4 SPORTING REMINISCENCES 



God save us an' the Colonel with his eye on us. 

 Miss Dora will be thrampled below. Lift the hay 

 an' don't be talkin', ye bosthoon," would go the 

 chorus. I wonder if they knew that I used to get 

 over on purpose. 



There was one old man, Johnny Kennedy, who 

 always built his haycocks crooked, and I re- 

 member how all the others used to laugh at him. 



I suppose I learnt something in those days, but 

 I can only remember being always out in the 

 garden or on the farm, and generally alone. 



I believed in the Fairies firmly. My old nurse 

 taught us to. I used to creep out to the Forths 

 and watch there to see Uttle men ride out on white 

 horses, and to hear the fairy cobbler tap tap at 

 his shoes, and then go racing home wild with 

 terror if a blackbird flew out of the thick thorn 

 trees. 



There was a black dark walk too where Fear 

 lived, which I could never pass through except 

 at a run, and even up to the time we left the farm, 

 a big girl would take to her heels and scurry 

 through the gloom from the new garden door. 



As to my efforts to kill myself, fortunately 

 nothing alarmed my mother. I used to run round 

 the high garden walls, to swing from end to end 

 of a wood without touching ground, and jump 

 from the highest section of a half-full haybarn 

 to the lowest, and drop from the bathroom 

 window. 



