“O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
Across the sands o’ Dee!”
The western wind was wild and dank with foam,
And all alone went she.
The creeping tide came up along the sand,
And o’er and o’er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see.
The rolling mist came down and hid the land—
And never home came she.
“Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair—
A tress of golden hair,
A drownèd maiden’s hair,
Above the nets at sea?”
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
Among the stakes on Dee.
They brought her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel crawling foam,
The cruel hungry foam,
To her grave beside the sea.
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home,
Across the sands o’ Dee.
—Charles Kingsley.
THE INVENTION OF PRINTING.
I. BLOCK BOOKS.
Six hundred years ago every book was written by hand; for the art of printing was then unknown, If there were pictures, they were drawn with a pen or painted with a brush. It required a great deal of labor and time to make a book; and when it was finished, it was so costly that only a very rich person could afford to own it.
There were no bookstores such as we have now, and books were very few. But in the great schools and large monasteries there were men called scriptores, or copyists, whose business it was to make written copies of such works as were in demand. There were other men called illuminators who ornamented the books with beautiful initials and chapter headings, and sometimes encircled the pages with borders made with ink of different colors.
At last some copyist who had several copies to make of the same book thought of a new plan. He carved a copy of each page on a block of wood. If there was a picture, he carved that too, much in the same way that wood engravings are made now. When the block was finished, it was carefully wetted with a thin, inky substance; then a sheet of paper was laid upon it and pressed down till an impression of the carved block was printed upon it. Each page was treated in the same way, but the paper could be printed only on one side. When all were finished, the leaves were stitched together and made into a book. It was not as handsome a book as those written with pen and ink; but, after the block had once been engraved, the copyist could make fifty copies of it in less time than he could make one by hand.