He generally prides himself, like Major Bagstock, on being “sly, devilish sly.” That he is so, too, those who have tried to overreach him, either in his native wilds or elsewhere, have generally discovered. Indeed, the Yorkshireman’s good conceit of himself does not allow him to think that any other sense could possibly be intended. Thus, the man who is insulted by being called a dog rather takes it as a compliment to be dubbed a “sad dog” or a “sly dog,” and, like Bob Acres, lets you know, with a twinkle of the eye, that on occasion he can be a “devil of a fellow.” īy common consent, whatever its origin may have been, “tyke,” applied to a Yorkshireman, is taken in the complimentary sense. To be sure, we call a dog a “tyke,” and to describe any one as a dog is not complimentary, unless qualifications are made. No one knows whence this nickname arose, or whether it is complimentary or the reverse. By it we understand a native of this immense shire to be named. The Yorkshireman’s armorial bearings are wickedly said to be a flea, a fly, and a flitch of bacon because a flea will suck any one’s blood, like a Yorkshireman a fly will drink out of any one’s cup, and so will a Yorkshireman and a flitch of bacon is no good until it is hung, and no more is a Yorkshireman! No native of the county can be expected to subscribe to this, but no one ever heard of a Yorkshireman objecting to be called a “tyke.”Ī “Yorkshire tyke” is a familiar phrase. In The Great North Road: The Old Mail Road to Scotland (London, 1901), the English author and illustrator Charles George Harper (1863-1943) explained very clearly the ambiguities and complexities that have made the people from Yorkshire accept and even adopt as a term of self-reference the nickname ( Yorkshire) tyke: * Turpin fled from London thither, to screen himself, but was bit by a tike, and dy’d of the Country Disease. Will feed on carrion, mix’d with poison dung. So hang at Tyburn ’midst the jockey crew? Turn Yorkshire tike and steal a horse or two, What cou’d he do, in that dire starving case,īut take the trade peculiar to the place? In vain those roads he try’d above a year, Lean * Yorkshire chang’d the scene, his trade fail’d there In cash, and rings, and watches cas’d with gold When Turpin cruis’d near home, splendid he roll’d

This dull-bred rogue has found it to his cost, Our purer Northern air’s too sharp by half,Ī Yorkshire tike has bit this Essex calf: Of knaves and fools we don’t say we have neither,īut knave and fool are seldom found together. This rogue is theirs and we the honest folks. Gentleman.įull oft the South has sneer’d our Northern clime,Īnd horse-stealing been call’d a county-crime:īut now no longer we will bear such jokes, He was hanged at York for horse-stealing on 7 th April 1739.):Įpigram on Turpin. In 1737, he moved to Yorkshire under the alias John Palmer. He was a cattle and deer thief in Essex before entering into partnership with Tom King, a notorious highwayman. (Dick Turpin, born in Hempstead, Essex, in 1705, was an English highwayman. The following, from The Gentleman’s Magazine: and Historical Chronicle (London) of May 1739, indicates that Yorkshire tyke was indeed pejorative.

It is not possible to know from this dictionary definition whether the nickname was derogatory, but in The Wandering Pilgrim, published in London in 1740, by the English poet and diplomat Matthew Prior (1664-1721), the Yorkshire tyke exemplifies the poor:īut pass―The Æsculapian-Crew , Yorkshire-tike, a Yorkshire manner of Man. Yorkshire tyke is first recorded in A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew (London, 1699), by “ B.

The nickname given to the people from Yorkshire might have arisen from the fact that tyke was in common use for dog in that county. Because it was said in playful reproof to children, it came to also denote a small child, especially a cheeky or mischievous one. The English word dates back to the early 15 th century it denoted a dog, especially, depreciatively, a mongrel, and was applied to an unpleasant or coarse man. The noun tyke is from Old Norse tík, denoting a female dog (cf. The term ( Yorkshire) tyke is used as a nickname for a person from Yorkshire.

Definition tyke