Yorkshire Dialect

DING 2012: “There is very little information about John Malham-Dembleby apart from his publications: an anthology of Yorkshire verse, studies on the Brontë sisters and a book on shorthand. F. W. Moorman (1916: xxxxvii-xxxviii) says “Airedale still has its poets, among the most ambitious of whom is Mr Malham-Dembley, who published in 1912 a volume of verse entitled, Original Tales and Ballads in the Yorkshire dialect.” Leah Malham-Dembleby, possibly his sister or his wife, published privately one of his works on Charlotte Brontë. From the Preface to Original Tales and Ballads we learn that he lived in Stannington, nr. Sheffield, as a boy, and that he spent his teens at Wrose Hill, Yks. When Original Tales and Ballads was published he was living at Eccleshill, Bradford, Yks. In the 1911 England and Wales Census he appears as living at Eccleshill, aged 37 together with Cordelia Malham-Dembleby, aged 57 and David Malham-Dembleby, aged 61. There is no trace of them either in the 1891 or in the 1901 England and Wales Census for Eccleshill. In the Preface he also states that his Yorkshire dialect writing had the approval of Prof. Joseph Wright, the Rev. Walter W. Skeat and Dr. Henry Bradley.”

Works

Original Tales and Ballads in the Yorkshire Dialect, known also as Inglis, the Language of the Angles and the Northumbrian Dialect: Spoken to-day in Yorkshire, and in early times from South Yorkshire to Aberdeen. 1912. London, Felling-on-Tyne, New York: Walter Scott Pub. Co. SC.

Not in Kingkong Project

For further information about his life and works, see

Moorman, F. W. 1916. Yorkshire Dialect Poems (1673-1915) and Traditional Poems. London: Published for the Yorkshire Dialect Society by Sidwick and Jackson.

Gallery