I do not claim
that I have furnished literal transcripts of what I heard in my
conversations with my heroes and heroines, but my purpose throughout has
been to hold a mirror up to Nature, to give a faithful interpretation of
thought and character, and to show my readers some of the ply of mind and
habits of life that still prevail among Yorkshiremen whose individuality
has not been blunted by convention and who have the courage to express
their reasoned or instinctive views of life and society.
But the interpretation of the minds of Yorkshire peasants and artisans for
the benefit of the so-called general reader is only the secondary object
which I have in view. My primary appeal is not to those who have the full
chorus of English song, from Chaucer to Masefield, at their beck and call,
but to a still larger class of men and women who are not general readers
of literature at all, and for whom most English poetry is a closed book.
In my dialect wanderings through Yorkshire I discovered that while there
was a hunger for poetry in the hearts of the people, the great
masterpieces of our national song made little or no appeal to them.
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