332 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



where I were born, I used to be up at four in the 

 morning, in summer, listening to the blackbirds. And 

 mother she used to say, ' Lord, how she do love to hear 

 a blackbird ! ' It's always been the same. I's always up 

 at four, and in summer I goes out to hear the blackbird 

 when it do sing so beautiful. But them starlings that 

 come messing about, pulling the straws out of the 

 thatch, I've no patience with they. We didn't have so 

 many starlings when I were young. But things is very 

 different now ; and what I say is, I wish they wasn't I 

 wish they was the same as when I were a girl. And I 

 wish I was a girl again." 



Listening to this tirade on the degeneracy of modern 

 times, it amused me to recall the very different feeling 

 on the same subject expressed by the old Wolmer 

 Forest woman. But the Itchen woman had more vigour, 

 more staying - power in her: one could see it in the 

 fresh colour in her round face, and the pure colour and 

 brightness of her eyes brighter and bluer than in most 

 blue-eyed girls. Altogether, she was one of the best 

 examples of the hard-headed, indomitable Saxon 

 peasants I have met with in the south of England. 

 She was past seventy, impeded by an old infirmity, 

 the mother of many men and women with big families 

 of their own, all scattered far and wide over the county, 

 all too poor themselves to help her in her old age, or 

 to leave their work and come such a distance to see her, 

 excepting when they were in difficulties, for then they 

 would come for what she could spare them out of her 

 hardly-earned little hoard. 



