There are remains in this old farmstead of a vanished importance, both in the thick walls carefully disposed and loopholed for defence, and in the old porch surmounted by a defaced coat of arms and the word “Pruz.” It is said to have been the manor-house of a family of that name, long ago extinct, or its identity lost in the debased form, “Prowse.”
And so at last, steeply—always steeply up or down in these parts—down a typical Devonshire lane to Combemartin, meeting on the way a truly Devonian farm-labourer, who remarked of the sultry heat that it was, “Law bless ’ee proper St. Lawrence weather.”
“St. Lawrence weather?”
“Ees, fay; braave an’ hot, sure.”
“But why St. Lawrence?”
“Aw, then; daunt ’ee knaw? St. Lawrence wer’ king o’ th’ idlers, he wer’.”
But why St. Lawrence should have that unenviable distinction is more than I can tell. There is, at any rate, an obvious connection between hot weather and the gridiron martyrdom of St. Lawrence.
“Lazy as David Lawrence’s dog,” is said to be a Scottish phrase: the “Lawrence” in this instance being originally an imaginary “Larrence” who presided over the indolent. In Essex, on the other hand, your typical lazybones is “Hall’s dog”: e.g. “you’re like Hall’s dog, who was too lazy to bark.”