Ey up agen, mi owd duck!

I CAUGHT up with an old friend recently and have news that will excite lovers of local dialect.

It’s more than 40 years since Ey Up Mi Duck!, Rick Scollins’ and John Titford’s seminal book on ’ow way spake araahnd ‘ere, was first published.

Rick died tragically young. But John is very much alive and enjoying a resurgence of interest in the dialect of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, with the book on sale in Waterstones.

Now, some of the voices that encapsulate what was once common parlance, but is gradually disappearing from everyday use, can be heard on CD.

After the book came out, John and Rick decided to make an LP to accompany it. “We had people in various parts of the county recommend local dialect speakers – several beyond the Erewash Valley – foreign territory!” John recalls. “So we travelled far and wide, carting a very heavy Ferrograph tape recorder with us, and recorded at broadcast quality.

“To produce an LP in vinyl: record the contributors, create a tape, get the tape transferred to a machine that will cast the records in plastic; design the centre label to be fixed to the record; design the outer sleeve; get that printed; slip all the records inside all the sleeves; compile and print sleeve notes. What a palaver!

“Then we advertised and sold the records – they sold out rapidly, as did our books and the Ey Up Mi Duck T-shirts. Everything we touched turned to gold!”

Years went by and several people offered to create a CD from the LP, but nothing came of it until John met up again with David Montague Heathcote, who used to fix John’s car when he lived in Ilkeston.

David had a good copy of the LP and got together with a local publisher to produce a CD, now on sale from j.tiford@zen.co.uk.

It’s a mixture of music and recitations, featuring the rich brogue of storytellers such as Harold Bacon, with Tales From Ossley Woodus, and Owen Watson (There’s No Coal Mines In The Sky).

John, 77, still works from his Derbyshire home as a genealogist and antiquarian bookseller and has now embarked on another publishing venture.

He and wife Heather have transcribed the 19th-century handwritten ledger of a widow who ran a register office for servants from her home in King Street, Derby, in 1833-46.

Mrs Williamson’s Register records the names and brief career details of 3,000 servants seeking employment – with details of how to contact them, such as: “Footman Richard Tinkler, 23, a very nice looking young man has lived with Mr Manners Goadby Hall nr Melton 2 years & last with C Hunter Esq Kilbourn to be found at the refreshment room station.”

It saahnds grand uz ote, yoth!