SILENCE AND MUSIC 147 



than on most days. Beer, too, of wliich unusually 

 large quantities are consumed at such times, makes 

 glad the Sussexian heart, and song is with him the 

 natural expression of the feeling. Willum, asked for 

 a song, without much demur sings it with all his 

 heart ; he is followed by Tummas, who scarcely waits 

 to be asked ; and then Gaarge, who began clearing his 

 throat and moistening his lips when Tummas was in 

 the fourteenth and last stanza, bursts out with his 

 rollicking song with a chorus in which all join. Then 

 follow Sammel and Bill (to distinguish him from 

 Willum), and finally John Birkenshaw, the silent man, 

 who has been occupied all the evening drinking beer 

 and saying nothing, gives by general request his cele- 

 brated murder ballad in twenty-three stanzas. Before 

 it is quite finished, when he is pointing the moral of 

 his gruesome tale, warning all fond mothers to look 

 well after their daughters dear, and not foohshly allow 

 them to go out walking with young men of doubtful 

 reputation, the listeners begin to yawn and look 

 drowsy; but they praise his performance when it is 

 happily over, and John wipes his forehead, drinks his 

 beer, and says good-night. 



As to their manner of singing, it was admirably 

 described about the middle of the eighteenth century 

 by a Dr. John Burton, a clergyman, who was accus- 

 tomed to " travel " into Sussex at intervals, and who 

 recorded his observations on the country and its people 

 in an amusing work entitled Iter Sussexiense, 



