Krindlesyke | Page 3

old clocker.
ELIZA:
True enough,
Marriage means little more than a new gown
To some:
but Phoebe's not a fancicle tauntril,
With fingers itching to hansel
new-fangled flerds.
Why she'd wed ...
EZRA:
Tuts! Girls take their chance. And you'd
Conceit enough of Jim, at
one time--proud
As a pipit that's hatched a cuckoo: and if the gowk

Were half as handsome as I--you ken, yourself,
You needed no
coaxing: I wasted little breath
Whistling to heel: you came at the first
"Isca!"
ELIZA:
Who kens what a lass runs away from, crazed to quit

Home, at all hazards, little realizing
It's life, itself, she's trying to
escape;
And plodging deeper.
EZRA:
Trust a wench for kenning.
I've to meet the wife who'd be a maid
again:
Once in the fire, no wife, though she may crackle
On the live
coals, leaps back to the frying-pan.
It's against nature.
ELIZA:
Maybe: and yet, somehow,
Phoebe seemed different.

EZRA:
I've found little difference
Betwixt one gimmer and another gimmer,

When the ram's among them. But, where does she hail from?
ELIZA:
Allendale way. Jim met her at Martinmas fair.
EZRA:
We met ...
ELIZA:
Ay, fairs have much to answer for.
EZRA:
I thought 'twas Judith Ellershaw.
ELIZA:
God forbid
'Twas Judith I'd to share with: though Jim fancied
The
lass, at one time. He's had many fancies:
Light come, light go, it's
always been with Jim.
EZRA:
And I was gay when I was young--as brisk
As a yearling
tup with the ewes, till I'd the pains,
Like red-hot iron, clamping back
and thighs.
My heart's a younker's still; but even love
Gives in, at
last, to rheumatics and lumbago.
Now, I'm no better than an old
bell-wether,
A broken-winded, hirpling tattyjack
That can do
nothing but baa and baa and baa.
I'd just to whistle for a wench at
Jim's age:
And Jim's ...
ELIZA:
His father's son.
EZRA:
He's never had
My spirit. No woman's ever bested me.
For all his
bluster, he's a gaumless nowt,
With neither guts nor gall. He just butts

blindly--
A woolly-witted ram, bashing his horns,
And spattering its
silly brains out on a rock:
No backbone--any trollop could twiddle
him
Round her little finger: just the sort a doxy,
Or a drop too much,
sets dancing, heels in air:
He's got the gallows' brand. But none of
your sons
Has a head for whisky or wenches; and not one
Has half
my spunk, my relish. I'd not trust
Their judgment of a ewe, let alone a
woman:
But I could size a wench up, at a glance;
And Judith ...
ELIZA:
Ay: but Krindlesyke would be
A muckheap-lie-on, with that cloffy
slut
For mistress. But she flitted one fine night.
EZRA:
Rarely the shots of the flock turn lowpy-dyke;
Likelier the
tops have the spunk to run ramrace;
And I think no worse ...
ELIZA:
Her father turned her out,
'Twas whispered; and he's never named her,
since:
And no one's heard a word. I couldn't thole
The lass. She'd
big cow-eyes: there's little good
In that sort. Jim's well shot of her;
he'll not
Hear tell of her: that sort can always find
Another man to
fool: they don't come back:
Past's past, with them.
EZRA:
I liked ...
ELIZA:
Ay, you're Jim's dad.
But now he's settling down, happen I'll see

Bairn's bairns at Krindlesyke, before I die.
Six sons--and only the
youngest of the bunch
Left in the old home to do his parents credit.
EZRA:
Queer, all went wild, your sons, like collies bitten
With a
taste for mutton bleeding-hot. Cold lead
Cures dogs of that kidney,

peppering them one fine night
From a chink in a stell; but, when
they're two-legged curs, They've a longer run; and, in the end, the
gallows
Don't noose them, kicking and squealing like snarled rabbits,
Dead-certain, as 'twould do in the good old days.
ELIZA:
You crack your gallows-jokes on your own sons--
And
each the spit of the father that drove them wild,
With cockering them
and cursing them; one moment,
Fooling them to their bent, the
moment after,
Flogging them senseless, till their little bodies
Were
one blue bruise.
EZRA:
I never larruped enough,
But let the varmints off too easily:
That
was the mischief. They should have had my dad--
An arm like a
bullock-walloper, and a fist
Could fell a stot; and faiks, but he welted
me
Skirlnaked, yarked my hurdies till I yollered,
In season and out,
and made me the man I am.
Ay, he'd have garred the young eels
squirm.
ELIZA:
And yet,
My sons, as well: though I lost my hold of each
Almost
before he was off my lap, with you
To egg them on against me. Peter
went first:
And Jim's the lave. But he may settle down.
God kens
where you'd be, if you'd not wed young.
EZRA:
And the devil where you'd be, if we hadn't met
That
hiring-day at Hexham, on the minute.
I'd spent last hiring with
another wench,
A giggling red-haired besom; and we were trysted

To meet at the Shambles: and I was awaiting her,
When I caught the
glisk of your eye: but she was late;
And you were a sonsy lassie, fresh
and pink;
Though little pink about you now, I'd fancy.
ELIZA:
Nay, forty-year of Krindlesyke, and all!

EZRA:
Young carroty-pow must have been in