olk-tale, the
earliest known version of which is to be found in the works of the
thirteenth-century Persian poet Jalalu'd-Din. Castillo died at Pickering
in 1845, and five years later a complete edition of his poems was
published at Kirkby Moorside.

Less popular than "Awd Isaac," but often met with in collections of
dialect verse, is the poem entitled "The York Minster Screen." This was
the work of George Newton Brown, a lawyer by profession, who lived at
Nunnington in Ryedale. The poem, which is in the form of a dialogue
between two Yorkshire farmers, was first published at Malton in 1833.
The conversation, which is of the raciest description, is supposed to
take place in York Minster and turns on the repairs which were made in
1832 to the famous organ-screen which separates the nave and transepts
from the chancel. The question of altering the position of the screen is
debated with much humour and vivacity.

Before leaving the North Riding, reference must be made to Elizabeth
Tweddell, the gifted poetess of the Cleveland Hills. Born at Stokesley
in 1833, the daughter of Thomas Cole, the parish-clerk of that town, she
married George Markham Tweddell, the author of The People's History of
Cleveland, and in 1875 she published a slender volume of dialect verse
and prose entitled Rhymes and Sketches to Illustrate the Cleveland
Dialect. In her modest preface Mrs. Tweddell declares that the only
merit of her work lies in "the stringing together of a good many
Cleveland words and expressions that are fast becoming obsolete"; but the
volume has far deeper claims on our gratitude than this. There is much
homely charm in her rhymes and sketches, and the two extracts which find
a place in this collection are models of what simple dialect-poems should
be. Above all, Mrs. Tweddell has the gift of humour; this is well
illustrated by the song, "Dean't mak gam o' me," and also by her
well-known prose story, "Awd Gab o' Steers." Her most sustained effort in
verse is the poem entitled " T' Awd Cleveland Customs," in which she
gives us a delightful picture of the festive seasons of the Cleveland
year from " Newery Day," with its "lucky bod," to "Kessamus," with its
"sooard dancers."

The western portion of the North Riding, including Swale and Wensleydale,
has been less fruitful in dialect poetry than the eastern. Apart from
the anonymous "Wensleydale Lad" already noticed, it is represented in
this anthology only by the spiri