Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/215

 Folk- Lore of the Wye Valley. 179

" ' So she was ; we hadn't no bread last week, but bor- rowed from neighbours, and when I met you, she was baking a batch o' bread to repay the neighbours with,' says the lad.

" ' And about your sister, who you said was crying over the fun she had at Whitsuntide,' asks the landlord.

" * So she was,' says the lad. ' She had saved some money, and at Whitsuntide she spent it all, and she was crying over that when you met me.'

" ' And about your brother's hunting,' asks the landlord.

" ' What I said was true,' says the lad. ' When we met, my brother, was under an oak-tree hunting fleas, and all he killed he left behind, and all he did not kill he brought home alive,'

" So the landlord he gave a receipt for the six months' rent that was due."

Margaret Eyre.