Last week, when we’d a haul’d the crops,
We went a-nutten out in copse,
Wi’ nutten-bags to bring hwome vull,
An’ beaky nutten-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-gwain a-nutten.
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 nutten.
We voun’ zome bushes that did feaece
The downcast zunlight’s highest pleaece,
Where clusters hung so ripe an’ brown,
That some slipp’d shell an’ vell 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 sneaeke,
An’ jump’d off into zome girt breaeke,
An’ tore the bag where she’d a-put
Her sheaere, an’ shatter’d ev’ry nut.
An’ out in vield we all zot roun’
A white-stemm’d woak upon the groun’,
Where yollor evenen light did strik’
Drough yollow leaves, that still wer thick
In time o’ nutten,
An’ twold ov all the luck we had
Among the bushes, good an’ bad!
Till all the maidens left the bwoys,
An’ skipp’d about the leaeze all woys
Vor musherooms, to car back zome,
A treat vor father in at hwome.
Zoo off we trudg’d wi’ clothes in slents
An’ libbets, jis’ lik’ Jack-o’-lents,
Vrom copse a-nutten.
Other works by William Barnes...
