OLD COUNTRY FOLK 257 



sloppin' about, and I used to get 'em pulled oft' in the 

 stiff mud down the lane.' 



I well remember seeing the sharp prints of the irons 

 on the village footpaths. 



My father told me how the sentries at the park gates 

 in London had orders not to allow any one to walk in the 

 park in pattens. It was to prevent the cutting up of the 

 gravel paths. 



Children were very simply dressed. Girls had a cotton 

 or stuff frock according to the season, and always a long 

 pinafore. Girls, up to eight or nine years old, had their 

 hair cut short like boys, and wore the same round hats of 

 coarse black felt. Their sleeves were generally short, and 

 their poor little arms uncovered in nearly all weathers. 



Boys had short round frocks like small smock-frocks 

 over suits of corduroy ; these short frocks were sometimes 

 called by the old name ' gabardine. 



' Let me see,' said my friend the former schoolmistress, 

 ' which boy was it that used always to speak of his 

 gabardine — Was it Jushingto Earl ? No, it was Berechiah 

 Gosling.' 



The first-named boy's odd Christian name was always 

 a wonder to us as children ; the other is a good old Bible 

 name ; while ' Gosling,' though to the rustic mind it has a 

 homely connexion, is really a corruption of a grand old 

 French family name. There are many other names in the 

 country of obviously French origin, such as Durrant, which 

 is now almost typically familiar as belonging to West 

 Surrey. 



' Berechiah ' is evidently a result of the fine old practice 



of opening the Bible and giving a child a name found on, 



2 K 



