Songs of the Pennine Hills (1938)
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APPRECIATIONS • "An almost unschooled mill worker who is careless of popularity or fame has been able to write poetry that has thrilled thousands of homely folk. He is a poet of the open air. His songs are of the moors and the wind in the heather. In his prose sketches he writes of his wanderings in rain and shine on the wind,swept Pennines.,, W.R. Scott in" John o' London's Weekly." '' Ammon Wrigley's verse and prose have added a grace to the chann of the moor land scenery they paint, and to the appeal of beautiful bygone things killed by economic change." R.H. Case in "Lancashire in Prose and Verse.'' H If he never writes another line he will leave a legacy of simple prose and verse which is vital with his native wind swept moors." "Daily IY!ail." To J. A. S. Wishing him Happiness AMl\iON VVRIGLEY As a Prehistoric Man. From a water colour by the late Sam Fitton, Hl22. SONGS OF THE PENNINE HILLS A BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR AMMON WRIGLEY GEO. WHITTAKER & SONS PUBLISHERS ST ALYBRIDG E 1:938 CONTENTS Page.. Introduction Vil Apology 15 To the Reader 16 My Father and Mother 18 On a Yorkshi,re Moor 20 Sa ddleworth Church 22 The P,ennines 27 A Hunting Mom 28 The West \Vind in Spring 29 A Merry Thrush 31 Fri-ezlanci Ale 32 O'·er the Hills and Far Away 35 In " Auld Lang Syne '' 37 BilFs o' Jack's 39 April on the Mooredge 41 The Song of a Tramp 43 The Call of the Country 44 The Scouthe3!d Road 46 The Songthrush near a Town 49 To a Moorland Lass 51 To a Southe-rn Friend 52 The Hill Country - 53 The Royal Tiger 'Inn 55 The Watermill 56 The Green Road 60 A Flint Arrow-head 62 Grouse Driving on Bill's o' Jack's Moors 64 Town and Country 66 The Twelfth of August 68 Roving o'er a Moorland 69 The Ruined Farmstead 70 Page A Moorland Grave :Mound 72 Flowers in an Oldham Alehouse 75 Tunstead 77 A Driving Sho,t in a Driving Wind 78 A :Moorland Lad in Town 79 The Fie1ds of Lurden Sr The Fairy Etcher 83 The Brown I-Ia:re of Whitebrook Head 85 The Hills of Longdendale 87 The Homestead 88 The Men of the " Church:si:de '' 92 A Good Day 98 "Th' Heaunds. are eaut acren"b 100 The Hill of S1eep IOI The Song Thrush 102 Parting 107 The Heather Cock 108 The Fool 108 Youth and Age 109 By Ladhill Bridge III On Doldrum Hill in June 114 A Moorland Inn II~.) The Road to Ripponden 118 The Song of the " Lightside '' Valley 120 The "Shelf'' Road I22 The vVind of the Hills 124 A Summer's Night on a Moor 125 A Hunting Day 126 Spring in the North Country 129 \Ve'll go again a-Roaming 130 All I Ask IJI In SaddLeworth 132 The· War :Memorial 134 Hearing the Cuckoo 135 A Greeting • .. • 136 Page A Parson's Pitchers 138 My \Vay 141 Exit 14r \Vhitebrook Head 142 An Old North Riding Road 143 Castleshaw and the Roman Fort 144 In vVimberry Time 148 A Trout Stream 148 Saddl,eworthshire 149 I Love the Roaid 150 A December Night 150 August Days 150 Come Out, the Spring 1s Roaming I"".) I A Rare Old Inn 152 The Hounds are Out at Lingards 1 53 A Song of Parting 154 The ThrosHe's Lament 155 A Doomed Oak 157 An Old Friarmere Hunting Day 159 List of Subscribers 163 ILLUSTRATIONS Page Ammon \Vrigley Face Title Pennine Moors March Hill 16 A Pennine Clough Marsden Moors 32 A Pennine Stream Saddleworth Moors 64 A Pennine Ham1et Stcmebreaks 80 A Pennine Village Dobcross 96 A Pennine Farm " North Britain '' 128 Fragment of Roman Pottery Castlesha w 147 A Parson's Pitchers Friarmere 140 INTRODUCTION I BEGAN to write rhymes when I was about eight years of age. We were then living at Millcroft, a lovely hamlet. of trees and gardens in the Castleshaw valley. A field's breadth below there is a brook, that in my young days was famous for its trout, but now, it flows through the poor bare meadowlands, with hardly anything in its waters, bigger than a stickleback. How well I remember my first sight of that valley. It must have been in early June, for there were white trees the first I had ever seen, and my mother said it was hawthorn blossom. How I clung to her with fear, when we reached the weir at the top of Hull mill dam. It is close to the path and flood waters were roaring and plunging into the deep pool below. I must have thought that monsters were fighting under the heaving swirling masses of foam. I began to work as a halftime piecer for my father who was a spinner at a nearby mill and there were times when we knew dire poverty. That was when work was so bad, that little could he earned. Sometimes, when he had worked a whole week and paid the wages of his piecers, he had about two shillings left for himself. Then I :sat at the table with my brother to porridge, morning, noon and night, every day in the week. It is a healthy food, but have it set befon~ you every meal time, from Monday morning till Saturday night, and you will begin to hate the very sight of it. On dark Friday nights I always went with my mother down the dangerous brookside path to a grocer's shop in the village. Many times we stood for an hour on fhe bare flag stones at the far end of the shop till we were stiff with cold. My mother kept missing her turn to be served. She would not go to the counter if there were another customer standing by YH it for she had not enough money to pay for all we required. \Ve ran pounds in debt but every penny was paid off when better days came. One of the blackest memories of my early years is of a Christmas time. About the middle of December there came the roughest storm of the year, with a high wind, and for weeks the lanes werie full of snow, level with the wall tops. Huge drifts were piled over the hedges and a,,gainst the walls and doors of the houses. Work had been very bad at the mill for over a month and the wolf was at our door as people say when they are poverty stricken. We had no paraffin oil for our lamp and barely a barrowful of coal. If a neighbour woman had come into our house on that Christmas eve, she would have seen a father, mother and two little lads sitting in silence and gloom as they watched a few red cinders die down in the grate. We knew that in the neighbour houses there were great warm fires, merry making, caroJ singing and happy children playing with their new toys. We knew too that there were Christmas puddings, cakes and many kinds of seasonable dainties on the tables. Our dinner on that freezing Christmas day was a plate of porridge and a spoonful of treacle. No one outside our house knew how poor we were at that time. We went through it in silence. When trade was fairly good, the spinning was better, and sometimes, my father earned a pound a week. My mother was a piecer and .our three wages amounted to about thirty shillings. We were then living in clover and had a cup of tea at one meal every day. When my mother had brewed the home ale, my father sat at night in his great armchair, and sang old songs that I never hear to-day. His fine tenor voice often made our house ring to its ridge stones. There were three sets of carding machines and three self-acting mu1es at the mill and I think the carder had about a pound a week standing wage but he had three mens' VIII work to do every day, for he was the firebeater and the engine driver. He had to rise early every morning and get the steam up, start the ·engine and keep it running all day. There were times when he was busy in the cardroom that he forgot all about the boiler fire till it was nearly out. Then he had to strip to the shirt and sweat till he had got the steam up again. There was a little waterwheel but without the ,engine it could scarcely turn the machines. There were no powerlooms at the mill. All the shawls were woven in the hillside cottages and it was common to see a bed and a loom in the same chamber. Before my father became a spinner he had a loom in his cottage and my mother a fifty spindled jenny. The master where we worked often said that no millworker was worth more than a pound a week, but there were other mills where the masters were kindly men, paid fair wages and treated their workpeople well. No matter how badly off we might he, I kept on writing verses at night on the only paper we had in the house. My mother's groceries had been wrapped in it and she smoothed it out with her clothes iron.