Or, with my Bryan, and a book,
Loiter long days near Shawford-brook;
There sit by him, and eat my meat,
There see the sun both rise and set;
There bid good morning to next day;
There meditate my time away;
And angle on; and beg to have
A quiet passage to a welcome grave.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR.
Mean Temperature 52·05.
[378] Gentleman’s Magazine.
[379] Hutchins, in his “History of Dorset,” says, this “Fair is held in the churchyard,[381] on the first Monday after the feast of St. Michael, (O. S.) and is a great holyday for the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood. It is ushered in by the ringing of the great bell, at a very early hour in the morning, and by the boys and young men perambulating the street with cows’ horns, to the no small annoyance of their less wakeful neighbours. It has been an immemorial custom in Sherborne, for the boys to blow horns in the evenings in the streets, for some weeks before the fair.”
[380] A tall and portly dame, six feet full, with a particular screw of the mouth, and whom the writer recollects when he was a mere child, thirty years ago; none who have seen and heard her once, but will recollect her as long as they live.
[381] The fair has been removed from the churchyard about six or seven years, and is now held on a spacious parade, in a street not far from the church.