Sackering

Sackering - Telling false tales of distress.  This variation on crying wolf was noted by the Reverend Alfred Easther in his Glossary of  the Dialect of Almondbury and Huddersfield. Easther said that Sackerin' Sam was a well known tramp or beggar in the district of Dalton.

The good Reverend was a incomer to his Yorkshire parish, and noted with respect to pronunciation that "Our Yorkshire friends have ideas of their own as to their peculiar vowel sounds, and will hardly admit that a South countryman, even one so thoroughly acclimatised as myself, can pronounce them at all."

Easther also recorded other characters who lived in or passed through his parish, one of these was Feckless Fanny. Fanny was a shepherd, and perhaps bit simple, she dressed in mens clothing and drove her dozen sheep into the churchyard one night.  The tamest of the sheep she had named Charlie, when she slept she laid down with her head on Charlie's flank.

The painting is Diogenese by Robert Lenkiewicz, you can see more of his art here.