COMPETITIONS

On this page you will find the conditions of entry to each class, the rules for the competition, the winners and entries for the current year, and photos of the Presentation Evening.

EDWIN WAUGH DIALECT SOCIETY COMPETITION

TROPHIES

CLASS 1        RICHARD HOLLAND CUP
                           For the best POEM in Lancashire Dialect

CLASS 2    HARRY CRAVEN CUP
                            For the best PIECE OF PROSE in Lancashire Dialect                                                                   Overall limit of 2000 words

CLASS 3 ANNE RIDGEON CUP
                           For the best STORY with a Lancashire Theme in Standard English         Overall limit of 2000 words
                           Limited dialogue in dialect permitted
                           Entries which are not Lancashire in theme will be disqualified

CLASS 4    EDITH GRAYSHAN GOBLET
                            For the best POEM with a Lancashire Theme, written in Standard English
                            Entries which are not Lancashire in theme will be transferred to Class 5

CLASS 5     PRESIDENT'S CUP
                           For the best POEM in Standard English - subject matter open
                           Entries from new writers who are trying their hand at poetry writing and also to more
                           experienced writers with work that does not comply to the other Classes 1 - 4

                           ADDITIONAL TROPHIES

                        VICAR SHAW TROPHY
                            For the BEST OVER-ALL ENTRY, chosen from the winners of Classes 1 - 4

                          TH' OWD TAY CADDY
                            For the BEST ENTRY in Classes 1 - 5 from a competitor who is not a previous winner

        T' KISSIN' SHUTTLE
                            For the best presentation of a DIALECT PIECE at the Waugh Supper

RULES
1.              The competition is open to members and non-members of the Society.
                   The cost for non-members is £2.50 per entry.   Non-members are encouraged to join the society, the membership being £5.*
                   Members may make as many entries as they wish.
2.               Entries should not be named but be accompanied by a covering note indicating the name of the writer.
3.               Writers are advised to keep a copy of their entries. Original entries will be returned at the Waugh Supper.
4.              Winning entries, or extracts therefrom, may be performed by the authors (or proxy) at the Waugh Supper.
5.               Trophies will be presented at the Waugh Celebration Supper in March. They remain the property of the Society and should be
                   returned no later than the following December meeting.
6.               Entries should not be, or have been, published or publicly recited before the closing date of the competition.
7.                Entries may be resubmitted in a subsequent year, provided that they comply with Rule 6.
8.               Th' Owd Tay Caddy and T' Kissin' Shuttle may be held only once.
9.               The committee reserves the right to withhold a trophy if there are insufficient entries.

* To download a membership form, please click here

ALL ENTRIES BY 31st JANUARY TO THE COMPETITIONS SECRETARY:

           STEWART CHADWICK                          TEL.   0161 652 5852
STARKEY FARM
           THORNHAM ROAD
           ROYTON
           OLDHAM
           OL2 6YG

Non-members please enclose your entry fee - or, if joining the society, your membership fee and application form.
Cheque or postal order please, no cash.

These are the awards made at Waugh's Presentation Supper, held on March 20th 2018

   1.        RICHARD HOLLAND CUP                                             RON WILLIAMS              The best POEM in Lancashire Dialect

   2.    HARRY CRAVEN CUP Not awarded
               The best PIECE OF PROSE in Lancashire Dialect    - insufficient entries

   3. ANNE RIDGEON CUP SALLY JAMES
               The best STORY with a Lancashire Theme in Standard English

   4.      EDITH GRAYSHAN GOBLET    ROD BROOME
              The best POEM with a Lancashire Theme in Standard English

   5.        PRESIDENT'S CUP    FRANK GIBSON
              The best POEM in Standard English - subject matter open

                             VICAR SHAW TROPHY ROD BROOME THE BEST OVERALL ENTRY in classes 1 - 5

                          TH' OWD TAY CADDY    ROD BROOME
                            THE BEST ENTRY in classes 1 - 5 from a competitor who is not a previous winner

        T' KISSIN' SHUTTLE    MICHAEL HIGGINS
                For the best PRESENTATION of a DIALECT PIECE at the Waugh Supper

                            Congratulations to all the winners and to all who took part

These are the winning entries from 2018 :-

RON WILLIAMS Poem in Lancashire Dialect,
the winner of the Richard Holland Cup

                              TH’ ‘EN FARMER

Wi ‘ave a farmer jus’ deawn t’ road, ‘e’s lots o’ ‘ens un ducks
‘E as a contract wi t’ superstores, wi see monny Asda trucks.
T’ trouble is they’n greedy thi want drumsticks, legs un thighs
Thi dunnot want whole chickens, which causes a big surprise.
Soh Farmer Breawn developed a chicken, a clever mon is ‘e,
It ‘ad one ‘eart, one yed, two breasts, un ten legs dustah see,
‘E towd t’ manager ut Asda o’ th’ new chickins ‘e ‘ad bred
“Ah’ll supply thi’ wi onny amount, ah’ll keep eawr nation fed”
T’ manager wer most impressed, aw t’ managers com deawn
Theauz nivver sin soh monny limozines uz wi ‘ad i’ th’ teawn.
Apparently thi seed these chicks ut wer born wi monny limbs,
Thi wer runnin’ reawnd ‘is fields like thi’d aw bin toh t’ gyms.
T’ managers wer astounded, thi’d sin nowt like this afore,
As chickens whizzed reight past ‘em doin’ sixty miles ur more.
“We know they’re bownt be lean…. thi whizz abeawt so fast
But what do they really taste like?” t’ managers axed at last
“No idea” said Farmer Brown, “Thi bring mi eawt i’ a sweat,
Thi run areawnd so flamin’fast ah’ve nivver catched wun yet”

1 12 2017
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SALLY JAMES    The best STORY with a Lancashire Theme in Standard English,
   the winner of the Anne Ridgeon Cup

Lancashire Legacy

I look out of the window, see the snow on the hills, my bed is warm, the duvet tucked under my chin, a cup of hot tea on the bedside cabinet and a book begging to be read. I will stay here where it is comfortable I decide no need to get up, for I am too old, past it and happy.

My mind wanders as I look over the distant moors and think of those early days when I first came to live in a certain cotton town in Lancashire. I wasn’t in a hurry to get up in those days either. I was young with a baby on the way, the window iced up in the sparse bedroom and the linoleum cold to my bare feet.

We had nothing you see, less than nothing, a friend once said, “Som’ foak start at t’ bottom ut t’ladder but thee two need a brick toh ger on t’bottom step.” And so it was with many folk in those days. We were barely out of our teens, married and with a baby on the way. It may have been the “Swinging Sixties” in London but here in Lancashire nothing swung except perhaps the washing on the line.

Every other day I would go into town to see if there were any houses to rent. It was like ‘No room at the Inn’ wherever you went. There was a very long waiting list for a council house and so it came to be that we lived with the in-laws until we could find a place of our own.

This was the winter of 1962-63 and the coldest winter on record since 1947. I did have the baby to keep me warm in his snug little nest in my tummy though chilblains bothered my toes but with an army overcoat thrown over the bed to hold the heat in, we managed.

The baby came in the middle of March, a cold blustery day when ice and snow still tinged the distant moors. With no pram till the baby was a couple of weeks old I couldn’t go out and was desperate to show off my new baby. Then a relative, who had promised us a pram, sold us one for £5 but as my husband’s weekly wage was £8 it wasn’t much of a bargain for a third hand pram, but it was a good one and we knew its heritage so we made do.

Eventually after trekking into town plus baby and pram nearly everyday for almost two months we got somewhere to live. It was a mid-terraced house on a cobbled street in the heart of industrial Lancashire. With mills to the left of us and mills to the right of us and in front of us the weaving shed of a large cotton mill whose looms rattled and clanged twenty four hours a day five and a half days a week. Sunday was maintenance day when the looms were silent, so silent that I could hear the church bells ring.

“Tha’ll get used toh noise” I was told but I never did. I liked peace and quiet but everywhere there was hustle and bustle. People clogging their way to work at six o’clock in the morning, and then coming back at two o’clock in the afternoon as another batch of factory fodder went to replace them. Yet they were cheerful happy souls and as I pushed my pram on the stone flags and cobbles there was always a cheery smile to greet you with a “Heaw do.” In fact the first words my baby said were “Heaw do”.

I got our little love nest as comfy as I could with the money we had saved for there was no living off the bank of mum and dad in those days. We bought a few items of furniture that we could just about afford. The bed was a divan, quite posh really as we were used to an iron framed one with flock bedding that had to be kneaded every morning before making up. We also managed a kitchenette, a Formica topped table and four kitchen chairs and even a green moquette three piece suite on the never never. We did get a small electric cooker too which was paid monthly via the electricity bill. It seemed like we were doing ok but the first morning for breakfast I realised there were no plates so with great laughter I ate Weetabix from a frying pan.

There were five jars in the bedroom marked, rent, coal, electric, insurance, and the never never jar. When these were budgeted for what remained was spent on food. There was nothing left for luxuries like clothes so I knitted, sewed, darned, made do and mended. Bury Market remnant stall was a Godsend for me. 1964 saw me pushing and shoving the huge pram from Elton to Bury market, with the hopes of getting a bargain or two.

That pram became a vehicle of transport for not only a couple of babies for by 1964 I had two but also going to the Laundrette with a plastic bag full of clothes and bedding as we had no washer. It was also used for collecting groceries and vegetables from Bury Market probably a four mile journey there and back. There were no supermarkets in those days.

For eighteen months we lived in our first home amidst the smoke from mill chimneys and steam trains that chuffed their way over a bridge only a couple of hundred yards from the end of the street. With not much sun to penetrate the gloom, the shadows of industrialisation swamped us but we were not discouraged. Even when a new influx of labour arrived to work in the mills from India and Pakistan we didn’t mind, though they did look poor and undernourished as some walked around with blankets around them after work. It was years later that I was told that they had only one or two sets of working clothes between them so as one finished at the mill the other changed into their clothes for the next shift.

Oh dear, why do I day-dream, reminisce, it makes me feel sad but we never did feel sorry for ourselves in those days or considered ourselves hard done by, we never even felt that life had dealt us a raw deal.

“Thas med tha bed so tha mun lie in it” is what I was told and so I dealt with it. We had youth and health on our side and were happy despite my intense dislike of scrubbing nappies in the sink or slop-stone as it was called in those days. We had just cold water on tap so I boiled the nappies in a large pan on the stove. There were no disposable nappies in those days.

I look at my hands now, they are wrinkled concertina fashion with blue veins throbbing as I hold my teacup in my hand. They are soft gentle hands now but in my young days my fingers would be cracked with scrubbing and chapped with the winter wind when I pegged the nappies out on the clothes line in the backyard.

I must get up, no more remininising but my bed is warm, my aching limbs resting and I can see the sun rising a little higher over the hilltops. It is January with sporadic dustings of snow in the garden and on the car. There were not many cars in those days or indeed could be afforded by ordinary working people so my husband went to work on his bike. He worked in a paper-mill about four miles away but never complained even if he got soaked and the smog clogged his nostrils. I look towards were he should have been lying, there is no sag in the pillow where his head would have lain, he has gone now, the strain of working twelve hour shifts in a paper-mill may have contributed to his early demise.

Yes, now I am getting maudlin, I had better get up for my son will be calling with his family and strangely enough he now works in the same street that I used to walk along many years ago. There is a huge depot there now, a sorting office for parcels and mail, where there once was a busy working mill. This depot is where my son works, the cobbled street now tarmacked was where his father rode his bike and I pushed my pram, babies washing and all but that was over fifty years ago.

There is still one mill left standing not quite derelict and this has been turned into units for various occupations and where my eldest grandson has a recording studio. The weaving shed has long since gone as is the railway bridge and chimneys and so is the house we lived in, there is no sound of marching clogs, factory whistles or the chuffing trains anymore but in my mind it is as clear as yesterday.

I live in a different part of Lancashire now where I can see the hills and moorland and smell the earth instead of the soot and smog of Lancashire’s industrial heritage. I can never erase those early days and wouldn’t want to, for it is ingrained in me forever for I, like many things in those days was made in Lancashire.
________________________

ROD BROOME The best POEM with a Lancashire Theme in Standard English - the winner of the Edith Grayshan Goblet.
   Also the winner of the Vicar Shaw Trophy and Th' Owd Tay Caddy.
Click on Rod's name for a video of him reading his poem.

That’s the Trouble with this Town

(Rochdale 2015)

When I was young in days of yore,
To live round here was quite a bore,
By half past eight the place was dead
And all the young folk always said:
That’s the trouble with this town!

The high spot of the week perchance
Was going to the chapel dance
Where lads stood round in groups, alone,
And girls would dance in twos – and moan:
That’s the trouble with this town!

The back row in the one and threes
Was where you gave your girl a squeeze;
An usherette would shine her light
And give you both a total fright –
That’s the trouble with this town!

The Scouts and Guides were at the heart
Of keeping boys and girls apart,
By teaching knots and pressing flowers
And advocating ice-cold showers…
That’s the trouble with this town!

Then suddenly at sixty three
A new town I began to see;
Tattooed lads who looked like thugs
Falling out of rowdy clubs –
That’s the trouble with this town!

The churches too had lost their grip
And morals had begun to slip,
With girls out in their underwear
And fascinators in their hair,
That’s the trouble with this town!

The mills have gone and jobs are lost
And now we have to count the cost;
Our health’s improved with cleaner air
But half the folk are in despair…
That’s the trouble with this town!

We’ve beggars on the streets once more
And food banks for the truly poor,
Who really would be glad to see
Some bread and dripping for their tea…
That’s the trouble with this town!

And so a circle we have made…
We’re back before the cotton trade.
Uncovering the River Roche is
Bound to bring in lots of coaches –
Is that the future for this town?

   ________________________

Piccies / Images / Photos from the Presentation Evening

Courtesy of Kenneth Hall and John Pye

Sid	Ron, Sally, Julie, Geoff

Michael, Stewart

Rod, Stewart