Thirty years ago farmers in the Yorkshire Dales never wore gloves even when the temperature was well below zero and there was snow on the ground. Asked if their hands felt cold one replied: “Aye a little, but only twice a day.
“I feel it first thing in the morning when I first go out, but after a few minutes my fingers go numb, like, and then I don’t feel them again until I finish my evening work and go inside the house. Then they sting a bit as they warm up again.”
This story from The Inn at the Top, an account by Neil Hanson of his time running the Tan Hill Inn, the highest pub in Britain, illustrates his admiration for his local clients, all sheep farmers, who, he claims, had as many terms for rain and wind as the Inuits have for snow. Words such as “slape”, for slippery or icy, “clashy”, meaning wet and windy, and “dowly” for dull and gloomy.
Although many of these local dialect words do not appear in dictionaries, some do, and are ascribed roughly the same meanings as understood by the farmers. All of them that do get a mention are said to be derived from Norse words that have the same descriptive sound.
This is an area where many landscape features – fell, beck, hag, scar and tarn – derive from Norse names, so it seems that the Vikings who settled here centuries ago have passed down their descriptions of local weather through many generations. Indeed Hanson says that Norwegian tourists found it easier to understand the local dialect than hill walkers from the soft south.
