“Why they used to be black ends uppermost and now they’r ’tother waay on.” “Well, that’s just how they always have been.” “Naay they warn’t. It was ’81 they turned.” They _do_ lie with the attachment of each bean to the pod, just the way you would not expect, and having noticed this he was convinced that up to then they had really lain the way he had always supposed they did, so difficult is it to separate fact from imagination. The similes used by a Lincolnshire native are often quite Homeric, as when an old fellow, who was cutting his crop of beans, the haulm of which is notoriously tough, resting on his scythe said, “I’d rayther plow wi two dogs nor haulm beans.” Then they have often a quiet, slow way of saying things, which is in itself humorous. I remember a labourer who was very deaf, but he had been much annoyed by the mother of a man whose place he had succeeded to. He was working alongside of his master and _apropos_ of nothing but his own thoughts, he said, “Scriptur saäys we should forgive one another; but I doänt knoä. If yon owd ’ooman fell i’ the dyke I doänt think _I_ should pull her out. I mowt tell some ’un on her, but I doänt think I should pull her out howiver.” There is some kindliness in that, though in quantity it is rather like the Irishman’s news: “I’ve come to tell you that I have nothing to tell you, and there’s some news in that.” But the Lincolnshire native is a trifle stern; even the mother’s hand is more apt to be punitive than caressing. “I’ll leather you well when I gets you home, my lad,” I have heard a mother say to a very small boy, and I have heard tell of a mother who, when informed that her little girl had fallen down the well, angrily exclaimed, “Drat the children, they’re allus i’ mischief; and now she’s bin and drownded hersen I suppose.” In Westmorland it is the husband who _will_ take too much at market on whom the vials of the wrath of the missis are outpoured, and they generally know how to “sarve” him. One good lady, on being asked “How_ever_ did you get him ower t’wall, Betty?” replied “I didna get him ower at a’—I just threshed him through th’ hog-hole” (the hole in the wall for the sheep, or hoggetts, to pass through). Speaking of tippling, there is no more delightful story than this from Westmorland, of a mouse which had fallen into a beer vat and was swimming round in despair, when a cat looked over, and the mouse cried out, “If ye’ll git me oot o’ this ye may hev me.” The cat let down her tail and the mouse climbed up, and shaking herself on the edge of the vat, jumped off and went down her hole, and on being reproached by the cat as not being a mouse of her word, answered, “Eh! but ivry body knaws folks will say owt when they’re i’ drink.” [Sidenote: OLD BOLINGBROKE]