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Topic: Shy Tom - Poem in Yorkshire Dialect (Read 749 times)
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Pels.
RootsChat Marquessate
 Online
Posts: 4464
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Your mum remembered all that .. didn't she do well! 
It's brilliant .. thankyou very much! 
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Binkie
RootsChat Extra
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Posts: 56
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Here is the saddest poem that Grandma recited to us and although she no longer had the book, she could still remember it into her 80s. It will have to be in two instalments for this website
The Road to Heaven
A Story of Waterloo Bridge
By George R Sims from “Lifeboat” & other poems
How is the boy this morning?
Why do you shake your head?
Ah! I can see what’s happened
There’s a screen drawn round the bed
So poor little Mike is sleeping
The last long sleep of all
I’m sorry, but who can wonder
After that dreadful fall
Let me look at him, Doctor
Poor little London waif!
His frail barque’s out of the tempest
And lies in God’s harbour safe
It’s better he died in the ward here
Better a thousand times
Than have wandered back to the alley
With its squalor and nameless crimes
Too young for the slum to sully
He’s gone to the wonder land
To look on the thousand marvels
That he scarce could understand
Poor little baby outcast
Poor little waif of sin
He has gone, and the pitying angels
Have carried the cripple in
Didn’t you know his story?
Ah1 You weren’t here I believe
When they brought the poor little fellow
To the hospital, Christmas Eve
It was I who came here with him
It was I who saw him go
Over the bridge that evening
Into the Thames below
‘Twas a raw, cold air, that evening
A biting Christmas frost
I was looking about for a collie
A favourite dog I’d lost
Some ragged boys, they told me
Had been seen with one that night
In one of the bridge’s recesses
So I hunted left and right
You know the stone recesses
With the long broad bench of stone
To many a weary outcast
As welcome as monarch’s throne
On the fiercest night you may see them
As crouched in the dark they lie
Like the hunted vermin striving
To hide from the hounds in cry
The seats that night were empty
For the morrow was Christmas Day
And even the outcast loafers
Seemed to have slunk away
They had found a warmer shelter
Some casual ward, maybe
They’d do one morning’s labour
For the sake of the meat and tea
I fancied the seats were empty
But as I passed along
Out of the darkness floated
The words of a Christmas song
Sung in a childish treble
‘Twas a boy’s voice, harsh with cold
Quavering out the anthem
Of angels and harps of gold
I stood where the shadows hid me
And peered about until
I could see two ragged urchins
Blue with the icy chill
Cuddling close together
Crouched on a big stone seat
Two little homeless Arabs
Waifs of the London street
One was singing the carol
When the other with big round eyes,
It was Mike – looked up in wonder
And said “Jack, when we dies
Is that the place we go to
That place where yer dressed in white
And has golding harps to play on
And it’s warm, and jolly, and bright?
Is that what they means by ‘eaven
As the misshun coves talk about
Where the children’s always happy
And nobody kicks them out?”
Jack nodded his head assenting
And then I listened and heard
The talk of the little Arabs
Listened to every word
Jack was a Sunday scholar
So I gathered from what he said
But he sang in the road for a living
His father and mother were dead
And he had a drunken granny
Who turned him into the street
She drank what he earned, and often
He hadn’t a crust to eat
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Bowman - Angus
Chalmers - Lanarkshire & Stirlingshire
Cheakley - Kent & Westmorland
Miller - Orkney
Moorhouse - Yorkshire (Airton,Bradley & Skipton)
Morgan - Herefordshre
Smith - Yorkshire (Lothersdale)
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Binkie
RootsChat Extra
Offline
Posts: 56
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Road to Heaven Part 2
He told little Mike of heaven
In his rough untutored way
He made it a land of glory
Where the children play all day
And Mike, he shivered and listened
And told his tale to his friend
How he was starved and beaten
‘Twas a tale one’s heart to rend
He’d a drunken father and mother
Who sent him out to beg
Though he’d just got over the fever
And was lame with a withered leg
He told how he daren’t crawl homeward
Because he had begged in vain
And his parents’ brutal fury
Haunted his baby brain
“I wish I could go to ‘eaven”
He cried as he shook with fright
“If I thought they’d only take me
Why I’d go this very night
Which is the way to 'eaven?
How d’ye get there, Jack?”
Jack climbed on the bridge’s coping
And looked at the water black
“That there’s one road to ‘eaven”
He said, as he pointed down
To where the cold Thames water
Surged muddy, and thick, and brown
“If we was to fall in there, Mike
We’d be dead and right through there
Is the place where it’s always sunshine
And the angels has crowns to wear”
Mike rose and looked at the water
He peered in the big, broad stream
Perhaps with a childish notion
He might catch the golden gleam
Of the far-off land of glory
He leaned right over and cried
“If there are the gates of ‘eaven
How I’d like to be inside!”
He’d stood but a moment looking
How it happened I cannot tell
When he seemed to lose his balance
Gave a short sharp cry and fell
Fell over the narrow coping
And I heard his poor head strike
With a thud on the stone work under
Then splash in the Thames went Mike
We brought him here that evening
For help I had managed to shout
A boat put off from the landing
And they dragged his body out
His forehead was cut and bleeding
But a vestige of life we found
When they brought him here he was senseless
But slowly the child came round
I came here Christmas morning
The ward was bright and gay
With mistletoe, green and holly
In honour of Christmas Day
And the patients had clean white garments
And a few in the room out there
Had joined in a Christmas service
They were singing a Christmas air
They were singing a Christmas carol
When Mike from his stupor awoke
And dim on his wandering senses
The strange surroundings broke
Half dreamily he remembered
The tale he had heard from Jack
The song and the white-robed angels
The warm, bright heaven came back
“I’m in ‘eaven” he whispered faintly
“Yes Jack must have told me true”
And as he looked about him
Came the kind old surgeon thro’
Mike gazed at his face for a moment
Put his hand on his fevered head
Then to the kind old doctor
“Please are you God?” he said
Poor little Mike, ‘twas heaven
This hospital ward to him
A heaven of warmth and comfort
Till the flickering lamp grew dim
And he lay like a tired baby
In a dreamless gentle rest
And now he is safe for ever
Where such as he are best
This is the day of scoffers
But who shall say, that night
When Mike asked the road to heaven
That Jack didn’t tell him right?
‘Twas the children’s Jesus pointed
The way to the Kingdom come
For the poor little tired Arab
The waif of a London slum
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Bowman - Angus
Chalmers - Lanarkshire & Stirlingshire
Cheakley - Kent & Westmorland
Miller - Orkney
Moorhouse - Yorkshire (Airton,Bradley & Skipton)
Morgan - Herefordshre
Smith - Yorkshire (Lothersdale)
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kesannah
RootsChat Senior
Offline
Posts: 484
Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
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I enjoyed that poem and understood it too even though I am a Cockney not from Yorkshire.
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Hide/Hyde Kent,Sussex,West Ham
Beale/Burgess Sussex
Reed West Ham,East Ham London
Banks Seaford,Rottingdean Sussex
Koller Poplar London,Como Italy.
Checkley Northamptonshire.
Bentley Northamptonshire.West Ham,Poplar
Ridley Gatehead Durham Northumberland.
Poplar.Galt, Ontario, Canada
Corbyn Poplar,West Ham.Suffolk
Merritt Norwich.West ham
Watson Norwich,West Ham
Corbyn Fressingield Suffolk
Ridley.Galt Ontario
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kesannah
RootsChat Senior
Offline
Posts: 484
Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
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I enjoyed the second poem too, but needed a hankybefore I could finish reading it.
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Logged
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Hide/Hyde Kent,Sussex,West Ham
Beale/Burgess Sussex
Reed West Ham,East Ham London
Banks Seaford,Rottingdean Sussex
Koller Poplar London,Como Italy.
Checkley Northamptonshire.
Bentley Northamptonshire.West Ham,Poplar
Ridley Gatehead Durham Northumberland.
Poplar.Galt, Ontario, Canada
Corbyn Poplar,West Ham.Suffolk
Merritt Norwich.West ham
Watson Norwich,West Ham
Corbyn Fressingield Suffolk
Ridley.Galt Ontario
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Pages: 1 [2]
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