Shocks A picture was published :ast week of flax, now
a widely spread crop, being " stooked." Is the word allowable? It is, I think, nowhere used in local idiom in the South of England. The almost universal word is " shock," as substantive or verb. Stook is Scottish and has spread to the Northern Counties. However, the word has been generally preferred by literary persons, just as they prefer sickle to the fagging hook or bagging hook or which hook you prefer in the language of the village,, which disregards " sickle." A pretty example of its use is to be found in Hood's Ruth.
" Thus she stood among the stooks, Praising God with sweetest looks:
Sure, I said, Heaven did not mean, . Where I reap thou should'st but glean."
What a poet poor Tom Hood might have been, if poverty had not forced him to grin through a horse-collar! I have sometimes thought that the swallows which " twitted " the sweated seamstress with the spring found the 'very best verb in our literature. It sublimates the pun.
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