after another, in quick succession, the leaf-covered supporters are uprooted and the short-cut bine, and trampled open ground, mark the spot where so very lately they stood in all their stately splendour.
By this time the sun is high overhead, and the hour of dinner approaches, preparations for which have been going on in different parts of the garden for the last two hours. There is no fixed time for the welcome meal; but, by tacit consent, when twelve o’clock arrives, work pretty generally ceases, and the pleasanter employment of refreshing the inner man commences. The cottagers who reside near return to their homes for dinner; those from a distance have brought their meals with them, and, under the shelter of the hop-rows, speedily dispatch their frugal repast. But the tramps enjoy a better and more plentiful supply of refreshments than their more civilised neighbours, for, having neither house nor home to support, every penny they can earn is devoted to eating and drinking. Sticks, gipsy-fashion, have been supporting kettles and pots, from which very savoury perfumes are wafted by the wind, and now both old and young hasten in the direction of the fires. Old knives, tin plates, mugs and spoons are called into requisition; beer, in no small proportion, is produced from large kegs and stone bottles; pipes filled ready for smoking, and, without any ceremony, the hungry hoppers fall upon their food like half-famished animals. Seen from a little distance the scene is very picturesque; the clear blue sky over-head, with the bright sun-light playing amongst the foliage of the deep background formed by the unfelled hops, the leaping fires, with the witch-like cauldrons suspended above them, and the wild, weird-looking groups surrounding them form a picture not easily forgotten.
Here an old man, already worn out with his half day’s work, has fallen asleep, and a little curly-headed boy is carefully covering his face with his tattered pinafore—“to keep the flies from grandad’s face.” There two sturdy strapping young fellows are flirting with two equally sturdy strapping young lasses, whose natural dark-eyed beauty not even the rough exposure of their lives has as yet totally obliterated; whilst still lingering close to the tires are the husbands and fathers, wives and mothers of the fraternity, with barefooted, bareheaded children crawling, sleeping, or playing around them.
At length the meal is concluded, and all, save, the old man, return to their labour, the two young men referred to having agreed to pull quicker—“that old daddy may rest awhile.” The children now cluster round the dying embers, and smoke pieces of bine stick, &c., in precocious imitation of their elders; till, one by one, they fall asleep or wander away to the active scene elsewhere.
On returning to the spot whence we first started, we find the bins have been moved nearer to the standing hops, and some of them are overflowing with the fragrant produce.
“Measurer, measurer, ho, ho!” call out half-a-dozen voices together, and in a few minutes the person named appears, with a large sack, into which he empties bushel after bushel of fruit, and for every measure gives the picker a tally. This important functionary departed, work is resumed as before, whilst the gatherers compare notes as to the quantity they expect to pick before nightfall. And speaking of earning, we may as well state here that two grown persons, with two children to help them, will pick between forty and fifty bushels a-day, at prices varying from 1½d. to 2d. a-bushel in a good year. In a bad one the prices rise much higher, even 6d. a-bushel has been paid in some seasons; and though this would seem more profitable to the picker, the trouble of finding the hops concealed beneath the leaves, and the constant harass of continually changing and shifting the position of the pole, renders a shilling to be earned at 6d. a-bushel far more difficult than at 1½d. The pullers are paid in some grounds so much a-day, the prices varying, but 2s. 6d. is about the average; at others, so much per 100 poles.
Nothing conduces so much to sharpen the appetite as the fresh sweet air of one of these gardens, unless it be the spectacle of others enjoying the repast you would yourself like to partake of. So, with these powerful provocatives of appetite, we hasten to the nearest cottage, where a simple dinner awaits our arrival, provided for us by a kind friend. Rising from our rural fare, we feel sorely tempted to follow “old dad’s example,” and indulge in a long nap; but conquering the lazy feeling, we take our way once more into the field.
On entering the garden an angry voice falls upon the ear, exclaiming—
“Sure, now, Pat, and ye’re giving that girl” (it is necessary sometimes to omit Mr. and Mrs. Pat’s expressive adjectives) “all the best poles, ye blackguard.”
And with these words an irate, red-faced woman forces her way to the cottagers’ bins, where her lord and master has just arrived with a magnificent pole, which, with true Irish gallantry, he is presenting to one of the prettiest cottage-girls, to the intense indignation of his angry spouse, whose experienced eye not only detects nearly two bushels of hops on the bine, but the glance of admiration which her giant husband bestows on the handsome picker.
“Sure now, darlint, and it’s your own true Pat will find you a better and bigger pole than this little one,” cries the penitent puller, edging most judiciously at the same time out of the reach of his wife’s fingers, that seem suddenly to have discovered the secret of perpetual motion, and open and close with a rapidity perfectly alarming to a nervous beholder. The foreman of the ground here interposes, and, with muttered oaths, Mrs. Pat returns to her work. The quantity of fruit varies considerably on the poles, and when we remember that the richer the bine, the swifter fill the bins, this angry virago had some cause for ill-temper, as her recreant lord left her side to attend on the laughing girl, leaving her to the care of a stranger of very inferior strength of arm, and who pulled the weakest poles he could find. Leaving the ill-used lady to recover her good temper on the peace offering of a pipe of “rale tobacco,” we turn our steps towards the host, from whose
