One day he comes to her, and says:
‘Thou liggey my hraa, here is some wool for thee to spin, and if it is not done a month from this day, I’ll throw thee out on the side of the road. Thou and thy Traa dy liooar have left me nearly bare.’
Well, she was too lazy to spin, but she would be pretending to be working hard when the husband was in the house. She used to put the wheel out on the floor every night before the husband came in from work, to let on to him that she had been spinning.
The husband was asking her was the thread getting near spun, for he said he was seeing the wheel so often on the floor that he wanted to know if she had enough to take to the weaver. When it came to the last week but one, she had only one ball spun, and that one was knotted and as coarse as gorse. When her husband says to her:
‘I’m seeing the wheel middling often on the floor when I come home at night; maybe there’s enough thread spun at thee now for me to take to the weaver next week?’
‘I don’t know, at all,’ says the wife. ‘Maybe there is; let us count the balls.’
Then the play began! Up she went on the lout, and flung the ball through the hole, down to him.
‘Keep count thyself, and fling the balls back again to me,’ says she to the man. And as fast as he flung the ball up to her, so fast she flung it down to him again. When he had counted the ball, maybe, two score times, she says to him:
‘That’s all that’s in.’
‘Aw, ’deed, you’ve spun well, woman, for all,’ says he; ‘there’s plenty done at thee for the weaver.’