COUNTRY LIFE
WE came through the village slowly and quietly, Impressed with the sleepiness of the place. A ewe and her lamb came down a side-street. A second ewe wandered along the middle of the road, and an aged woman walked carefully round it carrying a pail of water to her cottage. Apart from a man and his wife pushing a baby in a pram, there was not a child or man to be seen. We had gone a little way before I had the answer. Turning a bend, we caught sight of a football field, a patch of mossy grass in the midst of boulders and slate mounds. A great roar went up from the spectators and echoed in the hills. Some- one had scored or had failed to score a goal. The perimeter of the field was crowded. All the men and children of the village were gathered to watch, and at every turn cars and vans were parked— strangely battered old cars and broken-down vans. It was an event up here in the hills, and it was evident that many of the spectators had come from even more remote places, places where the voice of a crowd would never echo and the thud of a bouncing football never be heard.
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