Lakeland Limericks Find!
Well this must be one of the slimmest hidden gems I've found so far - just thirty-seven pages but sometimes the biggest surprises come in small packages. "Lakeland Limericks", written in 1941, by C.Armstrong Gibbs and illustrated by William H. Waddington. It is what it says - a book of limericks based on different Lakeland places. Here is the one for Grange:
A young man of GRANGE-OVER-SANDS
Has a habit that none understands;
If a friend he should meet,
He's compelled to shake feet,
As he normally walks on his hands.
Each limerick is illustrated with a comical pen and ink drawing which are most skilfully drawn. And there is an amusing foreword signed by both author and illustrator:
FOREWORD
We, the undersigned joint authors of this book, have felt that though there have been many to sing and otherwise praise the beauty of this "country of lumps and bumps" as Whistler called it, no-one to our knowledge (which is profound) has seen the Lake Country from the peculiar angle from which we have made our approach. Wordsworth and Coleridge - not to mention other men of literary distinction have done notable work - we do not wish to be compared with their geniuses who are with us no longer. This book, we firmly (not too firmly) believe will fill a useful place in the literature of this country-side. As Abraham Lincoln sagely remarked "Those who like this sort of thing will like it". Perhaps on some dull dark day you will find herein something that will both cheer your mind and stretch your face - if this should be so, then our efforts will not have been in vain.
Who were C. Armstrong Gibbs and William H. Waddington? I was quite intrigued by now. They were obviously friends and considering the publication date I wondered if it was a simple effort to cheer up their readers who by now were already two years into the misery of the Second World War. And after some research what a suprise I had in store!
Cecil Armstrong Gibbs was a little-known but prolific English Composer, Adjudicator and Conductor, who studied under Sir Adrian Boult and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and was a contemporary of Sir Arthur Bliss, Herbert Howells and Sir Arnold Bax. His house in Essex was recquisitioned during the war and so he moved to Windermere where he continued composing and conducting. His third symphony was called 'The Westmorland' and he also wrote the 'Dales and Fell Suite' and eight preludes called 'Lakeland Pictures'. His daughter remembers him as a warm and affectionate man with a great sense of humour which is clearly reflected in 'Lakeland Limericks'.
William Hartley Waddington was born in Bradford but moved to the Lake District when he married. He and his wife became tenants of Beatrix Potter in Castle Cottage, Sawrey where an outbuilding was altered by the famous children's writer to provide a better studio for her artist tenant. In 1914 he was appointed to take charge of art teaching at Charlotte Mason College in Ambleside - a place I know well as I was a teacher training student there from 1974 - 1977! I've also discovered that one of his closest childhood friends was J. B. Priestley. He was a renowned landscape painter who was a member of the Lake Artists Society and, like Gibbs, was reputed to be an 'excellent and humorous raconteur'.
So this slim little book has led me on yet another journey. Like any good detective I've followed the clues and discovered all kinds of interesting things - and had a good giggle along the way! So here is one final offering from Gibbs and Waddington:
An abnormally stout man, says fable,
Wished intensely to get up GREAT GABLE,
He persuaded his mother
And sister and brother
To carry him up on a table.
3 September 2009 from Mary Rossall
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Finds
- On Lindale Hill
- Grange-over-Sands: The Story of a Gentle Township
- The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland
- Red Ike
- Cumbrian Privies
- Ethel Fisher's West Cumbrian Dialect titles
- The Embalmer's Book of Recipes by Ann Lingard
- Nella Last's Peace
- Riding the Stang by Dawn Robertson
- Life on the Fell - a pictorial chronicle of a Lakeland community
- About Scout Scar
- William Wilberforce - A Summer Diary 1779
- Beatrix Potter - the unknown years
- Smoke over Shap by Margaret Potter
- Songs of a Cragsman by George Basterfield
- The Grasmere Dialect Plays
- The Grizedale Experience: Sculpture, Art & Theatre in a Lakeland Forest
- An Atlas of The English Lakes
- How Hall. Poetry and Memories. A Passion for Ennerdale by Tom Rawling
- Stumpy, Hero of the Lakes
- The High Places by A. Harry Griffin
- The Highest House in Wathendale
- Kendal by Roger Bingham
- Secrets and Legends of Old Westmorland
- Reminiscences of Wordsworth Among the Peasantry of Westmorland by Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley
- Little Gods by Jacob Polley
- A Lakeland Summer
- Hunter of Harter Fell by Joseph E Chipperfield
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- Excursion to Loweswater. A Lakeland Visit 1865
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- Kendal In The Nineteenth Century by A Wainwright
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- The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards
- Old Will Stories by Dudley Hoys
- The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff
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- Furness and the Industrial Revolution
- The Shadow of Black Combe
- The Painted Letters of Percy Kelly
- Ivver Sen
- Lakeland in the 1830s
- Wasdale Climbing Book By Michael Cocker
- Riding High by Barbara Sneyd
- Deborah in Langdale
- Early Recollections of Grange
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- Yan, Tan, Tethera
- Talk of the Town
- Capturing the Mountains
- Hope On, Hope Ever
- Mildred Edwards: Our City Our People 1889 - 1978 Memories
- Lakeland Limericks
- Surrounding loveliness
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- Hercules and the Farmer's Wife
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- I've been so busy reading I haven't had time to blog!
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