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Lancashire Songs

Chapter 8: TICKLE TIMES.
By Edwin Waugh
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Poetry

About This Book

A collection of short songs and ballads written in a regional northern dialect that captures everyday rural and working-class life through domestic scenes, courtship, local characters, celebrations, and moments of hardship. The verse mixes humor and sentiment, employing conversational rhythms, refrains, and vivid local idiom to render communal ties, seasonal chores, and small pleasures. Arranged as brief lyric pieces, the poems alternate playful storytelling, moral reflection, and musical choruses that evoke the sounds and social routines of village life.

TICKLE TIMES.

Here’s Robin, he looks very gloomy; An’ Jamie keeps starin’ at th’ greawnd; An’ thinkin’ o’th table at’s empty, An’ th’ little things yammerin’ reawnd; It’s true, that it’s dark just afore us,— But, keep your hearts eawt o’ your shoon,— Though clouds may be thickenin’ o’er us, There’s lots o’ blue sky up aboon!
But, when a mon’s honestly willin’ To wortch, an’ it connot be had; And clemmin’ for want ov a shillin’,— No wonder ’at he should be sad; It troubles his heart to keep seein’, His little brids feedin’ o’th air; An’ it feels very hard to be deein’, An’ never a mortal to care.
But life’s sich a quare bit o’ travel,— A marlock wi’ sun an’ wi’ shade,— An’ then, on a bowster o’ gravel, They lay’n us i’ bed wi’ a spade; It’s no use a peawtin’ an’ fratchin’— As th’ whirligig’s twirlin’ areawnd, Have at it again; an’ keep scratchin’ As lung as your yed’s aboon greawnd.
Iv one could but grope i’th inside on’t, There’s trouble i’ every heart; An’ thoose that’n th’ biggest o’th pride on’t, Oft leeten o’th keenest o’th’ smart. Whatever may chance to come to us, Let’s may th’ best we con ov e’r share,— For there’s mony a fine suit o’ clooas That covers a terrible care.
There’s danger i’ every station,— I’th’ palace as mich as i’th cot; There’s hanker i’ every condition, An’ canker i’ every lot; There’s folk that are weary o’ livin’, That never fear’t hunger nor cowd; An’ there’s mony a miserly nowmun At’s deed ov a surfeit o’ gowd.
One feels, neaw at times are so nippin’, A mon’s at a troublesome schoo’, That slaves like a horse for a livin’, An’ flings it away like a foo; But, as pleasur’s sometimes a misfortin’, An’ trouble sometimes a good thing,— Though we livin’ o’th’ floor same as layrocks, We’n go up, like layrocks, to sing!