It is generally admitted that your Northumbrian pre-eminently possesses the quality which the pious but worldly Scotchman was used to pray for, namely, ‘a guid conceit o’ hissel’.’ It is the more unfortunate, therefore, that of late years a considerable landslip should have taken place in the ground whereon his reputation rested. The local poet no longer hymns the ‘Champions o’ Tyneside,’ for Chambers and Renforth and other heroes have long since departed, leaving ‘no issue.’ Advancing civilizat

‘So you’re a county family?’ I echoed, and, though it may have been impolite, I could not forbear a smile, for never had I seen County Family so well disguised before. ‘Ay,’ replied Geordie Crozier, ‘I is,’ and forthwith proceeded to search in the pocket of his pit-knickerbockers for his ‘cutty.’ He had just come up to ‘bank’ from the ‘fore-shift,’ and was leaning on a waggon on the pit-heap, about to have a smoke before going home for a ‘wesh,’ dinner, and bed. ‘The last ov us,’ he continued, h

‘Ay, that’s the priest, the Catholic Priest,’ said Eph Milburn, after a white-haired, cassock-clad old gentleman, who had nodded slightly in reply to my companion’s greeting, had passed over the bridge and departed out of hearing. ‘He looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth now,’ continued Milburn, a long-legged, ruddy-bearded, hawk-eyed son of the moorlands, ‘and aal his time nowadays he spends in his garden over his bees or his flowers, or thumbing his Mass-book in his library; but it wa

We were standing on the fencing-room floor—Jake Carruthers and I—leaning our backs against the armoury, our foils still in our hands, slowly recovering our breath, after a rapier and dagger contest which had lasted a good half-hour. He was much less ‘winded’ than myself, for all his sixty-five years; and as I had positively worn myself out against his iron wrist I was delighted to gain a breathing space, and occupied the time in drawing out from my companion some old-time memories of the fencing

‘No, I never saw him, not the old Squire—“t’owd Squire,” as they called him; but grandfather, he was thick with him, bein’ the oldest farmer in the dale an’ pretty nigh a gentleman hisself in those days; he was master of the ’ounds, d’ye see, when they was a trencher-fed pack—that was before Squire Heron took them over to t’ new kennels at The Ford. ‘Well, I done some pretty fair jumps myself at one time an’ another in t’ ring or steeple-chasin’, but ’twas nowt to what he done, not even when a m

‘Tell me about that mysterious affair of “Tom the Scholar,” and Jack Jefferson’s sudden death, and how you ran him to ground when suspicion had given up the chase. If all I have heard is true, you ought to have been at Bow Street, high up in the Criminal Investigation Department. Tell me,’ I said again, ‘how you came to play the part of amateur detective.’ ‘There was nowt o’ the ammytoor aboot it,’ retorted ‘the Heckler’ with aggressive dignity, ‘it was a proper perfessional bit o’ wark, an’ the

‘Ay, that’s what ’tis,’ replied ‘the Heckler’ to my query, ‘it’s an “in memoriov’m”—Latin, ye ken, meanin’ in memory ov him. The words is alike, mevvies, but it’s Latin language, I’s warn’d, an’ I howked it oot upon that headstone myself wiv a clasp-knife.’ I knelt down upon the sandy dune and brushed aside the bents that nearly covered the squat gray stone with their long lashes, and eventually deciphered a straggling array of figures which for their illegibility would have enraptured an antiqu

‘Men are kittle cattle enough,’ replied ‘the Heckler’ oracularly, from his position of vantage on the top of a gate, to some question of mine concerning an indignation meeting held recently to protest against some matter about which no two people could give a like account; ‘but they’re nowt ti what womenfolk is. Ye can get roond most men easy enough if ye’ve a bit tax.’ ‘Tax?’ I queried aloud, somewhat mystified. ‘What tax? not rates an’ tax——’ ‘Gan on wi’ thoo—rates an’ taxes be d——!’ retorted

The ‘Caleb Jay’ [14] was not, as his nickname of itself might testify, popular in our pit village of Black Winning. His appearance was against him in the first instance, and he continued to be shy and reserved even after you might be said to have made his acquaintance. Reserve is unpopular in any society, but in the lower social grades, where life is of a freer and more hearty character than in the propriety-loving circles of the well-to-do, it may be said to be one of the ‘seven deadly sins.’ T

It so chanced that I was detained in Bridgeton on the day of the annual fair and hiring, and having two hours to wait for my train, I determined to pass the time away by noting the humours of the festival. Farmers’ wives, laden with ‘remnants’ and cheap bargains in the hardware line, were slowly surging through the throng, towards the various publics, in search of their ‘men’ and the ‘trap.’ Hinds, male and female, having now ‘bound their bargains’ with their masters, were coasting round the boo

‘Now, tell me,’ said I, as I led him up to the station, ‘why do you do it? You know you oughtn’t to, for it will kill you if you exert yourself like that.’ ‘Ay, an’ that’s why,’ replied he, ‘for I ken I’m dyin’; I went an’ axed a doctor a while back, iv Oldcastle, an’ he says, “I’ll gie ye a year ti live at the ootside,” says he.’ ‘Then, why do it?’ I urged. ‘Do you love it so, or is it for the sake of the money?’ ‘Ay,’ he replied, gasping a little, as we mounted the slope to the station, ‘that’

Geordie Armstrong, after a somewhat stormy past, had become a steady hewer, and a local preacher of some repute. Never a Sunday but he was ‘planned’ to speak at this or that village, and frequently, as he found opportunity, would ‘pit in a bit overtime’ at a ‘class-meeting’ or ‘knife-an’-fork tea,’ when the ‘asking a blessing’ or a returning of thanks might furnish occasion for a ‘bit extemporizin’.’ He was in receipt of excellent wages down the pit; his wordly goods comprised, as he often procl

The custom of ‘riding the stang’ is now obsolete, so that the date of this story must be put back a number of years, though Mr. Brockett, [19] writing in his glossary of Northumbrian words, in the early part of this century, says, ‘I have myself been witness to processions of this kind. Offenders of this description are mounted a-straddle on a long pole, or stang, supported upon the shoulders of their companions. On this painful and fickle seat they are borne about the neighbourhood backwards, a

Quaker John was one of the best known figures in the small seaport town of Old Quay. Short of stature, heavy of tread, always quietly attired in a black suit, which varied not in cut from year to year; indeed, the same suit had once been known to do duty for three years together, till his wife one day, so ’twas said, handed them over to the chimney-sweep in mistaken identity. You might have told that he was of Puritan descent some yards away, but the ‘letter of the law’ in him had been softened

The Vale of the Frolic in the far west of Northumberland had always been a favourite retreat of mine. As I trudged the London pavements in the dog-days before the Law Courts rose, my heart panted for the green hills and the sweet silences of remotest Frolicdale. The chiefest charm of the vale perhaps for me lay in the fact that it was a track untrodden by the tourist, resembling the maid of the waters of Dove in this—that it was one which, as yet, there were ‘few to know, and very few to love.’

Ransacking Jake’s treasury one afternoon, I made an unexpected find—no less than a Spanish doubloon hidden away in an old sporran of a great-uncle of his. The history of the fox-marked rapier, of the blood-stained tress of hair found at Cawnpore, and of the yellow robe of the Brahmin, I knew already; but the heavy Spanish coin suggested something of a different order. ‘Come,’ said I, holding it up so as to attract his attention, ‘tell me the tale connected with this—something to do with a pirate