Ploughboy

“ The ploughboys know it, and the wayside children, the mower and those who linger in fields, but few else. Brightly blue and surrounded by greenest grass, imbedded in and all the more blue for the shadow of the grass, these growing butterflies' wings draw to themselves the sun. ”

“ They are habited similar to the morris-dancers, are yoked to and drag a small plough. They have their farmer and a fool, called Billy Buck, dressed like a harlequin, with whom the boys make sport. The day is concluded by the bullocks running with the plough round the cross in the marketplace, and the man that can throw the others down and convey their plough into the cellar of a public-house receives one shilling for his agility. ”

“ You knew, for instance, the slur of the plough, the whistle of the blackbird, the whirr of the grass-cutter, the slash of the bill-hook on a far fence, the gnawing of turnips, the wind-talk of dead leaves. But there were others you never placed: elf-like twitterings that never came from any bird’s throat, weird, hoarse grunts like some guttural gnome-language that couldn’t possibly be just a sheep coughing; and if you caught the right time on the right night, you would hear a rustling along the lower fields as the Brush-Harrow Dobbie went by, with never a horse before it nor a man behind. ”

“ Ploughing was probably despised as a form of manual labour, and hence an undignified action for a member of the aristocracy, just as a squire or gentleman farmer in England might consider it beneath his dignity to drive the plough himself. ”

“ Do you suppose it might be one of Blue Bob’s gang?”
“Them? Naw! None of them water rats has got sand enough for a real desperate job. I can’t think of nobody round here that could have done it. Anyway, I’d be out about twelve hundred dollars only for you, and I’d like to do something——”
“So you can. You can do something right now,” returned Lockwood promptly. “I want you to ride over with me to Power’s place, and back me up in what I say to old Henry.”
“Hey? What for?” exclaimed the turpentine man, looking surprised and uneasy. “I wouldn’t, if I was you, Lockwood. ”

“ Besides, they find fault with his ho, and gee, and wo, when ploughing. 'He speaks to the horse,' they say, 'and they gang—and there's something no canny about the man.' In short, between the prejudices of laziness and superstition, the ploughman leads a sorry life of it;—yet these prejudices are daily abating, under the steady and indulgent management of the proprietor. Indeed, nowhere is improvement in agriculture more necessary. An old-fashioned Zetland plough is a real curiosity. ”

“ The ploughing gang was superintended by a driver, who was provided with a watch; and while we were looking at them he called out that it was twelve o’clock. The mules were immediately taken from the ploughs, and the plough-boys mounting them, leapt the ditches, and cantered off to the stables, to feed them. One or two were ordered to take their ploughs to the blacksmith, for repairs.
The ploughmen got their dinner at this time: those not using horses do not usually dine till they have finished their tasks ”

“ Whoever heard of such a thing for respectable lassies!" they exclaimed.
Even the ploughman who worked on the farm ignored me when he was out of temper. When in a good humour he insulted me by way of pastime.
"You're an Eerish pig!" he roared at me one evening.
I am impulsive, and my temper, never the best, was becoming worse daily. When angry I am blind to everything but my own grievance, and the ploughman's taunt made me angrier than ever I had been in my life before. ”

“ Idyllic ploughmen are jocund when they drive their team afield; idyllic shepherds make bashful love under hawthorn bushes; idyllic villagers dance in the chequered shade and refresh themselves not immoderately with spicy nut-brown ale. But no one who has seen much of actual ploughmen thinks them jocund, no one who is well acquainted with the English peasantry can pronounce them merry. The slow gaze, in which no sense of beauty beams, no humour twinkles ”

“ These young men yoke themselves to a plough, which they draw about, preceded by a band of music, from house to house, collecting money. They are accompanied by the Fool and Bessy; the fool being dressed in the skin of a calf, with the tail hanging down behind, and Bessy generally a young man in female attire. ”

“ You’ll be better paid than as a cowboy. You’ll be far back, miles from any ranch, finding the places where the wolves hide. Men in such circumstances do not always maintain their human attributes but degenerate nearer the level of the wild creatures who have had no advantages of ten thousand generations of fixed traditions and recorded experiences. You’ll be better paid, however, than a cowboy. Truly, I should like to make my meaning clear to you. There is more in you than just the ability to trap outlaws. ”

“ Lockwood wrenched away Tom’s grip on his neck.
“What’s the matter?” he began chokingly. “I came to tell you—Jackson’s shot. I came to raise a posse.”
“The nerve he had to come back here!” somebody said at the edge of the crowd.
“Saves us a heap of trouble,” was the reply.
“We’ve got the posse,” said Tom grimly. “You needn’t bother about no posse. All you need’s a rope.”
“Here’s the rope,” some one called out. Old Henry Power pushed his way in, also belted with a gun. His eyes were bloodshot; he looked wrinkled and aged, but as deadly inflexible as fate. ”

“ We could all ride a bit out of the common, if it comes to that. Better if we'd learned nothing but how to walk behind a plough, year in year out, like some of the folks in father's village in England, as he used to tell us about when he was in a good humour. ”

“ The “Fathers” hurt no one by this savage volley, for their aim like their hearts is high. It is quite as well they do not. The stubble-disturbing force in front chances to be none other than that half company of regulars, to whose rear it seems the inadvertent Papa Plauche, in freeing them from the hunting-shirt men, has led his “Fathers.” The regulars are in a towering rage with Papa Plauche; but since no one has been injured, and Papa Plauche is profuse in his apologies, their anger presently subsides. ”

“ Thus it befalls that, do their dignified best, Papa Plauche and his “Fathers” are left behind by the hunting-shirt men, who, deploying more and still more to the left, extend themselves in front of Papa Plauche. This does not suit the latter's hardy tastes, and he frets ferociously. He grows condemnatory, as the spitting rifle flashes show him that the vainglorious hunting-shirt men are between him and those English whom he hungers to destroy. ”

“ Next comes the plough as a fetish. The carrying about of the plough and the prohibition common in Europe against moving it on Shrove Tuesday and other holidays have, like many other images of the same class, been connected with Phallicism.132 But, considering the respect which an agricultural people would naturally pay to the chief implement used in husbandry, it is simpler to class it with the other tool fetishes of a similar kind. ”

“ Especially is it the key to the behavior of boys at the gang age. The normal boy between ten and sixteen is really living through the historic period which, for the races of northern Europe, began somewhere this side of the glacial period, and came to an end with, let us say, the early middle ages. He is, therefore, essentially a savage, with the interests of a savage, the body of a savage, and to no small extent, the soul of one. He thinks and feels like a savage; he has the savage virtues and the savage vices; and the gang is his tribe. ”

“ Then Bob put me up to stoppin’ the car. He said Williams was all alone, with twelve hundred dollars on him, and it’d be dead easy. I was that desperate I didn’t care much whether I got the money or Williams shot me. I ain’t seen Bob since. I dunno what’s goin’ to happen when he finds I ain’t got the thousand dollars, but I’m right in a corner now, an’ I’ll fight.”
“That’s the talk!” cried Lockwood. “I’ll see you through. Don’t be afraid. That river gang would never lay any information against you. They’re scared themselves of—why, look here!” ”

“ Just imagine your fiery, red-faced, stout millionaire dancing furiously, while the owner of the scalded dog fires an occasional shot, cowboy fashion, close to his toes to make him jig faster. And all the while they are both yelling, the one in crazy delight and the other as mad as they make ’em. ”

“ For there must be a pretty accurate balance between the life of the home and the life of the gang, if the boy is to get the best training out of both. If the boy stays at home too much, he is likely to become sissy. ”

“ I was not laughing at you, but at the very great aversion in which you hold anyone who has at one time followed the profession of a cowboy. As one who was born practically with a lariat in his hand I claim the liberty of being amused at that aversion. I've known many of the cow punching trade, and a good few others, and while the boys are frequently rough they are generally white—a great deal whiter than their critics—and with sounder respect for a good woman than I have found in circles that consider themselves superior. ”

“ Despite all their savagery these people were human, had in them a certain bonhomie and sense of humor, and possessed many of those traits which we associate with the word "gentleman." The latter curious fact had been impressed on Floyd several times in his dealings with them. Sru, for instance, the worst of the lot, though he had probably dined off his enemy in his time, and though he had planned and plotted murder, would not have hurt your feelings for the world by word or gesture. ”

“ The big fifth-form boys, who were a sporting and drinking set, soon began to usurp power, and to fag the little boys as if they were præpostors, and to bully and oppress any who showed signs of resistance. The bigger sort of sixth-form boys just described soon made common cause with the fifth, while the smaller sort, hampered by their colleagues' desertion to the enemy, could not make head against them. ”

“ In the discharge of what he considered his duty, he was of a wondrous sweet and equable temper. Is it so, that Felicity is only to be found in the discharge of duty? And those torpid flies, the young loafers of our noble families, whose only occupation is to play ball, and whose amusements are vicious; they have it not because none has set them tasks. The ploughman whistles as he drives his team; the vineyard rings with laughter at the gathering of the grapes. The galley-slaves chant as they bend over the oar, and the herdboy pipes as he tends the goats. ”

“ For a short season, in the winter, the whole gang joined the club, which was kept for mill-boys and was supported by the corporation for which I worked. There were work-benches, checker-rooms, a poorly equipped gymnasium, seemingly always in the possession of the adults, and every now and then an entertainment occurred, when some imported entertainer with [148] talent would be invited to come from his or her aristocratic home—with a group of “slummers,” usually and divert us. ”

“ The man in the fur cap, and the potboy rush out; a scene of riot and confusion ensues; half the Irishmen get shut out, and the other half get shut in; the potboy is knocked among the tubs in no time; the landlord hits everybody, and everybody hits the landlord; the barmaids scream; the police come in; the rest is a confused mixture of arms, legs, staves, torn coats, shouting, and struggling. Some of the party are borne off to the station-house, and the remainder slink home to beat their wives for complaining, and kick the children for daring to be hungry. ”

“ Willie, greatly relieved, stood up and began to tell his neighbour, Button Bowie, as they called him, all the strange sights which he and Bob Fortune had seen that morning: the partridge with the brood of chickens, the chaffinch's nest, and the fight between the wood-pigeon and the sparrow-hawk.
But this interval of relief was not to last long. In every school, just as in every company of human beings, there is always to be found a bully; and this bully requires two persons near him,—a victim to be tormented by him, and a toady to laugh at his cleverness. ”

“ To a large extent, moreover, the practice of being disagreeable is, as the boys themselves report, merely “to get the chase.” “Plaguing people” is an exciting sport, which satisfies a natural thirst for adventure, and which is therefore most naturally controlled by judicious doses of adventure in other forms. The joy of getting the chase necessarily departs as soon as the running instincts begin to fade, and the growing boy begins to encounter the gang’s prejudice against fleeing from a pursuer not much stronger than himself. ”

“ But when once I had made it known, you can imagine the gusto with which the police prepared to enter the house and confound the obliging host with a sight of my dripping garments and accusing face. And indeed in all my professional experience I have never beheld a more sudden merging of the bully into a coward than was to be seen in this slick villain’s face, when I was suddenly pulled from the crowd and placed before him, with the old man’s wig gone from my head, and the tag of blue ribbon still clinging to my wet coat. ”

“ The potboy at the corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge of life and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges confidential communications with the policeman and has the appearance of an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable in station-houses. ”

“ These two youths, brought up in the midst of this life of strife, of rapine and of debauchery, left to the violence of their passions, disposing as masters over an abject population, had none of the charms that are the attribute of adolescence. Away in a corner of the hall stood several bourgeois of the little town of Plouernel, who had come to complain of the exactions of the Count's men; or to excuse themselves for failure to pay the imposts in money and goods that it had pleased their seigneur to lay upon them ”