COUNTRY LIFE
Merry England
The old Mill is in Domesday. The stream is a favourite swimming pool for a swan, where it makes a still pond above the mill and a not uncommon haunt of both dabchick and kingfisher where it ripples freely below the mill. Across the bridge and the village street is an inn of hardly less age, and between the two the street broadens into quiet space. Here was held last week the first Cattle Fair in the local annals. British farmers (not always regarded as artists in this direc- tion) have recently devised the merriest method of giving recorded since Domesday. Gifts are asked from the owners of any sort of animal ; and for the occasion of the auction, Women's Institutes and other kindly groups set up tea stalls or produce marts. All rural auctions are amusing, an occasion for the release of rural wit, but these special auctions, from which all profits go to the Red Cross and local charities, excel others because it is the happy habit of the buyer of any unwanted animal to have it auctioned a second or third time. A decrepit lamb or antique fowl may in this way earn as much as a prizewinner. For instance, a calf that no farmer was likely to covet was bravely bought by the owner of a furnishing shop. With the wit and generosity proper to the occasion, he called out, " Sell it again, it would take too long to make it into an antique." The auctioneer, always stimulated by a rival jester, at once announced that as Mr. A. could only feed the calf on furniture polish it must come back into the ring. The next purchaser was the newsagent, who at once pro- claimed that he, too, had no grass. The auctioneer, going from strength to strength, proclaimed that as Mr. B. could only feed the calf on paper, and that was rationed, he must put the animal up for the third time. Thus the Fair proceeded, very merrily, very sociably, after a fashion only possible within that ideal, but very real, social unit, the English village. The Red Cross was the richer by some L700, an astonishing sum within so small a community. England is Merrie England still.
Previous page
