S. Baring-Gould

“ We had, when I was about thirteen, a maid of the name of Cicely Crowe; she was an excellent servant, with a passionate love of neatness, did her work well and conscientiously, but had not the most amiable disposition or the most gracious manner. She was not a bad-tempered woman, never violent, but, just as a diamond is said to be off colour if the least lacking in absolute clearness, so may she be said to have been off temper. She was very kind-hearted, but it seemed to go against her pride to do a kind thing in a kind way. She never saw the good in anything, only the faults. ”

“ Aaron, alias Haroun, fell in love, and took to courting Elizabeth Thomas, alias Sugar-cane, alias Cassabos Souccar, the tweenie maid. It took the whole parish by surprise, for Elizabeth was not beautiful; she had not the eyes or the frame, or the svelte movements or the elastic tread of the light gazelle. She was a somewhat heavily formed, broad-shouldered, pudding-faced damsel, who could not cross a room without rattling all the chimney ornaments, and who had no more imagination and genius than has a duck. ”

“ Thacker was left alone in the house with a maid only. Her agitation, her alarm, were great. She loved her child passionately. How could a child struggle through such a storm and beat a way through the snow? Every road was deep buried, the landmarks obscured. The child would stray on the Downs, perhaps sink with weariness, and sleep the fatal sleep of death; perhaps in its wanderings come, blinded with snow, to the edge of a chalk quarry, fall over, and be dashed to pieces. ”

“ Sir Thomas Overbury in his “Character of a milk-maid,” in the reign of James I., says, “She dares go alone, and unfold her sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none: yet, to say truth, she is never alone, she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones.”
There is still a reminiscence of the milk-maid that comes to us every spring, in the fresh flickering cuckoo-flower of the delicate lilac, like the pale cotton, of which the dresses of the girls were made. ”

“ She can read novels and milk cows; she can laugh and weep with the same ease that you could take a glass of ale when thirsty. Indeed, gentlemen, she reminds me of what the poet says of women in general—
‘Heaven gave to women the peculiar grace
To laugh, to weep, to cheat the human race.’ She can make butter and scold the maid; she can sing Moore’s melodies, and plait her frills and caps; she cannot make rum, gin, or whisky, but she is a good judge of the quality from long experience in tasting them. ”

“ The grass that flourishes on it is the richest, most succulent, and the most emerald to be found and enjoyed anywhere. Indeed, the cows that consume the herbage on it have grown red as the soil itself, and if the sheep were not shorn annually they would produce fleeces of flame. Even the streams after rain run blood, so flush is this red land with the juices of life.
When a man wishes to build a house, he takes the clay, throws in straw, tramples it about for a while, and then builds it up into a wall; it sets, and will out-endure a structure of stone, if only kept covered on top. ”

“ And never was there such a funeral in the memory of man as that of the bride, her white pall borne by six girls all in white, and wearing white posies—and a whole parish—every one from the richest to the poorest, from the red-faced, fox-hunting squire to the old stone-breaker with a crippled leg—in floods of tears.
The other day I went over the ramp to look at the ruined cottage. Years had passed since this took place, which I have described. After the death of their only child, the Wordens had left the cottage and it had fallen into ruin. ”

“ He had not learned as a boy, and now it was too late. “Now look you here,” said Doble. “This is a terrible disappointment to me, but I’ll not be beat. I’ll have good music in my house somehow. I’ll marry a wife, and get a little boy or girl; it don’t matter which, and I’ll have that there child taught so soon as ever it has the sense to know its notes; and when I’m an old man I’ll just sit by the fire and listen, and my lad or my little maid shall play to me by the hour. I’ll have Handel, and Haydn, and Bishop, and Mozart. Ah! them will be times worth living for. ”

“ Beautiful on the hills of old were the harebells, beautiful in the evening the glory of light that lit up the russet hills—ugly, maybe, is now the mining settlement; and yet there is a loveliness above that of harebell and bracken and heather and foaming mountain rill in the lives of the men and women who have invaded and displaced the rude natural charms of the Dulais Valley. And I am going to tell you of one of these beauties, and thus I introduce you to Shone Evans. ”

“ An Almbub, a little boy, is with her, and he has to look after the herds, drive the cattle to pasture, and bring them back at even. Both live on the boiled milk and some lard out of a pot. Then when darkness comes on they light the kichspan, a bit of firwood dipped in pitch that serves as a candle, and by its flare she mends his torn garments which must be made to last till they return in October ”

“ Now and then, on a Sunday evening, the rector would say to his wife, “Look here, Rosie, I could read Haroun’s mind to-day as he sat under the pulpit, as though it were a book in large primer type, open before me. He was very attentive when I began my sermon, and he followed me some way, but by degrees his eye became vacant, abstracted, his expression of face altered, and I knew that he was away with the Three Calenders, hearing why Zobeide whipped the hounds.”
“Harry,” responded the rectoress, “you have only yourself to blame. Try to be more interesting when you preach.” ”

“ Surely the woman’s hand is best for the process. A woman instinctively knows how to milk. All men cannot acquire the art, and cows are well aware as to which are skilful milkers and which are not. A man may be a good milker, a woman always is one. That is the difference. What a charming sketch that is of Caldecott’s of the “maid who milked the cow with the crumpled horn,” in his illustrated story of the House that Jack Built! When our children nowadays recite that nursery doggerel, the words concerning that maid who milked the cow are not understood by them. ”

“ Why had Aaron not become enamoured of the lady’s-maid, a most willowy person with a very sweet and refined face? Why not with the kitchen-maid, the Sprig of Coral, who had indeed coralline lips, and who in time would know how to boil a potato and do a chop so as not to be done to leather. But a tweenie! and such a tweenie! The whole parish discussed it for a month. It was most astounding that the man who romanced about every one and everything and every place, should make such dead prose of his [105] own love affair. ”

“ TIMOTHY SLOUCH
“Mother,” said John French, “you say that everybody has his place in the world, and his mission. I’d precious like to know what is Tim Slouch’s place and what his mission. It seems to me there never was such a chap for tumbling out of his place when he has got one, and bless’d if I know what good he can or does do, put him where you will.” ”

“ He stood up straight as a post, sang with lungs like the bellows of a blacksmith, in his blue jersey, his face brown as a coffee-berry fresh roasted, but his eye, blue as the summer sea, flashed and twinkled, but never on her.
She heard talk of him too. He was much at the Ship Inn; and Kate Varcoe, the daughter of the host, was a “likely lass,” cheerful, fresh-faced, with black dancing eyes. With Kate he chaffed and made merry. Cicely listened every Sunday to hear the banns called, but no—called they were not. Next, some one said that William had a sweetheart in Bristol. ”

“ The South Down chalk hills abound in hedgehogs. They are to be found in burrows in great numbers, and at evening, when the dew is falling, the side of the down may be seen alive with these little creatures scampering about seeking their prey. The widow’s girl, Jane, a young girl uncouth in form, with low brow and dull unintelligent eyes, was clever in finding hedgehogs, and these she carried about coiled up in a basket, and sold them to people who were troubled with slugs and snails in their gardens, or with cockroaches and black-beetles in their kitchens. ”

“ This spring never failed in the hottest summer, and its overflow trickled into the tarn that occupied the ancient, deserted quarry. It was a long way to go to get water for all requirements, but the water when got was most refreshing and delicious.
At least twice a day Prue had to descend to the well with empty pitchers, and toil up the ascent with them laden.
“And mind this, Prue,” said her mother repeatedly, “never you go no farther than the well, for the slate rock beyond by the water is that slippy you might fall in, and none ever hear you cry out.” ”

“ The black strip round Jack’s leg had started them; they diverged to the scandal of Thomas Leveridge being away when his child died, and not being present at the funeral.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Mrs. Weldon, “men are monsters. They’ve no more feelings than have traction engines. I wish we could get along without them.”
“But Jack?”
“Ah! Jack is a good son. I’m not speaking of lads, but of married men. There is poor Mrs. Leveridge, left without a shilling; and whatever she would have done had not Jack caught her a rabbit, I do not know. It all comes of politics.” ”

“ When I think of what I have done in leaving you alone, and my Rosie ill, I feel that ashamed as I’d like to dive under the bedclothes and never come up no more. Now look here, Jack. You are not a married man, nor thinking of it.”
“No,” said Jack, retreating a step; “I’m rather too young, thank you kindly.”
“No offence, it was well meant,” said the mason. “What I was going to say to you——But there, I hear your name called below. Run and see who wants you.”
The young man descended the stairs. At the foot stood Kate with a newspaper in her hand. ”

“ In the midst of such beauty, such plenty, such softness, humanity cannot be rough and harsh. It is not so. The simplest peasant has the courtesy of a noble, and the lowliest girl the grace of a princess. In that warm, soft, crumbling soil hearts are also warm, soft, and—well, we must admit it—crumbling too. ”

“ Thacker had a fretful, irritable temper, and the presence of Crazy Jane furnished her with an occasion for giving tongue to her annoyance, and scolding and finding fault with her husband. She knew perfectly that she had no real grounds for her jealousy, and the fact that she knew this excused her in her own mind for her fretfulness towards her husband on the subject. Some women regard their ebullitions of ill-temper and jealousy as justified by the fact that they are unreasonable. Jim was so good-natured that he did not become angry, and his good-nature provoked his wife. ”

“ They buzzed round her, as though she were a flower, as though they would light on her laughing lips, and she scolded them and away they flew—it was their fun, that was all, she explained. But it was not bees only that came about Prue. Village youths are not blind to female beauty, and hearts open at once to a bright spirit, as celandines open to the sun. ”

“ Unhappily we know by experience that this world of ours is full of selfishness, that among a hundred persons we meet, scarce one is not infected with this vice; nevertheless there is a salt of fresh unselfishness to be discovered. But among the many of these elect, the very crown and acme of all was, I verily believe, Auntie.
The parish knew her story, yet no one ventured on an allusion to it in her hearing, except possibly Mrs. Estcourt, who had been her schoolfellow, and with whom she did sometimes speak of the past, and open that old, but unwithered, heart. ”

“ A few days later, when the earth had closed over the child, Tom was speaking with Mary, and she said to him: “Tom, I think now I should like that Christmas tree to be planted on the little maid’s grave. Will you oblige me by doing it?” [281] Then, after wiping her eyes: “Tom, that is a Tree of Death.”
The head-gardener triumphantly carried away Bella; the marriage took place within six weeks of the Christmas supper and dance. Isabella Frowd had become Mrs. Sandy MacSweeny, and was planted in the gardener’s beautiful cottage. But in all things human there comes a change. ”

“ The Bristol Channel looks upon the map as though in it could be only calm water, as in the estuary of the Thames. It is, however, not so. When the wind blows from the west, how the great Atlantic billows roll in, and with what fury do they recoil and strike the faces of their brother waves also seeking an entrance! They tread one another down; they overleap one another ”

“ Aaron Price did not keep his treasury of stories bottled up in his own breast. He was great at retailing them, but he transferred the scenery to Wales, translated Camaralzaman and Badoura into David Jones and Sheena Williams, located every incident in some well-known spot, and thoroughly bewildered his hearers, who could not make out whether he were poking fun at them or narrating facts.
Perhaps the climax was reached when he converted Ganem the slave of Love, into the amiable, somewhat corpulent, and eminently respectable squire, Sir John Vaughan, at Llanselyf. ”

“ Julia could neither read nor write. Possibly because she could neither read nor write she was a most neat and knowing housewife, who kept her cottage in beautiful order, and whitened her hearth-stone and threshold every day, and even twice a day, and burnished pans and candlesticks and old mustard tins on the chimney shelf till they shone as gold and silver. Most labourers’ wives possess the alchemical art of transforming soft, succulent meat over a fire into leather or indiarubber, and are [176] peculiarly skilful in destroying the digestions of their husbands. ”