“England is not such a place as it was when I was a young man. It is not half the size for one thing. Why, when I was a young man, you could go up a lane with a long dog or two and pick up a bit of supper and firing and nothing said. The country seemed to belong to me in those days, but now I might as well be in Africa. I am worse off than the labourers now, except that I have got more sense than they have, singing their silly old songs, like this.” Then he sang with perhaps mock sentimentality a frail little peasant song, full of the smallness of lonely, small lives:—
“Mary, come into the field
To work along of I,
Digging up mangold wurzels,
For they be a-growing high.
Dig ’em up by the roots,
Dig ’em up by the roots,
Put in your spade,
Don’t be afraid,
Dig ’em up by the roots.