The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of the Ridings, by F. W. Moorman

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Title: Tales of the Ridings

Author: F. W. Moorman

Commentator: C. Vaughan

Release Date: April 14, 2006 [EBook #18173]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF THE RIDINGS ***

Produced by David Fawthrop and Alison Bush

TALES OF THE RIDINGS
BY
F. W. MOORMAN 1872 - 1919

LATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEEDS UNIVERSITY

Editor of "Yorkshire Dialect Poems"

WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR
By Professor C. VAUGHAN

LONDON ELKIN MATHEWS, CORK STREET
1921

Contents:
MEMOIR
A LAOCOON OF THE ROCKS
THROP'S WIFE
THE INNER VOICE
B.A.
CORN-FEVER

MEMOIR

Frederic Moorman came of a stock which, on both sides, had struck deep
roots in the soil of Devon. His father's family, which is believed to
have sprung ultimately from "either Cornwall or Scotland"--a
sufficiently wide choice, it may be thought--had for many generations
been settled in the county.(1) His mother's--her maiden name was Mary
Honywill--had for centuries held land at Widdicombe and the
neighbourhood, in the heart of Dartmoor. He was born on 8th September
1872, at Ashburton, where his father, the Rev. A. C. Moorman, was
Congregational minister; and for the first ten years of his life he was
brought up on the skirts of the moor to which his mother's family
belonged: drinking in from the very first that love of country sights
and sounds which clove to him through life, and laying the foundation of
that close knowledge of birds and flowers which was an endless source of
delight to him in after years, and which made him so welcome a companion
in a country walk with any friend who shared his love of such things but
who, ten to one, could make no pretence whatever to his knowledge.

In 1882, his father was appointed to the ministry of the Congregational
Church at Stonehouse, in Gloucestershire; and Frederic began his formal
schooling at the Wyclif Preparatory School in that place. The cou