1832.] Unreported Cases. 651 



Hosea's time was fully occupied $ and he had already, not so much from 

 love as necessity, it is remarked in the ballad, married a second wife, in 

 the hope of obtaining a second mother for his seven children. He soon 

 had an eighth, which seeming ugly by the side of Rachael, its playmate, 

 the latter, at an earlier age than even the bad circumstances of her father 

 could warrant, was thrust into distant employment. Old Sir Ralph's bai- 

 liff undertook to give her food and lodging, with twopence per month as 

 wages, to drive the birds from his master's crops ; but Rachael soon lost 

 her place, being endowed, as Brodie says, with so sweet a quality of voice, 

 that she attracted the creatures she was hired to scare away. So it fared 

 with her in all her subsequent youthful services, some natural perfection 

 rendering her unfit for those occupations in which a child less pre-emi- 

 nently gifted, but with equal zeal and industry, would doubtless have 

 excelled. At length so says Brodie in his ballad she was actually turned 

 out of the choir, in which she had only sung for a few Sabbaths, because, 

 as Reuben Orton, the leader, observed, with a confident appeal to his co- 

 adjutor, the parish clerk, no less than three young tenors, and a middle- 

 aged bass, lost time and. marred all melody, by gazing into her innocent 

 blue eyes with such heterodox enthralrnent as though there had been no 

 other heaven. 



Yet, though admired by all, Rachael became an object of affection to 

 none. The boldest of the young rustics looked up at her as she glode 

 silently along, just, says Brodie, as they might at the moon, conscious of 

 her beauty, but feeling no emotion of love j and, though she was known to 

 be gentle as a lamb, rarely presuming to offer her a passing salutation. 

 Except among the old and heart-broken, to whom she came as a mini- 

 stering angel, Rachael had no companions, no, not even among such as 

 were just emerging from their babyhood; for, on the lips of these their 

 mother's milk was scarcely dry, before they heard the story of Hosea Par- 

 fett's changeling, and, as one who had been in fairy-land, and whose form 

 and features seemed to retain some of its " lovely leaven" we quote from 

 Brodie they deemed her awful, and quivered when she kissed them ; so 

 that, says our respected authority, in a note to his ballad, adopting a 

 bold figure, Rachael's beauty shrouded her from joy. 



She was still a girl when her father died, after a lingering illness brought 

 on, after a lapse of twenty years, by the fatal in-lock of the Wiltshire 

 giant. His wife, with her child, removed to a distant village, where she 

 had many relatives ; and of Rachael's six brothers three had long been in 

 the grave, one had gone to sea, and the other two were bearing muskets 

 in the east, so that young Rachael found herself a lone being among her 

 village neighbours. Brodie says she took to peeling willows, and making 

 various fancy articles in wicker-work j but those about her either did not 

 appreciate her taste, or felt no inclination to traffic with her ; she was 

 therefore compelled to carry the produce of her labours to a neighbouring 

 town, where she stood like a statue in one corner of the market-place, 

 asking no price, but silently receiving what those who passed thought fit 

 to give her for her wares. None met her going forth, none beheld her 

 return ; she was rarely seen except on the Sabbath, when she modestly 

 stole up one of the side aisles of the church, and took her place among 

 the paupers on a stone-bench beneath the pulpit. Her decent neatness 

 of attire on ihese occasions, and the care that was evidently, yet invisibly, 

 bestowed on the little patch of rose-trees in front of her cottage, led the 



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