“Golden slumber kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise.
Sleep pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullabye.”
Another moment, and the arms had fallen, each girl faced her opposite partner, and then linking hands together they were rocking a cradle as they joyously warbled:
“Baby is a sailor boy, swing, cradle, swing;
Sailing is the sailor’s joy, swing, cradle, swing.”
Now the girls were waltzing gaily down the room and back again to place, where this time they formed in rows of three in each line. A crash of chords from the piano, and each girl stepped forward with outstretched left hand, and made the motion of taking something with the right hand from the closed left, and casting it on the ground, as they repeated clearly and loudly:
“Good flax and good hemp to have of her own,
In May, a good housewife will see that it is sown.
And afterwards trim it to serve in a need,
The fimble to spin, the card from her reel.”
Yes, they were sowing hemp as their great-grand-mothers had done hundreds of years ago—a sign of a thrifty housewife. Now came three claps of the hand and again the girls swung into two facing lines. Each performer now lightly put forward the right foot, poised on the ball of the left one, while making the motion as of moving the treadle of a spinning-wheel, as with lifted hands she twisted the flax, stopping every moment to moisten one finger in an imaginary cup fastened to the distaff.
“Polly Green, her reel,” announced Helen.