Answer is blowing in the wind

May 31 2008 by Our Correspondent, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

THE recent winds – though not winter easterlies – remind me of an expression my father used to use when bitter east winds blew up Colne Valley in pre-war winters.

He would say that the east wind was ‘th’only wind Robin Hood couldn’t stand’.

I never heard anyone else use this expression; but some 30 years ago, when calling on an acquaintance at Hartshead – not a mile from Robin Hood’s reputed grave – I mentioned my father’s ‘speyk’ to her and she replied immediately with the words ‘Ah, a reight Robin Hooder’.

Perhaps some of your older readers might be able to throw a little light on this expression which I never heard used except by my father until hearing this remarkable echo of it so much later and so long ago.

Philip Charlesworth

Waterloo