74 Reckoning hy Thatchings. 



The straw had lasted better lately-, because there 

 were now no great elm trees to drip, drip on it in 

 wet weather. Cottagers are frequently really- squat- 

 ters, building on the waste land beside the highway 

 close to the hedgerow, and consequently under the 

 trees. This dripping on the roof is very bad for 

 thatch. Straw is remarkably durable, even when 

 ^exposed to the weather, if good in the first place 

 and well laid on. It may be reckoned to last twenty 

 years on an average, perhaps more. Four thatch- 

 ings, then, made eight}^ years ; add three years since 

 the last thatching ; and the old lady suj^posed she 

 was seventeen or eighteen at the first — i.e. just a 

 ceijtur}^ since. But in all likelihood her recollections 

 of the first thatching were confused and uncertain : 

 she was perhaps eight or ten at that time, which 

 would reduce her real age to a little over mnet3\ 

 A great part of the A'illage had twice been destroyed 

 by fire since she could remember. These fires are 

 or were singularly destructive in villages — the 

 flames running from thatch to thatch, and, as they 

 express it, ' wrastling' across the intervening spaces. 

 A pain is said to ' wrastle,' or shoot and burn. 

 Such fires are often caused by wood ashes from the 

 hearth thrown on the dust-heap while yet some em- 

 bers contain sufficient heat to fire straw or rubbish. 



The old woman's memories were wholly of gossipy 

 family history ; I have often found that the ver3' aged 

 have not half so much to tell as those of about sixty 

 to seventy years. The next oldest was a man about 

 eighty ; all he knew of history was that once on 

 a time some traitor withdrew the flints from the 

 muskets of the English troops, substituting pieces 



