Wigan Album
Haigh Hall
16 Comments
Photo: DTease
Item #: 31555
Jan 1996.
'We walked on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight...'
The scene is timeless as if nothing has changed over the centuries. The nearest glance the humble bargees would have had of the Hall...another world to them, I imagine.
Simon and Garfunkel made a great team Jarvo, although I am more a fan of Paul Simon than his partner.
It does make you wonder what those Bargees thought as they passed this spot doesn't it Veronica?
The male crews of canal boats are 'boatmen' - not 'bargees'... a horrible word anyway. You won't find the term 'bargee' used in local parish registers, as far as I've found, anyway.
"Tarry awhile Jem, let's see if we con find a rabbit or two fot jackbit , ahm' heartiily sick o'fish"!
" Neaw Billy lad- thid sooner hang us from yon tree, keep gooin' wit yed deawn afoore they see us gawpin" !
"The Bargee'' a film made in 1964 starring Harry H Corbett. I remember seeing it. A lock keeper causes trouble for barges when he refuses to open the locks! Perhaps the 'boatmen' had ideas above their station Rev. Pretending they were at sea...
'THE BARGEE' one of my favourite films. I watch it every time it's on the TV.
A truly timeless scene, and I love that dialect, Veronica, and I love that song, Jarvo. xxxx
The Bargee was a story about folk on narrow boats - not barges - so the title of the film is doubly offensive to my ears. Catchy title for a film, maybe, but, certainly up here, the wrong word to describe a boatman on our canals.
Irene if interested: "Mary Barton " by Elizabeth Gaskell a 19th C novel about the mill workers in Manchester, she was a Unitarian Clergyman's wife/ social worker and provides a deep insight into the working class and their lives and the way they spoke and thought. She championed the mill workers especially. I read it on a course I did over thirty years ago, never forgot it.
A frozen landscape for sure.
The Rev Long is right about the names of canal boat people. There were barges & narrowboats. Some good books are available about the history of their lives on the water.
If truth were told, in my comment I am speaking hypothetically, it does make me wonder where 'barges' and 'bargees' come from though..not something I am familiar with, just the result of a lively imagination, combined with Dtease's lovely pictorial scene. ;0))
from my memory the name boatman was the official title of the pilot and the name bargees was the collective name given to the families that lived on the barges
Thank you for that Rt.