Country Hoard

     

With my interest in slower, rural life, Alison Uttley's recollection of a late 19th Century childhood on a farm in Derbyshire fitted the whimsical bill.

 

Known by me for her successful children's books ( especially A Traveller in Time and the Little Grey Rabbit series ), this title is illustrated with great care by C F Tunnicliffe. 

It's another time and another place, when communities, though often isolated, were cohesive.
   "Anyone who had been snubbed or repressed to silence before other people was said to have "sneaped". A haughty woman would sneap another, an overbearing man would sneap his wife, the wintry wind sneaped us to silence. 
    A person who was too sensitive to cold was said to be nesh. It was often used of one who was unable to endure any hardship. Also it had a kinder meaning. After an illness one was nesh, and must take care. A baby was nesh, and must be guarded." ( P. 127 )

Much is made of the rhythms of farm life, the joys of the recurring seasons, the ties that bind the members of a community and the simplicity of self-reliance.

   "The strange smells of the smithy attracted me, and I stood as near the open door as I dared. The blacksmith was a morose man, in his leather apron, dark and torn. His face was dark, his hair coal black, his temper was irritable, he shouted strange oaths, and threw down his hammer with such a clatter it was like doom. He blew up the fire with wheezing bellows, and a shower of golden sparks went through the hole in the roof to the trees above. He shaped the horse-shoe on the anvil and the sharp clang of the hammer rang through the market place like a bell". ( P. 86 )

The world, as such, exists within reach, for everything necessary is there, within reach, for contentment.

She doesn't ever seem to have had a dull day, but then there was always activity around the farm, and the natural world around it to explore.

 Although looking back, this memoir is also a tribute to the senses, tingling with life.
   "Frummerty, which we had for breakfast at certain periods, was whole wheat, creed all day and night in the oven. "Creeing" meant the art of cooking very slowly in an earthenware vessel, until the wheat formed a jelly. 
    We called the rind of bacon, the sword. Bacon badly cured was reasty. Heavy bread was sad, a most expressive description. We culled the vegetables when we gathered them. Peas and beans were hulled, which meant shelled. The shells were hulls". ( P. 129 )

The twelve chapters ( with names such as 'Sledging', 'Flowers', 'Writing Letters', 'Bathrooms' - with which Alison Uttley grew up without - and 'Field Toys' ) read as a sort of traveller's guide to the past. Although perhaps a little simplistic and rosy to us today, the writing asks to be lingered over.

  This is, of course though, the world seen through a child's eyes, when everything is new.
   "I felt such bliss steal over me as I pulled the sledge up the hill that I knew I had reached the core. There could never be anything more beautiful as long as I lived. If only the snow would stay, if the night wouldn't fall, if the lamplight would always shine from the farmhouse to tell me that home was waiting! I could go on for ever, immortal". ( P. 57 )

It's the sort of book you sigh over, saving chapters for later, not wanting it to end...

...but then, I've got these great, ripping Australian yarns, 'The Bunyip of Barney's Elbow', to get stuck into, so regret won't be lasting long...