[Julie Steiner]

Amazingly, Google is no help.

M.A. Griffiths made a reference to Roobarb County while responding to comment and critique, re her Geordie dialect poem "Fer Blossom":

***

Wa’all, ’taint the way we do talk down ’ere in Wessexshire, my flower, but it do be genwin Roobarb County – hawhawhaw.

***

I wanted to put a note on the cultural reference here, but I can't figure it out myself. I had thought Roobarb (or Rhubarb) County might be from the American comic strip Li'l Abner, but I can't find anything linking the two.

Ah'm arskin' y'all cuz y'all know Everything. (And it is a vaguely poetry-related request....)

Thanks,
Julie Stoner, who is apparently younger than she thinks

[Patricia A. Marsh]

Possibly: "rube" + "barb" = "roobarb"??

[Julie Steiner]

Yes, I think so, too, but where was it used? Was it part of a British comedy sketch?

BTW, if anyone would like to read Maz's poem:
http://ramblingrose.com/folly/2005_09/ferblossom.html

(I did manage to figure out what "Meltasers" are, all by myself.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltesers

[John Whitworth]

Roobarb is a dog. Any fule no that. He is a green dog with a pink cat (Custard) as his friend.

[Patricia A. Marsh]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Roobarb is a dog. Any fule no that. He is a green dog with a pink cat (Custard) as his friend.

Lardy, lardy! I dint no thet neider --->
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roobarb

[Ann Drysdale]

There was a TV cartoon series called "Roobarb and Custard" but she's talking about the dialect.

I think she was just mischievously misspelling rhubarb. If anyone were to ask me which is Britain's rhubarb county, I'd say Yorkshire. I can sort of make Yorkshire dialect out of her phonetics. Did Maz actually claim it was Geordie (ie from Tyneside)?

Here's a link to back up my thinking - and just listen to the local dialect!

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/...-day-1-5909947

[Mary McLean]

I'm with Ann. If you search on rhubarb triangle, you'll find out about the Yorkshire region. Otherwise, no idea what it could be.

[Ann Drysdale]

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mary!

Yes, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that this is what she means. She's "speaking" in pretend Dorset (Hardy's Wessex) dialect (the dialect of rural Poole, as it were) telling her critter that she's writing in a different voice, a voice from somewhere else. A Northern voice. From rhubarb county. From Yorkshire.

[Julie Steiner]

Sigh. Just like old times--I spent over an hour composing a reply directly into the "Reply to Thread" window, hit "Send", and found I'd been timed out...and going back a window didn't retrieve the lost text, as it sometimes does...so frustrating....

Anyhoo, my sincere thanks to Patricia, Ann, John, Mary, and the Informative and Generous Person Who PMed me.

I am now certain that Maz's reference to "Roobarb County" is specific to Yorkshire, and not a general reference to rural areas such as the hick town I grew up in, which is how I'd heard the term used colloquially in America, more than once. Apparently Yorkshire forced rhubarb is so famous that it has protected designation of origin status, like Champagne sparkling wine and Stilton cheese.

Maz often used the Yorkshire word for "thanks" in her messages, so it's my turn now. Ta.

I am not aware of any specific connection that Maz may have had to Yorkshire. Her family lived in London (Marylebone and Maida Vale) until the 1970's, then in Slough and Bracknell (1978) before moving to Poole in the 1980's. She had spent her childhood summers with her father's family in Bedwellty, Wales, and briefly attended Cardiff University. And in comments she made several years before writing "Opening a Jar of Dead Sea Mud", she wrote, "When I was six, I was sent to convalesce after an illness to a place in Herne Bay run by nuns – it was like Stalag 17." This became "Stalag Kent" in the sonnet.

Interestingly (to me, at least), a comment about pigs that she made some years before writing "Fer Blossom" concerns Wales, not Yorkshire:

***

I find it funny how we’re nutty about some animals, but regard others as without feelings.

I had a friend in Wales who had a pig as a pet – not the trendy Vietnamese pot-belly, just a plain old farm sow he had picked up as a runt to save from the chop. She was affectionate and house-trained and used to snore quietly lying at his feet while he watched tv. He took her out for walks and she used to go out into the garden, trot round on an inspection tour, and come back in and give him a progress report with funny little grunts. He reckoned she was more intelligent than any dog, and more fastidious too.

Yet pigs are crammed into cramped filthy conditions, with no outlet for their curiosity and intelligence, then slaughtered and sliced, and very few people think anything about it. How does this hierarchy of concern come about? Is it just convenience?

Kind regards,
grasshopper

(2002-05-07)

[John Whitworth]

Indeed. And the same thing may be said of rats, intelligent and resourceful creatures. William Brown said it in one of the William stories. Of course he cheered on his dog Jumble who was a champion ratter and killed eighty at one go.