‘Canny Newcassel’: A Case Study, 1797–1822

Abstract

As a British centre of both print and ‘organised cultural activity of all kinds’, Newcastle was second only to London.³ Its four weekly newspapers, two of which — the Tyne Mercury and the Newcastle Chronicle — were vocally liberal, were the most prominent in northern England.⁴ The source material concerning songwriters and songs is exceptionally rich. The ephemera and stock lists of its major popular printers are largely extant, and the energies of John Bell preserved many unpublished songs.⁵ Such is the vitality of its song tradition that it might be supposed altogether exceptional, of little use as a representative study. I would rather attribute this to the self-conscious activities of Victorian Geordies, who — thanks to Bell’s volume and the long lives of singers like Blind Willie Purvis and William Mitford — were deeply conscious of the tradition they inherited, and were at pains to acknowledge this legacy in print and in archival collections.⁶ Accordingly, though Bell’s activities are central to our understanding, we cannot unduly privilege his contemporary importance. Newcastle may not have been so different from other cities, whose popular song culture has subsequently been neglected and lost.

’Bout Lunnun then divent ye myak sic a rout, There’s nowse there ma winkers to dazzle; For a’ the fine things ye are gobbin about, We can marra iv canny Newcassel.²

[About London then don’t you go make such a fuss, There’s nought there my eyes for to dazzle; For all the fine things you are boasting about, We can say too of bonny Newcastle.]

Whilst the standard definition of ‘canny’ also existed in Northumbrian dialect, its primary meaning was ‘Agreeable to the eyes…In the north of England (in some parts pronounced conny) a general epithet of approbation or satisfaction, as in “Canny Newcastle”’—OED, <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/27143?redirectedFrom=canny#eid> (8 May 2013).