158 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



understand the verb to "flirk," which is nearly the 

 same as to flick. " Pansherds " are " potsherds." 



Here is a country recipe for discovering whether 

 a lover is faithful or not. Take a laurel leaf, scratch 

 his name on it, or the initials, and put it in the bosom 

 of the dress. If it turns brown, he is true ; if not, 

 hell deceive you. The character of a girl, according 

 to the following couplets, is to be learned from the 

 colour of her eyes : 



" Brown eyes, beauty, 

 Do your mother's duty. 

 Bine eyes pick-a-pie, 

 Lie a-bed and tell a lie. 

 Grey eyes greediness, 

 Gobble all the world up." 



The interpretation is, that brown eyes indicate a 

 gentle and dutiful disposition. Blue eyes show three 

 guilty tendencies to pick-a-pie, that is, to steal ; to 

 lie a-bed, that is, to be idle ; and to tell a lie. As 

 for grey eyes, their selfish greediness and ambition 

 could not be contented with less than the whole 

 world. No one but a woman could have composed 

 this scandal on the sex. Sometimes the green lanes 

 are crossed by gates, over which the trees in the 

 hedges each side form a leafy arch. On the top bar 

 of such a gate, rustic lovers often write love messages 

 to their ladies, with a fragment of chalk. Unable 

 from some cause or other to keep the appointed 

 rendezvous, they leave a few explanatory words in 

 conspicuous white letters, so that the gate answers 

 the same purpose as the correspondence column in 

 the daily papers. When a gate is not available, they 

 thrust a stick in the ground near the footpath, split 



