Yet harten’d to his pipe, with all the skill
His few years could, began to fit his quill,
Willie he hight. . . .
Fair was the day, but fairer was the maid
Who that day’s morn into the green-woods stray’d.
Sweet was the air, but sweeter was her breathing,
Such rare perfumes the roses are bequeathing.
Browne, “Britannia’s Pastorals.”
I
It was the shepherd-cowman, and not Jinny, who delivered the horn to Will. She had “happened of him,” Master Peartree explained tediously, in the remote field to which he had taken the sheep to feed off the winter barley. “Powerfully trumpeting” for him with it just when he was looking for fly, when indeed in the very act of discovering a maggoty rump, she had besought him to convey that “liddle ole horn,” she being so late and Gran’fer likely to be “in a taking.”