A profound discovery is buried in the pages of the last issue of The Lincolnshire Philologist. In “Authority Nomenclature’s Influence on Scunthorpe”, Elias Adriatico posits an explanation for something which long has puzzled Scunthorpe scholars: Why, at the end of the 16th century, did Scunthorpe writers part ways with the rest of England, and base their poetic meter on the dactyl, instead of the iamb?
For example, here is Sonnet 55 from Elsdon Quickley’s 1583 Lucy Garland:
Why should’st thou ever forget me when I’ve gone away, Lucy,
Ever so far away into the still silent land, my dear,
Never again will’t thou hold on so fast to my hand, my dear,
Pulling me toward thee while I make a half-turn to stay, Lucy.
Why should’st thou ever forget me when thou, day by day, Lucy,
Tell me what life has in store and whatever thou’dst plann’d, my dear.
Thou should’st not ever forget me; for thou’ll’t understand, my dear,
‘Twill be too late to console or to kneel for to pray, Lucy.
Thou might’st forget me apace, at the least for a while, sweetheart;
Then thou’ll remember again, but I beg thee don’t grieve, my love.
Rottenness, darkness, corruption may still kindly leave, my love,
Memories, vague and vestigial designs I once had, my pet.
Thou should’st forget me; ‘twould better be if thou could’st smile, sweetheart,
Better than if thou remembered and made thyself sad, my pet.
Three centuries later, Christina Rossetti paraphrased Quickley's Sonnet 55, fortuitously providing us with a comparison between the development of Scunthorpe literature and that of English literature in general.
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more, day by day,
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Compare this with a sonnet of Rossetti’s Scunthorpe contemporary, Temple Huff,
If you remember the night that I left in the dark, madam,
Taking your horse from the stable and leaving the door off its
Hinges to show how unhinged was my soul, so much more off its
Head than was usual. You lit the furious spark, madam, etc.
Scholars long have noted that Scunthorpe swerved away from standard iambs around 1565. Left-wing historians have ascribed the cause to social unrest at the Grimsby docks, where the hardship caused by Queen Elizabeth’s Dutch Sludge Embargo engendered a great deal of animosity, not only toward Elizabeth and her administration, but toward the capital and its culture in general. If it was done one way in London, North Lincolnshire would do it another way.
One example of this is familiar to the BBC costume department, who know to make sure that a character in an Elizabethan drama, who hails from North Lincolnshire, will wear the Scunthorpe ruff, which broadens downward instead of upward.
For example, here is Sonnet 55 from Elsdon Quickley’s 1583 Lucy Garland:
Why should’st thou ever forget me when I’ve gone away, Lucy,
Ever so far away into the still silent land, my dear,
Never again will’t thou hold on so fast to my hand, my dear,
Pulling me toward thee while I make a half-turn to stay, Lucy.
Why should’st thou ever forget me when thou, day by day, Lucy,
Tell me what life has in store and whatever thou’dst plann’d, my dear.
Thou should’st not ever forget me; for thou’ll’t understand, my dear,
‘Twill be too late to console or to kneel for to pray, Lucy.
Thou might’st forget me apace, at the least for a while, sweetheart;
Then thou’ll remember again, but I beg thee don’t grieve, my love.
Rottenness, darkness, corruption may still kindly leave, my love,
Memories, vague and vestigial designs I once had, my pet.
Thou should’st forget me; ‘twould better be if thou could’st smile, sweetheart,
Better than if thou remembered and made thyself sad, my pet.
Three centuries later, Christina Rossetti paraphrased Quickley's Sonnet 55, fortuitously providing us with a comparison between the development of Scunthorpe literature and that of English literature in general.
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more, day by day,
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Compare this with a sonnet of Rossetti’s Scunthorpe contemporary, Temple Huff,
If you remember the night that I left in the dark, madam,
Taking your horse from the stable and leaving the door off its
Hinges to show how unhinged was my soul, so much more off its
Head than was usual. You lit the furious spark, madam, etc.
Scholars long have noted that Scunthorpe swerved away from standard iambs around 1565. Left-wing historians have ascribed the cause to social unrest at the Grimsby docks, where the hardship caused by Queen Elizabeth’s Dutch Sludge Embargo engendered a great deal of animosity, not only toward Elizabeth and her administration, but toward the capital and its culture in general. If it was done one way in London, North Lincolnshire would do it another way.
One example of this is familiar to the BBC costume department, who know to make sure that a character in an Elizabethan drama, who hails from North Lincolnshire, will wear the Scunthorpe ruff, which broadens downward instead of upward.
Scunthorpe Ruff Bradford Ruff
Even if, as some cultural historians believe, there is a political motive behind the Scunthorpe dactyl, it does not explain why disaffected North Lincolnshire fell back on a three-syllable foot, instead of simply regularizing iambic inversion [1]. Placing the stress on the first syllable of an iambic line, instead of the second, would have been the equivalent of reversing the ruff.
At about the same time that Scunthorpe was taking on its distinctive, rollicking dactylic meter, Adriatico points out, Halifax Nestlewood, First Earl of Yarborough, married the young, beautiful and intelligent Dorothy Cummerboughand, the memory of whom, even now, inspires Scunthorpe bards.
You ain’t no Dorothy. Stop belly-achin’ kid,
You should be grateful I even looked once at you.
Pussycat Rioters, “Take it or Leave it behind of You”
As for Scunthorpe writers who were contemporaries of Dorothy, Countess of Yarborough, they vied with each other in penning tributes to their beloved lady of the manor. Without exception, these were composed in Scunthorpe dactyls. Compare the chorus of “Glorious Ladyship”, by the Pocklington composer, Crispin Small (1538-1625) to those of Thomas Weelkes’ madrigal, “As Vesta was Descending.”
Then sang the nymphs and shepherds of Diana:
All hail our virgin Oriana. (Weelkes)
Singing and tripping upon the green commons,
Come now. Our glorious Dorothy summons. (Small)
As Einstein said, “The most ingenious discoveries come simply from seeing the obvious.” Elias Adriatico makes just such a discovery when he points out that the name “Elizabeth” is iambic:
Elízabéth
While the name "Dorothy" is dactylic:
Dórothy
As the use of iambics spread through England with the flourishing of the Elizabethan age [2], the use of dactyls spread through North Lincolnshire under the benign gaze of Dórothy Coúntess of Yárborough – helped along, no doubt, by the county’s rejection of Elizabeth and her trade policies.
“The world – at least the literary world – would be a different place altogether,” Adriatico concludes, “if Catherine of Aragon had had a daughter and namesake, and the English language had blossomed in a Catherinian Age instead of an Elizabethan one. We now might be quoting the lines, “Being or nothingness, that is the question I ask myself.”
[1] Iambic inversion is encountered only rarely in Elizabethan literature. The most famous example is Shakespeare’s
Now is the winter of our discontent
Some of the more enthusiastic Scunthorpe scholars point to the alternative opening of Richard III, found among the papers of the Earl of Oxford – a close friend of Shakespeare or, Oxfordians will argue, something much more than just a close friend – to suggest that Shakespeare at first meant to underscore the irony which permeates the play by having Richard open with three lines in Scunthorpe:
Now is the winter of our discontent, made a glorious
Summer by this sun of York. And the clouds which once lour’d on our
House, in the ocean’s deep bosom, unmournéd lie buried there.
[2] Even Elizabethan prose is iambic. Note Francis Bacon's "For some books may be tasted, others swallowed, and some few digested after being chewed."
At about the same time that Scunthorpe was taking on its distinctive, rollicking dactylic meter, Adriatico points out, Halifax Nestlewood, First Earl of Yarborough, married the young, beautiful and intelligent Dorothy Cummerboughand, the memory of whom, even now, inspires Scunthorpe bards.
You ain’t no Dorothy. Stop belly-achin’ kid,
You should be grateful I even looked once at you.
Pussycat Rioters, “Take it or Leave it behind of You”
As for Scunthorpe writers who were contemporaries of Dorothy, Countess of Yarborough, they vied with each other in penning tributes to their beloved lady of the manor. Without exception, these were composed in Scunthorpe dactyls. Compare the chorus of “Glorious Ladyship”, by the Pocklington composer, Crispin Small (1538-1625) to those of Thomas Weelkes’ madrigal, “As Vesta was Descending.”
Then sang the nymphs and shepherds of Diana:
All hail our virgin Oriana. (Weelkes)
Singing and tripping upon the green commons,
Come now. Our glorious Dorothy summons. (Small)
As Einstein said, “The most ingenious discoveries come simply from seeing the obvious.” Elias Adriatico makes just such a discovery when he points out that the name “Elizabeth” is iambic:
Elízabéth
While the name "Dorothy" is dactylic:
Dórothy
As the use of iambics spread through England with the flourishing of the Elizabethan age [2], the use of dactyls spread through North Lincolnshire under the benign gaze of Dórothy Coúntess of Yárborough – helped along, no doubt, by the county’s rejection of Elizabeth and her trade policies.
“The world – at least the literary world – would be a different place altogether,” Adriatico concludes, “if Catherine of Aragon had had a daughter and namesake, and the English language had blossomed in a Catherinian Age instead of an Elizabethan one. We now might be quoting the lines, “Being or nothingness, that is the question I ask myself.”
[1] Iambic inversion is encountered only rarely in Elizabethan literature. The most famous example is Shakespeare’s
Now is the winter of our discontent
Some of the more enthusiastic Scunthorpe scholars point to the alternative opening of Richard III, found among the papers of the Earl of Oxford – a close friend of Shakespeare or, Oxfordians will argue, something much more than just a close friend – to suggest that Shakespeare at first meant to underscore the irony which permeates the play by having Richard open with three lines in Scunthorpe:
Now is the winter of our discontent, made a glorious
Summer by this sun of York. And the clouds which once lour’d on our
House, in the ocean’s deep bosom, unmournéd lie buried there.
[2] Even Elizabethan prose is iambic. Note Francis Bacon's "For some books may be tasted, others swallowed, and some few digested after being chewed."
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