Rome never looks where she treads, Always her heavy hooves fall On our
stomachs, our hearts or our heads; And Rome never heeds when we bawl. Her
sentries pass on - that is all, And we gather behind them in hordes, And plot to
reconquer the Wall, With only our tongues for our swords.
We are the Little Folk - we! Too little to love or to hate. Leave us alone
and you'll see How we can drag down the Great! We are the worm in the wood! We
are the rot in the root! We are the germ in the blood! We are the thorn in the
foot!
Mistletoe killing an oak - Rats gnawing cables in two - Moths making holes in
a cloak - How they must love what they do! Yes - and we Little Folk too, We are
as busy as they - Working our works out of view - Watch, and you'll see it some
day!
No indeed! We are not strong, But we know Peoples that are. Yes, and we'll
guide them along, To smash and destroy you in War! We shall be slaves just the
same? Yes, we have always been slaves, But you - you will die of the shame, And
then we shall dance on your graves!
We are the Little Folk, we, etc.
HAL O' THE DRAFT
Prophets have honour all over the Earth, Except in the village where they
were born, Where such as knew them boys from birth Nature-ally hold 'em in
scorn.
When Prophets are naughty and young and vain, They make a won'erful grievance
of it; (You can see by their writings how they complain), But Oh, 'tis won'erful
good for the Prophet!
There's nothing Nineveh Town can give (Nor being swallowed by whales
between), Makes up for the place where a man's folk live, That don't care
nothing what he has been. He might ha' been that, or he might ha' been this, But
they love and they hate him for what he is.
A rainy afternoon drove Dan and Una over to play pirates in the Little Mill.
If you don't mind rats on the rafters and oats in your shoes, the mill-attic,
with its trap-doors and inscriptions on beams about floods and sweethearts, is a
splendid place. It is lighted by a foot-square window, called Duck Window, that
looks across to Little Lindens Farm, and the spot where Jack Cade was killed.
When they had climbed the attic ladder (they called it 'the mainmast tree',
out of the ballad of Sir Andrew Barton, and Dan 'swarved it with might and
main', as the ballad says) they saw a man sitting on Duck Window-sill. He was
dressed in a plum-coloured doublet and tight plum-coloured hose, and he drew
busily in a red-edged book.
'Sit ye! Sit ye!' Puck cried from a rafter overhead. 'See what it is to be
beautiful! Sir Harry Dawe - pardon, Hal - says I am the very image of a head for
a gargoyle.'
The man laughed and raised his dark velvet cap to the children, and his
grizzled hair bristled out in a stormy fringe. He was old - forty at least - but
his eyes were young, with funny little wrinkles all round them. A satchel of
embroidered leather hung from his broad belt, which looked interesting.
'May we see?' said Una, coming forward.
'Surely - sure-ly!' he said, moving up on the window- seat, and returned to
his work with a silver-pointed pencil. Puck sat as though the grin were fixed
for ever on his broad face, while they watched the quick, certain fingers that
copied it. Presently the man took a reed pen from his satchel, and trimmed it
with a little ivory knife, carved in the semblance of a fish. 'Oh, what a
beauty!' cried Dan.
''Ware fingers! That blade is perilous sharp. I made it myself of the best
Low Country cross-bow steel. And so, too, this fish. When his back-fin travels
to his tail - so - he swallows up the blade, even as the whale swallowed Gaffer
Jonah ... Yes, and that's my inkhorn. I made the four silver saints round it.
Press Barnabas's head. It opens, and then -'He dipped the trimmed pen, and with
careful boldness began to put in the essential lines of Puck's rugged face, that
had been but faintly revealed by the silver-point.
The children gasped, for it fairly leaped from the page.
As he worked, and the rain fell on the tiles, he talked - now clearly, now
muttering, now breaking off to frown or smile at his work. He told them he was
born at Little Lindens Farm, and his father used to beat him for drawing things
instead of doing things, till an old priest called Father Roger, who drew
illuminated letters in rich people's books, coaxed the parents to let him take
the boy as a sort of painter's apprentice. Then he went with Father Roger to
Oxford, where he cleaned plates and carried cloaks and shoes for the scholars of
a College called Merton.
'Didn't you hate that?' said Dan after a great many other questions.
'I never thought on't. Half Oxford was building new colleges or beautifying
the old, and she had called to her aid the master-craftsmen of all Christendie -
kings in their trade and honoured of Kings. I knew them. I worked for them: that
was enough. No wonder -' He stopped and laughed.
'You became a great man, Hal,' said Puck.
'They said so, Robin. Even Bramante said so.'
'Why? What did you do?' Dan asked.
The artist looked at him queerly. 'Things in stone and such, up and down
England. You would not have heard of 'em. To come nearer home, I rebuilded this
little St Barnabas' church of ours. It cost me more trouble and sorrow than
aught I've touched in my life. But 'twas a sound lesson.'
'Um,' said Dan. 'We've had lessons this morning.'
'I'll not afflict ye, lad,' said Hal, while Puck roared. 'Only 'tis strange
to think how that little church was rebuilt, re-roofed, and made glorious,
thanks to some few godly Sussex ironmasters, a Bristow sailor lad, a proud ass
called Hal o' the Draft because, d'you see, he was always drawing and drafting;
and'- he dragged the words slowly -'and a Scotch pirate.'
'Pirate?' said Dan. He wriggled like a hooked fish.
'Even that Andrew Barton you were singing of on the stair just now.' He
dipped again in the inkwell, and held his breath over a sweeping line, as though
he had forgotten everything else.
'Pirates don't build churches, do they?' said Dan. 'Or do they?'
'They help mightily,' Hal laughed. 'But you were at your lessons this morn,
Jack Scholar.'
'Oh, pirates aren't lessons. It was only Bruce and his silly old spider,'
said Una. 'Why did Sir Andrew Barton help you?' 'I question if he ever knew it,'
said Hal, twinkling. 'Robin, how a' mischief's name am I to tell these innocents
what comes of sinful pride?'
'Oh, we know all about that,' said Una pertly. 'If you get too beany - that's
cheeky - you get sat upon, of course.'
Hal considered a moment, pen in air, and Puck said some long words.
'A,ha! that was my case too,' he cried. 'Beany - you say - but certainly I
did not conduct myself well. I was proud of - of such things as porches - a
Galilee porch at Lincoln for choice - proud of one Torrigiano's arm on my
shoulder, proud of my knighthood when I made the gilt scroll-work for the
Sovereign - our King's ship. But Father Roger sitting in Merton College Library,
he did not forget me. At the top of my pride, when I and no other should have
builded the porch at Lincoln, he laid it on me with a terrible forefinger to go
back to my Sussex clays and rebuild, at my own charges, my own church, where us
Dawes have been buried for six generations. "Out! Son of my Art!" said he.
"Fight the Devil at home ere you call yourself a man and a craftsman." And I
quaked, and I went ... How's yon, Robin?' He flourished the finished sketch
before Puck.
'Me! Me past peradventure,' said Puck, smirking like a man at a mirror. 'Ah,
see! The rain has took off! I hate housen in daylight.'
'Whoop! Holiday!' cried Hal, leaping up. 'Who's for my Little Lindens? We can
talk there.'
They tumbled downstairs, and turned past the dripping willows by the sunny
mill-dam.
'Body o' me,' said Hal, staring at the hop-garden, where the hops were just
ready to blossom. 'What are these? Vines? No, not vines, and they twine the
wrong way to beans.' He began to draw in his ready book.
'Hops. New since your day,' said Puck. 'They're an herb of Mars, and their
flowers dried flavour ale. We say -
'Turkeys, Heresy, Hops, and Beer Came into England all in one year.'
'Heresy I know. I've seen Hops - God be praised for their beauty! What is
your Turkis?'
The children laughed. They knew the Lindens turkeys, and as soon as they
reached Lindens orchard on the hill the full flock charged at them.
Out came Hal's book at once. 'Hoity-toity!' he cried. 'Here's Pride in purple
feathers! Here's wrathy contempt and the Pomps of the Flesh! How d'you call
them?'
'Turkeys! Turkeys!' the children shouted, as the old gobbler raved and flamed
against Hal's plum-coloured hose.
"Save Your Magnificence!' he said. 'I've drafted two good new things today.'
And he doffed his cap to the bubbling bird.
Then they walked through the grass to the knoll where Little Lindens stands.
The old farmhouse, weather-tiled to the ground, took almost the colour of a
blood-ruby in the afternoon light. The pigeons pecked at the mortar in the
chimney-stacks; the bees that had lived under the tiles since it was built
filled the hot August air with their booming; and the smell of the box-tree by
the dairy- window mixed with the smell of earth after rain, bread after baking,
and a tickle of wood-smoke.
The farmer's wife came to the door, baby on arm, shaded her brows against the
sun, stooped to pluck a sprig of rosemary, and turned down the orchard. The old
spaniel in his barrel barked once or twice to show he was in charge of the empty
house. Puck clicked back the garden-gate.
'D'you marvel that I love it?' said Hal, in a whisper. 'What can town folk
know of the nature of housen - or land?' They perched themselves arow on the old
hacked oak bench in Lindens garden, looking across the valley of the brook at
the fern-covered dimples and hollows of the Forge behind Hobden's cottage. The
old man was cutting a faggot in his garden by the hives. It was quite a second
after his chopper fell that the chump of the blow reached their lazy ears.
'Eh - yeh!' said Hal. 'I mind when where that old gaffer stands was Nether
Forge - Master John Collins's foundry. Many a night has his big trip-hammer
shook me in my bed here. Boom-bitty! Boom-bitty! If the wind was east, I could
hear Master Tom Collins's forge at Stockens answering his brother, Boom-oop!
Boom-oop! and midway between, Sir John Pelham's sledgehammers at Brightling
would strike in like a pack o' scholars, and "Hic-haec-hoc" they'd say,
"Hic-haec-hoc, " till I fell asleep. Yes. The valley was as full o' forges and
fineries as a May shaw o' cuckoos. All gone to grass now!'
'What did they make?' said Dan. 'Guns for the King's ships - and for others.
Serpentines and cannon mostly. When the guns were cast, down would come the
King's Officers, and take our plough- oxen to haul them to the coast. Look!
Here's one of the first and finest craftsmen of the Sea!'
He fluttered back a page of his book, and showed them a young man's head.
Underneath was written: 'Sebastianus.'
'He came down with a King's Order on Master John Collins for twenty
serpentines (wicked little cannon they be!) to furnish a venture of ships. I
drafted him thus sitting by our fire telling Mother of the new lands he'd find
the far side the world. And he found them, too! There's a nose to cleave through
unknown seas! Cabot was his name - a Bristol lad - half a foreigner. I set a
heap by him. He helped me to my church-building.'
'I thought that was Sir Andrew Barton,' said Dan.
'Ay, but foundations before roofs,' Hal answered. 'Sebastian first put me in
the way of it. I had come down here, not to serve God as a craftsman should, but
to show my people how great a craftsman I was. They cared not, and it served me
right, one split straw for my craft or my greatness. What a murrain call had I,
they said, to mell with old St Barnabas'? Ruinous the church had been since the
Black Death, and ruinous she would remain; and I could hang myself in my new
scaffold-ropes! Gentle and simple, high and low - the Hayes, the Fowles, the
Fenners, the Collinses - they were all in a tale against me. Only Sir John
Pelham up yonder at Brightling bade me heart-up and go on. Yet how could I? Did
I ask Master Collins for his timber-tug to haul beams? The oxen had gone to
Lewes after lime. Did he promise me a set of iron cramps or ties for the roof?
They never came to hand, or else they were spaulty or cracked. So with
everything. Nothing said, but naught done except I stood by them, and then done
amiss. I thought the countryside was fair bewitched.'
'It was, sure-ly,' said Puck, knees under chin. 'Did you never suspect ary
one?'
'Not till Sebastian came for his guns, and John Collins played him the same
dog's tricks as he'd played me with my ironwork. Week in, week out, two of three
serpentines would be flawed in the casting, and only fit, they said, to be
re-melted. Then John Collins would shake his head, and vow he could pass no
cannon for the King's service that were not perfect. Saints! How Sebastian
stormed! I know, for we sat on this bench sharing our sorrows inter-common.
'When Sebastian had fumed away six weeks at Lindens and gotten just six
serpentines, Dirk Brenzett, Master of the Cygnet hoy, sends me word that the
block of stone he was fetching me from France for our new font he'd hove
overboard to lighten his ship, chased by Andrew Barton up to Rye Port.'
'Ah! The pirate!' said Dan.
'Yes. And while I am tearing my hair over this, Ticehurst Will, my best
mason, comes to me shaking, and vowing that the Devil, horned, tailed, and
chained, has run out on him from the church-tower, and the men would work there
no more. So I took 'em off the foundations, which we were strengthening, and
went into the Bell Tavern for a cup of ale. Says Master John Collins: "Have it
your own way, lad; but if I was you, I'd take the sinnification o' the sign, and
leave old Barnabas' Church alone!" And they all wagged their sinful heads, and
agreed. Less afraid of the Devil than of me - as I saw later.
'When I brought my sweet news to Lindens, Sebastian was limewashing the
kitchen-beams for Mother. He loved her like a son.
"'Cheer up, lad," he says. "God's where He was. Only you and I chance to be
pure pute asses. We've been tricked, Hal, and more shame to me, a sailor, that I
did not guess it before! You must leave your belfry alone, forsooth, because the
Devil is adrift there; and I cannot get my serpentines because John Collins
cannot cast them aright. Meantime Andrew Barton hawks off the Port of Rye. And
why? To take those very serpentines which poor Cabot must whistle for; the said
serpentines, I'll wager my share of new continents, being now hid away in St
Barnabas' church-tower. Clear as the Irish coast at noonday!"
"They'd sure never dare to do it," I said; "and, for another thing, selling
cannon to the King's enemies is black treason - hanging and fine."
"'It is sure, large profit. Men'll dare any gallows for that. I have been a
trader myself," says he. "We must be upsides with 'em for the honour of
Bristol."
'Then he hatched a plot, sitting on the limewash bucket. We gave out to ride
o' Tuesday to London and made a show of taking farewells of our friends -
especially of Master John Collins. But at Wadhurst Woods we turned; rode home to
the water-meadows; hid our horses in a willow-tot at the foot of the glebe, and,
come night, stole a-tiptoe uphill to Barnabas' church again. A thick mist, and a
moon striking through. 'I had no sooner locked the tower-door behind us than
over goes Sebastian full length in the dark.
"'Pest!" he says. "Step high and feel low, Hal. I've stumbled over guns
before."
'I groped, and one by one - the tower was pitchy dark - I counted the lither
barrels of twenty serpentines laid out on pease straw. No conceal at all!
"'There's two demi-cannon my end," says Sebastian, slapping metal. "They'll
be for Andrew Barton's lower deck. Honest - honest John Collins! So this is his
ware- house, his arsenal, his armoury! Now see you why your pokings and pryings
have raised the Devil in Sussex? You've hindered John's lawful trade for
months," and he laughed where he lay.
'A clay-cold tower is no fireside at midnight, so we climbed the belfry
stairs, and there Sebastian trips over a cow-hide with its horns and tail.
"'Aha! Your Devil has left his doublet! Does it become me, Hal?" He draws it
on and capers in the shafts of window-moonlight - won'erful devilish-like. Then
he sits on the stairs, rapping with his tail on a board, and his back-aspect was
dreader than his front, and a howlet lit in, and screeched at the horns of him.
"'If you'd keep out the Devil, shut the door," he whispered. "And that's
another false proverb, Hal, for I can hear your tower-door opening."
"'I locked it. Who a-plague has another key, then?" I said.
"'All the congregation, to judge by their feet," he says, and peers into the
blackness. "Still! Still, Hal! Hear 'em grunt! That's more o' my serpentines,
I'll be bound. One - two - three - four they bear in! Faith, Andrew equips
himself like an Admiral! Twenty-four serpentines in all!"
'As if it had been an echo, we heard John Collins's voice come up all hollow:
"Twenty-four serpentines and two demi-cannon. That's the full tally for Sir
Andrew Barton."
"'Courtesy costs naught," whispers Sebastian. "Shall I drop my dagger on his
head?"
"'They go over to Rye o' Thursday in the wool-wains, hid under the
wool-packs. Dirk Brenzett meets them at Udimore, as before," says John.
"'Lord! What a worn, handsmooth trade it is!" says Sebastian. "I lay we are
the sole two babes in the village that have not our lawful share in the
venture."
'There was a full score folk below, talking like all Robertsbridge Market. We
counted them by voice.
'Master John Collins pipes: "The guns for the French carrack must lie here
next month. Will, when does your young fool" (me, so please you!) "come back
from Lunnon?"
"'No odds," I heard Ticehurst Will answer. "Lay 'em just where you've a mind,
Mus' Collins. We're all too afraid o' the Devil to mell with the tower now." And
the long knave laughed.
"'Ah! 'tis easy enow for you to raise the Devil, Will," says another - Ralph
Hobden of the Forge.
"'Aaa-men!" roars Sebastian, and ere I could hold him, he leaps down the
stairs - won'erful devilish-like howling no bounds. He had scarce time to lay
out for the nearest than they ran. Saints, how they ran! We heard them pound on
the door of the Bell Tavern, and then we ran too.
"'What's next?" says Sebastian, looping up his cow- tail as he leaped the
briars. "I've broke honest John's face."
"'Ride to Sir John Pelham's," I said. "He is the only one that ever stood by
me."
'We rode to Brightling, and past Sir John's lodges, where the keepers would
have shot at us for deer- stealers, and we had Sir John down into his Justice's
chair, and when we had told him our tale and showed him the cow-hide which
Sebastian wore still girt about him, he laughed till the tears ran.
"'Wel-a-well!" he says. "I'll see justice done before daylight. What's your
complaint? Master Collins is my old friend."
"'He's none of mine," I cried. "When I think how he and his likes have
baulked and dozened and cozened me at every turn over the church" - and I choked
at the thought.
"'Ah, but ye see now they needed it for another use," says he smoothly.
also they did my serpentines," Sebastian cries. "I should be half across the
Western Ocean by now if my guns had been ready. But they're sold to a Scotch
pirate by your old friend -"
"'Where's your proof?" says Sir John, stroking his beard.
"'I broke my shins over them not an hour since, and I heard John give order
where they were to be taken," says Sebastian.
"'Words! Words only," says Sir John. "Master Collins is somewhat of a liar at
best."
'He carried it so gravely that, for the moment, I thought he was dipped in
this secret traffick too, and that there was not an honest ironmaster in Sussex.
"'Name o' Reason!" says Sebastian, and raps with his cow-tail on the table,
"whose guns are they, then?"
"'Yours, manifestly," says Sir John. "You come with the King's Order for 'em,
and Master Collins casts them in his foundry. If he chooses to bring them up
from Nether Forge and lay 'em out in the church-tower, why, they are e'en so
much the nearer to the main road and you are saved a day's hauling. What a coil
to make of a mere act of neighbourly kindness, lad!"
"'I fear I have requited him very scurvily," says Sebastian, looking at his
knuckles. "But what of the demi-cannon? I could do with 'em well, but they are
not in the King's Order."
"'Kindness - loving-kindness," says Sir John. "Questionless, in his zeal for
the King and his love for you, John adds those two cannon as a gift. 'Tis plain
as this coming daylight, ye stockfish!"
"'So it is," says Sebastian. "Oh, Sir John, Sir John, why did you never use
the sea? You are lost ashore." And he looked on him with great love.
"'I do my best in my station." Sir John strokes his beard again and rolls
forth his deep drumming Justice's voice thus: "But - suffer me! - you two lads,
on some midnight frolic into which I probe not, roystering around the taverns,
surprise Master Collins at his" - he thinks a moment - "at his good deeds done
by stealth. Ye surprise him, I say, cruelly."
"'Truth, Sir John. If you had seen him run!" says Sebastian.
"'On this you ride breakneck to me with a tale of pirates, and wool-wains,
and cow-hides, which, though it hath moved my mirth as a man, offendeth my
reason as a magistrate. So I will e'en accompany you back to the tower with,
perhaps, some few of my own people, and three-four wagons, and I'll be your
warrant that Master John Collins will freely give you your guns and your
demi-cannon, Master Sebastian." He breaks into his proper voice - "I warned the
old tod and his neighbours long ago that they'd come to trouble with their side-
sellings and bye-dealings; but we cannot have half Sussex hanged for a little
gun-running. Are ye content, lads?"
"'I'd commit any treason for two demi-cannon, said Sebastian, and rubs his
hands.
,"Ye have just compounded with rank treason-felony for the same bribe," says
Sir John. "Wherefore to horse, and get the guns."'
'But Master Collins meant the guns for Sir Andrew Barton all along, didn't
he?' said Dan.
'Questionless, that he did,' said Hal. 'But he lost them. We poured into the
village on the red edge of dawn, Sir John horsed, in half-armour, his pennon
flying; behind him thirty stout Brightling knaves, five abreast; behind them
four wool-wains, and behind them four trumpets to triumph over the jest,
blowing: Our King went forth to Normandie. When we halted and rolled the ringing
guns out of the tower, 'twas for all the world like Friar Roger's picture of the
French siege in the Queen's Missal-book.'
'And what did we - I mean, what did our village do?' said Dan.
'Oh! Bore it nobly - nobly,' cried Hal. 'Though they had tricked me, I was
proud of them. They came out of their housen, looked at that little army as
though it had been a post, and went their shut-mouthed way. Never a sign! Never
a word! They'd ha' perished sooner than let Brightling overcrow us. Even that
villain, Ticehurst Will, coming out of the Bell for his morning ale, he all but
runs under Sir John's horse.
"''Ware, Sirrah Devil!" cries Sir John, reining back.
"'Oh!" says Will. "Market-day, is it? And all the bullocks from Brightling
here?"
'I spared him his belting for that - the brazen knave!
'But John Collins was our masterpiece! He happened along-street (his jaw tied
up where Sebastian had clouted him) when we were trundling the first demi-cannon
through the lych-gate.
"'I reckon you'll find her middlin' heavy," he says. "If you've a mind to
pay, I'll loan ye my timber-tug. She won't lie easy on ary wool-wain."
'That was the one time I ever saw Sebastian taken flat aback. He opened and
shut his mouth, fishy-like.
"'No offence," says Master John. "You've got her reasonable good cheap. I
thought ye might not grudge me a groat if I helped move her." Ah, he was a
masterpiece! They say that morning's work cost our John two hundred pounds, and
he never winked an eyelid, not even when he saw the guns all carted off to
Lewes.'
'Neither then nor later?' said Puck.
'Once. 'Twas after he gave St Barnabas' the new chime of bells. (Oh, there
was nothing the Collinses, or the Hayes, or the Fowles, or the Fenners would not
do for the church then! "Ask and have" was their song.) We had rung 'em in, and
he was in the tower with Black Nick Fowle, that gave us our rood-screen. The old
man pinches the bell-rope one hand and scratches his neck with t'other. "Sooner
she was pulling yon clapper than my neck, he says. That was all! That was Sussex
seely Sussex for everlasting'
'And what happened after?' said Una.
'I went back into England,' said Hal, slowly. 'I'd had my lesson against
pride. But they tell me I left St Barnabas' a jewel - justabout a jewel!
Wel-a-well! 'Twas done for and among my own people, and - Father Roger was right
- I never knew such trouble or such triumph since. That's the nature o' things.
A dear - dear land.' He dropped his chin on his chest.
'There's your Father at the Forge. What's he talking to old Hobden about?'
said Puck, opening his hand with three leaves in it.
Dan looked towards the cottage.
'Oh, I know. It's that old oak lying across the brook. Pater always wants it
grubbed.'
In the still valley they could hear old Hobden's deep tones.
'Have it as you've a mind to,' he was saying. 'But the vivers of her roots
they hold the bank together. If you grub her out, the bank she'll all come
tearin' down, an' next floods the brook'll swarve up . But have it as you've a
mind. The Mistuss she sets a heap by the ferns on her trunk.
'Oh! I'll think it over,' said the Pater.
Una laughed a little bubbling chuckle.
'What Devil's in that belfry?' said Hal, with a lazy laugh. 'That should be a
Hobden by his voice.'
'Why, the oak is the regular bridge for all the rabbits between the Three
Acre and our meadow. The best place for wires on the farm, Hobden says. He's got
two there now,' Una answered. 'He won't ever let it be grubbed!'
'Ah, Sussex! Seely Sussex for everlastin',' murmured Hal; and the next moment
their Father's voice calling across to Little Lindens broke the spell as little
St Barnabas' clock struck five.
A Smugglers' Song
If You wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet, Don't go drawing back the
blind, or looking in the street, Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
Five-and-twenty ponies, Trotting through the dark - Brandy for the Parson,
'Baccy for the Clerk; Laces for a lady; letters for a spy, And watch the wall,
my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
Running round the woodlump if you chance to find Little barrels, roped and
tarred, all full of brandy-wine; Don't you shout to come and look, nor take 'em
for your play; Put the brushwood back again, - and they'll be gone next day! If
you see the stable-door setting open wide; If you see a tired horse lying down
inside; If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore; If the lining's wet and
warm - don't you ask no more!
If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red, You be careful what
you say, and mindful what is said. If they call you 'pretty maid,' and chuck you
'neath the chin, Don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been!
Knocks and footsteps round the house - whistles after dark - You've no call
for running out till the house-dogs bark. Trusty's here, and Pincher's here, and
see how dumb they lie - They don't fret to follow when the Gentlemen go by!
If you do as you've been told, likely there's a chance You'll be give a
dainty doll, all the way from France, With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet
hood - A present from the Gentlemen, along o' being good!
Five-and-twenty ponies, Trotting through the dark - Brandy for the Parson,
'Baccy for the Clerk. Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie - Watch the
wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
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