Edwin Waugh

Edwin Waugh (1817-1890) was an English poet who wrote in the Lancashire dialect. He has been called "the Lancashire Burns." His most famous poem is "Come whoam to thi childer an' me", 1856.

Waugh's Well, Rossendale, Lancashire, England. Photo by P. Smith. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Life

Overview

Waugh, son of a shoemaker, was born at Rochdale and, after a little schooling, apprenticed to a printer. He read eagerly, and became assistant secretart to the Lancashire Public School Association. He 1st attracted attention by his sketches of Lancashire life and character in the Manchester Examiner. He wrote also in prose Factory Folk, Besom Ben Stories, and The Chimney Corner. His best work was, perhaps, his dialect songs, collected as Poems and Songs (1859), which brought him great local fame. He was possessed of considerable literary gift, and has been called "the Lancashire Burns."

Youth and education

Waugh was born at Rochdale on 29 January 1817. His father, a shoemaker at Rochdale, in decent circumstances, came of a Northumbrian stock, and had received some education at the local grammar school; his mother, a woman of piety and rustic intelligence, was daughter of William Howarth, a stonemason and engraver, who belonged to south-east Lancashire.

Edwin was 9 when his father died, and during his mother's struggle to carry on the business in a humble way her poverty was so great that for several years a cellar dwelling was her own and her son's home. She taught him, however, to read. His father had left a few books, and among the earliest which he read with avidity were Foxe's Book of Martyrs, a compendium of English history, and Enfield's Speaker.

At 7 he received some schooling, but it was of a fitful kind. Already he had to assist his mother at a shoe-stall which she kept in Rochdale market. At 12 he earned his earliest wages as errand-boy to a local preacher and printer, his mother being a zealous Wesleyan, then entered the service, in the same capacity, of Thomas Holden, a Rochdale bookseller and printer, to whom 2 years afterwards he was bound apprentice, and under whom he learned to be a printer.

Among the books in Holden's shop he found opportunities for reading which he had not known before. He read with eagerness any histories of his native county. From Tim Bobbin, the pseudonym of John Collier, he learned something of the literary use that could be made of the Lancashire dialect.

Roby's Traditions of Lancashire introduced him to romantic episodes in Lancashire family history and to the legendary lore of his native county. He is said to have visited in early life every locality which Roby has associated with a legend. He devoured poetry as well as prose. A book which most influenced him was a collection of border ballads.

Career

His apprenticeship finished, Waugh led a wandering life, finding employment as a journeyman printer, chiefly in the provinces, but for a time in London. At the end of 6 or 7 years he returned to Rochdale, and re-entered Holden's service.

It was probably due to the active part which he took in establishing a literary institute in Rochdale that he was appointed about 1847 assistant secretary to the Lancashire Public School Association, the headquarters of which were at Manchester. The association had been recently founded to advocate the establishment in Lancashire of a system of popular and unsectarian education, to be supported by local rates and administered by local boards elected by the ratepayers. The post was a modest one, but afforded him leisure for original composition.

The reception of some of his attempts in prose, descriptions of rural rambles, which appeared in the Manchester Examiner, encouraged him to persevere. In 1855, by which time he had become the town traveler of a Manchester printing firm, a local bookseller published his 1st book, Sketches of Lancashire Life and Localities (reprinted from the Manchester Examiner). Its most distinctive feature was the racy humor of his reproduction, in their own dialect, of the daily talk of the Lancashire people. The welcome given to the Sketches was chiefly local, but discerning judges out of Lancashire recognised their sterling merit, and Carlyle, into whose hands the volume fell, pronounced its author "a man of decided mark."

In 1856, the year after the Sketches was published, Waugh greatly extended his reputation by his song, "Come whoam to the childer an' me." It was 1st printed in a Manchester newspaper, and forthwith reprinted, to be given away to his customers, by a Manchester bookseller. It became at once immensely popular, not only in Lancashire but out of it, and even in the colonies. The Saturday Review called it "one of the most delicious idylls in the world," and Miss Coutts (now the Baroness Burdett-Coutts) had some 10-20,000 copies of it printed for gratuitous distribution (Milner, p. 29).

The success of this lyric largely influenced Waugh's subsequent career. It sent his Lancashire Sketches into a 2nd edition. Many metrical compositions still remained in manuscript. He now prepared some of them for publication, and they appeared, with many additions in the Lancashire dialect, in his Poems and Songs (1859).

Offers of work poured in on him from local editors and publishers. About 1860 he determined to depend solely on his pen, and for 15 years, with occasional public readings from his works, he made it suffice for his support.

During that period he poured forth prose and verse, songs, tales, and character-sketches, realistic, humorous, pathetic, which were illustrative of Lancashire life in town and country, in the north as well as in the south of the county, and in which abundant use was made of its dialect. Besides these there were more or less picturesquely written narratives of tour and travel outside Lancashire, in the Lake country, in the south of England, in Scotland, in Ireland, and even in Rhineland. They were issued in various forms, from the broadsheet upwards. One of his earlier writings during this prolific period describes in graphic detail the districts most deeply affected by the cotton famine of 1862.

In person Waugh was a striking specimen of the sturdy, independent, plain-spoken Lancashire man. His long struggle before he became known did not impair his geniality and cheerfulness, and he was not in the least spoilt by success. Eminently social and convivial — a good singer as well as writer of songs — he was a very pleasant companion and an admirable story-teller, especially if the stories were to be told in his favorite Lancashire dialect.

Last years

In 1876, on Waugh's health becoming infirm, a committee of his Lancashire admirers took over his copyrights and substituted for his precarious literary gains a fixed annual income.

Between 1881 and 1883 he published a collective edition of his works, in 10 volumes, finely and copiously illustrated. Subsequently "he sent forth in quick succession a new series of poems." They were printed singly in a Manchester newspaper, and in 1889 they and some earlier verses were issued as volume xi. of the collective edition.

He died on 30 April 1890 at New Brighton, a watering-place on the Lancashire coast. His remains were brought to Manchester, and on 3 May he was buried with public ceremonial in Kersal church, in the vicinity of his domicile for many years on Kersal Moor.

Writing

The popularity of Waugh's writings was increased by his death. A moderately priced edition of his selected writings, in 8 volumes, was issued in 1892–3, edited by his friend George Milner, who prefixed to vol. i. an instructive and interesting notice of Waugh.

Waugh's writings bear abundant testimony to his intimate knowledge of the chief English poets.

Recognition

Waugh's Well, Waterfoot, Lancashire. Photo by Michael Ely. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Geograph.org.

In 1881, Gladstone conferred on Waugh a Civil List pension of £90 a year.

Waugh's Well was built in 1866 to commemorate him at Foe Edge Farm, on the moors above Edenfield, Rossendale where he spent much time writing. Foe Edge, was completely demolished by the North West Water Authority in the mid-1970s and no trace remains of the building. Waugh's Well was rebuilt in 1966 in memory of Ward Ogden, a local naturalist and rambler. It makes for a fine contemplative viewpoint and resting place on the Rossendale Way.

In popular culture

Many of Waugh's songs have been set to music, and a list of them occupies several pages of the music catalogue of the British Museum Library.

Publications

Poetry

• Poems and Lancashire Songs. London: Whittaker, 1859.
• Lancashire Songs. Lonon: Simpkin, Marshall, 1862, 1866, 1871; Mnchester, UK: Hime & Addison, 1879; Manchester, UK: John Heywood, 1881, 1892.
• Poems and Songs: Second series. Liverpool: G.G. Walmsley / Oldham, UK: W.E. Clegg, 1889.
• Poems and Songs of Old Lancashire. Tottington, UK: Printwise, 1992.

Novels

• The Goblin's Grave. Manchester, UK: John Heywood, 1865.

Short fiction

• Besom Ben. Manchester, UK: John Heywood, 1865.
• Tufts of Heather from a Lancashire Moor. Manchester, UK: John Heywood, 1867, 1882.
• Around the Yule Log: A series of fireside tales. Manchester, UK: John Heywood, 1879.

Non-fiction

• Rambles in the Lake County and Its Borders. Manchester, UK: John Heywood, 1864.
• Irish Sketches. Manchester, UK: John Heywood / London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1869.
• Lancashire Sketches. Manchester, UK: John Heywood, 1881.
• Factory Talk During the Cotton Famine. Manchester, UK: John Heywood, 1881.
• The Limping Pilgrim, on His Wanderings. Manchester, UK: John Heywood, 1883.
• Rambles in the Lake Country, and other travel sketches. Manchester, UK: John Heywood, 1892.

Collected editions

• Complete Works. (10 volumes), Manchester, UK: John Heywood, 1881-1883.

Come Whoam to thi Childer an' Me by Edwin Waugh

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of British poets
• List of English-language songwriters

References

•  Espinasse, Francis (1899) "Waugh, Edwin" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 60 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 79-81  . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 16, 2018.

External links

Poems

• Waugh in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "The Dule ’s i’ This Bonnet o’ Mine," "Th' Sweetheart Gate," "Owd Pinder"

Audio / video

• Edwin Waugh at LibriVox

Books

• Works by Edwin Waugh at Project Gutenberg
• Edwin Waugh at Amazon.com

About

• Edwin Waugh at Minor Victorian Poets and Authors

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Waugh, Edwin