SUNDAY IN POGUE'S ENTRY
amie and Anna kept the Sabbath. It was a habit with them and the children got it, one after another, as they came along. When the town clock struck twelve on Saturday night the week's work was done. The customers were given fair warning that at the hour of midnight the bench would be put away until Monday morning. There was nothing theological about the observance. It was a custom, not a code. Anna looked upon it as an over-punctilious notion. More than once she was heard to say: "The Sabbath was made for maan, Jamie, and not maan for th' Sabbath." His answer had brevity and point. "I don't care a damn what it was made for, Anna, I'll quit at twelve." And he quit.
Sometimes Anna would take an unfinished job and finish it herself. There were things in cobbling she could do as well as Jamie. Her defense of doing it in the early hours of the Sabbath was: "Sure God has more important work to do than to sit up late to watch us mend the boots of the poor; forby it's better to haave ye're boots mended an' go to church than to sit in th' ashes on Sunday an' swallow the smoke of bad turf!"
"Aye," Jamie would say, "it's jist wondtherful what we can do if we haave th' right kind ov a conscience!"
Jamie's first duty on Sunday was to clean out the thrush's cage. He was very proud of Dicky and gave him a bath every morning and a house cleaning on Sunday. We children loved Sunday. On that day Anna reigned. She wore her little shawl over her shoulders and her hair was enclosed in a newly tallied white cap. She smoked little, but on Sundays after dinner she always had her "dhraw" with Jamie. Anna's Sunday chore was to whitewash the hearthstones and clean the house. When the table was laid for Sunday breakfast and the kettle hung on the chain singing and Anna was in her glory of white linen, the children were supremely happy. In their wildest dreams there was nothing quite as beautiful as that. Whatever hunger, disappointment, or petty quarrel happened during the week it was forgotten on Sunday. It was a day of supreme peace.
Sunday breakfast was what she called a "puttiby," something light to tide them over until dinner time. Dinner was the big meal of the week. At every meal I sat beside my mother. If we had stir-about, I was favored, but not enough to arouse jealousy: I scraped the pot. If it was "tay," I got a few bits of the crust of Anna's bread. We called it "scroof."
About ten o'clock the preparations for the big dinner began. We had meat once a week. At least it was the plan to have it so often. Of course there were times when the plan didn't work, but when it did Sunday was meat day. The word "meat" was never used. It was "kitchen" or "beef." Both words meant the same thing, and bacon might be meant by either of them.
In nine cases out of ten, Sunday "kitchen" was a cow's head, a "calf's head and pluck," a pair of cow's feet, a few sheep's "trotters" or a quart of sheep's blood. Sometimes it was the entrails of a pig. Only when there was no money for "kitchen" did we have blood. It was at first fried and then made part of the broth.
The broth-pot on Sunday was the center. The economic status of a family could be as easily gaged by tasting their broth as by counting the weekly income. Big money, good broth; little money, thin broth. The slimmer the resource the fewer the ingredients. The pot was an index to every condition and the talisman of every family. It was an opportunity to show off. When Jamie donned a "dickey" once to attend a funeral and came home with it in his pocket, no comment was made; but if Anna made poor broth it was the talk of the entry for a week.