54749: Lob
Creators: name: Project Team, First World War Poetry Digital Archive
Publisher: name: University of Oxford
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 430304
subject: British history
classificationCode: 430308
subject: European history (excl. British, classical Greek and Roman)
classificationCode: 430316
subject: International history

description: At hawthorn-time in Wiltshire travelling<br> In search of something chance would never bring,<br> An old man's face, by life and weather cut<br> And coloured,---rough, brown, sweet as any nut,---<br> A land face, sea-blue-eyed,---hung in my mind<br> When I had left him many a mile behind.<br> All he said was: 'Nobody can't stop 'ee. It's<br> A footpath, right enough. You see those bits<br> Of mounds---that's where they opened up the barrows<br> Sixty years since, while I was scaring sparrows.<br> They thought as there was something to find there,<br> But couldn't find it, by digging, anywhere.'<br> To turn back then and seek him, where was the use?<br> There were three Manningfords,---Abbots, Bohun, and Bruce:<br> And whether Alton, not Manningford, it was,<br> My memory could not decide, because<br> There was both Alton Barnes and Alton Priors.<br> All had their churches, graveyards, farms, and byres,<br> Lurking to one side up the paths and lanes,<br> Seldom well seen except by aeroplanes;<br> And when bells rang, or pigs squealed, or cocks crowed,<br> Then only heard. Ages ago the road<br> Approached. The people stood and looked and turned.<br> Nor asked it to come nearer, nor yet learned<br> To move out there and dwell in all men's dust.<br> And yet withal they shot the weathercock, just<br> Because 'twas he crowed out of tune, they said:<br> So now the copper weathercock is dead.<br> If they had reaped their dandelions and sold<br> Them fairly, they could have afforded gold.<br> Many years passed, and I went back again<br> Among those villages, and looked for men<br> Who might have known my ancient. He himself<br> Had long been dead or laid upon the shelf,<br> I thought. One man I asked about him roared<br> At my description: ''Tis old Bottlesford<br> He means, Bill.' But another said: 'Of course,<br> It was Jack Button up at the White Horse.<br> He's dead, sir, these three years.' This lasted till<br> A girl proposed Walker of Walker's Hill,<br> 'Old Adam Walker. Adam's Point you'll see<br> Marked on the maps.'<br> 'That was her roguery.'<br> The next man said. He was a squire's son<br> Who loved wild bird and beast, and dog and gun<br> For killing them. He had loved them from his birth,<br> One with another, as he loved the earth.<br> 'The man may be like Button, or Walker, or<br> Like Bottlesford, that you want, but far more<br> He sounds like one I saw when I was a child.<br> I could almost swear to him. The man was wild<br> And wandered. His home was where he was free.<br> Everybody has met one such man as he.<br> Does he keep clear old paths that no one uses<br> But once a lifetime when he loves or muses?<br> He is English as this gate, these flowers, this mire.<br> And when at eight years old Lob-lie-by-the-fire<br> Came in my books, this was the man I saw.<br> He has been in England as long as dove and daw,<br> Calling the wild cherry tree the merry tree,<br> The rose campion Bridget-in-her-bravery;<br> And in a tender mood he, as I guess,<br> Christened one flower Love-in-idleness,<br> And while he walked from Exeter to Leeds<br> One April called all cuckoo-flowers Milkmaids.<br> From him old herbal Gerard learnt, as a boy,<br> To name wild clematis the Traveller's-joy.<br> Our blackbirds sang no English till his ear<br> Told him they called his Jan Toy ""Pretty dear"".<br> (She was Jan Toy the Lucky, who, having lost<br> A shilling, and found a penny loaf, rejoiced.)<br> For reasons of his own to him the wren<br> Is Jenny Pooter. Before all other men<br> 'Twas he first called the Hog's Back the Hog's Back.<br> That Mother Dunch's Buttocks should not lack<br> Their name was his care. He too could explain<br> Totteridge and Totterdown and Juggler's Lane:<br> He knows, if anyone. Why Tumbling Bay,<br> Inland in Kent, is called so, he might say.<br> 'But little he says compared with what he does.<br> if ever a sage troubles him he will buzz<br> Like a beehive to conclude the tedious fray:<br> And the sage, who knows all languages, runs away.<br> Yet Lob has thirteen hundred names for a fool,<br> And though he never could spare time for school<br> To unteach what the fox so well expressed,<br> On biting the cock's head off,---Quietness is best,---<br> He can talk quite as well as anyone<br> After his thinking is forgot and done.<br> He first of all told someone else's wife,<br> For a farthing she'd skin a flint and spoil a knife<br> Worth sixpence skinning it. She heard him speak:<br> ""She had a face as long as a wet week""<br> Said he, telling the tale in after years.<br> With blue smock and with gold rings in his ears,<br> Sometimes he is a pedlar, not too poor<br> To keep his wit. This is tall Tom that bore<br> The logs in, and with Shakespeare in the hall<br> Once talked, when icicles hung by the wall.<br> As Herne the Hunter he has known hard times.<br> On sleepless nights he made up weather rhymes<br> Which others spoilt. And, Hob being then his name,<br> He kept the hog that thought the butcher came<br> To bring his breakfast. ""You thought wrong"", said Hob.<br> When there were kings in Kent this very Lob,<br> Whose sheep grew fat and he himself grew merry,<br> Wedded the king's daughter of Canterbury;<br> For he alone, unlike squire, lord, and king,<br> Watched a night by her without slumbering;<br> He kept both waking. When he was but a lad<br> He won a rich man's heiress, deaf, dumb, and sad,<br> By rousing her to laugh at him. He carried<br> His donkey on his back. So they were married.<br> And while he was a little cobbler's boy<br> He tricked the giant coming to destroy<br> Shrewsbury by flood. ""And how far is it yet?""<br> The giant asked in passing. ""I forget;<br> But see these shoes I've worn out on the road<br> and we're not there yet."" He emptied out his load<br> Of shoes for mending. The giant let fall from his spade<br> The earth for damming Severn, and thus made<br> The Wrekin hill; and little Ercall hill<br> Rose where the giant scraped his boots. While still<br> So young, our Jack was chief of Gotham's sages.<br> But long before he could have been wise, ages<br> Earlier than this, while he grew thick and strong<br> And ate his bacon, or, at times, sang a song<br> And merely smelt it, as Jack the giant-killer<br> He made a name. He too ground up the miller,<br> The Yorkshireman who ground men's bones for flour.<br> 'Do you believe Jack dead before his hour?<br> Or that his name is Walker, or Bottlesford,<br> Or Button, a mere clown, or squire, or lord?<br> The man you saw,---Lob-lie-by-the-fire, Jack Cade,<br> Jack Smith, Jack Moon, poor Jack of every trade,<br> Young Jack, or old Jack, or Jack What-d'ye-call,<br> Jack-in-the-hedge, or Robin-run-by-the-wall,<br> Robin Hood, Ragged Robin, lazy Bob,<br> One of the lords of No Man's Land, good Lob,---<br> Although he was seen dying at Waterloo,<br> Hastings, Agincourt, and Sedgemoor too,---<br> Lives yet. He never will admit he is dead<br> Till millers cease to grind men's bones for bread,<br> Not till our weathercock crows once again<br> And I remove my house out of the lane<br> On to the road.' With this he disappeared<br> In hazel and thorn tangled with old-man's-beard.<br> But one glimpse of his back, as there he stood,<br> Choosing his way, proved him of old Jack's blood,<br> Young Jack perhaps, and now a Wiltshireman<br> As he has oft been since his days began.<br>