r in the West Riding, the
almanac has never obtained foothold in the other Ridings, and is little
known outside of the county. The "Bibliographical List" of dialect
literature, published by the English Dialect Society' in 1877, mentions
only two annuals or almanacs, in addition to those published in the West
Riding, and both of these belong to Tyneside.

Abel Bywater finds a place in our anthology by virtue of his "Sheffield
Cutler's Song." In its rollicking swing and boisterous humour it serves
admirably to illustrate the new note which is heard when we pass from
rural Yorkshire to the noisy manufacturing cities. We exchange the farm,
or the country fair, for the gallery of the city music-hall, where the
cutler sits armed with stones, red herrings, "flat-backs," and other
missiles ready to be hurled at the performers "if they don't play'
Nancy's Fancy' or onay tune we fix."

We are not concerned here with the linguistic side of Yorkshire dialect
literature, but the reader will notice how different is the phonology,
and to a less extent the vocabulary and idiom, of this song from that of
the North Riding specimens.

Returning once more to the North Riding, we must first of all draw
attention to the poet, John Castillo. In the country round Whitby and
Pickering, and throughout the Hambledon Hills, his name is very familiar.
Born near Dublin, in 1792, of Roman Catholic parents, he was brought up
at Lealholm Bridge, in the Cleveland country, and learnt the trade of a
journeyman stone-mason. Having abjured the faith of his childhood, he
joined, in 1818, the Wesleyan Methodist Society and acquired great
popularity in the North Riding as a local preacher. His well-known poem,
"Awd Isaac," seems to have been first printed at Northallerton in 1831.
Twelve years later it occupies the first place in a volume of poems
published by the author at Whitby under the title, Awd Isaac, The
Steeplechase, and Other Poems. Like most of his other poems, "Awd Isaac"
is strongly didactic and religious; its homely piety and directness of
speach have won for it a warm welcome among the North Yorkshire
peasantry, and many a farmer and farm-labourer still living knows much of
the poem by heart. As "Awd Isaac " is too long for an anthology, I have
chosen "The Lucky Dream" as an illustration of Castillo's workmanship.
Apart from its narrative interest, this poem calls for attention as a
Yorkshire variant of an ancient and widely dispersed f