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And when back-end set in and we'd salved the sheep wi' butter and tar to keep the winter rain out on 'em, still Owd Jerry kept wick and cobby, and there were days, aye, and weeks too, when I forgot what I'd done on Ash-Riddling Day.
I mind that there was a good back-end that year, as we say, with plenty of keep for the beasts, and the stacks under thatch of sprits by the end of September, and I would be standing in the stackyard as a man will, just pleased to be seeing things as they were, and swithering if I should be taking a step to the Quay Inn, when the halflin lad from Bryde's place came up to me.
There may be a few who care to know how the lives of Jess and Hendry ended. Leeby died in the back-end of the year I have been speaking of, and as I was snowed up in the school-house at the time, I heard the news from Gavin Birse too late to attend her funeral.
She would talk to Margaret about her gowns, using terms that never before had I heard tell of, and sending as far as Edinburgh for her braws, which, I am thinking, was a waste of good money, but I kept my thumb on that. For the wedding was to come off at the back-end, and I would be hoping that the weather would keep up, and the harvest be well got, wedding or not.
For three hundred years there had been a Garstin at Hootsey: generation after generation had tramped the grey stretch of upland, in the spring-time scattering their flocks over the fell-sides, and, at the 'back-end', on dark, winter afternoons, driving them home again, down the broad bridle-path that led over the 'raise'. They had been a race of few words, 'keeping themselves to themselves', as the phrase goes; beholden to no man, filled with a dogged, churlish pride an upright, old-fashioned race, stubborn, long-lived, rude in speech, slow of resolve.
Utterson beheld a marvellous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths.
'One night t' last back-end, says this young fellow, 'I wor hengin' about on t' quiet at t' end o' Stubbs' Lane, he says: 'T' truth wor, he says, 'I wor waitin' for a word wi' a young woman 'at lives i' that terrace at t' top o' Stubbs' Lane she wor goin' to come out and meet me for half an hour or so.
This travelling show visited us regularly twice a year: once in summer for the Muckle Friday, when the performers were gay and stout, and even the horses had flesh on their bones; and again in the "back-end" of the year, when cold and hunger had taken the blood from their faces, and the scraggy dogs that whined at their side were lashed for licking the paint off the caravans.
Leisurely at the start, the pace of his stories quickened considerably as he warmed to his work, and it was not without reason that he had acquired a reputation of being the best story-teller on the long settle of the Ring o' Bells. "'Twere back-end o' t' yeer," he continued at last, "an' t' lads had gone into t' woods to gether hesel-nuts an' accorns.
'What could ye tell? says I just like that theer. 'Why, he says, 'this much one night t' last back-end " "Stop a bit, Mr. Pickard," interrupted Byner. "What does that mean that term 'back-end'?" "Why, it means t' end o' t' year!" answered the landlord. "What some folks call autumn, d'ye understand?
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