Lark Rise - Flora Thompson (read more books .TXT) 📗

feel herself properly equipped unless she had one secreted about

her. To make a ‘pin-a-sight’ two small sheets of glass, a piece of brown

paper, and plenty of flowers were required. Then the petals were

stripped from the flowers and arranged on one of the sheets of glass

with the other sheet placed over it to form a kind of floral sandwich,

and the whole was enveloped in brown paper; in which a little square

window was cut, with a flap left hanging to act as a drop-scene. Within

the opening then appeared a multicoloured medley of flower petals, and

that was the ‘pin-a-sight’. No design was aimed at; the object being to

show as many and as brightly coloured petals as possible; but Laura,

when alone, loved to arrange her petals as little pictures, building up

a geranium or a rose, or even a little house, against a background of

green leaves.

 

Usually, the girls only showed their ‘pin-a-sights’ to each other; but

sometimes they would approach one of the women, or knock at a door,

singing:

 

A pin to see a pin-a-sight,

All the ladies dressed in white.

A pin behind and a pin before,

And a pin to knock at the lady’s door.

 

They would then lift the flap and show the ‘pin-a-sight’, for which they

expected to be rewarded with a pin. When this was forthcoming, it was

stuck with any others that might be received on the front of the

pinafore. There was always a competition as to who should get the

longest row of pins.

 

After they reached school-going age, the boys no longer played with the

girls, but found themselves a separate pitch on which to play marbles or

spin tops or kick an old tin about by way of a football. Or they would

hunt in couples along the hedgerows, shooting at birds with their

catapults, climbing trees, or looking for birds’ nests, mushrooms, or

chestnuts, according to the season.

 

The birds’-nesting was a cruel sport, for not only was every egg taken

from every nest they found, but the nests themselves were demolished and

all the soft moss and lining feathers were left torn and scattered

around on the grass and bushes.

 

‘Oh, dear! What must the poor bird have felt when she saw that!’ was

Laura’s cry when she came upon that, to her, saddest of all sad sights,

and once she even dared to remonstrate with some boys she had found in

the act. They only laughed and pushed her aside. To them, the idea that

anything so small as a mother chaffinch could feel was ridiculous. They

were thinking of the lovely long string of threaded eggshells, blue and

speckled and pearly white, they hoped to collect and hang up at home as

an ornament. The tiny whites and yolks which would come from the eggs

when blown they would make their mothers whip up and stir into their own

cup of tea as a delicacy, and their mothers would be pleased and say

what kind, thoughtful boys they had, for they, like the boys, did not

consider the birds’ point of view.

 

No one in authority told them that such wholesale robbery of birds’

nests was cruel. Even the Rector, when he called at the cottages, would

admire the collections and sometimes even condescend to accept a rare

specimen. Ordinary country people at that time, though not actively

cruel to animals, were indifferent to their sufferings. ‘Where there’s

no sense there’s no feeling,’ they would say when they had hurt some

creature by accident or through carelessness. By sense they meant wits

or understanding, and these they imagined purely human attributes.

 

A few birds were sacred. No boy would rob a robin’s or a wren’s nest;

nor would they have wrecked a swallow’s nest if they could have reached

one, for they believed that:

 

The robin and the wrens

Be God Almighty’s friends.

And the martin and the swallow

Be God Almighty’s birds to follow.

 

And those four were safe from molestation. Their cruelty to the other

birds and to some other animals was due to an utter lack of imagination,

not to bad-heartedness. When, a little later; country boys were taught

in school to show mercy to animals and especially to birds, one egg only

from a clutch became the general rule. Then came the splendid Boy Scout

movement, which has done more than all the Preservation of Wild Birds

Acts to prevent the wholesale raiding of nests, by teaching the boys

mercy and kindness.

 

In winter in the ‘eighties the youths and big boys of the hamlet would

go out on dark nights ‘spadgering’. For this a large net upon four poles

was carried; two bearers going on one side of a hedge and two on the

other. When they came to a spot where a flock of sparrows or other small

birds was roosting, the net was dropped over the hedge and drawn tight

and the birds enclosed were slaughtered by lantern light. One boy would

often bring home as many as twenty sparrows, which his mother would

pluck and make into a pudding. A small number of birds, or a single

bird, would be toasted in front of the fire. Many of the children and

some of the women set traps for birds in their gardens. This was done by

strewing crumbs or corn around and beneath a sieve or a shallow box set

up endways. To the top of the trap as it stood, one end of a length of

fine twine was attached and the other end was held by some one lurking

in a barn doorway or behind a hedge or wall. When a bird was in a

favourable position, the trap was jerked down upon it. One old woman in

particular excelled as a bird-trapper, and, even in snowy weather, she

might often have been seen sitting in her barn doorway with the string

of a trap in her hand. Had a kindly disposed stranger seen her, his

heart would have bled with pity for the poor old soul, so starving that

she spent hours in the snow snaring a sparrow for her supper. His pity

would have been wasted. She was quite comfortably off according to

hamlet standards, and often did not trouble to pluck and cook her bag.

She was out for the sport.

 

In one way and another a bird, or a few birds, were a regular feature of

the hamlet menu. But there were birds and birds. ‘Do you think you could

fancy a bird, me dear?’ a man would say to his ailing wife or child, and

if they thought they would the bird would appear; but it would not be a

sparrow, or even a thrush or a lark. It would be a much bigger bird with

a plump breast; but it would never be named and no feathers would be

left lying about by which to identify it. The hamlet men were no

habitual poachers. They called poaching ‘a mug’s game’ and laughed at

those who practised it. ‘One month in quod and one out,’ as they said.

But, when the necessity arose, they knew where the game birds were and

how to get them.

 

Edmund and Laura once witnessed a neat bit of poaching. They had climbed

a ladder they had found set against the side of a haystack which had

been unthatched, ready for removal, and, after an exciting hour of

sticking out their heads and making faces to represent gargoyles on a

tower, they were lying, hidden from below, while the men on their way

home from work passed along the footpath beneath the rick.

 

It was near sunset and the low, level light searched the path and the

stubble and aftermath on either side of it. The men sauntered along in

twos and threes, smoking and talking, then disappeared, group by group,

over the stile at the farther side of the field. Just as the last group

was nearing the stile and the children were breathing a sigh of relief

at not having been seen and scolded, a hare broke from one of the hedges

and went bounding and capering across the field in the headlong way

hares have. It looked for a moment as if it would land under the feet of

the last group of men, who were nearing the stile; but, suddenly, it

scented danger and drew up and squatted motionless behind a tuft of

green clover a few feet from the pathway. Just then one of the men fell

behind to tie his bootlace: the others passed over the stile. The moment

they were out of sight, in one movement, the man left behind rose and

flung himself sideways over the clover clump where the hare was hiding.

There was a short scuffle, a slight raising of dust; then a limp form

was pressed into a dinner-basket, and, after a good look round to make

sure his action had not been observed, the man followed his workmates.

X

Daughters of the Hamlet

 

A stranger coming to Lark Rise would have looked in vain for the sweet

country girl of tradition, with her sunbonnet, hay-rake, and air of

rustic coquetry. If he had, by chance, seen a girl well on in her teens,

she would be dressed in town clothes, complete with gloves and veil, for

she would be home from service for her fortnight’s holiday, and her

mother would insist upon her wearing her best every time she went out of

doors, in order to impress the neighbours.

 

There was no girl over twelve or thirteen living permanently at home.

Some were sent out to their first place at eleven. The way they were

pushed out into the world at that tender age might have seemed heartless

to a casual observer. As soon as a little girl approached school-leaving

age, her mother would say, ‘About time you was earnin’ your own livin’,

me gal,’ or, to a neighbour, ‘I shan’t be sorry when our young So-and-So

gets her knees under somebody else’s table. Five slices for breakfast

this mornin’, if you please!’ From that time onward the child was made

to feel herself one too many in the overcrowded home; while her

brothers, when they left school and began to bring home a few shillings

weekly, were treated with a new consideration and made much of. The

parents did not want the boys to leave home. Later on, if they wished to

strike out for themselves, they might even meet with opposition, for

their money, though barely sufficient to keep them in food, made a

little more in the family purse, and every shilling was precious. The

girls, while at home, could earn nothing.

 

Then there was the sleeping problem. None of the cottages had more than

two bedrooms, and when children of both sexes were entering their teens

it was difficult to arrange matters, and the departure of even one small

girl of twelve made a little more room for those remaining.

 

When the older boys of a family began to grow up, the second bedroom

became the boys’ room. Boys, big and little, were packed into it, and

the girls still at home had to sleep in the parents’ room. They had

their own standard of decency; a screen was placed or a curtain was

drawn to form a partition between the parents’ and children’s beds; but

it was, at best, a poor makeshift arrangement, irritating, cramped, and

inconvenient. If there happened to be one big boy, with several girls

following him in age, he would sleep downstairs on a bed made up every

night and the second bedroom would be the girls’ room. When the girls

came home from service for their summer holiday, it was the custom for

the father