A motto for psychopaths?

Ey up, me duck. ‘Ow do?

I spend part of my time living in Yorkshire, the largest county in England. Which is to say, it’s not very large, because England isn’t very large; but it’s still bigger than all the other counties. Yorkshire is the stereotypical ‘North’, home of grim industrial towns, bleak and desolate moors, green sheep-peppered dales, and flat cap-wearing locals with a love of whippets and clog dancing. Yorkshire has given the world stainless steel, Wensleydale cheese, annoying yappy dogs, club football (proper football, not that hand-egg nancy sport played by the Yanks), rugby league, ferret legging (look it up), Yorkshire pudding, white roses, Robin Hood, all three Brontë sisters and Sean Bean. That accent all the miserable northern bastards in Game of Thrones use? That there’s a Yorkshire accent. The eerie town Count Dracula first makes landfall in Britain at? Whitby, in fucking Yorkshire. Naturally.

Basically, the world owes an enormous debt to Yorkshiremen, and don’t they know it! The tongue in cheek motto for all Yorkshire folk between the Pennines and the sea, from Sheffield all the way up to Staithes is:

‘Ear all, see all, say nowt;
Eyt all, sup all, pay nowt;
And if ivver tha does owt fer nowt –
Allus do it fer thissen.

For those of you who don’t speak ‘God’s Own Tongue’, the English translation:

Hear everything, see everything, say nothing;
Eat everything, drink everything, pay nothing;
And if you ever do anything – always do it for yourself.

Now, I don’t know about you, but that to me sounds like a pretty great philosophy to live by. It boils down to take as much as you can without giving in return. Travel the world, and sample as many of its experiences as possible, but don’t sweat the small stuff and get bogged down in pleasing other people. Live for yourself, because nobody else matters. And on the odd occasions when prudence demands you give a little back – to save face, to flatter, to make sure everybody else keeps dancing your tune, then do so without taking your eyes off the ball. Do it for yourself.

So the humble Yorkshire tyke is really just advocating a form of philosophical psychopathy.

Flippin’ ‘Eck!