Thanks Sid.

The Gerald Massey website is a great resource devoted to many Chartist and working class poets. The pages for William Billington include a well researched article about him, three brief biographies written by his contemporaries, and three full books of his songs and poems.

I'm inclined to agree with Sid that the Lancashire dialect comes from the old Northumbrian language; following the recent switchover of TV broadcasting to digital from analogue some homes in west Lancashire received Welsh TV programmes, and these were not at all readily understood!

Matthew