92 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



the English troops, substituting pieces of wood, 

 which, of course, would not ignite the powder, and 

 thus they were beaten. Of date, place, or persons he 

 had no knowledge. He " minded " a great snowfall 

 when he was a boy, and helping to drag the coaches 

 out and making a firm road for them with hurdles. 

 Once while grubbing a hedge near the road he found 

 five shillings' worth of pennies the great old " cop- 

 pers " doubtless hidden by a thief. He could not 

 buy so much with one of the new sort of coppers : 

 liked them as King George made best. 



An old lady of about seventy, living at the village 

 inn, a very brisk body, seemed quite unable to under- 

 stand what was meant by history, but could tell me 

 a story if I liked. The story was a rambling narrative 

 of an amour in some foreign country. The lady, to 

 conceal a meeting with her paramour, which took place 

 in the presence of her son, who was an imbecile (or, 

 in her own words, had " no more sense than God gave 

 him " a common country expression for a fool), 

 went upstairs and rained raisins on him from the 

 window. The son told the husband what had hap- 

 pened ; but, asked to specify the time, could only fix 

 it by, " When it rained raisins." This was supposed 

 to be merely a fresh proof of his imbecility, and the 

 lady escaped. 



In this imperfect narrative is there not a distorted 

 version of a chapter in the " Pentameron " ? But 

 how did it get into the mind of an illiterate old woman 

 in an out-of-the-way village ? Nothing yet of Water- 



