From Cowper's Task.
XIV
THE WOMAN CHURNING
Again we are in the picturesque province of Normandy, and are shown the interior of a dairy where a woman is busy churning. It is a quaint place, with raftered ceiling and stone-paved floor, and the furnishings are only such as are required by the work in hand. On some wooden shelves against the farther wall are vessels of earthenware and metal, to hold cream, cheese, butter, and the like. The churn is one of the old-fashioned upright sort, not unlike those used in early New England households, and large enough to contain a good many quarts of cream. The woman stands beside it, grasping with both hands the handle of the dasher, or plunger, which is worked up and down to keep the cream in motion and so change it into butter.
In the beginning of the churning process the movement of the dasher is slow, so that the cream may be thoroughly mixed. Then it goes more rapidly for a time, till, just as the arms grow weary, the butter begins to "come," when the speed slackens to the end, the entire process occupying thirty or forty minutes. The butter collects in yellow lumps, which are at length taken from the churn, washed and kneaded to press out the buttermilk, and then moulded into pats. The pleasure of the finishing touches makes up for the fatiguing monotony of the churning. George Eliot, in the novel of "Adam Bede," gives a charming description of Hetty Sorrel's butter-making, with all the pretty attitudes and movements of patting and rolling the sweet-scented butter into moulds.
