Corf-Batters and Bum-Bailiffs: Victorian Miners' Language Catalogued

There's a fascinating review in yesterday's Guardian of Pitmatic: The Talk of the North-East Coalfield (Northumbria University Press):

"A dialect so dense that it held up social reforms has been rescued from obscurity by the publication of its first dictionary.

"Thousands of terms used in Pitmatic, the oddly-named argot of north-east miners for more than 150 years, have been compiled through detailed research in archives and interviews with the last generation to talk of kips, corf-batters, and arse-loops.

"First recorded in Victorian newspapers, the language was part of the intense camaraderie of underground working which excluded even friendly outsiders such as the parliamentary commissioners pressing for better conditions in the pits in 1842.

"'The barriers to our intercourse were formidable,' they wrote in their report on encountering the Pitmatic dialect. 'Numerous mining technicalities, northern provincialisms, peculiar intonation, and accents and rapid and indistinct utterance rendered it essential for us to devote time to the study of these peculiarities ere we could translate and write the evidence.'

"The first Pitmatic dictionary, including pit recollections and analysis of the origins of the dialect's words, has been compiled by Bill Griffiths, the country's foremost Geordie scholar, whose previous work includes the standard Dictionary of North East Dialect. His new book reveals an exceptionally rich combination of borrowings from Old Norse, Dutch, and a score of other languages, with inventive usages dreamed up by the miners themselves.

"'There's been an urgency to the project, copying the handwritten diaries and songs stored away in family homes,' said Mr Griffiths, who also collected booklets, pit newspapers, and magazines and spent hours interviewing ex-miners.

"Although the north-east was once the world capital of mining - hence the phrase carrying coals to Newcastle - the last major pit closed in 2005 and the industry's traces are vanishing.

"'The golden age of writing about the pits by working pitmen for working pitmen and their families is over,' said Mr Griffiths. 'It is time to save and share what we can.'

"Part-financed by the Heritage Lottery Fund, in a three-stage dialect study of the north-east called Wor Language, the dictionary reveals the deeply practical nature of Pitmatic. The dialect was originally called Pitmatical, and its curious name was a parallel to mathematics, intended to stress the skill, precision, and craft of the colliers' work.

"Term after term is related to mining practices, such as stappil, a shaft with steps beside the coal seam, or corf-batters, boys who scraped out filthy baskets used for hauling coal to the pithead.

"Other words are more earthy: arse-loop is a rope chair used when repairing shafts and a candyman or bum-bailiff is a despised official who evicts strikers from company-owned homes."

--end of The Guardian article--

Shown here: "The Miner," The Graphic, 15 April 1876.