Mr. Hay Disliked To See The Slouching Fellows Making Tracks Across His
Fields, Every One Of Which He Looked On
With as much jealousy as if it
had been a garden - a wild garden they were too, strewn sometimes with
The
white cotton of the plane tree, hung about with roses and sweet with
mowing grass. Those who love fields and every briar in the hedge dislike
to see them entered irreverently. I have just the same feeling myself
even of fields and woods in which I have no personal interest; it jars
upon me to see nature profaned. These fellows were a 'Black George' lot,
in hamlet language. Nestor Hay knew everybody in the village round about,
their fathers and grandfathers, their politics and religious opinions,
and whether they were new folk or ancient inhabitants - an encyclopaedic
knowledge not written, an Homeric memory. For I imagine in ancient days
when books were scarce that was how men handed down the history of the
chiefs of Troy. An Homeric memory for everything - superstitions,
traditions, anecdotes; the only difficulty was that you could not command
it. You could not turn to letter A or B and demand information direct
about this or that; you must wait till it came up incidentally in
conversation. In one of the villages there was a young men's club, and,
among other advantages, when they were married they could have a cradle
for nothing. A cottager had a child troubled with a slight infirmity; the
doctor ordered the mother to prepare a stew of mice and give him the
gravy.
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