182 A FARMER'S YEAR 



that they are worth 85/. In the end it was agreed that the offer 

 should stand open till Friday, so as to give both parties an oppor- 

 tunity of thinking it over. 



May 4. To-day the weather is squally with heavy showers of 

 rain. In the Home Barn I found the curious village character 

 known as Rough Jimmy, a weird-looking and picturesque old man, 

 with a strongly marked countenance and flying locks of iron-grey 

 hair, seated on a sack by the open door and employed in splitting 

 broaches to be used for thatching stacks. This is the process of 

 broach-splitting : First the hazel or ash rod is measured by another 

 to a length of about three feet, at which it is chopped upon a block. 

 Next the edge of the bill is set across the end and tapped gently 

 so that it enters the wood. Then it is levered sideways and 

 twisted with the hand until, if there are not too many knots, the 

 rod splits neatly in half. This process is repeated with the 

 severed halves, so that each rod makes four broaches, while the 

 trimmed off ends are used for firing. In bygone years Rough 

 Jimmy was the most expert woodman in the parish, but now he 

 can only do such jobs as this. Peering up from the seat on the 

 sack, for he is half blind, the old fellow said : 



' A lowerin' time, squire ; a rare laaring time. There'll be a 

 hay crop now. Rainy May> plenty of hay.' 



After this we had a conversation. He told me that he remem- 

 bered flour at five shillings a stone, and the time when his father 

 sold his wheat at two guineas a coomb, ' and could have sold a 

 thousand coomb if he had had it.' 



Asking me about the war, he said : ' Poor Spain, she's chosen 

 a rum place to fight with, she hev Amurica. All the best of 

 the earth go there, they du English, Scotch, and that like. I've 

 got a son in South Africa, I hev, though I haven't seen him for 

 many yeers, and never sh'an't no more. He gets on won'erful 

 well, he du. Began as a mason working on a bridge, and is his 

 own master now, so I onderstand, with lots of land, cattle, black 

 men, and bacca plants.' 



