92 Wild Life in a Southern County 



reaching the zenith, the body of the bird just below the 

 horizon. The resemblance is sometimes so perfect that 

 the layers of feathers are traceable by an imaginative eye 

 This, the old folk say, is the wing of the Archangel Michael, 

 and it bodes no good to the evil ones among the nations, 

 for he is on his way to execute a dread command. 



Herbs are still believed in implicitly by some. Not 

 long since I met a labourer, one of the better class too, 

 whom I had known previously, and now found deeply de- 

 pressed because of the death of a son. The poor fellow 

 had had every attention ; the clergyman had exerted him- 

 self, and wine and nourishing luxuries had not been spared, 

 nor the best of medical advice. That he admitted, but 

 still regretted one thing. There was a herb, which grew 

 beside rivers, and was known to but a few, that was a cer- 

 tain cure for the kind of wasting disease which had baffled 

 educated skill. There was an old man living somewhere 

 by a river fifty miles away, who possessed the secret of this 

 herb, and by it had accomplished marvellous cures. He 

 had heard of him, but could not by any inquiry ascertain 

 his exact whereabouts ; and so his child died. Everything 

 possible had been done, but still he regretted that this 

 herb had not been applied. 



Nothing is done right now, according to the old men 

 of the hamlet ; even the hayricks are built badly and 

 ' scamped.' The ' rickmaker ' used to be an important 

 person, generally a veteran, who had to be conciliated with 

 an extra drop of good liquor before he could be got to set 

 to work in earnest. Then he spread the hay here, and 

 worked it in there, and had it trodden down at the edge, 

 and then in the middle, and, like the centurion, sent men 

 hither and thither. His rick, when complete, did not rise 

 perpendicularly, but each face or square side sloped a little 



