There are many a thing, about being a lad,
That I remember still to this day.
But 'ave good manners, they cost you nothing,
Is what me ole grandpa would say.
I were given a feather, day after me birthday,
By two lasses whilst out and about.
I told me grandpa, who went after them lasses,
And shouted, “Si thee! Good manners cost nowt! ”
I can still smell the yeast, from over t'brewery,
And the dray men hitting our Fred.
He'd been throwing stones and shouting nasty-
“Them uns need manners! ” they said.
Or when rag and bone man gave his nag the boot
When she neighed she could pull no more.
Quick as a flash, our Ma ran o'er cobbles,
“Have you some manners! ” she roared.
I remember in winter, racing Tim t'privvy,
Hearing shouting in't ginnel behind-
An ole drunk from the ale house, grabbing a lassie,
“Get you some manners! ' she whined.
And I'll remember these things I picture,
Right up to me very last breath-
But 'aving good manners, which cost us nothing,
Is the thing I'll hold til me death.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
This is just brilliant. I love the dialect. the salt of the earth characters *, the moral tag of the one virtue the speaker always upheld, almost as if it were a force of nature and not a human invention. When a person is so devoted to a particular value, finds it reinforced in experience after experience, he us at the center of a moral universe that is remarkable. (*) Is salt of the earth an idiom familiar to you? It refers to common decency, things that are self-evident in their rightness. There is a great film about the visionary photographer Sebastio Salgado called THE SALT OF THE EARTH. He is a modern secular saint. We need more men like him.