Monday 1 August 2016

Bulorns, Kenacks and Lizamoo . . .

I have a fuddled brain here - after the exhaustions of the early part of last week, then the disappointment, then preparing for yesterday's Fleamarket on the showground in town, today has been a bit of a catch up day.  I also managed to book two nights away for ourselves in the West Country.  I wish we could manage longer away, but that's the best we can do.  Mind you, judging by the price of B&B accommodation, I'm surprised I managed to get anywhere under £100 a night!  That's the price you pay for trying to get away in August.  We have a night in Somerset and a night on the edge of Dartmoor, so I am praying we get dry weather.


(Hay bales made from the grass in our top field).

I bought myself a book at the Fleamarket yesterday.  "Words from the Countryman", edited by Valerie Porter, and published in 2007.  It had extracts from the very earliest Countryman magazines (some more of which I bought recently when a friend was offering them cheaply) and is ab absolute delight.  There were two short pieces about people with rat problems dealing with them by having Guinea Pigs in the vicinity - one was in Portugal and the other in Africa.  I should think the Guinea Pigs were left loose to deal with the vermin, as they talked about one GP boar having tattered ears from fighting.  Who would have thought?

Here is another delightful extract:

"One evening in May my wife and I found the children's roundabouts in Fitz Park, Keswick, deserted but not for long.  Sheep which had been grazing walked to one of them, and the leader jumped on the platform, setting it in motion.  As others quickly followed, its speed increased; and the whole flock had a ride, jumping on and off, some more than once.  We were told that this had happened many times when no children were about . . ." R W Barnes.

Some of you will remember my fascination with rural language especially in the West Country, and here is another contribution from the Countryman:

"My Cornish ex-sailor gardener is 'some old tung-tavas', but  between intervals of chatter he does useful work on my splat of ground.  He takes a braave spur (good while) to get through, but he can always find time to smell the gillyflowers and to notice the thrush at its anvil breaking snail-shells, or as he puts it, 'the grey-bird scattin' the bulorns' - sometimes he calls them jan-jakes - 'to sherds'.  He digs a straight vore for the beans, pausing to throw a bully (pebble) at the cat because she chased away a pedn-paly (blue tit).  With his garden fork, which he calls an evil, he lifts a burn of dried grasses for the mabyers' (pullets') nests, and he gives them a few kenacks (worms).  Mizzle or skewy (showery) rain is good for sticking plant, by which he means planting out all types of cabbage and broccoli and stanking or treting them firm in the ground.  The soft weather brings on the weeds - drill-draw, keggas and lizamoo, known to me as small bindweed, hemlock and cow-parsnip.  Weeding he finds 'a sparey (tedious) ole job' and cutting the skedge (privet) not much better.  The rain always seems to come when he has a few tubbins (turfs) to burn; these and damp cricks (twigs) in the bonfire make some smeech.  His griglan or heather broom is handy for sweeping paths or to place in the arm of the bucca, whose realistic hand-painted face frightens more than the crows.  A day too wet to work in the garden is 'a day gone in to the King.'  Gladys Hunkin, Cornwall.

I hope to have the time to write a proper and fitting tribute to our family's men who fell in the Somme - my husband's Great Uncle George Brown Bird and my husband's grandfather, Bertie Ward-Harrison.  Their sacrifice will never be forgotten by our family.



13 comments:

  1. Lovely photo of the hay bale, very seasonal. Hope you have a lovely time in the West Country, August is definitely not a cheap time to go away!

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    1. We are looking forward to our break. Another year we will go earlier I think.

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  2. Enjoy Somerset it's my birth county and still beautiful, Dartmoor is so rugged and stunning.

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    1. We will enjoy Somerset Marlene. You must miss it. I didn't get down to Dartmoor last summer, so it is calling loudly this year.

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  3. I hope you are having an enjoyable rest, I used to come across the odd countryman magazine, lovely extracts thanks for sharing.

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    1. I have a boxful here which I need to pass on, if you are interested Dawn. Lots of fascinating pieces in them.

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  4. I have had guinea pigs for almost as long as I an remember and was involved with breeding and showing them for a few years as well...everyone I know who had problems with rats would not have said guinea pigs can deal with rats! Quite the opposite with rats chewing into cages and injuring rats. Perhaps those guinea pigs in Portugal and Africa are the more undomesticated and perhaps larger cavies!

    Enjoy your time away, hope you get good weather, it is looking rather dismal here at the moment

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    1. That should say 'rats chewing into cages and injuring guinea pigs' !

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    2. Perhaps these were Super GPs Serenata! I had to say I had my doubts, but it was two different countries where this was the stuff of legend!

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  5. Years ago, working in stables, i was told by a Swiss visitor that stables at home kept Guinea Pigs because their squeals detered rats. Dont know how well it works

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    1. Never thought about it being the noise they made being a deterrant. There was another lovely piece about some retired Colonel who couldn't abide the noise of the lawn mower, so he bought 100 white Guinea Pigs and had them billetted on his large lawn, moving the netting surrounding them at regular intervals and by the time they got back to the starting point, the grass was needing a cut again!

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  6. There is some very evocative language there!

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    1. I love articles like that and hope that some of these expressions are still used.

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