The milkmaid, and the girls guarding sheep and cows are things of the past, and with them have largely departed their old ballads and songs. Tusser, in his "Points on Huswifry," in 1570, recommends the country housewife to select her maids from those who sing at their work as being usually the most painstaking and the best. "Such servants are oftenest painsfull and good, That sing at their labours, like birds in a wood." Nowadays, domestic servants sing nothing but hymns, and the use of ballads and folksongs has died out among farm girls, and these are to be recovered only where there are village industries as basket weaving, glove sewing, and the like. But the old men sing their ancient ditties, or did so till within the last fifty years. Now they are no longer called on for them, but they remember them, and with a little persuasion can be induced to render them up. When I was a boy, I was wont to ride over and about Dartmoor, and to put up at little village taverns. There I was sure in the evening to hear one or two men sing, and should it be a pay day, sing hour after hour, one song following another with little intermission. There was an institution at mines and quarries called a _fetching_. It occurred every fortnight. The men left work early, and went to the changing room; stone jars of ale were brought thither from the nearest public house. Each man filled his mug, and each in turn, before emptying it, was required to sing. On such occasions many a fine old ballad was to be picked up. There was also the farm-supper after harvest, at which the workmen sang. Now the suppers have been discontinued. Ringer's feasts, happily, still remain, and at them a good old ditty may be heard. But most of the old singers with their traditional ballads set to ancient modal melodies have passed away. In "Poems, etc.," by Henry Incledon Johns, published by subscription, Devonport, 1832, is the following interesting passage. He is describing a night spent in an inn on the borders of Dartmoor; he met farmers and labourers. "One of the party I observed never took any share in the conversation, but appeared to have been invited there for the sole purpose of singing to them. He sang a great number of ballads, making up in loudness for what he lacked in melody. I thought it betrayed rather a want of courtesy that his auditors continued to talk while he sang, and no less remarkable, that they never expressed either applause or disapprobation of his strains. Now and then, one or two of them would join in a line of chorus, but it seemed to be done in a sort of parenthesis, and the thread of the conversation was immediately resumed as vehemently as ever.... I gleaned the following scraps of the border minstrelsy of Dartmoor: 'There was an old man as blind as blind could be, He swore he saw the fox go up a great tree.'