THE SPIRIT OF THE 
 OLD FOLK 
 
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THE SPIRIT OF THE 
 OLD FOLK 
 
 BY 
 
 MAJOR qAMBIER-PARRY 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "ANNALS OF AN ETON HOUSE," "THE PAGEANT OF MY DAY* 
 "ALLEGORIES OF THE LAND," ETC. ETC. 
 
 " Enquire ', / pray thee, of the former age, and prepare 
 thyself to tJie search of their fathers. . . . Shall not they 
 teach thee and tell ihee, and utter words out of their 
 heart?" JOB viii. 8-10. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 1913 
 
 [All rights reserved] 
 
Printed by BALLANTYNB, HANSON A* Co. 
 at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh 
 
TO 
 
 MY BROTHER 
 SIDNEY GAMBIER-PARRY 
 
 IN RECOLLECTION OF THE GOLDEN DAYS 
 WHEN WE TRUDGED THE FIELDS 
 
 TOGETHER 
 IN FULLEST HEALTH AND STRENGTH 
 
 492843 
 
William Dovunmarfs, 
 
 The Village Green, Loneham, 
 
 June 21, 1913. 
 
 MY DEAR S., You will perhaps be sur- 
 prised when you see that I have dedicated 
 this book to you ; but I think you will be 
 still more surprised when you find this letter 
 addressed to you in print that is, should it 
 ever attain the so-called dignity. But there 
 are one or two things I want to say to you, 
 and as these are somewhat intimately associated 
 with what follows, I may as well say them 
 here. 
 
 Do you realise ivhat we were really doing 
 when, all through o^lr younger days, and when 
 we were alone together, we habitually "talked 
 Gloucestershire," as we called it / mean, of 
 course, the dialect of the dear old County? 
 How we revelled in any new-found expression, 
 didnt we? how we treasured any fresh turn 
 of speech, and how we laughed with joy when 
 
viii THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 we met the real article in the flesh and laid 
 by in memory exactly what the old folk among 
 our many friends in the old home said to us 
 in their inimitable way ! It all seems very 
 long ago now, doesnt it? 
 
 But to go back to my first question, though 
 only to add to it another. Do you know what 
 we were really doing though not, of course, 
 always when we aped the phraseology of 
 those who were very certainly our betters? 
 My dear fellow, we were doing nothing less 
 than talking a tongue that, in the great 
 majority of its words, may be traced back 
 to Saxon times. 
 
 Of course we all know that, by some, the 
 dialect of our native County is set down as 
 mere viilgarism. It is nothing of the kind. 
 A very learned man, who prefers to be anony- 
 mous, has told me the truth has, indeed, written 
 it down and put it into print himself. And 
 this is what he says: that "on the Cotteswolds 
 they speak strong, broad Saxon as their ver- 
 nacular" ; that "the tillers of the land there, 
 many centuries ago, spoke with the same im- 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK ix 
 
 pressiveness, power, and pathos as may still be 
 heard among us " ; and that a work written 
 by no less a one than Robert of Gloucester in 
 1265, " w" i n the language yet in use by the 
 ploughboys of our more sequestered districts'' 
 So that what I have just told you is true, you 
 see. We were often talking something approach- 
 ing Saxon. Arent you proud? I am. 
 
 But dont be alarmed. This book is not 
 written in debased Saxon. Nor is it even 
 written in "Gloucestershire." And for this 
 reason. Apart from the fact that it would 
 have had few readers had it been so, such a 
 thing would have been impossible. I dont 
 mean the Saxon now, but the Gloucestershire. 
 
 You know as well as I do, that many of 
 us hailing from the County have no great 
 difficulty in telling a hill man from an in- 
 habitant of the vale, or even one from the 
 east and west sides of Severn^ the dialect of 
 the Forest of Dean being furthermore peculiar 
 to itself. But however this may be, I dont 
 believe the cleverest speller in the world 
 that is, always supposing he wished to be 
 
x THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 understood could write suck things down. 
 Yet it is just there that lies the strength, the 
 forcefulness the beauty, if I may say so of 
 the tongue as we have always known it. 
 
 All I have attempted to do here, apart from 
 the sketches of old friends, is to recall for you 
 some of the words of our former vocabulary 
 some of the expressions we so often heard, and 
 grew to use ourselves in all seriousness some- 
 thing of their quaintness, and that guardedness 
 of utterance that appeared to assert that no self- 
 respecting man could ever be so foolish as to 
 answer a question with a plain "Yes" or 
 "No" That is all I have tried to do. To 
 have spelt all words wrong or rather, as 
 they were pronounced to write zs for ss, 
 v s for f s, to drop all h s, to cut out all 
 final gs though I have adopted this last for 
 the most part to write "art" for "all," 
 " vur" for "for," and so forth, would be to 
 puzzle the reader needlessly. And then again, 
 how woidd one set about writing the word 
 "here" as a Gloucestershire man pronounces 
 it, whether he hail from wold or vale or 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK xi 
 
 forest? How feeble, too, does that abbrevia- 
 tion of "however" the common adornment of 
 most sentences appear when written " 'wever" 
 Or to take another instance, " allus" for 
 "always" In such matters it seemed to me 
 there was no way out, and therefore much of 
 the dialect has here been purposely toned 
 down. 
 
 I must pass over the other county occasionally 
 dealt with in these pages our distinguished 
 neighbour, Oxfordshire and come to another 
 matter. 
 
 Do you remember, long, long ago, our playing 
 a trick on poor old Thomas? We had been 
 walking day after day, as was our wont, after 
 those partridges of ours, that sometimes seemed 
 to be a veritable breed of themselves, unlike 
 others elsewhere, such was their amazing powers 
 of running in our heavy clays, to say nothing 
 of their general wildness and extraordinary 
 length of flight. 
 
 We had done our usual twenty miles and 
 more, over stubble and fallow and plough, and 
 came towards close of day to where Thomas 
 
xii THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 had been mowing nettles along a ditch edge, 
 and had left his scythe behind for fiirther 
 mowing on the morrow. It was soon done. 
 A penny rubbed along the edge put that scythe 
 out of action, as we soldiers say, for many an 
 hour. How thoughtless ! His age was no less 
 than ninety-one. I wish now that I could beg 
 his pardon. He was one of that class I have 
 attempted to depict here, and deserved our 
 praise instead of such a senseless trick. We 
 knew nothing of it then, but there shone out 
 in that old man the very finest spirit of his 
 class, just as there shines out now in his son, 
 after more than sixty years of labour on the 
 Manor and " bed-tier though he be, por soul" 
 the fullest share of his father s virility his 
 stubborn pluck, and splendid self-dependence. 
 We should have known better, and perhaps, 
 as Thomas might have said, our best excuse 
 is that " we wus nafral mischief u and gallus 
 like, as boys, ther , will allus be." 
 
 I am quite sure you will agree with me in 
 one thing, and this is that the spirit of the 
 old folk is not dead yet. For my dart, I have 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK xiii 
 
 found it in all manner of places not only 
 when meeting those who are the descendants 
 of the friends of old days, but when, for the 
 purpose of practising another art than that 
 of letters, I have lived, as you know, for weeks 
 at a time in their cottage homes. And I can 
 assure you, furthermore, this that a famil- 
 iarity with the class, from childhood onwards, 
 has taught me many things, and that with the 
 knowledge gathered has grown a deep respect, 
 and at the same time a very definite opinion 
 that many and many among them deserve to 
 be honoured, in the best and truest sense, as 
 much as any in the land. 
 
 I have only one more thing to say to you, 
 and perhaps of a more personal and intimate 
 kind. 
 
 You will notice that in my dedication I have 
 given that word " together" a line all to itself. 
 I did so, of course, purposely, and because it 
 seems to me, and doubtless to you and others, 
 often to mean so much. I know few words, 
 indeed, that may mean more: it seems to link 
 up the past with the present, and to fore- 
 
xiv THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 shadow also something of a future, with the 
 great, dim hopes that lie there. What it means 
 exactly here, I must leave you, in full affec- 
 tion, to discover. I am not afraid that you 
 will be long at fault ! Yours always, 
 
 E. G.-P. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. "BlTHIE" . I 
 
 II. THE THRESHERS 37 
 
 III. THE BREAST PLOUGH 71 
 
 IV. NAT ORGAN, THATCHER . . . .109 
 V. BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 149 
 
 VI. THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK . . .184 
 
 VII. THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS . .233 
 
 VIII. LUKE . 280 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE 
 OLD FOLK 
 
 i 
 
 " BITHIE " 
 
 EVERYONE in the parish knows Tabitha 
 Steevens, and everyone calls her Bithie 
 men, women, and children whether they 
 know her personally or only by sight, as 
 ; passers-by along the road that runs somewhat 
 above the level of the cottage garden in which 
 she may be often seen at work. Even un- 
 observant strangers look at her twice, for she 
 is altogether uncommon in appearance, as well 
 as often engaged in doing things that others 
 now either shrink from altogether, or expect to 
 have done for them. 
 
 For instance, it seems only the other day 
 
 that she was found by this one shovelling in 
 
 A 
 
2 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 five hundredweight of coal that had been shot 
 down at her gate the result of the sale of 
 some of the potatoes she had both planted and 
 dug herself, in the patch by the two large 
 apple trees, next the boundary hedge. And 
 her age at the moment was precisely eighty- 
 five. 
 
 " I suppose they says as we've got to have 
 it somewheres ; and down it goes, yer see. 
 But I'd learn 'em, if I'd my way. They wants 
 a lot o' learnin', 'tis my belief, for it be either 
 as they don't know no better and about that 
 I has mi doubts ; or else it be as they be 
 afeard of a little extra trouble or work, or 
 summut and that's my firm belief. Ah, they 
 should a-seed what I seen! But there, they 
 haven't got the spirit in 'em if so be they had 
 a-done. It be gone, I says clean lost out o' 
 the country, I says and more's the pity for 
 the country, and them as lives in it." 
 
 And with that she picked up the worn 
 stump of an old bissum and proceeded to 
 sweep the flagged path where the coal had left 
 its mark. She had not spoken with any sound 
 of anger or resentment in her voice, but rather 
 
"BITHIE" 3 
 
 with regret. She had known what work and 
 trouble meant in her younger days ; had in- 
 deed touched at all points the life of the 
 labourer on the land, in childhood and early 
 womanhood touched it again when she 
 married Joe Steevens, the carter at Hinton 
 Farm, farther up the road ; and yet again 
 when she had become the mother of five and 
 learnt what it was to keep a home going in the 
 'forties and the 'fifties. She had watched all 
 the changes that had followed one another in 
 quick succession, both on the land itself and in 
 the hearts and minds of those who worked 
 there, and had noted all in turn. 
 
 And thus it was that she could never under- 
 stand modern ways, and looked askance at 
 them, judging them " a deal too soft, and like 
 enough to make folks nesh * and weakly. Do 
 your shoppin' for yourselves, I says, and you'll 
 gain by it ; and never be afeard of work or 
 dirtying yer hands. More like to make a man 
 on you, if you be a man ; and a usefu' 'ooman, 
 if you be a 'ooman." 
 
 Certainly, to look at her, no one would 
 
 1 Delicate. 
 
4 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 judge the life she had led had harmed her. In 
 height she had once been full five feet nine, 
 though now a little bent. It was easy to see 
 that her eyes had once been very dark and full 
 of fire, though now a little faded. There was 
 no doubt about her frame ; she was big boned 
 and heavily built ; and she carried her head 
 well, with a quick movement to right or left as 
 if she were afraid of nobody. Her face was 
 long and thin ; and with the loss of her teeth, 
 lips had fallen in, making nose and chin seem 
 prominent. She always wore a small, close- 
 fitting white cap, with white frills at the ears, 
 and tied tightly under the chin by means of 
 tapes, a knitted red cross-over in winter, a 
 skirt of some coarse material cut very short 
 and very full round the waist, with an apron of 
 brown hessian ; and she was invariably shod in 
 what others referred to as men's boots, for they 
 were of surprising thickness and furnished with 
 a superfluity of nails. 
 
 Only in one particular did she show her age, 
 and then only of recent years, and this was in 
 her deafness. For some time now, when this 
 one had paid her a visit, she had produced a 
 
"BITHIE" 5 
 
 slate and pencil that he might write what he 
 had to say. She had somehow or other, and 
 unlike the majority of women of her time, 
 learnt to read, and being, as the Scotch would 
 say, " quick at the uptake," she would usually 
 grasp the meaning of a sentence before it was 
 half completed, and also watch the lips closely 
 for what was said. 
 
 The two were old friends and had known 
 each other long, right back to the time when 
 she habitually addressed him as "my dear," to 
 this later period, when she tried, though not 
 always successfully, to call him something else. 
 Of course he had never known her in her girl- 
 hood, for this was long ago ; but it must be 
 confessed that he often looked at her tall form 
 and marked that carriage of the head, and tried 
 to picture her out in the fields in the wind and 
 the weather, doing the work almost of a man, 
 and, what was more, liking it tried to picture 
 her back again in those days of sixty to 
 seventy years ago, when more than one man 
 must have looked at her for her stature, her 
 dark eyes, and the dignity that nature had 
 given her, till Joe the carter of Hinton at 
 
6 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 length claimed her and took her home for his 
 own, to the cottage where she was living still. 
 
 It was a day in late autumn when that five 
 hundredweight of coal was shot down at Bithie's 
 garden gate. She had been carrying it in, bit 
 by bit, in a couple of old tin buckets, for none 
 of it was large. Someone else helped with the 
 last lots, while she did the sweeping up, her 
 face puckered in smiles ; and when all was done, 
 she turned down her sleeves and followed that 
 other to the door. 
 
 " Yer never wasn't a-goin' to turn away from 
 me like a-that, was yer? Yer never haven't 
 done it yet. You please to come in and 
 have a set down for a while. Here here's 
 the chair as you likes : draw un up to fire 
 while I rinses mi hands : this coal-gettin' is 
 mullockin' work. The slate's in the corner 
 ther' ; but I can hear yer a bit to-day, I finds. 
 'Tis like that with this here drummin' in the 
 yud." 
 
 She rarely waited for an answer now, or a 
 question either, for that matter, her plan being 
 one not uncommon with deaf people, to go on 
 talking, with or without a lead. 
 
"BITHIE" 7 
 
 She was drying her thin, bony hands on her 
 apron when she returned from the pump in the 
 little back kitchen, the nails in her thick boots 
 sounding loud on the flagged floor. 
 
 "Oh, it's that yer wants, be it?" she re- 
 marked, stooping to read what had been 
 written on the slate. " Well, I never ! But 
 there, my dear or, dear soul, I should say 
 my childhood be long agone, though it be all 
 as clear as they colours in them yollems 1 
 yonder, when I sits here an' thinks at edge 
 o' nights. Bain't I eighty-five ; bain't I a 
 old 'ooman ? I got mi strength, though, if I 
 lost mi hearin' ; I bain't a-done yet! But 
 you'll have to have it all out, your way, 'spose 
 same as you did used when yer was no higher 
 than the chair yer a-settin' in you'll have to 
 have yer way, same as yer've allus had it, long 
 o' I. You've allus wanted to know ; though for 
 why I've wondered times. Ther' be nothin' in it." 
 
 She turned towards the fire as she spoke, 
 raked the embers together with a broken 
 length of an apple branch, and then put the 
 wood on the top with the deftness of long 
 
 1 Elm trees. 
 
8 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 practice. Then she rubbed her lips with the 
 other hand and sat down facing the small 
 window, where a heavy clump of yellow 
 chrysanthemums showed above the sill and 
 caught the pale sunlight of the waning day. 
 
 " Mother never got over that, I tell yer no, 
 she never didn't. From that evenin' she wer' 
 changed 'ooman, good un to go though she 
 wer' ay, a proper un ! Sammy wer' her 
 favourite, yer see, bein' her only boy, like. 
 First come Jessie ; then I ; then Sammy and 
 the two little uns. 
 
 " Jessie wer' nine when she went out wi' father 
 and mother in one o' they gangs. She wer' a 
 pretty child then, taller and stronger an' better 
 lookin' nor I she wer' allus terrible pretty, 
 an' that wer' her ruin an' I wer' nesh and fady 
 like, an' kep so long. O' course she'd got to 
 go out, though she wer' a girl an' no boy all 
 on 'em had to, them days : added to the 
 money, yer see, an' when it wer' a job to live 
 an' many went fammelled. 1 
 
 " Wull, back along, an' wi' neighbours on the 
 same jobs as oursel', we was mostly locked up 
 
 1 Famished. 
 
"BITHIE" 9 
 
 in housen till they come home again ; wi', 
 maybe, a bit o' bread and a can o' water set 
 out on the table, an' wi' I lef in charge of the 
 three others to do best as I could. Do ye 
 think I don't call to mind the turn o' the key 
 in that lock and the hangin' on it in the ivy as 
 grew up to the thatch ? I calls it all to mind 
 right enough, for such things burdens a lot 
 behind 'em, as you may judge. 
 
 " Left alone, same as that, a pretty caddie 
 us got into at times, and a pretty sight the 
 housen wer' when mother come home in the 
 dark, and set down to light the fire and take 
 off the rags, all wet, as she did bind her legs 
 with. She was wet to her middle, times and 
 so wer' I, when it come to my turn to do 
 as she done or try to, 'wever. 
 
 " Don't know as I ever told anyun afore," 
 continued Bithie after a pause, with her head a 
 little on one side, her eyes turned towards the 
 grate, and the fingers of one hand fingering 
 her lips "don't know as I ever said as much ; 
 but it wer' all along o' Sammy's fault. He 
 wer' a boy, yer see he wer' just a boy, wi' a 
 boy's spirit in un, and as mischiefu' as could 
 
io THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 be ; and we wus all just clam o' hunger. 1 It 
 wer' in the short days, too ; the wind wer' 
 a-blowin' down hill, 2 and cut in under the door, 
 smart, so as it wer' shrammin' cold wi'out a bit 
 o' firm'. Firin' ! mother warn't a-goin' to 
 leave us wi' any o' that, no fear ! 
 
 " Wull, Sammy wouldn't pay no heed to I ; 
 for wasn't un a boy an 7 desperate gallus ? 3 
 One as wasn't soon darnted, wasn't Sammy, 
 wi' his sparklin' eyes an' his brave ways, an' 
 his laugh as kep' the fam'ly happy when work 
 was out an' food in housen scanty. 
 
 "Come Sundays, them days, we did have a 
 bit o' bacon to our dinner, now and again, 
 same as most on us have had since, times 
 and times. Ther' was a bit o' gammon-end 
 a-hanging high to a nail that day, and out o' 
 reach. But it wern't out o' reach o' Sammy 
 don't know as much would 'a been had un 
 lived. We'd eat up the bread, what mother 
 left, as soon as the key turned, and ther' 
 wasn't nothin' left then for the rest o' the day, 
 and it wer' cold. 
 
 1 Starving. 
 
 2 North wind ; " up hill " being used for the south. 
 * Impish or mischiefful. 
 
"BITHIE" ii 
 
 " The little uns wer' a-cryin', when they 
 woke from sleepin' on the floor, come after- 
 noon ; bein', as I says, just clam o' hunger, 
 and not a-knowin' as all ther' was, was gone to 
 the last crum. And I reckons as that day the 
 cryin' though it wasn't nothin' new, like up- 
 set Sammy. He'd been messin' in the grate 
 along o' the cinders with a stick end ; but 
 presently I see'd un eyein' that ther' gammon 
 as if summut had struck un. He'd got thought- 
 ful, yer see, bein' just on eight year old, and 
 about to be took on, come the followin' week, 
 for stock mindin', or sheep mindin' in the lane, 
 or summut. 
 
 "He didn't eye it long not he ; but gets 
 up, an' wi'out a word to I, he begins a-pushin' 
 an' a-pushin' o' the table till he gets it agin the 
 wall. It warn't a mossel o' use my say in' 
 nothin', bless yer. And then, I'm blarmed if 
 he didn't get a chair and calls to me to help 
 un, for he wer' a' strugglin' and blowin' wi' it. 
 But he gets it on the table, right enough, and 
 then I sees what he been after. 
 
 "It warn't a minute afore he wer' up on 
 that ther' table, and a-clamberin' up the rungs 
 
12 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 o' the chair, till so be as he did get on his toes 
 an' could just about reach that ther' bit o' 
 bacon. He knew'd as the little uns, as wer' 
 a-cryin' on the floor, wer' fammelled ; an' I be 
 bound as it never struck un that that ther' bit 
 o' pig's meat wer' raw. He did mean to get 
 the young uns summut t'eat that's what he 
 meant, an' no thought of aught else. 
 
 " He'd just unhitched it, then, from wer' it 
 hung, and turns round, when overset goes the 
 chair, and he and all comes down upon the 
 floor, where he seemed to be settin', wi' the 
 gammon in his arms. Then he just rolls over 
 backwards, an' lays, while I did run an' rattle 
 the door to get out. An' a lot wer' the use 
 o' that. We wus locked in, o' course, an' 
 ther' warn't no way out. Then the little uns 
 did set to a-crying again, an' I did join in for 
 fear; while it wer' growin' dark, an' Sammy 
 lay ther', still as a dead thing, like. 
 
 " But er warn't dead, for just then, as if 
 th' Almighty had a-heard us childern wail in', the 
 key turned in the lock, and ther' wus mother's 
 voice right among us. She wer' down on 
 the floor agin Sammy in a trice. The sound 
 
"BITHIE" 13 
 
 of her voice seemed to wake un, for presently 
 he open his eyen, and says, that plain ' I 
 hain't hurted, mother I hain't hurted.' ' Then 
 for why don't you get up ? ' says she, a-kneelin' 
 ther' in her wet rags, for rain was a-fallin' 
 terrible as she come in. 
 
 " But Sammy never moved ; and it come out 
 then as he hadn't got no felth uv either limb. 
 Then mother turns to I and asks what we'd 
 been a-doin'. An' I don't mind a-tellin' of 
 yer now, as if I never told a lie in my life 
 afore, and tried to never since, I told one 
 then, so be as our Sammy could get shun l 
 behind it an' he wer' so minded. I says as 
 it wer' my fault, I says, and as I druv un 
 to it, for why as the little uns were wi'out 
 a mossel o' fittles t'eat. 
 
 " Then father come in, and did granch his 
 teeth like when he sees the lay o' matters. 
 And Sammy looks up an' says as he didn't 
 suffer not at all, he didn't. Nor did un', I'll 
 be bound, for he spoke quite nat'ral like 
 when father laid un on the table, and lit 
 the rushlight as we could all see. And 
 
 1 Shelter. 
 
14 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 mother did lap im round wi' her auld shawl, 
 and got the sticks together for the firm', and 
 the little uns fell asleep in the corner a-munch- 
 in' on' their bread. I can minds it all, bless 
 yer ah, as plain as plain ! 
 
 " Don't seem as it wer' long about, arter 
 that. Sammy did turn wonderfu' comical 1 
 later, and seemed as though he was a-goin' 
 to slip off. And so er wus, and did : the 
 spine o' the back wer' broke, I tell ye. Ther' 
 weren't no hope for un not a mossel, bless 
 yer! 
 
 "Jessie an' I wer' sent to bed arter that, 
 I minds ; but they never brought Sammy 
 along, as general lay with we. I calls to 
 mind the look o' mother a-kneelin' by the 
 table, and father a-standin' near, and I hear'd 
 father say, savage like ' Ther', danged if 
 he don't foller his grandfather, the way he 
 do take it danged if he don't ; same heart 
 about un, so far as I can judge, anyways.' 
 
 " And mother did look up, and says 
 to he ' I've never lef this housen wi'out 
 dread o' what might happen; an' I never 
 
 1 111 and light-headed. 
 
"BITHIE" 15 
 
 come back to un wi'out thankin' th'Almighty 
 as nothin' had happened while we'd been gone.' 
 She never gave way, though a brave un 
 wer' mother ; a brave un, self-respectin' an' 
 thrifty, like, an' trustin' th'Almighty through 
 all as come. 
 
 " She wern't never the same arter that, 
 as I says ; but it wer' the shame, later, as 
 finished her, brave heart that she wer'. Ther' 
 wasn't no cowin' mother when she see'd things 
 plain ; but it wer' different along o' our 
 Jessie. 
 
 " I wer' put out arter that wi' a neighbour, at 
 a shillun a week ; an' old Charlotte come in 
 and minded the rest, when mother was a-forced 
 to go out. She didn't go as reg'lar after 
 Sammy wer' gone ; but Jessie wer' druv 
 to go along o' father, to help out ; and, minds 
 yer, we wer' a fam'ly o' girls arter that, and 
 that wer' wondrous bad for married folks. 
 And as for I ; well, I warn't much use, though 
 I did go along at times. You see, I wer' 
 over tall, fady like, an' not much more nor 
 a frame. But Jessie wer' strong and fine 
 to look at ther' weren't no finer in the parish 
 
16 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 round, nor one as wore a prettier face. An' 
 that wer' her ruin, as I says. 
 
 " You must minds as in them gangs ther' 
 was folks o' all ages old and young, married 
 an' single, boys an' girls ; an' toddlin' childern, 
 I tell ye. We was a-marched here and a- 
 marched there, accordin' to the work and 
 place o' workin'. And I can minds one time 
 though that did often happen elsewheres about 
 when we was on a job o rippin', 1 over at 
 Thrapnell's, as we started over night, and did 
 lay about in the barns, or where us could, 
 till mornin' come an' it wer' light. 
 
 " Willum Cadle wer' badger 2 o' the gang, 
 and ther' wer' sixty-four on us all told ; and he 
 did make smartly out o' we. Ther' was plenty 
 as said as he did clear fifteen or eighteen 
 shillun a week out o' what we done, besides 
 what he did make on the fittles and things 
 as he did sell to them as wanted 'em, an' extra 
 on the job as well. But he wer' a notorious 
 
 1 Reaping. 
 
 2 Gang master. The terrible abuses and dangers associated 
 with the gangs were not remedied till the passing of the Gangs 
 Act in 1867. The Act was the death-blow, and the system 
 gradually fell into disuse altogether. 
 
"BITHIE" 17 
 
 bad un, wer' that Willum Cadle, an' he did 
 flatter our Jessie, when so be as mother wasn't 
 along, for mother wer' torn in two, like, as you 
 may know, an' little money comin' in. 
 
 " An' the end on it was, as Jessie wer' 
 lost : the gang wer' broke up ; and that ther' 
 Cadle wer' gone, and Jessie along wi' un. Us 
 never didn't hear on her no more. Mother did 
 use to sit and rock herseP afore the grate, 
 an' get up afore light an' do her work in housen, 
 an' try to keep things mended an' all decent 
 like, for she wer' good an' thrifty. She never 
 didn't give way ; nor didn't father. They just 
 went on, wi'out hump or hoot. 1 Well, 'em had 
 to go on what more could 'em do, wi' four on 
 us at home beside they, and all on us girls ; 
 what more could 'em do ? 
 
 " And that wer' what the gangs and low 
 money and th'old times brought to such as we 
 ay, to such as we. And minds ; what I be 
 a-tellin' on yer be all true as Book all true, 
 an' what I seen and done myself, back in yon 
 long times as they did call th' hungry 'forties, 
 and when I can assure you, dear soul on yer, 
 
 1 Without grumbling or crying out. 
 
 B 
 
i8 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 as many a fam'ly went half fammelled, winter 
 times." 
 
 The old woman's voice ceased : silence fell 
 upon the room : the light of the fire threw 
 shadows on the floor and ceiling, for the light 
 of day was dying. Bithie's hands were resting 
 on either knee, and now and then she would 
 raise one and let it fall again, while her lips 
 moved as though she were munching some- 
 thing. 
 
 Then of a sudden she looked up, and said, 
 with quite an altered tone in her voice, " But 
 there ; us mustn't give way : it be all long 
 agone and forgot ; an' mother never didn't 
 cry out, not father neither : it warn't their way 
 like it warn't their way." 
 
 Bithie did not tell any more of her life's 
 story that day, and it was time for this other 
 to be going. 
 
 As the cottage was left, a bright light showed 
 in the far distance. Someone had lit a fire 
 in the deep shadows at the foot of the woods, 
 and was making up his pile of clearings for 
 the night. The light gleamed brighter, and 
 then died down again, the blue smoke gathering 
 
"BITHIE" 19 
 
 volume and floating away through the great 
 tree stems and up over the silent hills. The 
 air was quite still : there were bars of pale 
 yellow in the sky to the westward ; but over- 
 head all was grey. 
 
 "Pears an' apples be a-blowin' early this 
 year, an' ther' be fogs come along in the 
 day. Never likes the look o' that : means a 
 light hit o' fruit. Fogs in March means frosts 
 in May, they says ; an we've had a-plenty." 
 
 Bithie Steevens was coming off her small 
 potato patch, clad in her white, close-fitting 
 cap with the frills at the ears, a blue cotton 
 dress, short as ever, and an apron made of 
 sacking. She was using a fork, the prongs 
 of which were worn down to some four inches 
 in length, to help her along, and when she 
 got off the patch she scraped her heavy boots 
 against the tread to free them of soil, much 
 as a man would. 
 
 The pear blossom above her head was full 
 out and white, and the apple trees were flushed 
 rose red and had emerald leaves on every twig. 
 
20 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 Blue shadows from the larger stems fell across 
 her shoulders and on her white cap ; the sun 
 shone bright and warm on the red walls of 
 the cottage ; and from the blackened top of 
 the wide chimney above the thatch, there 
 floated the pale blue smoke of a wood fire 
 within. 
 
 There was a bench beside the door, and 
 the two sat down there, for neither were in 
 the habit of being much indoors, and there 
 was a feeling in the air of spring. 
 
 " Just got the last row of my taters in. 
 May be I wer' a bit early wi' the first row 
 or two ; but us must do things, such as they, 
 when un can at my age, 'wever. 
 
 "Wull; I was a-sayin' to ye t'other day, 
 when I was a-tellin' yer how as I got married 
 to Joe. Ah ! a many had eye'd me, afore 
 he ; but he took me. I wer' but a slip then ; 
 an' arter my first child wer' born turned weakly 
 like an' fady. Did upset Joe, did that ; an 
 he 'ouldn't have no peace till he got one o' 
 them doctor chaps to look I over. Not as 
 I be a girt believer in they. But that un 
 struck it right, an' I blesses un for it. For 
 
"BITHIE" 21 
 
 what do yer think he says ? ' My good 'ooman, 
 the thing for you be the air an' the open. 
 Get out in the fields, he says, and work along 
 o' your 'usbun'. You'll come to it right enough 
 arter a bit, if it do tire you at the onset/ And 
 that ther' man wer' right, as time did prove. 
 
 " Mother wer' still alive then well ; she 
 did live till eighteen hunderd an' fifty-one, 
 I thinks it wer', havin' gone to work first 
 in the time o' the wars, when flour was any- 
 how in price and bread made up o' all sorts. 
 I'd never leave child o' mine behind when 
 I went to work not me ! When they was 
 all a-comin' an' it was five as I had mother 
 did come in an' look to 'em when I wer' out. 
 
 " The youngest was three when mother wer' 
 took ; but I could take un along then, an' 
 set un out in the burru, 1 long o' the rest. 
 The eldest wer' a boy, and when he wer' 
 seven he wer' earnin' crow-starvin' an' that, at 
 a shillun a week. Joe's money come to eight 
 shillun then, I minds ; an' mine, though that 
 wern't reg'lar, to sometimes as much as three. 
 
 "Ther' wer' no mistake about the work, 
 
 1 Shelter from sun or wind. 
 
22 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 or the want o' fittal either, for that matter; 
 but it had got to be done an' put up wi'. 
 Ther' warn't no use a-lookin' at it, wi' a party 
 o' seven in housen. In winter times, comin' 
 off whatever it meut be ay, an' wet, too, 
 right up above the knees on us, and no firing 
 to dry us by but a few stick we wer' often 
 times glad enough to dip a bit o' bread in 
 a drop o' cider, an' go to bed on that. 
 
 " Mother did used to tell as it wer' worsser 
 back along in her earlier days than it ever 
 wer' in our'n, an' she 'ould say as there weren't 
 no use a-cryin' over it, but what us had got 
 to do was to kep in good heart. An' so us 
 did; and wi'out a-losin' by it, 'tis my belief; 
 an' what's more, us brought up the childern 
 to do the very same. Yer see, it wer' the 
 times and changes, like, as druv the women 
 an' the childern out ; an' ther' wus plenty 
 as wer' glad to have their work, for it wer' 
 cheap. Any ways ; it wer' that or the House 
 for the lot, an' no choosin'." 
 
 A rook in blue-black plumage probably 
 the oldest in his colony, for he was very cute 
 alighted almost noiselessly in the big apple 
 
"BITHIE" 23 
 
 tree, and then dropped onto the ground be- 
 neath. 
 
 " Ther', beggar his old back on him, if he 
 bain't arter my taters," exclaimed Bithie, rising 
 instantly from the bench and scaring the bird 
 away with her apron. " Despert thieves be 
 they gentry," she added as she resumed her 
 seat " I knows their ways proper. Didn't I 
 go scarin' on 'em when I wer' just turned eight ? 
 Ay ; went out as soon as it wer' light, an' 
 come in at muckshut, 1 as soon as I see'd they 
 black-coated fellers off to the 'oods for the 
 night. Begun at a shillun a week and got to 
 eighteen pence : warn't a lot, as you might say, 
 wus it ? 
 
 " Us took food along, o' course. But it wer' 
 a'most allus bread or a few cold taters, though. 
 An' it weren't a lot different wi' mine, I can 
 tell ye just bread, home-made, bless yer, wi' 
 now an' then a bit o' cheese, or might be a 
 inon out o' garden when ther' wus one. That's 
 what me an' mine did have, an' us did eat 
 it at twelve an' four. Come Sundays and, 
 later on, other days at times, we did have a 
 
 1 The last of the twilight. 
 
24 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 bit o' pig's meat ; but such as beef an' mutton 
 what folks holds to, these days may be, 
 we didn't see they more often than half a score 
 o' times in a twelvemonth ; it wer' reckoned a 
 lux'ry among us then, and one not easy come by. 
 
 " I bain't no adder, 1 as you should know by 
 now ; but you may take my word for it that 
 to feed and clothe and rear a fam'ly ay, an' 
 do the mendin' an' cookin', an' keep the house 
 clean an' things weren't brought along to yer 
 door then weren't no soft job, them days. 
 Prices wer' most allus high : an' when a bad 
 season come along an' it were a'most beyond 
 us to get flour for the bakin', the food as we 
 had wer', may be, cutlins that's the oatmeal 
 grits or kettle broth and that be bread in 
 the kettle or a score an' score o' times, just 
 the taters an' greens from the garden an' no 
 more. 
 
 " I don't say anythin' agin it, mind, any 
 more than us did then. Us didn't take much 
 account o' that. Us wer' happy, if some folks 
 wer' allus mungerin', as 'em is yet. There's 
 never wantin' for them, if in my time there 
 
 1 Not given to exaggerate. 
 
"BITHIE" 25 
 
 wer' many as had a sad lot to put up wi', poor 
 souls. I say again, as so far as us went we 
 wer' happy and content, an' especial when 
 things did look up a bit when the money got 
 a bit better, an' food weren't quite so dear ; 
 when three o' the childern wer' earnin' wi' 
 oursel', an' we got us a peg in the cot at the 
 back to help pay the rent of a shillun a week 
 an' to give us a bit indoors. I tell ye that wer' 
 famous an' as it all went nicely. 
 
 "It was twenty-seven years as I worked on 
 this very farm an' reg'lar, mind yer ; an' off 
 an' on till fourteen years agone, when wanted. 
 What I had all the fore part was sevenpence 
 a day ; but later it wer' tenpence, or maybe a 
 shillun, wi' a quart o' cider in harvest-time. 
 
 " Ther' bain't a field here as I havn't been 
 over in my time, from hay-makin' in Milk and 
 Honey, to rippin' wheat in the Flecks, <5f~ 
 hoein' in Cucket Croat, or pullin' docks an' 
 settin' fires goin' in the Hord Patch Ah ! I 
 can mind the names of 'em all yet ; an' the're 
 like enough to be forgot, for folks now do turn 
 round an' asks you, silly like, if you do mention 
 wher' you been 'Why, wer' ever be that, 
 
26 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 then ? ' they says : I got no patience with 
 J em" and Bithie laughed to herself, took 
 up her fork and cleaned the soil from the 
 prongs, and then lodged it against the wall by 
 her side. 
 
 " Nay," she continued after a while, " there 
 weren't no work as did come amiss to we 
 'oomans, from milkin' to chat 1 rakin'. Us 
 reckoned as the year begun arter Harvest 
 Home. Ther' was the last o' the fruit gatherin' 
 then fillin' the carts wi' the cider fruit, that 
 a man did knock down and we 'oomans did 
 pick up thirteen pots to the load, an' a shillun 
 a cart-load was what us got. Then ther' was 
 the yelmin' that be to do with the thatchin', as 
 you knows, or helpin' the men to make a day's 
 wage at winnowin' when 'twas wet, or clat 2 
 beating', dung turnin', pullin' docks and cuttin' 
 thistles, weedin' and keepin' the coutch fires 
 goin' ; wurzel pullin' an' toppin' as we done by 
 the acre ; bean settin', barley hoein', wheat 
 hoein', as was begun in March an' went on till 
 us come pretty well to the haymakin' which 
 wer' some o' the hardest of all wi'out it wer' 
 1 Fallen twigs. * The clods of earth in a fallow field. 
 
"BITHIE" 27 
 
 the cheese-makin' hours bein' terrible long 
 and terrible tirin'. 
 
 " Ah ! that ther' cheese-makin' and tendin' 
 that wer' a job, now. 'Twas work as wer' 
 never done. Lookin' arter the made cheeses 
 wer' the worst, for they had all to be turned 
 reg'lar an' moved ay, an' cleaned an' wiped 
 careful an' each did weigh a quarter of a 
 hundred, and some more. Well, if that 
 weren't a job to break a 'ooman's back afore 
 the day was out, I don't know as what 'ould ! 
 
 " Then, round we come to harvest again, 
 wi' the drawin' o' the bonds and the tiein' an' 
 the stookin', which was mostly 'ooman's work. 
 Work along o' the men us did, harvestin' 
 drawin' an' tiein' an' the rest for 'em, and bein' 
 paid by them as we tied for at two shillun the 
 acre, an' doin', may be, half an acre a day. 
 But there there was nothin' as us 'oomans 
 didn't have a hand in, nothin' ! 
 
 " Go rippin' wheat ? I should just say as I 
 did an' times. I done a quarter of an acre or 
 better ; times, I have. An' I 'ould tell Joe as 
 I could beat un at it. Not as us ever had so 
 much as a bit of a miff between us no, not 
 
 
28 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 from the time we was a-loverin' to the day as 
 he were took, an' they carr'd un out from this 
 very door seventeen year agone come next 
 fall, and when he wer' earnin' fourteen shillun 
 a week as carter, in place of nine and ten as 
 'twas when we begun. 
 
 " See here," she added, pointing to a white 
 wale crossing the thumb and forefinger of her left 
 hand " that's what I done, the first time as I 
 went at it wi' the shackle. 1 You did use your 
 left to grab the straw, this way ; arid then cut 
 in quick below " ; and the old arms went 
 through the movements again and again. 
 
 " Me an' Joe used to take it by the piece, as 
 was the way then ; an' be out all day, from 
 when I could join un wi' the childern, to seven 
 in the evenin,' tuckin' the littlest under hedge, 
 like, or beneath a girt tree for shade, while us 
 worked, and larnin' the eldern how to help. 
 An' I can tell ye what as wi' them to pull an* 
 lay the bonds, and to tie an' help stook, Joe 
 an' me at times did do as much as close on an' 
 acre a day, though half an acre be reckoned 
 good work for a man, an' half that for a 'ooman 
 
 1 A sickle furnished with teeth, after the manner of a saw. 
 
"BITHIE" 29 
 
 that be, when things went kind an' the straw 
 did stand well, for all do depend on that how 
 you do get on. 
 
 " The childern didn't get no pay for their part, 
 for it wer' job work, an' what they did did 
 count in. The pay wer' accordin' as to how 
 the crop did stand, and did run from seven to 
 eight shillun an acre to ten at times, and some- 
 times more nor that when a crop wer' heavy or 
 wer' badly laid. There was good money to be 
 made then ; an' if it didn't last long, it helped 
 out nice. 
 
 " Ther' be folks as 'ouldn't look at such jobs 
 these days, though, an' as tells ye that such 
 bain't 'ooman's work. It wer' just the same, 
 back along. Ther' wer' them as took to it an' 
 them as never did, an' who says as all field work 
 be quite unfitten for a 'ooman. May be they be 
 right ; may be they bain't ; but, afore times, us 
 hadn't no time to think o' that : us had to con- 
 trive to live an' a hard matter it often wer'. 
 
 "But, the Lord bless yer" and the old 
 woman raised her voice and pointed to a 
 distant field that was now in grass, but that 
 had once been always arable "see Long 
 
30 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 Friday ther' ? That wer' a famous piece for 
 roots. I tell ye I been one of eleven 'oomans 
 a-hoein' that piece, times an' times ; one on 
 each land, and at eight pence a day, a-workin' 
 from eight till five, evenings. I warn't 
 very knowin' nor very old when I went at it 
 first; but just married, an' by rights should a' 
 been indoors. You had to put your hoe 
 forrard always forrard ; an' not bein' used to 
 it I couldn't kep up. But I got at it, wi' a 
 little showin', an' I 'ouldn't take a beatin' arter 
 that! 
 
 " The hoein' wer' better work nor the liftin', 
 when 'em wer' all soused in the autumn time. 
 It wer' cunnin' work, though, hackin' 'em, and 
 then pilin' on 'em together and coverin' em' 
 wi' their leaves agin the frosties. Ah ! wet 
 work it wus, an' no mistake ; but I did allus go 
 out in winter times rigged out for what might 
 come in a smock an' coarse apron, wi' a cross- 
 over shawl tied round, same as I got now, an' 
 gaiters and stout shoon. Didn't take a lot o' 
 hurt then. 
 
 "They'd think theirselves gawbies, wer' 'em 
 to be asked to go about like that ther' now. 
 
"BITHIE" 31 
 
 But, lor' bless ye, it be year an' year sin' a 
 'ooman 'a been seen on the farms hereabouts, 
 though in my time they was in dozens, an' the 
 main on 'em wer' married, and some had 
 childern along, and some was very old. 
 
 " But ther' bain't the call for 'em now. They 
 be in their housen an', maybe, that be often 
 better for their homes an' the men as have got 
 to work to keep their homes together, as they 
 says. An' the childern be all at school, and 
 like enough that be better for they, though I 
 misdoubts if all the larnin' they talks of sticks 
 by 'em, or leaves 'em settled in mind. But 
 things be all changed ; it be all different to 
 when I wer' young. I found it, right enough, 
 wi' mi own childern, what have all long got 
 married an' gone out ; an' wi' some o' theirs 
 married again, so as there's gran'childern an' 
 great-gran'childern an' not one on 'em bided 
 on the land, not one, though they be all good 
 to I." 
 
 There had come, once more, a ring of regret 
 into the old woman's voice. She had ceased 
 to talk of her own life and the hard times of 
 the old days, and was speaking her thoughts out 
 
32 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 loud about the present. She knew that every- 
 thing had not been for the best in former 
 times ; but she shook her head when asked 
 if she thought that what she saw around her 
 was all for the best now " Can't say," she 
 said " can't say, at all, I can't." 
 
 The light of the sun was turning white ; the 
 afternoon was waning ; and now and then a 
 cold draught found its way round the corner of 
 the house, making the tufts of primroses 
 tremble that grew close against the old red 
 walls. A blackbird piped his flutey note for a 
 moment in the hedge by the road, and sped on 
 with a chuckle. Then a hedge-sparrow's song 
 sounded from the apple tree the bird sitting 
 quite close on one of the lower branches, where 
 the emerald leaves glistened and the buds 
 showed round and red as sweet a note as 
 man may listen to. Bithie's quick, keen eyes 
 were everywhere, and she was watching the 
 bird though she could not hear it. 
 
 " One o' them blue Isaacs ; * that's what he 
 be. They be here allus, an* they be allus the 
 same been so all my time, 'wever. An' they 
 
 1 Hedge-sparrow. 
 
"BITHIE" 33 
 
 don't do no hurt, neither, like they pie-finches * 
 an' sparrers an' the like. I be fond on the 
 birds, I be, though some on 'em be despe'rt 
 meddlesome, an' costs a farmer a lot that 
 'em do." 
 
 Once again there fell a silence between the 
 two. Bithie's eyes had wandered from the 
 bird and were looking dreamily into the 
 distance, where the meadows glowed orange- 
 green in the light of the sun. Then once 
 more she began to talk. 
 
 "The grass be a-springin', bain't it? 
 Anyun' can see that by the colour on it an' 
 they tussocks yonder. There'll be a crop an' 
 it comes a nice rain wi' April's days. Then, 
 by June, they'll be a-cuttin' again wi' they 
 machines, an' this meadow an' that '11 be all 
 laid in a day, where us did take weeks. 'Tis 
 all quick, but it ain't made as it was in our 
 time nor so good. 
 
 " Ah! that haymakin' wer' hard, but it wer' 
 happy. Us and a lot o' others 'ould take a 
 field, like ; and cut an' make, an' set ready for 
 the waggons : the farmer did do the rest wi' 
 
 1 Chaffinch. 
 
 C 
 
34 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 his reg'lar men. I can tell ye it wer' bonny 
 to come into they meadows wi' the sun just 
 up when all the craiseys 1 wer' a-blowin' an' 
 the grass o' June like gold it done us all 
 good." 
 
 "Did you like it all, Bithie?" came the 
 question on the slate ; and the old woman 
 stooped down quite close to read. 
 
 "Like it?" she asked and there was fire in 
 her voice as she spoke " I've told ye all as 
 is ; I've told ye what the land was in mi young 
 day, back along, when Sammy lived, an' we 
 lost our Jessie, what never come back. I've 
 told ye of the middle times, an' of we 'oomans 
 in the fields, an' how yer had to keep heart up 
 to put yer fam'ly decent an' to keep yer home 
 together. An' now as I be a old 'ooman' an' 
 sits here a-talkin' to ye, same as when I 
 daddled ye an' yer head was all in curls, you 
 asks me if I liked it, an' whether it wer' all 
 hard." 
 
 Bithie was talking quicker than she had 
 done, almost as if she was indignant at the 
 
 1 Buttercups said to be a corruption of " Christ's-eye," the 
 mediaeval name for the marigold. 
 
"BITHIE" 35 
 
 question put. She had raised one arm high 
 when she broke out again, after a pause. 
 
 "Hard!" she repeated. " Bless the live 
 on yer, my dear, I loved it all, an' dearly ! Me 
 and Sarah Pointes as lived on the Green wer' 
 as merry as crickets, especial' at the rippin' o' 
 the wheat. An' old Mr. Webb as had the 
 farm then did say as he could hear we a-singin 1 
 at our work, right away from the fields to his 
 farm yard. I took to reg'lar farm work 'cause 
 I wus in ill health, an' that doctor chap did say 
 as he knew'd as I hadn't got a quarter of a 
 pint o' blood in mi whole body ; and it give me 
 back mi health, I tell ye it give me back mi 
 health; an' it all come to me as nat'ral, as 
 nat'ral . . . !" 
 
 The extended arm fell to the side ; the old 
 woman's story was done. 
 
 The hedge-sparrow began singing again ; 
 but his notes no longer claimed the same 
 attention, for thought had run off on the 
 possible songs this old thing of brave heart 
 had sung in the days of her vigour and 
 strength when she clutched at the tall straws 
 of the ripe, red corn, and the shackle flashed in 
 
36 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 the burning sun all through the long August 
 day. 
 
 Bithie Steevens still lives, and is now entering 
 her ninetieth year. But not so long ago, when 
 this one passed along the road, she was out at 
 the bottom of her garden, armed with a long- 
 handled brush-hook she had borrowed, and 
 trying to trim her hedge a bit and put things 
 tidy. 
 
 " I bain't afear'd on it," she called " I bain't 
 afear'd on it ; but it don't seem to go as it 
 should, somehows ! " 
 
II 
 
 THE THRESHERS 
 
 " MOTHER, mother ! they've started ; I can hear 
 'em at it." 
 
 It was the voice of a child raised little above 
 a whisper. 
 
 " 'Tis but five, then : lie over a while, and 
 bide still." 
 
 The little bedroom was not in total darkness, 
 though the hour was long before daybreak 
 on a mid-December morning. The moon was 
 shining and stars were glittering; there was 
 a white light outside everywhere, for the land 
 was in the grip of a frost and the ground was 
 sprinkled with snow. And some of this light 
 even found its way into this small cottage 
 bedroom through a window that was no more 
 than two feet square, to wake a child sleeping 
 there and make her think for the moment that 
 the day was dawning. 
 
 37 
 
38 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 The cottage has long since been pulled 
 down ; but in those days it looked out into the 
 yards and faced the great barn of Satwell farm. 
 Its roof was thatched, as were all cottages and 
 farm buildings hereabouts, and the two small 
 windows of the upstair rooms were set deep 
 and snugly in the same. It was in one of 
 these last that the above two sentences might 
 have been heard had there been anyone in the 
 house to listen ; but the only other who lived 
 there, besides Ann Daw and her child, had 
 gone out to his work and indeed was already 
 at it on this mid-December morning, and 
 partly by the help of the moonlight. 
 
 He that is, Evan Daw was over in the 
 great barn on the farther side of the yard. 
 The huge doors under the deep overhanging 
 roof of the barn-porch were thrown wide open, 
 darkness being made visible within by two 
 horn lanterns burning rushlights. Such light 
 as these gave was yellow in colour, and in 
 curious contrast to the white that reigned out- 
 side. And all that was not in actual shadow 
 in the barn itself appeared to be yellow in tone 
 too, for in the great bays, or mows, to right 
 
THE THRESHERS 39 
 
 and left, were piled many hundred sheaves of 
 corn, and many also lay upon the floor. 
 
 Another besides Evan Daw he called him 
 Jemmy was at work in there ; the shadows 
 of the two as they moved about being cast 
 like those of two great giants on the 
 boarded walls and the many hundred sheaves, 
 piled up and up till they and the moving 
 shadows were lost in the darkness of the 
 roof, five and twenty feet above, where bats 
 lived and cobwebs hung in wreaths, and 
 no light ever penetrated unless reflected from 
 the floor. 
 
 Men generally worked in pairs at the task 
 these two had before them, though in excep- 
 tionally big barns four were sometimes seen 
 together, as in smaller ones a man would often 
 work alone. Just now they had met to time 
 half-past four at the corner of the yard, when 
 Jemmy had fumbled with his hand along the 
 wall-plate of the cart-shed, till he struck the 
 barn key hidden there, and then joined his 
 mate, passing some remark about the cold by 
 way of morning greeting. Evan had mean- 
 while lit the lanterns outside, and, this done, 
 
40 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 the two made their way across the yards, their 
 footsteps muffled in the light sprinkling of 
 snow, the moon casting their shadows in sharp 
 outline as they went. 
 
 The great roof of the barn and the overhang 
 of the barn-porch loomed high above them : 
 then there came the grating sound of the key 
 in the lock, followed by that of the heavy 
 doors, half groan half sigh, when they swung 
 back by their own weight, leaving only the 
 racks, or boards at the entrance, for the men 
 to throw their legs over. 
 
 " Be-eautiful," remarked Evan, picking up 
 a birch bissum, with which to sweep out the 
 threshing-floor. 
 
 His mate seemed to understand the utter- 
 ance, and rejoined with : " Ay ; nice light 
 dry, too it'll go well this marnin'." 
 
 In a few moments they were arranging the 
 first lot of sheaves end to end across the floor 
 or midstey the only sound audible, unless 
 one of the two happened to clear his throat, 
 being the rustle of the straw that always tells 
 of warmth and cleanliness. Every sheaf was 
 so placed with the fork that its head met the 
 
THE THRESHERS 41 
 
 corresponding one of the opposite line, the 
 bonds being left uncut for the nonce, and 
 each man managing his own row. They were 
 about to thresh wheat, and these were the 
 preliminaries. 
 
 " That'll do for a lining out of it," said Evan, 
 going away into the dark on the other side 
 of the barn, setting his fork there, hitching 
 something down from the oak upright, and 
 feeling it over carefully with his hand. 
 Jemmy did the same. Then, without further 
 word, they stripped to their shirts, turned up 
 their sleeves, and took their places opposite 
 one another. It was too cold to stand still long. 
 With a nod of the head both started in strict 
 time, and with alternate strokes swung their 
 flails over their heads and brought them down 
 with a will on the heavy sheaves of corn. 
 
 They were both young men, under thirty, 
 and sturdy and strong. They were at work 
 often all through the winter months, and the 
 swinging of the flail over their heads with 
 raised arms, followed by the stoop forward as 
 it was given an extra flick just before it struck, 
 had developed the muscles of back and arms 
 
42 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 and shoulders till they were hard and supple 
 as a mariner's mainsheet. 
 
 It was good to watch them now, going at 
 their work with a will or rather, would have 
 been, had anyone cared to be abroad so early 
 in the morning, when the rest of the world 
 was still asleep. Outside the great barn 
 nothing was moving : there was the white 
 light and there were the steel blue shadows, 
 and the silent stare of the moon looking down 
 on the frost-bound earth and these yards and 
 roofs all powdered with snow. But inside, in 
 the dim yellow light, all was action : shadows 
 were dancing there, and there was the sound, 
 moreover, that some can remember still the 
 music of the flail on the floorsomething be- 
 tween the hum of a mill-wheel and the beating 
 of a big drum, with the swish of the flail 
 itself and the whistle of the wooden swivel, 
 followed always by the " thud-thud," " thud- 
 thud " and the rustle of the straw, with the 
 grain flying merrily here and there as it was 
 driven from the rough, red ears of corn. 
 
 The sound of course found its way out into 
 the quiet moonlit yards, and made dull echoes 
 
THE THRESHERS 43 
 
 in the buildings near. In the intense stillness 
 it even reached out into the home orchards 
 rhythmical as the tramp of a marching host, 
 full always of a music of its own the steady 
 drumming on the solid oaken floor for men 
 were threshing in the old-fashioned way, and 
 the flails were swinging in the air. 
 
 It was some time ere it ceased. Then the 
 bonds of the sheaves were severed with knives, 
 and the straw spread out anew. 
 
 " Not amiss for cutting off, and first time 
 over," remarked Evan. " I minds that crop 
 in the Upper Dene wer' heavy. The heavier 
 the crop, the better for the nile. 1 That's it, 
 bain't it ? " 
 
 " That's right," returned the other. He 
 had gone to the wide doors and was looking 
 at the eastern sky. " Not yet awhile," he 
 said ; " nothin' a-gate yet ; but dawn's anighst." 
 
 "Us must get a-gate oursel', and thresh 
 out," put in Evan, coming to the door, too, 
 for a moment. " Do allus make anybody 
 swither, spite o' cold, don't it ? " 
 
 1 The common term for the flail in Gloucestershire ; " thrail " 
 being usual in Oxfordshire. 
 
44 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 Then the two tightened the tuckings of 
 their shirt sleeves, moistened their hands, 
 and went at it again. The grain was soon 
 flying more merrily than ever, and rattling 
 against the racks. Every stroke now added 
 to the quantity lying among the loosened straw 
 of the slackened sheaves, and the men seemed 
 to be redoubling their efforts. The second 
 stroke of each man sounded louder than the 
 previous one ; and for this it was difficult to 
 account, unless it was that the first flattened 
 the straw and the second went right home. 
 On and on they went, with few pauses to 
 fork the straw over. The ears were getting 
 lighter, and most were by this time stripped 
 of grain. The second time over, as they 
 termed it, was nearly done, and a few moments 
 later, the men, having satisfied themselves 
 that their flails had nothing left to do, set 
 these on one side and took to the rakes, to 
 get the straw towards the corners of one of 
 the bays, ready for tying into boltings later on. 
 And just then the first cockcrow was 
 heard, to be answered presently by another 
 farther away. The sky was changing colour 
 
THE THRESHERS 45 
 
 in the east, stars were slowly fading out, the 
 moon was growing paler. On the farther 
 side of the yard others were astir ; the men 
 of the farm were coming to work ; horses 
 were being fed ; and one had already been 
 harnessed to a cart, the wheels of which 
 could be heard going out through the gate 
 and turning into the roadway. 
 
 One of the fresh comers stopped as he 
 crossed under the barn-porch, to see how 
 the threshers were doing. The light outside 
 was rapidly eclipsing that of the two lanterns 
 in there ; day would be breaking shortly. 
 
 "Been goin' nicely? Ah; I reckoned as 
 much. That ther' wheat stood up well, rip- 
 pin' time ; a good head, and not much dirt 
 wi' it." 
 
 " Not a lot," returned Evan, arming himself 
 at the same time with a wide wooden shovel, 
 with which to push the grain, chaff, and 
 cavings towards the rack, or high boarding 
 dividing the bays from the midstey, for winnow- 
 ing when more should have been threshed out. 
 
 " Grain been flyin' right up, high, and 
 all over, I sees," remarked the newcomer, 
 
46 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 watching the two men at work with their 
 shovels. 
 
 "Ay; we'll tackle that ther' later," said 
 Jemmy. "Time to dout these now, I reckon," 
 he continued, unhitching the lanterns and 
 extinguishing the rushlights with finger and 
 thumb. 
 
 "An' for we to get home and get a mossel 
 t'eat," added Evan. " 'Tis come light, ; wever 
 -'tis day." 
 
 It was half-past seven ; the sun would be 
 up before long. These men had done three 
 hours' work already, and, for the most part, 
 swinging flails weighing, in Evan's case, just 
 over two pounds ; Jemmy's was a little lighter. 
 Their job was piecework ; they were not 
 going to be away long. Time was money, 
 and they were to have fourpence a bushel 
 for all they did. 
 
 Evan's cottage door stood open when he 
 reached it, his wife being busy sweeping 
 out the floor. A fire of sticks was burning 
 on the hearth and a kettle there was at the 
 boil. On the deal table stood a loaf of dark- 
 coloured bread, made of barley flour and 
 
THE THRESHERS 47 
 
 toppings, with next to it, on a chipped blue 
 plate, a lump of lard, and on another some 
 honey, most of which was bee bread. 
 
 " Wher's the young un wher' be our Jane ? " 
 asked Evan, coming in on to the stone floor 
 with heavy tread. 
 
 " Gone dunny over the sound o' yourn an' 
 Jemmy's flails ; that's what the child be. 
 Woke I this marnin' as soon as ever you 
 started. Never know'd the like of her : sound 
 of them flails seem to excite her, like ; she 
 be up in a moment when threshin' be on 
 yonder." There was a tone almost of annoy- 
 ance in Ann Daw's voice. 
 
 Evan only laughed. He had flung his 
 hat on one side, and was sitting down to the 
 table, while the wife poured boiling water 
 on some baked crusts in an earthenware jug ; 
 tea was very rarely seen on such tables as 
 theirs, being then five shillings a pound. This 
 done, she went to the foot of the narrow stairs 
 that led down into the living room by the 
 side of the hearth, and called loudly : 
 
 " Child, child; be ye never going to rouse? 
 We be started ; can't ye hear ? " 
 
48 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 An old man, with white hair and clad in a 
 white smock, sat in a chair by his open cottage 
 door. In front of him were the yards and 
 ample outbuildings of a large farm, on the 
 farther side of which, and much higher than 
 the rest, rose the moss-grown roof of a great 
 barn. 
 
 It was a golden day in October, when trees 
 were of all colours, from russet to flame ; 
 when ruddy fruit lay piled in the orchards, and 
 the sward there, though now never dry, was 
 warm to the touch and softer than any carpet 
 to walk upon. A distant clock had just struck 
 three : the sun was still shining brilliantly, 
 but shadows were faint, for there was a misti- 
 ness in the air, and the amber and pale green, 
 the flame and the gold that decked the trees, 
 faded away into blue and the greys that 
 belong to the autumn. 
 
 The day was a busy one in the yards. The 
 farmer was trying some of his new wheat, to 
 see what kind of sample he would have to 
 offer, prices being very low. The. steam 
 thresher was at work, and its hum had filled 
 the air ever since it was first started soon 
 
THE THRESHERS 49 
 
 after seven in the morning, and would go on 
 doing so till the sun went down, and the band 
 was thrown off the driving-wheel for the day. 
 
 All the farm hands were busy, and all were 
 dust-covered, except the one in a blue slop 
 tending the engine, and he was blackened with 
 coal and much smeared with oil. Two of 
 their number were on the top of the thresher, 
 slitting the bonds as the sheaves were pitched 
 down from the rick, then dropping them into 
 the insatiable drum whose hum never ceased, 
 and whose tune only changed according to 
 the way in which its mouth was kept filled or 
 left for a moment empty. 
 
 Inside the casing endless ingenious contri- 
 vances were doing a dozen things at once. 
 Feeding rollers were spinning, and the beaters 
 in the drum were revolving at from six to eight 
 hundred times a minute ; fanners were winnow- 
 ing ; dust and dirt and the seeds of weeds, as 
 well as the tail and light corn, were being run 
 into different channels, and the grain was being 
 dressed while being threshed ; the rowens were 
 being piled on one side, and the best grain was 
 being run into sacks on the other ; and last of 
 
50 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 all the straw was being delivered at the back 
 and dropped on to an elevator that was build- 
 ing a mountainous straw-rick by itself. It was 
 only a six-horse engine ; but in a day of ten 
 hours this thresher could deliver with its help 
 fifty quarters of grain threshed, dressed, and 
 sacked up ready for market, at a cost of nine- 
 pence a quarter, wages and coal and all in- 
 cluded. 
 
 " Cut us out, didn't it ? it wer' bound to 
 come," remarked Evan Daw, now an old man, 
 incapable of doing any work beyond a little 
 crow-scaring with an old gun, burning a few 
 weeds and hedge trimmings, and keeping the 
 fires going on the Broad-leys, or cutting thistles 
 in the grass-grounds before they went to seed. 
 He liked to be out, if he could not do much ; 
 he had always been so, and moreover had a 
 great dislike to dependence. 
 
 " O' course them niles wer' right enough ; 
 but wi' a bad thresher or one as wasn't honest, 
 ther' wus terrible loss ay, as much loss as 
 ther' wus seed corn sown, and sometimes 
 a' most double ; I knows it wer'. Some didn't 
 used to thresh out proper, second time over, 
 
THE THRESHERS 51 
 
 and ther' was corn chucked away in the ears 
 wi' the straw, to be lost. It made no difference 
 how some chaps wus paid whether it wer' by 
 lot that be the twenty-fifth part, as wus tried 
 about here when I wur young or whether ; em 
 wur paid so much a boll or bushel it wer' all 
 the same ; couldn't stop it. Didn't take no 
 pride in the work, you knows ; an 7 it be the 
 same now ther' be allus mouchin' l folks 
 about. 
 
 " Ay ; it wer' tiring work for them as wern't 
 used to it, and wern't fitted proper with their 
 nile : he must have it to suit un, mind not too 
 heavy and not too light, or it 'ould tire un 
 shamefu'. But I'll show you one as I allus 
 keeps by me, and never means to part wi'. 
 
 " See here," he continued, having fetched 
 something out from behind the door, "this 
 un here be nigh a hunderd year old, I 
 reckons. It wer' poor old Jemmy's father's, 
 and I do kep un for Jemmy's sake ; not as 
 he'll ever want un again, worse luck. But 
 I'll tell ye o' that presently. 
 
 " Now see here now. The like o' these 
 
 1 To mouch is to pilfer ; but mouching is also used for idling. 
 
52 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 things be going to be forgot, so it's time as 
 you knewed 'em. This here be the hand 
 stick, and that be made of ash ; and this un, 
 what beat the corn, be allus made of crab for 
 the sake of the knots on it. Some do call 
 it the swingle, same as we do call a flail a 
 nile. This here be the middle bond that 
 fastens the two parts together, and do run 
 through the swivel at the top of the hand 
 stick, see, and through the leather-bound eye 
 of the nile. And what do ye think that ther' 
 middle bond be made of I fastened many 
 myself o' that quality ? Well, it be made of 
 a girt eel skin as come out o' Severn : us did 
 allus use eel skin for it when us could get 'em. 
 And now you knows the lot. But we've forgot 
 the swivel now, haven't us ? That be clever 
 made, bain't it? It be just a bit of steamed 
 hazel ; and terrible to fashion, I can tell ye. 
 The rest of the binding be horse-hide or cow- 
 hide, though horse be reckoned best. 
 
 " My nile wer' heavier than this un ; but not 
 a lot. You never knew'd Jemmy, did yer? 
 Worked along of I for years he did, and we 
 wus mostly threshing all through winter times 
 
THE THRESHERS 53 
 
 and in yon barn, too. Well, nothin' 'ould 
 suit un but er must go off to the wars, and so 
 off'er went ay, the Crim-ea, that's it. And 
 er done some execution ther', from what we 
 hear'd tell. I can minds it all. 
 
 " It wer' at the battle o' Ink'man, what was 
 begun afore light. They did run out o' ammu- 
 nition, did our folks. Jemmy, they says, in the 
 end, did get on top of a mound, like, that 'em 
 had throw'd up for protection ; and they says 
 as he did fought there furious. He got hisn's 
 firelock, and he did crack the skulls of they 
 Roosians like hen's eggs, he did. He'd been 
 used to the hand stick, you sees ; and if there 
 weren't no nile a-swingling at the end of it, 
 the butt end did do as well ; and Jemmy did 
 gi'e 'em that, he did Jemmy did give 'em 
 that till one on 'em got him in the end. 
 
 " He never come'd back no more, didn't 
 Jemmy. They put un in pit hole along o' the 
 rest o' the Coldstream Giards as fell ther' ; and 
 I've hear'd tell as they got and put up a 
 moniment to 'em, with the names all writ in gold. 
 
 " And folks have told I and the main of a 
 lot went from round and about here at the time 
 
54 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 as Jemmy's name is ther' along o' the rest, 
 though us never knew'd what er's name was 
 except as it wer' Jemmy Jemmy what lodged 
 at Brown's. Come here from other parts, he 
 did. But er wer' a good un, wer' Jemmy, and 
 threshed honest all his time. There; I'd 
 a-liked to a-seen un work that ther' firelock o' 
 hisn's that way ay, that I 'ould, for I be 
 bound he done terrible execution wi' it he 
 just knew'd how ! " 
 
 The engine-man was stoking up. There 
 was no wind, and a column of black smoke was 
 rising from the tall chimney, to form into a 
 heavy black cloud above, and then to float 
 away over the top of the great barn and be 
 swallowed up in the end by the mists of the 
 autumn afternoon. 
 
 " Gettin' a smart few sacks together over 
 yonder, I reckons," continued the old man, 
 after a pause. " They've been at it since 
 about of a seven in the marnin' and should 
 a-won fifty to sixty sacks by now. Ah four 
 bushel to the sack and two sacks to the 
 quarter : like enough, workin' the hours as 
 they'll put in to-day, they'll a-got seventy sacks 
 
THE THRESHERS 55 
 
 afore they comes to knock off. If they'd 
 a-been doin' barley, they meut a-done the 
 same, instead of less as us 'ould ; and if so be 
 as it had been oats, they'd meut a-done double 
 in the time. 'Tis a lot quicker than it used to 
 be a lot ; and from what I can see, I judges 
 as it'll be all machinery arter a bit. 
 
 " How much could us do with the nile, did 
 ye ask? Well, Jemmy and me together did 
 reckon to do three to three and a half sacks of 
 wheat, two to two and a half o' barley ; nigh 
 four sacks of oats, and near five when it wus 
 beans. That's about what 'twus, though I 
 don't mean to tell you as it ran as good as that 
 at all times. Sometimes it wer' more, some- 
 times less : all did depend on what the crop 
 wus how dry it wus ; the ground it growed 
 on ; length of straw, so as not to interfere with 
 a-linin' on it out : did all make a difference. 
 Barley wer' longways the most troublesome, 
 and the better it wer' corned the less you did 
 earn doing it as it should be ; and oats wer' 
 the easiest, except it was the beans. You did 
 stand them beans up, you knows, and then did 
 cut 'em down, so as the straw fell over one 
 
56 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 way. That wer' pretty work, and many's the 
 wager Jemmy and I had over it, too. 1 
 
 " Hours wer' long, o' course ; but that didn't 
 signify a lot. We'd begin soon after four, stop 
 for breakfast at seven or half-past, have a 
 mouthful o' bread wi' a horn o' cider or it 
 meut be two at about of eleven, and dinner as 
 us called it at one. And us knocked off at 
 four again, or when it come dark. That wer' 
 our day ; and the most us did earn wus from 
 twelve to fourteen shillun a week apiece, or 
 when us wus extra lucky meut be fifteen, and 
 wi' two quarts of cider allowed. And when us 
 come to take our money and that wer' 
 reckoned good money, mind ye we did leave 
 a bit behind for the rent ; and that's what 
 threshin' wi' the nile wus in the years agone 
 wi' we. 
 
 " There wus plenty as come along and 
 thought as they could thresh, but 'em couldn't, 
 
 1 As to the quantities given here, while these may be taken 
 as a fair average, the writer knows at least one old man who 
 assures him that when wheat was in good condition and good 
 yield, he could thresh out 12 bushels a day ; and also another 
 who asserts that he once threshed out 100 bushels of beans in a 
 week. 
 
THE THRESHERS 57 
 
 and some on 'em didn't mean to, any more than 
 nothin' else. 'Twas bad times wi' some, too; 
 and a-plenty was on the rates, I can tell ye. 
 Well, it come to this here at last, as the farmers 
 clubbed together, like, and took on between 
 'em more hands than ever they wanted, to stop 
 them rates from being swelled, and to give 
 work to them as was out of employ. So it 
 was as lots o' they poor wratches, what knew'd 
 nothing o' flail work, wer' stuck at barley 
 threshin' all through winter months, and 
 though it meut a-been done for less than half 
 the money by the machines as they had got in 
 their sheds : I knows it. 
 
 " But would ye care to step over to the old 
 barn ? I has summut of a likin' for th' old place, 
 'wever, and can tell ye a thing or two about it, 
 and yer minds. The master be good sorted, 
 and gives I the grant o' going round where I 
 do like at any time." 
 
 Evan walked with a stick now, and was much 
 bent, his shoulders being permanently stiffened 
 by rheumatism. Talking while walking he had 
 never been used to, and moreover his voice 
 was thin and he quickly became breathless, 
 
58 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 so he and this other made their way over to 
 the great barn without further remark. 
 
 The high doors beneath the barn-porch 
 were standing wide open, and the sun threw 
 a square of golden light on the midstey, 
 the reflection of which lit all parts of the 
 interior, right up to the grey thatch and the 
 rough-hewn, cobweb-hung joist of the roof, 
 five and twenty feet above. The floor had 
 not been used for threshing for a generation, 
 and what had once been Evan's pride was 
 now scored with the marks of waggon wheels. 
 
 The idea of a threshing-floor being dirty 
 was to Evan altogether abhorrent ; and be- 
 fore a fresh rick or full bay was attacked 
 it always had to be swept out with a birch 
 bissum where he was at work. Some floors 
 were better than others to deal with, he 
 always said; but oak floors, such as the 
 "Good Squire," as he called him, had put 
 down seventy years ago and that still stood 
 in many a midstey on the Manor, were the 
 best of all. Elm was always too dusty and 
 added to the dirt, while wearing badly. Beech 
 might do better ; but next to oak, in his esti- 
 
THE THRESHERS 59 
 
 mation, and much, to be preferred to stone, 
 came the old Gloucestershire earthen floors 
 that he had helped to fashion as a boy on 
 many an occasion. 
 
 These floors were laid down wet in some 
 parts of the county, being made of the 
 surface soil mixed with the strongest clay 
 and also sometimes dung, and then spread with 
 a trowel and rolled. But Evan Daw always 
 averred that laying these floors wet was wrong, 
 because they sooner or later cracked. " Lay 
 'em dry, same as I watched my fayther do 
 scores and scores of times, and you've got 
 'em then ; though I don't say as they come 
 nigh the heart of oak at that." 
 
 To make such a floor, the ordinary gravelly 
 subsoil was mixed with the chippings of free 
 stone in equal quantities. This was sifted 
 twice ; first through a wide screen, to catch 
 the stones and gravel used to form the bottom 
 of the floor, and then through a closer one, 
 to separate the more earthy parts from the 
 fine gravel. The finer material was then 
 spread over the stones already laid and the 
 earthy residue scattered on the top of all. 
 
60 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 " The whole 'ould be about of a foot thick," 
 said Evan " and when it wer' levelled, we 
 did kep on a-beating of it wi' a flat 'ooden 
 beetle, summut after the style o' them turf 
 beaters. And I'll tell ye this, as such floors, 
 when 'em was properly laid and rammed, 
 would last a length o' years and be a'most 
 proof against both flail and bissum. 
 
 " Some o' the old tackle still about, you 
 sees," he added, pointing to the corner of 
 one of the mows, or bays, where a litter of 
 things had been thrown pell-mell in the course 
 of years a hand-winnower smothered in dust, 
 a broken barley-chopper, part of an old leaf fan, 
 the rusted iron gear of a four-horse thresher, 
 together with a miscellaneous assortment of 
 implements that had fallen out of use or 
 served their time. " Ah ; I can minds when 
 they mows was piled every harvest as come 
 wi' as fine a sample o' barley as ever you 
 seed and all on it grown on the Banks 
 where now every smite be in grass. 
 
 " And look you at that girt beam up ther', 
 as runs across at the spring o' the roof! Well 
 many's and many's the time, I can tell yer, 
 
THE THRESHERS 61 
 
 as I've been perched up there as a boy, to 
 hold the horn lantern with the rushlight, 
 so as 'em could see to unload the waggons 
 when dusk had shut in. We didn't knock 
 off in them days ; but kep' on, and never 
 thought on it. What us had to do was to 
 save the barley, and get un dry into barn. 
 
 " And I'll tell ye another thing. To get 
 as much as ever us could into these here mows, 
 we did use a horse to tread it ; and when 
 one load arter another wus brought in, th' 
 old horse did get set up higher and higher, 
 and 'ould be up ther' two or as much as 
 three days at times. 'Twus easy to mount un 
 up, but a job sometimes to get un down when 
 he wer' right up ther', look ye, in the dark. 
 For the most part we did use a double halter 
 wi' some straw put down on the midstey. 
 Then he'd slide down, right enough, wi' one 
 above to check un a bit by holding to his 
 tail. 'Twus a rare bit o' fun at times ; and 
 didn't do the old horse no hurt, bless yer. 
 
 " Barley chaff wer' held in remarkable 
 esteem them days, and not much on it wer' 
 wasted, I can tell ye. Everything by rights, 
 
62 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 was forced to be consumed, as yer might say, 
 on the farm ; straw wer' given loose to cattle 
 in mangers and cribs ; and when us had 
 threshed the barley and chopped off th' eyles, 1 
 we did fill the chaff coifs they girt baskets 
 and throw'd out the whole tack the straw 
 and the rowens into the yard at the back, 
 where cows, young stock, pigs and poultry 
 and all manners, come for it as their reg'lar 
 feed. 'Twus all a sight different then." 
 
 Evan, like many another contemporary of 
 his, would never believe for a moment that 
 those who handled the new-fashioned imple- 
 ments were better off than he had been ; 
 and with the old spirit that marked his class 
 would defy the younger men to do better 
 work than he did, or had done, in many a 
 direction. Threshing might be quicker and 
 lots of things have been made easier and 
 cheaper, both in the farmstead and out in 
 the fields ; but he always questioned whether 
 fresh difficulties had not cropped up that 
 never had a place when he was young. 
 
 1 The awns or terminating grass-sheath of cone-wheat and 
 barley : pronounced "ahyls," and often written "ails." 
 
THE THRESHERS 63 
 
 " It's like as it meut be with the steam 
 cultivators as have come about," he would 
 say. " See how they do break up the coutch 
 and drops it into every crack, for every mossel 
 on it to grow out and start afresh. There 
 be mischief along many o' such things ; though 
 'em may be a trifle quicker and cheaper 
 at the onset trier's no gainsayin' o' that." 
 
 He would often put it that way. He liked 
 to talk of the past, and to tell of the old 
 days, hard though they had been. He had 
 been proud of his skill, and proud of what 
 he had done and once been able to do. 
 But with that inbred refinement that belonged 
 to many of his class, he hid that pride away 
 behind a certain dignity of manner that had 
 grown with advancing years, and that stamped 
 him now as one of Nature's gentlemen. 
 
 Then again, if many of the old tools he 
 had used in former times were now rusting 
 in the sheds and barns, or had disappeared 
 altogether, he knew the whereabouts of those 
 that remained, and would point them out with 
 his stick when strolling round the yards, as 
 he was doing now. Such old tools had once 
 
64 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 been a part of his calling ; and as they had 
 therefore, to his mind, been also a part of 
 himself, they were not things to be despised 
 now that they had served their time and fallen 
 into disuse. 
 
 The two stood watching the steam thresher, 
 on their way back. The men were getting 
 towards the bottom of the rick, and one or 
 two had armed themselves with short sticks. 
 They were reaching the last refuge of the 
 rats and mice, and a loud laugh would be 
 heard when one of the former proved too 
 much for the men and got clear away. The 
 nine staddle 1 rick of wheat would be fairly 
 finished before night. It had contained some 
 twenty-six waggon loads, and would have 
 occupied two men with the flail several weeks. 
 
 There was the sound of teacups from inside 
 the cottage when they reached it. The old 
 wife, Ann Daw, in a coloured apron, was 
 spreading the table with a coarse white cloth 
 and laying out the things. A kettle was sing- 
 ing on the hearth, and soon she would be making 
 
 1 Or staddle stones supporting a rick stand, usually either 
 seven or nine in number. 
 
THE THRESHERS 65 
 
 the tea. The loaf on the table was white 
 too white for nourishment ; there was sugar in a 
 tin ; and tea had now come down to pence in- 
 stead of standing at some shillings the pound. 
 
 " You'll take a cup along o' we, won't ye ? " 
 said Evan. " 'Tain't a lot as we've got to 
 offer yer. 'Tis my daughter, Jane, as have 
 learnt we this," he added, on entering the 
 kitchen. " She done well in service ; kept 
 her places, yer understands." 
 
 " She never had but two," interposed Ann 
 Daw. " But wherever us 'ould be wi'out 
 her, the Lord do know." 
 
 " And that's truth," added Evan. " There's 
 nurra-one like our Jane." 
 
 " I've been overhearin' some o' your talk 
 o' the nile threshing," continued his wife, 
 "and it come into my yud what a liking 
 our Jane did have for the sound of it when 
 she wer' a child. She did used to wake 
 I every otheren marnin', a-callin' * Mother, 
 mother; they've started! I can hear 'em at 
 it ! ' sometimes afore five o'clock and light, 
 and as soon as ever him ther' and poor old 
 
 Jemmy was on to it." 
 
 E 
 
66 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 "Ah; the missus used to tell as the child 
 'ould go dunny over it. Ther' be some like 
 that : it be the drummin 5 o' the nile as 'tises 
 'em ; and at times it be pretty music, or used 
 to was, 'wever especial' when the floor wer' 
 heart o' oak." 
 
 " Prettier music than that ther' buzzin' over 
 yonder : that be enough to drive folks dafty 
 altogether," added the wife. 
 
 "They be a'most through now, and then 
 ther'll be an end to the charm. 1 Quick work, 
 bain't it ? Ah ; quick work, and a sight quicker 
 than ever the nile wer', or could be. Fifty 
 quarter or more o' corn, maybe, in a day ! 
 And us could do no more than nine to ten 
 on the floor in a week and that be, when 
 things went right. But Jemmy wer' a good 
 un to work wi' clean, and threshed honest 
 and never bigged hisself for what er done." 
 
 Old Evan was bed-ridden during the hist 
 two years of his life, and showed in that state 
 the extraordinary hold on life that is not un- 
 
 1 A hum, or confused murmur : from carnten t a song. 
 
THE THRESHERS 67 
 
 common with his class, as well as a full share 
 of the invincibility of spirit that marked so 
 many of his contemporaries. The country side 
 is not yet bereft of such examples, by any 
 means : but looking back, and principally at 
 the older men of a past generation, the fact 
 that stands out very prominently is that con- 
 ditions which would put a period quickly to 
 the lives of ordinary folk, often took long 
 to lay these old men low. In numberless in- 
 stances they accepted what came in good heart, 
 and seemed to know no fear ; and thus it was 
 that those who loved their honest company, 
 often stood by in some amazement at what 
 they witnessed. 
 
 The lives of these men had been spent in 
 the open air, and at hard work from boyhood 
 in many a case, from childhood. The 
 majority of them may not have been physically 
 powerful ; but they were strong, hardy, healthy. 
 Knocks had not been few in their calling, 
 and these they had learnt to take without 
 complaint : exposure to the weather had been 
 their daily experience, and this they grew to 
 accept without a thought, more often with a 
 
68 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 laugh : to put up a good fight, as they might 
 have termed it, was no more than any man 
 should do on all occasions, and this the best 
 of them never failed in. 
 
 Life in such an atmosphere, if limited in 
 view, had yet taught these men a multitude 
 of things ; and so it was that when they came 
 to be laid by, the old qualities in them still 
 had play, and there shone out in them in 
 their closing years characteristics lying outside 
 those usually suspected. They had accepted 
 in contentment the life in which they found 
 themselves. Many if not the majority pre- 
 ferred it to any other ; and thus they carried 
 the spirit which that life had called forth into 
 the sombre and the quiet days, taking what 
 was sent, and all unconsciously, in a way that 
 showed in truth what manliness and fortitude 
 might be. 
 
 Certainly Evan Daw exhibited these qualities 
 in very marked degree. He had been known 
 by many in his parish as one who, " when 
 a job was agate, would be sure to be up at 
 it any more than he'd breath in his body " ; 
 while those who were older, recalled that he 
 
THE THRESHERS 
 
 69 
 
 was once reckoned almost a conjurer with the 
 flail. " Where Evan had been with hisn's nile," 
 said these, " there was never a corn o' grain 
 in the ears when you held 'em to the light." 
 
 That was the verdict of master and man 
 upon him. And when he had grown old, and 
 the flail had long dropped out of use with 
 other now forgotten tools, it was often re- 
 marked that he took as much pains with the 
 coutch fires on the Broad-leys as he did when 
 he could just manage, towards the end, to 
 cut a few thistles in the great cow-ground. 
 Fires should not go out, and thistle-down should 
 not be sown broadcast by the wind, if he 
 could help it. 
 
 He was always "doing a little"; and his 
 mates on the farm, though all now younger 
 than he, would say to one another as they 
 watched him, " The old man '11 never stop at 
 home. He don't never munger, neither ; 
 though many, had 'em been as he be, would 
 have come to be bed-liers long since." 
 
 He did wander a lot, towards the latter 
 
70 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 part," related the wife " wandered a lot, he 
 did. And he took to pickin' at the clothes ; 
 and you knows what that do mean. Some- 
 times, too, he 'ould keep on a-sayin' 'grain 7 
 * chaff' same as that. Hisn's mind had 
 got back to the flail, I fancies, for it was most 
 times the grain and the chaff, and the winnow- 
 ing or summut, as had got to be done. 
 
 " But just afore he went and the end come, 
 he rose hisself up : his face lit, like, when 
 he stared through the winder in the thatch 
 ther' ; and he did call out quite loud : 
 
 "' Jemmy Jemmy! We've threshed out: 
 I'm a-comin' : I can hear yer ! ' : 
 
Ill 
 
 THE BREAST PLOUGH 
 
 WILLIAM TRIPP was in his garden digging 
 his potatoes. It was an August afternoon, 
 and the air was sultry and still, with no definite 
 sunlight and therefore no very definite shadows. 
 A steady, white glare ruled in the heavens ; 
 and to move about required something of an 
 effort, if there was any desire to keep cool. 
 The atmospheric conditions, however, seemed 
 to have no particular effect on William Tripp, 
 for he continued his occupation without pausing 
 to look up, his whole mind apparently fixed 
 upon what the next turn of the fork would 
 give and what the next, and the next after 
 that till he should arrive at the end of the 
 row. Not that the rows were long they 
 measured at most five yards ; nor was the 
 garden large, its whole extent being perhaps 
 twenty poles. That was as much, if not more, 
 
72 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 than he could manage, as was evident if you 
 watched him digging these potatoes in the 
 glare and the heat of this August afternoon. 
 
 The date must have been about twelve 
 years ago, perhaps a little less ; and Tripp 
 being then in his seventy-ninth, this would 
 make the year of his birth somewhere early 
 in the 'twenties of the last century. He was a 
 particularly small man, not more than five 
 feet four in height and very lightly built, and 
 always gave the impression that in his child- 
 hood he must have been under-fed. But how- 
 ever this might have been, his spirit was at 
 all times amazing, and certainly outreached 
 his strength ; his neighbours averring that 
 "they had always hear'd tell as Bill, ther', 
 stuck at nothin' in hisn's young days, and 
 as no un couldn't check him and few out- 
 reach him on a job, neither." 
 
 Of course that was long ago ; but if the 
 small, ill-nurtured little body had been now 
 weakened by time, the spirit burnt bright as 
 ever, and it was evident that so long as heart 
 continued to beat within the confines of that 
 narrow chest, William Tripp would carry oh 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 73 
 
 the matter in hand with a cheery tone in his 
 voice and a smile upon his face. 
 
 To watch him at the moment, it was hard to 
 believe that anything would ever make him 
 give in. It was not his way. Nor was it the 
 way of many of his generation, all over the 
 land : the work in hand was the work of the 
 hour, and the thought of whether it was hard 
 or the reverse did not often, apparently, in- 
 trude itself upon their minds. The growing of 
 crops was a matter of urgency if they and 
 others were to be fed, and work on the land 
 entailed rough hours. " Some un have got to 
 do it, and they must go at it if t'others didn't." 
 For the rest, they did not often pause to think. 
 
 The job that William Tripp had in hand 
 certainly laid claim upon all the spirit at his 
 command, and a good deal more strength than 
 he could at this period lay claim to. In the 
 first place he was crippled with rheumatism, 
 the result no doubt of decades of exposure in 
 the rain and wind-swept fields, and at all times 
 scanty clothing. His hips appeared tied well- 
 nigh rigidly together ; he moved always with 
 the help of a stick, and just now also with the 
 
74 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 help of his pronged fork. His every move- 
 ment was slow, and reaching and stooping 
 were evidently points requiring consideration. 
 
 When he turned up fresh ground and then 
 broke it up with the prongs, you could hear 
 the tool sing. Then he would get the dead 
 haulm together, and reaching out with the 
 hook of his stick bring the result in potatoes 
 towards him " that they meut dry nice, and 
 not get too fur away." That was the procedure 
 each time ; and if there was room for wonder 
 as to how these potatoes were to be put into 
 the bucket without aid, there was no doubt 
 about every movement being a source of pain 
 to the digger. 
 
 The business got the better of the onlooker 
 at last, and having helped the old man off his 
 potato patch and propped him, not without 
 difficulty, on a cricket that stood handy, he 
 took off coat and waistcoat and went on with 
 the work himself of course under Tripp's 
 directions. To appear to have usurped his 
 place would have been to make a sad mistake : 
 if the job was to be done at all, it must be 
 undertaken by this one as a joke. 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 75 
 
 Tripp chuckled as he began to appreciate 
 the yield of the Up-to-dates ; but he broke 
 out into a cheery laugh when Farmer Hobbs 
 passed in his gig, and in return for a familiar 
 greeting from the digger, shook his whip at 
 him for his impertinence, at the same time 
 muttering something about making him warmer 
 even than he was should opportunity occur. 
 
 "Ther'; he be up in the boughs, he be!" 
 exclaimed Tripp with a laugh " he wur always 
 inclined to be a bit franzy, 1 like, same as his 
 fayther wur afore un. Ther', I do believes as 
 he never knew'd yer ! " 
 
 Two rows were dug, and the result put 
 together to dry before picking up. " Ther' 
 now ; an' you please, that'll do ; don't want to 
 get 'em all up yet a bit. Very fair, bain't 'em ? 
 Lucky, you thinks ? Ah, well ; better be lucky 
 nor rich ; better be lucky nor rich ay, by 
 far ! " There was little sound of old age in 
 Tripp's voice ; all things considered it was 
 still strong ; just as his eyesight remained good, 
 and his hair, worn very short, showed little 
 trace of grey when he took off his hat. 
 
 1 Quick-tempered or hasty. 
 
76 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 " Won't do to go inside with these here," he 
 said, looking at his boots with a grin ; " put 
 the missus out shamefu' : won't ha' no dirt in 
 house, if so be as it can be kep' out." 
 
 Leaning on his stick and rubbing his boots 
 as well as he was able on some grass weeds at 
 the foot of the wall, he then led the way to- 
 wards the house door. "T would be cooler in 
 ther'," he said ; adding, in answer to the ques- 
 tion as to whether the wife was in, " Well, I 
 shouldn't think but what her might be." 
 
 There she was, of course, with her homely, 
 smiling face and white hair. She was a few 
 years younger than Tripp, and in appearance 
 bore a strange contrast to him, being large of 
 frame, stout, and what might have been de- 
 scribed as "broad and hippy." She wore a 
 cotton dress and a coarse white apron ; and 
 her voice was strong and loud, if also pleasant 
 in tone. 
 
 " I've been a-watchin' on yer," she said, 
 "a-diggin' our taters a bit. Well, I never: he 
 shouldn't 'a let you done it. But ther', he can't 
 scawt about much hisself, as he did used." 
 
 " I'll tell ye what," put in Tripp, " them Up- 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 77 
 
 to-dates have turned out beautiful : ther'll be a 
 smart few to carry we through the winter, and 
 a sight on 'em be whoppers." 
 
 The talk turned after that from what is 
 always an important event in the cottage home, 
 to old friends and things as they used to be. 
 Perhaps the mistake made by Farmer Hobbs 
 brought the subject forward. His failing to 
 recognise one whom he knew well, in such an 
 unwonted position as a cottage garden, digging 
 potatoes, had amused Tripp greatly, and with 
 many a laugh and no little gesticulation he 
 proceeded to tell his missus what had occurred. 
 
 " Just like un, it wer'. There, he do feature 
 his fayther remarkable ; he be as like as like. 
 And I worked for he, years ; from the time as 
 I fust come into this part o' the country out o' 
 Glos'shire, 'wever, and married this un here, 
 till the time as he got took with the sezzure. 1 
 How long ago wer' it ? " 
 
 " Since we wus married, you means ? Why, 
 to be sure, fifty-one year come this fall." 
 
 " Ay, so it be : you knows. An' what crops 
 he did grow, to be sure, when we wer' set on 
 
 1 A seizure, or stroke. 
 
78 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 breakin' up the slopes o' them ther' hills : oats 
 special'. Can't grow 'em now, seemingly, and 
 judgin' by what I sees hauled past here in 
 the waggon. 'Twas the system as was dif- 
 ferent, in my belief." 
 
 " And the tools?" 
 
 " Ay ; an' the tools, especial' that ther' 
 breast plough, as we called un. Famous tool 
 he wer', too, for the job, and no mistake. But 
 I'll show ye what mine wer' like, look, since 
 maybe yer never didn't handle one yersel'." 
 
 Tripp proceeded to lick the top of his fore- 
 finger and to draw mysterious lines on the 
 piece of brown American cloth that covered 
 the table. He stood leaning on his stick and 
 had not to stoop. His wife had brought 
 another chair forward and was sitting opposite 
 him, with a dresser holding the household 
 crockery behind her. 
 
 " If I can make you sensible, mine the last 
 I had, 'wever, as Charles as was smith then 
 made for I wer' summut like this here," con- 
 tinued Tripp, trying to make the lines of his 
 sketch visible on the shiny surface of the cloth. 
 " Don't seem quite right, though, somehows, 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 79 
 
 do it ? No, I couldn't do no better with no 
 pencil. Never handled the like ; and it wer' 
 a great denial to me as I never had no 
 schoolin'." 
 
 The old man gave up the attempt at last, 
 and sought refuge in a high-backed chair with 
 a cotton cushion in it, that stood on one side 
 of the wide hearth. From there, and with help 
 of stick and hands, he could explain matters 
 more easily. 
 
 The tool he spoke of had gone out of use 
 many years in this part of South Oxfordshire 
 according to these old people, not long after 
 they had become man and wife. Tripp had 
 used it for more than a decade, and his wife 
 had reasons for recollecting its appearance, and 
 had not been behindhand in correcting her 
 husband's draughtsmanship, putting her head 
 sideways, that the lines he was making might 
 catch the light from the window. 
 
 At one time the breast plough had been in 
 common use all round here, no less than in 
 other parts of the country, having originally 
 differed little in form from the shovel-shaped 
 plough evolved by the Saxons, which cut a 
 
8o THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 furrow slice of a kind, and which was the first 
 attempt at ploughing as we know it to-day. 
 
 The tool was fashioned in this way and was 
 used in the following manner. It was made 
 of steel or wrought iron, was flat, except at the 
 left side where it was turned up, and measured 
 in some cases fifteen inches in length and 
 breadth, and in others no more than twelve 
 inches long with a width of nine inches. In 
 appearance and size it was not unlike an 
 ordinary shovel, except that the sides were 
 more angular, and its point, or picket as it 
 was called, sharper. The edges, the picket, 
 and the cutting part of the turned-up side, 
 known as the counter, were ground to a very 
 keen edge, the stone for the purpose being 
 often brought to the field where the men were 
 working. 
 
 The beam, or haft, was of course of wood, 
 and was fixed into a socket on the face of the 
 plough by wedges, that also served the purpose 
 of raising or lowering the beam to suit the 
 height of a man, the soil he had to deal with, 
 and the depth he wished to go. In earlier 
 days, the beam was from five to six feet long ; 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 81 
 
 but latterly it was not more than four and a 
 half feet, being often forked where it joined 
 the crutch, or cross handle, some two feet 
 wide, into which it was firmly morticed. Usu- 
 ally the beam was quite straight, though in 
 some places it was slightly curved after the 
 manner of the haft of a spade. 
 
 The plough itself was generally made by the 
 village smith the cost being between three 
 and four shillings and the implement, as often 
 as not, was the property of the man who 
 worked it. The beam was either supplied by 
 any carpenter, or by the men themselves, 
 when only a straight beam and crutch, without 
 the forks, was adopted. The weight of the 
 whole necessarily varied, but does not appear 
 to have exceeded 40 Ibs. at most, and many 
 were a great deal lighter. 
 
 In working the implement, the ploughman, 
 as the name denotes, pressed his chest against 
 the cross-handle and drove the plough forward 
 through the soil by means of a series of pushes. 
 Such was the earlier way ; but a better plan 
 was evolved when the ploughman was furnished 
 with a board slung round his waist ; and later 
 
 F 
 
82 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 still that is in Tripp's and his father's days 
 when this was again supplanted by two pieces 
 of wood, worn over the thighs and known as 
 clappers. These were hollowed out to fit the 
 front of the thighs, and were generally made 
 of beech by the men themselves. A leather 
 loop was nailed to the upper parts of the 
 clappers to suspend them from a leather belt 
 worn loosely round the waist, the lower parts 
 being fitted with straps that buckled round the 
 legs above the knees. 
 
 When driving the implement through the 
 soil, the ploughman, in the latter case, no 
 longer used his chest, or the lower part of his 
 body, for pushing ; but, in Tripp's phrase, 
 " When we did work 'em, we did push in with 
 our thighs ; and every two or three pushes did 
 turn it over to the right side where the plough 
 wus flat." 
 
 In this way, when the work was on grass ley, 
 clover, sanfoin, or turf, the surface was pared 
 off into pieces of more or less uniform size, the 
 successive jerks or wrenches turning these 
 over face downwards. The object of this 
 shall be referred to in due course, the work 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 83 
 
 connected with the breast plough not by any 
 means terminating here. 
 
 " It didn't take no learnin','' remarked Tripp. 
 " We had to go at it and in good courage. O' 
 course all depended on the ground you met wi', 
 how you did get on. We was at it most days, 
 March and April ; and we was on the turf in 
 the spring times, and stubbles in winters. 
 
 " Most o' the work as we done wus piece- 
 work ; an' the pay wer' eight shillin' the acre. 
 We did begin work at seven in the morning 
 and go on till five at night, and us had an hour 
 off for dinner, but no lunch time. And when 
 all wer' done, I did walk two mile home, havin' 
 natural' come the same in the mornin' oftens 
 afore light. 
 
 " The sinfine (sanfoin) wus the worse work 
 of the lot, the roots be so strong. They and 
 the stones took the edge off proper, and that 
 meant more grindin' for we. The picket had 
 to be terrible sharp, you understands, and 
 the edge as keen as you could get it; and 
 now and again, when we wus far from home- 
 stead, we did have the stone rigged up, like, 
 under hedge where we could get at it handy. 
 
84 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 <c The lengths we mostly did wer' a chain long 
 and a chain wide. And any un couldn't do an 
 acre in ordinary ground much under a week, 
 and he'd have to work well to do that. All 
 depended on what you met, and what the ground 
 wer. Ther' wus five on us workin' together on 
 a twenty-acre piece at Kingston Warren, near 
 Kingston Lisle, and an acre was near enough 
 what we could do ther'. 
 
 " It wer' very different up Lewknor way. I 
 wer' up that way for a bit, afore I come to settle 
 here and work for Farmer, yonder. The soil 
 up ther' wer' very light and remarkable dark 
 in colour, and didn't go more than about four 
 inches afore it struck the chalky stuff, for it 
 wer' shallow, like. We was a-breakin' up the 
 sides of them hills ther', and ther' wus six or 
 seven on us at it, 'wever. Well, we did always 
 work down hill, and when we got to bottom, 
 us did drag the plough behind us to top, and 
 then did work down again." And Tripp 
 laughed as the circumstance returned to his 
 mind. 
 
 " And 111 tell ye what," he went on. " New 
 ways meut a-taken the sunshine out o' breast 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 85 
 
 ploughin', same as new ways a-taken the shine 
 out of a lot ; but all the horse ploughs on such 
 ground as that up ther' '11 never bring the crops 
 as the breast ploughs a-done former times. 
 They do fetch the sour ground to the top too 
 much a sight too much ; and that's wer' the 
 mischiefs done. Be all different now, though, 
 bain'tit?" 
 
 There was a pause in the conversation after 
 that for a minute or two. Some waggons 
 laden with wheat were coming down the broad 
 road that ran through the village, and that 
 was as broad in some places as it was narrow 
 in others. To look down it from either end 
 gave the impression that the little houses 
 some tiled, some thatched had been dumped 
 down much where the builders liked ; some 
 facing it, some sideways to it, others set 
 right back, with their gardens between them 
 and the road. 
 
 Half-way along, and raised rather above 
 the level of the roadway, stood the little church 
 of the parish, centuries old, and having elm 
 trees growing along the low wall that bounded 
 its quiet graveyard. On the other side of the 
 
86 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 way stood the vicarage, the only house of any 
 size in the place. At three points, the signs 
 of an inn and of two beer-houses hung out 
 over the roadway, telling that this was " The 
 Jolly Farmer," and that "The John Barley- 
 corn," where tobacco and snuff could also be 
 bought and liquor consumed on the premises. 
 And at either end of the village proper stood 
 the houses, outhouses, rickyards, and sheds of 
 two farms, bringing the straggling lines of 
 dwellings to a final termination. 
 
 Tripp leant forward in his chair to get a 
 sight of the swaying loads as they passed. 
 " I reckons that'll be the last from the Red- 
 acre," he said. "Ah! the times I've ploughed 
 that, too, and with just that tool as we was 
 a-speakin' on." 
 
 Interest in his former calling had not died 
 out in this man by any means ; though to look 
 at him might well have made strangers wonder 
 how the small body had been able to follow 
 such a calling at all, with the shortness of 
 wage and the dearness of all things necessary 
 to support life, in those days long ago when he 
 first took to it. Yet he had gone right through 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 87 
 
 and handled all the tools, even to the implement 
 in question. 
 
 To look at a breast plough now and to think 
 of the exertion its use entailed, is for some to 
 dub the implement a diabolical invention, and 
 for others to cease to wonder that men in these 
 fields were often then worn out at sixty years 
 of age, and marvels indeed if they reached 
 threescore and ten. Yet to have had many 
 a talk with those who used it and other for- 
 gotten tools in the old days, is to have found 
 such conjectures not borne out by these men 
 themselves any more than they are supported 
 by the rough headstones in the churchyards 
 of their villages. The very reverse is more 
 often the case. There can be little doubt that 
 many then succumbed who were without natural 
 strength, or without a share of that spirit and 
 virility that were perhaps more common then 
 than now ; but the majority worked through, 
 lived to be old, and bore good sons to follow 
 them. 1 
 
 1 In support of this, the following may be adduced. In an 
 agricultural parish in the writer's neighbourhood, the vicar 
 compiled the following figures from his register for the fifty 
 years, 1841-91. In that period, sixty-eight persons died who 
 
88 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 "You asks as whether it wer' hard work 
 with this here plough ? I hain't a-goin' to tell 
 yer as 'twus work for one as had got leaden 
 socks in his shoes. It wer' hard, o' course, and 
 it wanted strong men to do it as it should be. 
 But I'll tell ye this, as many on us liked it 
 well enough, for us could go at it extra hours and 
 earn more money when the ground wer' right, 
 and we wus doin' piecework. No ! knock us 
 up? It never hurted I, and I was at it years, 
 though I wer' younger then." 
 
 Tripp raised his voice at the close of the 
 sentence, and broke out into a laugh at the 
 idea of his being hurt by anything. He even 
 got out of his chair and came once more to the 
 table in order to add emphasis to his words, 
 and there was a tone of contempt in his 
 utterance when he added : 
 
 " 'Tis they as do molly for theirselves as 
 gets hurted ; and 'tis they as brings trouble 
 along to them as they works wi'. I tell ye 
 
 were between 80 and 90 years of age, and sixteen between 90 
 and 100. Of these, thirty-two were 85 years and upwards, and 
 eight were 95 and upwards. Of the eight, one was 99 and one 
 100 years old. The population of the parish was 602 in 1871 ; 
 462 in '81 ; and 438 in '91. 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 89 
 
 again, as I never had a mis word over the job 
 mysel'; and if it wer' hard well, I wer' younger 
 and stronger then, and could do wi' it." 
 
 " It killed my fayther, did that breast 
 ploughin', anyway," broke in the wife at this 
 point, and without preface. She had not taken 
 much part in the conversation up to now, beyond 
 confirming what her husband said, or correcting 
 him in small details. Her voice sounded loud 
 after the old man's. 
 
 "She do always say that," he said, almost 
 apologetically. 
 
 "Ay, an' it's truth. Breast ploughin' killed 
 my fayther. Mother always told us as much, 
 and neighbours the same." 
 
 "He weren't so terrible strong in the 
 chesties," remarked Tripp, just above his 
 breath. 
 
 " An' that's truth again," returned the wife ; 
 " and it wer' afore I was born. But it wer' 
 the breast plough that killed un, or mother 
 'ouldn't never a-said it ; and he wer' no more 
 nor forty-three at the time, and lef mother with 
 four, and I, here, expected. Ah ; the eldern 
 of us had to get out and scawt about then 
 
QO THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 ay, get out in the fields at any job as come 
 along. And it wus eightpence a day as 
 mother did earn and no more eightpence 
 a day!" 
 
 At that she fell silent for a moment. The 
 sound of children's merry voices came in 
 through the open door. It was school holiday 
 time, and a party of them were having a ride 
 back to the Red-acre in the empty waggon. 
 There were still the rakings to be got up there, 
 if the last of the shocks had been carried. 
 
 " It be all different now all different," said 
 Tripp, watching the children going by in the 
 yellow waggon with the bright red wheels. 
 
 "An 'tis a mercy for some as 't be," added 
 the wife. " There bain't no breast ploughin' 
 been done about here since we married, and 
 that be fifty-one year, come this fall. But it 
 wer' that as killed my fayther, weak chesties 
 or no, for mother said it wus, an 1 what she 
 did say wer' truthful." 
 
 It was time to get the potatoes in. They 
 were dry already ; no rain had fallen for a 
 fortnight and the ground was dusty. To leave 
 them out might be to lose them ; and more- 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 91 
 
 over the air was sultry and the sky to the 
 south had grown dark. 
 
 Five journeys with the bucket completed 
 the job, while Tripp sat smiling on the cricket 
 by the door ; and his wife stored the potatoes 
 as they came in the back kitchen, piling them 
 against the wall. 
 
 " I burdens tempest afore long," said the 
 old man as he leant on his garden gate, looking 
 up at the sky to the southward and wishing 
 this other one good-night " I burdens tempest 
 any way afore marnin'." 
 
 It must not be supposed that the breast 
 plough took the place, or did the work of the 
 horse plough. The primary object was to 
 cleanse the top soil and to provide material 
 for what was known as burnbaking a system 
 that had been carried out in England from 
 time immemorial. All that the breast plough 
 did was to take off, or pare, the surface, much 
 after the manner in which turf is stripped with 
 the turfing iron, the layers removed varying 
 in thickness from two to four inches, and the 
 
92 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 sods being turned up in the way already de- 
 scribed. When these had lain to dry for three 
 or four days, they were raked together into 
 heaps with short iron rakes, unless they were 
 of exceptional thickness, when the harrow was 
 brought to bear on them. 
 
 The heaps varied in size according to custom 
 in different parts of the country, and neces- 
 sarily depended upon the quantity of material 
 to be dealt with. In some places, such as 
 the parts of Oxfordshire here more particularly 
 referred to, they were of the size of ordinary 
 haycocks, and numbered from ten to a dozen 
 to the acre. In others, especially in Kent, 
 they were ten times this size, being built up 
 of the sods much as bricks are built for burn- 
 ing, and having a chimney, or flue, left in the 
 centre, to prevent the ground beneath the 
 fires from becoming calcined. When the piles 
 were sufficiently dry they were set on fire, 
 the ashes being subsequently scattered over 
 the field and ploughed in in the ordinary way. 
 
 While burnbaking was the term usually 
 applied by the labourers themselves in speak- 
 ing of the work as a whole, the system is 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 93 
 
 generally found referred to as paring and 
 burning, a term that describes exactly what 
 was done. The ploughing was not an end 
 in itself, and required more strength than art ; 
 but burning the sods was another matter, and 
 demanded considerable knowledge and practice 
 if fires were not to go out, the ashes lost, 
 and all the work to be thrown away. The 
 men who did the ploughing also did the burn- 
 ing, and the fires were often alight in one 
 part of a field while the breast ploughs were 
 being driven through the soil in another. 
 
 Of the efficiency of the system there can 
 be little doubt, though it necessarily had its 
 opponents. By the majority of farmers it 
 was looked upon as indispensable, and was 
 very widely practised ; but others spoke of 
 it as likely to prove ruinous in many cases 
 and do infinite harm in others. Of the imme- 
 diate gain, however, there was never wanting 
 evidence, and it was only necessary to look 
 at the phenomenal crops that often followed 
 paring and burning to realise that the advan- 
 tages to the farmer were great. At the same 
 time it must be owned that this immediate 
 
94 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 profit, where the virgin turf of the hillsides 
 and downs was ploughed up, was often won 
 at the loss of that short, sweet herbage that 
 the shepherd valued so greatly. Once de- 
 stroyed, that could not be easily, if ever, 
 regained ; and it was often on this account, 
 apart from any theories about Nature being 
 left to do her own work of disintegration, 
 that many were led to regard the whole 
 system with disfavour. 
 
 When the breast plough was used on land 
 that had been long in cultivation, and burn- 
 ing followed, little could be urged against it. 
 The farmer, knowing then nothing of guanos, 
 chemicals, and bone manure, was largely de- 
 pendent on burnbaking for the ingredients 
 he required for the soil ; and " all intelligent 
 men," says one writer of old days, " recognised 
 its utility and practised it." Arthur Young, 
 in his Farmers Letters, speaks of the efficacy 
 of the system as " indisputable and unequalled," 
 and goes on to say that "the grand point of 
 paring and burning is the bringing of waste 
 soils into cultivation, one may almost say, in 
 a single day : it is pared and burnt and sown 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 95 
 
 immediately with turnips, a crop that never 
 fails after such management. ... I have 
 actually seen a promising crop of turnips on 
 land that only a month before was as black 
 as night itself." 
 
 The quantity of ashes is said to have been 
 generally reckoned as five hundred bushels 
 to the acre. Sometimes they were ploughed 
 in hot ; and while one contemporary writer 
 speaks of the system " imparting to the soil 
 such instant and ample resources of fertility 
 as are equal to the production of two or 
 three successive crops of corn," there can 
 be no doubt that it was also wellnigh un- 
 equalled in destroying ling, as well as great 
 numbers of injurious grubs and insects. 
 
 On land such as that stretching away from 
 the slopes of the Chilterns of light quality 
 and little depth, and where farmers dealt 
 largely in sheep paring and burning there- 
 fore was widely followed. Meadows and grass 
 lands in these districts were few ; it was 
 essentially a country of straw crops, especially 
 barley and oats that grew such green crops 
 as clover and sanfoin, vetches and mixed 
 
96 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 grasses, together with famous turnips, and 
 that carried sheep well. It was found, after 
 paring and burning on such land as this, that 
 a maximum crop of roots could almost always 
 be reckoned upon ; and that where sanfoin 
 had to be dealt with, the result was as a 
 rule far superior to what could be expected 
 from the horse plough and the harrow, and 
 manuring in the ordinary way. 
 
 But if such was the case all over this part 
 of the country, the breast plough was even 
 more in evidence on the Cotswolds. Marshall 
 refers to Cotswold labourers as " expert and 
 indefatigable in the work of breast ploughing," 
 though he dubs it "the most slavish work 
 of husbandry." They were no less efficient, 
 apparently, in the manner of their fires, for 
 he goes on to say that " the sods were all 
 burnt in small heaps, about a rod apart, the 
 unburnt pieces being burnt together afterwards 
 in fresh heaps, so that not a piece of raw 
 sod the size of the hand is to be seen." 
 
 The work of these men was evidently 
 thorough, their chief difficulty being to get 
 material, as their descendants say, "tough 
 

 THE BREAST PLOUGH 97 
 
 enough to handle and rough enough to burn." 
 When sanfoin came to be regarded as "the 
 sheet anchor of the Cotswold farmers," this 
 difficulty often disappeared, the breast plough 
 being found by far the most efficient means of 
 breaking up the stubborn roots that otherwise 
 took long to rot in the ground, while the fires 
 subsequently reduced them to an invaluable 
 form of manure. 
 
 Paring and burning was indeed, as Caird 
 writes in 1850, "the great feature in the 
 management of the farms on the Cotswolds." 
 11 On a 7oo-acre farm," he says, " we were 
 assured by the occupier that he every year 
 burnt from sixty to seventy acres of land. . . . 
 No manure of any other kind had ever been 
 applied to one field, and that had been broken 
 up fifty years before, the burning having been 
 repeated seven times in the period. . . . The 
 best farmers on the Wold are the men who 
 burn most extensively." 1 
 
 And what of those who carried out the work ? 
 
 1 Though the breast plough is rarely met with now, a tool 
 similar to it is still used in some parts of the country for 
 planting potatoes. On the Cotswolds, the writer also knows 
 an old man a type of the best of the old sort who continues 
 
 G 
 
98 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 Though men like William Tripp referred to 
 it with a laugh in their later days, there can be 
 no doubt that it was often very hard. The 
 prime difficulty of the whole undertaking, how- 
 ever, had always to do with the fires, and it 
 was here that the labourer suffered most. 
 The material pared had somehow or other to 
 be rendered dry enough to burn. Rain and 
 wind and snow frequently played havoc with 
 the work just when the piles were right for 
 kindling ; and even when the fires were at last 
 alight, they often required constant attention 
 during many hours. 
 
 On the bleak Cotswolds in winter, the unen- 
 closed slopes of the Chilterns, and the open 
 expanse of country that stretches away from 
 these last to form the flat parts of Oxford- 
 shire and Berkshire, the men at burnbaking 
 led hard lives and were much exposed. At all 
 times it wanted those of good heart and ample 
 courage. The work was for the most part 
 piecework, and the money to be earned there- 
 to use a breast plough to-day, though in this case the imple- 
 ment has no counter. The work done with it is cutting the 
 drains in water meadows ; the old hand in question doing as 
 much as 65 acres of such land yearly. 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 99 
 
 fore was an attraction ; but often and often the 
 labour must have appeared to be without end. 
 It did not by any means necessarily close with 
 the day, spent in driving the plough through 
 the ground, but was also frequently carried on 
 far into the night, lest the precious fire should 
 go out and time and money be alike lost. 
 And thus it is that the few now left who were 
 once familiar with the art of burnbaking, while 
 speaking of the actual ploughing as having 
 often been nothing to complain about, yet 
 never fail to tell of the constant trouble that 
 their fires gave, and smile or look grave as 
 they recount their stories. 
 
 " You'd never get 'em to do it now no 
 fear ! Well, for that matter, 'tain't wanted : 
 farmers be pervided with other stuffs, these 
 days, and ashes ain't thought on so much 
 wi'out it be wi' the drill at times. But I most 
 in general doubts, wi' all them chemicals as 
 some on 'em do use, if 'em can show the 
 turmuts as we grow'd or th' oats either." 
 
 The speaker, Abel Lovelock, was a con- 
 
TOO THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 temporary of Tripp's, and the last occasion on 
 which this one had a talk with him was on a 
 May afternoon some ten years ago. The old 
 man had come out to sun himself, and was 
 lodged on a bank beneath a solitary hawthorn 
 bush that stood by the side of the dusty road, 
 and was then in full flower white as driven 
 snow in the brilliant sunshine. 
 
 The spring was an early one, and in this 
 country, known for its wild flowers, many 
 were fully out a week and more earlier than 
 usual. There were yellow rock roses all along 
 the top of the bank, and where the rough 
 grasses came to an end and the cultivated land 
 began, charlock and campions were in full 
 bloom ; a large patch of the blue veronica 
 occupied the ground close by the thorn, and 
 the white and beautifully formed flowers of the 
 stitchwort were already high. 
 
 The sun was hot and the air was still. Out 
 here there was only the warm earth, the in- 
 finite depths of blue sky, with now and then a 
 draught of air to play with the may blossom, to 
 whisper to the dry grasses, to pass away to 
 where sheep were in fold far away, lying as 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 101 
 
 they always lie when the sun is hot at this time 
 of year tucked close against the hurdles and 
 close together, head to tail, ewes and lambs 
 alike. It was hot for them : they wanted 
 shade, and they wanted sleep, and perhaps 
 they wanted water. 
 
 Two cock larks, fighting, came over the top 
 of the bank at incredible speed and disappeared 
 over a barley stubble that had not yet been 
 ploughed, and where an old horse with the 
 water barrel was now coming lazily across, 
 bringing drink to the thirsty sheep. Then two 
 cuckoos began calling in the distant woods, nigh 
 a mile away. Bluebells, there, had long gone 
 to seed, and the wood sorrel's trefoil leaves, 
 with the dog's mercury, now made a carpet of 
 cool green beneath the trees. 
 
 You knew the look exactly. You had just 
 come from thence, having noticed that the 
 wayfaring trees were breaking into flower, and 
 that the feathery fronds of the filix were slowly 
 unfolding themselves. You had come out of 
 the woods into the open and taken a line 
 straight across country past the rye where the 
 sheep were a month ago and that was now 
 
102 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 nearly two feet high, where barley was being 
 sown in one place and mangel got in in 
 another, with a wide piece of crimson trifolium 
 in bloom just ahead, and green tares among it 
 making beautiful contrast. The ground was 
 chalky white, and hard and dry, and the sun 
 made all growth flag. 
 
 And now you had reached this dusty road ; 
 the warm earth and its growing crops extend- 
 ing on and onwards for many miles ; the 
 illimitable depths of the heavens above you ; 
 with a cool draught now and then to make the 
 charlock and the campions nod to one another 
 on the top of the bank. An old friend sat by 
 your side sunning himself there, trying to take 
 a fill of the first hot day, that some of the aches 
 in the old bones might be drawn out by the 
 sun, and in the hope that someone perhaps 
 might come along to pass a word with. 
 
 " You wer' fond o 5 the land from the first, 
 weren't yer? Ah, I knows." 
 
 The old man had a trick of rubbing his chin 
 while he talked, enclosing it in the fist of one 
 hand as though he were pulling an imaginary 
 beard. He was doing this at this moment and 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 103 
 
 looking up sideways, with his head bent to 
 keep the sun out of his eyes. 
 
 " Drillin' over yonder, hain't 'em ? I 
 reckoned as much from the dust as was a- 
 flyin'. Know'd that ground well, former times ; 
 and them pieces beyond, too ; right up them 
 hills from wher' you've come. Ah, ploughed it 
 and harrowed it and sowed it ay, all manner." 
 
 The sheep far away were beginning to howl 
 at the sight of the water-cart, rousing them- 
 selves from sleep and going over towards one 
 corner of the fold. A lark kept singing over- 
 head, filling the pauses in the talk with song. 
 
 "We grew'd some crops them days, and 
 no mistake ! The ground wer' done different 
 then. We burnt it, yer knows ay; burn- 
 baking. Not the whole on it; no fear! 
 Wher'd a-been the time for that? Ther' 
 was other things to be done besides that, and 
 plenty on 'em. 
 
 " But that ther' burnbakin' wer a famous 
 thing. Now, I'll tell ye. Sometimes there 
 wus three on us, sometimes five and six at 
 it, with the breast plough. We did work, 
 one behind the other followin' one another, 
 as yer might say same as you've seed 
 
io 4 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 mowers do. We didn't get above nine shillun 
 a week at it on most grounds, and where it 
 wer 1 stony ; never more, or as much as ten, 
 'cept it wer' sinfine. When we ploughed and 
 burnt that, we got a pound an acre ; and I'll 
 tell ye as it took a man all his time to burn- 
 bake an acre o' that ther' stuff in a fortnight, 
 most places. 'Tis so stubborn, and don't light 
 but middlin' well. Job to get it to dry ; and 
 then, if wet do come, that sets you back again. 
 " Ah, them fires ! Sometimes we did 
 harrow the sods, sometimes not ; but when 
 'em got a bit fine, we did rake 'em up with 
 our iron rakes, and set alight to 'em. No 
 sticks wer' used no fear ! But once we'd 
 got it to go, we did snatch it up quick. Us 
 didn't wait then while it wer' burnin' ; but on 
 again ploughin', same as afore, though, natural', 
 we did turn round now and again and banked 
 'em up when they did want it. The hips 
 (heeps) did run about a pole apart, and wer' 
 about a yard through, up yonder. Others, 
 I've hear'd tell, would have 'em half as big as 
 a house : all depended on what anyun had 
 got to deal wi'. The women wer' out then to 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 105 
 
 help wi' they fires. And we wanted 'em, I 
 can tell ye. 
 
 " Ther' was no mistake about 'em they 
 fires, I means. The ploughin' might a-been 
 hard work, if many on us didn't mind it a 
 lot ; but they fires wer' rum uns to kindle, and 
 rum uns, too, to keep a-goin' when you'd got 
 'em lit. Why, it was often times as we was 
 out' o' nights to tend 'em in rough weather. 
 Ay, and we did slink off, too, of a Sunday 
 marnin', and just so as parson mightn't see us, 
 to keep them hips up. The fires 'ould be 
 out else, and we'd lose our ashes. And where 
 'ould us a-been then, think ye? We had to 
 light 'em at the first onset wi' any dry rubbish 
 as there wus the weeds and turf theirselves ; 
 and we did mostly kindle one from other a 
 new un from an old un, is my meanin'. But 
 if rain or snow come and put 'em out, or 'em 
 went out through want of 'tention, we wus in 
 a caddie then, and we lost the money too. 
 
 " You see them hills yonder, as you've come 
 down now just. Well ; me and Willum Tripp 
 and old Thomas as you do minds, and another, 
 I forgets who 'twas, wus burnbakin' ther' at one 
 
io6 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 time. Well ; when we'd done, and throw'd the 
 ashes over and they'd got 'em ploughed in, 
 the land, I can assure yer, didn't forget it for 
 years not for years it didn't. We'd have 
 some turnips after that ay, some, I can tell ye ! 
 
 " It wer' the same farther up, too what 
 was land as had not been broken up afore. 
 Oats wus sowed after the burnbakin' got done, 
 and when it come harvest time and we wer' a- 
 faggin' 'em, we never ketched a sight o' one 
 another, for the straws o' them oats wus seven 
 foot high if they wer' an inch and that's truth." 
 
 The old man had taken long to tell his story, 
 and had jerked it out, sentence by sentence, 
 often in answer to questions. The afternoon 
 was on the wane. The sheep had had their 
 drink long ago, and were now busy on a new 
 bait, into which the shepherd had just turned 
 them, after a hour and more of hard work on 
 his part with the rammer, the vorsels, 1 and the 
 hurdles. The ground was hard and dry, and 
 holes had had to be driven, two for each hurdle, 
 and one for the vorsel that held it up, and to 
 
 1 The stakes to which the ends of the hurdles are fastened 
 by rings of twisted hazel, known as reeves. 
 
THE BREAST PLOUGH 107 
 
 which it was fastened by the reeves. The 
 whole procedure had been so familiar that you 
 pictured exactly what the shepherd was doing, 
 while the old man sitting at your side told 
 of the things "of a sight o' years agone," 
 rubbing his chin with his rough hand. 
 
 "That ther' shepherdin' '11 go on," he said. 
 " Never changes a lot, do it? But them other 
 things passes out o' mind, like, and gets 
 forgot." 
 
 The two got up from the bank then ; and 
 as they did so, a lark rose from the grass at 
 their feet, within a foot of the dusty road. It 
 had been sitting close, all the time ; and in 
 its nest were four brown eggs : its presence 
 there explained at once the fighting and the 
 song. 
 
 "Ther' be always them about; but I ques- 
 tions if they does a lot o' good punishes 
 young wheat terrible, 'wever," remarked the 
 old man ; and then went on homewards at a 
 slow pace down the dusty road. 
 
 A lo-acre piece of pink sanfoin lay in front, 
 under the sun ; beyond that a stretch of young 
 wheat, vivid green ; and beyond that again the 
 
io8 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 blue hills, and the dreamy distance of the 
 waning afternoon. 
 
 Old Abel Lovelock had worked his breast 
 plough and kept his fires going on many an 
 acre here. But all that was long ago ; and 
 if now a strange tool something between a 
 shovel and a turfing iron with the side bent 
 up chanced to be unearthed from the cobweb- 
 hung corner of some barn, that had not perhaps 
 been cleared out for half a century, those 
 present would wonder what it might be, being 
 ignorant even of the uses to which it had once 
 been put. And if again, another were shown 
 a pair of clappers things once worn over 
 men's thighs, to drive the breast plough home 
 had not such indeed long since found their 
 fires they might possibly have been judged as 
 articles belonging to the period when women's 
 stays were fashioned of beech in much the same 
 way, only opening with hinges at the side. 
 
IV 
 NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 
 
 THIS wide stretch of rye had been put in, in 
 the autumn two bushels to the acre with the 
 drill when the light soil hereabouts was dry 
 as ashes, and the seed ran little risk of suffering 
 from its enemy too much wet at the outset. 
 So when the spring came there was a good 
 plant ; and keep for sheep being none too 
 plentiful, he who farmed this land had put his 
 sheep and lambs on it, to the infinite satis- 
 faction of the shepherd and the equal joy of 
 the sheep. The flock had had their daily 
 measure of it, set out square by square with 
 the hurdles, the lambs being allowed the first 
 bite at each new bait, and being afforded 
 access to the same by means of the iron lamb- 
 hurdle, with its wooden rollers set at con- 
 venient width, and generally known as the 
 lamb-creep. 
 
 109 
 
no THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 Before they had been over the whole of 
 these twelve acres, the rye in the last baits 
 was as high as the lambs' backs, for fast as 
 the lambs grew, the rye grew faster, till it 
 was time for the flock to be shifted to a grass 
 meadow some way off, and to leave this 
 apparently devastated stretch to recover and 
 show what it could do. 
 
 April was only a few days old when the 
 waggons came for the hurdles and the troughs 
 and the shepherds' odds and ends ; and then 
 one morning the flock was gone, having de- 
 parted in a long string five hundred ewes 
 and lambs with the shepherd ahead and a 
 young dog at his heels, and an old dog 
 bringing up the rear. The dandelions were 
 in golden bloom where they were going, and 
 there was a rich feed there of young clover, 
 hop-leaf and the rest, as a welcome change 
 of diet after the rye that had grown so 
 strong. 
 
 For a while there was not much sign of 
 growth in this last : April rains held off and 
 nights continued cold. It was a famous time 
 for drilling barley, though, farther up the 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER in 
 
 Dene, and all the farmer's horses and all 
 his men were out, making good use of the 
 favourable opportunity. On the bare stretch 
 where the rye had been green a month back, 
 two women and a child were stone-picking 
 gathering the flints into small conical heaps, 
 three feet high for easy measurement, and 
 apparently getting so tired from stooping and 
 stooping all day long, that now and then they 
 sat down on the dusty ground and gathered 
 only such stones as lay within their reach. 
 
 Then came the cloudless nights and the 
 silent sapphire sky, with the feeling of frost 
 still in the air, and that comparatively meagre 
 array of familiar stars marking now the spring 
 heavens Leo's sickle, with Regulus set like 
 a diamond at the butt of the haft ; Virgo, with 
 Spica occupying a similar position at the foot 
 of the familiar Y ; Bootes low down to the 
 north and Arcturus flashing till it is time for 
 him to disappear behind the hills ; Corvus and 
 Crater and Hydra lying away to the south, 
 and an infinity of nameless jewels looking down 
 from the depths of space overhead on the 
 earth and its petty affairs, even as they shone 
 
ii2 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 on this diminutive field of rye that would loom 
 so large in the eyes of some when daylight 
 came again. 
 
 The season, for once, seemed to be playing 
 into the farmers' hands : there were alternating 
 showers and sunshine all through April and 
 part of May, and then there was a "drippy 
 June" that ensured a heavy hay crop and, 
 later on, a good growth of straw. And so, 
 by mid July, none would have known that 
 sheep had ever been over the rye, for it was 
 five feet high, making soft music in the breezes 
 that passed silently over it all day, and 
 affording a play-ground for innumerable turtle- 
 doves that had not been in England long. 
 
 Then it bleached quickly, and unlike wheat 
 and oats and barley, lost all beauty, standing 
 there merely as a fine crop of some worth and 
 some utility, waiting for the cutters and self- 
 binders. 
 
 These last were drawn out to the edge of 
 the field one evening at the end of July, the 
 two machines being at work upon it very early 
 the following morning. Once again the weather 
 was made for the job. A hot wind blew from 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 113 
 
 the south-east ; the heat was intense, and a 
 white glare reigned everywhere. The very 
 straws seemed to crack and stiffen ; the three 
 horses drawing the heavy machines, with a 
 boy on the leaders, sweating freely and re- 
 quiring to be changed at midday. 
 
 The drivers were fairly tired out when they 
 finally drew up at seven o'clock in the evening. 
 The men employed stocking, or as they called 
 it here, " shocking up," went on till nearly 
 nine that is, as long as they could see ; and 
 it was evident that this farmer meant to make 
 the most of his opportunity while the crop was 
 dry and dead ripe, and was also prepared to 
 pay heavily for overtime. 
 
 By the following evening nearly the whole 
 of the rye was down and half the field in 
 shock ; the doves busier than ever, flapping 
 and fluttering everywhere, and taking heavy 
 toll of the grain. The day had been just 
 a repetition of the previous one, and the 
 rattle of the cutters had continued without 
 ceasing till late in the evening, their agitated 
 arms showing high above the crop as they 
 
 jerked out the trusses at every ten yards. 
 
 H 
 
H4 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 The only difference was that on this day 
 another sound had been added to that of 
 the busy machines. It came from the direc- 
 tion of the farmyard, half a mile away, and 
 was wholly unmusical. Nature herself could 
 produce nothing like it, for it was as though 
 someone was fashioning a big drum made 
 wholly of iron and tin and employing several 
 men to beat it without ceasing till, in fact, 
 all the neighbourhood wished, in local parlance, 
 "that them ther' fellers, yonder, would give 
 over." The noise could be heard all over 
 the farm and much beyond it, and if some 
 were irritated by it, there were others who 
 considered that it carried with it a reflection, 
 if not a direct attack, upon themselves. 
 
 Here was one, for instance, Nat Organ 
 by name, who was certainly numbered among 
 these last. He was walking across the rye 
 field with stiff gait, smoking a short clay pipe. 
 There was nothing remarkable about him : 
 he was of small stature and bandy legged, 
 wore corduroy trowsers, carried his jacket 
 on his arm, this hot day, and had a somewhat 
 battered straw hat with a very broad brim 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 115 
 
 upon his head. It was evident from the 
 way he moved that he was well on in years, 
 and this was confirmed when he came nearer, 
 and his face and neck were seen to be scored 
 with many lines, and the skin of his hands to 
 be shrivelled. He had come along to see 
 how the cutting was going, and having marked 
 one he had long known tucked in on the shady 
 side of one of the shocks, with a truss put 
 crossways above his head to add to the shade, 
 was now making his way to join him. 
 
 " Well, Nat ; so you are about again," said 
 this last, when the old man was within ear- 
 shot. 
 
 " No fear," came the answer; "got a job 
 on to-morrow, and along o' some o' this here," 
 and Nat poked the nearest shock with his 
 stick, drew the pipe from his mouth, and looked 
 across the already bleached stubble in the 
 direction of the farmstead. Then he spat 
 and returned the pipe to his mouth, after 
 which he sat down with the sun full on 
 the back of his neck: he did not seem to 
 mind it. 
 
 " By to-morrow night, a part of this '11 be 
 
n6 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 threshed out. I'll begin drawin' the straw, 
 come Monday. Ah ! quick work. Let's 
 see. Begun cuttin' yesterday ; finish first 
 thing to-morrow mornin'. All the shuckin' 
 up '11 be done by midday. Then they'll 
 begin hauling by two ; and er means to thresh 
 out a bit as it comes. Wants some straw for 
 the hayricks ; and this here be dead ripe, 
 bleached pertty near white, bain't it ? Been 
 at it afore, hadn't er wanted to finish er's hay 
 first. I overhear'd un order fire to be lit in 
 th' engine, so I knows it's right ay, and 
 what's more, he said as if I wer able, I wer' 
 to have the job of them two five and twenty 
 tonners yonder." 
 
 Nat Organ was known far and wide as the 
 best thatcher of his day. He was past regular 
 work now, being much hampered by the 
 rheumatics ; but he was glad of a job at his 
 old trade in summer time and early autumn, 
 especially as he always said that " idleness 
 was a deadly thing for rich or poor, and there 
 was no use in them as was everlasting on 
 the nifle 1 not a mossel." 
 
 1 Idling, or "loafing" ; sometimes, " on thenifling pin." 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 117 
 
 Among his mates his character had always 
 stood high, and these would say of him : 
 " Ah, now ; ther' be Nat ther' he be a deadly 
 man for a job desp'ert he be ; and the 
 awkwarder it be, the kinder he do take to 
 it, seemin'ly ! " 
 
 Perhaps Nat was aware of such estimate 
 for, old as he was, he went his way possessed 
 of a certain independence of manner, at the 
 same time holding opinions, the correctness 
 of which he never doubted, because, as he 
 would from time to time aver, he had arrived 
 at them by means of his own unaided judg- 
 ment and experience. In his younger days 
 he had been reckoned witty as well as wise, 
 and if he had now lost much of the former, 
 he had still, on occasions, a funny way of 
 referring to current topics that caused his 
 mates to remark when they heard his words 
 repeated : " Now, that be just one o' old 
 Nat's ; ah it be a rare job to get upsides 
 with he, especial when he've made up his 
 mind." 
 
 "Nice noise they're a-making over yonder," 
 he jerked out, after gazing intently towards 
 
u8 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 the farm, his eyelids screwed up tight in the 
 glare. " I says as every blow of them 
 hammers knocks a nail in a coffin, and marks 
 the death of a good trade and one as I've 
 followed, too, since I picked tin up from mi 
 father, an' he took me on as thatcher's boy, 
 or prentice to un. 
 
 " And since them days, I've thatched for 
 every farmer on the Manor, and done every 
 cottage roof on the place, and pretty near all 
 the barns and sheddin' as wanted it ay, and 
 till the time come when straw was that ther' 
 dear as it cost years on years o' rent to do 
 one cottage roof alone, and, seemed like being 
 just fearfu' waste of good money. Ah ; do 
 it all now, I would, though they says as I 
 be old and too rheumaticky. But the gaffer 
 do know right enough. Haven't he give me 
 the job of them two new hayricks ? Course 
 he have and he knows, same as I do. 
 
 " There, listen to 'em," he continued. 
 " They're rattlin' on them corrugated iron 
 plates as though 'em were tiles ; and a girt, 
 girt place it's a-goin' to be Dutch barn, or 
 French barn, or summut, they calls un : 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 119 
 
 they furriners be bound to be at bottom of 
 it, 'wever, same as usual. Come a few year, 
 and there won't be so much as a thatched 
 rick in the country or thatchers either, any- 
 wheres. Ah, you'll live to see it you mark 
 my words if I can't expect to be about a 
 lot longer myself." 
 
 The old man took a pull or two at his pipe 
 before he continued again: "There was Dick 
 Pegler a-sayin' t'other night as, from what er 
 could see, it wer' about time as he and I, and 
 folks of our years and experience, wer' cre- 
 mated. I says to him, I says : ' Go on with 
 yer,' I says, 'and you may leave me out where 
 the cre-matin' is in question : I wants none o' 
 that : all as I wants is to be put three feet 
 under ground, and no more, when the time 
 comes; and then I'll know as I'm benefittin' 
 the land on the top o' me still, and some un 
 with it.' 
 
 " He only laughs at what I did say ; but 
 Stainey, as was along, says : ' Well, well, to 
 be sure ; an' perhaps you be right there arter 
 all' and he don't talk very fast, don't our 
 Stainey." 
 
120 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 An hour later, Nat and that other were 
 down by the river in the cool, getting willow- 
 rods together for the rick pegs, splitting the 
 sticks down the middle, and then quartering 
 them again ready for the thatching in a day or 
 two, while the old man told of some of the 
 mysteries pertaining to what will soon be a lost 
 art in most districts. Changes are many on 
 the land, and it is well that they are, for 
 competition is keen and profits are drawn very 
 fine. There is no room for the waste notice- 
 able in the old days ; there is a place for every 
 truss and every bolten ; and if what will go to 
 make the one can be got into the hayrick 
 quickly, the other is not to be thrown away on 
 thatch, but turned to more profitable uses. 
 Thus, the covered yard and the French barn 
 are in evidence on even the smaller farms, and 
 thatched ricks and thatched cottages are being 
 replaced by repellent corrugated iron in the 
 one case, and cheap tiles or even smug slates 
 in the other. 
 
 Nat Organ referred to all these and many 
 other things as he split and quartered his rick 
 pegs and trimmed the spurs down a bit. 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 121 
 
 " Ther's no need to cut 'em too long," he said. 
 " For hayricks, 1 likes 'em from two foot to 
 two foot six ; but for wheat and that, pegs 
 shouldn't never be less than three by rights. 
 Then again, ye see, there be this the thick 
 end should allus be sharpened and t'other end 
 cut off square, so as it don't injure yer hand 
 when you come to thrust it into rick roof. 
 And never you get your pegs too thick, lest 
 you make a bigger hole than you needs in the 
 thatch : you'll get the wet in else. 
 
 " But there, what's the use of my a-learnin' 
 the likes o' you ? You haven't a-got to live by 
 it ; and so far as I can see, from these furrin' 
 plans as is comin' in, and the nonsense talked 
 at home, it be a girt mercy for ye that yer 
 haven't, or you'd very certain starve. Job to 
 get a thatcher's boy now ; they don't want to 
 learn it, and what's more, sees as there's no 
 partic'lar call for it or won't be soon. 
 
 "Same along o' the yelmin'. 1 My missus, 
 God bless her, did allus come yelmin' for me ; 
 and former times, hereabouts, it was reckoned 
 
 1 Gathering the handfuls of drawn straw, preparatory to 
 thatching; sometimes, "helming." 
 
122 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 'oomen's work. It wer' just proper work for 
 a 'ooman, too, it wus, an' 'twer' done this way 
 same as I'll show you, come Monday, when 
 us can get to draw the straw. They did go 
 down on their knees, with the straw laid in 
 front of 'em, and with one hand in front o' 
 t'other, did draw out the straws towards 'em. 
 Well, when youVe got as much draw'd that 
 way and cleaned out with the fingers at the 
 ends, as you can clasp round with your two 
 hands, that be a yelm. 
 
 " Then you lays one this way and t'other 
 that, crossways two together, by the rick, so 
 as 'em can be counted and carr'd up to him as 
 is at work. And what the 'oomens was paid 
 for that ther' was twopence a score, or four 
 bundles o' yelms, as we do call 'em, for the 
 twopence. But you don't see the women at 
 it now, no fear ; and after a bit " and Nat 
 removed his hat to scratch the top of his bald 
 head "you won't see . . . ah, well; perhaps 
 not. But I reckons with what we've got in 
 the yard, we've got about of enough of these 
 pegs for the present time." 
 
 What Nat Organ had said turned out to be 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 123 
 
 quite right, and the following afternoon two 
 brightly-painted waggons were out in the rye 
 field, being loaded by the farmer and his men. 
 A wind had sprung up from the south-west 
 and the sky was cloudless, but the heat was as 
 great as ever. There was no sound of the big 
 drum over at the farmstead. This was Saturday, 
 and the men at work on the new barn had 
 left at twelve, " not reckoning to do much that 
 day." For the farm hands it was different : at 
 this season they looked to make overtime, no 
 matter what the day of the working week 
 might be. Thus, as soon as the first waggon 
 was loaded, the farmer and five of his men 
 went off with it to the yard ; and then, much 
 to the surprise of some, there presently arose 
 in that direction the pant and the hum of the 
 steam-thresher. 
 
 The waggon had been drawn up close to 
 the machine, and a volume of black smoke 
 from the engine was being carried off by the 
 hot south-west wind. A man quickly climbed 
 to the top of the load with a fork, and began 
 pitching the sheaves one by one to two others 
 standing ready on the feed ing- board. The 
 
i2 4 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 first of these took the sheaf in his arms and 
 passed it over to his mate, who ripped the 
 twine with a knife as he cast it into the drum. 
 Precisely the same movements were repeated 
 again and again, and in the dust and the 
 smoke and the heat, these men in their white 
 shirts, tossing the bleached sheaves in this 
 way, might have been jugglers ball-playing 
 to the music of the thresher's hum. 
 
 It was soon a busy scene. A pile of straw 
 began to grow where it was shaken out at the 
 back of the thresher after the ears had been 
 stripped of grain, and this was quickly tackled 
 by three men with long forks, who started 
 building it into a rough rick close by. Then 
 an old horse came round the corner drawing 
 water for the engine : the fires were made up, 
 a fresh volume of black smoke rose from the 
 tall chimney, and the note of the thresher 
 dropped half a tone, from Ab to G. 
 
 And just then, too, as if the change of key 
 awoke fresh memories, one of the men, more 
 musical than the rest, began a plaintive kind 
 of tune, and continued to whistle it over and 
 over again. Possibly it was one he had picked 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 125 
 
 up at the village revel the week before : the 
 rest of the men stopped talking ; one looked 
 up with a grin, as though he recognised it, 
 and some of the others smiled. The whistle 
 carried a long way, for it was high pitched 
 an] octave higher than an ordinary whistler's 
 compass the thresher humming a continual 
 accompaniment with its two deep notes, in the 
 dust and the smoke and the dancing heat of 
 the July afternoon. 
 
 By five o'clock half a dozen waggons had 
 been brought in and unloaded, and the loose, 
 rough strawrick had grown till it ,was almost 
 as high as the hayricks close by, that Nat 
 would be thatching on Monday. Even the 
 pile of cavings was up to the top of the 
 thresher's wheels. A man was busy raking 
 them away, and a string of white ducks, 
 accompanied by a few venturesome fowls, 
 waddled up to see what might be gathered 
 there. Then, of a sudden, and as if by 
 mutual consent rather than definite order, the 
 band was thrown off the driving wheel, the 
 engine stopped, and the hum fell to a low 
 groan and slowly ceased. All the straw that 
 
126 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 Nat would want was in the great loose pile 
 that would be half its height by Monday ; and 
 someone took a bucket and threw water over 
 it from the engine's water-butt, by way of 
 aiding the thatcher later in his task. 
 
 The men wiped the sweat from their fore- 
 heads, glanced at the work done, and went 
 their way. It was past five o'clock on Satur- 
 day afternoon, and the toil of a hot week was 
 ended. Only the farmer remained with the 
 man who had charge of the machine ; and 
 when the fire had been raked out of the 
 engine, these two began putting the thresher 
 and engine to bed under their respective 
 tarpaulins. 
 
 " Not a bad sample of grain, and a very 
 nice bit of straw that should suit the old man 
 well," remarked the farmer ; to which the 
 engine-man agreed. " He's been a good one 
 in his day," he went on, " no better, and will 
 do a rick with less than any man I've ever 
 seen. The only thing about it now is that 
 it's an everlasting job, and makes one fear 
 sometimes that the wet ,.'11 get in afore he's 
 done." 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 127 
 
 " 'Tis a kindness, though, to give it him," 
 remarked the engine-man. 
 
 " Don't know nothing about that ; but it 
 pleases the old man, anyway. Can't a-bear 
 to feel dependent, can't old Nat. Why, when 
 he's laid up with his rheumatics, and you know, 
 for certain, that he wants a little of this or 
 that, you've got to be just about particular or 
 you'll be certain to offend him : got to do it 
 on the sly, like, and pretty well ask his accept- 
 ance as a favour." The farmer was tugging 
 at a tarpaulin rope at the front of the engine. 
 
 " Ther' be some like that," put in the engine- 
 man again. 
 
 " Ay still. Why, the other day, I says to 
 him * Nat, why ever don't you put in for 
 your old age pension ? You be over time a long 
 way.' And what kind of answer do you think 
 I g ot ? J ust this an d no more: ' Danged 
 if I does ! ' " 
 
 The engine-man laughed. "There's queer 
 folks about, to be sure," he said. 
 
 "This be my assistant," remarked Nat 
 
128 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 Organ, by way of introducing his mate 
 a young man busy wetting straw, preparatory 
 to yelming. Nat had been tucking the rick 
 since the early morning pulling the sides 
 with the hand and had nearly finished it. 
 
 " You see," he explained, " when a rick be 
 well tucked, the bottom be much in from the 
 eaves : the gaffer will have 'em like that, and 
 he be quite right. There's plenty of holes up 
 on the roof as wants fillin', I can see, and 
 then there '11 be the ridge '11 want building up 
 a bit. Hayricks do always sink wonderful, 
 and swig-swags about, too, for the matter 
 o' that. 
 
 " But, oh dear, oh dear ! see that rick o' 
 mine yonder, t'other side of them three round 
 wheatricks? Ah I did thatch all o' they, 
 last season. But just look at that un now. 
 Tucked as nice, so as his sides wer' like walls 
 though leaning ones, to be sure ; and then 
 Harry goes and leaves the paddock gate open, 
 and that ther' old grey nag, as ought to be 
 shot, come in and played the very dooce wi' 
 it, a-nibblin' all along the sides, see ? There, I 
 did warm him for that, I did ; it wer' shamefu'." 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 129 
 
 A thatcher's outfit does not amount to much, 
 and Nat's lay on the ground close by. First 
 there were a number of balls of rough twine, 
 which it is the business of the farmer to find, 
 together with the pegs and all materials, 
 though by ancient custom the thatcher has 
 always to sharpen his own pegs. Then came 
 Nat's properties, consisting of a short hand- 
 rake, fashioned out of half a hayrake, with 
 the teeth cut to three inches and sharpened, 
 a paring knife, a pair of sheep shears, a large 
 thatcher's fork, two pieces of old carpet for 
 kneecaps, and a small square of leather on a 
 thong, which Nat always wore on the palm 
 of his right hand, to save wounding it when 
 thrusting in the pegs. "It be a lot better 
 than the 'ooden mallet as some do use a lot 
 better, and mi father did always use the like," 
 he explained. 
 
 " And a prime thatcher wer' mi old father, 
 too," he continued, tucking the rick as he 
 talked. " When I began a-learnin' the trade 
 of he, he did always have two assistants to 
 wait on him, same as I always had myself, 
 later. We was paid, then, same as we is now 
 
130 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 a shillun a square of ten feet by ten feet, 
 the thatcher a-settlin' with his own men hisself. 
 Early times, they didn't give as much six- 
 pence to eightpence for straw ricks, to ten- 
 pence for wheat and that, and hay. But it 
 got to a shillun, and ther' it be now. 
 
 "How much could us earn ? Well, maybe 
 I'll tell yer. See them wheatricks yonder, 
 again? The staddles on which 'em do stand 
 measures six yards across, and they be ninety- 
 six feet round the eaves, and twenty feet from 
 that to the top, so us reckons as there be a 
 trifle over nine squares on the roof. A 
 thatcher, such as I, or what mi father wer', 
 with two men to wait on us and do all the work 
 with the yelming and the pegs, would bustle 
 about proper to thatch two ricks of that size 
 well in a day. And if he wer' a careful man, 
 he shouldn't use above three-quarters of a ton 
 of straw, such as we've got here, for the job, 
 though, to be sure, with rye you do want a lot 
 more of it than when you be using wheat 
 straw. 
 
 " O' course sometimes us didn't do so much 
 perhaps not more than a rick and a half. 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 131 
 
 At other times us did more. Why, I can call 
 to mind when I was thatcher's boy and helped 
 at it, as we've done a rick afore breakfast 
 that be, startin' at five and carryin' on till 
 half-past eight. O' course the yelms v/us 
 ready ; and I could nip up and down a ladder 
 with 'em sharpish, them days. 
 
 " But ther', you do know things in these 
 times bain't a-done to last as 'em used to wus ; 
 nor wanted to, as far as I can see. Why, 
 former times, a farmer did often reckon to 
 keep his wheat in rick for as much as a couple 
 o' year. Now, it be all threshed out when 
 the rent-day's in sight, and yards be mostly 
 empty by time as next harvest do come round. 
 It ain't always so with our gaffer here, I 
 knows ; but it be with many. And had 'em 
 acted that way when I were younger, there's 
 plenty would a-twisted up their mouth, like, 
 when going by, and have passed the remark 
 to their neighbour : ' Well, to be sure ; I 
 wonder what's wrong with his money, then 
 somethin', for certain.' 
 
 " But it ain't perhaps wonderful, these days, 
 as 'em don't want to spent no money as they 
 
132 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 can help on such work as we be a-doin' here : 
 times be mortal different : not half the straw's 
 grown : and many on 'em is busy lookin' 
 round for someun else to save 'em altogether." 
 
 " Ah ! listen ; there 'em be, at it again, 
 t'other side o' barns, and quite near enough, 
 too. Runned short o' plates, I understands ; 
 but I seen a fresh lot come in, now just, so 
 they'll be after givin' the whole parish the 
 headache very shortly, same as last week." 
 
 Nat called to his mate to come and help him 
 move the long ladder. The tucking all round 
 the rick was finished, and it was time to get 
 on to the roof, to fill in hollows and comb 
 down. It was necessary to lay the ladder 
 perfectly level with the roof, and when this 
 was done Nat went up to have a look round. 
 
 " We'll soon set that right with the tuckings 
 and rakings and that," he said, on coming 
 down and pointing to a hole where the rick 
 had fallen in from heating. " There's plenty 
 as says as you must mind to put a bolster of 
 tied straw all along the ridge. That be non- 
 sense, and what's more, I knows as, oftens, 
 it be downright waste. Top up and make 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 133 
 
 up your ridge with your rakings and that, 
 and don't throw another's good money away." 
 
 A little later Nat had begun operations. 
 There are many ways of beginning the thatch- 
 ing of a rick, whether it is oblong in shape 
 like a hayrick, or round as in the case of those 
 of wheat and other straw crops. Nat was of 
 opinion that the place to begin, in the case 
 of the former, was at one of the ends, though 
 some might prefer the middle. " Finishin' 
 off don't show, under my plan," he ex- 
 plained. 
 
 When he had chosen his place, he went up 
 with his first lot of yelms, his helper subse- 
 quently keeping him supplied. Taking a yelm, 
 he twisted the ear end of the straws into a ball 
 and thrust it well into the hay just above 
 where the eaves would be, continuing the line 
 as far as he could reach. Then the second 
 row was laid in the same way ; the ends of 
 the straw being as close to the eaves as was 
 necessary, for them to be held down later by 
 the bottom string. The lower line of pegs 
 was subsequently thrust in a foot apart, the 
 string, which was on a ball with a stick run 
 
134 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 through it so as to lodge it handy to the 
 thatcher on the roof, passing from one peg to 
 another and being tied to each with a builder's 
 knot, or clove hitch. 
 
 " There's two things you've got to mind 
 partic'lar in thatchin'," Nat explained, talking 
 to that other standing just below him on the 
 ladder, " the one be always to shut your 
 yelms well in; and t'other, to put your pegs 
 in level same line as the ground. Ther's 
 plenty lays their yelms on top o' one another ; 
 while others, careless like, do put their pegs in 
 slanting up or down, or no matter how. Such 
 carryings on be fatal to a rick : the wind do 
 blow the straw off, in the one case : and they 
 pegs says to the rain, same what they gipsy 
 folk sings out at our revel : ' This way, gents, 
 for them as wants to get inside.' Why, them 
 pegs, put in slantin' down'ards, do just act like 
 a lot o' drains for the water, bless yer. 
 
 " Then again, see here there's no call for 
 you to get and put your pegs in so frequent 
 when you comes to the next line above this 
 un ; though you gets 'em a little closer as you 
 works up, same as you do the lines theirselves. 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 135 
 
 About of a six lines be a plenty for so be a 
 ordinary stack, the top un being run close 
 against the ridge, and the pegs ther' the 
 nearest o' all say, six inches apart, be about 
 right. 
 
 " And its just the ridge where some do 
 make their worst mistakes. You must lay the 
 straw ther', well cocked up, minds, so as to run 
 the water off. And it ain't amiss to place 
 some of your pegs in first, just as you does in 
 exposed parts, puttin' 'em crossways, like. 
 The ridge and th' eaves be the two principal 
 parts in all thatchin' ; but it be the layin' o' 
 the straw, right through, as wants the care. 
 It got to be done wi' judgment, see ? And 
 what haven't, for the sayin' o' that?" 
 
 Nat was using his short rake to rake out the 
 yelms lightly along the stelch, or length, he 
 had done, and to beat down the straw and 
 make all ship-shape. He did not attend to 
 the ridge till all was finished, when he would 
 use the shears, as he said, " with their 
 handles held right up'ards, so as you can cut 
 down'ards with 'em : 'tis the only way to 
 make a proper job." Then the whole roof 
 
136 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 would be carefully cleared of all trimmings and 
 made to look its best ; the eaves being left to 
 the last. 
 
 " And them eaves be terrible important," he 
 would say. " By rights, if so be you've laid 
 th' yelms right, the straw should be a'most 
 double thickness ther'. I can tell in a minute, 
 bless yer, whether a booby been at work or no, 
 just as anyun may tell as a booby have been 
 about when pegs along one stelch, or width 
 between the strings, be in line with those above 
 'em. Why ; what do that mean but the rain 
 making a drain from one row to another right 
 down the roof, and finding its way again into a 
 farmer's rick ? 
 
 " Half of 'em now don't know their trade, yer 
 see. There's a lot to be learnt in thatchin', 
 though some says as it's to be picked up easy. 
 I knows better nor that. A man ain't a-goin' 
 to trim his eaves proper wit'out practice and 
 judgment. First, you must pare 'em careful 
 with your draw knife, and then you must go in 
 with the sheep shears, being very partic'lar to 
 hold 'em same level with the ground, cutting 
 always towards the rick ; and you won't want 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 137 
 
 to take off a lot if your yelms have been laid 
 as 'em should a-been. 
 
 "Ay; there's a lot o' rubbish talked; but 
 this is what I says. Push in your yelms and 
 shut 'em in well, and do the best as you can 
 from the first ; but never you fancies as your 
 thatch be not a-goin' to let the wet in, nor 
 warrant as it won't. I knows as not one in 
 fifty thatches '11 kep it out altogether; and I 
 be certain as it won't when snow be in 
 question, for that do allus sobble into 'em 
 proper." 
 
 It was the afternoon of the second day of 
 the work when Nat reached the last side of his 
 rick. He invariably regarded every rick as 
 his till he had finished it, and as something 
 that no one had a right to interfere with not 
 even the farmer himself. Was he not the best 
 thatcher in the county, and proud of his work ? 
 " If I be to be trusted," he would say, "there's 
 nothin' more to be said ; and if I bain't why, 
 get someun else." 
 
 Then again, he would often remark when 
 talking of thatching : " There be those as thinks 
 theirselves clever when they gets their thatchin' 
 
138 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 done bi contract, and by such as takes all the 
 ricks in the yard at, maybe, five and sixpence 
 apiece ; but sometimes it happens as the winter 
 comes along and tells 'em as they was a little 
 bit out in their reckonin'. Some ricks be more 
 difficult nor others, as anyun may see, just as 
 some is more steeper than others and wants less 
 straw accordin' ; but, however such may be, 
 you've got the sky above you, minds summer 
 and winter, and all seasons and ricks is ricks 
 and straw's straw, all said and done." 
 
 Difficulties, when they arose, were nothing 
 to him, and often when the weather played him 
 false, and things went wrong with the work 
 just as it was nearly done, Nat Organ never 
 lost heart or showed signs of giving in. With 
 him it was always in Robert Browning's line 
 " So one fight more, the best and the last ! " 
 The character he had earned was that he was 
 " a deadly man at a job " ; and he was destined 
 to show this now, though it might be for the 
 last time in his long and honest life. 
 
 The farmer had come by earlier in the day, 
 and asked Nat what he thought of the weather ; 
 to which he had replied : " Ther's going to be 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 139 
 
 a change and a break up. The wind be puffy, 
 I can find, now I've come round to this south 
 side of my rick. We're in for a tempest, I'm 
 thinking, and afore so very long." He did not 
 stop in his work ; but called to his helper to 
 keep on with his yelms, and to charge the 
 thatching fork with a lot and bring it up in 
 case he might want it. 
 
 Clouds were gathering in the south behind 
 the woods, the air was sultry, and the wind had 
 dropped altogether, though now and then there 
 came an eddy that toyed with the loose straws 
 lying round the rick, carrying them high in the 
 air to let them fall some distance away. The 
 light of the sun seemed to be partially eclipsed 
 and shadows grew fainter ; and at the same time 
 silence fell upon the world, save for the ham- 
 mering on the new Dutch barn of which every- 
 one had grown so tired. That never ceased, 
 and latterly had grown worse ; one of the firm 
 having called that morning and stirred the men 
 up, time being the essence of this contract. 
 
 A dove was purring in the willows by the 
 river, and another answered from across the 
 glassy water that was flowing in a sluggish 
 
140 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 stream. No birds sang : it was the wrong 
 time of year and the wrong time of day ; but 
 those that were on the move flew silently, as if 
 they sought shelter from something that they 
 dreaded. A party of yellow buntings arrived 
 in the yards quite suddenly, and then a yaffel 
 laughed loudly as he took an undulating flight 
 across the home paddock, his cheery voice, for 
 once, sounding quite out of place. And all the 
 while thunder-clouds continued to pile them- 
 selves up and to mount higher and higher into 
 the sky. The light of the sun was shrouded 
 altogether. Nature was waiting for something. 
 Flowers were drooping and all things wanted 
 rain ; the spell of hot weather had lasted many 
 days. Then a low rumbling was audible, a 
 long way off, and a pheasant crowed in the 
 woods. At the same time, a puff of wind came 
 from the opposite direction, slammed one of 
 the barn doors, and set up a rustle in the 
 trees. 
 
 " It's coming, right enough," remarked Nat's 
 helper. 
 
 " Maybe as it be ; just bring up another 
 of them forkfuls, then, and kep on at that 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 141 
 
 I shall be after wanting they presently, 
 I reckons." The old man was working 
 quicker : the end of the rick, where he was 
 lying out on the ladder, faced direct towards 
 the coming storm. 
 
 He had hardly finished his sentence before 
 there were further rumblings in the heavens, 
 and from two directions at once. The storm 
 was evidently going to be a severe one : the 
 clouds had lost all beauty of form ; the sky 
 had turned indigo, with lurid patches here and 
 there, and with a ragged, lead-coloured fringe 
 low down, betokening rain. For the time, 
 beauty was shut out, and limitless power was 
 coming to occupy her place. There was going 
 to be war in the heavens ; and things on the 
 earth, while they watched, were about to feel 
 their insignificance. 
 
 For a moment there was silence. The air 
 had turned quite cold. Suddenly the dark 
 mass that seemed to shroud the whole earth 
 was riven by a flash, jagged as a broken egg- 
 shell. The silence seemed to deepen for many 
 seconds after that ; but it was broken at last, 
 and there followed the solemn voice of the 
 
142 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 thunder, echoing among the more distant 
 clouds till it and they were weary. 
 
 It was time for everyone to seek shelter. 
 The hammering on the Dutch barn had already 
 ceased, and the men had made their way to 
 the old shed that stood over against where 
 Nat was working. No one was visible in the 
 yards. The poultry were crowding into the 
 wane house, and the string of white ducks 
 waddled round to the other side of the wheat- 
 ricks and disappeared from view. 
 
 A few drops, heavy as lead, had already 
 fallen on the thatch at Nat's side, causing him 
 to look up as he heard them patter down. 
 There was still time : the storm would not be 
 overhead just yet : this end must be finished, 
 somehow, and the wet kept out. Such were 
 the thoughts that appeared to be occupying 
 the old man's mind. 
 
 One of the other farm hands came running 
 across at this moment, with his jacket thrown 
 over his shoulders, and called to Nat that the 
 farmer wanted him to come in. But Nat only 
 looked down and said nothing in reply, which 
 made the messenger feel foolish. He was 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 143 
 
 getting up to the ridge, and his figure stood 
 out clearly against the lurid background of 
 the sky. Rain was beginning to fall in earnest, 
 and the new thatch was getting its first 
 wetting. 
 
 Nat's coat was at the foot of the rick, and 
 he was in his shirt-sleeves. He looked down 
 at the old, tattered garment for a moment, and 
 then felt in his waistcoat pocket, drew out a 
 short wooden pipe, and gripped it tightly 
 between his teeth. It was, of course, quite 
 contrary to his principles to smoke when at 
 such work as this, and he was not going to 
 do so now ; but the mere fact of sucking at 
 a cold pipe seemed to help him in what lay 
 ahead for him to do. Only once after that 
 did he as much as glance over his shoulder, 
 and this was when he wanted to see where his 
 mate was. He grinned when he noticed that 
 the man had crept beneath the threshing 
 machine that, covered with its tarpaulin, stood 
 where it had been left on the previous 
 Saturday. 
 
 " Don't you take no harm, you minds," he 
 called, removing his pipe from his mouth for 
 
144 E SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 a moment " it might hurt yer ! " Nat's words 
 and a louder peal of thunder made the man 
 take the hint : he ran for the shed close by, 
 and Nat was left alone. 
 
 The rain was coming down harder than 
 ever. The old man's shirt-sleeves were soaked 
 through and were clinging to his bony 
 shoulders, while the water was streaming from 
 the broad brim of his old straw hat. He was 
 working as hard as he had done when forty 
 years younger : every movement was quick ; 
 and he was shutting in his yelms one after the 
 other and driving his pegs home with the 
 leather on the palm of his hand, in a way that 
 showed a lifetime's practice. 
 
 The townsmen were watching him from the 
 shelter of the shed, and as Nat's mate joined 
 them, one remarked, " What abaht that ould 
 fool up there? He'll get struck, if he doun't 
 mind." 
 
 " I doun't know abaht the fool part of what 
 yer sai," returned another, slowly; "but ther' 
 hain't no daut abaht the dainger." 
 
 Another figure was seen running across the 
 yard. It was the farmer, clad in a mackintosh. 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 145 
 
 "Come down off there, I tell yer ! " he 
 called, " or you'll get struck ! " 
 
 In the hurly-burly that was going on the 
 repeated claps of thunder and the heavy rain 
 Nat had difficulty in hearing what he said ; 
 but divining the farmer's words, he sung out : 
 " I don't believe as a drop o' water have got 
 in yet. I'll a-done after a bit, see ? " 
 
 " Well ; come down, I tell yer ! " 
 
 " What, and leave my rick to get a sousing 
 no fear!" 
 
 " I don't care a damn about the rick : just 
 you come down ! " called the farmer, his anger 
 evidently rising. 
 
 "Danged if I do till I've finished," came 
 the answer from above ; and Nat went on 
 with his work, leaving the farmer to say what 
 more he liked. 
 
 It seemed hopeless to do anything with a 
 man like that. The farmer knew well whom 
 he had to deal with, and with a " Well ; have 
 it your own way I've warned you," which 
 never reached Nat on the rick, he gave it up 
 and made his way back to his house. The 
 men in the shed laughed. 
 
146 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 " There's no doing anything with him," he 
 explained to his wife. " Why, bless you, he 
 looks upon the rick as his own, and seemed 
 quite hurted at my interfering. He's always 
 been like that. Just ask the men ; they'll tell 
 you the same old Nat have ever been a 
 deadly man at a job, if he is fated to be 
 struck to a cinder now." 
 
 The farmer's wife put her hands to her 
 eyes to hide out such a possible eventuality, 
 and at the same moment a brilliant flash lit 
 up the whole room, followed by a crash that 
 sounded as if the roof of the house had been 
 stripped off or had fallen in. The farmer left 
 at once to see what had happened ; but his wife 
 ran to the window to look towards the rick. 
 
 It was difficult to see anything clearly, with 
 the rain streaming down the window-panes ; 
 but to her dismay she made out at last that 
 the figure she had watched working on the 
 tall ladder, these two days, was now no longer 
 to be seen. With a choking sensation in her 
 throat, she ran out of the room and mounted 
 the first flight of stairs. 
 
 "There's no one on the rick," she called, 
 
NAT ORGAN, THATCHER 147 
 
 breathlessly, to her husband on the floor above ; 
 " there's no one on the rick; Nat Organ's 
 struck, man run ! " 
 
 "I knew'd how it 'ould be," returned the 
 farmer, coming down and seizing his hat : he 
 did not wait now for other covering. 
 
 As he opened the door, the sound of cheering 
 smote his ears. It was repeated again and 
 again, and came from the direction of the 
 old shed, over against where Nat had been 
 working. He reached his garden gate and 
 stood for a moment looking across the road, 
 where the rain was making the gravel dance : 
 a clap of thunder came from farther away ; 
 the previous one had been the worst. 
 
 Once again, as he stood there, the cheering 
 was renewed. There could not be much wrong 
 where there were such sounds as those. Then 
 he realised their meaning. 
 
 The small figure of a man, with nothing 
 remarkable about him, was walking across 
 the flooded yards, his coat slung over one 
 shoulder and a short pipe between his teeth. 
 It was old Nat, wet to the skin ; and the 
 men from the Dutch barn were cheering him. 
 
148 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 He was walking straight past them, at some 
 distance, without turning his head, as if what 
 was going on had no reference whatever to 
 himself. But when the farmer hailed him, and 
 shouted some remark that he did not quite 
 catch, he called, in reply : 
 
 " It be all shut in, and won't take a lot o' 
 hurt now : I'll attend to ridge and eaves, come 
 the mornin'." 
 
 Then he went out on to the road that led 
 past the remaining shocks of rye, standing 
 soaking in the fields, with his clothes clinging 
 to his body and raindrops dripping from his 
 hat. 
 
 The worst of the storm was over. Light 
 was showing in the sky to windward ; though 
 in the north, where thunder still rolled sullenly, 
 the landscape and the heavens were indigo 
 blue. Beauty and peace would return ere long 
 in the distance was a double rainbow. 
 
 The war was over ; and as Nat reached 
 the cottage where he lived alone, asking help 
 of none, a pale gleam of sunlight travelled 
 over the rain-washed fields, and cast the old 
 man's shadow on his cottage floor. 
 
V 
 BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 
 
 THERE were five of us, and this was our time 
 and place of meeting. 
 
 It was St. Martin's Day and three o'clock in 
 the afternoon, and St. Martin was celebrating 
 his summer, destined, as often, to last just one 
 day and no more. With the morrow would 
 come again, in all likelihood, the drip of autumn, 
 the familiar drifts of sodden leaves in the 
 woods, the drenched grasses in the open, and 
 Nature falling asleep with tears glistening on 
 her lashes. Behind then, for good, would lie 
 the summer with all its wealth of treasured 
 recollections, and the unseen power would be 
 declaring the old familiar truth, that all things 
 here must change. The tops of the elms 
 would turn more golden daily as if by touch 
 of fire, the beech blood-red, the aspens to 
 amber, the maples to flame ; and once again 
 
 149 
 
150 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 there would be the eternal evidence of the 
 cycle that is destined to pass for all time from 
 that which is good to that which is hard, 
 and then onward again from the hard to the 
 supremely good, and the rest and peace that 
 shall accompany it. 
 
 There was a certain reflection of this in 
 the talk of four here present, no less than 
 in the general atmosphere of their lives, the 
 fifth contenting himself with listening and not 
 venturing to say much, however frequently 
 he may have been in the habit of spending 
 an hour with each and all of these as intimate 
 friends of many decades' standing. 
 
 The spring and summer and much of the 
 autumn of the lives of this company just as 
 with others living in the adjoining buildings, 
 and none of whom were less than seventy 
 years of age lay very certainly behind, till 
 now, in the end, when winter was close 
 ahead and days grew visibly shorter, they 
 and those others had come together here, 
 one by one. All were old, and some were 
 broken down ; but in these almshouses, each 
 was well sheltered from all that was hard 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 151 
 
 in future; and, though they did not trouble 
 their minds greatly on this score, peace and 
 beauty were lying now just over the adjacent 
 border, for each and all, in God's good time. 
 
 Possibly no more perfect site could have 
 been chosen in all England than this upon 
 which the founders settled when they had 
 it in their hearts, two centuries and more 
 ago, to benefit their poorer fellow-men. This 
 was it now. A wide expanse of fine, short, 
 virgin turf, level as any lawn, something be- 
 tween a heath and a common, with stretches 
 of gorse and bracken fern and tall foxgloves 
 flourishing luxuriantly on its gravelly soil, with 
 giant oaks spreading wide their limbs, and 
 with sometimes sheep, at others a herd of 
 Alderneys, beautiful in colour as any fallow 
 deer, grazing at will over the whole expanse. 
 To right and left, great beech woods ; in rear 
 a group of thatched and tiled farm buildings, 
 embowered in cherry orchards ; and, in front, 
 room for the eye to roam far, over five or 
 more of England's southern counties. 
 
 The main buildings set out on three sides 
 of a square about an ample courtyard paved 
 
152 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 with flint cobbles and brick faced so as to 
 catch the maximum of sun, and were separated 
 from the heath by a low wall. The date of 
 the whole was unmistakable, the steep roofs, 
 massive chimney-breasts, and form of gable, 
 declaring it to be the reign of Queen Anne. 
 To right and left, the two sides of the great 
 courtyard furnished each a row of comfortable 
 tenements ; and on the third, while further 
 tenements had also here a place, the centre 
 was occupied by a chapel where daily services 
 were held for all who cared to come. A clock- 
 tower rose here above the entrance door, on 
 either side of which were ancient and com- 
 fortable seats, where those who were weary 
 could come and sun themselves, on such a 
 day as this, for instance, and hold converse 
 while they sat, with the view of all those 
 counties spread out for them to gaze upon 
 between the stems and branches of the trees. 
 
 Behind the range of red brick buildings, 
 beautiful in the colours that time alone can 
 give, lay these old folks' gardens, divided by 
 grass paths, each with its apple or pear or 
 cherry trees, the whole enclosed by hedges 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 153 
 
 of clipped yew. And here, too, in a quiet 
 corner, surrounded by a brick wall, perhaps 
 two feet high a sun-trap in its way was a 
 small grass square of consecrated ground, 
 where roses and daffodils grew and birds 
 built early, and where those were laid to 
 rest who had no right of breaking ground 
 elsewhere when their days were ended. 
 
 And lest these old folk might feel them- 
 selves lonely and cut off up here from the 
 rest of the world, the founders had shown 
 their wisdom and forethought by ensuring 
 that a constant stream of -young life should 
 be in daily touch with them. Adjoining these 
 almshouses were considerable schools, the 
 foundationers of which were dressed alike 
 the boys in blue serge with brass buttons; 
 the girls in scarlet cloaks and head-covering 
 to match. 
 
 Thus daily, save in holiday time, a crowd 
 of children assembled here from all round this 
 purely agricultural district, to obtain their 
 education, and what was of equal if not greater 
 moment, to win health and strength for future 
 years and what those years might claim of 
 
154 E SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 them as English men and women. Here they 
 could play their games throughout the seasons, 
 in the high air that came unimpeded straight 
 across those English counties from the distant 
 seas or through the great woods and cherry 
 orchards lying round always out on their 
 own short, level turf, where the gorse and 
 the bracken grew strong and the great oaks 
 spread their limbs making the old buildings 
 ring with the sound of their laughter and the 
 prattle of their tongues, and bringing there- 
 by many a smile to an old face, and rekindling 
 many a recollection in the hearts of those who 
 watched them. 
 
 The chapel door stood wide open on this 
 St. Martin's Day, and of the party that had 
 assembled round it, three were sitting together 
 in the sun on one of the old seats, a fourth 
 on one of the arms of the same, with another 
 standing in front in his shirt-sleeves, his hands 
 thrust deep into the ample pockets of his 
 trousers, and with a short wooden pipe in 
 his mouth. Willum Dawbey had just come 
 in, after doing a little ploughing for the farmer 
 of the farm at the back. He was tall and clean 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 155 
 
 shaven, and his face seemed to be wreathed 
 in a perpetual smile. 
 
 " I like's a bit o' ploughin', when I can 
 get at it, ye see, and it went nice to-day after 
 the wet as we've had. Farmer yonder, got 
 a man sick ; and I worked for he all my time, 
 same as my father worked all his time for 
 hisn's." 
 
 " Where was yer, Willum ? " asked a heavily- 
 built man on the seat, with a badly-deformed 
 left hand and foot. " In the Grove furlong, 
 was it ? Not allus a very kind piece, that 
 bain't, and I've ploughed un, times ay, and 
 with a 'ooden plough, too." The speaker's 
 name was John Lugge, but the others called 
 him Jack. 
 
 "Ah! they 'ooden ploughs. You brings 
 back summat to mind when you speaks o' 
 they," broke in Jimmy Crowdy, with a thin 
 voice, and a bad cough that he had never 
 been known to be without. He was the oldest 
 of the party, being eighty-five ; and having 
 lived in these almshouses twenty-one years, 
 was somewhat deferred to by the others. If 
 you asked him about his cough, he would 
 
156 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 tell you "as it wus th' asthma," and that 
 his father said that he had been born with 
 it, adding that " breakin' the fresh ground 
 up, ploughin 5 , did used allus to affect his 
 chesties and make him find of it worse." 
 
 But it was not only his age that gave Jimmy 
 Crowdy his position among his fellows here. 
 He was also known as "a great man to 
 sing ; and one who could sing all through the 
 Psalms, beautiful, yet ; and put the shame 
 on the face of some in the doin' of it that 
 he 'ould!" 
 
 Oddly enough, it had always been the dream 
 of Jimmy's life that he might end his days 
 where he now found himself; and all through 
 his boyhood, and right on through the years 
 that followed, he had regularly attended the 
 services in the chapel, at the door of which 
 he was now sitting, and where he had sung, 
 he would tell you, nearly eighty years. 
 
 "Ah! they 'ooden ploughs," he repeated, 
 swinging his legs, for being small of stature 
 his feet did not touch the ground when sitting 
 on this seat. " There's no un 'ouldn't go by 
 me in a field with they" 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 157 
 
 " Folks 'ouldn't look at 'em now," interposed 
 Dick Pegler, a keen-faced, white-haired man, 
 sitting on his left and engaged in sharpening 
 his knife on a strap. 
 
 "They 'ouldn't look at many things as we 
 was forced to," returned Jimmy, with a cough. 
 " What would 'em say to a turn-furrow made 
 o' beech, and the beam of a bit of ash or elm ? 
 They'd tell ye as they 'ouldn't last more nor 
 a twelvemonth, and there they'd be a'most 
 right ; but I knows as them there 'ooden 
 ploughs did do good work, especial' in heavy 
 ground. Didn't do where there was gravel 
 and stone : soon wored out then. But they 
 slipped the dirt ever so much better, in soft 
 ground : didn't clog so much : didn't have no 
 wheels, yer see, so there was less to cling." 
 
 "You be right there, Jimmy," put in John 
 Lugge. " I founds the same. I've been with 
 'em with six horses, lots o' times, myself, and 
 all workin' in the furrow, though I allus says 
 as six be too many can't work together, yer 
 see, and treads it all together too much. Can't 
 do nothin' with it then ; and wants two boys 
 along. Ay, but I been with they 'ooden 
 
158 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 fellers times and times on heavy land, I have ; 
 and what's more, oftentimes in winters, when 
 the ground did lie wet an' I knows as they 
 did better than the wheel ploughs then, a lot, 
 they did." 
 
 John Lugge spoke in a deep voice, stretch- 
 ing out his deformed foot now and again, and 
 tapping the boot with a stick he always walked 
 with in his old age. His infirmities had not 
 prevented him making his way in life. With 
 his maimed hand and foot there were neces- 
 sarily things he could not do, no less than 
 others that he could ; but having begun at bird- 
 scaring at seven years of age at tenpence a 
 week, when " he could hop about the farm in 
 a fashion," he came to be carter's boy, and 
 from that, in the end, rose to be head carter, 
 "with twelve horses to look arter," he would 
 tell you, " and two under-carters and three 
 plough-boys. It wer' heavy, four-horse land, 
 over yonder, and I were responsible for the lot ; 
 and ten shillun a week was the money, with a 
 cottage free, as you may say, and a good 
 master." 
 
 " And they ploughs weren't the only 'ooden 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 159 
 
 tools as we used, was 'em, Jack?" asked 
 Willum Dawbey. "Why, see, now," he con- 
 tinued, as Lugge assented, "there was them 
 'ooden rolls, afore the iron ones -come in. 
 The worst of 'em was as they soon wor'd out 
 quick, especial' when us had to take 'em, it 
 might be, a couple o' mile along a road to 
 reach a field. That took the middle part out 
 of 'em sharpish ; and then 'em did very 
 middlin' work." 
 
 " But there was summut afore they, as 
 you've forgot," remarked Jimmy. " Clod- 
 beaters come about afore the rolls. Women 
 and boys did use 'em I did go along o' 
 my mother at it, anyways I knows that. 
 Summut like a beetle l they wus, only with no 
 iron rings to 'em, and about nine to ten inches 
 long and made o' elm or beech. Not so very 
 heavy, they wasn't ; wi' a handle same as a 
 prong but not so long as a pitchfork." 
 
 "Ah; I can minds 'em now," returned 
 Willum ; " and as many as seven and eight 
 women in a field at a time wi' 'em, beaten' the 
 clods proper and gettin' eightpence a day, or 
 
 1 A large mallet used for driving wedges. 
 
160 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 four shillun a week, for the job." And Willum 
 proceeded to imitate how the tool was 
 worked ; laughing himself, and making the 
 others laugh. 
 
 " There wus times, then, to be sure ; and 
 some rummish doings along," said Dick Pegler, 
 turning round towards John Lugge, his hands 
 upon his knees. " You talks o' ploughing 
 Jack ; but you never done what I done, and 
 that be ploughin' wi' oxen." 
 
 " 'Twarn't done our way, or I should ha'," 
 returned Willum. 
 
 " Maybe as you 'ould ; but here, look. 
 Where I was, at Byfords, us did ; and I had 
 sixteen oxen to look arter. Plenty's the times 
 as I've been ploughin' with they, and eight in 
 the team, too, and a boy to drive. An' I'll tell 
 ye what us got through as much as th' 
 horses. Done an acre and a half in a day, 
 knockin' off at four. But us did them ther' oxen 
 'well, mind yer filled 'em up with chaff and 
 cavins * and when us knocked off plough, and 
 two teams goin', mind yer, it wer' a perty sight 
 to see 'em, for they oxen when 'em turned for 
 
 1 Refuse from threshing (Ox.): in Glos. rowens. 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 161 
 
 home did skip and play like good uns down the 
 road, they did ; and wi' all the chains and that 
 a-jinglin', like the pertiest music, Jimmy, as 
 ever you've hear'd, I reckons." 
 
 "They oxen wus mortal slow, though," said 
 Jimmy, by way of retort. 
 
 " Not so slow as you'd think for ; and kept 
 on, they did. But where 'twus wi' they, wus 
 just here they took a lot o' room a-turnin', 
 when us got to th' headland. And that be 
 how it be as you can allus see where oxen 
 been in use on a ground, for the lands do take 
 a long curve, like, at th' ends." 
 
 The rest of the company appeared impressed 
 with Dick Pegler's knowledge. He had capped 
 the others, and the conversation dropped for a 
 few moments. The clock overhead chimed 
 the half hour ; and in the silence, the children's 
 voices could be heard in the schools. An old 
 woman in a blue cotton dress was sweeping the 
 dust out of the door of one of the tenements far- 
 ther off, and the men turned to look at her : she 
 was a poor, bent old thing, with round shoulders. 
 
 " There be Mrs. Clist, at it again as usual : 
 
 she be allus cleanin' up. I should judge as 
 
 L 
 
1 62 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 Jonathan, her 'usbun', there, don't want a deal 
 o' cleanin' hisself if she got anythin' to do wi' 
 un oh, dear ! " Willum Dawbey always made 
 a joke of everything. 
 
 " Be gettin' to look a bit old, be Jonathan," 
 remarked old Jimmy " do mostly read the 
 Book now; and er been a truthful man. 
 Went in and sat along wi' un last week when 
 it did rain pour in'. Be got wonderful white, 
 he have. We got a-talkin' about the food, for 
 the butcher come along and left un four pen'oth 
 a meat and a nice piece it wur. He wus 
 a-tellin' me as he wus one o' ten, and as bread 
 wer' the staple when he wer' a child and 
 taters summut of a lux'ry, being not in general 
 grown by all folks, and swedes being often 
 used by 'em, in his part. Nor wasn't wheaten 
 bread, he says ; but his mother did used to 
 make a kind of a dumplin', like, wi' toppins, 
 water and salt, and a few greens wi' it. He 
 weren't very big then, or could' a-been, for he 
 did say as when he had to get the collars on 
 th' horses, he did have to clammer into mainger 
 to do it. But ther', it weren't very different 
 along o' we." 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 163 
 
 " Nor us," said Jack Lugge, leaning forward 
 and tapping the flint cobbles with his stick. 
 "See here now. When I got married and 
 too young at that us never had no tea to 
 breakfast ; it wer' too dear. And us never 
 used no coal neither, for it were the same 
 three shillun a hunderd, it wer' ; and canal as 
 brought it, ten mile off. What we had reg'lar 
 was 'ood, such as us got 'oodin' fir cones, 
 stubble, and roots o' beans, and often cowdung 
 wi' it, which went well. Our breakfasts wer' 
 just this bread and lard, or bread and honey, 
 for mi father kep' bees, and I done the same ; 
 or sometimes it wer' poridge made o' flour 
 and water, with onions and potatoes at times 
 to give un a taste. Dinner was bread and 
 cheese, for most part, with now and again a 
 bit o' bacon ; for meat, along o' we, were very 
 seldom eat very. And then come supper 
 again. There was sopped bread for that, 
 sweetened with honey, or gruel with treacle 
 put with it. Breakfast was at 6, I minds, wi' 
 a bit o' bread ; sometimes a bit o' cheese to 
 take out in the field ; dinner at 3 ; with supper 
 again at 7. That's how us planned it out." 
 
164 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 " And what for drink?" asked one of the 
 others. 
 
 "Why, beer, to be sure; what the farmer 
 made hisself. We did have so much allowed, 
 according to time o' year three to four pints, 
 reckoned at one and threepence to one and 
 six a week ; but the price wus a penny a quart 
 for the small beer ; threepence for the ale ; 
 and the extra strong wus sixpence." 
 
 " But then that ther' wus ale, that wus, and 
 no mistake," quoth Willum with a grin " job 
 was to get it ! " 
 
 " You're right there," continued Jack Lugge. 
 " Well, milk were a halfpenny a quart at 
 times, and we did have some o' that then ; 
 and come Easter time, eggs was often a 
 matter o' twenty-four a shillun, I can minds. 
 And when money was better at piece work, we 
 did have two ounces o' tea a week, and same 
 o' coffee, though we did oftentimes make our 
 own, or add to it, like, with roasted bread- 
 crumbs. And come Sundays, my missus 
 the last, that is, what's been dead now long 
 did allus spread the table, Sunday mornings, 
 wi' paper, to make a show, for we didn't use 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 165 
 
 no cloths, them days : 'twas her fancy, 
 like." 
 
 " Dear, dear," said Jimmy, " 'twas thought- 
 ful, though, warn't it ? But there was another 
 thing, Jack, as you never said nothin' about, 
 and what seems summut curious now : it wer' 
 a treat to get a bit o' coal, as you says, and 
 sometimes we did have as much as half a 
 hundred a week ; but what about them lights, 
 winter times ? Summer didn't signify a lot ; but 
 when them candles, or what we did call rush- 
 lights, were tenpence a pound, there wasn't 
 a lot o' light in our housen after dark not a 
 lot and precious little of 'em was used ac- 
 cording." 
 
 " No, that there wasn't," exclaimed two of 
 the others. 
 
 " It wus a lot cheaper to go to bed," put in 
 Willum, "and that's just where us went. But, 
 Jimmy, look ye; you've never spoke much of 
 one thing as I been watchin' for, and that's the 
 cheese. Lord save us now, if that there 
 weren't just hard enough ! It wer' made o' 
 skim milk, what us had, and you wanted all 
 yer teeth, and pretty sound uns, too, pervided 
 
1 66 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 yer mind wus set on tack o' that description. 
 'Twasn't exactly like the soap as you gets now!" 
 
 Willum threw himself back from his hips 
 and laughed loudly, the others joined in, and 
 old Jimmy at last succumbed to such a bad fit 
 of coughing that one of the company considered 
 for a time that this must of necessity be the 
 end of him. 
 
 But Willum came and sat next to the old 
 man on the arm of the seat, and then looked 
 up with his smiling, weather-beaten face, and 
 said : " Don't mean nothin', bless yer ; we be 
 used to it, and so be he : there's nothing to be 
 a-fear'd on. You'll be singin' in here, come 
 Sunday, Jimmy, won't yer?" he added, bend- 
 ing forward over the small choking figure, and 
 pointing with his thumb over his shoulder. 
 
 " Dare say as I shall," returned the old man 
 as if nothing particular had occurred, "done it 
 eighty year ; come Christmas, anyways." 
 
 The sun was getting lower, and the light 
 was reaching far up the floor of the chapel 
 through the open door. The old brickwork of 
 the surrounding buildings was aglow with 
 golden light, and the air was quite still. The 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 167 
 
 figures on the great clock in the tower caught 
 the rays, and so did the colours of the arms of 
 the founders of 'this place of rest and peace, 
 while just above these, cut deeply into a slab 
 of stone and more easily read at the moment, 
 ran the history of this old Foundation. 
 
 It had been placed there long years ago by 
 those who wished the facts recorded, and told 
 how one had given " all his estate to the 
 discharging of poor prisoners for debt out of 
 the Marshalsea Prison, and for the building 
 and endowing of this House, which is for the 
 maintenance of a Chaplain and Schoolmaster 
 to it, and twelve men to be chosen out of the 
 five surrounding parishes, with a nurse to 
 attend them ; and the remainder of his estate 
 to put poor children out of the several parishes 
 aforesaid to the School, and clothe them till 
 they are capable to be put out apprentice, for 
 which they are to have ten pounds each." 
 And then, just beneath, in old lettering, were 
 these further words : 
 
 JJtustra 
 
 The old folk who, for generations, had gone 
 
168 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 in and out here had never read any of it, 
 for it was high up, all the s's were fs, as 
 some termed them, few could read, and the 
 last three words were apt to be dismissed 
 as "no doubt the gentleman's name." 
 
 But if these last words now caught the 
 eye of someone for the hundredth time, who 
 had gone out into the courtyard at the moment 
 to look at the clock, it was impossible for 
 him to return to these four old men fair re- 
 presentatives of the twelve who found a resting- 
 place here without being fully aware that had 
 the English of the final words been mentioned, 
 these men of a manly race not mealy-mouthed, 
 and wholly free of cant would have looked up 
 quickly, and muttered as if they meant it, 
 "That's God's truth!" 
 
 The majority of their class cling to certain 
 guiding principles very staunchly. Contented- 
 ness and a certain deep-seated trustfulness rule ; 
 and what comes to them is accepted and dis- 
 missed in the phrase so often heard amongst 
 them "Well, us have got to put up wi' it, 
 s'pose ; " not uttered in docility and meekness 
 of spirit, for characteristics of the kind have 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 169 
 
 no place here : nor again, because such as 
 these are without opinions of their own, or 
 are incapable of forming them for themselves, 
 as some would have us think. The folk here 
 met with are often far shrewder than the man 
 in the road supposes ; and out in these fields, 
 where such have spent their lives, there have 
 ever been keen eyes, if silent tongues. Shrewd 
 judgments have been formed, with foundations 
 in experience ; little suspected by those who 
 know them not, and by no means lightly 
 surrendered. 
 
 " Lord love you ; look there ! " exclaimed 
 Willum, pointing upward with an outstretched 
 arm, and breaking the silence that had fallen 
 on the company after Jimmy's fit of coughing. 
 
 Willum had walked away from the seat and 
 was standing now, shielding his eyes with one 
 hand, and looking up into the sky. " Just look, 
 now. Did ye ever see such a lot of queesties 
 as that? Well, well, to be sure. Why look, 
 the string of 'em be a quarter of a mile across, 
 and stretches now right over White Lands 
 Wood, and round over The Great Chalk like 
 
170 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 specks, and beyond. Why, I reckons as there 
 be more pigeons there than there be folks 
 in England ; and they're a-coming still, see?" 
 
 " I be too middlin'-sighted to see 'em at all ; 
 they be up too high for I," remarked Jimmy. 
 "They taken to it of late, though; be after 
 the beech mast ; and Chaplain was a-sayin' 
 as they do come from t'other side o' the world, 
 or somewheres and he do know, though I 
 was a-tellin' him as there' ve been allus queesties 
 about in my time." 
 
 "Us been talkin' of our vittals ; whose a- 
 going to feed they?" asked Dick Pegler. 
 " Feeds theirselves, do 'em ? I should say 
 as they helped theirselves. But my meaning 
 is ; see the way they be a-goin' to punish 
 the farmer. And it be hard lines if we be 
 going to suffer for the furriners. Well, well ; 
 ther' be no end to 'em, look." 
 
 Dick was perhaps a little better educated 
 than the other three, and studied the weekly 
 county sheet. Moreover, he was known to 
 read the more solid portions of the same and 
 to find interest therein, for when he had 
 offered the paper on one occasion to his neigh- 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 171 
 
 hour, Elsby Vicke, wife of Almsman Vicke, 
 telling her "it wer' remarkable interesting" she 
 had found that, so far as her perusal went, this 
 assertion was not borne out by facts. She had 
 therefore returned it to him, with a remark 
 to this effect, and with the further addition that 
 she " couldn't find no single murder in it no- 
 wheres." To which Dick had replied : " Maybe 
 there ain't; but I bain't a-going to wrestle 
 with ye over that." 
 
 " They'll be a bit too late to get a deal from 
 the harvest fields this time, I reckons ; 'tis 
 all cleared and in rick, long agone, and some 
 on it already threshed," remarked Jack Lugge, 
 looking at the great flight of migrant pigeons 
 that were still passing overhead, and continued 
 to do so for many minutes. 
 
 " And there's not a great deal left on the 
 ground neither, these days," returned Jimmy. 
 " Why ; I can tell ye what that former 
 times, when leezin' 1 was reg'lar custom and 
 a field of wheat wus carried, me and mine 
 did get as much as from three to four bushels 
 not uncommonly, and worth to we from twenty- 
 
 1 Gleaning. 
 
172 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 five to thirty shillun, it wer', when threshed 
 out and ground, for we did allus bake at home. 
 Bread was one and six the gallon then ; and 
 wages nine shillun a week, and five on us 
 in family. But us made it out, for there was 
 as much as twenty pounds to be gotten at 
 harvest time, some seasons that be, with 
 the family all at work and that did help out 
 nice against low wage, ye see. 
 
 " And then again, there was a lot o' kind- 
 ness showed vittals and old clothes give 
 away by the farmer. And I'll tell ye what 
 is my belief, and it be this as though 
 shepherds and carters in this here county 
 o' our'n be gettin' fifteen shillun a week 
 and labourers thirteen, against our ten and 
 eleven, I don't believes as they be such a lot 
 better off than some of us wer'. There was 
 a deal of overtime made then, and few 
 machines, and the girls did sew gloves and 
 make lace, what they don't do now. And 
 then again, I says there's plenty leaves the 
 soil, these days, mainly 'cause they think 
 some have done better for theirselves by a 
 so doin', and others expects to ; but for my 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 173 
 
 part, I very greatly doubts as many on 'em 
 as goes be any better off in the main." 
 
 The rest appeared to agree ; but Dick re- 
 marked : " You says as you done six days' 
 work a week o' twelve hours, at nine shillun." 
 
 " So I did," said Jimmy. 
 
 " Well, I done seven for the same money ; 
 and I'll tell ye how. Didn't I walk nigh 
 three mile out in mornings and the same home 
 o' nights, and ain't that two hours on the 
 road every day as comes ? Well ; put that 
 together, and you've got another day to 4 be 
 added to the six, haven't yer ? " 
 
 "That's right enough," said Jack Lugge, 
 "and that come o' livin' off the place, and 
 wer' unlucky." 
 
 "And so it wer'," returned Dick; "but 
 I bain't a-going to say as it wus always so 
 arter I got married and settled, for it went 
 a lot better then. And for the matter o' that, 
 mi father done the same, and bred up a family 
 o' twelve childern he did, and never had a 
 penny relief in his time nor asked any o' livin' 
 soul ; threshed with the flail every day, he 
 did, in winter time, and walked three mile 
 
174 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 to his work and same home. And the most 
 as he ever earned wer' twelve shillun." 
 
 The conversation turned after this to old 
 tools and old ways. The great flight of 
 pigeons, and what they were going to pick 
 up, had turned the minds of the company 
 that way, and when one of the party referred 
 again to leezing, and how they threshed out 
 what they got on the barn floor with the flail, 
 Jack Lugge affirmed that after such threshing 
 was done, " there come the winnowin' with 
 the fan. I could turn that, you see," he said, 
 "and I'll tell ye what I've oftentimes 
 cleaned forty sacks of barley in a day with 
 the help of another man, and a' ooman along. 
 And so far as turning do go, I'll tell ye 
 another thing as with a three-knife machine, 
 I've oftentimes cut a hunderd and twenty 
 bushel o' chaff in a day, and I believes now 
 as, over at our place, I wer' the only man 
 as could do it. It be all done by a old horse 
 now, or else by steam." 
 
 " Daresay you was a good hand at that : 
 well, I've hear'd tell as much," said Willum, 
 lighting his pipe that had gone out while he 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 175 
 
 had been watching the pigeons. Then he 
 asked: "Tell us, Jimmy; did ye ever see 
 the four-horse thresher, your way ? " 
 
 " I hain't a-goin' to say but what I didn't, 
 and for years ; done remarkable good work, 
 it did." 
 
 "Well," continued Willum, "I wer' em- 
 ployed on it as a boy, and for long. Never 
 seed one, didn't yer? Well, well, to be sure. 
 It wus like this here. The machine itself 
 did stand in the barn, and weren't over big 
 maybe four and a half feet high, or so. A 
 shaft ran from that out into the yard, see, and 
 it had a double spindle and what 'em did 
 call a intermediate motion to un, 'cause the 
 horses wouldn't move fast enough for it else, 
 as you understands. Well, o' course there 
 was the corn, and the chaff; and the cavings 
 or short pieces o' straw, like. A 'ooman wus 
 mostly employed to keep on rakin' out from 
 under, and to do the siftin' to get rid of the 
 cavings, the chaff being winnowed out with 
 the fan later on. 
 
 " Then, outside, ye see, 'twas like this. 
 Ther' was the four beams fixed crossways, and 
 
176 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 a horse as was hitched to each of 'em went 
 round in his place in a circle, like. And set 
 up in the middle, where the beams did join, 
 wer' a cage about of a two feet and a half 
 high, made o' wire nettin', to stop that ther' 
 boy as did stand ther' from fallin' into wheels 
 below. O' course when I stood there myself, 
 I had a whip, to keep the horses up to their 
 job ; but perhaps some 'ould think as the 
 fun come in here, though I don't know so 
 much about that myself. 
 
 "You must know as the carter inside the 
 barn did have to feed the machine ; and I 
 daresay as you've seed plenty o' old barns 
 with a bit of a little glass winder set in 'em, 
 to one end, like. Well, that ther' winder 
 wer' just to let him see what that ther' boy 
 wer' after, and how he did keep the horses 
 to their job. And many's the time, I can 
 assure ye, as I've ketched it smartish from 
 Jonathan Clist as wer' carter then, for he 
 did give I a taste o' the strap if there was 
 anythin' amiss ; " and Willum laughed his 
 usual laugh at the recollection. 
 
 "That be quite right," said Jimmy, ap- 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 177 
 
 provingly. " But I seen they four-horse roller 
 threshers out in a field, times ; and been boy 
 myself to 'em. The most as we ever dealt 
 with and they did famous work, mind yer 
 was never above ten quarter a day never 
 more nor that. But they things be all done 
 up, years back, and forgot." 
 
 " And with these here threshers now, same 
 as you can hear a-buzzin' over yonder," added 
 Dick Pegler, "they thinks nothin' o' doing 
 fifty quarters in a day o' ten hours, sacked up 
 and all. And just look what it wer' with us, 
 and takin' the winnowin' alone. In my time, 
 when us dressed and cleaned wheat with the 
 winnower yonder, we did do well to get 
 through three to four quarter an hour, and 
 may be five quarter of oats, with three of us 
 a-workin' at it one to turn, one to feed, 
 and one pullin' back. That there winnower 
 of our'n did blow the chaff one way and grain 
 t'other." 
 
 " Ay," continued Willum again, " and if it 
 be barley as they be on to, all as they've got 
 to do with the new-fangled things, be just to 
 run on another band, and it do drop into a 
 
 M 
 
178 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 hum'ler * and all the eyles 2 be cut off ther' and 
 then. Very different to what it wer'. Why, 
 look ; ther' be one o' them hand-worked barley 
 hum'lers over in the shed now, where I wus 
 this mornin' : and it did ought to be broke up, 
 for it wus that des'pert hard to turn, though 
 it be fair to say as it aren't been used these 
 twelve year or more. But there was a tool I 
 did use afore ever that there hum'ler come in, and 
 that wer' the barley chopper. Didn't ye never 
 see one o' they ? It wus five blunt iron blades, 
 like, set in a frame, with a half hoop over ; 
 and then there was a cross-handle above. I'll 
 be bound I could put my hand on mine now, 
 and as he lies up in the shed where I pitched 
 un. It wer' heavy work, that. You had to 
 keep liftin' him and choppin' hard down with 
 him to cut the barley eyles off; and stand 
 with your feets pretty wide apart, or you'd 
 learn of it, and like enough be choppin' your 
 own toes off along o' them eyles." 3 
 
 1 Hummeler a hollow cylinder in which a spindle is fitted 
 with transverse blunt knives. 
 
 2 The local name for the awns, or terminating grass-sheath 
 of barley. 
 
 3 The tool here mentioned is in the writer's possession, and 
 weighs 8 Ibs. 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 179 
 
 "That be just about it," added Jimmy, with 
 a chuckle; "and the barley wer' laid down 
 on the barn floor to start with, about of a six 
 inches deep, and while you was a-stumpin' and 
 a-choppin', another did follow after a-turnin' 
 of it over wi' a shovel. The winnower come 
 after that ; all as the chopper done was to cut 
 them eyles off." 
 
 "And what us did call the leaf fan, or sail 
 fan," put in Jack, "was in use at that time, 
 for the winnowin' ; and I' could turn that again 
 nicely. Some places it wer' used for a'most 
 any thin'. One did stand in front, shuckin' 
 whatever it was in a sieve, and the wind o' the 
 fan did blow the chaff and that away. But 
 about these parts it wer' mostly used for 
 cleanin' seed clover, trefoil or hop, and such 
 as that small seeds, like ; and it did do nice 
 work, too, I minds, especial winnowin' such 
 as the turnip and the swede seed." 
 
 " It wer' just a girt high wheel to look at," 
 continued Jimmy, "with a round bar or axle, 
 like, with sticks fixed in him, and with girt 
 pieces o' sacking stretched to 'em. It wer' 
 turned with a handle, and 'er made a girt 
 
i8o THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 draught of wind. Three did allus work the 
 fan, and oftentimes it wus women done it. 
 And I minds when our'n wer' broke up at the 
 last, the Squire's good lady come along, and 
 says as all that ther' sackin' wer' to be kept ; 
 and later, she did make aprons on it, and gave 
 'em about, she did." 
 
 The old men seemed to enjoy talking of the 
 tools they had once used, and though they 
 regarded them now with some amusement, they 
 were evidently proud of their familiarity with 
 things that many a younger man had never 
 seen. In days long gone by, such tools and 
 implements had played a prominent part in 
 their lives ; and when one of the company 
 remarked that "they made some rare work 
 wi' 'em, then, and no mistake," the words 
 raised a smile on the faces of the rest. 
 
 The hard days for them were over now for 
 good, and in this place of rest and peace they 
 were ready to laugh at what had once been 
 their lot, when sitting in the sun as they were 
 doing now, fighting their battles o'er again. 
 The fight for them had been the common 
 battle of life, and a very real one ; but the 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 181 
 
 wounds received had now healed over, and 
 perhaps the last thing they would have 
 thought of doing would have been either to 
 draw attention or to complain of the scars. 
 Something of the old spirit seemed to live 
 with them still; and old Jimmy once summed 
 it all up in a phrase. 
 
 He was endeavouring to chop up his quar- 
 terly allowance of firewood, and with but 
 feeble arms. Someone had offered to help 
 him tackle the larger pieces ; but his reply 
 had been this : " Thank ye, all the same ; 
 but I likes to do mi own work. I bain't 
 a-goin' to turn baby at eighty." 
 
 "Ther'goes Chaplain, I can see," remarked 
 Willum, turning on his heel and looking across 
 the heath. " That do mean as it be just on 
 four o'clock." 
 
 " Be goin' over to the School ; that's wher' 
 he be goin'." 
 
 "For sure," echoed another: "we shall 
 hear 'em singin' in a minute ; the air be that 
 still." 
 
 No one said anything after that. The light 
 of the sun, grown fainter now, had crept up 
 
1 82 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 the floor of the chapel through the open door, 
 and was shining full on the east wall, the 
 simple altar there, and the painted balusters 
 that did duty for altar rails in this building 
 of a past age. 
 
 The great clock broke the silence at last 
 by striking four ; and just at the same moment 
 came the notes of a familiar hymn. 
 
 " I sung that, times," said Jimmy, beneath 
 his breath. 
 
 " Listen a bit," added Willum, "and there'll 
 come summut else." 
 
 The old men could not hear the words very 
 plainly ; but they knew what they were, for 
 all had been educated at the school, and in 
 days when both school and education were 
 very different to what they are now. The 
 same words had been uttered for two centuries 
 within these walls, and ended thus : 
 
 "... Let no harm happen to our bodies. Let no bad 
 thoughts hurt our souls. Bless and keep us now and 
 evermore. . . ." 
 
 "Amen," added one of the old men, when 
 the voices ceased. 
 
 Then there was the sound of the rush of 
 
BATTLES O'ER AGAIN 183 
 
 many feet coming out of the school buildings ; 
 and in a moment, the heath was a busy scene. 
 A crowd of children were running this way 
 and that towards their several homes, filling 
 the air yet again with the sound of their merry 
 voices, flecking the smooth turf with colour, 
 and adding life and movement, and the hope 
 that belongs to the young, to the closing 
 minutes of this St. Martin's Day. 
 
 The air was growing chilly; the distant 
 view had been swallowed up in the mists of 
 the lower lands, and the sun no longer threw 
 shadows of the great oaks upon the turf. 
 
 "I see my missus be a-beckonin' me to 
 tea," said Jack Lugge. 
 
 "You be very lucky to ha' one," returned 
 Jimmy ; and the party broke up. 
 
VI 
 
 THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 
 
 THEY were both new to their place. But there 
 was nothing very remarkable about this. 
 The vicar was the same : the church had only 
 just been built, and he was necessarily there- 
 fore as new to his place as both the sexton 
 and the clerk. In fact, everything here at 
 this date was as new as well could be. Even 
 the parish had not existed as a separate 
 ecclesiastical entity until a maze of legal 
 courses had been severally traced Orders in 
 Council been issued under the Queen's own 
 hand and duly published in The Gazette ; the 
 Commissioners of the Bounty of another 
 Queen been duly satisfied ; the church con- 
 secrated ; the new vicar comfortably installed 
 in his new vicarage ; the sexton appointed 
 to pull the big bell in the tower ; and the clerk 
 to fill sundry offices in the body of the church. 
 Then and not till then was all complete, and 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 185 
 
 this that was all new launched on the course 
 that leads in such things to old age. 
 
 Looked at now, all this newness appears a 
 long way back, and it is necessary therefore 
 to inquire a little as to what had preceded 
 it, and how it all came about. 
 
 In that part of the country, as the rest of 
 the world knows, the parish of Middleham had 
 always had attached to it the two considerable 
 hamlets of Long Green and Uffham, the 
 mother church of the same being so placed 
 as to be distant full three miles from the more 
 inhabited parts of Long Green, and nearly 
 five from those of Uffham. The two hamlets 
 were thus, in matters ecclesiastical no less than 
 those educational, left somewhat out in the 
 cold ; and hanging much together as they did, 
 the inhabitants were not behindhand in recog- 
 nising the fact. Nonconformity was practically 
 unknown here. The people were all staunch 
 church folk, and would have attended their 
 parish church after their own manner, had that 
 church, as they expressed it, " not been so 
 mortal far away." 
 
 The whole district hereabouts was essentially 
 
i86 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 rural, though it was not so entirely cut off from 
 the rest of the more active world as many a 
 one elsewhere. The county town or to give 
 it its full dignities, cathedral city lay four 
 miles distant from the centre of Middleham. 
 It is true that a wide river separated the one 
 from the other, and that access to the town 
 was only obtainable by the last bridge to cross 
 its tidal waters. But while this made little 
 difference to the majority of the inhabitants of 
 the mother parish, it certainly added to the 
 comparative isolation of the two hamlets, for 
 as the name in a measure denoted, Middleham 
 lay between them and the attractions and con- 
 veniences that the county town afforded. 
 
 Then there was another thing in these 
 earlier times that had affected the hamlets 
 closely. If they could boast no church of their 
 own, they had always been able to point to 
 the fact that the only considerable house in 
 the neighbourhood stood in Uffham, and that 
 they possessed in the owner of the hamlets a 
 local Squire, whereas Middleham very certainly 
 had none. But alas for their time-honoured 
 boast ! Churches may stand but families decay. 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 187 
 
 The old line of the Squires of Uffham was 
 brought down to a single life, and when that 
 life came to an end the thread snapped, and 
 there was the end of that line. For many a 
 year the Manor House stood empty, and for 
 an equal number had it been offered for sale. 
 Thus, the two hamlets came to realise that 
 they were shorn of some of their former dignity, 
 and felt themselves somewhat rubbed on the 
 raw when the men of Middleham referred to 
 their old-time boast, and moreover with their 
 tongues in their cheeks. 
 
 Occupying the position that it did, many 
 would have naturally supposed that Middle- 
 ham must possess a church of some historic 
 interest. Nor would they have been disap- 
 pointed. About the building itself there was 
 much that claimed attention, from the little 
 Saxon window in the tower and the Norman 
 arch that spanned the entrance door on the 
 south, to the fourteenth-century tracery of the 
 small window that graced the east end. Such 
 possessions breathed of many centuries, if the 
 walls inside were periodically whitewashed and 
 could show no ancient cenotaphs or brasses. 
 
i88 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 Time, moreover, had dealt kindly with the 
 whole, no less than the ignorant and interfering 
 hand of the more modern man ; and Middle- 
 ham Church, with shingle spire amid surround- 
 ing elms, was thus a peaceful and attractive 
 spot to visit at every season of the year. 
 
 Half a century would, naturally, not be con- 
 sidered a long period when set beside the age 
 of this church : but such a span counts for 
 something in most human affairs, and at this 
 period the early 'fifties the conditions that 
 still ruled, so far as the services in Middleham 
 Church were concerned, would now certainly 
 be regarded as belonging to a past and well- 
 nigh forgotten age. The truth was that every- 
 thing here was old. The vicar was old, and 
 so too were the clerk and the sexton and the 
 two churchwardens, and there being no one to 
 awaken these from their lethargy by the dis- 
 agreeable process of stirring them up, they and 
 the weekly congregation continued the even 
 tenor of their way untouched as yet by the 
 spirit of revival that was already beginning to 
 operate elsewhere. 
 
 Those who assembled here on Sundays were 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 189 
 
 the farmers of the parish and their families, 
 their labourers, and such an assortment of men 
 of divers callings as may be found in most rural 
 districts. They were not all regular church- 
 goers ; but they were all equally proud, and 
 indeed fond, of their church. The spirit of the 
 class to which they belonged shows itself in 
 many ways, and perhaps in few directions 
 more so than in an implicit faith in an over- 
 ruling Providence. 
 
 Thus the church, to the people of this parish, 
 and especially to the old folk, was the house 
 of God in no fictitious sense, and told them 
 many things. It was the place where they 
 and theirs had been christened ; where many 
 among them had been married ; and it was the 
 one to which they themselves would one day cer- 
 tainly be carried, to lie beneath the grass around 
 the old walls and to rest there with others, their 
 forbears, till "the last day did come." 
 
 There was nothing perhaps of warmth in 
 their religious sense. The expression of their 
 faith remained inarticulate. But to have made 
 any comment here on their parish church, or 
 the services as then conducted, would have 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 been certainly to wound, and in not a few 
 cases to call forth both warmth and expression 
 of a kind to surprise strangers who knew these 
 people not. Protestant they were to the back- 
 bone, and from that nothing would ever shift 
 them. There were, of course, indifferent and 
 ignorant folk among them : but the rest, where 
 the church was concerned, were reverent and 
 religious, with that reverence and religion that 
 is content to leave affairs in the hands of 
 the Almighty, and that otherwise seeks only 
 to be left alone untroubled by innovations, 
 unpuzzled by excess of ritual and dogma, un- 
 touched by proceedings that savoured of a new 
 age, and which, to the minds of those who 
 considered that their knowledge in such matters 
 went beyond the rest, spoke of another Church 
 than that of England. Gray's immortal Elegy, 
 indeed, aptly described Middleham's inhabitants 
 at this period, no less than their desires in 
 these and other directions : 
 
 " Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, 
 Their sober wishes never learnt to stray ; 
 Along the cool, sequestered vale of life, 
 
 They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.' 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 191 
 
 The parson read the services on Sunday 
 mornings and Sunday afternoons, and similarly 
 on Ash Wednesdays and Good Fridays twice, 
 when the farmers gave their men a half day 
 off, on condition that they attended the same. 
 The aged sexton, Nathaniel Creed, dug his 
 graves and tolled the bell when called upon 
 so to do, and afterwards helped to set up the 
 square-topped stone : 
 
 "With uncouth rhyme and shapeless sculpture deck'd." 
 
 The equally aged clerk, Samuel Lowe, followed 
 in his vicar's steps as a good clerk should, and 
 played no inconspicuous part in the services 
 according to immemorial custom and tradition. 
 And since it is with the last two that we 
 have more particularly here to deal, it is well 
 to look at them somewhat closer. The duties 
 of a sexton need little comment ; but in the 
 days here spoken of, those of a clerk were 
 undoubtedly of some importance. Not only 
 did he take a prominent place at baptisms, 
 weddings, and funerals, but he was constantly 
 before the congregation in other ways. It was, 
 for instance, his duty vestries being then 
 
192 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 unknown to lay the parson's surplice ready 
 on the reading desk, and to put it round his 
 shoulders when he arrived there from his 
 vicarage duly clad in bands and gown ; to take 
 it from him when the Psalm was sung before 
 the sermon ; and to put it on him yet again, 
 together with the broad black scarf that did 
 duty for a stole, when the sermon had been 
 brought to a close. 
 
 Then again, he habitually occupied the 
 lower deck of the comfortably-furnished three- 
 decker throughout the services, whether the 
 parson or "maister," as Samuel styled him 
 here was reading the prayers from the deck 
 above, or had gone aloft to deliver a sermon 
 that was never suffered to be less than of half 
 an hour's duration, whether there was much to 
 be said upon the chosen text or not. From this 
 same point of vantage, too, all notices were 
 given out by him and not by the parson ; and 
 it was he, when the time arrived to sing a 
 psalm as paraphrased by Tate and Brady, who 
 announced the number and specified the verses 
 to be dealt with by the instrumentalists and 
 singers in the gallery at the west end. On 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 193 
 
 occasions when a collection was taken (and 
 these were limited in Middleham to the four 
 Sundays when there was a Celebration and to 
 that known as Queen's Letter Day), it was 
 once more the clerk's duty to take round the 
 basin or wooden-money box used for the pur- 
 pose, and to safeguard the same till handed 
 over at the departure of the congregation. 
 
 Needless to say that all these and many 
 other duties were punctiliously performed by 
 Samuel Lowe. He was already at this date a 
 man of nearly sixty, and to those who watched 
 him in those far-off days he often recalled the 
 portrait Crabbe has left of Jachin. He, too, 
 was like his vicar in appearance : he was of 
 the same age, "of tall and slender frame," and 
 "slow of speech," and he was also 
 
 " The gravest man on ground, 
 And heard his master's jokes with look profound." 
 
 Then again, Samuel, like Jachin, had acquired a 
 " trick of state " in the discharge of his duties, 
 and had also learnt to move " with formal air 
 and gait" ; and he was certainly like him once 
 more in holding, before all else, that in the 
 
 N 
 
194 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 majority of human affairs, the Devil would 
 sooner or later be found to have his place : 
 
 " That never evil deed on earth was done 
 But of the acting parties he was one." 
 
 If anything went wrong in church or parish, 
 Samuel Lowe was left in no manner of doubt 
 as to the door at which that wrong should be laid. 
 He would cast his eyes on the ground, with one 
 hand raised to his chin, and his head slightly 
 on one side perhaps leaning on a bissum with 
 which he was engaged in tidying up the 
 vicarage garden and then after mature thought, 
 he would look up and remark, gently, " Ah ; 
 I knows." 
 
 Sometimes, if drawn into talk on the ques- 
 tion by those who knew him, he would certainly 
 repeat the timeworn story that was the only 
 one he ever suffered himself to tell, and which 
 in his wording ran thus : "It wer' a sad pity 
 a sad pity indeed, it wer' as Zin wer' ever 
 given a zeat in that ther' ark, along o' the 
 animals two and two." And then he would 
 add, slowly and with emphasis : " But it's my 
 belief that if so be as Noah and the rest on 
 'em sons and that as was along had put un 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 195 
 
 over the zide, then the Devil 'ould a-been 
 there all the same, ready to learn un to zwim." 
 He never laughed : to his mind the arrange- 
 ments at the time of the Deluge had been 
 certainly faulty in this particular ; and if they 
 were so, there was no room for so much as a 
 smile on his part, whatever his listener might 
 either say or think. 
 
 Possibly Samuel Lowe was fond of funerals. 
 Of course, as has been said, he was equally 
 in evidence on other occasions, such as at 
 baptisms after afternoon service ; at weddings 
 in the early part of week-day mornings ; and 
 at churchings, then held on Sundays in the 
 middle of the service just before the general 
 thanksgiving, and when he never failed to look 
 up from the lower deck and remind, the parson 
 with a nod not to omit the wording of the 
 special clause. Apart, however, from such 
 occasions as these, it was certainly at funerals 
 that Samuel was more than usually prominent. 
 
 In those days it was the custom at Middle- 
 ham to hold funerals on Sundays, the parson 
 going to meet the procession before the 
 afternoon service began, and the body being 
 
196 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 brought into the church and placed at the 
 west end under the gallery. Samuel of 
 course saw to it that the special psalms were 
 duly used in place of those appointed for the 
 day, and also that a suitable Tate and Brady 
 was selected for the occasion. And when at 
 last the time came, and the afternoon service 
 was ended, it was he who led the rest of the 
 congregation to the graveside ; showed the 
 members of the same where they were to 
 stand ; and otherwise kept order both by voice 
 and gesture. 
 
 In his opinion, and perhaps rightly, the 
 body of the deceased occupied the first place, 
 and indeed retained something of individuality 
 till such time as Nathaniel Creed, the sexton, 
 had fulfilled his part and had gone up to tell 
 out the years on the bell ; and it was on 
 this account, doubtless, that on one occasion, 
 when a hitch had occurred in the proceedings, 
 he advanced to the vicar, and was heard 
 to remark, with pull of forelock, " Beggin' 
 pardon, Maister ; but corpse's brother 'ould 
 like a word with you." 
 
 He was usually asked to the collation that 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 197 
 
 followed that is, to the houses of those who 
 were better off and it was averred by some 
 who said they knew, that on these occasions 
 he never failed to remark that "for his part he 
 had had three wives in his time, though thank 
 the Lord he had buried them all with cold 
 roast." And as throwing further light on these 
 momentous funeral feasts of his, Sarah Tombs, 
 widow, who as an inveterate late comer at 
 church had reasons for propitiating Samuel 
 Lowe, had once been known to add : " Ay, 
 Mr. Lowe, and that's truth, it is; and I 
 can also minds as you had them small cakes 
 laid round the table, like, on black-edged 
 note." It was obvious, when such details as 
 these were given, that Samuel's presence lent 
 a certain dignity to the proceedings. 
 
 But while doings of the kind differed little 
 from those in other country parishes of the 
 neighbourhood, there was certainly nothing 
 either in Middleham Church itself or the 
 conduct of the services that would have led 
 anyone to regard this church as the church 
 of the rich. For one thing, there were no 
 rich to come ; and there was ho precedence 
 
198 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 in coming out or going in. There was no 
 Squire's pew here, with stove therein, and 
 the only relic of the past connected with 
 the rich was a hatchment on the north wall 
 showing many quarterings, with imitation 
 tears still visible on its broad black mount- 
 ing, and with these words beneath, that this 
 congregation above all might understand : 
 
 Sttrpis Suae 
 
 Thus the whole atmosphere might have been 
 described as homely ; and as evidence of this 
 it may be recorded that on one occasion when 
 Creed's son, Shadrack, corrected Samuel Lowe 
 from the gallery in an announcement as to 
 the hour of service on that particular afternoon 
 and which, by the way, caused relations 
 between sexton and clerk to remain a little 
 strained for a while no one in the congrega- 
 tion so much as smiled. It was all accepted as 
 perfectly natural ; and when Lowe, there and 
 then, proved Shadrack wrong by intimating 
 that the vicar had to go elsewhere, the matter 
 was regarded much as a minor point might 
 have been in a debating society. 
 
 1 " He was the last of his race." 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 199 
 
 Of course all the pews in the church were 
 high, narrow, and possessed of doors ; and it 
 was Lowe's province at Christmas time to 
 go round with a gimlet and fix a sprig of 
 holly in the door of each one. Such was 
 the only form of decoration ever suffered here, 
 and innovations in these and other direc- 
 tions were never for one moment entertained. 
 Rules were rules, and inside the church rule 
 and custom remained at Middleham unbroken. 
 
 Naturally, Lowe saw to that ; while further- 
 more, there was one thing concerning which 
 he was always on the watch. This had to 
 do with late comers, and he never failed to 
 warn these subsequently, should he have 
 detected them in omitting to bow to " Maister " 
 in acknowledgment of their error. So stern 
 was he with Sarah Tombs one Sunday in this 
 regard, that when she repeated her offence 
 of being late on the very Sunday following, 
 and sought to purge her sin by bowing to 
 the vicar and then making the lowest curtsey 
 to the congregation, Samuel declared to her 
 afterwards with warmth : " There weren't no 
 call to do that, nor nothin' like it : all as you've 
 
200 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 got to move to, if you be late, be parson. 
 Otherways it be sinful and we all knows where 
 such do come from." 
 
 It remains here only to refer to the music in 
 this church. Hymns and hymnbooks were as 
 yet unknown, as were also organs and har- 
 moniums in the large majority of village 
 churches. To lead the singers in the gallery 
 at the west end were three villagers with 
 instruments a clarionet, a fiddle, and a bass 
 viol. When Samuel had announced the num- 
 ber of the psalm to be sung, the bass viol gave 
 out the note and repeated the same an octave 
 below. The congregation then turned about 
 and faced the gallery, taking little or no part 
 in the singing, and leaving the men and boys 
 above to do their best according to their lights. 
 It was perhaps characteristic of the spirit 
 that ruled in Middleham at this time regarding 
 church matters, that when an accident befell 
 the bass viol, of such a nature that a new one 
 had to be procured, one and all subscribed their 
 mites according to their means ; the sole con- 
 dition laid down by some, and much approved 
 by the majority, being that under no circum- 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 201 
 
 stances was the new instrument ever to be 
 taken inside a Nonconformist chapel. 
 
 While Middleham, and for that matter its 
 two hamlets, thus continued the even tenor 
 of their way, year by year, in matters ecclesi- 
 astical, few in the parish ever suffered their 
 minds to be disturbed by the possibility of 
 change. But rumours were now suddenly put 
 afloat that a party of strangers had been seen 
 more than once in the grounds of Uffham 
 Manor. At first nobody paid much attention 
 to the report. Visitors, of the kind had often 
 been seen there before during the past ten 
 years ; but nothing had subsequently occurred, 
 and Uffham accordingly went to sleep again. 
 A distant relative of the family that had 
 lived there long visited the old house from 
 time to time ; but otherwise nothing disturbed 
 the quiet of the place. A few gardeners made 
 out their days in and about the gardens, and 
 an agent and solicitor from the county town 
 paid periodical visits and endeavoured to solve 
 the riddle with the steward as to how the 
 property was to be kept in proper repair 
 with the insufficient means in hand. Other- 
 
202 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 wise, the only footfall ever heard in the 
 Manor House itself was when Esther Webb, 
 the wife of the oldest of the gardeners, crossed 
 the floors to unbar a shutter, or broke the 
 silence ruling in the sleepy gardens by opening 
 a window. 
 
 It was Creed's son, Shadrack or Shakie as 
 he was always called who brought the news 
 at last that turned the growing rumours into 
 facts. He worked and lived at Uffham, being 
 one of the Manor men, and therefore what he 
 said might be accepted as the truth. 
 
 "The Manor House be sold," he said to 
 Lowe one Sunday afternoon, when church 
 was coming out and a circle of the older 
 members of the congregation lingered round 
 the entrance door. "And that bain't all, 
 neither," he continued, with all the pride of one 
 possessed of exclusive information that he was 
 prepared to dispense piecemeal as he thought 
 fit. " The sayin' is as all Uffham and all Long 
 Green be to go with it." 
 
 " Never ! " exclaimed two or three at once. 
 
 " Ah ; but 'tis true 'tis right enough, I 
 tell ye." 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 203 
 
 " I wishes as the old lot wus back again," 
 said Lowe. " But there ; it ain't a mossel o' 
 use a-wishin' that where hes been about. It 
 wer' Satan hisself as brought the grandfather 
 to the ground ; broke his son's heart, like, 
 so as he died ; and left the last o' the family 
 beggar'd. 'Twer 'Zin as wer' the bottom o' 
 the lot, I tell ye." 
 
 "Ah; I can minds 'em all," added Creed, 
 the sexton, coming up to join the party. 
 " My son a-told me a'ready ; and from what 
 I judges, it be all true ; and what's more, as 
 it be likely to bring about changes for the 
 main on us. If Uffham and Long Green's 
 to go along, as seems likely, Middleham '11 
 be left out in the cold afore many years are 
 gone you mark me." 
 
 Creed's words reduced the rest to silence. 
 These old men here were unused to change, 
 and were not given to accept strangers until 
 they had proved their quality. 
 
 " The sayin' is," continued Shakie, offering 
 another instalment, " the sayin' is as he's 
 plenty o' money and knows how to spend it : 
 I knows he's young, for I seen un." 
 
204 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 " Money brings work," remarked someone 
 from Long Green. 
 
 "Ah, and there'll be work, too, from what 
 we hears over our way ; and room for it wi' 
 some of they housen, too," added Shakie. 
 "They says as half the place be to be pulled 
 down, and t'other half be to be built up ; 
 and as ther's to be mighty doings all over." 
 
 Shakie Creed's news proved quite correct, 
 Uffham Manor was sold, and with it the whole 
 of the two hamlets. Middleham. as before, 
 remained church and college property; but 
 the rest had passed to a new owner and a 
 new line. 
 
 The stir occasioned when the facts became 
 more widely known was such that even the 
 oldest asserted it to be without a parallel in 
 their experience. But this was as nothing 
 to what was occasioned a little later when an 
 army of men of all trades was set to work, 
 and the sound of the trowel, the saw, and the 
 hammer began to resound on all sides. 
 
 This new-comer this young Squire, as he 
 quickly came to be called was obviously no 
 fool ; and what was more, did not apparently 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 205 
 
 care a fig for popularity. Many of the older 
 folk resented being disturbed, declaring that 
 "all as they wanted was to be let bide quiet." 
 But an order had been issued that no cottage 
 here was to possess less than three bedrooms, 
 and that all were to have convenient out- 
 buildings as well as piggeries ; and since few 
 possessed more than two of the former and 
 also the scantiest of outbuildings, or none at all, 
 there was plenty of field for improvement no 
 less than material for the grumblers. 
 
 " Can't see for why us can't bide as us 
 wus. My fayther and mother did live here, 
 right enough, and there was eight on us besides. 
 We didn't take no hurt, so far as us can see. 
 Says it ain't decent, do he ? Well, I knows 
 nothing about that ; but us wus allus reckoned 
 decent folk, back along, in our time." Such 
 were the opinions of many, though all were 
 fain to admit that the new Squire didn't seem 
 afraid of anyone when he had given an order ; 
 and that went a long way with these men. 
 
 Then again, while all this work was going 
 on, it was generally remarked that this new- 
 comer was doing nothing to his own dwelling, 
 
2o6 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 outside or in. The Manor House, though he 
 and a young wife had come to reside there, 
 was left much as it was, nothing beyond 
 immediate requirements being attended to. 
 That also went a long way with these folk, 
 busy as they all were taking stock. 
 
 " Don't seem to care a lot about hisself, 
 from what us can zee," remarked Lowe's son, 
 John, to him, one evening on returning from 
 work. " Seems a very decent man, er do." 
 
 "So I should judge," returned the old clerk. 
 " Been brought up to the land, from what I can 
 gather; and that do make a power o' difference." 
 
 The son agreed. Father and son were much 
 of the same pattern, both in appearance and 
 temperament, with that something approaching 
 to melancholy that marks so many of this class. 
 As the only issue of Samuel Lowe's three 
 marriages, son and father had hitherto lived 
 alone together; but quite recently, John had 
 taken to himself a wife, and was on the look- 
 out for more permanent work than he had 
 hitherto secured. Thus it was a stroke of 
 luck for him when the new Squire took him 
 on as one of the regular estate hands, more 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 207 
 
 especially as much was going on in many 
 directions at Uffham, quite apart from the 
 bricklayers, carpenters, and the rest. 
 
 A further order had been issued that all 
 cottage gardens that fell short of a quarter 
 of an acre in extent were to have their boun- 
 daries altered, and that in these, good, sound 
 apple stocks were to be planted. An ample 
 garden was as good as a rise in wages to 
 a steady man, and also meant better food for 
 his children. Then again, when these fruit- 
 trees grew and fair seasons followed, the fruit 
 should bring in sufficient to cover the best 
 part of a rent that was never to be more than 
 eighteenpence for those in regular employ ; 
 a shilling for those who could no longer do 
 much ; and half a crown a year for widows 
 and the oldest folk. Those were what the 
 people of these hamlets understood as being 
 the opinions and final decision of this new- 
 comer among them. 
 
 Of course the farmers, here and there, were 
 a little upset when the new boundaries of 
 cottage gardens encroached upon their pasture 
 or some very favourite field ; but on the whole, 
 
208 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 and especially when it came to their turn for 
 a visit from the army of workmen, they were 
 well pleased that since their capital was limited, 
 they were to reap advantage from the capital 
 of another at an inappreciable increase in rent. 
 " Things were looking up, and no mistake," 
 they remarked quietly to each other at the 
 ordinary, held at " The Top Boot" in the 
 neighbouring town on Saturdays. 
 
 The young Squire was everywhere. He 
 had from the first decided to go among the 
 people of these hamlets that he might get 
 to know them and they him that he might 
 study their way of life, their outlook, their 
 wishes, and their hopes, no less than their 
 curious little idiosyncrasies. If they were sus- 
 picious, he would gain their confidence ; if 
 they seemed to doubt him, he would prove 
 to them that his word was as good and better 
 than his bond ; if they were silent in the face 
 of his sympathy, he would try to show them 
 that the sympathy of his whole heart was 
 theirs, and that they could claim it irrespective 
 of what it might cost him. He always offered 
 them his hand : he wished to be their friend. 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 209 
 
 To some who watched him, peeping from 
 their windows, it seemed curious that this man, 
 possessed of so much, should apparently be 
 content to work so hard and to do the things he 
 did. They had never seen such ways before, 
 and could not understand them ; the older folk 
 were puzzled and sat silent ; the younger men 
 and women looked at one another with a smile 
 or a grin. The truth was, this new Squire 
 was before his day, and his hand was that of 
 the reformer who wished to learn while working 
 also from experience. 
 
 He was always to be seen at the services 
 at Middleham on Sunday mornings, and never 
 seemed to care where he sat, often taking 
 his place on a form at the bottom of the 
 church. Somtimes his young wife was with 
 him ; sometimes he came alone. No weather 
 stopped him. It was the same, the farm 
 hands said, all over his estate : come bad 
 weather in autumn or winter, there he was, 
 out on the ploughing, ready to pass time of 
 day with those he found ; to take stock of 
 the horses ; to see for himself what was being 
 
 done, and what life in the open was, day in 
 
 o 
 
210 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 day out, for those working always on the 
 land in the wind and the weather. 
 
 One Sunday he came again in the afternoon. 
 It was the shortest day in the year, and there 
 being no means of lighting churches at that 
 time, beyond perhaps a candle in the pulpit 
 when wanted, service was at half-past two. 
 He had taken a line across country and through 
 the woods, or he could scarcely have done it 
 in the time. It was remarked afterwards that 
 he had lingered behind at the conclusion of the 
 service, and joining the vicar had gone to the 
 vicarage, walking slowly while he talked. 
 
 That evening rumour had it that the vicar 
 appeared to have something on his mind, while 
 Samuel Lowe subsequently remarked that 
 " Maister seemed as though a reg'lar change 
 had come over un all the week." 
 
 The villagers had not long to wait for the 
 truth. This time the farmers brought the 
 news. It was all in the County Herald, that 
 made its appearance every Saturday. 
 
 " New church at Uffham," ran the announce- 
 ment, " with vicarage and full endowment, 
 as well as schools." Then followed further 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 211 
 
 details, the notice closing with a long effusion 
 about "the unparalleled munificence that 
 brought at once honour to the county, con- 
 ferred singular benefit upon the neighbour- 
 hood, and redounded to the lasting credit of 
 the generous donor." 
 
 The following day the young Squire was in 
 his usual place in church at Middleham, and 
 it was particularly remarked by those who 
 naturally cast their eyes his way, that he 
 joined in the singing, when Samuel Lowe had 
 given out in due form, " Let us sing to the 
 praise and glory of God, the second part of 
 the 1 1 Qth Psalm" 
 
 " How shall the young preserve their ways 
 
 From all pollution free ? 
 By making still their course of life 
 With Thy commands agree." 
 
 Compared to all that had gone before at 
 Uffham and Long Green during the past few 
 years, this fresh departure was as nothing ; 
 and when the whole state of the case was 
 grasped by those likely to be most affected, 
 the inhabitants of Middleham and its hamlets 
 may be said to have been fairly overcome. 
 
212 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 " I told ye all as much, mind," remarked 
 Creed, the aged sexton. " I told ye all how it 
 'ould be. Uffham and Long Green together 
 measures a sight more nor Middleham do, and 
 us of th' old parish be a-going to be cut out. 
 You mark my words if the hamlets don't set 
 up for theirselves, presently with new church 
 and new schools, and new burial-ground all 
 set out ready, and " 
 
 " And new parson, new sexton, and new 
 clerk," broke in another. 
 
 "Just so," continued Creed, with quavering 
 voice, for he was old. "And see the changes 
 as is in store for all on us here mighty, ain't 
 J em?" 
 
 The whole country side was agog for the 
 next few months, and there was no end to the 
 talk concerning the possible fate of Middleham, 
 especially. Then it came out in fact, the 
 Squire put it about himself that Middleham 
 would not be injured in any way : the tithe 
 would all go to the mother parish. But from 
 the day that the new church was consecrated, 
 the hamlets would stand henceforward as an 
 ecclesiastical parish of themselves, with the 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 213 
 
 certainty, however, of their being created a 
 civil parish later. 
 
 It was nearly three years before all the work 
 was done the church completed, the vicarage 
 and schools built, and the ground about them 
 skilfully laid out and planted. 
 
 " It struck I all of a 'oonderment," re- 
 marked Samuel Lowe, after his son had per- 
 suaded him to come and view what was going 
 on, and there was the usual gathering outside 
 the old church porch one Sunday. " Was ever 
 such sights zeen ? Well, well, to be sure. See 
 the height of that ther' roof, and of that ther' 
 steeple : why un can see 'em now for miles 
 and miles, they be that high ! " 
 
 " It's goin' to be a high church altogether," 
 said Shakie Creed, with a laugh; " wonderful 
 high it's a-goin' to be. There's goin' to be 
 boys in surplices, I tell ye ; and candles all 
 over the church." 
 
 " Boys in surplices, and candles ? " questioned 
 the old clerk doubtfully. " I don't seem to 
 like the sound of them ther' candles ; " and 
 Samuel scratched his head. 
 
 " Why, that be nothin'," continued Shakie. 
 
214 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 "Ther's goin' to be a girt orgin, and a man 
 to play un, and another to blow un ; and the 
 parson bain't a-going to stand wher' un's allus 
 stood ther' be going to be a pulpit for un in 
 one place, and a readin' desk for un in another, 
 and a lection for un to read the Bible from ; 
 and all the glass in the winders be to be 
 coloured ; and the clerk be a-goin' to be called 
 by another name and sit by hisself; and the 
 sexton be to pass out the girt bell, and keep 
 place tidy outside, and warm un up inside of 
 a Sunday, and " 
 
 " A-done, I tell ye : I don't hold with none 
 on it : there's summut wrong ! " 
 
 " Well," returned Shakie, who was evidently 
 much taken with the doings of the new Squire, 
 " I wer' only just a-givin' ye an item of what 
 was a-comin'." 
 
 " And who be a-goin' to be clerk and sexton 
 who be goin' to take that, I should like to 
 knows? " 
 
 "'Tain't exactly settled yet, I understands," 
 said Shakie doubtfully. 
 
 Samuel and his son sat long talking that 
 evening, the former repeating what he had 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 215 
 
 gathered from Shakie Creed, and John Lowe 
 adding to it from what folk said at Uffham. 
 
 " It seems," he said, "as the clerk be a- 
 goin' to have a house built for un, so as to 
 be handy ; and as his wife be to clean the 
 church, and as he be to help the parson." 
 
 "Well; I done that, years," said Samuel. 
 " 'Tain't much of a position as he'll have over 
 ther', from what I gathers ; and doubtful if 
 ther' be room for two I do mean, a sexton 
 and a clerk." 
 
 " Ah ; but he do say, as we've all on us 
 been used to two over this way, and as he'd be 
 sorry to take the bread out of anybody's mouth." 
 
 "Then he be a very decent man," returned 
 Samuel, bringing the talk for that occasion 
 to an end. 
 
 The old clerk's opinion of the new Squire 
 was further strengthened some days later, when 
 John came over one evening in a hurry, and 
 burst out with: " He've offered I the place, 
 father ; new house and all. And 'er says as 
 I shall then be followin' the same callin' as 
 you does, and as it should go nicely for the 
 missus as well." 
 
2i6 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 Samuel Lowe was standing in his garden, 
 leaning on his stick and listening keenly while 
 his son talked. He waited for a moment 
 before replying, with quiet emphasis, " Well ; 
 such things do run in families, an' wi'out a 
 doubt ; but I don't hold with them candles 
 and the rest, mind ye." 
 
 " Don't like too much of 'em, myself, I 
 don't," replied the stolid John. 
 
 The sexton's place was filled the following 
 week, by accident, and in this way. The men 
 at work on the spire had gone home, and a 
 group of villagers had strolled over, according 
 to what had become a custom among them, 
 to see how things were going on at the new 
 church. It was a spring evening, and it was 
 remarked that " the jackdaws were all of a 
 charm in the belfry, already inquirin' birds 
 that 'em be." The finial had been placed in 
 position that day, and when the vane and 
 cross were fixed the spire would be finished. 
 
 It was two hundred feet to the top ; and 
 one of the onlookers had expressed a doubt 
 about the ability of anyone present to climb 
 the ladders and get to the summit. The 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 217 
 
 challenge had at once been accepted by a 
 young man of the party, who had thrown 
 waistcoat and jacket on the grass and was 
 already half-way to the top. The rest stood 
 watching him, making jokes, and saying that 
 he looked no bigger than a fly. Up and up 
 he went, stopping for a moment to get his 
 breath and to laugh at those below. One 
 more ladder and he was on the topmost stage 
 of scaffolding, standing by the finial. 
 
 " It be a high church, this un, and no mis- 
 take," he shouted, and his voice carried far 
 at that height. " But I bain't a-done yet: I 
 be goin' higher," he added with a laugh. He 
 took off his hat as he spoke, flung it into 
 the air, and spat on his hands. Then he 
 seemed to make a jump at the tallest scaffold 
 pole near him, and proceeded to swarm to 
 the top, while those below set up a cheer. 
 
 Meanwhile the hat, after many gyrations 
 in the air, had fallen at the feet of an onlooker 
 who had just arrived on the scene, and who 
 picked it up and stood with it in his hand. 
 " My eye and Betty Martin, take care take 
 care ! " he shouted, as he saw the man jump 
 
218 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 at the scaffold pole. " Whoever is that up 
 there?" he asked. 
 
 "Why; it be Shakie, zir," replied several 
 at once. 
 
 "Shakie!" returned the Squire for it was 
 he who had come up unnoticed "it makes 
 me shake to see him." 
 
 The others laughed. " He be right enough, 
 zir he be right enough. That ther' Shakie 
 Creed can climb a'most anythin'." 
 
 "And do a'most anythin' as he be asked," 
 added another. 
 
 Shakie was down on the ground ere long, 
 tucking in his shirt and hitching his trowsers. 
 He looked a little abashed at seeing the Squire 
 with the hat he had flung from the top of the 
 steeple in his hand. But he was put at his 
 ease in a minute, when the latter gave it him 
 and said, " You're the man for me, Creed ; 
 and if you'd like to be sexton here, when the 
 time comes, the place is yours." 
 
 " Danged if him's not a good un," remarked 
 one of the party later. 
 
 Thus the two offices were filled, and there 
 was a new sexton and a new clerk. A new 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 219 
 
 vicar had been already appointed ; the new 
 church was shortly afterwards finished, and 
 when the day of consecration came there were 
 great doings and great feastings, and Uffham 
 and Long Green were finally severed from 
 the mother parish. 
 
 The new church was not thronged with 
 worshippers at first, as may be supposed. 
 With many, to attend church "was not their 
 way," and a certain number here belonged 
 to that class that enters a church twice in 
 life and on both occasions when they have 
 no voice in the matter. Many came at first 
 to look round ; the novelty attracted. Others 
 held aloof, "not likin' the goings on," they 
 said, "or such a lot o' music with it." The 
 vicar was of course much canvassed, especially 
 by the women. 
 
 "He be that high minded," 1 remarked 
 Martha Heaven, " as I couldn't understand 
 a word of what er said in sermon, no more 
 nor nothin'." 
 
 " Nor I, neither," returned her neighbour, 
 Susan Mantel ; " his prichin' ain't like old 
 1 Of high mental level. 
 
220 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 Mr. Smith's, ther', at Middleham, and I sat 
 under he forty year when I wer' younger." 
 
 "The prichin' may be right or may be 
 wrong can't say nothin' at all about that; 
 and the man do seem civil enough ; but that 
 there orgin do make such a dotherin' in my 
 yud, as I be forced to sit down or come out. 
 Don't hold much with orgins well, for that 
 matter, I never didn't." 
 
 In the case of the men, criticism took another 
 line. 
 
 "Parson be right enough," said one, "if 
 er don't go too fast ; and it be warm and 
 comfortable in ther', I can finds." 
 
 "And he be a wonderful good church 
 man, 1 too, for I can hear un nicely," returned 
 another who attended regularly, clad in 
 smockfrock. 
 
 " I likes them seats a deal better," said 
 another, " for we wus mortal scrooged in them 
 at th' old church, wasn't us ? " 
 
 John Lowe found himself greatly puzzled 
 by it all, and told his father that, " come 
 sometimes, he didn't know where he wus, 
 
 1 A clergyman with a good voice. 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 221 
 
 he wer' that put to it." To which his father 
 remarked that "it wus all deceitful." 
 
 The remark did not help him much ; and 
 between one and another John was more 
 than once on the point of giving up the post. 
 Possibly he would have done so, had not 
 his wife stoutly protested. 
 
 "You'll come to it in time," she said. "It 
 be difficult for the likes of we to understand 
 at first." 
 
 Shakie Creed, on the other hand, was jubi- 
 lant, and threw himself into it all, pulling the 
 great bell in the tower with a smile always on 
 his face, and only repressing that smile when 
 there came the first funeral. 
 
 John's hesitation and bewilderment acted as 
 an incentive to Creed "to take por old John 
 on"; and when, by degrees, little additions 
 and alterations were made in conducting the 
 service, Shakie drew John's attention to it, and 
 expressed a wonder " where all these doings 
 were to lead to," trying the while to keep a 
 solemn face. 
 
 At first, only the choirboys appeared in 
 surplices, the men of the choir taking their 
 
222 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 places shortly before these entered with the 
 vicar, and the organist began to play. The 
 young Squire was always one of the number, 
 with Giles Meret, the estate carpenter, who 
 wore bone-rimmed spectacles and sang bass ; 
 Luke Hulle, a woodman, who was bass on the 
 opposite side ; Daniel Paggs, the village tailor, 
 one of the tenors ; and James Alder, a natural 
 alto ; together with the coachman from the 
 stables and a footman from the house. 
 
 It was suggested after a while that if the 
 men were clad the same as the boys more 
 uniformity would be attained. At this, one 
 member left the choir at once, not on account 
 of definite objection to the scheme, but because 
 he was sensitive to ridicule. The rest braced 
 themselves for the ordeal, and when the 
 Sunday came, and the organist played some- 
 thing in march time as the full choir entered 
 from the vestry at Matins, the variety of 
 expressions on the men's faces attracted the 
 attention of the boys as well as many in the 
 congregation. 
 
 The day that had been fixed for the event 
 was that of the Harvest Festival, when it had 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 223 
 
 been also announced that " in future, Evensong 
 would be at 6.30 instead of 3 o'clock as here- 
 tofore." 
 
 There were rumours in the parish that the 
 choir was practising an anthem for the occasion, 
 and that at the first of these evening services 
 they would enter in procession by the south 
 door. Nor was this all. The Litany would 
 be chanted in the morning, and in future all 
 the responses and the Amens would be sung. 
 Then again, the Squire's lady was known to 
 have been at work for a whole year upon a 
 white altar-cloth, that was to be first used on 
 this same festival, while the Manor gardeners 
 had already had orders to make use of all the 
 choicest flowers to decorate the church, and 
 the farmers been invited to send samples of 
 their crops and the fruits of their orchards for 
 a similar purpose. 
 
 In the face of all this, Shakie Creed strongly 
 advised John to go and talk matters over with 
 his father ; and John accordingly went, not a 
 little perturbed in spirit. The music, the 
 flowers on the altar, the constant beautifying 
 of the interior of the building with colours and 
 
224 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 gilding skilfully applied, the way in which the 
 vicar spoke in a whisper when he chanced upon 
 John in the church all these things, while 
 tending to mystify the clerk of Uffham still 
 further, were as nothing to the new departures 
 now announced. 
 
 Once again, it was the candles and the 
 surplices that mainly upset John. The whole 
 choir were now to be arrayed in the last, and 
 candles were to be lit all over the church on 
 every Sunday evening ; each one being an 
 offence to John, who had to light them and also 
 to put them out when the congregation had 
 departed. 
 
 11 'Tis up up up," called Shadrack Creed, 
 by way of a parting shot, when he saw John 
 start. " Us '11 get a lot higher yet, though ! " 
 
 John was growing more used to Shakie's 
 banter, and only now replied with, " We be 
 too high a'ready." 
 
 Arrived at Middleham, John once more laid 
 the whole case before his father. Samuel 
 Lowe was growing old, and it was often now 
 with great difficulty that he carried out his 
 duties as clerk of Middleham Church, Creed 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 225 
 
 the sexton having sometimes to occupy his 
 place in the three-decker, and give out psalms 
 and notices to the best of his ability. 
 
 Samuel was sitting in his doorway slumber- 
 ing, when his son came up the path from the 
 road. He had often explained to John the 
 mysteries and superstitions surrounding candles 
 in a church, and had duly apportioned the 
 blame. But now that he heard of their ex- 
 tended use and all the rest, as conveyed to 
 him by his son, he raised one hand and let it 
 fall upon his knee, uttering in tremulous tones : 
 " Then pace to their zouls, John pace to their 
 zouls." 
 
 " There's someun have unsettled you," 
 remarked Lucy Lowe, when her husband 
 returned that night, " and it's my belief that it's 
 that Shadrack Creed be at the bottom of it all. 
 He wants to be fetched a good dowse over the 
 head, he do." 
 
 The appeal to his manhood fell on deaf ears 
 in John's case. " Well, ye see, we be so 
 high," he returned, with a sickly smile. John 
 stood in some awe of his wife. 
 
 The day of the Harvest Festival came at 
 
226 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 last, and all things were carried out as rumour 
 had foretold, as well as a few more. For 
 instance, when the vicar mounted the pulpit in 
 the morning, it was remarked by some in con- 
 versation afterwards that, before beginning his 
 sermon, he placed round his neck something 
 white, richly embroidered at the ends. " We're 
 all a-goin' straight to Rome," they added ; 
 " there's not a doubt about it straight as ever 
 wus ! " 
 
 A large number of people attended the 
 service in the evening of the Harvest Festival. 
 Uffham Church was drawing the attention of 
 many throughout the county, and of others far 
 beyond its borders. " I understand they are 
 singing all the Amens now ; just think of 
 that ! " remarked one or two, discussing matters 
 in a neighbouring county. " It should be 
 stopped." 
 
 The church was crowded. The procession 
 attracted considerable attention, also the sur- 
 pliced choir, the hanging candelabra of chaste 
 design, the brilliant lighting and decorations 
 of the east end, the demeanour of the vicar. 
 Some were struck by the general atmosphere 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 227 
 
 of reverence, that to them seemed strange. 
 When the time arrived for the Anthem, the 
 vicar announced it as being taken from the 
 sixty-fifth Psalm : " The valleys also shall stand 
 so thick with corn, that they shall laugh and 
 sing." 
 
 The Squire was in the choir as usual, and 
 each member did his best. When the organist 
 began the introduction, softly, and with many 
 a beautiful harmony, there was a hush of 
 expectancy in the church. Then the singing 
 burst forth, and the congregation rose to their 
 feet. For certainly ten minutes the lofty roof 
 re-echoed to the voices. Men and boys, 
 supported now by the full power of the organ, 
 excelled each 'other in their efforts that the 
 body of which they were members might not 
 suffer in repute. The congregation stood 
 transfixed. There was no hitch or symptom of 
 any breakdown ; and at length, with many an 
 Amen, the work that had taken weeks in pre- 
 paration was finally brought to a successful 
 close. 
 
 Not a little flushed and heated, the choir 
 sank to their knees and buried their faces in 
 
228 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 their surplices ; a throb seemed to pass through 
 the whole church ; and even the vicar's voice 
 was thought to tremble when he began to 
 intone the first Collect. There had been 
 nothing like it in the annals of the district, and 
 the County Herald referred to it subsequently 
 with guarded praise. 
 
 " My old missus wus arl of a bivver at the 
 lips, when 'twus done," remarked an ancient 
 villager on getting outside. " I likes that, 
 though ; and I'll come along again for sure." 
 
 The Harvest Festival, to which many had 
 looked forward, was over ; but on the follow- 
 ing morning there was found scrawled in chalk 
 on the vicar's entrance door, " No POPRY " ; 
 the words being repeated on the shutters 
 of the village post-office. Some laughed ; 
 others cried " Shame " ; the words being 
 rapidly washed out, never to appear again. 
 The large majority grew by degrees proud of 
 their church, and attended regularly. 
 
 " It be what the good Squire have given we, 
 and us '11 stick by un ! " said the older folk with 
 some warmth ; and the rising generation said 
 the same. 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 229 
 
 Even John, and others like him, became in 
 course of time reconciled, for he was now 
 getting on in years, as was also Shakie Creed. 
 The fathers of both were dead ; and the old 
 Vicar of Middleham had not survived them 
 long. Over there, at the church of the 
 mother parish, many changes had come about. 
 The spirit of revival was abroad, and had 
 found its way to many places. 
 
 " Seems as if it wer' gettin' all new over 
 ther', like, and all a-growin' old here," said 
 Shakie. 
 
 " Seems so," returned John. " Looks as if 
 they was a-going by us. I understands it be 
 wonderful different to what it wus, anyhow. 
 They tells me as the three-decker be gone, 
 and the pews be gone, and as they've got the 
 place lighted and warmed up, same as we, and 
 a nice choir. . . ." John had grown quite 
 voluble. 
 
 " And what would your father 'a said?" 
 asked Shakie. 
 
 Shakie's remark spoilt it all, and John fell 
 silent. 
 
 All that John had said was quite true. 
 
230 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 What had been new was growing older, and 
 with the new 'came innovations. But while this 
 was certainly the case elsewhere, no change from 
 the first had taken place in church matters at 
 Uffham. There had never been anything of 
 ritualism here. It might be prophesied that 
 there never would be. Certain ideas and 
 opinions are held very firmly by the people 
 of the land, and these are never likely to be 
 surrendered. When all things became, in a 
 way, new at Uffham and the church was built, 
 a certain standard had been adopted that was 
 in advance of its day. That standard had 
 never been altered. Time passed, and what 
 had made some stare and many talk, came by 
 degrees to be regarded as nothing out of the 
 way. A decade or so later, it was nothing 
 more than what was to be found in many a 
 country parish. A little later still, the standard 
 originally adopted here was looked upon as 
 old-fashioned in many another place. There 
 had been little change, and none at all in ritual, 
 at Uffham from the day the church was opened. 
 Yet many continued staunchly to believe that 
 if cope or chasuble, censer or cross, were re- 
 
THE SEXTON AND THE CLERK 231 
 
 quired, these and many other things would be 
 found in plenty in Uffham's vestry. That this 
 was so, was shown at one time thus. 
 
 A great gathering of choirs was to be held 
 in the neighbouring cathedral, and at a meeting 
 of the Chapter it was considered that a 
 banner, if procurable, would tend to greater 
 order in so large a procession as this would 
 certainly be. 
 
 " Send over- to Uffham, and borrow theirs. 
 They are sure to have one there," said a 
 canon, with a shrug of the shoulders. 
 
 A messenger was duly despatched with a 
 note from the dean ; and when the answer was 
 brought back, it contained this from the vicar : 
 
 " I am sorry I am quite unable to lend you 
 a banner : we have never had one here. But 
 I think possibly you would have no difficulty 
 in obtaining what you require if you were to 
 apply to the vicar of our mother parish 
 Middleham." 
 
 The story got about in other places than 
 Uffham village, and was the cause of some 
 amusement. 
 
 Two men were standing talking together 
 
232 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 by the tower door of Uffham Church. Both 
 were grey-haired, and looked like men of over 
 sixty. One had just come down from passing 
 out the bell for old Giles Meret, the estate 
 carpenter, who had sung in the choir for nearly 
 thirty years ; the other had been fixing fresh 
 candles in the chancel and cleaning brass work, 
 and was carrying away his things in a large 
 basket. 
 
 " Heard about the banner? " asked the first, 
 with a twinkle in his eye. 
 
 " Ay ; I did hear summut about it," drawled 
 the other. 
 
 " Couldn't meet their wishes, anyway," 
 said the first speaker, breaking into a laugh. 
 
 " No," returned the other again, with some 
 solemnity. " But then, don't ye zee ? we be 
 so low." 
 
VII 
 THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 
 
 IT would have been rude to laugh, and more- 
 over the rudeness would not have escaped the 
 notice of the other party, a doubtful, inquiring 
 look probably making itself felt by way of 
 reply. Yet it was almost impossible, even in 
 those days, to look at old man Young's face 
 and not smile. The name by which he went 
 "old man Young" reflected perhaps some- 
 thing of the craft and mysteries of his calling 
 and the way in which he worked, going about 
 always on his own account and apparently as a 
 privileged person ; but about his face there was 
 no mystery at all : it was open in the truest 
 sense, and it was also comical to look upon. 
 
 To describe him as he would certainly have 
 appeared to a stranger might be to be judged 
 as dealing in caricature ; yet an attempt must 
 be made, and the irresistible smile accounted for 
 
 *33 
 
234 E SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 that rose so often to the faces of those who 
 met him. It was not so much that he belonged 
 to a type and followed a calling that is now 
 well-nigh extinct ; he was a type himself, there 
 being few like him at any time, even in those 
 directions where he and the generality of men 
 commonly resemble each other. 
 
 First of all, his face, though not large, was 
 singularly round, and secondly he was by 
 nature almost hairless. He possessed few eye- 
 brows worthy the name ; and his eyes, that 
 were small and of the palest grey, were scantily 
 protected by lashes and very seldom seen to 
 blink. The mouth was the chief feature of the 
 face, being large and with a quaint twist to one 
 side. His cheeks were round and of high 
 colour, and when he laughed or chuckled, the 
 muscles of the face moved little, nor diJ the 
 mouth alter much in form. 
 
 The truth was he appeared stiff all over, so 
 that some might have judged him cut from one 
 solid block of hard and seasoned wood. Even 
 his hands and fingers looked stiff latterly, though 
 he never lost the wonderful deftness with them 
 that was of paramount necessity in his calling. 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 235 
 
 There were, as has been said, few traces of 
 hair upon his face, but he was not, even in old 
 age, altogether bald, and if that which he 
 possessed upon his head was exceedingly 
 scanty, he wore it long almost as ringlets 
 showing well over the large ears beneath the hat 
 and retaining its colour, light brown, to the end 
 of his days. 
 
 In height he was below the average, and 
 while he might have been described as a spare 
 man, he was wiry and strong, with arms some- 
 what long and legs a good deal bowed. His 
 clothes, winter and summer, appeared much 
 the same. Over a thick jacket and waistcoat 
 he wore a much stained white or nondescript- 
 coloured slop, from one of the pockets of which 
 the end of a large red cotton handkerchief 
 generally showed itself. At all times of the 
 year he wore breeches and gaiters, the former 
 being of cord and the latter of box cloth or 
 black leather according to the weather. His 
 hat was of soft felt, rather high and round in 
 the crown, after the fashion of the time, and 
 having the brim always turned down in 
 front ; and his boots were neither over thick 
 
236 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 nor heavily nailed, for reasons that will pre- 
 sently appear. To complete his outfit, he 
 often carried, when not actually engaged in 
 business, a short stick of holly or perhaps of 
 yew, that he had cut from the woods himself, 
 and that had its crook much polished by long 
 usage ; when at work, his hands were full 
 enough without anything of the kind. 
 
 He had once been married, but had had no 
 family, and when Martha, the wife, died he 
 lived on in the same comfortable house, with 
 its thatched shed and outhouses at the back, 
 and good garden and piece of orcharding in 
 front, doing for himself with the help of a niece, 
 and following his calling as mole-catcher pure 
 and simple though it is fair to add that he 
 was at times not behindhand in the matter of 
 rats, when some farmer had had his stalls 
 " rutted up by they vermin," or other damage 
 had been done. 
 
 The trade and calling of mole-catcher ran in 
 his blood, and just as his grandfather, uncle, 
 and father had been each in turn known as 
 " old man Young," and been the mole-catchers 
 of their day, so had he followed in their 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 237 
 
 steps as the accredited mole-catcher of the 
 district, "and of all the country round, for 
 miles on miles," as he would say, in his very 
 high-pitched voice. 
 
 Of course he had a Christian name, like 
 other folk, and this was Shelemiah. " It be 
 a sight too long," he would remark ; though 
 few, save his intimates or those who had 
 employed him for years, ventured to shorten it 
 to 'Miah. Nor did he encourage such habits. 
 It was not for a trapper, if only a mole-trapper, 
 to be intimate with many : he occupied a 
 definite position in the place, and was respected. 
 His craft was his craft, and what he knew had 
 been born in him, or had come down to him 
 from his forbears, to be supplemented by what 
 experience might teach him in the course of a 
 long life. 
 
 Thus it was that when his father was no 
 more, the title of " old man Young " had been 
 granted him as of right and to differentiate him 
 from other Youngs in the parish, with the addi- 
 tion of " the mole-catcher " the definite article 
 being never omitted to differentiate him yet 
 again from those who merely caught moles now 
 
238 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 and then when they got troublesome, and who, 
 Young declared, with a cast round of the eyes, 
 " wus as innocent of knowledge as kittens; I 
 knows 'em be ! " 
 
 Moles, then, were as the breath of his body ; 
 by them and by their deaths he lived ; and as 
 he sometimes remarked to inquisitive strangers 
 asking stupid questions, " Wull, I reckons as 
 ther' be nothin' about they craturs as I for my 
 part doesn't know. Never had a lot o' 
 schoolin' ; didn't hold with overmuch o' that. 
 Can read, right enough, and does a little 
 summin' ; but that ther' writin' I finds terrible 
 awk'ard. And as to the work ; wull, I followed 
 grandfa' about as a boy : took to it from the 
 first, yer see, and in the end rized myself to 
 this." 
 
 Calling and achievement were always in 
 Young's eyes matters to be proud of ; and so 
 they were in the opinion of his neighbours, and 
 for the following reason : he was the owner 
 of the house he lived in, and of no less than 
 two acres of land adjoining. That, in the eyes 
 of the rest of the parish, counted for far more 
 than the length of time he and his had been 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 239 
 
 connected with the craft, or even the large 
 sums he was currently believed to earn in a 
 week. 
 
 Of course he had not always been so placed. 
 He was already past middle life when he had 
 made the purchase of the house in which his 
 family had lived so long ; and it was only by 
 slow degrees that he had improved the little 
 property, by adding a place for a pony and 
 trap, and outside shedding constructed of oak 
 uprights and well-tarred elm boards on a brick 
 foundation by planting fresh apple stocks on 
 an acre of the land and laying it down to grass, 
 by setting a climbing rose or two against the 
 walls of old red brick and black oak timbers, 
 and adding flowers that took his fancy to those 
 growing on either side of the path edged with 
 box that led from the wicket to the door. 
 
 The house faced west ; the thatch was nigh 
 two feet thick that overhung the three windows 
 of the upstair rooms and cast deep shadows ; 
 and often in the long summer evenings, when 
 walls and thatch and wide chimney-breast took 
 on all the reds and purples and gold that may 
 be known, artists would come along and ask 
 
2 4 o THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 permission to make a sketch of the picturesque, 
 old-world dwelling. Probably Young himself 
 would be sitting at the time on the low bench, 
 fashioned of a thick slab of elm, with four short 
 oak legs, that stood against the wall on the 
 east side ; and in answer to the question, would 
 look up from his work and reply with a laugh, 
 " Certain' you may paint what you do please, 
 only I hopes as you'll be so good as to leave 
 me out o' yer picter." 
 
 Young disliked publicity of any kind, and 
 had always a certain shyness about him, in- 
 duced probably from living and working much 
 alone. He did not trouble about the affairs of 
 others, and objected to their interfering with 
 his. But he was always a good friend, and 
 his neighbours averred that " old man Young 
 was never one to keep his eggs to hisself, he 
 wern't ; and often did kindnesses behind the 
 door well, they know'd he did." 
 
 Summer was his slack season, and it was 
 then that he turned out most of those clever 
 traps of his, on the make and successful setting 
 of which his home in the first instance had 
 been built up, and his livelihood now undoubt- 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 241 
 
 edly depended. He had worked hard and been 
 successful, and it was no wonder, therefore, that 
 Mr. Young, as he was called to his face, was 
 treated with respect by his neighbours, if he 
 was equally spoken of behind his back as 
 " old man Young, the mole-catcher, who had 
 put by a sight o' money and made hisself a 
 pretty home, and all out o' catchin' they 
 woonts or molewarps, call 'em what you likes." 1 
 
 "For my part I do mostly call 'em moles," 
 Young would remark, when asked. And 
 should any passer-by admire the little house, 
 and inquire who might live there of the rather 
 odd-looking man in the lane close by, whose 
 appearance raised a smile and who was carry- 
 ing things more strange even than himself, 
 they would get for answer : " Wull, 'tis mine, 
 mum ; yus, it be I as lives ther'." 
 
 Such a reply generally took both men and 
 women aback, causing the smile to die out 
 of the face, and leading to their covering their 
 confusion by adding: "What a pretty house." 
 To which Young would again reply, casting 
 
 1 "Woont," or "hoont," is probably from the old Danish 
 " wand." " Moldwarp " was the old name, and is derived from 
 the Anglo-Saxon molde (mould) and weorpan, to throw up. 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 his eyes that way : " Yus ; and I can assure ye 
 I worked hard to get it all together. Walked 
 a hundred miles a week for years, I did." 
 
 He often seemed to like to talk when trap- 
 making in summer time in the shade of the 
 wall, or in his thatched shed and workshop 
 when the land was in the grip of the frost. 
 He did not give his knowledge away to 
 strangers ; that was only natural. Many were 
 the hours, however, that a certain other spent 
 in his company during many years ; and having 
 known this one from childhood from the 
 time when he was no more than forty himself 
 he would often open out to him freely, 
 telling of the mysteries of his craft and of the 
 ways and habits of moles, when they walked 
 the fields together, followed the course of the 
 sluggish stream in the lower meadows, threaded 
 the rides of the woods, or watched the bank 
 alongside some ditch to see what might be 
 gathered there. 
 
 "Clip traps be all very well in meadows," 
 he would say, "and I do most always keep 
 a few on 'em in the shed, somewheres. They 
 be usefu' at times and some places, as I says ; 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 243 
 
 but how be ye goin' to carry about a lot o' 
 such tack, and when each do weigh a pound 
 and more perhaps nearer two, if it should 
 chance to be a double ? No, no ; to be of 
 any good, and for anyone to travel fairly light, 
 reckoning the distances as has to be gone, 
 traps must be o' wood. And I'll tell ye this, 
 that unless a man can make all his gear hisself, 
 he can never make this job pay never ! His 
 traps must be made at home and nowheres 
 else; and he've got to learn to make 'em, 
 as well as set 'em proper." 
 
 He was cutting up some staves of an old 
 barrel with a fine saw, into pieces measuring 
 four and a half inches by two and a half. The 
 wood was hard oak and dark in colour ; and 
 these pieces were to make the tops of the 
 traps, into which the other parts were to be 
 fixed later on. At the four corners of each 
 a neat round hole had to be drilled with a 
 three-eighths' bit, and another in the centre. 
 Into those at the corners would be bent two 
 small hoops of hazel, half an inch wide, care- 
 fully bevelled and smooth, and with a deep 
 groove cut round their inner sides. 
 
244 TH E SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 The measurement, in the clear, of these 
 little hoops had to be exactly an inch and three 
 quarters no more, no less to fit a mole's 
 body nicely ; and inside the grooves would 
 eventually be hidden a single strand of thin- 
 nest copper wire, the ends of which would be 
 carried through the oak piece and looped to 
 a length of strong twine above. Two and 
 a half inches from where the wire was thus 
 looped, the string terminated in a knot ; and 
 when the trap was set, this knot was run 
 through the hole in the middle of the oak 
 piece, and fixed there by the most important 
 thing of all a small oak peg, in the form of 
 an inverted Y. 
 
 "Ah; they's the boys," remarked Young, 
 looking at his work. " Got a thousand of 
 'em ; perhaps more. There be them as thinks 
 as the calling be to be picked up in a day ; 
 same as I daresay they thinks as moles don't 
 see, nor hear, nor smell, nor think. I tell 
 ye it'll take a lifetime to learn the ins and 
 outs, and years to set a trap right. You got 
 to come to it by study, as anyone might say. 
 
 " Now, look ye here. Grandfa' died in 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 245 
 
 '66 and wer' eighty years of age when he 
 went. He wer' among 'em all his life ; but 
 eyesight failed un, and he wer' done up then. 
 Uncle followed he, who did fight at Waterloo 
 and drawed five pounds a quarter ever arter 
 for what he done ther', as I understands. 
 Then come mi old father for a while, and 
 now here be I ; and if that bain't over a 
 cent'ry and a tidy bit to spare, what be ? 
 
 " It do all fit tight, don't it ? " he continued, 
 handling one of his traps " must be wedged 
 in, must these hoops, when they've been bent 
 right ; and then there 'em be for ever. Some 
 on 'em been in use for years carries grandfa's 
 initials, see ; same as these new uns here '11 have 
 SY burnt in 'em arter a bit which is mine. 
 
 " Ah," he would often say in later times 
 " talk to me o' the callin' ! Been amongst 
 'em mi whole life, and I knows. Talk o' 
 the callin' and the trappin' ! I tell ye a man 
 have got to have his whole heart and soul 
 in it if he's goin' to know how that's done. 
 If you're a-goin' to do aught at it, you've got 
 to start by learnin' all the moves and the 
 ways o' the craturs theirselves what they 
 
246 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 does here, and what they does there, summer 
 and winter, and all times. You've got to 
 learn just exactly what he'll do. And if you 
 don't know that and haven't learnt it, you'd 
 better stop at home. The whole takes learnin', 
 I tell ye. And as to the trap-settin' ah, 
 wull ; if you've got to get your livin' by it, 
 it'll force you then it'll force you, no fear! " 
 
 The end of the month of March in a very 
 forward spring : the green of soft turf, the 
 first rose-red blush of apple blossom, the 
 pale yellow of wild daffodils nodding their 
 heads in the sun under the shelter of a tall 
 hedge. The turf here is as level as a cricket 
 field. It was grazed a while back by a dozen 
 bullocks ; folk maintaining that the grass of 
 many of these orchards will fatten such " ay, 
 and for Christmas beef" without the help 
 of cake and other feeding stuffs. And all 
 that is quite true. But now the place of the 
 bullocks has been taken by a dozen ewes that 
 have been late in lambing, and whose doubles 
 and singles with their black heads may be 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 247 
 
 seen lying asleep where the sunspots play, 
 while their mothers move slowly about as 
 if on soft carpet, nibbling choice bits that 
 suit them. 
 
 There is plenty of room here, though these 
 apples are all large trees. The grey and 
 moss-grown stems lean this way and that, 
 and the branches, beautiful in form and colour, 
 stretch far ; but the alleys are wide, and this 
 orchard is full fourteen acres in extent, with 
 another adjoining not much smaller, and yet 
 another beyond that. A deep, wet ditch, with 
 a hedge on the far side consisting mostly of 
 hazel, bounds this orchard to the north, and 
 across it in one place has been thrown a slab 
 of rough elm, cut when the stick was squared, 
 to make connection with a step-stile giving 
 access in that quarter. 
 
 A man in a white slop is coming over the 
 farther field, with a basket in one hand, the 
 arm resting across a short iron bar carried 
 on the shoulder, and a small bill-hook in the 
 other. He stops at the stile and sets his load 
 on the ground. The air is quite still and the 
 day is young, and he cranes forward over 
 
248 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 the stile and watches without movement of 
 any kind. 
 
 To look at him you would think he was 
 never going to move again. His eyes ap- 
 pear to be fixed upon the ground ; the 
 rich turf, the blossom, and the nodding 
 "daffers" have evidently no place in his 
 mind. At other times he has a quick eye 
 for beauty ; and it is only necessary to look 
 at his garden and the walls of his house, or 
 go inside and note the nosegay on the table 
 by the window, to realise the truth of this. 
 His life may be spent among moles ; but you 
 have known this man long enough to learn 
 that he is for ever watching Nature and 
 marking her ways at all seasons of the year, 
 and that he can tell you a score of things that 
 you yourself may have passed a score of times, 
 without so much as a thought or look of 
 faintest interest. 
 
 Suddenly he holds up his hand to you 
 as you come across the turf towards him, 
 signalling you to stop. Then, as suddenly, 
 he is over the stile in a trice, moving rapidly 
 but as quietly as a cat. He skirts the ditch 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 249 
 
 edge with a long stride or two ; then he seems 
 to make a spring : down goes one foot hard 
 upon the ground, and at the same time he 
 holds up a ringer in the air to tell you that 
 you may come along now. 
 
 Before you have reached him, he has 
 followed a short length of a mole-run with 
 a stick, and a dead mole lies upon the turf. 
 
 " Saves a trap, when you can get 'em like 
 that," he remarks with a chuckle, that comical 
 mouth of his twisted slightly up on one side. 
 " Ah ; saves a trap, and that means time." 
 He picks up the mole, takes a look at the 
 numberless molehills extending down the side 
 of the ditch and far out on the soft turf, and 
 turns again towards the stile. 
 
 " Working smartish about here, bain't 'em? 
 And now's the time to catch J em, I tell ye. 
 Catch 'em easier in March than any time. 
 They gets most active, last month and this. 
 'Tis the ruttin' season, and they'll be having 
 their young in May and back part of April. 
 Just such a place as that there bank they'll be 
 after having their nesties in, though I've 
 know 'em bed out in the fields at times. Nests 
 
250 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 be made o' leaves and grass and things o' that 
 kind ; and the young uns may number three to 
 five ; seldom six ; mostly four four's about 
 their number, you may reckon." 
 
 He is resting on the stile, with his eyes 
 again fixed on the mole tumps : he has come 
 nigh three miles to reach this place. 
 
 " Ah ; easy killed, when once you've got 
 'em : tap on the nose does it in a minute, same 
 as a badger. Got no eyes, has he? " he asks, 
 holding the soft, plump, cylindrical little body 
 in his hand, " Nor ears ? Blind and deaf, 
 bain't he ? 
 
 " Now just you please to look here, and 
 minds what I do tell ye. He knows light 
 from dark, right enough, and there be his eyes, 
 look bright as two little black beads, and set 
 straight back from the corner of the mouth. 
 And as to ears well, he haven't got none 
 outside as you can see ; but look here, inside 
 the fur here. That's where he do hear. And 
 can't he hear, just! I tell ye their hearin' be 
 wonderfu' wonderfu' quick it be. If you 
 watches and sees ground movin' as I did now 
 just, you must go up behind him always 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 251 
 
 behind him and quietly, mind ye, for if he 
 hears a sound of ye, he be gone ! Must be 
 very quick, or you won't have him ; must nip 
 along on 'em at such times, and as I says, to 
 take one that way saves a power of trouble. 
 But I must be gettin' along and set this lot 
 here," he concludes, taking up his bill and 
 making his way down the hedge to cut the 
 sticks he wants from " the nuts," as he always 
 calls them. 
 
 These sticks have to be of two sizes some 
 of them about fifteen inches in length, and 
 some about two feet, all alike being supple 
 and with a good spring in them, especially the 
 longer ones, that are stouter than the others. 
 Having got these and a number of short, forked 
 sticks for pegging down, he lodges on the stile 
 while he trims them to his liking. 
 
 "Traps? ah, wull ; I've got two dozen 
 along in the basket, and that's the most I ever 
 takes. And wer' you got to cut your sticks 
 and set and peg down, anyone's got to be 
 smartish busy to set two dozen in a day, I can 
 tell ye." 
 
 He was scanning the ditch edge again, and 
 
252 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 looking from this to the molehills farther out 
 in the grass. " They do always make their 
 homes by a ditch or bank, and works out from 
 that, as I've often told ye. And that's where 
 you've got to catch 'em in the main run, see ? " 
 
 Conversation ceased after that : he was 
 going to be busy. You had often watched him 
 before ; but it was all so clever and so deftly 
 done that you must see it all again. You 
 might not have another opportunity for long. 
 
 Picking up his gear and crossing the plank, 
 he stops at a point where the turf has been 
 slightly raised and a run can be traced leading 
 to the first molehill, twisting this way and that 
 in its course. He does not want his bar here, 
 for the ground is soft, and he leaves that stuck 
 upright by the bank, with the bill-hook beside 
 it. Then he stoops, and judging by his eye, 
 cuts out a portion of the run that shall exactly 
 fit his trap. Having adjusted the peg in the 
 centre, sufficiently firmly to keep the knotted 
 end of the string in place, he fixes the trap in 
 the run so that the hoops at either end meet 
 the mole's path to a nicety. Satisfied with this, 
 he takes one of the lighter sticks that he calls 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 253 
 
 cross bits, pushes the end in the ground on one 
 side of the trap, and bends it carefully across to 
 the other, where it is pinned down by one of the 
 short forks, to hold the trap in place. The butt 
 end of one of the stouter sticks is then thrust 
 firmly in the ground on the other side, after 
 which it is also bent over towards the trap, 
 where it is held in position by the loop in the 
 end of the string. The string is thus strained 
 taut, while the wire remains loose. Some 
 earth and grass are spread carefully over the top 
 of the trap after that, to exclude any possibility 
 of light entering the run, and the job is done. 
 
 When the mole comes along, the hoops being 
 smooth and of the exact size of the run and of 
 his body, he is not aware of their presence ; but 
 directly he touches the peg between them 
 and no matter which way he may be travelling 
 the knotted end flies out, the stick above 
 draws the wires taut with a jerk, and the mole 
 is caught in a trice. 
 
 "Ah," remarked Young, "they takes some 
 settin'. The peg have got to be right, o' 
 course ; the cross bit firm ; and the main stick 
 must have a strong enough spring back in him 
 
254 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 to jerk the wires, tight as ever they'll draw. 
 It's just there lies the craft. Taken me over 
 a quarter of an hour, have it ? You please to 
 take one yourself and go and try. I'll give ye 
 a hour, and I'll wager as ye won't 'a done it 
 then not to ketch, yer won't nor yet in 
 two," and 'Miah's face looked more comical 
 than ever as he made the offer. 
 
 By midday half the traps were down, and a 
 rest was taken for a bit of bread and meat. 
 Young was always one of the most abstemious 
 of men, and would tell you that he ate meat 
 but once a day, with a bowl of porridge and 
 milk for breakfast, and another on going 
 to bed. " And as to drink," he would add, 
 " never has no spirits in house ; and never 
 takes none outside. In times past, I did take 
 a drop now and again, or a pint o' bitter, when 
 anyone persuaded ye to it, and mostly wished 
 I hadn't had it arterwards. Wull ; one day I 
 reckons what that comes to in a twelvemonth ; 
 I jacked it then! " 
 
 A blackbird flew from the hedge into a 
 neighbouring apple tree and began to sing. 
 You could see his black feathers and his orange 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 255 
 
 bill among the crimson buds and the emerald 
 leaves. A little beyond the lambs had grown 
 tired of sleeping and were having the finest 
 games with one another, not forgetting to 
 punish their mothers now and then. 
 
 Young's eyes were fixed on the blackbird. 
 " Sing, don't he? He'll have to look out for 
 hisself though soon, won't he ? Cuckoo's mate 
 'a come along at my place a'ready, and heard 
 the chiffer-chaff last week. They'll all be a- 
 comin' in directly. 'Tis all a matter o' food 
 wi' em and a job to get it for some." 
 
 Young was cutting a piece of white bread 
 and fitting a bit of meat to it. " Food ? Ah," he 
 continued, " them yonder's the boys for that. 
 Never wer' such hungry things in all creation 
 as be they. And feeds at as reg'lar times as do 
 they as has their dinner bells rung to remind 
 'em. Three times a day they be at it to a minute, 
 as you might say 7 to 8, 10 to 1 1, 3 to 4. 
 Their appetites be wonderful. And bain't 'em 
 determined, neither. Whatever they means to 
 have, they'll have it. Can't find it ; keeps on 
 till 'em does. And if 'em can't get food to 
 their liking as it may be lobs, for that be 
 
256 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 their staple, though 'em be wonderful fond o' 
 the eggs o' the chaffers if they can't get 
 things of that natur', they'll take what's 
 nearest ; ay, even to one o' their own brothers 
 or sisters. But whatever it be, it's got to be 
 got frequent, or they be dead. They be things 
 as works hard and wants plenty, and they 
 means fillin' o' theirselves tight as drums, and 
 fairly reg'lar too. 
 
 " Just listen to this here, now. I've tried 
 'em myself, times. Wull, one day I gets two 
 alive, put 'em in a tub, and filled it three parts 
 with earth. I kept 'em an hour or two with 
 nothin'. Then I gives them a field mouse, 
 and they swallowed him down. They weren't 
 starvin', mind ye, but plump. And perhaps 
 there be those as wouldn't believe it, but I 
 seen it frequent ; and one of these very two 
 in the tub, as I'm a-tellin' you on, falls on 
 t'other and part eats him when I wer' out. I 
 tell ye their appetites be voracious, and they do 
 seem, if you watches 'em, to be just like mad 
 things arter food ay, as though a frenzy, like, 
 had took 'em." 
 
 The blackbird began a fresh song. Some- 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 257 
 
 one came through a gate at the other end of 
 the orchard and set it open. Then he walked 
 round the ewes and their lambs and turned 
 them into the next field, slamming the gate 
 after him as he disappeared. 
 
 " That's it," said Young; "I asked un to 
 do that. Now, this gear o' mine won't be 
 meddled with. But there, it won't be long 
 afore the busy time be over. When the main 
 o' the birds a' come in, my job's about ended. 
 'Tis busy time Michaelmas to Whitsun : can't 
 get much on the ground arter that growin' 
 time then, whatever 'tis." 
 
 He had finished his lunch, or dinner as he 
 called it, and was getting ready to go on with 
 his work. 
 
 " Must get the rest o' these down," he said ; 
 " and that won't finish the job for the day, 
 neither. Trappin' over at Snatchnall, and got 
 a power o' traps to look to ther' afore I gets 
 home. How many '11 I get here, do ye say? 
 I'll tell ye. Shall be round here again to look 
 these up in a day or two, and out o' the two 
 dozen, ther '11 be a score, I guarantee. Bound 
 
 to have 'em ; ther's never no fear." 
 
 R 
 
258 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 If memory serves aright, the number caught 
 was twenty-one, when old man Young visited 
 this orchard three days afterwards. 
 
 It was time to be going, leaving Young to 
 follow his work alone. 
 
 " So you be goin' soon for good, be yer?" 
 he inquired. " S'pose it's always foughtin' out 
 ther', along o' they blacks, bain't it ? Oh ; not 
 always? Across the seas, bain't it? Never 
 seed the seas myself; but knows what 'em be 
 like, for all that. Wish as I wer' going along 
 with ye yus, that I do. But ye must come 
 back safe, you minds ; and the best o' health 
 to yer ; ther', I do wish as I wer' coming 
 along!" 
 
 The two had not parted many minutes 
 before Young was in pursuit of the one who 
 had just left him. He came up breathless, 
 wiping his face with his red handkerchief. 
 
 " I forgot to tell ye," he said, with a queer 
 twist of the mouth, " I forgot to tell ye as I'll 
 put by fifty o' the very best against ye comes 
 back : they'll make a waistcoat for ye 'gainst 
 the winter or a cap, if you do minds." 
 
 He did not stay to be thanked. " My traps," 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 259 
 
 he exclaimed "the day's a-gettin' on, and I 
 haven't a-done yet." Then he had gone, as 
 quickly as he came. 
 
 Fifty skins? What did that mean to him? 
 He was getting twopence apiece for every one 
 he caught, two shillings a dozen, according to 
 his reckoning ; and that was what he had had 
 all his life when working piece-work. In his 
 early days it was all such ; but after a while, 
 much of what he did was done by contract, the 
 price being three halfpence to twopence an 
 acre, or so much for a whole farm say, a 
 pound to twenty-five shillings for one of two 
 hundred acres, though, as he always averred, 
 he often found he " could not do with it at that 
 in most places." 
 
 He did not always, or indeed often, sell his 
 skins. Skinning and the rest took time, and 
 when, by degrees, he grew busier, he did not 
 attempt it, and finally gave it up altogether. 
 But for his best skins, when he had any, partly 
 cured with a little alum or arsenic and not 
 damaged by the trap, he generally managed to 
 get a further twopence apiece. Thus his offer 
 was no cheap one ; and his words rang long in 
 
260 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 the ears, with his "You come back safe, 
 minds you come back safe; I do wish as I 
 wer' goin' along." * 
 
 Eight years had gone by ere the two met 
 again, and many things had changed in the 
 time, Young among the rest. 
 
 A stretch of dusty road, straight as it could 
 be laid down when roads worthy the name first 
 came into existence hereabouts ; with no hedge 
 on either side, and only separated from an 
 apparently measureless extent of arable land 
 by a narrow strip of grass and an equally narrow 
 ditch that sometimes held a foot of water in 
 winter but was now dry. 
 
 There were no hedges proper on any of this 
 land, and no trees save in the immediate 
 vicinity of the scattered farmsteads that were 
 
 1 Two of the leading London furriers inform the writer that 
 Dutch moles are now considered the best, having a bluer shade 
 and softer fur; but that English moleskins are also much used. 
 These last are chiefly procured from Norfolk, Herefordshire, and 
 Kent : many also coming from the Lowlands of Scotland. 
 They are sold by the hundred. Until recently the price has 
 been from 28/- to 34/- a hundred, but owing to the large 
 demand for them in Paris and America, this has latterly been 
 doubled, the best-dressed skins costing a further 7/6 a hundred. 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 261 
 
 easily visible, lying at varying distances one 
 from the other, with their rows of new ricks, 
 outbuildings, and the cottage or two attached 
 to each. Far away, a line of hills showed in 
 pale blue : the sky above was the sky of 
 September, with mass upon mass of great 
 cumulus cloud piled there and hanging motion- 
 less in the still, clear air and the sunlight. A 
 flock of plovers rose from the stubbles near by, 
 uttered their sad notes, and flapped away, show- 
 ing their white sides and then their dark green 
 wings, till they were lost to sight in the distance. 
 A cloud of dust rose from the road in that 
 direction and floated slowly over the dry land. 
 Someone was evidently coming that way ; and 
 presently a small, common-looking, two-wheel 
 trap, drawn by a pony to match, made itself 
 visible. It took some time to traverse the stretch 
 of road ; but at length it came nearer. The man 
 seen to be driving it was leaning forward with 
 his elbows on his knees as he held the reins, 
 being clad in a nondescript-coloured slop, and 
 with an old felt hat on his head, the brim of 
 which was turned down over his eyes. There 
 were no two men in the land quite like that. 
 
262 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 "Then 'tis you!" he exclaimed, pulling 
 up. " I made sure as 'twas. And ye've got 
 safe back and all ; across the seas and that. 
 I hear'd as you wus a-comin. And yer done 
 with the foughtin', too. Wull, wull, to be 
 sure ! " 
 
 He was out of his trap, and the two stood 
 talking on the dusty road. He looked older ; 
 his neck had grown thinner, was more scarred 
 with lines, and had taken on a deep copper 
 colour after a hot summer. But there was 
 little alteration in the face ; the sight of which 
 raised a smile as it had always done, in spite 
 of a certain change now about the mouth. 
 
 "Gone up in the world, you call it? 'Twus 
 like this. Found myself going downhill when 
 I got the wrong side o' fifty ; been a-doin' a 
 hundred miles a week on mi feet for years, ye 
 see. Fust, I did try a donkey ; but that wur 
 too slow a lot. So it had to be a pony : not 
 an old un, mind, but a good un a good un, 
 you knows. 'Tain't a bad un to look at, 
 though, be he? Good stamp, bain't he?" 
 
 The pony was a forester, brown and with 
 a ragged mane ; the cart had once been 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 263 
 
 painted dark blue all over that much could 
 be seen through the dust that covered it. 
 Inside there was the familiar basket with 
 the traps, the bar, and the bill, with an 
 assortment of hazel sticks of various lengths, 
 for none were to be got just here. 
 
 " Ah been at it ever since ; but can't do 
 much with it now just ; be too dry ; must have 
 wet for our work. But it'll come ; it'll come. 
 I sees that by the ways of them lapwings as 
 crossed the road a while ago. 
 
 " So you be back," he continued after a 
 pause, with his mouth awry and his small eyes 
 screwed up " and safe an' sound. I thought 
 on yer, times ; and wants to ask ye this, as it 
 come into my mind. Wer' it like Waterloo ? 
 Not much? Oh. A sight different clothes? 
 Ah ! Wull ; old uncle would always be a- 
 tellin' on us that when Bony come along they 
 was all set out in squares, and as his men did 
 come and charge up, like, and got swep' away, 
 for our hands as wus ther' was steady. And 
 I read on the paper as you wus all in squares, 
 same as that ; and as they charged yer, same 
 as Bony's men done. And I says to mi niece, 
 
264 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 Jessie, I says, ' Depend on it, it wur jus' 
 Waterloo over again, and nothin' else,' I says. 
 Ther', I wishes as I'd been along!" 
 
 Later on in the autumn the two were out 
 together more than once. That October was 
 a wet one in the early part of the month, and 
 the ditches alongside this road, and that often 
 marked the divisions between the farms, were 
 full of water. But November came in dry, 
 and before it closed many a hundred acres 
 were sown to wheat. Prices still allowed a 
 fair profit for the farmer, though they were 
 falling rapidly each year. The 'seventies were 
 drawing to a close, and some were growing 
 increasingly anxious. Thus margins were 
 more closely watched than they had been, and 
 things of all kinds that were likely to injure 
 growing crops received increased attention. 
 
 Of course old man Young's friends, the 
 moles, by no means escaped, with the result 
 that his services were more than ever in 
 demand. "Got the whole range, now," he 
 said "ay, thousands o' acres. To make the 
 job pay as it should, a man must have that 
 or nothin'. 1 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 265 
 
 He was never in any doubt about the 
 damage that moles were capable of doing, 
 and he was wont to cast his eyes from one 
 side to the other and grin when he heard folk 
 assert that moles drained the ground and 
 brought mould to the surface of pastures, for 
 the harrows to deal with in the early spring 
 and to do good. 
 
 " The harm as they does to the corn is more 
 than the good they ever does elsewhere, and 
 I knows it. They'll go thirty to forty yards 
 and more in loose ground any time. And just 
 you please to mark this the corn '11 always 
 die where the moles a-been workin' under 
 always. Same on grass seeds and that. 
 Same in places where the ley be down and 
 small seeds sown. The seed '11 chit and dry ; 
 the plant '11 never grow. Same among the 
 turnips, too. They raises the ground up 
 under 'em their noses helps 'em to do that ; 
 and wer' they been burrowin', ther' won't be 
 no turnips ther' never ! I tell ye I've marked 
 it a hunderd, hunderd times." 
 
 " And the wheat fields is just the place to 
 catch 'em, too, especial' wer' ther' be water, 
 
266 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 such as in they ditches, and close at hand for 
 'em ; for water they will have ; and a'most as 
 eager for it as food, they be. Wheat grounds 
 '11 give you time, ye see, because ye can get 
 on the land ther' from Michaelmas till April. 
 I've ketched five to six dozen in one field then, 
 times, and a score in one trap in the same 
 place, set against a gatepost where he can't 
 work round. You gets the run o' the ground, 
 ye see ; and when you done one piece here, 
 you moves on to the next : that's the best o' 
 the wheat." 
 
 There was no doubt at this date that old 
 man Young had made a great name for him- 
 self. Every farmer and most landlords knew 
 him, and some even ventured to address him 
 as 'Miah. The folk in the villages knew his 
 dark blue trap by sight, and would point him 
 out to strangers as " Mr. Young, the mole- 
 catcher, from over B artsy way : one as is 
 doin' well, and no mistake ; got his own 
 house, these years now, and all got out o' 
 they traps as he makes for hisself to catch 
 the woonts with." 
 
 For many a mile all over this country 'Miah 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 267 
 
 Young was thus known to all, and not alone 
 because he was an expert at his trade, but 
 also because, as some averred, " he wus free, 
 and wouldn't be behind in helpin' a man as 
 wus down : they knew'd that for truth." 
 Even the children knew him, and would 
 smile up at him when he passed in his little 
 cart, always getting a smile, though of a 
 queer sort, in return. 
 
 When winter came, his work was in the 
 woods, where he judged there were often 
 living as many as from two to three hundred 
 moles in one covert. It seemed wonderful 
 to some that when the ground was hard 
 frozen over, these animals could keep alive 
 and find sufficient food ; but Young would 
 take you to parts where the ground lay wet 
 in the hollows, turning aside the covering of 
 dead leaves there with his foot and pointing 
 to the familiar workings of his friends beneath. 
 
 " They wants water, as I've told ye, every 
 bit as much as food, and they gets it here 
 from the land shoots. And they'll go right 
 down for it, too ay, three feet and more. 
 See ; it don't matter to 'em which way they 
 
268 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 got to go in a run, they be fashioned for it. 
 Look at this un's jacket see? If it were set 
 same as that o' other craturs, how would 'em 
 run back so easy? It be set upright. It 
 don't matter to they which way as they do go ; 
 their jackets won't drag. Same wi' their ears. 
 How would 'em get on underground if they 
 had ears on 'em, set outside, like, same as 
 other craturs? No, I tell ye, they be reg'lar 
 made for the job o' burrowin', same as a bird 
 for flyin', or a fox for runnin', and they got 
 hard labour all their lives, they have, and no 
 ceasin'. 
 
 " And I'll tell ye another thing about they, 
 since we be talkin'. They be reg'lar made 
 for swimmin', same as they be for diggin'. 
 They got muscles on their arms stronger even 
 than any o' your'n, though their hands be 
 the greater wonders. Just look here. Stop a 
 minute." Young had got out his knife, bringing 
 with it from his pocket spare string and a 
 coil of wire almost as fine as thread. He 
 severed one of the mole's arms, and then laid 
 the hand open on the top of a gatepost. 
 
 " Look ye here," he said. " See the breadth 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 269 
 
 o' that hand. And why is it ? Why, here it 
 be, look. Ye see, he've got what might a'most 
 be called another finger, for he've got a bone 
 the shape of a sickle it be lodged along the 
 inside to broaden it out, while the paw itself 
 be set turned back. His nose '11 grout, for 
 he've got an extra bone at the tip o' his snout ; 
 and if his fore paws digs, his hinders pushes. 
 But it don't end ther', for with such hands on 
 him, he can swim amazin' wonderful fast ; ay, 
 faster nor a rat, a sight. 
 
 "And I'll tell ye what you never throws 
 one in a brook or river, as he goes across 
 never : always comes back. I've thrown in 
 scores alive, for they likes the water ; and I 
 never know'd one as didn't return from where 
 he'd come. Maybe as they know'd wer' 
 they'd corned from, and couldn't see across ; 
 maybe they didn't ; but however that be, 
 come back they always does. Ah ; anyone as 
 do follow our trade have got to know such 
 things. He be forced to know ; and not alone 
 what the cratur '11 do, but what he can do, 
 the same." 
 
270 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 The door of the cottage stood wide open, 
 and the sun was streaming in on the floor, 
 no less than through the lattice of an open 
 window that looked out the same way. Spring 
 had come round again and had touched its 
 zenith, for the hawthorn was in full flower and 
 the grass in the meadows was long. The day 
 was on the wane ; all the birds were singing ; 
 and when one ceased close at hand, you could 
 hear others farther off, and yet farther off still. 
 
 In the corner by the window, in a high- 
 backed chair, sat old man Young, and by his 
 side on a polished elm table lay a newspaper, 
 and on it his spectacles. 
 
 He was always ready for a talk, for visitors 
 were few. Most of those who had known him 
 long had passed on, and he himself had grown 
 to be something more than old man Young in 
 name. He was no longer " the mole-catcher," 
 and for more reasons than one. His sight had 
 begun to fail, for one thing, and his hands 
 showed very evident signs of gout ; and while 
 he had always appeared stiff, he looked stiffer 
 than ever now, and suffered much from rheu- 
 matism. He still kept most of his hair that 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 271 
 
 is, on his head and this retained its colour 
 and hung long, almost as ringlets over his ears. 
 By his side, on the window sill, stood a tumbler 
 filled with white lilac, the work of his niece, 
 Jessie, who saw to him in all ways and knew 
 well his love for flowers. 
 
 His voice still retained its high pitch, though 
 it had grown thin now, and quavered when he 
 spoke. But it would always lower a little in 
 tone and grow stronger when he worked back 
 in conversation to his old trade and calling. 
 Even his small grey eyes showed bright then, 
 and he never failed to speak with pride of his 
 great catches here and there. 
 
 " The most I ever ketched in one day wer 1 
 sixty-two ; that wer' the very best. All on 
 Mr. Rackstraw's farm. Took me from light 
 till dark. Just afore Christmas, it wer'. Kep' 
 on as long as I could see. O' course I ketched 
 two to three dozen in the day, times over again, 
 but that ther' wer' the very best I ever done." 
 And the old man chuckled at the thought. 
 
 " I believes as moles travels," he would say, 
 again. " Wull, I be sure as they does. They 
 does it in February, March, April. They'll 
 
272 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 come out o' the woods, and you may find 'em 
 in this field one day ; and the next they'll be 
 in the next, a-travellin' on, like. They moves 
 at daytimes, early ; don't do much o' nights in 
 that line ; never knew'd 'em do it then." 
 
 But at this date he also often talked of other 
 things, for he had come by very definite 
 opinions owing to the changes he had wit- 
 nessed on the land, and the things he had seen 
 in the course of a life that now numbered more 
 than threescore years and ten. 
 
 " What would 'a done my job up by now, if 
 I hadn't a-given it up myself, would 'a been 
 through the farmers and the rest not being no 
 longer able to pay for it. I've known twenty 
 go from just round here. Things have all 
 gone back ; and it's my belief that until the 
 land be cultivated again, ther' bain't no hope 
 for us. And if it wer' to be taken in hand now 
 it would be many a year afore it got back to 
 what it wus. We wants land, to work it our- 
 selves, and pay a fair rent : a man should pay 
 a fair rent always. And, mark me, ther' be 
 plenty as could afford a farm up to a hunderd 
 acres, as couldn't afford to tackle one o' two. 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 273 
 
 "We all has to live on the land in the end. 
 We can't all on us live on trades ; and if us 
 tried to, we'd come back to land in the finish. 
 Cultivate the land again : that's the remedy in 
 my belief. And don't ye ever forget as the 
 land breeds the healthiest men." 
 
 Then again he had his views about educa- 
 tion. " The schools are at fault, go where you 
 will," was the way he always put it. " Ther' 
 be too many fiddly fads in 'em ; that's what's 
 doin' the mischief. Then there's another thing. 
 There be too much doctorin', and too much 
 patent physics. When I gets a cold, I boils 
 myself a drop o' linseed, and keeps a-drinkin' 
 that. Or I gets and boils a few onions, and 
 takes 'em goin' to bed. Famous things they be. 
 But ther', linseed '11 check a'most any cold." 
 
 The visits to the old man were many during 
 that summer and autumn, and often on these 
 occasions he would relate facts about moles 
 that seem now worth recording. 
 
 For one thing, he said that he always looked 
 upon them as the most silent of animals, and 
 had never heard them utter a sound, night or 
 day. Their sense of smell, too, was wonder- 
 
274 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 fully developed. " Don't do to handle much 
 else when you be goin' trappin', for they 'ould 
 find of ye for certain," he would say. " They 
 never goes by hearing when they be huntin' 
 for food. They goes by scent. I be certain 
 of it. See here : I've often watched 'em 
 huntin' of an evening aboveground in the 
 months o' July and August. They be arter 
 the white slugs then. Wull, at such times, 
 I've seen 'em run their heads out, wind a lob, 
 and go for him. So they be bound to smell : 
 stands to reason. 
 
 " The lobs theirselves be not very different 
 o' their part, for they do hear, though folks 
 says as they don't. But I knows as they do ; 
 and I knows as it's true. When lob worms 
 hears 'em, they'll run right out in front of 'em ; 
 and then the moles '11 run right out arter them 
 in their turn, and fetch 'em in. Ah, they be 
 clever craturs, be moles ; wonderful clever, they 
 be. And they be always healthy animals, too. 
 Never know'd 'em die much o' anything, 
 though they'll suffer terrible in dry weather; 
 and die in heaps if it comes a drought in May. 
 The young are runnin' then, and they'll suffer 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 275 
 
 most, and die off at any rate should ther' come 
 a dry spring." 
 
 The end of January. A thaw had at length 
 followed a long frost, and the snow that had 
 been lying over the land had been cleared 
 by a heavy fall of rain. Mud and slush were 
 everywhere, and water might be heard running 
 in every ditch. To complete the general dis- 
 comfort for men and animals, the sun had 
 never shown all day ; the sky was the colour of 
 lead, and a keen north-east wind was blowing. 
 
 The cottage door was closed, and someone 
 had put a hayband along the sill outside to 
 keep out the draught. Inside, the little room 
 was warm enough, and a bright fire of wood 
 and coal was burning on the wide hearth, 
 where old man Young sat in his high-backed 
 chair, his hands upon his knees. It was no 
 time for flowers, but Young's niece had filled 
 a vase with a bunch of dried honesty, the 
 shining seedpods of which glowed like gold, 
 catching the light of the flames. 
 
 The old man looked up as the door opened. 
 
276 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 "Come in, come in," he said ; "and I be glad 
 to see ye that I be ! I sees as you got the 
 waistcoat on. Keep ye warm, do it? You 
 should 'a had a cap made o' them others ; but 
 there, I daresay such things be- out o' the 
 fashion now." 
 
 He rarely spoke of the moles latterly, or 
 seemed to care to do so. That part of his 
 life was closed, and his work done. What 
 seemed to interest him most was the contrast 
 of the present with the past ; and after the 
 manner of the aged, he was sure the past 
 was without doubt far the better of the two. 
 He had little faith in many of the changes 
 that had even then begun to make themselves 
 felt ; and he never ceased to regret the way 
 in which the land was going out of cultivation. 
 " Somethin' '11 have to be done somethin' ; 
 and that's sure or ther'll be ruin." 
 
 For the rest, he often appeared to be look- 
 ing ahead. Once, when Jessie had come in 
 to make up the fire, and left the room again, 
 he said, with a throw of the head, " It'll be 
 all hers, when I be gone, as you knows ; that 
 is, what's left on it, for seems to myself as; if 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 277 
 
 I'd hung on a sight longer than I thought I 
 'ould. And that have eated into the savin's 
 smartish," he added, letting his voice fall. 
 
 "'Taint a-goin' to be so very long now," 
 he said, on this particular day. " You knows, 
 don't ye ? Wull, you minds me a-tellin' on 
 ye about 'em always coming back, always. 
 Wull, I be goin' over, I tell ye goin' over 
 
 The remark struck the other as strange, 
 coming from such a quarter. Silence fell, 
 and the eyes were fixed upon the darkening 
 sky that presaged further heavy rain, or per- 
 haps a fall of snow. 
 
 Young noticed it, and with a flash of his 
 old humour, he broke in with quite another 
 note. 
 
 " What be lookin' out o' the winder for ? 
 Be ye afraid ye' 11 catch it from the missus 
 when ye get's home?" 
 
 Both laughed at the remark. 
 
 Beyond his usual leave-taking, " The best 
 o' health to ye, and good-night," those were 
 the last words that passed between the two. 
 
 The old man's niece came out to open the 
 gate, as if she had something to say. 
 
278 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 " I fear he's breaking fast, isn't he ? " 
 
 "Ay," she answered, " he's breaking faster 
 than many of you knows. It's only his spirit 
 as keeps him up and makes folks think dif- 
 ferent." 
 
 " He has always had his share of that." 
 
 "And more. His spirit be wonderful; he 
 don't complain." 
 
 "Not he." 
 
 " And he've worked hard, too, all his time ; 
 and there's some as '11 miss him when he's 
 gone." 
 
 "And with him will go another of the old 
 lot ; and what is more in these parts, if not 
 in others the last of his calling the very last." 
 
 "That's truth," came the answer with a 
 quivering of the lips. 
 
 The next moment Jessie Young had turned 
 her back ; and as she went round the corner 
 of the old house to enter by another door, 
 the last of the light showed that she had her 
 apron to her eyes. 
 
 In this old man Young the mole-catcher, 
 then, there was something lovable. 
 
THE LAST OF THE MOLE-CATCHERS 279 
 
 A few days later, the bell in the church- 
 tower that all knew as "our Tom" was beat- 
 ing out the tale of the years ; and someone 
 counting, made it seventy-seven. 
 
 And a year or two after that, one of a class, 
 known as "week-enders," had bought the 
 old house and ground ; had done it up, in 
 vulgar parlance ; and presently converted the 
 shedding at the back into a motor-house, with 
 a corrugated iron roof, left unpainted. 
 
 The spirit of the place was gone. 
 
VIII 
 LUKE 
 
 THERE was no mistaking him, even at a dis- 
 tance ; and there was perhaps less of misjudg- 
 ing his character, when you had once had 
 a talk with him. 
 
 Apart from having worked on the farm as 
 a boy, and come back to work on it again as a 
 full-grown man, Luke Hulle had done all the 
 more important part of the hedging here for 
 five and twenty years ; and as this farm 
 measured nigh seven hundred acres and the 
 fences looked well, it was fair to conclude 
 that he knew something of the art he practised. 
 
 He was a tall man, with a broad and honest 
 face, and his age was sixty-seven. His eyes 
 were dark and he had heavy eyebrows, and 
 the impression he gave a passer-by was that 
 if he received an order, his carrying it out to 
 the letter would be a dead sure thing. But 
 
LUKE 281 
 
 then he had served his time as a soldier, had 
 fought through two campaigns, the one in 
 India, the other in Egypt, and was proud of 
 having done so, as the two medals and the star 
 he always wore on Sundays plainly showed. 
 
 As a lad of eighteen he had wanted to 
 see something of the world, and having en- 
 listed in a marching regiment had seen it, 
 with much advantage to himself. He had 
 learnt what hardship really meant, as also the 
 meaning of that word climate. He had felt 
 what responsibility was on a still, dark night 
 on service, when there seemed to be no 
 danger near and the silence was so intense 
 that he could hear the beetles moving in the 
 thorns some yards away. 
 
 He was only a private soldier in those days, 
 doing sentry-go on outpost duty, with others 
 at a distance right and left in the darkness 
 and an army sleeping in the rear. But he had 
 seen the light of battle later in his comrades' 
 eyes ; had used the bayonet and the clubbed 
 rifle ; had heard men calling on their God 
 to end their lives and put a period to their 
 agony, while the blood ran and soaked into 
 
282 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 the sand, and each had to wait his turn. He 
 had taken his knocks, and doubtless given 
 them, though of this he never spoke ; had 
 seen and faced death in many forms, and 
 witnessed what cholera might do in an hour or 
 two. And having seen and learnt and done 
 such things for a shilling a day, less stoppages, 
 and a free ration, had returned to the country- 
 side and the cottage under the hill, to follow, 
 eventually his father's calling, to take his father's 
 place when he was gone, to marry the girl of 
 his heart, and respond to the call of the land. 
 
 Such had been a part of his round of life, 
 and now for a little over thirty years he 
 had worked on this seven-hundred acre farm, 
 doing most of the hedging for the greater part 
 of the time, taking a pride in his work, and 
 earning a character for straightness from the 
 farmer for whom he laboured, and the very 
 definite respect of the rest of the farm hands. 
 Character had come to the fore as always, 
 if stature and carriage had also, as always, lent 
 a hand : Luke Hulle was looked up to, and by 
 some was not a little feared ; and is so still. 
 
 He has never had any doubt about the land, 
 
LUKE 283 
 
 and is always quite sure that " it'll all come 
 right." But he has very definite doubts about 
 some of the younger folk to be found there, and 
 has but a poor opinion of "their goings on." 
 
 " There's plenty on 'em, these days, as 
 gets bezzling 1 about and looks shy at all 
 jobs." He was switching a tall whitethorn 
 fence as he spoke, a short clay pipe in his 
 mouth, the bowl of which was close beneath 
 his nose. " They won't learn," he continued, 
 after a slash or two with the long-handled 
 brush-hook, "and, what's more, don't want to 
 learn. Take such a job as this here. It's bad 
 yearly switchin' as does the damage, and 
 the not knowin' the form as a fence ought 
 to take. They won't be told not they! 
 Thinks they knows it all. Why, bless the 
 life on 'em, it do take from twelve to fifteen 
 year to rear a thorn hedge strong enough 
 to turn a bullock, or keep heavy stock where 
 you wants 'em, and nigh as long for a man 
 to get to the bottom of hedgin' well, for 
 that matter, there be allus summut to be 
 learnt at it, and every time as you has the 
 bill or the hook in yer hand." 
 
 1 Squandering money on drink. 
 
284 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 He had taken his pipe from his mouth 
 during the last sentences, and was using it in 
 his left hand to add emphasis to his remarks. 
 Had a stranger been present he might have 
 noticed, then, that the third and fourth fingers 
 of that hand were missing. The sight never 
 failed to recall the incident to the minds of 
 those who had known him many years, or the 
 way in which he set about combating the diffi- 
 culties that naturally followed, the facts being 
 worthy of mention here because they brought 
 out the man's character and added materially 
 to his reputation among those he worked with. 
 
 According to usual custom, the landlord 
 of this estate supplied his tenants with timber 
 in the rough for mending odds and ends, 
 though hanging- and falling-posts for gates, 
 and such like, were cut out in the timber 
 yard and subsequently fixed by the estate 
 carpenter and his man. A waggon had been 
 sent from the farm on this particular day, to 
 fetch some of all sorts, with two or three hands 
 to help load up, Luke being one of the number. 
 
 When on such errands he had often helped 
 with the new circular saw that the Squire had 
 
LUKE 285 
 
 erected, and was doing so on this occasion, 
 a gatepost being squared out of a stout oak 
 stick, and one or two pushing it forward on the 
 trolly till it came in touch with the saw. Saw- 
 dust was flying and the air in the open shed 
 was full of the finer dust ; the engine outside 
 working at a steady throb ; the voice of the 
 saw rising at times almost to a scream, then 
 falling to something approaching a growl when 
 it was brought to a stand altogether, with its 
 teeth buried deep in the heart of the oak. 
 
 When this thirty-six inch saw was running, 
 it was difficult to hear anything, the work 
 being done mostly by signal of head or hand. 
 The log had jammed in this case, and there- 
 fore had to be eased back a bit and then run 
 forward anew. Luke had his hand on the 
 butt end at the moment, and was pushing 
 with all his weight to help the sawyer. " Ease 
 her ! " cried the latter, seeing what was coming. 
 It was too late : the hungry teeth of the saw 
 ripped up through a bend in the stick, and 
 in a flash the two fingers of Luke's left hand 
 were gone. 
 
 At such a sight, three or four men by the 
 
286 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 bench turned and ran out into the lane, only, 
 however, to be pursued by Luke's voice calling 
 after them : " Where yer runnin' to, yer bally 
 fools ? Do you think as the saw's a-coming 
 arter yer ; or are yer afraid of a spot o' blood ? " 
 The very sight of these younger men behaving 
 in such a way appeared to make Luke forget 
 his injuries for the instant. He wrung the 
 blood from his mangled hand, and then watched 
 them in silence as they returned to the bench, 
 looking sheepish. 
 
 " I don't want to miscall anyun, nor any 
 o' you ; but yer shouldn't do that," was all 
 that he added ; and then asked one of the 
 number to "lend him a hand home." 
 
 He never appeared to feel the want of 
 those fingers in later days. By persistent 
 pluck he learnt how to make three do the 
 work of five ; and Nature, as usual, accom- 
 modated herself to circumstances and helped 
 the man of grit. Part of his hedger's outfit 
 consisted of a pair of hedge-trimming gloves 
 made of sheep's hide, and when a fence was 
 extra thick he often wore the left-hand one, 
 if not always the right. 
 
LUKE 287 
 
 The rest of his kit did not amount to much 
 a hedge-slasher, as he called his long-handled 
 brush-hook, a bill-hook for layering, and a 
 short axe for chopping down big stumps or for 
 cutting out stakes, which he explained " should 
 allus be four foot long and made o' ash, for 
 such do lasties longer." Then there was a 
 maul, "which some do call driver, but which 
 you minds you never calls mallet," for driving 
 these stakes, and lastly, the pair of gloves 
 aforesaid. 
 
 " But, lor' bless yer, it bain't the tools, it 
 be the knowledge as does it, though I be 
 not one to tell you as a hedger can get far 
 wi'out a good pair o' these here," he would 
 remark, showing you his gloves with pride. 
 " See how they be cut. Famous, ain't it ? 
 Left hand un reaches up to shoulder when 
 you straightens yer arm, look, and t'other 
 stops at the elbow to give your right arm 
 play. And I can tell you as a good pair 
 o' they do lay anyun in a smart few shillun, 
 they do." 
 
 He was always glad to talk about his work, 
 in that deep voice of his, being sometimes 
 
288 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 alone for as much as a week at a time. And 
 it was always good to watch him. His arms 
 were hard as steel, and to see him layering 
 a fence was a sight not exactly to be missed 
 by anyone interested in an art that is likely 
 soon to be forgotten on most farms. 
 
 "Cut yer layers as near as ye can to the 
 ground, and don't you layer again arter that 
 for so it be six to eight year," he would say. 
 Then with a powerful stroke with his tool, 
 keen as a carpenter's chisel, he would deal 
 a blow at the butt of a stout hawthorn stem, 
 of just sufficient force to sever it for bending 
 over, exactly as far as he wanted, and rarely 
 requiring to be repeated. 
 
 " But what's the sense of layerin' a fence, 
 and leaving it same as some does ? If you 
 wants to give un a chance, you must give 
 it protection ; and I says as they wants pro- 
 tectin' for three year arter ay, and careful 
 weedin' too. Keep your young hedges clean 
 o' weeds, though you be called on to weed 
 'em twice or thrice in the year. Thorn fencing, 
 first and last, costs money, mind yer ; and 
 you be just a-goin' the right way to throw 
 
LUKE 289 
 
 someun else's money away, unless the work 
 be protected in the first onset and cared for, 
 as I says, in the by and by." 
 
 Of the mysteries of switching, so as to leave 
 the top shoots to grow ; of always doing your 
 dressing with an upward stroke, to make the 
 hedge wedge-shaped ; of never touching a 
 young hedge, for trimming and dressing, till 
 it had been planted from four to five years ; 
 and of the judgment required in ribbing 
 of cutting the outgrowth, where it might be 
 too proud, back to the main stem all these 
 things he was ready to explain to anyone 
 who cared to listen. He was fond of the 
 work and proud of what he could show, often 
 remarking : " Wull, I be one o' they as be 
 fond of a bit o' hedgin' wonderfu' interestin' 
 it be : wull, I did allus take to it, from the 
 time I did follow the old hedgers about as a 
 boy, and studied what mi father done. 
 
 "Ay; and I'll tell yer more I car'd the 
 hedger's tricks wi' me when I put on the red 
 jacket ; and when we was out on the sands, 
 I warn't afeard o' they wait-a-bit thorns, and 
 showed a few o' the old company how 'em 
 
2QO THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 might be tackled to keep the fuzzies 1 out, 
 if so be they thought to rush us of a night, up 
 Nile way. Such things do come in usefu', times, 
 and a man do never know wher' he meut be. 
 
 " But for all that, and whether it be drainin' 
 at the first onset, plantin' or cleanin', or cuttin' 
 back like it or fancy it as you may it do 
 all want studying, and it have all got to be 
 done wi' judgment. There's plenty thinks 
 as it is to be knocked off anyhow in a day ; 
 but never you be in a hurry for one thing, 
 and that be to run a hedge up too fast ; it'll 
 come, it'll come, wi' decent treatment, and 
 do you a credit an' you wait. 
 
 " You're right ; all's of a hurry, these days. 
 And see the nonsense as some talks about 
 such things. 'Tain't as they means to lie ; 
 but they minds me, when I listens to 'em 
 and that bain't often o' they folk as comes 
 home market peert 2 o' Saturdays, wi' a tidy 
 drop o' cider in 'em. 
 
 " Ah ; you set such as they, as thinks they 
 knows you set such as they to fill gaps in 
 
 1 The nickname for the Arabs of the Sudan. 
 
 2 Cheerful. 
 
LUKE 291 
 
 a old hedge wi' livin' thorn, and then see 
 wher' he'll be. I hain't a-goin' to tell you 
 an untruth, and I can't go for to rightly say 
 as I never made a mistake at such a job 
 myself. But you may take my word for it, 
 as of all the jobs in a hedger's callin' that 
 be out and out the most tricky ; and the 
 work as some does in such directions '11 never 
 dure, nor be worth a farden piece neither. 
 Be all right for a day ; but come along and 
 look at un later and see whether the new stuff 
 have taken holt or no. It be just the same 
 wi' most things though, bain't it? There's 
 plenty o' folks as comes along wi' their long 
 talk and says they knows ; but it be all a lot 
 o' tales all a lot o' tales, and nothin' else." 
 
 He had just finished a hedge that had 
 wanted trimming for some time, and was 
 raking up the rubbish of brambles preparatory 
 to burning it. The more useful stuff he had 
 faggoted, and the piles of these, neatly built 
 up, stood at intervals along the fence ready 
 for carting ; the meadow here being for hay 
 this season, and the sooner they were off the 
 ground therefore the better. 
 
292 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 " Be most done now for this year. Hedgin' 
 proper do end in February, if trimmin' do go 
 on to March and now just a man's no right 
 to do it arter that. They'll be a-drawing o' 
 these here faggots, come Monday, and then 
 it'll be time to close the gates till hay cuttin'. 
 They faggots don't look amiss, though, do 
 'em ? Ah ; the work be right enough, but 
 there ain't the money in it as there be in 
 hedgin'. 
 
 " Now I'll tell yer. It be a rummish job 
 to earn more nor two-and-six a day faggoting, 
 and, for the matter o' that, better money be 
 very seldom to be won at it. My meanin' 
 be, as a man can't afford to do much gossipin' 
 when he've got such a job as that agate. 1 
 When there's such stuff as we got here yollum 
 suckers, mawple, a bit o' ash and such like 
 you cuts and draws it out first, and when your 
 hedging's done, you comes back to it for the 
 faggotin'. A shillun a score's the price, five 
 shillun th' hunderd. Fifty in the day be good 
 work ; so you can't, in usual, earn more than 
 your half-crown, yer see I knows as no man 
 1 So engaged. 
 
LUKE 293 
 
 can, 'wever, and stack 'em and all as 'em 
 should be. 
 
 " Days be for most part short when hedgin' 
 and faggotin' be on ; and there's plenty as 
 forgets that. But if you talks o' earnings, 
 hedgin', it be like this. If you was to ask 
 me, for instant, what I'd do such a hedge 
 as that un yonder for and that bain't one 
 o' ourn, mind yer, no fear! I should tell 
 you as I wanted seven-and-six the chain o' 
 twenty-two yards to do it, though o' course 
 I've took many a length myself at four 
 shillun, and less, and gone wrong over 'em 
 too. 
 
 " I bain't a-goin' to tell you as I haven't 
 a-done a chain in a day in my time, and 
 worked from seven to half arter five afore I 
 got through wi' it, too. But come the next, 
 maybe, I haven't a-done half a chain, nor 
 nothin' like it. You've got to break the 
 days in two to get at it, yer see, and if it 
 do work out at four shillun, you be lucky. 
 In the dead o' winter, days be short, and 
 the earnings then be most in general three- 
 and-six, and sometimes it be less. It ain't 
 
294 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 a lot when you counts in the tearin' o' your 
 clothes, be it ? not a lot, as you might say." 
 
 The month of March was drawing to an 
 end and the elms were clothing themselves 
 in pale green. Each day made a difference 
 in the appearance of the country, and each 
 week now would add to the number of the 
 flowers in the hedges and the visitors from 
 over the sea. The sun, too, was growing 
 in strength daily, and where it beat in full 
 warmth, white violets at the butts of these 
 great trees declared their presence by their 
 scent. Farther along, many tufts of prim- 
 roses were making their appearance among 
 the red and green leaves of the wild carrot, 
 with the stitchwort, the lords and ladies, 
 and the red dead-nettle. 
 
 A chiff-chaff one of the very first to 
 arrive was uttering his note from the lower 
 branch of one of the trees : higher up, a 
 pair of blue tits were carrying out a busy 
 search on the mightier limbs : higher up still, 
 rooks were busy with their nests, and some 
 were already laying : and higher yet again, 
 the north-west wind was sweeping a dark 
 
LUKE 295 
 
 blue sky white cloud-masses racing before 
 it, their shadows producing endless contrasts 
 on the vivid green wheat, the red of the 
 fallows, and violet woods beyond. The land 
 looked prosperous and gay. There was the 
 promise of a good season, the frosts having 
 done their work well, and the seed-time having 
 been perfect for the farmer. 
 
 Luke had got his fire to burn, and the 
 smoke was being caught by the wind and 
 blown across the meadow and into the next 
 field. His work as a hedger was over for 
 the season, and ere long he would be turning 
 his hand to other jobs. He had taken the 
 trouble to learn, and could be trusted to do 
 many things, from repairing a fence and set- 
 ting up posts and rails for the protection of 
 a new quick hedge, to building a wheatrick 
 and thatching it if wanted, or trussing out a 
 rick of hay. As a soldier he had had to fill 
 many places, from navvying to being three 
 parts a sailor, and now for thirty years on the 
 land he had set himself to pick up all he 
 could, and so to add to his weekly money by 
 learning certain arts that others were already 
 
296 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 beginning not to care to know. At trussing 
 out a rick, or tying boltings of straw twenty- 
 four to the thrave he always said he would 
 not take a beating from anyone ; and to watch 
 him at the former made those who stood by 
 wonder how he arrived at the proper weight 
 of a truss. He always answered with a laugh, 
 if asked, and generally in this fashion : 
 
 " You asks if these trusses be fifty-six 
 pounds each and forty to the ton ? Wull 
 I reckons as 'em be. 'Tis like this ; the 
 Master came along one day, and says as he 
 wanted 'em weighed very partic'lar awk'd 
 customer, s'pose. So I says to he, ' I don't 
 understands your scales so well,' I says; 'but 
 I understands mi own ; and you please to 
 come up when I've done and weigh any one 
 as you likes, and I'll wager as there's not one 
 as is two ounces out.' Nor wer' 'em. I knows 
 a'most exactly when I've tried the first, and 
 the size too. I judges arter that by scowl 
 o' brow." 
 
 He had arrived at his own way of doing 
 things, partly, perhaps, because of his maimed 
 hand, though he always admitted that his 
 
LUKE 297 
 
 father had taught him how to plant a hedge 
 and to make it take proper form as it grew, 
 or he would have never learnt to do the work 
 as it should be. 
 
 "There's things as you've got to be told, 
 and this here ain't to be picked up like thatchin' 
 and faggotin'," he remarked, when finishing 
 his work on this fence for the day. "It looks 
 more as it should, now, don't it? Nicely 
 dressed back, eh ? " 
 
 He was running his eye down the line of 
 great hedgerow elms, much as a soldier might 
 down a line of men deployed. " It'll last now 
 for six or eight year ; and who'll come along 
 and try their hand at it next time, God knows. 
 T'ould be a pity, now, to let 'em all go back, 
 though, 'ouldn't it? Or to let that ther' 
 barbed wirin' come in, what's a disfigerment 
 and a danger, too, to man an' beast. 
 
 " But ther', I oftentimes thinks the likes o' 
 that : gettin' on, yer see, and pretty near put 
 in my time towards final discharge. There be 
 changes comin over the land, too, and I can't 
 seem to get beyond 'em, somehows. The 
 young uns won't have it: got above it, or 
 
298 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 summut; and them as is older wants more 
 wages that's right enough, pervided they be 
 worth the money when the pay-night comes : 
 wants a lot o' other things, too, from what I 
 gathers of their talk ; but how it's all to be 
 managed I couldn't justly say." 
 
 Luke Hulle is not the only man who talks 
 in such a strain out here. The same words 
 are to be heard in the mouths of many. Men 
 like him still retain the traditions of the past, 
 and are linked to them in memory. They 
 have followed their fathers, heard their talk, 
 and have learnt from them the finer arts of 
 husbandry. A few among them can even 
 recall their grandfathers' stories of the far-off 
 days and what life on the land was then. 
 And by such means they have inherited some- 
 thing of the spirit of the old folk and brought 
 it down into the life of to-day ; though if asked 
 now about the morrow and the outlook that 
 way, many among them shake their heads. 
 
 " I did oftens go out to work at four in the 
 mornin', as a boy," Luke Hulle remarked one 
 day, when haymaking had begun and he was 
 busy mowing, "and plenty o' times did not 
 
LUKE 299 
 
 leave stable till seven o' evenings, But we 
 was happy, and didn't mind nothin'. There 
 wasn't the pride in them days as is now ; and 
 us meant workin'. There was a sight more 
 o' friendliness then as well folks did seem 
 more all alike, and not one above another ; 
 and us was content. But what be it now ? 
 Why now 'tis if one o 5 the youngsters hasn't 
 got three or four suits and three or four pairs 
 o' boots, they bain't satisfied. And what's 
 a-goin' to satisfy such as they ? 
 
 " I tell yer as they looks upon comin' on the 
 land as a punishment ; and what's more, there 
 be many o' the fathers o' the youngest on 'em 
 do look on it in the same fashion. Why, here's 
 my neighbour, Harry Clegg, a-talking of his 
 varmint of a son, says to me this way : ' Well, 
 if he don't turn over a new leaf soon, he'll go 
 straight on the farm, that's what he'll do 
 straight on the farm ! ' ' For why not ? ' says 
 I ; * 'tain't no disgrace in it, be ther' ? ' Or 
 look again at such sayin' as this. There's 
 Bill Brooks a-talkin' of his son 'listin', and 
 says : ' None of our family hasn't come to that 
 yet, and they bain't a-goin' to now the very 
 
300 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 idea ! ' I lets him have it a bit, arter that, and 
 Harry Clegg the same ; and now they knows 
 my leanings. 
 
 11 But, lor' bless yer, some o' the mothers 
 ain't no better, and aids and abets such foolish- 
 ness in 'em, if, for the matter of that, they ain't 
 afear'd on 'em. You knows as well as me as a 
 'ooman can lead a man a'most where she do 
 like. Can't a-been about the world a lot wi'out 
 havin' seen summut o' that. Ay ; seen scores 
 led away and brought to ruin wi' it, I have. 
 Wull, it be the same here. The lads about 
 knows as no girl '11 look at 'em while they 
 bides on a farm : don't lead to nothin', they 
 says : do lead, 'wever, to nothin' but hard 
 work, in a cottage stuck away alone, and no 
 variety. 
 
 " And there's plenty comes along and tells 
 'em the same, and talks o' the callin' o' the 
 land as the lowest o' the low. So the young 
 folks forgets the old as you might say, and all 
 as was in 'em ; dresses theirselves up, gets off 
 to the towns, and comes back wi' town manners 
 and town gait ; but the main of it be all sham, 
 just as it be all pride at bottom." 
 
LUKE 301 
 
 Luke spoke with a ring of contempt in his 
 voice. " You set any on 'em a job," he went 
 on, after one or two pulls at his pipe " you 
 set 'em a job, and you'll be sure to find as the 
 main on 'em as comes to farm work now be 
 melch-hearted and soon darnted. They bain't 
 out for all as can be picked up, in all manner 
 o' ways and for the main part o' the year, but 
 to molly for theirselves that be all. But I 
 can tell you and you knows as there be 
 hundreds done the same as when I begun, 
 I did work for nine shillun a week ay, and 
 since I been married. 
 
 " But that weren't my whole earnings ; no 
 fear ! Such as that 'ouldn't 'a done. I reckoned 
 the nine and ten shillun, and what it rose to, 
 wer just wet and dry money, and to be added 
 to by any industrious man. Why, take this 
 job as I be at now ; I don't mind a-tellin' of 
 yer as I be taking a guinea a week at it. And 
 what about the hedgin' and ditchin' in winter 
 times, at so much the chain, accordin' to what 
 it be ? Or what about overtime and piecework 
 at such jobs as cuttin' out and hoeing turnips, 
 or the wheat and the beans and the barley, 
 
302 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 come the spring months ; or the hay as we be 
 at now ? 
 
 " And then, look you again at when the corn 
 harvest do begin. 'Tis true as the main be 
 cut, these days, with the binder ; but it ain't 
 every season as that can be worked, especial' 
 when the weather's been rough and the crop 
 has got laid and twisted. It ain't all over with 
 sickle and the hook and the scythe yet awhile, 
 for I've seed a farmer pay as high as fourteen 
 and fifteen shillun an acre to get his wheat cut 
 the best way as he could, and since them 
 'nation machines come in. 
 
 11 But who do yer think be a-goin' to cut it 
 now ? Do you think many of them as comes 
 out here as a last resort, as you might say, 
 knows how to work a sickle and a hook, much 
 less such a tool as this here ? I tell yer there's 
 gettin' few now as can use a scythe, or knows 
 the grass-nail from the pole-ring, or the nibs 
 from the snead, 1 just as there be gettin' few as 
 can do hunderds o' other jobs as is wanted on 
 every farm, don't matter where it be. 
 
 "Tis like this we farm hands be skilled 
 
 1 Nibs are the handles, and the snead (sometimes, snathe) is 
 the curved pole to which the blade is fixed. 
 
LUKE 303 
 
 hands, though other folks doesn't seem to 
 reckon as 'tis so. And it be just here as they 
 as comes along finds as there be more to be 
 learnt than 'em thought for. They don't like 
 it neither ; it be too rough for 'em, and by 
 rights they've no business here at-all. But 
 they wants the same higher wages, all the 
 same, and wet or dry, as the sayin' is, and as 
 though 'em knew'd all about it and was fit to 
 do piecework and make their overtime. 
 
 " They says as livin's dearer. And so it 
 be, some ways. And they says again as there 
 bain't the piecework or variety as was to be 
 had in times gone by. Wull, there's plenty o' 
 tools gone out o' use in my time, and there be 
 a sight more machinery and not the labour 
 wanted as ther' was. And that's true again. 
 But I says this if a man do like to learn the 
 things as a farmer can never do without, never, 
 and leave the leaden socks at home as he've 
 sometimes got in his, shoes, there's as good 
 money to be won on the land as anywheres, and a 
 deal healthier life to be gotten at the same time. 
 
 " I know right enough, as with some as 
 muddles on out here, though the fixed wage, 
 
304 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 apart from earnings, be a quarter again as high as 
 it wer' when I first come back, as they be worse 
 off now than us was then. When mi father 
 wer' livin' us had a tidy-sized garden and a good 
 piggery, and a good house at eighteenpence. 
 And us had two pigs : killed one, and he helped 
 to pay the rent ; brought t'other in house, and 
 rubbed the salt in un of evenings, famous ; and 
 with that, and a bit earned harvestin' and 
 piecework, us often did uncommons nicely. 
 
 "And I'll tell yer another thing there 
 weren't half the sickness them days as there be 
 now. What us did eat wer' good : the bread 
 wer' home made, every crust on it ; and the 
 bacon home cured ; and so we knew'd what 
 was in the lot, like, and what we was a-puttin' 
 inside. We didn't want so much, neither ; nor 
 look for so much, them days. Why, many's 
 the time I've come home with a packet o' rush- 
 lights and an ounce o' tea ; and that had to 
 last a week " and Luke laughed loudly at the 
 thought ; " but we was happier then than some 
 ever will let 'emselves be now, for us wer' 
 content, and ther' weren't so much pride and 
 gaddin' and the rest as ther' be these days. 
 
LUKE 305 
 
 " My grandfather ever talk of the hungry 
 'forties, you asks ? Ah times ; and what's 
 more, mi father done the same. And they did 
 allus say this ' We did live and wer' merry, 
 and so meut you be. Don't you be upstart : if 
 you be offered a job, no matter what it be 
 take and do it.' Grandfather did only laugh, 
 bless yer, when he spoke o' them times, and 
 'ould allus finish, same as this ' Us did live 
 what more did ye want ? ' They bain't like 
 that now leastways, not a lot bain't. 
 
 " Ah," he continued after a pause, " they 
 old folk God bless 'em! Kep' on at it all 
 their time, they did ; and you may take this as 
 Bible truth, you may work wer* bred in 'em, 
 I tell yer, and wi' folks o' their metal, it wer' a 
 great denial to 'em when they was forced to 
 give over and felt as they was falterin '." * 
 
 There was silence after that for a while. 
 Luke whetted his scythe with the stone he 
 carried at his back in a belt, and then went to 
 work with a six-foot swing at the tall, rank 
 grass close at hand. His job at the moment 
 was to cut out the corners and awkward places 
 where the machine could not reach, and in the 
 
 1 Failing in health. 
 
 U 
 
306 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 very same meadow in which he had done the 
 hedging three months before. There was a 
 crop here of two tons to the acre, if it could be 
 got in well. The cocksfoot grew rank and 
 high in the shade beneath the elms ; but 
 farther out in the meadow the sun shone on a 
 myriad buttercups and clover heads, and the 
 warm winds of June played with the finer 
 grasses and drew the scents from the countless 
 flowering plants that go to make rich herbage. 
 
 The wind, at the moment, was sending an 
 endless succession of grey-green ripples cours- 
 ing across the field, and when it reached the 
 boundary hedge, it passed on over, to play in 
 turn with the wheat not yet in ear, but which 
 was going to return, later on, a yield such as no 
 other land in the world could boast. A stretch 
 of pink sanfoin lay beyond that, and then a field 
 of oats and another of late-sown barley. From 
 there, the land dipped towards the south, and 
 arable met grass again in the form of orchards, 
 where cider and perry fruit grew, where milch 
 cows were grazing, and sheep lay asleep in the 
 shade. 
 
 There was nothing wrong with this soil. 
 
LUKE 307 
 
 The very trees in the hedgerows proclaimed its 
 richness, no less than the herbage in the 
 meadows and the colour of the soil of the summer 
 fallows. To look over it from this rising 
 ground was to let the eye wander across a wide 
 vale, rich and well watered ; where farming had 
 reached a high standard, and where not so long 
 ago there was much prosperity. 
 
 The growing crops under the hand of the 
 June sun were full of promise : the sound of the 
 grass-cutters, far and near, proclaimed that the 
 hay harvest had begun : in a day or two the 
 first ricks would be building in many a yard, 
 filling the air with the scent of the new-mown 
 hay : from now onwards, all hands would be 
 busy, good money being earned and won, till 
 the orchard fruit was carted in the mellow sun- 
 light of October and the ingathering closed for 
 the year. Yet, for some reason, the lilt in the 
 air was not that of yore, and there was a 
 shadow on this land of which all who walked 
 these fields were fully conscious. What was 
 the hidden secret ? And if secret there were, 
 where was the remedy ? Was there something 
 wrong on the land ? 
 
308 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 Luke went on with his mowing, and the 
 heavy swathes fell before his scythe ; but the 
 mind of the one who watched him went back 
 to the words he had uttered, the silence only 
 broken by the sweep of the broad blade in the 
 tough grass. There was much of truth in 
 them ; but they did not tell the whole story. 
 The conditions ruling in one district, and even 
 in the same county, are no certain index of 
 what may be happening in another close at 
 hand. There are fair farms and poor, well- 
 placed and ill. There are many billets on the 
 land for the labourer that are certainly not 
 without their advantages and opportunities, as 
 there are others in plenty where there is little 
 to be looked for beyond the slender weekly 
 wage, the struggle to make the two ends meet 
 where the soil is as poor as the man who farms 
 it, and the home of the owner is closed. There 
 is no hiding such things as these last. The 
 evidence is patent to every casual passer-by 
 who cares to use his eyes. 
 
 Luke has cut out his corner under the great 
 
LUKE 309 
 
 trees, and the swathes of dew-laden grass, the 
 nettles and the docks, lie limp in his track. 
 His shirt is open at the neck and chest, and he 
 takes off his hat and wipes the sweat from his 
 forehead with the back of his arm ; the evening 
 being sultry and the air without movement. 
 
 He stands for a moment, looking up at the 
 heavens, westward, where the sun is sinking 
 behind breadths of violet cloud. Then he calls 
 to that other, " Ther' be the look in the sky 
 of fallin' weather, I'm thinkin' : see how the sun 
 be sroudin' 1 yonder." 
 
 His eyes turned after that from the heavens 
 to the land. For a moment he was silent. 
 Then he picked up a handful of the cool, newly- 
 mown grass, and began wiping the bright blade 
 of his scythe. 
 
 "Ah the land!" he exclaimed at last. 
 " Ther' be nothin' wrong wi' the land, if 
 summut be wrong out here. There be a old 
 sayin' along o' we, as everyone knows what to 
 do with a bad wife except the man as has got 
 her ; and there be wiseacres enough in these 
 
 1 Sometimes, "shrouding" the term used to describe the 
 rays of the sun, when slanting downwards like the shrouds of a 
 ship. 
 
3io THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 days, for sure. But what I says is and I'll 
 say it to my dying day as there is them as 
 means to make England lick the dust, and 
 unless summut's done to 'tice the young folk 
 back to wher' they should be, and learn 'em 
 when they've got 'em ther', it'll be just useless 
 to cast round this way for recruits." 
 
 He pulled himself up for a moment at this 
 point, and then added with a tightening of the 
 lips and a certain fire in his eyes, " I bain't 
 a-going to say, mind yer, as we shan't be there, 
 all the same." 
 
 Is the spirit of the old folk dead ? It could 
 hardly be so, if men like Luke are to be found. 
 Once more we recall the old hands their 
 sense of duty, their virility, their apparent 
 love of work for work's sake, the way in which 
 they faced circumstances that might well have 
 made their forbears, if not they themselves, 
 doubt whether there was a God in heaven for 
 the poor, or any justice on this earth : once 
 again there rise up before the mind the faces 
 of old friends who went about their humble 
 duties with something akin to a sense of 
 honour, and always without complaint or 
 
LUKE 311 
 
 thought of grumbling. We hear them laugh- 
 ing yet again when recalling the incidents of 
 their lives and the hardships of the far-off 
 days ; and as we retrace our steps in memory, 
 the question repeats itself in other form Is 
 the spirit dead that once was theirs ? 
 
 The answer need not remain in doubt. No 
 wide experience is here in any way claimed. 
 But if lifelong associationship with the labourer 
 on the land if familiarity with something of 
 the inner lives of those who work here, and 
 will continue so to do, till, in Luke Hulle's 
 phrase, they put in for their final discharge 
 if such gives the smallest title to reply, the 
 words can take but one form. 
 
 Tradition has not been lost. Something of 
 the old spirit has been handed down. Go 
 where one may, whether to the lonely sheep- 
 fold on the downs, out on to the bleak hills, or 
 to the tail of the plough in the heavy soil of 
 this vale, the old spirit is found to be alive in 
 many an instance still. More rare it may be ; 
 coloured by the conditions of these later days 
 it must of necessity be ; but it lives, and all 
 that it requires that it may not vanish alto- 
 
312 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD FOLK 
 
 gether is careful fostering by the wisest means 
 that may be found. While it remains in 
 evidence on the country-side, the Nation stands 
 for every reason rich in the first of its recruit- 
 ing grounds. Will the Nation let the spirit of 
 the old folk die ? 
 
 THE END 
 
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