EVICTED PEASANTS' HUMOUR.
[To THE EDITOR or TRY "SPECTATOR."'
Sin,—On p. 689 of the Supplement to your issue of Nov. let last, as a specimen of the humour of the sixteenth-century evicted peasant, are quoted the following lines :—
"Mr Pratt, your sheep are very fat, And we thank you for that ; We have left you the skins to pay your wife's pins,
And you must thank us for that."
I do not think they are nearly so old, for the incident to which they refer occurred in the parish of Clent, then in Stafford- shire, now in Worcestershire, some hundred years ago. Mr. John Pratt was the tenant of a farm called Thicknall, and his sheep were stolen and the skins left, with practically the same lines as those above attached to them—in deference to local dialect the last line ran, " And you must thank ' we' for that." In the adjoining parish of Halesowen, a Mr. Page was tenant of Lutley farm, and was visited about the same time by presumably the same gang of thieves. One morning his gander was seen wandering about with a packet tied to its neck. On a paper containing some coppers were written these lines :— "Mr. Page, don't be in a rage,
And if you are, it's no wonder; We've taken your geese for a penny apiece, And left the money with the gander."
—I am, Sir, &c., Rome: Notxnnber 5th. J. A.
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