'Tis Useless, He Tells Us, To Hang These Slain Robbers About
The Fields, Since In A Little While They Are No More Regarded
Than The Men Of Rags And Straw With Sham Rifles In Their
Hands.
It was for him to shift the dead from place to place,
to arrange them in dying attitudes with
Outstretched wings.
Finally, there was the fox, the stealer of dead crows, to be
guarded against; and again at eventide Giles must trudge round
to gather up his dead and suspend them from twigs out of reach
of hungry night-prowlers. Called up at daybreak each morning,
he would take his way through deep lanes overarched with oaks
to "fields remote from home" to redistribute his dead birds,
then to fetch the cows, and here we have an example of his
close naturalist-like observation in his account of the
leading cow, the one who coming and going on all occasions is
allowed precedence, who maintains her station, "won by many a
broil," with just pride. A picture of the cool dairy and its
work succeeds, and a lament on the effect of the greed and
luxury of the over-populous capital which drains the whole
country-side of all produce, which makes the Suffolk
dairy-wives run mad for cream, leaving nothing but the
"three-times skimmed sky-blue" to make cheese for local
consumption. What a cheese it is, that has the virtue of a
post, which turns the stoutest blade, and is at last flung in
despair into the hog-trough, where
It rests in perfect spite,
Too big to swallow and too hard to bite!
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