Jest let a feller know;
Ef it strikes you as it likes you,
Answer yes or no.
The judges, however, followed, if (two being “varmers”) they did not
thoroughly sympathise with, the obvious feeling of the crowded room.
The patriotic songs, I noticed, had quite changed their character. They
never were of the vulgar jingo kind in Wessex, but there used to be much
of the old Dibdin and tow-row,-row ring about them. “The Poor Little
Soldier Boy” may be taken as a specimen of the new style. His father
dies of wounds; he ’lists; comes home; is discharged; wanders
starving, till, opposite a fine gate, he sinks down, asking the unknown
inmates how they will like to find him, “dead at their door in the
morn.” At this crisis a lady appears, who takes him in and provides for
him for life. The only lines I carried away were from a song even more
pacific in tone than “The Poor Little Soldier Boy.” They ran:--
Ef I wur King o’ France,
Or, better, Pope o’ Rome,
I’d hev no fightin’ men abroad,
Nor weepin’ maids at home.
But there was an approach to “waving the flag” amongst the women, one of
whom, a strapping damsel, sang:--
We’ve got the strength of will,
And old England’s England still,
And every other nation knows it--“rather”!
which word “rather” ended every verse of a somewhat vulgar ditty. She
did not get the prize, nor did the matron whom I fixed on as the
winner, who sang without a hitch a monotonous and, I began to think,
never-ending ballad on the rivalries of “young Samuèl” and one
“Barnewell” for the graces of an undecided young woman. The attention
with which this somewhat dreary narrative was listened to deceived me,
for the prize went, without public protest, to a young woman of whose
song I could not catch a line, though I could just gather that it was
feebly sentimental. My impression is that it was her bright eyes, and
pretty face and figure, that carried it with the judges, rather than her
singing. If I am right, it will neither be the first nor last time that
the prizes in this world fall to _tes beaux yeux_.
The school faces the upper end of the village green, and I left it so
crowded that it was a wonder how the dancers could get along at all
with their polkas and handkerchief dances, the latter a kind of country
dance, which were the only ones in vogue. When I got out, I saw lighted
booths at the other end of the green, and went down to inspect. It was a
melancholy sight.
There was the publican’s dancing-booth without a soul in it. One swing
only was occupied in the neighbouring acrobatic apparatus, and the
round-about was motionless. The gipsies were there, ready and eager to
tell fortunes, and with a well-lighted alley for throwing at cocoa-nuts
with bowls rather larger than cricket-balls--the most modern and popular
substitute, I am told, for skittles. There they were, but not a customer
in sight, the only human being but myself being the solitary county
policeman, who patrolled the green with most conscientious regularity,
only slackening his pace for a moment or two as he passed under the
bright open windows of the schoolroom, from which the merry dance-music
came streaming out into the moonlight. I could almost find it in my
heart to pity the publican and gipsies, so overwhelming did their defeat
seem, for not a glass of beer had been allowed all day in the vicar’s
fields, where the cricket-match had been played and all the races
run, on milk, tea, or aerated waters. The whole stock of these last
beverages, supplied from the “Hope Coffee Room,” which has faced the
public-house on the village green now for about three years, was drunk
out before the dancing ended and the school closed on “veast” night, to
the exceeding joy of the vicar’s niece and her lieutenants, two bright
Cornish damsels, handy, devoted, and ardent teetotalers. These three
have been fighting the publicans since 1886, when they started the “Hope
Coffee Room,” supplied with bread, butter, and cakes from the vicarage,
and aerated drinks and light literature, all, I take it, at something
under cost price, though this the three ardent damsels will by no means
admit. The vicar, who is no teetotaler himself, shrugs his shoulders
laughingly, plays his fiddle, pays the bills, and lets them have their
own way, with an occasional protest that some night he shall have his
barn and ricks burnt. There is, however, no real danger of this, as he
has lived with and for his poor for more than thirty years with scarcely
one Sunday’s break, and gipsy or publican would get short shrift who
damaged him or anything that is his. I found him quite ready to admit
the great improvement which is apparent in the “veast,” as in many other
phases of rustic life, though he cannot get over, or look with anything
but dislike and distrust at, the cramming and examining system, which,
as he mourns, embitters the only time in the lives of his poor children
which used to be really happy, when they could play about on the village
green and in the lanes regardless of Inspector and Government grant.
Nor am I sure that he does not look with regret at the disappearance
of cudgel-playing and wrestling out of the programme of the yearly
“Veast-Sports.” Cricket, fine game as it is, does hot bring out quite
the same qualities. No doubt there were now and then bad hurts in those
sports, and fights afterwards; but these came from beer, and might
happen just as easily over cricket. So he muses, and I rather
sympathise. As has been well sung by the ould gamester:--
Who’s vor a bout O’ vrendly plaay,
As never should to anger move,