Page:The English Peasant.djvu/142

 Not that there is less gaiety or mirth in Dorset than in any other part of England, but, as far as I could learn, it was wholesome mirth.

Indeed, the love of joking, play of wit, and sharp but kindly repartee, the ready appreciation of irony and of principles conveyed or hinted in a playful manner, is quite a striking feature in Dorset character. In these poems the women are often depicted as playing off practical jokes on the good-natured but duller-witted sex; sometimes tacking up the sleeves and collars of Tom Dumpy's smock and filling it with stones, or sometimes giving him a sly push and sending him head over ears into a ditch. The men, too, have their fun, but mainly amuse themselves with such games as quoits, jumping, ringing bells, and playing quoits. Feast-day is an institution vigorously supported by bell-ringing, fifes playing, horns roaring, drums beating, and boughs over every door, while from the country all around the people come flocking in.

Club-day, too, is an important anniversary, when the members, bearing their great flags, walk in procession to the church, where Mr Goodman, the rector, preaches them a sermon, and wisely gives them warning—

"'To spend their evenen lik' their mornèn.'"

However, the church is no match for the public-house, and dinner and drink soon make too many of the members heedless of the exhortation, and so, "stark mad with pweison stuff," the evening of a club-day presents a sad scene in many a cottage home, for drink is the fiend that misleads men in Dorsetshire as everywhere else. Unhappily, custom favours its temptation, labourers receiving in some cases cider as part of their wages. No doubt both masters and men are under the belief that it helps them to work better.

Mr Bailey Denton gives a striking instance of the prevalence of this opinion in Dorset, and how signally it was refuted. Ii 1852 he was employing Dorset labourers on some large drainage works in the county, at the rate of wages which were then given—7s. and 9s. a week. Convinced that labour so poorly paid was hardly worth having, he induced some north countrymen to