Just who is this Jimmy Dyer?
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The story of the picture used on all Brampton Live materials
If you don’t know who I am
Look in my face and see
For I’m the most respected man
In all this country.
I’m noted for my poetry;
When e’er folk see me out,
They touch their caps respectfully
And this is what they shout:
Here’s Jimmy Dyer
The man we all admire
Here is Jimmy Dyer
Of him we never tire.
He plays his fiddle in the street
He does the best he can;
We all are highly fond of him –
He’s a Carlisle gentleman.
He was one of the best known characters of Carlisle in the late 19th century, an itinerant musician and ballad monger.
Jimmy was born on Christmas Eve, 1841, in West Walls, Carlisle and in his autobiography he declares himself ‘a Christmas Box of a different stamp and from a different mould to any that had ever been previously received in our house’ His life was certainly colourful. For example his sister was ‘prevailed upon’ (by one of her gentleman friends) to send young Jimmy to sea and he was bound apprentice on HMS Victory.
Disliking the drill Jimmy persistently played the fool, which soon tired out his superiors; for he was transferred to another ship bound for the West Indies. He was appointed carpenters’ cook, but he dismally failed in this career, claiming he got flogged for burning the toast! Typically, Jimmy says that he was determined ‘they should not flog sense into me’. Eventually his tomfoolery earned him a discharge, so back to ‘Canny Carel’ he came.
Now he had to earn his living as best he could, and in the manner best calculated to afford him the least trouble and labour. So he bought a fiddle and began to ply his vocation of composer, vendor and singer of street ballads. Soon no festive occasion, no market day or hiring fair would have been complete without the sight and sound of Jimmy Dyer. He boasted that he could earn £1 a day by his songs at one of the big hiring fairs.
A journalist in 1913 wrote “Jimmy’s ballads were his own production, some of them displayed ability and humour, but others, it must be confessed, were coarse and vulgar ditties, unfit for publication” (Carlisle Journal, 27 May 1913). Whatever opinion was held of Jimmy Dyer’s entertainment there is no doubt he was well known.
He travelled most days to the villages surrounding Carlisle. Well known by the farmers in the rural community “they ask for the news and Jimmy gives it them like the old Scotch town pipers, and thus the frequent visits of our virtuoso means the city and the country are kept in touch” (Carlisle Journal, 27 January 1895).
He must have been a memorable sight. He is described as having a snub nose, nondescript clothes with his feet always sticking out of the toe of his boots. Slung around his neck he carried a gaping Gladstone bag in which he carried his song sheets, so both hands were free to scrape at his fiddle. No wonder the children taunted him, such a sight as he was.
Jimmy Dyer continued this way of life until October 1902 when, unable to make a living from his fiddle, he sought refuge in the workhouse where he was confined to bed. He died in June 1903, aged 62, suffering from gangrene of the feet and exhaustion. The obituary that appeared in the local paper gave an account of his life and stated “few men were better known than this self-styled Cumberland Bard”. (Carlisle Journal, 19 June 1903)
Despite such a sad and lonely end to his full and free life, Jimmy Dyer would be pleased to know how well-known and remembered he is in the 21st century among Carlisle folk. He claimed that there were ‘one hundred and fifty thousand ways of getting a living without descending to earn it by the sweat of the brow… I was early in life struck with the idea that none but mere fools tried to get rich by hard manual labour…’
If you want to know more, you’ll find these letters interesting. They are recollections by the public of Jimmy Dyer, published in Carlisle Remembered, (Perriam, 1999)
Jimmy Dyer
Jimmy Dyer used to stand under Wheatley’s clock in English Street about 1898 and 1899… I used to give him ½ d. I have a verse…his own composition:
’Oh it was a gay night and day
Fair and cloudy weather,
Fiddle and I wondering by
Over the world together’.
Mrs H Wightman, November 1956
Blow the Fire
Jimmy Dyer we knew very well, my friend and I being chased by him often through Warwick Street and along Corporation Road, after insulting him by calling out ‘Jimmy Dyer blow the fire, hip hip hurray’. He never caught us as he couldn’t run fast in such big boots and I really think he enjoyed himself. Later in life, when my friends used to meet him he was quite the gentleman and he never failed to bow and raise his hat.
Mrs Ella Middleton (nee Kennedy), December 1955
A Star Turn
Jimmy Dyer was the star turn of those days. He was a big, stoutish bearded man with a red nose and huge splay feet, his boots slashed across the front to relieve pressure on his corns and bunions. His clothes were shabby and he wore a flat topped bowler. His stance was in front of the gaol door where on Saturday evenings he fiddled and chanted the verses he composed. It was said that when he took his tatie-pot to the bakehouse to be cooked, he spat in it to make sure no-one else took it.
James Beaty, July 1958
Jimmy Dyer endeared himself to the people of Carlisle in his lifetime and, in 1986, a statue was unveiled in the Lanes shopping complex in the centre of Carlisle. The statue has recently been cleaned and can be seen today in its new home in front of Debenhams, at the head of Peascod Lane and East Tower Lane. It seems that Jimmy Dyer now has his rightful place, as an itinerant fiddler and ballad singer whose career and character represents an important piece of Carlisle’s social history.
Bibliography
Perriam D, Carlisle Remembered, Tempus, 1999, ISBN 075 2416 782
The Life and Times of Jimmy Dyer, narrated by himself, 1870, Halstead, Carlisle
Mycock S, Jimmy Dyer – the Human Christmas box, English Dance and Song Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 3, December 1982
Chandler K, The Statue of Jimmy Dyer, May 2003
Acknowledgements
Archive photographs courtesy of Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle
Thanks on this to the author and our fab Stage Manager: Karen Bassett