l 
214 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
festivals. The ivy is frequently mentioned in the classic 
poets. Not so with the countrywomen in the villages 
to-day, ground down in constant dread of that hateful 
workhouse system of which I can find no words to ex- 
press my detestation. They tell their daughters never 
to put ivy leaves in their hair or brooch, because ‘they 
puts it on the dead paupers in the unions and the 
lunatics in the ’sylums.’ Such an association took away 
all the beauty of the ivy leaf. There is nature in their 
hearts, you see, although they are under the polar 
draught of poverty. At last there came a little warmth 
and the Emperor moth appeared, yellow and white 
butterflies came out, flowers bloomed, buds opened— 
ripened by the mystic magnetism of the sun in their 
sheaths and cocoons—great humble-bees came with a 
full-blown buzz, all before the swallow, the nightingale, 
and cuckoo. It was but for a day, and then down fell 
the bitter polar draught again, 
