Ernest Broxap's The Great Civil War in Lancashire (1642-1651) (1910) doesn't exactly tell the story of the war from the perspective of the people, but it does make bring it down to a human scale, making it clear that war in Lancashire was largely fought out with makeshift armies that often lasted only as long as they could be paid. The depredations of the various armies impoverished the local population and in the end, the Royalist Earl of Derby, who is said to have enjoyed the popular support of the county Lancashire, was defeated because he failed to raise an army large enough to confront the Parliamentary forces. The map of Manchester above is reprinted in the book and puts the scale of the war in perspective. The siege of Manchester in 1642 was an important early battle in the war, but as the map shows it was fought over what was at the time little more than a pair of villages joined by a narrow bridge across the River Irwell.
Ernest Broxap's The Great Civil War in Lancashire (1642-1651) (1910) doesn't exactly tell the story of the war from the perspective of the people, but it does make bring it down to a human scale, making it clear that war in Lancashire was largely fought out with makeshift armies that often lasted only as long as they could be paid. The depredations of the various armies impoverished the local population and in the end, the Royalist Earl of Derby, who is said to have enjoyed the popular support of the county Lancashire, was defeated because he failed to raise an army large enough to confront the Parliamentary forces. The map of Manchester above is reprinted in the book and puts the scale of the war in perspective. The siege of Manchester in 1642 was an important early battle in the war, but as the map shows it was fought over what was at the time little more than a pair of villages joined by a narrow bridge across the River Irwell.
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I have just finished Silas Hocking's best seller, Her Benny (1879), and was struck by how the author represents the accents and dialects of the various Liverpool characters in the book. The book is tale of two street children, Benny and sister Nell, who along with the reprobate Perks, are given distinctive accents and the unusual, to me, forms of the verb to be 'I's', 'You's' and 'It are'. I also tried to read their dialogue in a modern Liverpool accent are failed miserably, but that could be more due to my ignorance than anything else. The speech of the adult characters on the other hand, is represented in what appears to have become the standard for Lancashire dialect writing, which suggests that Hocking was sensitive to generational differences in the Liverpool speech of the time. Anyone who knows their northern English accents will know that the modern Liverpool accent is distinctive and doesn't spread far beyond the suburbs. Hocking's representation of late 19th-century Liverpool speech makes me wonder when this came about.
'Arter aw, it does a mon no hurt to travel. I should na wonder if I mought see things as I nivver heard on if I getten as fur as the Contynent. Theer’s France now – foak say as they dunnot speak Lancashire i’France, an conna so much as understand it. Well, theer’s ignorance all o’er the world.'
Sammy Craddock in That Lass o' Lowries, Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1877. |
Phil Benson
Born in Manchester when it was still part of Lancashire, which it still is really. Exiled in sunny Sydney, I love to read Lancashire books Archives
March 2013
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