Page:Once a Week Dec 1860 to June 61.pdf/188

. 9, 1861.] down. This is not pretty, certainly; nor are the hills pretty, patched with snow and colourless grass; nor the roads, on which we find a mixture of mud, cinders, and dirty snow, where we were lately tramping a bright icy path, on snow as pure as the clear heavens. But it is not all ugly. The very drip from the eaves has its beauty, when it falls from a well-kept thatch which is drying in the sun. It is pleasant to see the wash going on in so many cottages where it is sadly wanted after the frosty season. Tubs and pails are set every where to catch the drip, and linen is flapping on the lines, or spread on the bushes in every garden, on a sunny day. On the hedge banks, where snow still lurks in the hollows, there are ugly patches of rotten weeds: but there is already a promise of renovation. Dandelions are open in sunny places, and the common crowfoot: and the pretty bright green of the wild strawberry catches the eye, and the wild parsley, and the shining hartstongue fern, and the maidenhair, in choice places, and the tufts of primrose leaves, getting larger and stronger now, and the speedwells, and, perhaps, best of all, the daisy. The first daisies are an honourable mark for February in themselves. In the hedge we find the catkins already hanging from the hazels, and over the pools the smooth shining grey buds of the palm willow, which children suppose to be the palms carried by glorified spirits, and gaze at with awe accordingly. The alder and the poplar show their flower buds, and on the common the whin or gorse is already bright. In seasons when fodder is scarce, we are thankful to gather the young sprouts of the gorse for cattle. They are fond of it, and it is an important resource in a moorland country, where a growth of whins covers miles of the surface.

This topic brings us to Collop Monday, the day preceding Shrove Tuesday. The name is now a mere traditional one; but it is worth preserving, in memory of the time when Lent was truly and generally observed, and when it also happened that fresh meat was a thing almost unheard of at the end of winter. This Monday was the last day of flesh dinners before Lent: and people cut up such meat as they had remaining into collops, to hang up to dry, or to lie in salt for the forty days. Eggs and bacon are, or lately were, called eggs and collops on that day.

The hens ought to be laying abundantly by this time; and they must have been well treated, and much coaxed in old times, to answer the still greater demand upon them. Eggs were wanted with collops on that Monday, and for pancakes on the Tuesday, and for egg sauce to eat with salt-fish and parsnips all through Lent. Few of us see enough of fasting in Lent or other times to have much idea what it is now like, but we can form some notion of what it was in old Catholic times. We must remember how much the rural labouring classes depended then on cabbage of one kind or another. "Kail wort" was cabbage food then, and not the particular vegetable which we now know as colewort. The cabbage soup of Russia and some other countries seems to us an unwholesome diet: but it was formerly the main diet of the majority of the English people. Fish was more common then than now, for the poor as well as the rich. At present, the gentry have, in Lent, cod to any amount, soles, skate, haddocks, codlings, and, towards the end, herrings. Turbot is for those who think proper to fast in a luxurious way. There are several kinds of fish which afford a meal not to be complained of when stewed with wine and spices. The oddest dishes to find set down in the programme of Lent fasting are young ducks, fowls, pigeon-pie, and, no doubt, lark puddings. On the whole, considering what beef was in days when cattle could not be kept alive through the winter, and the meat was therefore salt; and remembering the kale diet of the poor, and the abundance of fish and eggs and wild-fowl, there might be no great disadvantage to Lent, in its comparison with the rest of winter, in regard to diet. As for us, we have an abundant choice. It is the height of the pork as well as the beef season. Veal begins to appear in the market. There is house-lamb for those who choose to pay for it. We can get wild-fowl still, though one of the spectacles of the month is the departure of the wild swans and geese for the north. Hares can be had up to the 27th, and no longer. We wait for our pigeon-pies, for the nests are our object now. Next to the hens, which are laying—some or other of them—all the year round, the first eggs we have to show little Harry are pigeons' eggs. There are no other birds' eggs, we tell him, anywhere round, unless under the pair of ravens which live on the crag. He cannot go and see them: nobody can go, or there would not be young ravens every year: but this is the time when the hen raven begins to sit.

"When will there be more?" he wishes to know.—Very soon now, in the rookery. The rooks, which have shown themselves every morning and evening through the winter, are now noisy and busy in the extreme. They are pairing and building. The sparrows make no less bustle in their small way: they are pairing, and they chirp at a great rate. The woodlark and the chaffinch sing, and the hen chaffinches flock together. The thrush and the lark sing, and the bullfinch has been seen in the garden again. The buntings collect in a crowd, and so do the linnets, and the sportsman finds the partridges settling themselves for the season in the meadows or among the young corn.

Harry and I agree that all this bustle is like the waking up of the year, as our early voices and footsteps about the house show that the night is over, and the sun is about to bring the day. We remember how, amidst the strange sounds in the frost, there was scarcely one which came from beast or bird; and then, how silent everything was after a fall of snow. Not only was every sound muffled by the snow, but the creatures seemed to be struck mute and motionless. It is so different now, though it is still winter, that we go out early in the morning, just for the purpose of observing what the noises are.

We leave behind the noisiest creatures of all—the turkeys, which make a greater fuss than ever with their gobbling and strutting, and the hens clucking over their morning task. We cannot resist waiting a minute or two for the eggs, and carrying them in for breakfast, and then on we