interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who always come
and join him. He is evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should think
must have been in his time a most dictatorial person. He will not admit
anything, and downfaces everybody. If he can t out-argue them he bullies
them, and then takes their silence for agreement with his views. Lucy
was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn frock; she has got a
beautiful colour since she has been here. I noticed that the old men did
not lose any time in coming up and sitting near her when we sat down.
She is so sweet with old people; I think they all fell in love with her
on the spot. Even my old man succumbed and did not contradict her, but
gave me double share instead. I got him on the subject of the legends,
and he went off at once into a sort of sermon. I must try to remember it
and put it down:--
It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel; that s what it be, an
nowt else. These bans an wafts an boh-ghosts an barguests an bogles
an all anent them is only fit to set bairns an dizzy women
a-belderin . They be nowt but air-blebs. They, an all grims an signs
an warnin s, be all invented by parsons an illsome beuk-bodies an
railway touters to skeer an scunner hafflin s, an to get folks to do
somethin that they don t other incline to. It makes me ireful to think
o them. Why, it s them that, not content with printin lies on paper
an preachin them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttin them on the
tombstones. Look here all around you in what airt ye will; all them
steans, holdin up their heads as well as they can out of their pride,
is acant--simply tumblin down with the weight o the lies wrote on
them, Here lies the body or Sacred to the memory wrote on all of
them, an yet in nigh half of them there bean t no bodies at all; an
the memories of them bean t cared a pinch of snuff about, much less
sacred. Lies all of them, nothin but lies of one kind or another! My
gog, but it ll be a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they
come tumblin up in their death-sarks, all jouped together an tryin to
drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was; some of them
trimmlin and ditherin , with their hands that dozzened an slippy from
lyin in the sea that they can t even keep their grup o them.
I could see from the old fellow s self-satisfied air and the way in
which he looked round for the approval of his cronies that he was
showing off, so I put in a word to keep him going:--
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