ABSTRACT
Ben Brierley and Edwin Waugh, both Manchester born, were colleagues and rivals in the dialect genre, often working the same circuit of poetry 'readin's'. Brierley’s poem Go tak' the ragged Childer an' flit was a satirical riposte to the sentiment of Waugh’s ‘Come Whoam to thy Childer an’ me’, and, in view of Waugh’s irregular domestic circumstances, as a personal jibe against his supposed hypocrisy.
