prescriptions for their poorer patients; they used to keep two or three
mixtures always made up ready in great jars, and ladle them out. There
was the bread and cheese mixture, very often called for, as the ailments
of the labourers are commonly traceable to a heavy diet of cheese. As an
old doctor used to say when he was called to a cottage, 'Hum; s'pose
you've been eating too much fat bacon and cabbage!' Another was the club
mixture, called for about May, when the village clubs are held and extra
beer disturbs the economy. In factory towns, where the mechanics have
dispensaries and employ doctors, something of the same sort of story has
got about at the present day. The women are constantly coming for physic,
and the assistants are stated to gravely measure a little peppermint and
colour it pink or yellow, which does as well. Great invalids with long
pockets, who have paid their scores of guineas and gone the round of
fashionable physicians, do not seem to have received much more benefit
than if they had themselves chosen the yellow or pink hue of their tinted
water. It is wonderful what value the country poor set on a bottle of
physic; they are twice as grateful for it as for a good dinner. Some of
the doctors of old are said to have had an eye for an old book, or an old
clock, or an old bit of furniture or china in the cottage, and when the
patient was recovering they would take a fancy to it and buy it at their
own valuation, for of course the humble labourer was obliged to regard
such a wish as a command. The workhouse system puts the labourer
completely under the thumb of the clergyman and the doctor. It was in
this way that many good old pieces of work gradually found their
destination in great London collections. Once now and then, however, the
eager collector would come across some one independent, and meet with a
sharp refusal to part with the old china bowl. The wife of a small farmer
naively remarked about the tithes, 'You know it is such a lot to pay, and
we never go there to church; you know it is too far to walk.' It was not
the doctrine to which she objected--it was the paying for nothing; paying
and never having anything. The farmers, staunch upholders of Church and
State, are always grumbling because the clergy are constantly begging.
One man took a deep oath that if the clergyman ever came to his house
without asking for money he would cut a deep notch with his knife in the
oaken doorpost. Ten years went by, still more years, and still no notch
was cut. Odd things happen in odd places. There is a story of an old
mansion where a powerful modern stove was put in an ancient hearth under
a mantelpiece supported by carved oak figures of knights. The unwonted
heat roasted the toes of these martyrs till their feet fell off. Another
story relates how in our grandfathers' days a great man invited his
friends to dinner, promising them a new dish that had never before been
set upon the table. The fillet came in on the shoulders of several men,
and when the cover was removed, lo an actress in a state of nature! One
farmer lent his friend his dogcart. Time went on, and the dogcart was not
returned; a year went by, still no cart. Country people are very peculiar
in this respect, and do not like to remind their friends of obligations.
Two years went by, and still no return, though the parties were in
constant intercourse. I have known people borrow a hundred pounds in the
country, and debtor and creditor meet several times a week for years, and
nothing said about it on either side. No strained relations were
caused--it seemed quite forgotten till executors came. Three years went
by, still no dogcart, though it was seen daily on the roads in use. I was
driving with a man once when we met a woman walking, and as we passed she
put up her umbrella so as not to be able to see us. 'That's So-and-so,'
said he; 'they borrowed some money from me a long time ago; they have
never said anything about it. Whenever she meets me she always puts up
her umbrella so as not to see me.' Four years went by, and still no
dogcart. By this time it was looking shabby and getting shaken by rough
usage; perhaps they did not like to return it in such a condition. Five
years went by, and after that they seem to have lost all count of the
dogcart, which faded away like a phantom. One farmer had been telling
another something which his companion seemed to consider doubtful, and
disputed; however, he finished up by saying, 'That's no lie, I can assure
you.' 'Well, no; but I should certainly have taken it as such.' One
fellow happening by chance in the hunting-field to come across the Prince
of Wales, took off his hat with _both_ hands to express his deep
humility. Here is a cottage nursery rhyme, genuinely silly:--
Right round my garden
There I found a farden,
Gave it to my mother
To buy a little brother,
Brother was so cross
Sat him on a horse,
Horse was so randy
Gave him some brandy,
Brandy was so strong
Put him in the pond,
Pond was so deep
Put him in the cradle and
rocked him off to sleep.
It is curious that there seems to be a distinct race of flat heads among
the cottagers; the children look as if the front part of the head had
been sat upon and compressed. Straw hats, the common sort, seem to be
made to fit these shallow crowns. In some parts they cook dates; others
cook oranges, making them into dumplings and also stewing them. These are
favourite sweets. To go out singing from door to door at Christmas is
called wassailing--a relic of the ancient time when wassail was a common
word. When I was a boy, among other out-of-the-way pursuits, I took an
interest in astrology. The principal work on astrology, from which all
the others have been more or less derived, is Ptolemy's 'Tetrabiblos,'
and there, pointing out the mysterious influence of one thing upon
another, it mentions that the virtues of the magnet may be destroyed by
rubbing it with garlic. This curious statement has been thrown against
Ptolemy and held to invalidate his theories, because upon experiment
garlic is not found to affect the magnet. Possibly, however, the plant
Ptolemy meant may not have been the plant we now call garlic, for there
is nothing so uncertain as the names of plants. There is a great
confusion, and it is difficult to identify with certainty apparently
well-known herbs with those used by the ancients. Possibly, too, the
experiment was performed in a different manner. It happened one day, many
years after reading this, I chanced to be talking to a village clockmaker
about watches. We were discussing what a difficulty it was sometimes to
get a watch to go right. I said I had heard that watches sometimes got
magnetised, and went on in the most erratic manner until the magnetism
was counteracted. Ah yes, he said, he recollected a case in the shop
where he learnt his trade; they had a watch brought to them which had got
magnetised, and he believed the influence was at last removed by the use
of onions. Instantly memory ran back to Ptolemy's garlic; perhaps after
all there was something in his statement; at all events, it is very
curious that the subject should come up again in this unexpected way, in
the darkness, as it were, of a village where the very name of the great
mathematician was unknown. The clockmaker fumbled with an anecdote, and
tried to tell me of another sort of magnetism which had got into a watch.
The watch would not keep time, nothing would make it; till by-and-by it
occurred to him to suggest to the owner to wind it up at breakfast-time
instead of at night. For he fancied the owner became a little magnetised
himself at night over the genial bowl, and so was irregular in winding
his watch.
FIELD WORDS AND WAYS.
The robin, 'jolly Robin!' is an unlucky bird in some places. When the
horse-chestnut leaves turn scarlet the redbreast sings in a peculiarly
plaintive way, as if in tone with the dropping leaves and the chill air
that follows the early morning frost. You may tell how much moisture
there is in the air in a given place by the colours of the autumn leaves;
the horse-chestnut, scarlet near a stream, is merely yellowish in drier
soils. Cock robin sings the louder for the silence of other birds, and if
he comes to the farmstead and pipes away day by day on a bare cherry tree
or any bough that is near the door, after his custom, the farmer thinks
it an evil omen. For a robin to sing persistently near the house winter
or summer is a sign that something is about to go wrong. Yet the farmer
will not shoot him. The roughest poaching fellows who would torture a dog
will not kill a robin; it is bad luck to have anything to do with it.
Most people like to see fir boughs and holly brought into the house to
brighten the dark days with their green, but the cottage children tell
you that they must not bring a green fir branch indoors, because as it
withers their parents will be taken ill and fade away. Indeed the
labouring people seem in all their ways and speech to be different,
survivals perhaps of a time when their words and superstitions were the
ways of a ruder England. The lanes and the gateways in the fields, as
they say, are 'slubby' enough in November, and those who try to go
through get 'slubbed' up to their knees. This expresses a soft, plastic,
and adhesive condition of the mud which comes on after it has been
'raining hop-poles' for a week. The labourer has little else to do but to
chop up disused hop-poles into long fagots with a hand-bill--in other
counties a bill-hook. All his class bitterly resent the lowering of wages
which takes place in winter; it is a shame, they say, and they evidently
think that the farmers ought to be forced to pay them more--they are
starvation wages. On the other hand, the farmer, racked in every
direction, and unable to sell his produce, finds the labour bill the most
difficult to meet, because it comes with unfailing regularity every
Saturday. A middle-aged couple of cottagers left their home, and the wife
told us how they had walked and walked day after day, but the farmers
said they were too poor to give them a job. So at last the man, as they
went grumbling on the highway, lost his temper, and hit her a 'clod' in
the head, 'and I never spoke to him for an _hour_ afterwards; no, that I
didn't; not for an hour.' A clod is a heavy, lumping blow. Their home was
'broad' of Hurst--that is, in the Hurst district, but at some little
distance.
'There a' sets' is a constant expression for there it lies. A dish on the
table, a cat on the hearth, a plough in the field, 'there a' sets,' there
it is. 'No bounds' is another. It may rain all day long, 'there's no
bounds;' that is, no knowing. 'I may go to fair, no bounds,' it is
uncertain, I have not made up my mind. A folk so vague in their ideas are
very fond of this 'no bounds;' it is like the 'Quien sabe?' of the
Mexicans, who knows? and accompanies every remark. An avaricious person
is very 'having;' wants to have everything. What are usually called
dog-irons on the hearth are called brand-irons, having to support the
brand or burning log. Where every one keeps fowls the servant girls are
commonly asked if they can cram a chicken, if they understand how to
fatten it by filling its crop artificially. 'Sure,' pronounced with great
emphasis on the 'su,' like the 'shure' of the Irish, comes out at every
sentence. 'I shan't do it all, sure;' and if any one is giving a
narration, the polite listener has to throw in a deep 'sure' of assent at
every pause. 'Cluttered up' means in a litter, surrounded with too many
things to do at once. Of a little girl they said she was pretty, but she
had 'bolted' eyes; a portrait was a good one, but 'his eyes bolt so,
meaning thereby full, staring eyes, that seem to start out of the head. A
drunken man, says the poor wife, is not worth a hatful of crab apples.
The boys go hoop-driving, never bowling. If in any difficulty they say,
'I hope to match it out to the end of the week,' to make the provisions
last, or fit the work in. Most difficult of all to express is the way
they say yes and no. It is neither yes nor no, nor yea nor nay, but a
cross between it somehow. To say yes they shut their lips and then open
them as if gasping for breath and emit a sort of 'yath' without the 'th,'
more like 'yeah,' and better still if to get the closing of the lips you
say 'em' first--'em-yeah.' The no is 'nah' with a sort of jerk on the h;
'na-h,' This yeah and nah is most irritating to fresh ears; you do not
seem to know if your servant has taken any notice of what you said, or is
making a mouth at you in derision.
The farmers are always complaining that the men crawl through their work
and put no energy into anything, just as if they were afraid to use their
hands. More particularly, if there is any little extra thing to be done,
they could not possibly do it. A wheat rick was threshed one day, and
when it was finished in the afternoon there were the sacks in a great
heap about twenty or thirty yards from the barn. So soon as the rick was
finished, the men asked for their money as usual, when the farmer said he
wanted them to carry the sacks into the barn before they left. Oh no,
they couldn't do that. 'Well, then,' said he, 'I can't pay you till you
have done it.' No, they couldn't do it, couldn't be expected to carry
sacks of wheat across the rickyard and into the barn like that, it was
too much for any man to do; why couldn't he send for the cart? The farmer
replied that the cart was two miles away, engaged in other labour; the
night was coming on, and if it rained in the night the wheat would be
damaged. No, they couldn't do it. The farmer would not pay them, and so
the dispute continued for a long time. At length the farmer said, 'Well,
if you won't do it, perhaps you will at least help me as far as this:
will you lift up a sack and place it on another high enough for me to get
it on my back, and I will myself carry them to the barn?' So small a
favour they could not refuse, and having raised up a sack for him in this
manner, he took it on his back and made off with it to the barn. He was
anything but a strong man--far less able to carry a sack of wheat than
the labourers--but determined not to be beaten. He carried one sack, then
another and another, till he had got eight safely housed, when on coming
back for the ninth he met a labourer with a sack on his back, shamed into
giving assistance. After him a second man took a sack, and one by one
they all followed, till in about half an hour all the wheat was in the
barn. This is the spirit in which they work if the least little
difficulty occurs, or they are asked to do anything that varies from what
they did yesterday or the day before, they cannot possibly accomplish it.
Since, however, the farmers have been unable to sell their produce and
winter wages have gone down, and work is scarce, the position of the
labourer is a very dull one, and it is feared the present winter will be
a hard time for many homes. Numbers talk of emigrating, and some have
taken the first step, and will sell their furniture and leave a land
where neither farmer nor labourer has any hope. One middle-aged cottage
woman, married, kept harping upon the holiday they should have during the
voyage to America. That seemed to her the great beauty of emigration, the
great temptation. For ten days, while the voyage lasted, she would have
nothing to do, but could rest! She had never had such a holiday in all
her life. How hard must be the life which makes such a trifling
circumstance as a week's rest appear so heavenly!
COTTAGE IDEAS.
Passing by the kitchen door, I heard Louisa, the maid, chanting to a
child on her knee:
Feyther stole th' Paason's sheep;
A merry Christmas we shall keep;
We shall have both mutton and beef--
_But we won't say nothing about it_.
To rightly understand this rhyme you must sing it with long-drawn
emphasis on each word, lengthening it into at least two syllables; the
first a sort of hexameter, the second a pentameter of sound:
Fey-ther sto-ole th' Paa-son's sheep.
The last line is to come off more trippingly, like an 'aside.' This old
sing-song had doubtless been handed down from the times when the
labourers really did steal sheep, a crime happily extinct with cheap
bread. Louisa was one of the rare old sort--hard-working, and always
ready; never complaining, but satisfied with any food there chanced to
be; sensible and sturdy; a woman who could be thoroughly depended on. Her
boxes were full of good dresses, of a solid, unassuming kind, such as
would wear well--a perfect wardrobe. Her purse was always well supplied
with money; she had money saved up, and she sent money to her parents:
yet her wages, until late years, had been small. In doing her duty to
others she did good to herself. A duchess would have been glad to have
her in her household. She had been in farmhouse service from girlhood,
and had doubtless learned much from good housewives; farmers' wives are
the best of all teachers: and the girls, for their own sakes, had much
better be under them than wasting so much time learning useless knowledge
at compulsory schools.
Freckles said, when he came in,
He never would enter a tawny skin,
was another of her rhymes. Freckles come in with summer, but never appear
on a dark skin, so that the freckled should rejoice in these signs of
fairness.
Your father, the elderberry,
Was not such a gooseberry
As to send in his bilberry
Before it was dewberry.
Some children are liable to an unpleasant complaint at night; for this
there is a certain remedy. A mouse is baked in the oven to a 'scrump,'
then pounded to powder, and this powder administered. Many ladies still
have faith in this curious medicine; it reminds one of the powdered
mummy, once the great cure of human ills. Country places have not always
got romantic names--Wapse's Farm, for instance, and Hog's Pudding Farm.
Wapse is the provincial for wasp.
Country girls are not all so shrewd as Louisa: we heard of two--this was
some time since--who, being in service in London, paid ten shillings each
to Madame Rachel for a bath to be made beautiful for ever. Half a
sovereign out of their few coins! On the other hand, town servants are
well dressed and have plenty of finery, but seldom have any reserve of
good clothing, such as Louisa possessed. All who know the country regret
the change that has been gradually coming over the servants and the class
from which they are supplied. 'Gawd help the pore missis as gets hold of
_you_!' exclaimed a cottage woman to her daughter, whose goings on had
not been as they should be: 'God help the poor mistress who has to put up
with you!' A remark that would be most emphatically echoed by many a
farmer's wife and country resident. 'Doan't you stop if her hollers at
'ee,' said another cottage mother to her girl, just departing for
service--that is, don't stop if you don't like it; don't stop if your
mistress finds the least fault. 'Come along home if you don't like it.'
Home to what? In this instance it was a most wretched hovel, literally
built in a ditch; no convenience, no sanitation; and the father a
drunkard, who scarcely brought enough money indoors to supply bread.
You would imagine that a mother in such a position would impress upon her
children the necessity of endeavouring to do something. For the sake of
that spirit of independence in which they seem to take so much pride, one
would suppose they would desire to see their children able to support
themselves. But it is just the reverse; the poorer folk are, the less
they seem to care to try to do something. 'You come home if you don't
like it;' and stay about the hovel in slatternly idleness, tails
bedraggled and torn, thin boots out at the toes and down at the heels,
half starved on potatoes and weak tea--stay till you fall into disgrace,
and lose the only thing you possess in the world--your birthright, your
character. Strange advice it was for a mother to give.
Nor is the feeling confined to the slatternly section, but often
exhibited by very respectable cottagers indeed.
'My mother never would go out to service--she _wouldn't_ go,' said a
servant to her mistress, one day talking confidentially.
'Then what did she do?' asked the mistress, knowing they were very poor
people.
'Oh, she stopped at home.'
'But how did she live?'
'Oh, her father had to keep her. If she wouldn't go out, of course he had
to somehow.'
This mother would not let her daughter go to one place because there was
a draw-well on the premises; and her father objected to her going to
another because the way to the house lay down a long and lonely lane. The
girl herself, however, had sense enough to keep in a situation; but it
was distinctly against the feeling at her home; yet they were almost the
poorest family in the place. They were very respectable, and thought well
of in every way, belonging to the best class of cottagers.
Unprofitable sentiments! injurious sentiments--self-destroying; but I
always maintain that sentiment is stronger than fact, and even than
self-interest. I see clearly how foolish these feelings are, and how they
operate to the disadvantage of those whom they influence. Yet I confess
that were I in the same position I should be just as foolish. If I lived
in a cottage of three rooms, and earned my bread by dint of arm and hand
under the sun of summer and the frost of winter; if I lived on hard fare,
and, most powerful of all, if I had no hope for the future, no
improvement to look forward to, I should feel just the same. I would
rather my children shared my crust than fed on roast beef in a stranger's
hall. Perhaps the sentiment in my case might have a different origin, but
in effect it would be similar. I should prefer to see my family about
me--the one only pleasure I should have--the poorer and the more unhappy,
the less I should care to part with them. This may be foolish, but I
expect it is human nature.
English folk don't 'cotton' to their poverty at all; they don't cat
humble-pie with a relish; they resent being poor and despised. Foreign
folk seem to take to it quite naturally; an Englishman, somehow or other,
always feels that he is wronged. He is injured; he has not got his
rights. To me it seems the most curious thing possible that well-to-do
people should expect the poor to be delighted with their condition. I
hope they never will be; an evil day that--if it ever came--for the
Anglo-Saxon race.
One girl prided herself very much upon belonging to a sort of club or
insurance-if she died, her mother would receive ten pounds. Ten pounds,
ten golden sovereigns was to her such a magnificent sum, that she really
appeared to wish herself dead, in order that it might be received. She
harped and talked and brooded on it constantly. If she caught cold it
didn't matter, she would say, her mother would have ten pounds. It seemed
a curious reversal of ideas, but it is a fact that poor folk in course of
time come to think less of death than money. Another girl was describing
to her mistress how she met the carter's ghost in the rickyard; the
waggon-wheel went over him; but he continued to haunt the old scene, and
they met him as commonly as the sparrows.
'Did you ever speak to him?'
'Oh no. You mustn't speak to them; if you speak to them they'll fly at
you.'
In winter the men were allowed to grub up the roots of timber that had
been thrown, and take the wood home for their own use; this kept them in
fuel the winter through without buying any. 'But they don't get _paid_
for that work.' She considered it quite a hardship that they were not
paid for taking a present. Cottage people do look at things in such a
curious crooked light! A mother grumbled because the vicar had not been
to see her child, who was ill. Now, she was not a church-goer, and cared
nothing for the Church or its doctrines--that was not it; she grumbled so
terribly because 'it was his place to come.'
A lady went to live in a village for health's sake, and having heard so
much of the poverty of the farmer's man, and how badly his family were
off, thought that she should find plenty who would be glad to pick up
extra shillings by doing little things for her. First she wanted a stout
boy to help to draw her Bath chair, while the footman pushed behind, it
being a hilly country. Instead of having to choose between half a dozen
applicants, as she expected, the difficulty was to discover anybody who
would even take such a job into consideration. The lads did not care
about it; their fathers did not care about it; and their mothers did not
want them to do it. At one cottage there were three lads at home doing
nothing; but the mother thought they were too delicate for such work. In
the end a boy was found, but not for some time. Nobody was eager for any
extra shilling to be earned in that way. The next thing was somebody to
fetch a yoke or two of spring water daily. This man did not care for it,
and the other did not care for it; and even one who had a small piece of
ground, and kept a donkey and water-butt on wheels for the very purpose,
shook his head. He always fetched water for folk in the summer when it
was dry, never fetched none at that time of year--he could not do it.
After a time a small shopkeeper managed the yoke of water from the spring
for her--_his_ boy could carry it; the labourer's could not. He was
comparatively well-to-do, yet he was not above an extra shilling.
This is one of the most curious traits in the character of cottage
folk--they do not care for small sums; they do not care to pick up
sixpences. They seem to be _afraid of obliging people_--as if to do so,
even to their own advantage, would be against their personal honour and
dignity. In London the least trifle is snapped up immediately, and there
is a great crush and press for permission to earn a penny, and that not
in very dignified ways. In the country it is quite different. Large
fortunes have been made out of matches; now your true country cottager
would despise such a miserable fraction of a penny as is represented by a
match. I heard a little girl singing--
Little drops of water, little grains of sand.