| Them things be all wore outMind, I don't say that... 705 |
[Jan. 28th, 2010|02:17 am] |
Them things be all wore outMind, I don't say that they never was, but I do say that they wasn't in my timeThey be all very well for comers and trippers, an' the like, but not for a nice young lady like youThem feet-folks from York and Leeds that be always eatin' cured herrin's and drinkin' tea an' lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aughtI wonder masel' who'd be bothered tellin' lies to them, even the newspapers, which is full of fool-talk
I thought he would be a good person to learn interesting things from, so I asked him if he would mind telling me something about the whale fishing in the old daysHe was just settling himself to begin when the clock struck six, whereupon he laboured to get up, and said,
"I must gang ageeanwards home now, missMy grand-daughter doesn't like to be kept waitin' when the tea is ready, for it takes me time to crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of 'em, and miss, I lack belly-timber sairly by the clock
He hobbled away, and I could see him hurrying, as well as he could, down the stepsThe steps are a great feature on the placeThey lead from the town to the church, there are hundreds of them, I do not know how many, and they wind up in a delicate curveThe slope is so gentle that a horse could easily walk up and down them
I think they must originally have had something to do with the abbeyLucy went out, visiting with her mother, and as they were only duty calls, I did not go-I came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and we had a most interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who always come and join himHe is evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should think must have been in his time a most dictatorial person
He will not admit anything, and down faces everybodyIf he can't out-argue them he bullies them, and then takes their silence for agreement with his views
Lucy was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn frockShe has got a beautiful colour since she has been here
I noticed that the old men did not lose any time in coming and sitting near her when we sat downShe is so sweet with old people, I think they all fell in love with her on the spotEven my old man succumbed and did not contradict her, but gave me double share insteadI got him on the subject of the legends, and he went off at once into a sort of sermonI must try to remember it and put it down
"It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel, that's what it be and nowt elseThese bans an' wafts an' boh-ghosts an' bar-guests an' bogles an' all anent them is only fit to set bairns an' dizzy women a'belderin'They be nowt but air-blebsThey, an' all grims an' signs an' warnin's, be all invented by parsons an' illsome berk-bodies an' railway touters to skeer an' scunner hafflin's, an' to get folks to do somethin' that they don't other incline toIt makes me ireful to think o' themWhy, it's them that, not content with printin' lies on paper an' preachin' them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttin' them on the tombstonesLook here all around you in what airt ye willAll them steans, holdin' up their heads as well as they can out of their pride, is acant, simply tumblin' down with the weight o' the lies wrote on them, 'Here lies the body' or 'Sacred to the memory' wrote on all of them, an' yet in nigh half of them there bean't no bodies at all, an' the memories of them bean't cared a pinch of snuff about, much less sacredLies all of them, nothin' but lies of one kind or another! My gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they come tumblin' up in their death-sarks, all jouped together an' trying' to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was, some of them trimmlin' an' dithering, with their hands that dozzened an' slippery from lyin' in the sea that they can't even keep their gurp o' them
I could see from the old fellow's self-satisfied air and the way in which he looked round for the approval of his cronies that he was "showing off," so I put in a word to keep him goingSwales, you can't be seriousSurely these tombstones are not all wrong?"
"Yabblins! There may be a poorish few not wrong, savin' where they make out the people too good, for there be folk that do think a balm-bowl be like the sea, if only it be their ownThe whole thing be only liesYou come here a stranger, an' you see this kirkgarth
I nodded, for I thought it better to assent, though I did not quite understand his |
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