Thoughts on cousin Tom’s poems




My father’s uncle Tom Twisleton (1845-1917) was born a century before me. At the age of 22 he achieved lasting fame through publishing his poems in Craven dialect read to this day. ‘Lang Tom fra Winskill Rock’ penned his thoughts many a night under his lamp to friends from his settled existence ‘upon this rough hill-side, year after year, content…to mind the kye (cows) an’ sheep’. His first book was entitled ‘Splinters struck off Winskill Rock’, the promontory above Langcliffe from where his movements are restricted by his mother’s fret, ‘Now mind, an’ don’t stop lang, for whaa’s to milk au t’ beeas.’ This discipline of farming frames a contemplative life which overflows in his poems. Winskill is a platform for contemplation ‘to the north just turn yersel, whar Penyghent and Fountains Fell cock up their crests on high’. Tom describes in poems to friends how his writing is intermittent so that in the lambing season ‘hevin’ miss’d a deal o’ sleep, wi’ sittin’ up an’ watchin’ t’ sheep… my heead for thowt was just as fit as if ‘t were med o’ wood’.

Tom’s early life was defined by the family farm which was their livelihood. The last poem in his collection tellingly speaks of material poverty as worse even than ‘to be without wit or to hev a cross wife’ since ‘the chap without brass… is as helpless in t’ world as a cat without claws’. Making brass is about survival and Tom devotes some of his poems to the struggles he was involved in such as the cattle plague. ‘For now-a-days, whare’er ye gang, it’s still the saam dark, mournful sang – the plague, the rinderpest. I’m glad to say, at Winskill here, we fra the plague hev yet kept clear’. As shepherd he also struggles. A graphic poem describes how on the night of 3rd January 1865 ‘wi’ fleece au torn, I spied a sheep, an’ mony a bite did bleed: then t’ truth into my mind did creep, - ‘Them dogs hez done this deed’. Tom describes how he shoots two dogs: ‘I think I med a good neet’s wark, an’ ye’ll na doubt think t’ saam: I settled yan his ugly bark, an’ t’ other’s varra laam’. Prudence is a major theme in Tom’s writings as, for example, in his record of how during the merriment at a Christmas party the older women talk of the price of cotton and ‘t’owd men sit round wi’ pipe an’ glass, in eearnest conversation; on t’ ways an’ meeans’ o’ saavin’ brass, an’ t’ rules an’ t’ laws o’ t’ nation’.

‘Lang Tom fra’ Winskill Rock’ lived a century before me but his warmth and humour are kept alive in his poems. We know he was tall from a family picture and the nickname he gave himself. Like his father Frank, 7’6” and nicknamed ‘Craven Giant’, he had impressive stature but compensated in humility for physical aloofness. 'When a chap can't beear fra others lips his faults to hear, it shows his want of sense' he writes and his poems poke at self-importance.  You can’t but chuckle 150 years on at the age old scenes he depicts: a lad running to escape detection who jumps over a wall into a trough, the wrath of a wife at her husband’s return from drinking so late his dinner gets burned, the hypocrisy of worshippers who ‘bent down as if in prayer, ower t’ top o’ t’ pew, wi’ careless stare, do nowt but squint an’ sken’. Tom has the humility of Burns who said ‘I am no Poet in a sense’. Maybe there’s a streak of vanity in a picture of him cloaked like Burns but like Burns his descriptive writing goes right out of himself to what he sees before him and engaging his readers with that observation in  heart and soul. This is especially the case in my father’s favourite poem, Uncle Tom’s humorous picture of ‘Lile Bobby’ the infant who ‘makes girt dubs on t' floor’ and yet in the poet’s words remains ‘that laughin' lad sa fat and funny, that can't be bowt wi' all t' queen's money’. 

Humour is Tom’s weapon for moralising. He describes a smoker as ‘just like a chimley walking’ and writes of lads who ‘imitate their dads; for, ere they’re weel turned ten, if they can souk a black clay stick, without yance turnin’ pale or sick, they think it maks ‘em men.’ They’d be better ‘to buy a toffee stick’! Like his father, Tom is strong campaigner on temperance in regard to alcohol. He paints a vivid picture of a drunken woman seen at Settle market. He has a powerful twenty verse poetic ‘address to strong drink’ cataloguing the foul consequences of alcoholism which starts ‘Thou chosen agent of Owd Nick’s!’ We read here of the mean attire of the drunkard’s wife, his shoeless children and his being ‘seduced fra virtue’s track to ruin an’ despair’. Tom’s tale of the conversion from drink of Johnny Bland, the blacksmith was composed for, and recited at Settle Temperance Festival, Christmas 1865. The blacksmith ‘wi’ au his power and might bow'd befoor a barrel’. The police fear him let alone his ‘saarly abused’ wife and his children ‘sweear, an’ brawl, an’ feight’ following his example. Then comes ‘a temperance man’ who explains how strong drink ‘ruins health, robs the purse and fills your home with sadness’. The blacksmith sees the light: ‘Now Johnny’s ceased to be a fool, an’ left off gin an’ wisky; his barns like others gang to school, an’ naan maar fair an’ frisky.’ The moral is ‘ye’ll find ye’ll nivver rue the day ye com to sign teetotal’.

Tom has all the directness of a Yorkshireman. Someone criticises his and brother Henry’s poems in the local Craven Herald paper and courts this riposte: ‘Oh! Who is this critic, he signs not his name, who’s so anxious to put other people to shame; an’ who owt that offends he so fiercely assails wi’ Latin quotations an’ words wi’ long tails?’ No long-tailed words, let alone Latin, in Tom Twisleton’s poems! It his gift to be simple and direct about things as in this succinct thought on gold: ‘It is mighty for good, if used wisely and well, but when it’s abused ‘tis and agent of hell’. Or this advice to young ladies: ‘if ivver a fellow that’s fond of his beer, comes to whisper a meltin’ love-taal i’ yer ear…just bid him begone, an ne’er come again, unless from strang drink he’ll consent to abstain’. His direct style comes into its own in the description he gives of young John Owen’s death, killed by the fall of a crane on the Settle and Carlisle Railway, February 18th 1873. ‘In a breath, in an instant, it falls down the rock, and the workman are scatter’d below, but all, except one, have escaped from the shock; he, alone, hath received the fell blow’. Tom is direct about how God ‘arrangest all things for our good’ showing the simple optimism of his faith. ‘Then dry up the tear, and let sorrowing cease, when the body is laid ‘neath the sod; for, rejoicing above at its early release, the spirit is present with God’.

Cousin Tom was married twice, each of them a Mary, because he outlived his first wife. Most of his poems precede his marriages but, even if they contain pictures of unhappy marriages, they have plentiful reference to romantic love.  He writes to his friend Joe Steel that ‘when my day’s wark I hev done, I like to ramble wi' my gun, or cooart some bonny lass' and to another friend of how 'by day I'll mind my work, an' kiss my lass when it grows dark, which is my girtest pleasure. It is hard to read his poems with images of courtship about young people picnicking, holding a Christmas party or going to the fair as less than autobiographical. In a poem to his friend Billy he makes a passionate affirmation of marriage telling how ‘when dark troubles vex the mind, what can cast ivvry cloud behind, like woman’s cheerful smile!’ If you find you can’t live without that, ‘if that’s the caase, then fix the lock; befoor the priest in his white smock, yer wedding vows declare!’ Better that than the cheerless life he depicts in his poem ‘The Bachelor’. ‘Mark weel the lone man’s dreary lot, his cheerless situation. Thaar meeat, hauf-cook’d i’ mucky pan, he swallows for subsistence: it can’t be said ‘Here lives a man!’ but yan drags out existence’. Elsewhere Tom advises ‘young chaps, ye ‘at think about takkin’ a wife…don’t gang huntin’ about efter beauty or brass, but fix on a modest an’ sensible lass’. 

In Tom Twisleton’s poems we meet a farmer, contemplative, humourist, romantic and one who tells and deals with things as they are.  'I travel life's uneven track, wi' mind med up content to tak, just what faus to my lot'.  His humanity, faith and insight carry down to us 150 years on.                   

John Twisleton (originally Dec 2014)

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