All this is clear gain, and the time may not be far distant
when England will again become what it was in Elizabethan days--a nest of
singing birds, where the minor poets will be able to take their share in
the chorus of song, leaving the chief parts in the oratorio to the
Shakespeares and Spensers of tomorrow.
The twenty-five poems of which this volume consists are meant to serve a
double purpose. Most of them are character-sketches or dramatic studies,
and my wish is to bring before the notice of my readers the habits of mind
of certain Yorkshire men and women whose acquaintance I have made. For
ten years I have gone up hill and down dale in the three Ridings, intent
on the study of the sounds, words and idioms of the local folk-speech. At
first my object was purely philological, but soon I came to realise that
men and women were more interesting than words and phrases, and my
attention was attracted from dialect speech to dialect speakers. Among
Yorkshire farmers, farm labourers, fishermen, miners and mill workers I
discovered a vitality and an outlook upon life of which I, a bourgeois
professor, had no previous knowledge.
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