"There was an old couple and they were poor,
Tweedle, Tweedle, go twee."
It was enough to make one crazy to hear her croanan, over and over, a line here and there, with the burden brought in after every one. I can see her old grim visage now as she maundered about the kitchen, singing in doleful tones,—
"Oh! I have been sick since you have been gone;
If you'd been in the garden, you'd heard me groan.
Tweedle, tweedle, go twee."
You may fancy I would rather hear thunder by night than be kept awake with her droaning in my ear,—
"Now I have a request to make unto thee,
Do pluck me an apple from the russet tree.
Tweedle, tweedle, go twee."
Worst of all she could never be trusted to do any work that required attention,—if scalding milk, for instance, whilst she was tweedlean, it would boil over, and the cream be in the ashes; if cooking, for the same reason, all the fat would be in the fire."
An' Mary paused, drew from her pocket a few lengths of yarn, when her husband said, "Come, Mary, keep the kibbal gwean, there's plenty of the same sort of stuff in thy bal." She continued her knitting and said, "There was a good mate for old Jenny Tweedles that used to live in the same parish, who was known by the name of Ky-me or Rigdom, because, when a boy, he was just another such fool, and would neglect, or badly do, any work he was set about whilst whistling the tune, or singing the words, of another old song,—
"There did a frog live in a well,
Close by a merry mouse in a mill,
To my rigdom, bomminare, ky-me,
Kyme-nare, gil-de-ka-re,
Kyme-nare, Ky-me." &c., &c."
"I can match these nicknames," said I, "with another instance of a grand one acquired from a song. But we must go back more than a hundred years to the time when potatoes were only grown as curious garden vegetables; peas supplied their place, and turnips, or other green crops, were unknown as winter's provision for cattle. Farmers then held, for the most part, freehold or leasehold tenements of from twenty to fifty acres of arable and pasture ground, with, in many places, twice that extent of uncultivated land or "outs" as we call it, which furnished fuel and winter's run for cattle.
Between tilling-season and harvest there was little farm work but to cut and carry furze and turf, and to save a little hay; and from the time that all was secure in the mowhay till seed-time there were long intervals of leisure. The corn was threshed as straw was wanted to be taken out to the downs or croft to keep the half-starved cattle alive. Horses, even, were seldom housed, and as there were no stall-fed beasts, little manure but ashes was made which was carefully housed to keep it dry till wanted for dressing; then it was carried in dung-pots to the ground, ploughed in, and the crop quickly sown. After rough weather everybody was on the alert watching for oarweed, which with sand constituted almost the only other substances used for manure. Everything had to be conveyed on horseback,—furze, hay, and corn in trusses, sand in sacks, oarweed in panniers or on crooks, slung over pack-saddles.