THEM POACHIN CHAPS, AXMINSTER, 1844.

 "I wish ked stap them poachin chaps, they've bin out gen ta night:

With theck ther nit that they've a got, an they've catch'd sich a zight.

Why dont 'em tek a rod and line an try ta git a dish,

But not ta g'out wi nits an traps an distroy all tha vish.

"We've tried ta stap et times enough, bit all that ther's na good:

If constabels did g'oot by night, wy than ya noo they cood.

Bit ther' I don't think voks da kear if they da git a dish,

How they w's cotch'd er wot becoms ov al the tother vish.

 

"Th' ginlmin wot coms bout here, ta vish in our river,

Da mek complaints all bout th' town, that they can't ketch noan niver.

No moore I don't spose that they can, wheniver they mid g'out;

The reysn's clare ver they ther' chaps da burk maust all the trout

"An all th' vish them chaps da git they zulls 'em by the poun,

An what they cant they drows away, zoonder than they'd be vound.

But now I think tis maust a time ta zee ta that ther's work,

Er els' wi all the vish bout here, they'l  play the vurry turk"

'Clericus'  was, one might guess, an Anglican clergyman ministering in Axminster.  According to The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette he was the author of a work entitled Rural Sketches in the Dialect of.East Devon   Of him and his book(?) I can not yet find any further trace.  The newspaper published the above sample of his dialect verses under the title Lines to Mr. Piscator in its poetry-corner on  28th September , 1844.

It's pretty crude writing (not very consistent) and how reliable an idea it gives as to how East Devonian countryfolk spoke in the middle of the nineteenth century is hard to say but 'Clericus' was clearly making an effort.

It would have been the salmon that the poachers were principally after but it's easier to find a rhyme for trout.

It's interesting that the word burk turns up, here perhaps meaning quietly to put out of existence .  It had only entered the language fifteen years before when William Burke was executed in Edinburgh.  He had made a business of suffocating people and then selling their bodies for dissection by surgeons.

I remember there was still much mutual ill-feeling with the licenced net fishermen and the line fishermen of the Exe in the nineteen-seventies.  

The Axe fishing would appear to have been an attraction to piscatorial ginlmin.  I don't believe they ketched noan niver.