As a rule our Lancashire peasants are not sentimental; in fact,
degenerate south-countrymen frequently take exception to their blunt
ways and terrible plain-speaking. But occasionally they display an
astonishing impressibility, and at all times know how to appreciate a
bit of romance.
When three months after his wife's death, for instance, Joe Balshaw
married her cousin, because, as he explained, "hoo favoured our Mary,"
all the neighbours thought such fidelity extremely touching.
I remember once when our little church was gaily decorated for the
harvest festival some one had the happy thought of placing among the
garlands of flowers and masses of fruit and vegetables--thank-offerings
from various parishioners--which were heaped on each side of the
chancel, a miniature hayrick beautifully made and thatched, and a tiny
cornstack to correspond. The sermon was over, and the service
proceeding as usual, when suddenly a burst of sobs distracted the
congregation, and Robert Barnes, the bluffest and burliest farmer in
the whole property, was observed to be wiping his eyes with a red
cotton handkerchief. In vain did his scandalised wife nudge and
reprove him; he sobbed on, and she grew alarmed. "Wasn't he well?" she
asked.
"Aye, well enough," groaned Robert; "but it's so beautiful. I cannot
choose but cry!"
"Is't th' music, feyther?" inquired his daughter.
"Nay, nay--it's them there little stacks. Eh, they're--they're
gradely. I never see sich a seet i' my life."
If this was not susceptibility, I don't know where to look for it.
No doubt a certain roughness of speech, an almost brutal frankness, is
a noticeable northern characteristic. It strikes a stranger painfully,
but is accepted and even appreciated by those accustomed to it from
childhood.
A sick man expects to be told he looks real bad, and preserves an
unmoved tranquillity on hearing how small a likelihood there is of his
ever looking up again, and what a deal of trouble he gives. The
visitor unused to our ways shrinks from hearing these subjects
discussed in the presence of the patient, but he himself listens
philosophically, and, it would occasionally appear, with an odd
pleasure in his own importance.
"Eh, I sometimes think it 'ud be a mercy if th' Lord 'ud tak' him,"
says the middle-aged daughter of a paralysed labourer, eyeing him
dispassionately. "Doctor says he'll never be no better, an' I'm sure
he's a misery to hissel', as well's every one else. Aren't ye,
feyther?"
"Ah," grunts feyther. "I'd be fain to go. I would--I'd be fain."
"What wi's restin' so bad o' neets, an' th' gettin' up an' down to
him, an' feedin' him, an' shiftin' him--he's that 'eavy I cannot stir
him mysel'--I 'ave to wait till th' lads comes back fro' work--eh,
it's weary work! I'm very nigh killed wi't."
"Well, but if he gets better, you know," suggests the visitor, "you'll
be glad to have nursed him so well."
"Eh, he'll noan get better now; doctor says he hasn't a chance."
The patient, who has been listening with close attention, and not a
little satisfaction, to his daughter's report, now rolls his eyes
towards his interlocutor.
"Nay, nay, I'll noan get better," he observes somewhat resentfully.
"Tisn't to be expected. I'm gettin' on for seventy-eight, an' this
here's my second stroke."
"Ah, his constitution's worn out," adds the woman; "that was what
doctor said. ''Tisn't to be expected as he could recover,' says he;
'his constitution's worn out.'"
The rugged old face on the pillow is indeed lined and wrinkled; the
one big hand lying outside the coverlet is gnarled and knotted, like
the branch of an ancient tree; the form outlined by the bedclothes is
of massive proportions. A fine wreck of a man this useless cumberer of
the earth.
"I shouldn't be worth my mate if I did get better," he says,
reflectively, and without the faintest trace of bitterness. "Nought
but lumber--in every one's road. Nay, I'd a deal sooner shift
a'together. I've allus worked 'ard--it 'ud not coom nat'ral to be
idle. I'm ready to go, if it's the A'mighty's will."
"Eh, He'll be like to tak' ye soon, feyther. He will--He'll tak' ye
afore aught's long," says the daughter. "Raly," she adds, as she
pilots her visitor downstairs after this consolatory remark, "it's
a'most to be 'oped as He will."
Yet when He does, and poor feyther is carried away to his long home by
his sons and cronies, there is genuine distress in the little
household. When the daughter has got her "blacks," and drawn the club
money, and the excitement of the funeral is over, she has leisure to
miss the quiet presence, the familiar voice. She starts up at night
many a time fancying she hears it, and weeps as she falls back on her
pillow again. She polishes "feyther's cheer" reverently, and treasures
his pipe, and sobs as she cuts up his clothes for suits for her little
lads, and takes in his great-coat to make it fit her gaffer.
"It was a blessed release," she says, wiping her eyes, "an' we had a
nice funeral, but it's lonely wi'out him."
"A nice funeral" is the most important of all desiderata, and many are
the privations which the living cheerfully endure, that the dead may
be interred with due respect and decorum. The most improvident of
these people look forward to and prepare for the contingency,
inevitable indeed, and yet deemed by other folk unutterably remote.
"Ah! it's bin a struggle to keep 'em," said a poor woman once,
speaking of her little flock of ten healthy hearty children. "I've
noan bin able to put by much, but theer's wan thing, I've got 'em all
in a buryin'-club."
Now and then when the death has been preceded by a long illness, and
the family exchequer has sunk low, the neighbours come to the rescue,
and with characteristic straightforwardness and goodnature avert
impending disgrace. One such case occurred here recently. The father
of the family had been hovering for months between life and death, and
when he "drew away" at last, wife and children were left absolutely
without means. Nevertheless the funeral was beautiful, it was
universally agreed. The wheelwright made a coffin free of charge, one
of the farmers sent the necessary refection; each household in the
village did something, one supplying a whole dress, one merely a
hatband. When the time came for the procession to start, every child
had its decent blacks, and though the question of how to live
to-morrow was still unanswered, the poor widow, wiping her eyes behind
her flowing veil, felt soothed and in a manner elated. No one could
say but what her master had a gradely buryin'. She could not repress a
certain honest pride, and, oddly enough, though the neighbours were
quite aware that without their assistance this desirable appearance
would never have been presented, they were none the less impressed,
and felt that Mrs. ---- deserved great credit.
If sentiment be not common among us, there is no dearth of "feelin',"
though it is sometimes exhibited in unusual and rather startling
fashion. The doctor, for instance, was somewhat taken aback one day by
the reply of a poor man with whom he had been condoling over the death
of an only son.
"I tell ye," sobbed the inconsolable parent, "if it hadn't bin for
what neighbours 'ud say, I'd ha' had th' little divil stuffed."
There is no rule without its exception, and, though our people are for
the most part affectionate and tender-hearted in their own rugged way,
I am bound to own there are some Stoics in our midst.
One old woman, in particular, whom I have known to be afflicted in a
variety of ways, has never betrayed the least sign of emotion; whether
she is incapable of it, or whether she heroically conceals it, I have
been unable to discover.
She lost two sons in rapid succession after a few hours' illness.
"What did they die of?" asked some one sympathetically.
As a rule such a remark would have led to a flood of tearful and
affectionate reminiscences, but this old lady was laconic.
"One deed of a Tuesday, and one of a Thursday," she replied.
The third son a short time afterwards, returning home from market
slightly hazy in his ideas, was run over by an express train as he
endeavoured to cross the line.
Next morning the body was found, horribly mutilated, and a porter was
despatched to break the tidings to the bereaved mother. The man,
overcome with the horror of the event, and full of compassion for the
white-haired woman--who stood stolidly awaiting his message, evidently
unsuspicious of its tenor--could scarcely find words with which to
tell the news.
"There's bin an accident," he faltered, "we'n foun' a mon o' th'
rails--dead--cut t' pieces by a train."
Old Lizzie stared at him in silence; then a light seemed to break in
on her.
"Ah," she said. "Happen it's our Bill!"
And with that she turned on her heel and went upstairs to select a
winding-sheet for him.
Some of our folks like to talk about their troubles. Over and over
again they tell you, almost in the same words, exactly how it all came
about. A poor woman pleats her apron and gazes at you with pathetic
eyes, which she stops to wipe occasionally. The story has grown
familiar to both relater and listener, and sometimes you are regaled
not only with the tale itself, but with the repetition of your own
comments thereon.
"I mind ye said so and so," she says, "an' it's often seemed to
comfort me."
Clearly there is nothing for it but immediately to say it again, and
you are rewarded by seeing the face brighten perceptibly, much as a
child's brightens as it hears a well--known point in a familiar tale.
These simple people are very like children.
But sometimes the pain is too great to be dilated on, and then a
chance phrase or word, infinitely pathetic, betrays the depth of
sorrow; sometimes there is silence more pathetic still.
Looking into a cottage, one day, where the week before a little child
had been carried to the churchyard, I found the mother hard at work,
ironing.
"I will not come in," I said. "You are busy."
"Nay, ma'am, coom your ways in an' sit ye down. There's no hurry. I'm
nobbut puttin' away our Teddy's little clothes."
Not another word did she say in allusion to her sorrow, and no tears
fell on the little worn garments. Poor little garments, so
pathetically bringing to mind the wee lost personality! Darned socks
which had covered active little feet; tiny short "knickers" patched at
the knees; shabby coat--moulded, it would seem, into the very shape of
the chubby figure--the mother ironed and polished them, and laid them
in a tidy heap. As she worked she tried to talk of other things, but
her face told its own tale, and I went away with an aching heart.
The men carry their troubles afield; manual labour dulls, if it does
not altogether exorcise, them; some have other less creditable means
of seeking oblivion. But the poor women, shut in in their little
houses, with their anxieties and sorrow staring them in the face--God
help them! So narrow are their lives, so few their experiences, that
their thoughts must run perpetually in the same groove; everything
which surrounds them, their "sticks" of furniture, their little
household gods, are reminders of lost joys and present grief.
"Eh, I can scarce 'bide to see my mother's cheer," said a poor
crippled girl to me. "Her 'an me was allus sat one aside o' t'other,
an' now hoo's gone. Eh, I know I shouldn't complain, an' hoo's in a
better place; but hoo's gone, ye see, an' I'm awful lonely. I keep
settin' here all day, an' thinkin' of her, and fancyin' I hear her
moanin'. Eh dear, yes, it's a shame for me, an' I know I ought to be
glad hoo isn't sufferin' no longer. Eh, at th' last, ye know, Mrs.
Francis, it were summat awful what hoo suffered. Oh yes, I _know_.
But, ye see, when I'm sat here all day by mysel', an' when I see th'
empty cheer, an' o' neets when I dream hoo's layin' aside o' me, an'
then wakken up an' stretch out my arms--eh, dear o' me!"
Some of the neighbours thought this poor girl's grief excessive. Nancy
indeed, who buried her own exceedingly ancient parent comparatively
recently, bade her remember that she was not the only one who knew
what it is to lose a mother. It is not, as a rule, considered quite
decent to speak in other than cheerful tones of a bereavement which
has occurred more than a year ago,--unless, of course, you are taking
a general survey of your troubles, in which case it is allowable to
include it as a proof the more that you have "supped sorrow." But Mary
set etiquette at defiance. Out of the fulness of her heart her mouth
spake. To all corners she must needs tell her loneliness and her
sorrow.
One day, however, she received me with a bright face and a certain air
of mysterious joy.
"Mrs. Francis, I scarce know how to tell ye, but it seems as if th'
Lord Hissel sent me a bit o' comfort. Ye see, nobry had no feelin' for
me here in village; they all towd me to resign mysel', an' that, an'
it were wicked o' me to be ill-satisfied wi' th' A'mighty's will. But,
ye see, I wouldn't seem able to give ower frettin'--I raly couldn't.
Well but, last neet--I haven't towd nobry, because I didn't want to
have 'em laughin', ye know, and, o' course, I dunnot set mich store by
dreams; but still, it seemed to comfort me."
She looked at me appealingly, and, being assured of my sympathy,
continued--
"Well, last neet I were very lonesome when I geet into bed, an' I
began o' thinkin' o' my mother, an' wonderin' where hoo was. An' 'Eh,
mother,' I says out loud, 'wheer _are_ ye, an' are ye thinkin' o' me,
an' are ye in heaven?' An' I geet agate o' cryin' an' axin' mysel wheer
was heaven, an' was hoo raly theer. Well, at last I dozed off, an' I
had a dream. I thought I saw my mother, in her cap an' apron, an' wi'
her sleeves rolled up--just same as hoo used to look when hoo was busy
about th' house. An' I thought hoo coom along, lookin' fro' one side
to t'other, as if hoo were seechin' soombry; an' I said, 'Here I am,
mother.' An' hoo stood a moment, an' smiled. An' then"--sinking her
voice and speaking hurriedly and excitedly--"I looked up at sky (we
was out o' doors i' my dream), an' then I saw it all full o' light,
and rays coomin', goldy rays, same as--same as ye see sometimes on a
Christmas card; an' they coom down, an' gathered all about my mother,
an' lapped her round. An' then I see her goin' up, up--reet into th'
leet; an' then I wakkened. Eh, Mrs. Francis, dunnot ye think--dunnot
ye raly think--as th' Lord sent me that dream to comfort me? Eh, I
feel sure hoo's in heaven now, an' hoo's thinkin' o' me. I cannot tell
ye how 'appy it mak's me."
"Eye hath not seen," says St. Paul, "ear hath not heard." Very
different was poor Mary's vision. Think of it: the little old woman in
her working dress, with the sleeves rolled up on her skinny arms--the
"goldy rays, same as ye see on Christmas cards." But, nevertheless,
even in her attic room she has had a glimpse of Paradise.