"Whor?" replied she. "What's your son
John getting?" The old woman put her hand up to her ear, and
answered,
"Aw'm rayther deaf. What say'n yo?" It turned out that her son was
taken ill, and they were relieved. In the course of inquiries I
found that the working people of Blackburn, as elsewhere in
Lancashire, nickname their workshops as well as themselves. The
chairman asked a girl where she worked at last, and the girl
replied, "At th' 'Puff-an'-dart.'" "And what made you leave there?"
"Whau, they were woven up." One poor, pale fellow, a widower, said
he had "worched" a bit at "Bang-the-nation," till he was taken ill,
and then they had "shopped his place," that is, they had given his
work to somebody else. Another, when asked where he had been
working, replied, "At Se'nacre Bruck (Seven-acre Brook), wheer th'
wild monkey were catched." It seems that an ourang-outang which once
escaped from some travelling menagerie, was re-taken at this place.
I sat until the last application had been disposed of, which was
about half-past two in the afternoon. The business had taken up
nearly four hours and a half.
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