An Old English Home and Its DependenciesBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
An Old English Home and Its Dependencies
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
England -- Social life and customs
"It is killin' of us old folks out. It isn't so much that us gets no
grinding I mind, but it leaves me and my Anne with no means in our old
age, and us don't like to go on to the childer, and us don't like to go
into the work'us. There it is. Us did reckon on being able honestly to
get our bread for ourselves and ax nobody for nothing. But now this ere
new mill wi' the steam ingens and the electric light--someone must pay
for all that, and who is that but the customers? I've no electric light
here, water costs nothing. Coals costs twenty-one shillings a ton, and
it takes a deal o' coals to make the ingen march. Who pays for the
coals? Who pays for the electric light? The customers get the flour
at the same price as I send it out with none of them jangangles. How
do they manage it? I reckon the corn is tampered with--there's white
china-clay or something put wi' the flour. It can't be done otherwise.
But I reckon folk like to say, 'Our flour comed from that there mill
worked wi' steam and lighted by electric light,' and if they have those
things, then, I say they can't have pure flour. So it must be, I think,
but folk say that I am an old stoopid and don't understand nothing. All
I can say is I can turn out wholesome flour, and niver put nothing in
but corn grains, and niver turned out nothing but corn flour, wheat and
oat and barley."
On the day of the golden wedding of the old couple I visited them. I
made a point of this, and brought them some little comfort.
I found them very happy. A son and a daughter had taken a holiday to
see their parents and congratulate them. The parson's wife had sent in
a plum pudding, the squire a bottle of old port. Several friends had
remembered them--even the miller in the new style, who had electric
light and steam power, had contributed a cake. There were nuts and
oranges--but perhaps the present which gave most gratification was a
doll, a miller with a floured face, sent by a grandchild with a rough
scrawl. I supply the stops to make it intelligible.
"Dear Grandada and Granny,--At skool, teacher said old pipple go
into a sekond childood. So has you be so tremenjous old you must be
orful babies. I think you will want a doll, so i sends you wun, with
mutch love, and i drest the doll myself as a miller. Hever yors, dear
grandada and granny.--ROSIE."
Though the village mill usually--almost always--presents a pleasant
picture in one's memory, a picture of cheerfulness and content, of good
nature and neatness, it is not always so. I remember one mill which
carries with it a sadness whenever I recall it. Not that the mill was
gloomy in itself, but that the story connected with it was such as to
make one sad.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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