Village headman

“ In the evening the young fellows of the village assemble, and with loud shouts and clashing of tins, ringing of cow-bells and goat-bells, and cracking of whips, tramp over hill and dale to another village, where the young men receive them with like uproar. ”

“ But I love a quiet village for its own sake above most things, and would rather spend my leisure amongst its simple cottage folk, take my rest on the bench at the village alehouse door, and walk amid the smock-frocked peasantry to the grey village church, than mingle with the fashionable, over-dressed, prurient, hollow-hearted, and artificial products of civilisation that [2] constitute themselves society—yea a thousand-fold rather. To me the restfulness of a little village, with its cots nestling among the drowsy trees in a warm summer day, is a foreshadowing of the rest of heaven. ”

“ And then, of course, a village is not merely a village, not merely the broad and rutted roads and the cottages planted among the pigs and fowls. The village has its ways out, its views, its hillsides and streams, its loveliness on all sides. Your long halt is not a sitting still in a human settlement, but a starwise tour of all the country round about.
Going on and on in a line of route has its drawbacks. The world is not a straight line, not even a crooked line, not even the line of a [Pg 193] man’s steps upon it—it is an area, a broad surface. ”

“ The day is over, the day which has been so hard and toilful even for the children,—and with the night comes rest and play. The village, so deserted before, is alive with voices; the elders cluster round the courtyard doors, the little ones whoop through the narrow alleys. ”

“ Never did the eye of man dwell upon a more smiling village. A village? No; it rather resembles a large borough. From at least six to seven hundred houses are scattered on the slope of that hill, without counting the vast thatched structures that are situated below on the meadow, which is watered by a river that rises to the north of the valley, crosses it and forms its boundary far away where the horizon dips. ”

“ We sped through village after village—a long street; children in blouses playing strange games, disputing in shrill voices, wagging little eloquent fingers under each other's noses; handsome men clothed in blue, with red sashes and the universal berret on their heads, guiding with their cruel goads patient teams of yoked oxen; a group of persons round a church door—a wedding, perhaps a funeral; old women knitting in the sun, young women smiling from windows—all these impressions follow each other like flickering pictures in a cinematograph ”

“ And sometimes, of course, you rattle through a village, with its crumbling, stained, and faded yellow-stuccoed houses, its dazzling white canvas awnings, its church and campanile, and its life that seems to pass entirely in the street: men in their shirt sleeves, lounging, smoking, spitting (else the land were not Italy!) , or perhaps playing cards at a table under the leafless bush of the wine-shop; women gossiping over their needlework, or, gathered in sociable knots, combing and binding up their sleek black hair; children sprawling in the kindly dirt ”

“ Living always in this remote high village, where the rock cropped out between the houses, and the streets climbed through tunnels of rock, he was always tormented with visions of great cities and thoroughfares ablaze; he longed for the jostle of men, he craved for other companionship than he could get in the village wineshop on the first floor, as a fainting man craves for air. ”

“ As the day approaches every village is suitably decorated, the women are all on the tip toe of excitement to see and be seen, the peasant throws dull care behind him, and the artizans in the nearest town work with renewed energy in order that they may do honour to the occasion. Every one, in short, makes his way to the rendezvous, a merry laugh on his lip and joy in his heart, and, lost in the tumult and general gaiety that prevail, all forget, for some few hours, their hard work and privations. ”

“ And towards nightfall the dusty road will be thronged with shadowy people and unladen asses and new-laden mules, urging silently into the country again, their backs to the town, glad to get away from the town, to see the cactus and the pleated hills, and the trees that mean a village. In some village they will lie under a tree, or under a wall, and sleep. ”

“ The life of the village, spreading itself into the vast and fertile plain behind, held him absorbed; a peasant himself and living amongst the people he so loved, he was in a position to bring before an unthinking world the poignant monotony of their useful lives. ”

“ At length the villagers, wearied with their exertions, retire to their cottage homes, marching in procession from the scene of their observances; and silence reigns o'er the village for a few short hours, till the sunlight summons them to their daily toil. ”

“ The whole village lived in the field; a corn-land village is always the most populous, and every rood of land thereabouts, in a sense, maintains its man. The reaping, and the binding up and stacking of the sheaves, and the carting and building of the ricks, and the gleaning, there was something to do for every one, from the 'olde, olde, very olde man,' the Thomas Parr of the hamlet, down to the very youngest child whose little eye could see, and whose little hand could hold a stalk of wheat. ”

“ Those writers who have imagined a reign of peace and happiness on earth, have generally described a rural country, where each small township was directed by the elders and wise men. This was the key of my design. Each village, however small, usually contains a leader, one among themselves whom they venerate, whose advice they seek in difficulty, and whose good opinion they chiefly value. ”

“ On arriving in the vicinity of a village, the whole population turn out to meet and escort him with due honors to the public well or tank; the men beating drums, and the women singing through their noses. Here his holiness unbends, washes off the dust and dirt acquired by perambulating several miles of dusty road; and, after partaking of a slight refreshment, enters into conversation with the assembled villagers just as if he were an ordinary mortal; making very particular inquiries concerning the state of their larders, and slight investigations as to their morals. ”

“ The village people live in the village, and keep themselves to themselves; the summer people live in boarding houses and in nice new bungalows on the edge of town, and associate with each other; and the artists and writers live out in the more inaccessible regions, perched on the edges of ravines, and turn up their noses at everybody else. ”

“ The place to hear them in their purity is in some out-of-the-way village, far from the main roads of civilization. But it is when the villagers are engaged in "communal" work, especially during harvesting-time, that the harmony between the surroundings and the people and the strains that arise, is most complete. ”

“ Wearied mortals are creeping home from their field-labour; the village-artisan eats with relish his supper of herbs, or has strolled forth to the village-street for a sweet mouthful of air and human news. ”

“ At night, when no wars or excitement of any kind stirred the village, they would gather in the chiefs or other great bark lodges around the fires, and tell and listen to stories ; a red wall of men in a great circle, the women a little back, and the children still behind, asleep in the skins and blankets. ”

“ OUR village, that’s to say, not Miss Mitford’s village, but our village of Bullock’s Smithy,
Is come into by an avenue of trees, three oak pollards, two elders, and a withy;
And in the middle there’s a green, of about not exceeding an acre and a half;
It’s common to all and fed off by nineteen cows, six ponies, three horses, five asses, two foals, seven pigs and a calf! ”

“ These heralds are self-elected, and are composed of the oldest men in the village, who run through the town to spread the orders of the chief. When no such service is required, they amuse themselves by stalking round the village, yelling out advice to the young men, with voices which may be heard at the distance of a mile, but which, as far as I was able to judge, was but little attended to. ”

“ A village often entirely covers one of the small hills, not a house venturing forward to form an outskirt, but all clustered and compact. Steep, perfectly straight streets of sharp narrow cobbles, without side pavements, run up to the church at the top through rows of low, whitewashed houses, of a single storey and of a dazzling whiteness. At evening the labourers come in from the far distant fields in a continuous line, on foot or on mules and donkeys, and children go out to meet them and are given a ride back into the village. ”

“ Still, in the village where I live, the officials are for ever issuing all kinds of orders, as if greatly compassionating the people, though really to their utter injury. Morning and night the underlings come round and say, ‘His Honour bids us urge on your ploughing, hasten your planting, and superintend your harvest. Do not delay with your spinning and weaving. Take care of your children. Rear poultry and pigs. Come together when the drum beats. Be ready at the sound of the rattle.’ Thus are we poor people badgered from morn till eve. We have not a moment to ourselves. ”

“ NO longer truth, though shown in verse, disdain,
But own the village life a life of pain;
I too must yield, that oft amid these woes
Are gleams of transient mirth and hours of sweet repose.
Such as you find on yonder sportive Green,
The 'Squire's tall gate and churchway-walk between;
Where loitering stray a little tribe of friends,
On a fair Sunday when the sermon ends:
Then rural beaux their best attire put on,
To win their nymphs, as other nymphs are won;
While those long wed go plain, and by degrees,
Like other husbands, quit their care to please. ”

“ At a distance of about a quarter of a mile lay the village, such a spruce and trim place as villages are which live in kindly neighbourship with a rich Lord of the Manor and a fastidious Rector—their gardens, their windows, everything was in good order. ”

“ The steamer carried us past village after village most beautiful as seen in passing; but again, my dear C., I warn you not to let this, the greenest word in memory, call before you wide streets, shaded courtyards, ample space, and all rural luxuries. A village here is a mass of wretched dwellings stuck against mouldering walls, where human existence, in point of comfort, is nearly on a level with the brutes; in fact, the same roof often shelters all the live-stock, from the master to his ass. ”

“ These speak their own thoughts, throw startling sidelights on their neighbours; and from the whole, a picture of a village community takes definite shape. The author has snapped his village at one instant on one day, so that there is no 'action.' The village is frozen motionless whilst the reader inspects each inhabitant. There is no sentimentalism, no 'kailyard' gloss; the villagers expressing themselves with immense force from the Earl to the mole-catcher. ”

“ Unerringly, she generalized from the microcosm of Warwickshire to the life of the world and guessed the universal human heart. With utmost sympathy, joined with a nice power of scrutiny, she saw and understood the character-types of the village, when there was a village life which has since passed away: the yeoman, the small farmer, the operative in the mill, the peasant, the squire and the parson, the petty tradesman, the man of the professions: the worker with his hands at many crafts. ”

“ As they passed in triumph through the village they were cheered by the men, women, and children, collected as usual on the tops of the lodges, and were exhorted by the Nestors of the village to be generous in their dealings with the white men. ”

“ Let us have a good many Maples and Hickories and Scarlet Oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A village is not complete unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. ”

“ There are amusements of all kinds, feasts at the temple, and sports outside the village, wherein the young men have an opportunity of exhibiting their strength and prowess. The community, perfect in itself, continues the daily tasks of sowing, planting, and reaping, without paying any attention to the political situations that agitate cities. The villagers do not see a newspaper from one year's end to another. ”

“ This is the subject—the church and trees—all else belongs to that—we see dimly through the leafage—we read, through the gloom and the glimmer, the village histories. The repose of the dead—the piety of the living—all that is necessary for the village home, is introduced—but not conspicuously—and nothing more; here is a house, a farm-house, and a mill—a village stream, over which, but barely seen, is a wooden bridge—the clouds are closing round, and such clouds as "drop fatness," making the shelter the greater—a figure or two in the road. ”

“ Though, at first sight, the village appeared an isolated, sleepy place, yet a plunge into its activities and a catching of its spirit meant the discovery of a number of enterprising, intellectual, and social efforts, of which any large community would have been proud. ”

“ I knew, in my youth, a French village far up among the Cevennes Mountains, where the one cultivated man of the place, saddened by the unlovely lives of the peasants around him and by the bare walls of the village school, organized evening classes for the boys. ”

“ The scenery is, I think, among the finest in the world, while, added to all is the strange fascination of the knowledge that the people who live in the Pass have cherished from generation to generation the most vindictive blood feuds. The villages are surrounded by high walls, loopholed along the top, and the huts in the inside are built against the wall, so that the roofs of them can be used by the men of the village as lounges during the day, and as ramparts for sentries during the night. ”