Countryman's Diary: Learning at the master's knee

In addition to an appreciation of the work of my illustrious predecessor, Maj Jack Fairfax-Blakeborough, my topics included a piece about new year prognostications, the publication of almanacs, brideways and an item about Yorkshire dialect - the use of the word kytle for a grey coloured working jacket, along with flipe, gamashes, haps and sark.

That first Countryman's Diary was headed by a black-and-white photograph of a splendid oak tree on the roadside near Crakehall, and on the same page, the late Bill Cowley also presented his appreciation of the life and work of Maj Fairfax-Blakeborough.

I had known Maj Blakeborough, as my family called him, for many years, and we both attended the same little Catholic church at Lealholm in Yorkshire's Eskdale.

The mass was then in Latin, albeit with an English translation in the missal, but as a small child it was often the case that I got lost in the text.

Maj Blakeborough would lean across from the pew in front, take my missal and point me to the correct place. When I passed my scholarship to Whitby grammar school, he presented me with one of his Lizzie Leckonby books, duly autographed.

It is fair to say that his encouragement of my juvenile reading did a lot to set me on the road to becoming an author and I could always seek his help and advice whenever needed.

I recall, in 1960, broadcasting in the dialect of the North Riding of Yorkshire. The programme was The Northcountryman, broadcast from the BBC North Region studios in Leeds (long before the modern local radio system) and afterwards I was asked to talk to the women of Scruton WI about dialect - it seems their president had heard my broadcast.

Never having given a talk and being a somewhat shy 24-year-old, I had no idea how or what to present to the audience, and so I asked Maj Fairfax-Blakeborough for his advice.

He suggested I give an outline of the history of our dialect, laced with funny stories and odd words, and then involve the women by asking if they could tell me the meanings of a fist of words presented to them.

I culled a long list from my dialect dictionaries, chiefly words associated with the home and domestic matters, and off I went. The date was January 4, 1961, more than 40 years ago. From my point of view, that became a wonderful example of audience participation!

That was the first of hundreds of similar talks I delivered to other WIs and elsewhere, always in the same format, and it was perfect proof of the soundness of the major's advice.

Indeed, for a period of seven years much later, I earned a living by lecturing, but this time on criminal law and police procedure! Even though it is quarter of a century since Maj Fairfax-Blakeborough died, his memory lives on, especially in the North York moors.

It was another moorland author, Harry Mead, who reminded me of my own 25th anniversary. I had overlooked the matter but Harry features Maj Fairfax-Blakeborough in his new book, A Prospect of the North York Moors, selections of which have already been featured in these pages.

It was the death of the major, on New Year's Day, 1976, which reminded Harry of the time I took over that famous column on the Saturday following the major's final article on January 3 - while knowing nothing of horse racing!

Although A Prospect of the North York Moors has been mentioned in these pages, I do believe that Harry Mead is the most dependable and accurate of all the North Yorks moorland authors.

The depth of his research is remarkable in the extreme and he does not rely on secondary sources, preferring to visit locations, to talk to local people, to unearth ancient records - and to check everything before committing himself to print.

I had no idea, for example, that the man who first depicted the structure of a snowflake once lived at Cropton, or that the monks of Rievaulx Abbey built the first industrial waterways, or that there was a curious reason for John Wesley's absorbing interest in the fallen rockface of Whitestonecliff, near Sutton Bank.

And was the very first time a church bell tolled at a funeral service an event which occurred in the North York moors?

There are stories of people and places, of standing stones and strange events along with thought-provoking pieces about the future of the moors and the role of those famous moorland sheep. It's all in Harry Mead's book.

Graceful glider

This morning's brisk walk in the chill of winter was enlivened by the sudden appearance of a bird of prey.

It rose from behind a tall hawthorn hedge as I passed, vanished momentarily behind a screen of leafless trees and then glided over my head to soar over the land at the other side of the lane.

It was remarkable due to its gliding flight with only the tips of its outstretched wings quivering; its tail was not forked nor was it spread wide, but it was carried behind the bird like a long blunt-ended blade of a cricket bat.

As it had risen from the hedge, I had caught the merest glimpse of its colouring and recall a lovely chestnut brown back - but that's all I saw. Once in the sky, it was a silhouette against the morning sunshine and so I could not distinguish any more of its colours, but a passing rook made me realise that this was a large bird. It was not a sparrow hawk or a kestrel, but something much bigger.

My conclusion was that I had seen a female hen harrier. I saw one a few years ago on the moors above Rosedale, but this was in a less remote region.

The female has a pleasant brown back and is larger than her male companion, and she does favour heathery places both for nesting and hunting. She does have the habit of gliding on outstretched wings with the tips quivering from time to time, and her tail is blunt and closed, as was the bird I witnessed.

The male is a beautiful silver grey with black wing tips, and from beneath he can appear to be pure white, with the exception of those wings tips. I have heard the male described as a silver hawk, a fitting description when the sun glints from his plumage.

Much rarer is Montagu's harrier which is a summer visitor to these islands, leaving our shores in September and so that was not my bird. I must admit I did wonder if I had seen a red kite, but my bird was not quite so large.

It was a hen harrier I am sure, a bird once considerably rare due to persecution for its attacks on domestic poultry, but now increasing in numbers thanks to successful conservation measures.

Plodging on

The rains and snows of recent weeks led to a local man referring to our back roads as sluthery. It's a lovely descriptive word which implies something rather slimy and dirty, with more than a hint of slipperiness, hence slutherment and sluther.

It ranks with plothery as a wonderfully apt description of muddy paths, gardens and lanes - with plother or even plotherment being the noun to suggest deep muck or mud.

In similar terms, I've come across ploshy or plodge, these suggesting something rather more wet than mere plother or sluther.

As a child, I can remember plodging or even splodging though water in my wellies, although there is an old word pload which aware the same thing. I can't remember ploading - but I do recall ploating, a very similar word which indicated something quite different - that was the removal of feathers from a bird; plucking, in other words.

My father always ploated the Christmas goose or turkey, for example, and I think the word was sometimes used to indicate the removal of a sheep's fleece.