Bloor Family Net

Written by David M Bloor

Articles featuring 'Jabez' first appeared in the North Staffordshire Evening Sentinel in September 1968 under the pen name of A. Scott. Unknown to anyone in the family, my father, Wilfred Bloor had submitted a series of stories featuring 'Jabez', a composite character reflecting memories of his childhood in the small North Staffordshire village of Scot Hay (hence the pen name) and including carefully crafted snippets of the local dialect.

If you would like to hear an example of Wilfred speaking in dialect (mp3 format) please click the picture.

Jabez was one of those characters one comes across in village life. He was sturdily built, had a face best described as craggy, eyebrows that were distinctly bushy, and small but bright blue eyes that betrayed his rougish sense of humor.

His normal clothes, Sundays excepted, were a nondescript jacket, a "union" shirt and a pair of "moleskin" trousers, the legs of which were tied just below the knee with string or pieces of old bootlace. ...

... It was said that in his youth he had worked in the pit, but for as long as I knew him he never had what you might call a regular job.

He was seldom short of work though. He was much in demand by local farmers for seasonal work, and could lay a hedge or plough a field as neatly as any in the district. He was also a competent bricklayer and carpenter, and I have seen him wipe a lead-pipe joint that would do credit to any plumber.

He could also give you a passable hair cut, or sole and heel your shoes. In a village such a man had no need to go looking for jobs.

The aspect of the 'Jabez' article which really captured the local readers was the way in which the local dialect was written in such an easily understandable form. This looked easy, but remembering just how much care my father took over each word, it was not. Each word had to be carefully selected so as to force the reader to use the correct pronounciation and stress but without using a word from 'Standard English' which might cause confusion. North Staffordshire dialect has many similarities to the language of Chaucer and the earlier Anglo-Saxon and so has a more complex set of rules of grammar than modern English. Some examples of this follow:

"Cost remember me tellin' thee abite that greet big ginger mare wot was frittened with that steym-injin an' welly kilt me?" said Jabez. "Well, ar was thinkin' abite that mare th'other dee an' ar remembered as 'er once brok a bloke's leg an' then seeved 'is leyfe.

This bloke was leebourin' at th'farm ar th'tarme, an' when ey wanted 'er ey used go ter th'fer end o' th'farmyard an' whistle it."

And from another story:

"Snow's a grand thing when yer young, inna it?" said Jabez. "Sledgin' an' snowboin' an' slarrin' an' meekin snowmen. But th'owder yer get th'less yer larke it. Dust know, sirree, ar've never felt th'seeme abite snow since that dee ar walked back from Betley in a blizzard. Ar was ony a youth at th'tarme".

With a short break in the 1980's my father produced a 'Jabez' story for the Sentinel every week from 1968 until his death in 1993 as well as a series of Bible stories in dialect for several years. Three collections of his stories were published between 1972 and 1978 and each sold several thousand copies. Over the years he also made many personal appearances at local venues, reading his stories and explaining about the local dialect and one of these he had professionally recorded and had great success with sales of an audio cassette. He also read his stories on Radio Stoke and in collaboration with them made a second tape and he also recorded many of his stories for the local talking newspaper for the blind .

To ensure that his work in producing a lasting record of village life and the local dialect was not lost his sons established an archive of his manuscripts and studies at Keele University. Copies of two audio tapes of him reading his stories are available for sale from the University.

What often amazed people who came to meet him was that all this was only one of his interests and that in 'real life' he was a scientist working in research to prevent occupational diseases in the pottery industry.