"Morning came, cool and sweet with bird-song and white mists. At five o'clock when the corncrake whirred in the Whitewell field and the cuckoo called on every side, the mowers were up and in the meadow. A soft rain fell, a good gentle rain, blessing the fields, and the dew lay thick over the grass. The three men stood on the path and sharpened their scythes, and Tom stood watching them. The music of the hone floated up the field, in at the bedroom windows, ringing a strange familiar note which came into Susan's dreams and made her smile in her sleep.
They took their positions, Patrick first, then Corney and last Andy, and they stayed in this order during the whole of the mowing, each mowing his own lane through the grass, yet overlapping by the tip of the scythe, so that not a blade of grass remained. The long rhythmic swish, swish, swish, filled the air, as the three men, with bodies curved and motion even and regular, worked, their strong arms sweeping the shining blade through the silken grass. Their voices, murmuring in Gaelic, made a bass accompaniment to the treble of the scythes. Their feet swung onward in time to the cut of the scythe, and behind them they left three deep swathes, pale green, and soft-coloured as the rain."
From The Country Child by Alison Uttley - a simply lovely book; illustrations by C.F. Tunnicliffe.
It sounds poetic.
Posted by: Mystica | 04 July 2017 at 02:17 PM
We read this book at school and I've always loved it. I like the way it moves through the seasons. The Christmas section is magical.
Posted by: Callmemadam | 05 July 2017 at 09:55 AM
Peeping over the top of my Christmas stocking, aged nine was a copy of The Country Child, still have it. A book which can be re-read countless times.
Last year in Austria I saw small hay fields being scythed by hand. The scent filled the air.
Posted by: Fran H-B | 08 July 2017 at 08:17 AM