And the rush-cart sure enough it was--a great wain from which the shafts had been removed stout ropes being substituted, with stangs across six in all, and to each stang two stout young fellows: all gay in rosetted knee-breeches and with streamers of bright colours fluttering from their jaunty caps. And on the waggon was piled a huge cone of rushes cunningly plaited together, on whose summit perched, with precarious seat, Tim o' Tame Water, who was regarded with fear and trembling by all the children for miles around, he being by way of being the village idiot, though, when I come to think of it, a man who can make a fairish living without doing a handstroke of work from January to December may not be quite such a fool as he's reckoned. Tim was furnished with a long slender wand or pole, to one end of which was tethered an old, battered tin can, the which he thrust invitingly under the noses of the men and women who watched the progress of the rush-cart. And the coppers rattled in gaily and freely, for who so mean as to begrudge a penny's fee to the burly lads who had scoured the countryside to gather the rushes, whose deft hands had plaited the reedy pyramid, and who now grunted and sweated behind the stangs as, swaying from side to side of the road, now lifting the stans above their heads, now bending their brawny shoulders to the strain, they drew the creaking wain towards the door of the Church. Old men and withered beldames stood on their doorsteps to watch the throng pass by, and I doubt not drew disparaging comparisons between the rush-cart of that day and those they had danced behind so trippingly when they were young and light of foot and heart; comely matrons dandled their babes in their arms, and held them aloft that their chubby fists might drop a coin into the rattling tin; sturdy urchins dodged about the labouring wheels of the groaning cart in a way to bring your heart into your mouth, till you remembered that a special Providence watches over drunken men and children; and, fairest sight of all, the pretty young lasses, all donned in their Sunday best, and wearing fragrant nosegays of every hue under the sun, ran by the waggon side with many a lilt of rustic melody. Following in the rear of the rush-cart, amid a jeering crowd, rode a man and his wife--their names and habitations I cared not to inquire--who were being "stanged". The man rode behind his better, very much the better, half, with his face towards the tail of the sorry beast that bore this wretched couple. And as it plodded heavily through the throng the lads and lasses, aye, and even silly grown-up folk who ought to have had more sense, shouted the old nominy, "With a ran, tan, tan, on my old tin can, owd Betty"--I did not catch the name--"and her good man. She banged him, she banged him, for spending a penny when he stood in need, she up with a three-footed stool; she struck him so hard, she cut him so deep, till the blood ran down like a new stuck sheep."