Clare's opportunities for learning the elements of knowledge were in
keeping with his humble station. Parker Clare, out of his miserable
and fluctuating earnings as a day labourer, paid for his child's
schooling until he was seven years of age, when he was set to watch
sheep and geese on the village heath. Here he made the acquaintance
of "Granny Bains," of whom Mr. Martin, quoting, doubtless, from
Clare's manuscript autobiography, says:--
"Having spent almost her whole life out of doors, in heat and cold,
storm and rain, she had come to be intimately acquainted with all the
signs of foreboding change of weather, and was looked upon by her
acquaintances as a perfect oracle. She had also a most retentive
memory, and being of a joyous nature, with a bodily frame that never
knew illness, had learnt every verse or melody that was sung within
her hearing, until her mind became a very storehouse of songs. To
John, old Granny Bains soon took a great liking, he being a devout
listener, ready to sit at her feet for hours and hours while she was
warbling her little ditties, alternately merry and plaintive. But
though often disturbed in the enjoyment of these delightful
recitations, they nevertheless sank deep into John Clare's mind,
until he found himself repeating all day long the songs he had heard,
and even in his dreams kept humming:--
There sat two ravens upon a tree,
Heigh down, derry O!
There sat two ravens upon a tree,
As deep in love as he and she.
It was thus that the admiration of poetry first awoke in Parker
Clare's son, roused by the songs of Granny Bains, the cowherd of
Helpstone."