With weird tales of the moon and cheese, chalk and cheese, white horses, crop circles, stone circles and UFOs, they've always been proud to be a funny lot in Wiltshire.

They talk in a dialect as thick as their arms, milk the mystical emmets (hippy tourists) for all they can and have an entire month where the whole county smells.

So it is no surprise that the often baffling world of Moonrakers – baffling, that is, to the emmets and the incomers – has finally been tackled in a new book, called Marnin' Moonrakers, which has been written to act as a guide to the odd natives of the nation's most mysterious county.

Penned by two born-and-bred Wiltshiremen, the book aims to unravel the kind of things that Moonrakers do, say and think, to better aid the incomer's integration into the strange shire.

Keith Burge said the book might be tongue-in-cheek, but it has a serious side to act as a cultural explanation.

Publishers Countryside Books was looking for authors of such a guide, and few better are qualified to wax lyrical about the county than Keith and Tom – both were part of The Yokels, Wiltshire's answer to The Wurzels, who toured the land in the glorious 1970s, when it seemed no one could have too much scrumpy and western music.

"It's a survival guide to the linguistic jungle of the Wiltshire dialect to start with," said Keith, from Keevil, near Devizes.

"We've got lots of different things in there too – basically it's a way to show people who come here exactly what Wiltshire is all about."

So there's a trip through the Wiltshire year – which begins with what Keith describes as "clothes peg month".

"In January, you have to go around with a clothes peg on yer nose because all the farmers are spreading manure everywhere," he said.

"Then there's every little quirky thing covered – the canoe race in the spring, the duck feast, crop circles, and so on.

"There's also a couple of serious chapters, one dealing with the dialect in a bit of a high-brow way, explaining it linguistically and grammatically and how it's survived this long.

"Then there's some historical bits about Moonrakers and Stonehenge and stuff, as well as some great old yarns, like the story of the poacher who pleaded not guilty, claiming he killed the rabbit in self-defence.

"A lot of it is tongue-in-cheek, but if someone was coming into Wiltshire and wanted to work out what people were talking about, this would be a good start.

"I did most of the writing, and Tom's really good at the sketches and funny little cartoons – we've got scenes like Hamlet's soliloquy in Wiltshire dialect, and what would happen with the execution of Charles I in Wiltshire, too," he added.

The pair are embarking on a book-signing tour – all in Wiltshire of course.

It starts on Saturday at Waterstone's in Swindon, then moves to the chain's store in Salisbury on Tuesday, November 4. Next it's Devizes Books on Saturday, November 8, following by the Waterstone's shops in Trowbridge and Chippenham on the following two Saturdays.

Wiltshire wisdom includes:

Moonrakers: The term comes from the tale of some excisemen catching a group of locals retrieving some barrels of smuggled French brandy from a pond. They acted dumb and explained that they were trying to retrieve that big round cheese from the lake, pointing at the reflection of the moon. The excisemen laughed at their stupidity and rode off, leaving the locals to their illicit booze.

Chalk and Cheese: The term comes from the difference in Wiltshire's geography – the south and east being high, chalk downland, and the north and west fertile clay pasture, ideal for dairy farming. It was first used in the 17th century and crept into wider use to explain two completely different things. Ironically, both are made mainly from calcium.

 Wiltshire is landlocked with Salisbury Plain in its middle. Statistically, it has the highest average land altitude in England.

One of the oldest counties in the history books, it dates from the 6th century as the heartland of Wessex. The county town used to be Wilton, then Devizes and now Trowbridge.

It boasts England's oldest town (Malmesbury), highest cathedral (Salisbury), largest Neolithic structure (Silbury Hill), world's biggest stone circle (Avebury) and is said to be the birthplace of the English language. So Moonrakers talking in dialect are actually speaking original English!