In six or seven unimportant passages Gay speaks of hills or mountains, apparently using the words interchangeably, but not in a manner indicating much knowledge of them. Yet such little pictures as that of the dawn when the sun “strikes the distant eastern hills with light,” or that of “the evening star shining above the western hill,” show some recognition of hills as an attractive part of a landscape. Gay knows flowers and birds and trees with some definiteness. He speaks of many domestic animals. He notes colors and odors.[216] He observes the lengthened shadows stretched across the meadows in the late afternoon, the long flight of crows seeking the wood at sunset, the streams “wrinkled”[217] by a fresh breeze, the yellow showers of leaves in autumn. Abundant and varied as is this use of Nature, it is not marked by especial delicacy of feeling or accuracy of observation. But for all that “The Shepherd’s Week” is a notable piece of work, and it is in these pastorals that we find Gay’s real service. Whether meant as a friendly aid in Pope’s castigation of Ambrose Philips or not, these poems were unquestionably meant as a good-humored satire on pastorals that ventured to deal truthfully with English rustic life. The Latin form was counted the ideal one for pastoral. To this form Gay held, evidently with the conscious purpose of suggesting the Latin at every turn. Then he filled in this mold with the homeliest, most realistic details of English country life.[218] The plain, practical truth of these details is simply amazing as will be seen from the passages indicated in the note. See also the flowers brought in, the primrose, kingcup, clover, daisie, gilliflower, mary-gold, butter-flowers, cowslip, and others; and the animals, the witless lamb, frisking kid, udder’d cow, clucking hen, waddling goose, squeaking pigs, worrying cur, whining swine, paddling ducks, guzzling hogs, and others; and the country sports, as romping in the fields, blindman’s buff, hot cockles, swinging, and others.[219] In Pastoral IV is an assemblage of curious country superstitions; in Pastoral I are given signs of rain; in Pastoral V are funeral customs; and in Pastoral VI an account of the favorite country songs. These poems are a veritable treasure-house for the student of folklore. They might also serve as a diary of country occupations. Take for example Bumkinet’s reminiscences of Blouzelinda’s life in Pastoral V. In such a wood, he remembers, they gathered fagots. There he drew down hazel boughs and stuffed her apron with brown nuts. In another place he had helped her hunt for her strayed hogs, and as they drove the untoward creatures to the sty had seized the opportunity to tell his love. At the dairy he had often seen her making butter pats, or feeding with floods of whey the hogs that crowded to the door. In the barn as he plied the flail, he had watched her sift out food for the hens. In the field she had ranged the sheaves as he pitched them on