THE LANDSWOMAN
December, 19 I 8
The Song of the Farmer
By E. V. LUCAS
"{X TALKING recently in Herefordshire, where
V V the cattle seem to be nobler creatures than
in the Home Counties, with t heir friendly, sa~acious
white faces and their rich, shaggy umber coats, and
those s preading horns (almost worthy of the big·
game hunter's smoking-room)-walking re~ e ntly in
Herefordshin•, where a lso I saw some of the
straightest. furrows ever driven through the patient
earth, and again marvelled at the skill of that
JF-a•t-ilattered of artists, the ploughman, npon
whom, aB I tru~t, when he exc hanges the fallow
soil of his native land for the sacred turf of the
Elystan Fields, an unending measure of conscious
sweet do-nothingness will fall, not unaccompanied
by pipe and glass-walking recently in HerefordshirP, I came (a.s I have been trying so long to
tell you\ upon an inn where the ci dc·r was served in
earthenware vessels on which we re written verses
in praise of the goodness and greatness of the
farmer.
Poetical pottery has always interested me, ever
since, as a child, I used to visit the collection of
the late Henry \Villett, that · discerning brewer of
beer, in the Brighton Museum, where much of the
social, po:it.ical and belligerent history of Engiand
in the eighteenth and early nineteenth . centuries
is recorded on jug and mug, the range being wide
enough to compnse the glory, not only of Lord
Nelson and William .Pitt, but Daniel Lambert
and Tom Crib. I was, therefore, glad to be in the
company of this rhyming receptacle.
I cannot repeat the whole of the song which I
read, and endeavoured to get by heart, in the inter·
vais of consuming the cider. I forget the three
opening lines, which the ingenious reader may
perhaps be amused to reconstruct, but the rP.st
was niore or less as I shall transcribe. The complacent farmer, it shouid be understood, is the
singer: his own ceiebrant.
The first line that I recall is the fourth, which
runs thus:
" I eat my o ݸ