188 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
they say, are ‘slubby’ enough in November, and those 
who try to go through get ‘slubbed’ up to their’ knees. 
This expresses a soft, plastic, and adhesive condition of 
the mud which comes on after it has been ‘ raining hop- 
poles’ fora week. The labourer has little else to do but 
to chop up disused hop-poles into long fagots with a 
hand-bill—in other counties a bill-hook. All his class 
bitterly resent the lowering of wages which takes place 
in winter; it is a shame, they say, and they evidently 
think that the farmers ought to be forced to pay them 
more—they are starvation wages. On the other hand, 
the farmer, racked in every direction, and unable to sell 
his produce, finds the labour bill the most difficult to 
meet, because it comes with unfailing regularity every 
Saturday. A middle-aged couple of cottagers left their 
home, and the wife told us how they had walked and 
walked day after day, but the farmers said they were too 
poor to give them a job. So at last the man, as they 
went grumbling on the highway, lost his temper, and hit 
her a ‘clod’ in the head, ‘and I never spoke to him for 
an hour afterwards ; no, that I didn’t; not for an hour. 
A clod is a heavy, lumping blow. Their home was 
‘broad’ of Hurst—that is, in the Hurst district, but at 
some little distance. 
‘There a’ sets’ is a constant expression for there it 
lies. A dish on the table, a cat on the hearth, a plough 
in the field, ‘there a’ sets, there it is. ‘No bounds’ is 
another. It may rain all day long, ‘there’s no bounds ;’ 
that is, no knowing. ‘I may go to fair, no bounds, it is 
uncertain, I have not made up my mind. A folk so 
vague in their ideas are very fond of this ‘no bounds ;’ it 
is like the ‘Quien sabe?’ of the Mexicans, who knows? 
and accompanies every remark. An avaricious person 
is very ‘having ;’ wants to have everything, What are 
