Country Life

I'm sure summer used to actually happen in the summer, rather than half in spring and half in autumn, as has been the case in recent years, this one included. Blue skies, bright sunshine, temperatures in the high twenties; perfect weather, in fact, for walking out through the fields.

According to A.L. Lloyd, "idyllic songs, praising country pleasures, mostly belong to a time before the agricultural revolution of the 18th and early 19th centuries turned the smallholders into a rural proletariat with grievances". That may be true. But given the choice, on a day like today, between being caged up in a stinking, sprawling metropolis or being out in the lanes and meadows, you'll always find me catching the first tractor out of town. So I'll leave you with this traditional English folk song.


I like to rise when the sun she rises
Early in the morning,
I like to hear them small birds singing
Merrily upon the laylum.
And hurrah for the life of a country boy
And to ramble in the new-mown hay.

In spring we sow at the harvest mow
And that is how the seasons round they go;
But if all the times if choose I may
T'would be rambling through the new-mown hay.

In winter when the sky is grey
We hedge and ditch our times away;
But in the summer when the sun shines gay
We go rambling through the new-mown hay.