FIFTY YEARS OF A SHOWMAN'S LIFE 



from oblivion many striking and graphic out- 

 pourings of the minds of the people, could tell 

 us. It was in the village hostelry and at the 

 harvest homes that you heard " The Vly among 

 the Turmuts," " God Bless the Puir Sheep," ' A 

 Gossipin' Wife goes Gaddin' Aboot," and, in the 

 West, " When I went a-coortin' to Taunton 

 Deane." In England, as in other countries, it 

 has been the people, living by the sweat of their 

 brows, who have preserved for us the melody and 

 the poetry of the country-side, as represented by 

 the folk-song, born and bred of the soil. What 

 could be more characteristic of rural experiences 

 than the chorus, as it used to be sung in Wiltshire : 



" The vly be on the turmuts, 

 The vly be on the turmuts. 



It be arl me eye for oi to try 

 To kip they arf the turmuts." 



I did, however, once hear a farmer sing an 

 excellent country-side song, which I have tried 

 in vain to run to earth since. Its burden was 

 " Brave boys, though I'm ragged I'm true," and 

 was as unexceptionable in its sentiment as the 

 air was in its suitability to the words, whose very 

 spirit, compounded of humour and pathos, it 

 breathed. It was sung with just the unctuous 

 heartiness appropriate to the theme, which greatly 

 helped its effect. The singer promised me a 

 copy of it, but it never reached me, and, as he 

 must have departed this earth long ago, for he 

 was fairly old when, in the 'sixties, I heard him 

 sing it, he is not likely to send it to me now. 



On many occasions I had experience of the 

 " staying powers " of farmers when they seriously 



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