It was a large dairy.There were nearly a hundred milchers under Crick's management, all told; and of the herd the master-dairyman milked six or eight with his own hands, unless away from home.These were the cows that milked hardest of all; for his journey-milkmen being more or less casually hired, he would not entrust this half-dozen to their treatment, lest, from indifference, they should not milk them fully; nor to the maids, lest they should fail in the same way for lack of finger-grip; with the result that in course of time the cows would `go azew' - that is, dry up.It was not the loss for the moment that made slack milking so serious, but that with the decline of demand there came decline, and ultimately cessation, of supply.
After Tess had settled down to her cow there was for a time no talk in the barton, and not a sound interfered with the purr of the milk-jets into the numerous palls, except a momentary exclamation to one or other of the beasts requesting her to turn round or stand still.The only movements were those of the milkers' hands up and down, and the swing of the cows'
tails.Thus they all worked on, encompassed by the vast flat mead which extended to either slope of the valley - a level landscape compounded of old landscapes long forgotten, and, no doubt, differing in character very greatly from the landscape they composed now.
`To my thinking,' said the dairyman, rising suddenly from a cow he had just finished off, snatching up his three-legged stool in one hand and the pail in the other, and moving on to the next hard-yielder in his vicinity;`to my thinking, the cows don't gie down their milk to-day as usual.Upon my life, if Winker do begin keeping back like this, she'll not be worth going under by midsummer.'
`'Tis because there's a new hand come among us,' said Jonathan Kail.
`I've noticed such things afore.'
`To be sure.It may be so.I didn't think o't.'
`I've been told that it goes up into their horns at such times,' said a dairymaid.
`Well, as to going up into their horns,' replied Dairyman Crick dubiously, as though even witchcraft might be limited by anatomical possibilities, `I couldn't say; I certainly could not.But as nott cows will keep it back as well as the horned ones, I don't quite agree to it.Do ye know that riddle about the nott cows, Jonathan? Why do nott cows give less milk in a year than horned?'
`I don't!' interposed the milkmaid.`Why do they?'
`Because there bain't so many of 'em,' said the dairyman.`Howsomever, these gamisters do certainly keep back their milk to-day.Folks, we must lift up a stave or two - that's the only cure for't.'
Songs were often resorted to in dairies hereabout as an enticement to the cows when they showed signs of withholding their usual yield; and the band of milkers at this request burst into melody - in purely business-like tones, it is true, and with no great spontaneity; the result, according to their own belief, being a decided improvement during the song's continuance.
When they had gone through fourteen or fifteen verses of a cheerful ballad about a murderer who was afraid to go to bed in the dark because he saw certain brimstone flames around him, one of the male milkers said--`I wish singing on the stoop didn't use up so much of a man's wind!
You should get your harp, sir; not but what a fiddle is best.'
Tess, who had given ear to this, thought the words were addressed to the dairyman, but she was wrong.A reply, in the shape of `Why?'came as it were out of the belly of a dun cow in the stalls; it had been spoken by a milker behind the animal, whom she had not hitherto perceived.
`Oh yes; there's nothing like a fiddle,' said the dairyman.`Though I do think that bulls are more moved by a tune than cows - at least that's my experience.Once there was a old aged man over at Mellstock - William Dewy by name - one of the family that used to do a good deal of business as tranters over there, Jonathan, do ye mind? - I knowed the man by sight as well as I know my own brother, in a manner of speaking.Well, this man was a coming home-along from a wedding where he had been playing his fiddle, one fine moonlight night, and for shortness' sake he took a cut across Forty-acres, a field lying that way, where a bull was out to grass.The bull seed William, and took after him, horns aground, begad; and though William runned his best, and hadn't much drink in him (considering 'twas a wedding, and the folks well off), he found he'd never reach the fence and get over in time to save himself.Well, as a last thought, he pulled out his fiddle as he runned, and struck up a jig, turning to the bull, and backing towards the corner.The bull softened down, and stood still, looking hard at William Dewy, who fiddled on and on; till a sort of a smile stole over the bull's face.But no sooner did William stop his playing and turn to get over hedge than the bull would stop his smiling and lower his horns towards the seat of William's breeches.Well, William had to turn about and play on, willy-nilly; and 'twas only three o'clock in the world, and 'a knowed that nobody would come that way for hours, and he so leery and tired that 'a didn't know what to do.When he had scraped till about four o'clock he felt that he verily would have to give over soon, and he said to himself, "There's only this last tune between me and eternal welfare! Heaven save me, or I'm a done man." Well, then he called to mind how he'd seen the cattle kneel o' Christmas Eves in the dead o'
