More Chatter 
“The blacksmith ? ” 
“Yes, to get him to put a little wheat into 
his iron ladle and melt the oil out of it.” Any 
oil is good, Mr. Smith opined, but the oil 
from wheat, he supposed, had a special virtue. 
“Wheat, you see, is the strongest thing we 
know,” and is therefore everybody’s food. ‘“‘ If 
you get a barrel of old ale and put some wheat 
in it to Steep, then you must look out for trouble.” 
«e Why ? 2? 
““ Because you can’t carry it.”” In other words, 
old ale, “strengthened” by the Strength of 
wheat, is an intoxicant too strong for ordinary 
men. 
To “take up your back day” was a phrase 
my uncle used for dying. He explained it as 
a common alternative metaphor for “ getting the 
sack ’’’; and it originated, he said, in the custom 
of paying a man on Saturday up to Friday evening 
only, so that there remains a day still to be paid 
for. During harvesting or haying, this secures 
that a man will come back to work next week, 
instead of straying off to another job. But of 
course, if he means leaving, he can “take up 
his back day.” 
So far Mr. Smith. Yet an old-fashioned 
flavour in his talk may have come from a more 
ancient origin than he knew. In old Manorial 
Court Rolls a tenant was often said to have 
£33 
