THE COMMUNITY "We seldom saw anybody, but once in a while a peddler would come all the way to see us and drive a trade. I recollect an old woman who gathered wool, such as the sheep lost on the hills before shearing time, which was a perquisite to the boys who picked it up and sometime in a season amounted to a pound or so. As we had no means of weighing the bargain was made by guessing. Now this woman had the longest and the strongest fingers I ever saw on the end of a human arm. She would make a grasp inthe the (Troging) wool so collected and encircle the whole pile and when we saw those long fingers begin to compress, the hope for a Jew's harp or a new knife, began to fade, for the once nice and fluffy pile looked so insignificant and small, that but a small part of its value was received. O, those fingers! There is a photograph of them on my brain yet. "Another who came about semi-annually was a little old man, a religious fanatic. He gave us little cards with a hymn on it which we learned and then he exchanged for another. We liked him very much. " Another had two packs of dry goods, etc. on the back of an ass. What wonders these packs revealed? "Our social intercourse with the world was going to church, a distance of six miles, a call from a neighboring shepherd, or a visit from some neighboring family; these were times to be remembered. Song and story was the order of the day. "There was a little man by the name of Tammy Nichol from Eskdalemoor. How we did like to see him come! It amounted to a concert; he did love to sing and there was no end to the number of songs he knew and he was not stingy. Is it any wonder my ear is attuned to simple melody, which has given it such intense pleasure? "On one occasion there was to be a goose eating at our nearest neighbors, and there was quite a number present, and we were having a splendid time, but one of the young "herds" was partaking too freely of the toddy as it went round, and becoming noisy, so my father, to the great disgust of us little ones, took us all off for home. GULCH END HOGG SCRAPBOOK #6 |
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Janice Brooks-Headrick is kindly sharing the writings in a scrapbook kept by her gr-grandmother Mina Hogg Brooks. © Janice Brooks-Headrick 2000 |
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