Before Christmas carols had to be reformed and regulated lest they should be a mere occasion of profanity and rudeness, that curious one of Dives and Lazarus was occasionally heard, of which two lines could never be forgotten—
He had no strength to drive them ’way,
And so they licked his sores.
And when Lazarus afterwards sees “Divers” “sitting on a serpent’s knee.”
May Day too survived in a feeble state, with the little voices singing:
April’s gone! May’s come!
Come and see our garland.
Mr. Keble improved the song into:
April’s gone, the king of showers,
May is come, the queen of flowers,
Give me something, gentles dear,
For a blessing on the year.
For my garland give, I pray,
Words and smiles of cheerful May;
Birds of spring, to you we come,
Let us pick a little crumb.
In the dew of the morning we gathered our flowers
From the woodlands and meadows and garden bowers,
And now we have twisted our garland so gay,
We are come here to wish you a happy May Day.
We cannot but here add an outline of a village character from Old Times at Otterbourne:—
Mr. William Stainer was a baker. His bread was excellent, and he was also noted for what were called Otterbourne buns, the art of making which seems to have gone with him. They were small fair-complexioned buns, which stuck together in parties of three, and when soaked, expanded to twice or three times their former size. He used to send them once or twice a week to Winchester. But though baking was his profession, he did much besides. He was a real old-fashioned herbalist, and had a curious book on the virtues of plants, and he made decoctions of many kinds, which he administered to those in want of medicine. Before the Poor Law provided Union doctors, medical advice, except at the hospital, was almost out of reach of the poor. Mr. and Mrs. Yonge, like almost all other beneficent gentlefolks in villages, kept a medicine chest and book, and doctored such cases as they could venture on, and Mr. Stainer was in great favour as a practitioner, as many of our elder people can remember. He was exceedingly charitable and kind, and ready to give his help so far as he could. He was a great lover of flowers, and had contrived a sort of little greenhouse over the great oven at the back of his house, and there he used to bring up lovely geraniums and other flowers, which he sometimes sold. He was a deeply religious and devout man, and during an illness of the clerk took his place in Church, which was more important when there was no choir and the singers sat in the gallery. He was very happy in this office, moving about on felt shoes that he might make no noise, and most reverently keeping the Church clean, and watching over it in every way. He also continued in the post of schoolmaster, which at first he had only taken temporarily, and quaintly managing it. He was found setting as a copy “A blind man’s wife needs no paint,” which he defended as “Proverbs, sir, Proverbs.” Giving up part of his business to his nephew, he still sat up at night baking, for the nephew, he said, was only in the A B C book of baking, and he also had other troubles: there was insanity in his family, and he was much harassed. His kindness and simplicity were sometimes abused. He never had the heart to refuse to lend money, or to deny bread on credit to hopeless debtors; and altogether debts, distress, baking, and watching his sisters all night, and school keeping all day, were too much for him. The first hint of an examination of his school completed the mischief and he died insane, drowning himself in the canal. It is a sad story, but many of us will remember with affectionate regard the good, kind, quaint, and most excellent little man.
A few lines, half parody, half original, may be added as picturing the old aspect of Otterbourne, about 1830:—