Wesleyballs or wesselbobs

[Ruskie]

I have added that very handy looking Dialect Dictionary to my Favourites. Thanks Jen.

The link I gave above was only to Volume 6 of the Dialect Dictionary, words starting T - Z

This should take you to the complete collection. I've found it very useful particularly for words occurring in old farming inventories  https://www.rootschat.com/links/01q5n/ 

You can search within each volume, using the 'search inside' box (NOT the general 'search' box top right)

Thanks Jen, it wasn’t until I added it to my favourites, then looked more closely that I noticed it didn’t seem to ‘work’  .... I thought I must have been doing something wrong. Thanks again.

[Mowsehowse]

Thank you Jen.

[Sunlaws]

This afternoon I had an email from a distant cousin who, speaking of her grandparents, said,
" And they never had a Christmas tree, always a wessill-bob  (wassail - very primitive.   They were Berry Brow poor.   Hoops with greenery on.)"

So the term was definitely used in the Holme Valley.

Regards,
Lesley

[bykerlads]

Interesting that wessill-bobs were known in Berry Brow - at the Huddersfield end of the Holme Valley.
Any cases of wessil bobs further up the valley eg Holmfirth?
Just in passing and piggybacking on the local vocab West Yorks theme: anyone know what a "spetch" is?
I think I may have floated this before and have only ever met one person outside my dad's Hade Edge family who called an elastoplast a spetch.

[JenB]

Just in passing and piggybacking on the local vocab West Yorks theme: anyone know what a "spetch" is?
I think I may have floated this before and have only ever met one person outside my dad's Hade Edge family who called an elastoplast a spetch.

You'll find several nice definitions in the Dialect Dictionary I linked to in reply #17   

[Sunlaws]

When I was growing up (in Almondbury/Magdale, but of Berry Brow stock) there would be an offer to put some spetch, not a spetch, on an injured knee , perhaps because elastoplast came in a roll, not as individual plasters?

Lesley

[bykerlads]

Good to find another spetch user.
And the stuff from a roll still is better than the individual plasters.

JenB, the ref to dialect dictionary sounds really interesting but I can't seem to use it. Any tips on how to get to the page with 'spetch' on it? Thanks in advance.

[arthurk]

JenB, the ref to dialect dictionary sounds really interesting but I can't seem to use it. Any tips on how to get to the page with 'spetch' on it? Thanks in advance.

It's a 6-volume work, and JenB's link takes you to the page showing all of them - though possibly not in the right order. Click on the one you want, and you can search or browse the contents.

Wessil-bobs also appear in Walter E Haigh's "A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District" (1928):

https://huddersfield.exposed/wiki/A_New_Glossary_of_the_Dialect_of_the_Huddersfield_District_(1928)_by_Walter_E._Haigh#page/n177/mode/2up

(Spetch is also in there, as spech.)

[bykerlads]

Arthurk, thanks for guiding me to the Hudds Glossary.
What a treat!
Just checked that it includes some of my favourites:
Spech
Mank
Throng
Lake/lek which as well as referring to playing games, is used to mean laid-off from work, unemployed.