The staff was held with both hands, one to guide and the other
to strike, and as the thrashers were both practically aiming at the same
place, it was necessary, in order to prevent their flails colliding,
that one lash should be up in the air at the same moment that the other
was down on the floor, so that it required some practice in order to
become a proficient thrasher. The flails descended on the barn floors
with the regularity of the ticking of a clock, or the rhythmic and
measured footsteps of a man walking in a pair of clogs at a quickstep
speed over the hard surface of a cobbled road. We knew that this
mediaeval method of thrashing corn would be doomed in the future, and
that the old-fashioned flail would become a thing of the past, only to
be found in some museum as a relic of antiquity, so we recorded this
description of Chantrey's contest with the happy memories of the days
when we ourselves went a-thrashing corn a long time ago!
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF BRIMHAM ROCKS.]
What Chantrey thought of those marvellous rocks at Brimham was not
recorded, but, as they covered quite fifty acres of land, his friend,
like ourselves, would find it impossible to give any lengthy description
of them, and might, like the auctioneers, dismiss them with the
well-known phrase, "too numerous to mention.
Pages:
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548