JOSEPH SKIPSEY (1832-1903): the 'Pitman Poet'

"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...

Basil Bunting:

It may be less easy for such city-dwellers as we have become to acknowledge the truth of the pretty incidents of pit village courtship, especially since there is a convention which must be observed. The things you may publicly admire in a girl, the things you may compare her to are fixed by what was originally a rustic tradition, withered in the towns and apologised for by villagers aware of town scrutiny, but not dead in the least. Only the ornaments change a little. The lad Skipsey's lasses admired for dancing and wrestling plays football now. It is in handling such matter that Skipsey comes nearest to the folksong, at times, like it, practically anonymous. But always he is very close indeed to the people and the life, as little embarrassed by its prettiness as by its pain. Burns sees Ayr and Dumfries vividly but from outside. He is not one with the people he observes. But Skipsey hardly sees Cowpen and Percy Main at all. He is inside the pit village, part of it, and but for a certain dignity of bearing, we might say he was the village itself composing...