Cumbrian Language in its Cultural Context

Cumbrian Culture.

This section is likely to be the longest in the book, but no segment of a book can adequately describe an entire culture. It should be clear to anybody who has read older Cumbrian literature that to be immersed in the culture is to have a mindset and an understanding of the world subtly, sometimes substantially, different from that of a modern person in the south of England. Aspects of such rural culture surely hang on in other parts of the rural north, as well as in Scotland (where even the metropolitan culture is worlds apart from that of England), Northern Ireland and Wales (likewise), and the West Country.

Any comment I make on it will necessarily be subjective, so I would encourage the reader to bear in mind that I have been raised in the south of England in the 21st century (albeit with several Cumbrian family members), and that my experience of the culture is not going to be the same as that of a modern fellfarmer, or of a travelling salesman from the 1700s, or of a schoolteacher from the 1940s. On the other hand, I would encourage the reader to suspend any preconceived ideas they may have about the north of England as a place of smog and factory workers. These are stereotypes, and would probably not be recognised by most people living in Cumbria over the last four centuries.

Quite aside from the 'industrial north' stereotypes, another set of preconceived ideas is often at play in the study of lake district culture. As both James Rebanks and Terry McCormick have written extensively about in A Shepherd's Life and Lake District Fell Farming respectively, poetic traditions over the last three hundred-or-so years have firmly established a romantic idea of the lake district that bears no resemblance to the landscape as seen from the perspective of the fell-farmer. Poets like Wordsworth and Wainwright have described it as an idyll and place of escape and innocence, made comparisons between Cumbrian shepherds and the biblical image of a shepherd. Even as somebody who has not been directly involved in fell farming and has mainly experienced Cumbrian farming culture only 133