SotA Anthology 2015-16
This again creates humour
within the poem, and
shows how Jeffrey is not as
intimidated by Winney as
the rest of the family, who
clearly see themselves as
distinctly different from, and
not equal to her. They have
therefore to make a special
effort to impress her, with
Jeffrey having to be the one
to sacrifice his dinner so that
Aunty Winney could be fed.
The discussion around what
Jeffrey’s mother makes for
dinner is another point that
highlights the way dialect
enables us to understand
the culture of the workingclass people of Wigan. One
thing to note is that because
these poems are amateur,
there is no date to refer to
in terms of when the poems
were written. However, any
Wiganer is likely familiar
with Wigan’s famous link
with pies. The poverty
Jeffrey’s family experienced
is illustrated in stanza three
when his mother says:
‘Neaw we ad’nt much
jackbit in’t pantry / So mi
mam made a plate praytuh
pie.’ Jackbit is a Wigan
dialect term meaning food,
and a symbolic indicator of
deprivation and poverty is
someone’s inability to buy
food, as is the case here.
Jeffrey’s mum, like many
working-class women would
have done, had to rely on
the food available to her and
make a meal from that. A
‘plate praytuh pie’ is quite a
phonetically pleasing use of
alliteration, and it highlights
the basic nature of the food
people in Wigan are famed
for eating. ‘Praytuh’ is the
dialect word for potato, and
to make a potato pie might
sound very unappealing to
anyone not used to eating
the heavy, stodgy foods that
people in industrial towns
have traditionally relied
on to feed their families.
Yet,
Jeffrey
highlight’s
the Wiganer’s love for
pies when he describes
it as ‘a reet gradely pie’,
again employing the use
of dialect words when he
says ‘reet’ instead of right,
and ‘gradely’, which Wright
(1982) translates as ‘fine’.
The indexical meanings
relating to pies have a
special significance when
considered in relation to
Wigan,
however.
BBC
Manchester ran an article
(n.d.) that explored the
origins of the term ‘pie
eaters’ which is a famous
nickname for Wiganers
throughout the North-West
of England. They explain:
“It all started on 3 May,
1926, when the General
Council of the Trade Union
Congress called a general
strike… the TUC eventually
had to give in and tell
people to go back to work
after the Government stated
that they couldn’t force
employers to take everyone
who had been on strike
back. Up in Wigan though,
they had already returned
to work. The collieries there
had decided to take matters
into their own hands and
were literally starving their
miners back down the
pit… the workers had no
choice but to return to work
before the workforces of
the surrounding towns.
They had, in essence,
been forced to eat ‘humble
pie’. Thus the nickname
that Wiganers now cherish
was born. Not out of a love
of pastry-covered meats,
but out of the cruelness
of employers and the
harshness of life. Much as
Wigan enjoys its pies now,
for one day in May 1926,
pie was the last thing they
wanted to be eating.”
The association between
Wiganers and pies is deeply
intertwined and therefore it
would have been natural
to expect Jeffrey’s mum to
choose to make a pie. Yet,
there is a deeper undertone
to this association that
again sets Wigan and
its people apart from the
rest of Lancashire, in that
Wiganers always believe
they are the worst-off –
that they are in some way
the lowest of the low. The
miners’ strikes of the 1920s
demonstrates this, and this
supports Catterall’s (2005)
comments regarding Wigan
being a place apart from
the rest of Britain due to the
industrialisation of the town
in the 19th century.
The theme of social
deprivation and poverty
continues throughout the
poem, when Jeffrey’s mum
tells him: ‘when I ask if tha
wa,ants some / say no’w
that nor hungry, tha’s ett’n’.
The use of free indirect
speech here seems to allow
the poem to be placed within
the tradition of the ‘Kitchen
Sink Drama’ as defined
by Dinah Birch (2016),
as it allows the reader an
insight into the realities of
life for Jeffrey’s family that