Dobbin and Robin and Buck and Jo

Went up to the meadow to mow, to mow

Went up to the meadow to mow.

Where we now reap there once we did sow

Up in the meadow we mow, we mow

Up in the meadow we mow.

Only now and then a mower would pause, pull up the whetstone hanging at his waist on a cord, and the harsh whistle of whetting a scythe blade broke into the rhythm of the song. Then picking up the rhythm and the words, he rejoined the others in swaying and singing.

There followed some more days of raking and tossing, piling up the hay into tall cocks. The weather held, in fact became hot and muggy, and by the fifth day most of the big Mill field and three-quarters of the Common had been cut, dried and stacked on the stubble when the accident occurred. So tiny an accident it was that no one regarded it.

Dick had been one of the party with Marion and Peter and a few others raking in the far corner of the big field. They had stopped work and were resting in the shade of an oak, lying under it on the short grass which was not long enough to be worth scything. Hilda had brought a bucket of thin ale and had kept it all the morning in the cool grass in a ditch beyond the oak. Marion had brought two loaves and a bit of hard cheese, and she had watched Peter holding the loaf against his chest and slicing it by drawing the knife towards his own throat. She had seen him do this all her married life and had never seen the knife slip – but she still wished he would not. Hilda dipped her small horn cup into the bucket and passed it round and the thirsty rakers poured the cool ale down their throats and ate the hard bread hungrily. They pulled the crusts from their teeth, they stuffed the cheese into already full mouths and called on Hilda for another hornful. Marion recalled the scene in detail: Hilda sitting cross-legged by her bucket, her cap off, her dark hair tied back at the neck, her sleeves rolled up showing her thin freckled arms, her body twisting round as she dipped the horn in the bucket and twisting back again to pass it into some red-pricked, thick-fingered hand that reached out for it; Dick lying flat on his back, his orange hair flowing over the hat that he had scrunched up to rest his head on, his eyes gazing up at the branches of the oak, his beard, sprinkled with breadcrumbs, sticking out below his chin and just showing the ridgy redness of his Adam’s apple. The grasshoppers whirred, occasionally a pigeon complained in the nearby forest, or a jay screeched. No one spoke for they had nothing much to say. After so many hours of hard work all were glad to lie in the cool undazzling shade and eat and quench their thirst.