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DICK
BAGNALL-OAKELEY
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| DICK
BAGNALL-OAKELEY |
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‘NORFOLK’
is not simply a word that describes a county, it also describes
a language, a humour and a way of life.
Spoken
Norfolk has a stout and uniquely resistant quality and only
people born in the county are able properly to penetrate it
and repeat it with their own tongues.
Just
as their language, so also the people of Norfolk are tough,
resistant and impenetrable.
They
guard to themselves the secrets of their language and of their
humour.
Yet
humour there is in the Norfolk people, riotous and abundant.
When you read Norfolk tales, remember that they are tales
about a highly observant, subtle and recondite people.
Therefore,
always think twice before you laugh at a Norfolk tale –
the laugh might be on you!
Dick
Bagnall-Oakeley 1908–1974
Naturalist and dialect expert
A
TRIBUTE TO A NORFOLK NATURALIST
It
seems important that someone who knew Dick should commit to
paper a brief tribute to a very remarkable person before all
those who knew him have gone, so here then is an extract from
Dick Bagnall-Oakeley, A Tribute to a Norfolk Naturalist
by Logie Bruce Lockhart, published by The Gallpen Press
Limited.
It
can’t be, even in a small way, an attempt at a modern
pocket biography. To modern biographers the point of departure
is that no man is a hero to his valet, and no picture is true
or complete unless every weakness in the subject is ferreted
out and he is ruthlessly debunked.
The
correspondence I have received about Dick is unhelpful in
one respect: all the correspondents paint the same picture.
He was a hero to them all. A hero, rather than a paragon.
He
had an element of dash peculiar to the ’30s and kept
it to the end. I asked Sir Martin Woods the eminent physicist
what he remembered most about Dick at the beginning of the
war.
“Our
hero,” he said unhesitatingly. “Dashing and handsome,
and with an eye for all the prettiest girls in Norfolk.”
To
me, too, years later, he seemed to have preserved that heroic
dash.
He
was one of the last, true all-rounders, an outstanding, if
mildly eccentric, example of a species of Briton approaching
extinction. His joie
de vivre
and vitality spilled over so that everyone else felt better
for it.
Again
and again his pupils and colleagues marvelled that he could
excel in so many activities and still find time to be a genius
in the classroom.
MUCKA
OLE MAWKIN
Some
of those ancient Norse invaders have left isolated words behind,
living in the spoken language of Norfolk until this very day.
As
a boy, I was brought up in Hemsby rectory, where my father
on one occasion had two Norwegian guests staying for a few
days. Passing through the garden one morning, we were approached
by the gardener, wishing to draw our attention to the gardener’s
boy who was propping up the tool shed wall – a favourite
occupation of his.
“There
he be agin,” said the old man, “standin’ there
a-garpin’ like a mucka ole mawkin.”
My
father and I could not understand this use of the Norfolk
Dialect, but our Norwegian visitors at once knew!
The
gardener was talking about the resemblance of the lad to a
scarecrow. Mawkin is the old Norse for an effigy or
guy. Here was a Scandinavian word that had been brought across
the North Sea before William the Conqueror, and remains in
spoken use in parts of Norfolk up to the present day.
From
Dick Bagnall-Oakeley, A tribute to a Norfolk Naturalist
by Logie Bruce Lockhart.
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