The Snail-Eater
' " My old grandfer was a strong man an' very quick-tempered. Ho liked children, but he couldn't bear them makin' a noise. ` Stop that 'er tootin',' he'd say when I come in whistlin'. A proper 'ard life he had. Went to work when he was no more than small, an' never had nothin' else but work all his life. When he was about sixteen he took ill. A decline they called it in them days. Nobody could cure him, no matter what they did. He was a goner, as they say. The doctors wouldn't give tuppence for him. Know what 'e did ? He got up early every momin' an' went out pickin' snails off cabbages an' such like. He picked 'em an' swallowed 'em down with the dew still on 'em. You wouldn't believe it, but in no time he turned the corner. Cured hisself. He -began to put flesh on, and he became a strong man. Lived to be old, 'e did. There was somethin' in them "snails or the dew that was on 'em. It took nerve to eat 'em for he might have died." Story -told in the village by the grandson of an old Worcestershire man.
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