A SUSSEX SHEEP-WASHING 



Autolycus whispers to himself, aside, " If the springe 

 hold, the cock's mine." 



The clown continues, "I cannot do't without counters. 

 Let me see ; what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing 

 feast ? ' Three pound of sugar ; five pound of currants ; 

 rice' What will this sister of mine do with rice? 

 But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and 

 she lays it on. She hath made me four-and-twenty 

 nosegays for the shearers, three-man songmen all, 

 and very good ones ; but they are most of them means 

 and bases; but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings 

 psalms to hornpipes. I must have saffron, to colour 

 the warden pies ; mace, dates, none ; that's out of my 

 note; 'nutmegs seven; a race or two of ginger,' but 

 that I may beg ; 'four pound of prunes ^ and as many of 

 raisins o 1 the sun.' " 



A pleasing picture, truly, culled from Shakespeare's 

 intimate knowledge of Warwickshire village life. 

 Somehow England was merrier in those days. Plea- 

 sures were simple and far between ; yet how folk en- 

 joyed them ! And this only a hundred years after the 

 Wars of the Roses, when the country had been torn, 

 ransacked, and drenched with blood from one end of 

 the realm to the other. 



225 



