So here I’ll add the shepherd’s name—
“Job Cork.’”
There is no merit in the lines beyond quaintness; but they are written in the sort of jingle which the poor remember; they have lived for fifty years and more, and will probably, in quiet corners of the Vale, outlive the productions of much more celebrated versemakers than Job Cork, though probably they were never reduced into writing until written out at my request.
Job Cork was a village humorist, and stories are still told of his sayings, some of which have a good deal of fun in them; I give one example in the exact words in which it was told to me:—
“One night as Job Cork came off the downs, drough-wet to his very skin, it happened his wife had been a baking. So, when he went to bed, his wife took his leather breeches, and put ’em in the oven to dry ’em. When he woke in the morning he began to feel about for his thengs, and he called out, and zed, ‘Betty, where be mee thengs?’ ‘In the oven,’ zed his wife. Zo he looked in the oven and found his leather breeches all cockled up together like a piece of parchment, and he bawled out, ‘O Lard! O Lard! what be I to do? Was ever man plagued as I be?’ ‘Patience, Job, patience, Job,’ zed his wife; ‘remember thy old namesake, how he was plagued.’ ‘Ah!’ zed the old man, ‘’a was plagued surely; but his wife never baked his breeches.’”
Other shepherds of the Hill have been poets in a rough sort of way. I add one of their home-made songs, as I am anxious to uphold the credit of my countrymen as a tuneful race.
“Come, all you shepherds as minds for to be,
You must have a gallant heart,
You must not be down-hearted,