"It is good to see
creatures that no man is stabbing or doing harm to."
Through warm sunshine, tempered by fresh breezes, they came yet deeper into
the drowsy farmland. Gradually the yeomen-soldiers, who had been wrangling
over the mystery of Edric's actions, dropped one by one into lazy silence, or
set their tongues to whistling cleverly turned answers to the bird-calls in
the hedges. Another mile, and from somewhere in the fields came the swinging
chant of a ploughman, as he turned the soil between the rows of rustling
corn,--
"Hail, Mother Earth, thou feeder of folk!
Be thou growing, by goodness of God,
Filled with fodder, the folk to feed."
Like the unbinding of a spell, the words fell upon the farmer-soldiers.
Dropping every other topic, they began to argue over the crops; and after that
they could not pass a harmless calf tethered to a crab-tree that they did not
quarrel over the breed, nor start a drove of grunting swine out of the mast
but they must lay wagers on the weight.
Running wild in the animation, it was not long before the clamor caught up
with the Etheling where he rode before them in sober reflection. He smiled
faintly as he caught the burden of the disjointed phrases.
"...Twelve stone; I will peril my head upon it!" ... "Yorkshire, I tell you,
Yorkshire." ... "A fortnight? It will be ready in a week, or I have never
grown barley corn!"
"I do not believe that a tree-toad can change color more easily," he observed
to the old cniht who rode at his side.
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