Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/325



For the Halls tha are upon the look out, Tha love to see a seäl, An when tha git well in my boys He's bound to taäste a meäl.

Seals are more common on this coast than one would think. Only this autumn, 1913, great complaints have been made by the fishermen of the destruction of soles, etc., in the 'Wash' by the increased number of these unwelcome visitors.

Dan Gunby, in spite of his fiddling and attendance at all the dances in the neighbourhood, was not of a jovial nature. His life was hard and his outlook on it was always serious, and any humour which he had was of the dry order, which is so frequent in the northern counties. Terse remarks with a touch of humour, sly or grim, he doubtless showed at times, but a real hearty laugh he would seldom allow himself. We find this same almost unconscious habit of saying a biting thing in a sly way frequent in the counties north of Lincolnshire, as for instance, when in Westmorland a man meeting a friend says, "I hear Jock has gotten marriet" and the rejoinder, which expresses so much in so few words, both about the man in question and the subject of matrimony generally, is "Ah'm gled o' that, ah niver liked Jock." Another time, a man meets a 'pal' and for a bit of news says, "We'm gotten a chain for oor Mayor," and the answer, "Han yo? We let yon beggar of ourn go loose" is far more funny than was ever intended. But Gunby and his likes, of whom there are more in the regions of the hills and fells than elsewhere, have not only the seriousness of those who live solitary and have leisure to do a deal o' thinking, but dwelling apart in places where they can commune with Nature and the stars they get the poetic touch from their surroundings. The mountain shepherd goes up on to the heights and spends long hours with his dog and sheep. He marks the great clouds move by, and listens to the voice of the streams. He knows "the silence that is in the starry sky;" the great constellations are his companions; he sees the rising moon, and the splendours of the dawn and sunset. Those sights which fill us with such delight and wonder when beheld now and then in a lifetime, are before his eyes repeatedly. Now he watches the storm near at hand in all its fury, the thunder echoing round him