MARKET HARBOROUGH.
It is the county of pork-pies, and once claimed to rear the largest sheep and grow the heaviest fleeces. Not so much has been said of Leicestershire as an industrial county, but its hosiery trade is the largest in England. Despite the stockingers, the bootmakers, and in some districts the coal-miners, Leicestershire is nevertheless a very agricultural and rural county. “Bean-belly” Leicestershire Drayton calls it, and there is a “Barton-in-the-Beans” near Gopsall; but there is, on the other hand, also a “Barton-in-Fabis,” or “Barton-in-the-Beans,” in Nottinghamshire. The corollary of being “bean-bellied” seems to be dull-witted; but, if we are to judge from Leicestershire folklore, the people are gifted with exceptional humour, of the saturnine kind, as witness this reproof to the boastful:
If all the waters wer one sea,
And all the trees wer one tree,
And this here tree was to fall into that there sea,
My sakes! what a splish-splash there would be!
And here is another example:
Yew thowt, did ’ee? Aiy,
’Yew thowt a lig,