Horizon

A Whippet's a dog like a miniature greyhound- I'm sure Alan A can tell you more. There's a popular idea among the rest of the country (what you and Alan H would call negative stereotyping) that a lot of people in the north breed whippets and racing pigeons.
Aged about fourteen I went through a phase of liking James Herriot's books about a Yorkshire Vetinary surgeon: I wanted a whippet for a bit, but this ambition was supplanted by wanting to keep pigs- in a south London back garden this wasn't exactly practicable: my idea was to build a sty on top of the square of concrete under which lay the undiscoverable mystery of an air raid shelter. To my mind the whole thing would be quite easy. I explained my plans to my old man, in detail on a number of occasions, but he didn't seem that excited by the scheme...

I was surprised to learn from that link that they have a Richard Ashcroft day in Wigan: I suspect this is a satirical swipe by the evidently pubescent author of the piece: Ashcroft being a hugely overrated and whiny 'I'm on smack and I make miserable records' kind of artist. In other words not an exuberant northern artiste: but maybe they like that sort of thing in Wigan, if what she says about the Great George Formby is true.

Whippets are only one example of stereotypical Northern 'signifiers' among a vast list stretching from ferrets to flat caps.

Helen Robinson on this BBC site contributes one example:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/yourvoice/feature1.shtml

If you Google 'whippets' and 'northerners' you can find many more.

My wife - from Tyneside - has met them all over the years, though before the accent was made more familiar by the BBC in the 1970s/1980s, she was often taken for something more exotic, when not merely misunderstood.

For Geordies, however, whippets would perhaps be less apt than Bedlingtons.

Auden used a close variant on the theme in his lyric (sometimes called *Madrigal*) for the documentary film *Coalface* (1935):

O lurcher-loving collier, black as night,
Follow your love across the smokeless hill;
Your lamp is out, and all the cages still;
Course for her heart and do not miss,
For Sunday soon is past and, Kate, fly not so fast,
For Monday comes when none may kiss:
Be marble to his soot, and to his black be white.

This is Elizabethan-pastoral in manner, but it still works well, I think.

Britten and Berkeley both set the song very effectively.

The are exceptions to the general notion of the north being mocked, misunderstood or done down by the south: i've met many a middle class southern university student affecting northernisms in speech and language. Here's a nice example:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/1530530.stm

And scroll down to Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim, a DJ) who spoke with a northern accent in the 1980s (my friend Brentano went to school with him and knew him well) and affected to come from Hull when in fact he was actually called Quentin and came from leafy Reigate.

I wonder if we'll ever see teenagers adopting southern accents for status in the US. Far as I know that's never happened.

And the other side of the coin is the 'ee, watch them Londoners (I've been called a cockney wanker a few times I'll tell you): they're a bit sharp, they'll have yer money off you.' Where in fact, these days, politically speaking, it's the other way round...

I think I've heard Americans adopting Northern English accents outside music clubs.

As for American Southern accents, there's some of that in the R&B end of rock music.

...anyway, so the purpose of whippets is racing, then?

BTW, what is "ecky thump," please?

-----

After reading the BBC link on accents: my maternal grandmother refused to accept that she had a Pennsylvania Dutch accent, to the point of denying, when her speech was first tape-recorded, that the voice played back was her own.

Whippets were used for coursing and then racing.

See:
http://www.dog-breeds.co.uk/breeds/w06.htm

The lurcher from Auden's poem is plainly a courser - perhaps with an added implication of doubling as a poacher's dog - but they are used for racing as well.

Thx much.

Now about this "Ecky Thump" business? Forgive the persistence here but I've been mystified by it since first encountering the Monty Python Accent Clinic Sketch.

As far as I know, it's a sort of ejaculation, if you will, like ee by gum.

Thanks. Any idea where on earth it comes from though? I mean, "by gum" is a euphemism for "by God," right? But WTF is "Ecky Thump"? Rhyming slang?