has its poets, among the most ambitious of whom is Mr.
Malham-Dembleby, who published in 1912 a volume of verse entitled,
Original Tales and Ballads in the Yorkshire Dialect. Mr. F. J. Newboult
has deservedly won fame as a prosewriter in dialect; his dialect sketches
which have for some years appeared in The Yorkshire Observer are full of
broad humour and dramatic power, and his dainty little lyric "Spring" (p.
87) is a sufficient indication that he has also the dower of the poet.
In Alderman Ben Turner of Batley Yorkshire possesses a courageous
advocate of the social betterment of the working man and woman, and in
the midst of a busy life he has, found' time to give utterance to his
indignation and his faith in dialect-poems which appeal from the heart to
the heart. Mr. Walter Hampson, of Normanton, writes in a lighter vein
in his Tykes Abrooad (1911); he is our Yorkshire Mark Twain, and his
narrative of the adventures of a little party of Yorkshiremen in Normandy
and Brittany is full of humour. Songs are scattered through the story,
and one of these, "Owd England," finds a place in this collection. The
Colne Valley and the country round Huddersfield has been somewhat slow in
responding to the call of the homely muse of dialect but Mr. E. A.
Lodge's little volume of verse and prose. entitled Odds an' Ends,
marks a successful beginning.

In our account of the history of dialect poetry in Yorkshire it will have
been noticed that the chief forms of verse to which local poets have had
recourse have been the song, personal or dramatic, the ballad, and the
dialogue. Among the most hopeful signs of the times has been the recent
extension of dialect to poems of a more sustained character. Within the
last twenty years two writers, associated with the far north and the far
south of the county respectively, have made the bold attempt to use
dialect in narrative poems of larger compass than the simple ballad.
These are Mr. Richard Blakeborough, the author of T' Hunt o' Yatton
Brigg (1896), and Mr. J. S. Fletcher, who, as recently as 1915, published
in the dialect of Osgoldcross his Leet Livvy. These two poems are in
general character poles apart: that of Mr. Blakeborough is pure romance,
whereas Mr. Fletcher never steps aside from the strait path of realism.
T' Hunt o' Yatton Brigg is steeped in all the eerie witch-lore of the
Cleveland moors. The plot is laid in the district round the famous
Roseberry Topping, and deal