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Updated: June 25, 2025
It was one of the great indecisive battles of the world, it being necessary to fight it over again every year. The Boyne had overflowed its banks, and in the fields forlorn hay-cocks stood like so many little islands. We stopped at the battle monument and read its Whiggish inscription, which was scorned by our honest driver.
The mowers had to shear the land close and smooth. The rakers threw their winrows straight, and the men made their hay-cocks of a uniform size, and placed them at equal distances apart. So in the grain field, the stubble had to be cut clean and even, the sheaves well bound and shocked in straight rows, with ten sheaves to the shock.
Looking up the valley one might be led to say that an hour's ramble would take him to the crest of that shining peak, and yet some men have made a life's journey of it. Others have turned back in time. One has a whiff of fragrant woodlands and serene hay-cocks, a breath of cool air from the Jungfrau's snows, a sniff of delectable bacon and toast and a zest for breakfast.
At first he had rushed off into the melancholy meadows, among the sodden hay-cocks still standing among the green growth of grass; but a shower, increasing the damp forlornness of the ungenial day, made him turn homewards. When, late in the afternoon, Ethel came into the schoolroom for some Cocksmoor stores, she found him leaning over his books on the table.
Its fields were green its rivers shining like loosened silver; its meadows already studded with hay-cocks, its green pastures covered with sheep, and its unruffled lakes reflecting the hills under which they lay. Here and there a gentleman's residence rose among the distant trees, and well did he recognize the church spire that cut into the western sky on his right.
These bristled with pine woods to the very edge of the precipices, and they were scarred too with white crosses the high roads, dotted in places with Nuremberg dogs, red-roofed hamlets, sheepfolds that seemed on the verge of tumbling headlong, clinging on how, it was impossible to guess, and flung here and there on patches of green carpet glued on to the steep hill-sides; while other peaks towered higher still, like vast calcined hay-cocks, with doubtfully dead craters still brooding internal fires, and trailing smoky clouds which, as they blew off, really seemed to be coming out of their summits.
The common people generally sleep in the open air, in a sitting posture, and covered by their mats, all but the head; which has been described as giving them the appearance of so many hay-cocks or beehives.
There were many indications that the storm was a serious one, and not the least of these was the behaviour of the little chief hare, or pika. As we ascended the rocky mountain-side we saw many of these little creatures scurrying hither and thither with bundles of hay in their mouths, which they deposited in tiny hay-cocks in sheltered places under rocks.
A gleam of hope came to her. "I know one thing you will enjoy," she said; "very soon they will begin to cut the grass on the meadow, and they will pile it into beautiful soft hay-cocks, and we will go and lie down upon them all day long; it cannot tire you to lie in the hay, and it's perfectly lovely."
A sunny landscape just now; but rich in picturesque associations of hay-cocks and winnows, spotting it near and far; and close by below them was a field of mowers at work; they could distinctly hear the measured rush of the scythes through the grass, and then the soft clink of the rifles would seem to play some old delicious tune of childish days. Fleda made Hugh stand still to listen.
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