I used to hear them faintly
Those evening bells for prayer,
Across the fields of Tilney,
Beyond the sunset's glare.
I heard them in my childhood,
Those bells of Timberland,
When I was always happy,
Holding my father's hand.
Enchanted in the distance,
They rode upon the air,
Seeming to float from Heaven;
I knew not how nor where.
All through life's dusty pathway,
I heard those bells ring out,
A chiming in the distance,
That sung, my path about.
My father--how I miss him--
Lies in the churchyard there,
He takes my hand no longer
He knows not how I fare.
But I would give up everything
To hold again his hand,
And hear across the meadows
The bells of Timberland.
'Dame Peach'
Old Dame Peach stuck like a leech to any good bargin what fell in
her reach,
She never let slip what come in her grip: however they turned she
was ready for each;
She'd strip herself bare or sell you her hair, or put up a price
for her best china ware,
Her very own bed in which she was wed would be yours in a second,
if only you dare;
Of childer she'd lots and would lend you their cots, and although
you'd have backed her to lose in a race,
Yet at business she shone when the others wor done; and nobody ever
could stand in her place.
Among all the men she took care of her-sen and was never alarmed at
the roughest of tricks,
She'd sit in a bar suppin' ale from a jar, till a bargain was
driven, her profit to fix.
Folk knew her all round and none ever was found but at one time or
other had met her somehow,
A good stand-up fight it was all her delight: she would get up at
midnight to sell you a cow;
She bested the men what came out of the Fen, and the folk from the
Wold they found theirsens sold,
While them from the Heath they was allers beneath; for however they
tried they was out in the cold.
The top of the tree was our Mrs. P. at swapping a horse or a cargo
of tea,
She'd purchase old wicks or a truckload of bricks or a house full of
furniture, just for a spree,
Though she's mounted on high somewhere up in the sky, wherever she
is there is business ahead,
But I wish she was back when we'd have a real crack on the friends
that are gone and the days that are fled;
When her shop was a store and a thousand things more; with her busy
in-gathering all she could reach:
A jewel, a treasure, a caution, a pleasure: Oh! sadly we miss her,
our Old Mrs. Peach.