Read Online Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson - Free Book Online

shrunk
and hard as boards in the process would have to be coaxed on over chilblains.
Sometimes a very small boy would cry over this and his mother to cheer him
would remind him that they were only boots, not breeches. 'Good thing you
didn't live when breeches wer' made o' leather,' she would say, and tell him
about the boy of a previous generation whose leather breeches were so baked up in
drying that it took him an hour to get into them. 'Patience! Have patience, my
son', his mother had exhorted. 'Remember Job.' 'Job!' scoffed the boy. 'What
did he know about patience? He didn't have to wear no leather breeches.'
    Leather breeches had disappeared in the 'eighties and were
only remembered in telling that story. The carter, shepherd, and a few of the older
labourers still wore the traditional smock-frock topped by a round black felt
hat, like those formerly worn by clergymen. But this old country style of dress
was already out of date; most of the men wore suits of stiff, dark brown
corduroy, or, in summer, corduroy trousers and an unbleached drill jacket known
as a 'sloppy'.
    Most of the young and those in the prime of life were
thick-set, red-faced men of good medium height and enormous strength who prided
themselves on the weights they could carry and boasted of never having had 'an
e-ache nor a pa-in' in their lives. The elders stooped, had gnarled and swollen
hands and walked badly, for they felt the effects of a life spent out of doors
in all weathers and of the rheumatism which tried most of them. These elders
wore a fringe of grey whisker beneath the jaw, extending from ear to ear. The
younger men sported drooping walrus moustaches. One or two, in advance of the
fashion of their day, were clean-shaven; but as Sunday was the only shaving
day, the effect of either style became blurred by the end of the week.
    They still spoke the dialect, in which the vowels were not
only broadened, but in many words doubled. 'Boy' was 'boo-oy', 'coal', 'coo-al',
'pail', 'pay-ull', and so on. In other words, syllables were slurred, and words
were run together, as 'brenbu'er' for bread and butter. They had hundreds of
proverbs and sayings and their talk was stiff with simile. Nothing was simply
hot, cold, or coloured; it was 'as hot as hell', 'as cold as ice', 'as green as
grass', or 'as yellow as a guinea'. A botched-up job done with insufficient
materials was 'like Dick's hatband that went half-way round and tucked'; to try
to persuade or encourage one who did not respond was 'putting a poultice on a
wooden leg'. To be nervy was to be 'like a cat on hot bricks'; to be angry, 'mad
as a bull'; or any one might be 'poor as a rat', 'sick as a dog', 'hoarse as a
crow', 'as ugly as sin', 'full of the milk of human kindness', or 'stinking
with pride'. A temperamental person was said to be 'one o' them as is either up
on the roof or down the well'. The dialect was heard at its best on the lips of
a few middle-aged men, who had good natural voices, plenty of sense, and a
grave, dignified delivery. Mr. Frederick Grisewood of the B.B.C. gave a perfect
rendering of the old Oxfordshire dialect in some broadcast sketches a few years
ago. Usually, such imitations are maddening to the native born; but he made the
past live again for one listener.
    The men's incomes were the same to a penny; their
circumstances, pleasures, and their daily field work were shared in common; but
in themselves they differed; as other men of their day differed, in country and
town. Some were intelligent, others slow at the uptake; some were kind and
helpful, others selfish; some vivacious, others taciturn. If a stranger had
gone there looking for the conventional Hodge, he would not have found him.
    Nor would he have found the dry humour of the Scottish
peasant, or the racy wit and wisdom of Thomas Hardy's Wessex. These men's minds
were cast in a heavier mould and moved more slowly. Yet there were occasional gleams
of quiet fun. One man who had found Edmund crying because his