Right round my garden
There I found a farden,
Gave it to my mother
To buy a little brother,
Brother was so cross
Sat him on a horse,
Horse was so randy
Gave him some brandy,
Brandy was so strong
Put him in the pond,
Pond was so deep
Put him in the cradle and
rocked him off to sleep.
It is curious that there seems to be a distinct race of flat heads among
the cottagers; the children look as if the front part of the head had
been sat upon and compressed. Straw hats, the common sort, seem to be
made to fit these shallow crowns. In some parts they cook dates; others
cook oranges, making them into dumplings and also stewing them. These are
favourite sweets. To go out singing from door to door at Christmas is
called wassailing - a relic of the ancient time when wassail was a common
word. When I was a boy, among other out-of-the-way pursuits, I took an
interest in astrology. The principal work on astrology, from which all
the others have been more or less derived, is Ptolemy's 'Tetrabiblos,'
and there, pointing out the mysterious influence of one thing upon
another, it mentions that the virtues of the magnet may be destroyed by
rubbing it with garlic. This curious statement has been thrown against
Ptolemy and held to invalidate his theories, because upon experiment
garlic is not found to affect the magnet.
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