The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems of my Youth With Sixteen Illustrations. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton |
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| DEAR-BOUGHT FIELD. |
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 | The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems of my Youth |  |
DEAR-BOUGHT FIELD.
There is a field three acres in extent,Down in the valley, and Sir Humphrey Fort,
Owner of all the acres hereabouts,
Purchased that little plot a year ago
For thrice its value. It was his before,
But talking with the tenant of the farm
One evening in July, he asked the man
“How soon one scythe could mow it?” “In a day,”
Replied the farmer, and Sir Humphrey smiled;
Which nettled Jackson, who began to swear
That from the rising of the morrow's sun
To its decline, he'd mow it all himself.
Sir Humphrey smiled again, and promised him
That if he did, the land should be his own.
So Jackson told his wife—a stirring dame,
Alive to all the details of finance;
Was not itself enough to keep the house,
Its loss would make a hole in the estate
Like an unsightly moth-bite in a cloak,
Which, though consuming no great breadth of cloth,
Annoys the wearer, took the matter up
Most warmly. But her husband seemed afraid
To face the task, so she encouraged him;
And all her words had weight; for she had known
For many years the length of Jackson's purse
Better than he, and all her arguments
Were to the point. “They'd had the thinnest crop
Last year,” she said, “of any since they came;
And four good cows had sickened one by one,
And perished in the spring; and then he lost
Five pounds by selling Jimmy at the fair
Beneath his value, when he came home drunk;
And then they'd had some sickness in the house,
And times were bad, and he was strong enough—
A stout-built man—enough to mow a match
With any farmer on the country-side.”
And then she instanced one called Jonas Lee,
Who, before breakfast one fine summer's day,
Had mown two acres—all the widow's field.
So she contrived by artful eloquence,
Addressed to love, regret, and self-esteem,
To emulation and old rivalry,
Naming by turns his losses and his faults,
To screw his resolution for the night.
When Jackson left the house; and when his hand
Shook off the dewdrops from the meadow gate,
The sun was half in sight. Then Jackson's wife,
Who'd roused him from his comfortable rest,
Took his scythe from him, and began to whet
Its edge, already sharp enough to mow
The beard upon his chin. By this the sun
Had fairly risen; so the farmer took
The scythe himself, and bent unto his task.
She fetched another quickly from the house;
And, if a blade of grass escaped the edge,
Made him exchange; and in that quiet field
All that long day the scraping of the blade
Resounded. Crisp and short the mower cut,
Stoutly and well, and steady time he kept;
And the monotonous sweeping of the scythe
Was music to the hearing of his wife.
He marched by inches, and upon his left,
The fallen swathes were heaped on one another
Like a slain army. Then into the field
His little children ran, rejoicing much
To tread again the long-forbidden ground,
And close behind him followed, to enlarge
Their liberty as quickly as they might.
Looked at her blue-eyed boy, and thought aloud
How much the child might gain by that day's work.
Jackson resumed his labour, and except
Some intervals of rest begrudged and stolen
When the surveillance of his overseer
Was broken by her absence for a time
To fetch him ale—he worked like one gone mad
Till sunset.
Beyond the misty woods there still remained
A dozen yards to mow, and close beside
Sir Humphrey stood—a sparkle in his eye
As it received the image of the sun
Half-buried in the west—when Jackson's wife,
Who stood beside him, gave a sudden shriek,
And the strong farmer dropped his scythe and fell
Into her arms. He died upon the spot!
And some spectators who had gathered round
Lifted her senseless from the senseless corpse,
And carried both away into the house,—
The little children following by themselves.
Because the sun had set behind the hill,
And not the true horizon, at the time
When Jackson died, who, had he lived it out,
Would have completed what he swore to do;
But when the story spread about the land,
The common people said, “'Tis dearly bought,”
For she had bought it with her husband's life;
And “dear-bought field” they call it to this day.
Sir Humphrey bought it back a year ago
For thrice its value, as poor Jackson's wife
Foresaw, to mend the hole in his estate.
NOTE.
The circumstance recorded in this poem occurred near Clapham in Craven, and the field is called “dear-bought” to this day. Jonas Lee, alluded to as having mown a field of two acres before breakfast, actually performed the feat. He was a stout, heavily-built man, above six feet high, with a pair of shoulders so broad and massive, that I have heard a yeoman compare them to “a chest of drawers.” Two of the best mowers in the neighbourhood challenged him to mow the same area in a given time, as they both could, and entered the field to do it, but their courage failed them. He was respected as a popular preacher, since he addressed himself to the simple understandings of his audience. For example, on one occasion he took his text from an old cartwheel which lay on the floor of the barn in which he was preaching. “The nave,” said he, “is Christ—the twelve spokes the apostles;” and he hunted the simile to the death. He built a chapel, and also a barn, and round the barn a wall, every stone of which was quarried, shaped, and set in its final place by his own hand. His favourite steed was a bullock, on which he once rode through Manchester. His earnings were large, but dissipated in unfortunate speculations, such as reclaiming moorland. This remarkable man killed himself with excessive labour. He was the type of the drayhorse class of the human race, and was never happy but when undergoing the most laborious exertion. Such, at least, are the traditions prevalent concerning him.
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