Page:Barnes (1879) Poems of rural life in the Dorset dialect (combined).djvu/106

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POEMS OF RURAL LIFE.

OUT A-NUTTÈN.

Last week, when we’d a haul’d the crops,
We went a-nuttèn out in copse,
Wi’ nuttèn-bags to bring hwome vull,
An’ beaky nuttèn-crooks to pull
The bushes down; an’ all o’s wore
Wold clothes that wer in rags avore,
An’ look’d, as we did skip an’ zing,
Lik’ merry gipsies in a string,
  A-gwaïn a-nuttèn.

Zoo drough the stubble, over rudge
An’ vurrow, we begun to trudge;
An’ Sal an’ Nan agreed to pick
Along wi’ me, an’ Poll wi’ Dick;
An’ they went where the wold wood, high
An’ thick, did meet an’ hide the sky;
But we thought we mid vind zome good
Ripe nuts among the shorter wood,
  The best vor nuttèn.

We voun’ zome bushes that did feäce
The downcast zunlight’s highest pleäce,
Where clusters hung so ripe an’ brown,
That some slipp’d shell an’ veil to groun’.
But Sal wi’ me zoo hitch’d her lag
In brembles, that she coulden wag;
While Poll kept clwose to Dick, an’ stole
The nuts vrom’s hinder pocket-hole,
  While he did nutty.

An’ Nanny thought she zaw a sneäke,
An’ jump’d off into zome girt breäke,
An’ tore the bag where she’d a-put

Her sheäre, an’ shatter’d ev’ry nut.