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Updated: June 1, 2025
She would sit for hours with her blue eyes staring into space with fixed hypnotic vacancy, the breeze twirling her yellow locks, as twisted and withy as so many snakes, or blowing up the faded old frock that reached the knees of two slim legs, shiny white, which had known no stockings other than the coat of brown the sun burned over their extremities in summer.
In counties where hazel is grown in the coppices, a wattled or "flake" hurdle is the favourite, and they afford much more shelter to sheep in the fold than the open withy hurdle, but, being more lightly made, they require stakes and "shackles" to keep them in position. The hazel hurdle-maker may be seen in the coppice surrounded by his material and the clean fresh stacks of the work completed.
The lads were down by the side of the river, in a spot called Withy Nook a green snug place entirely sheltered from all observation a spot with the emerald grass sloping down to where the river ran by, sparkling and dancing in the golden sunlight, flashing back the bright rays from the tiny wavelets, and making the golden waterlilies rise and fall as they rode upon the bright surface.
And gee, some fresh fish would taste good!" So they went to work, eager as children on a lark. The girls managed to furnish enough pins for the hooks, and when the available string gave out, the boys made use of stout, withy vines as substitutes. And, strange as it may seem, they actually were successful.
You must push through the reed grass to find the sword-flags; the stout willow-herbs will not be trampled down, but resist the foot like underwood. Pink lychnis flowers behind the withy stoles, and little black moorhens swim away, as you gather it, after their mother, who has dived under the water-grass, and broken the smooth surface of the duckweed.
"Enough said," replied Richie, and deposited the paper accordingly, just before a page entered to carry away the mess to his Majesty. "Aweel, aweel, neighbour," said Laurence, when the mess was taken away, "if ye have done ony thing to bring yoursell to the withy, or the scourging post, it is your ain wilful deed."
The buckles are the wooden pins made of a small strip of withy, twisted at the centre so that it can be doubled in half like a hairpin, and used to fix the rods which secure the thatch by pressing the buckles firmly into it. In Hampshire these are called "spars," and they are sold in bundles containing a fixed number. I heard an amusing story about these spars.
The moment came. The fox had been found in a spinney running down to Withy Brook, and his race for life had begun. With a happy shout, the hunt was up and off in a twinkling, and the stranger and I were left alone on the broad common. I had scanned him furtively as he stood near me; a tall, slightly build man of about fifty, with perfectly white hair, and strangely gentle blue eyes.
We then tried a corner where two of these large mounds, meeting, formed a small copse in which grew a quantity of withy and the thick grasses that always border the stoles. A hare bolted almost directly the dogs went in: hares trust in their speed, rabbits in doubling for cover. I fired right and left, and missed: fairly missed with both barrels.
Three sprigs of gall, a leaf of ivy from the bridge arch where it grew in dark green sprays of glossy sheen, and a bare twig of oak standing up at a slant, were held down on the parapet by a peeled willow withy, one end of which pointed in the direction of the glen. It was M'Iver who came on the symbols first, and "We're a day behind the fair," said he.
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