Yo’m ’avin’ a loff!

THE following humorous tales of the old Black Country and the characters that once lived here are taken from T.H Gough’s third collection of Black Country Stories, first published in 1936 and reprinted four times in the following ten years.

A doctor, having done everything he could for a patient, informed the wife that it was useless to send for him again, as her husband could not possibly survive for more than a few days longer. In the middle of the night the symptoms became alarming, the doctor was summoned by special messenger, and, much to his annoyance, had to travel from his home three miles away on what he considered a fruitless errand. “What was the use after what I told you, of fetching me out in the middle of the night to a dead man?” Voice from the bed, “But I aye jed, doctor”. “John,” said the wife, “if the doctor says you’re jed, yo’ bin jed, so shut up, because ’e knows better than yo’.”

A man knocked down by a motor was carried insensible to the nearest public house, and a doctor was summoned. “What’s the matter?” asked the man, becoming conscious. “You’ll be all right, keep nice and quiet,” said a man who had been assisting the doctor under the latter’s instructions to revive him. “We’ve just brought you to.”

“’Av yer? Well I doe remember ’em, so yo just bring me tew more,” replied the unfortunate victim.

* “’Av yer brought ’am for breakfust?” asked one workman to another. “Don’t ask me if I’ve brought ’am for me breakfust,” was the gloomy reply. “I ’ear enough about ’am at ’ome in a mornin’ afore I cum. I’m sick o’ the name o’ ’am, Am yer goin’ to get up? Am yert goin’ to go to work this mornin’? Am yer tryin’ to lose yer job? Am this, am t’other? My missus talks o’ nothin’ but ’am from six o’clock in the mornin’ till I gets out o’ the ’ouse.”