England Thirty-eight - Text
The interview with this retired agricultural worker was conducted by Paul Meier in the summer of 2001. Born 1916 this man has lived his entire life in the Torrington area, even during the WW2 years when he was assigned to agricultural work in Devon and spent the war years ploughing Dartmoor. His dialect is quite strong and the 'goat', 'bath', 'trap', 'bath', 'mouth' lexical sets all demonstrate it very well. You will hear some glottalization of 't', some r-coloration, and frequent dropped 'h'. His stories of his early life are very evocative of Devon's agricultural nature. This subject is also a very keen poet and recites one of his works commemorating his twenty years of volunteer conservancy of the Torrington Commons. Running time, 38a:00:06:36; 38b: 00:05:57.
TRANSCRIPTION (38A)
I was born at a little village called Meath it’s about ten miles outside of Torrington and uh I first started school at Meath when I was five years old but then when I was somewhere right about eight uh my father changed his occupation and I moved to a place called Newbridge which was only about two and a half miles further along now but uh course then I had to go to another school and then I went to motoring school and then that’s where I finished up my school at the age of fourteen you know well then there wasn’t an awful lot of choice really of jobs it was mainly agri..agriculture or working at the clay pits there was two or three clay pits around the Northern clay company and or the Meath clay Company so it was a choice of either us going to the clay pits or agriculture so anyway I went on agriculture. I remember starting off having to milk a you know a lot of cows really and when you’ve never milked cows before it can really be very trying on the wrists I mean uh if you got to sit say under about twenty cows I mean it’s quite an ordeal really and uh not only milking the cows I mean uh you milk the cows first thing in the morning and then again in late afternoon and but the other part of the day I mean you was out doing a lot of other manual work which was quite a you know a strain on a boy of fourteen really and well me wages were a pound a week seven days a week and uh well then when the war broke out I had to change jobs again I was working for a Lord Clinton.. Clinton and of course I had to register with my age group which was the twenty two yea… twenty two year olds so uh the bailiff for Lord Clinton he didn’t want to get rid of me because or he didn’t want to lose me because I was in the dairy running a real big dairy there but under paid (?)you know and uh and then I ended up one day I had a letter from the government and I thought well this is me call up papers then but anyway when I open the envelope there was some forms inside to fill out and uh they was it was a government thing and they wanted experienced agriculture workers to start up agricultural units all over the country now because the German U-boats were putting down our merchant ships and we were losing so much food that they wanted to start up a agricultural units and grow our own food so anyway I filled it in and thought well I expect I should have to go anyway but within a matter of about a week I had a reply back saying I was to report to Oakhampton and start up an agricultural unit there so anyway I went to Oakhampton and I was put out over an area which was bordering Dartmoor and well we sort of built up a unit and gradually had Land Army girls and different uh workers that was unfit for the army come out and of course our job was to sort of supervise them and train them you know what to do and that well after a while that sort of job didn’t really suit me too well you know so so you know there was loads of tractor work you see ploughing (unclear) all the time so I got on the tractors and in those days I mean we hadn’t got a lot of tractors but er most of the tractors came across from America and uh I got more or less full time tractor driving then and I plowed out well I always say I plowed half of Devon because I plowed areas that had never been plowed before I plowed um like Bedford (?) Moor, Roper (?) Moor, Harlequin (?) Moor, Kings (?) Moor and Rose Vive (?) uh and the biggest moor I’ve plowed which I know I was the first one ever to plow in living memory that was Haverly (?) Moor and it took me seven months to plow it its uh so big yea it took me seven month to plow that one.
TRANSCRIPTION (38B)
We went on tilling all this land for about three years after the war was over because we were still short of food stuff you see and uh it was about nineteen forty-eight when we uh grassed it out over all the ground that we had taken over and well after I got sort of made redundant from the government that was nineteen forty eight I went for a short spell with a gardener at an old peoples’ home and uh because you couldn’t pick and choose and there weren’t an awful lot of jobs to choose from but anyway I stayed there for about four and a half years and actually I, I did make the garden show a profit which was was quite uh you know pleased about that because when you did make the garden show a profit I mean uh that’s better than being on the loser isn’t it? But anyway then there was a job being advertised at an AI center as a stockman of course I had worked in agriculture before for Lord Clinton and that and I knew all about stock and that so I went and I saw the manager like and he knew me and he said when can you start so I said well I got to give a week’s notice where I’m trying (?) I just can’t start like that so he said well fair enough he said when your notice is up he said you can just start so I stayed there for twenty-six years until I retired yea when I retired I mean I always had to be busy you know doing something and when I retired I just couldn’t you know walk the streets and stand on the street corners I felt I had to be doing something so I took up doing voluntary work for the Titan (?)commons conservators because uh Titan (?) is very lucky really they’ve got three hundred and sixty-five acres of common land and over twenty miles of footpath and uh this is all um kept you know the paths and that neat and tidy and and that all they uh well why wouldn’t why wouldn’t you catch (?) really not so much why wouldn’t you work here they’re very short of volunteers who will work but anyway I decided I’d take it on on a full time thing you know and I used to put in about say four or five hours every day yea and uh I’ve been doing that now for more than twenty years and of course why would I lay down on the commons to work (unclear) I mean you see so many things in the way of wildlife and uh well things that’s happening that is sort of inspiring me into writing a poem about it and that’s where I get a lot of my ideas about writing poems you know and mmm I did one you know and eh quite hard (unclear) on the English Jerusalem built on the side of a hill for this beautiful garden of Eden better known as Castle Hill eh three hundred and sixty-five acres with over twenty miles of foot path where better to spend a summer’s evening just walk talk and have a good laugh as one looks down into the valley some hundreds of feet down below where there is only a soft breeze blowing and the Torridge (?)courage is flowing so slow a heron stands knee deep in water and takes looks all round and about and gets down to more serious business like catching a tasty fat trout a hawk hovers high way up in the sky with deep concentration and a magnetic eye on young baby rabbits that are playing nearby with just no idea that one could soon die then up soars a lark it burst into song a reminder that summer won’t be too long wild flowers all around too numerous to name: violets, fox gloves, and loads of plantain; slowly the sun sinks way down into the west, it’s another day over so back home and rest.
TRANSCRIPTION BY SUMMER MULFORD, FEBRUARY, 2008