‘Get Up!’
Joseph Skipsey’s short poem evokes the last goodbye a Northumberland miner made each morning.
1886
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Joseph Skipsey’s short poem evokes the last goodbye a Northumberland miner made each morning.
1886
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Northumberland miner Joseph Skipsey (1832-1903) won praise for his poetry from such famous names as Oscar Wilde and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He could evoke in a few lines the harsh life of a northern collier, and the dangers and tragedies he faced every day.
‘Get Up!’
‘Get up!’ the caller calls, ‘Get up!’
And in the dead of night,
To win the bairns their bite and sup,
I rise a weary wight.
My flannel dudden donn’d, thrice o’er
My birds are kiss’d, and then
I with a whistle shut the door
I may not ope again.*
Skipsey’s poem is a curious mix of Northumbrian dialect, such as ‘bairns’ for children and ‘dudden’ for duds (clothes), and words picked up from volumes of classic poetry, such as ‘wight’ for man and ‘ope’ for open. This was, apparently, not unlike his way of talking. “His accent was strong racy Northumbrian’ Robert Spence Watson tells us “with a curious South-country pronunciation of certain words which he had no doubt obtained when, as a very young man, he was working in London.” For a quick account of his life, see our post The Pitman Poet.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
How did Skipsey know when to start getting ready for his shift down the mine?