

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 4, 30 October 1931, Page 1

THE OLD NORTHERN WAY

The following appeared in the second number of the “Mangonui County Times” for August, 1904, and has made a periodical appearance in many different forms since :

“A correspondent sends the following : At a recent wedding in the Far North, the bucolic bridegroom, on being asked by the sky-pilot whether ‘he would take this woman to be his lawfully wedded wife,’ responded, ‘My oath I will,’ winking at the same time with a cunning leer in his optic. At the subsequent wedding breakfast, on rising to respond to the toast ‘Bride and Bridegroom,’ he knocked those present silly with an eloquent speech as follows : ‘Genelmen and lydies, I carn’t resite, I ain’t no good at conundrums, I ca*n’t talk, I ain’t no good at pen-shovin’, but I kin drive bullicks agin enny man in the North,’ after which the orator flopped back into his chair.

(The above correspondent in his letter opines that the ‘County Times’ intends running an aboriginality column on ‘Bulletin’ lines.—Ed. ‘C.T.’)” But it seems to have been its one and only effort. .