by Diane Allen
DIANE ALLEN
The Miner’s Wife
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Dedicated to the Dalesfolk of Swaledale
and Wensleydale and to the lead miners
who lost their lives in those remote dales
1
Swaledale, the Yorkshire Dales, 1877
Meg Oversby sat enjoying the warm sunshine of the June day. She leaned back and turned her face up to the sun, and smiled as she watched a skylark dip and dart in the blue sky as it sang its tune. Her father had arranged for her to get a lift into Swaledale to the little village of Gunnerside with the local butcher, although he would have had something to say about it, had he known how the man had enjoyed glancing at Meg’s ankles as he helped her up to sit next to him. But she had been thankful for the lift, because her heavy basket of butter was no longer weighing on her arm as his two horses struggled to climb the steep hillside out of the village of Hawes and the small hamlet of Simonstone. Carefully they had picked their way along the track, which snaked and turned following the fell contours, with a horrendous drop to their deaths if the animals put a foot wrong.
Once in the village, Meg had made her delivery of butter to the small shop that the local lead-miners’ wives used, run by her ailing surrogate aunt and uncle, before making her way back home, out of the long green valley. Now she was enjoying a little freedom as she sat on the edge of the limestone chasm known as the Buttertubs. It was deep enough for the Devil himself to live in, and many a stray sheep had fallen to its death down the hole, but it was a beautiful part of the world, with the winding pass between Great Shunner Fell opening up to beautiful, remote Swaledale at one end and to the village of Hawes and Wensleydale at the other. The chasm had reportedly been given its name by local women who, like herself, delivered butter and had found it a cool place to rest and chill their produce in the deep cavern, before carrying on their way.
Meg could well believe this, and she enjoyed the warmth of the day, picking some of the sweet-smelling wild thyme that grew around her and placing it behind her ear before she stood up. She gave a backward glance at the dale, which was also home to two lads who had taken her eye, brothers who worked at the Owd Gang lead-mines. She’d hoped for a sighting of them, but knew they would be working at the mines high up in the fells above Gunnerside. Not to worry, she thought to herself, there would always be the following week, when her next delivery was ready to be hawked to the small village shop. Next week she would as usual travel the ten miles with her father in the horse and trap, and while he had a jar at the King’s Head to quench his thirst and catch up with the news of the dale, she would quickly make her way up the steep fellside to the lead-mines above Gunnerside Gill. There the workers of the Owd Gang mines toiled, looking for the mineral ore of galena, which was then smelted into lead.
She knew Jack and Sam Alderson would be working there, Jack in the smelting mill and Sam as a ‘deadman’, removing the ‘deads’, or useless rock, from the working mine and refilling an older, disused mine. Both brothers had danced with Meg at a local event in Hawes Market Hall a time or two since the Christmas dance when they had all first met – much to her parents’ disgust, as they were not the sort of men a wealthy farmer’s daughter should associate with. But Meg’s head was turned by their good looks and the attention that both of them had shown her, albeit briefly. She had watched both brothers for a while and had noticed them flirting with other girls; and then one evening they had spotted her and had come to talk at first, and then dance with her.
She smiled now as she remembered both lads with their arms around her waist, guiding her around the dance floor as she had never been held and danced with before. All three had enjoyed their evenings together. The trouble was that she couldn’t make her mind up which one she preferred. She mused over each brother as she stepped out onto the rutted road that took her back to her family home at Appersett. Jack was charming, but serious; however, Sam was the better dancer and was always joking. The brothers looked alike, with dark brown hair and bright blue eyes, but they were complete opposites when it came to their characters. Both had taken her eye, and both had argued with each other for her affections. She really shouldn’t be thinking about either, Meg told herself as she made her way along the road home. But then she broke into song, feeling a spring in her step as she remembered their smiling faces. She’d do as she liked – and not even her father would stop her.
‘Well, you’ve taken your time, young lady. I hope you haven’t been trailing up to those lead-mines and fluttering your eyelashes at the men. None of them up there are worth owt, they’ve none of them got a penny to their names.’ Agnes Oversby looked up from her baking and shook her head as her daughter came sauntering into the kitchen at their home, Beck Side Farm. ‘You can take that thyme out of your hair and all, especially if one of them gave you it, madam.’ She looked at her slim, dark-haired daughter and shook her head. Meg was a bonny lass with a glowing complexion, and Agnes knew that many a man would soon be wanting to court her.
‘I’ve not been anywhere near the mines, Mother. I’ve taken my time because the day is so warm and, after all, it is a fair way there and back – my legs feel like jelly. I’m glad Father will be taking the horse and trap as usual next week.’ Meg slumped into the Windsor chair next to the fireside and took the wild thyme out of her hair, then played with the purple flowers in her hand.
‘Aye, well, you needn’t think you are going to sit there for long. You can take your father a jug of ginger beer. He’ll be dying of thirst in this heat while he’s scything the top meadow. I’m busy baking and haven’t time to see to him. You’d both complain if there wasn’t anything to eat in the house.’ Agnes scowled at her daughter; Meg had been out all day, and while she knew it was a good distance, she should have been back sooner. ‘Has Harry paid up? Did you tell him there would be a few pounds more butter next week, now the cows are milking well?’
‘Yes, the money’s in the basket, and he’s glad you can supply him with more butter. He says there’s a new influx of miners moved into the dale, after a fresh vein of lead was found at the Sir Francis level.’ Meg yawned and leaned back in the chair, showing no inclination to get up and walk to the high meadow with a drink for her father.
‘That’ll mean more rubbish coming into the dale. They’ve ruined those hills with their mining and damming of the becks. That land’s going to be worth nowt, if they are not careful.’ Agnes cut out the scones she had been making and placed them on her baking tray, before brushing them with beaten egg, then walked over to the fireside oven. ‘Stir your shanks – get gone with your father’s drink, and on your way back you can bring me the eggs from the hut. While you are about it, have a look in that clump of nettles next to the cowshed. I saw an old hen making her way out of them this morning, and I bet she’s nesting there.’ Agnes placed her scones in the oven and nudged Meg’s legs, to get her to move.
‘I’ve always got to be doing something – you never let me be,’ Meg growled as she went to the big earthenware bowl of home-made ginger beer, specially brewed for haytime, and filled a pottery jug to the brim for her father to drink out of.
‘’Tis the Devil that makes work for idle hands. It’s better that you are busy than sitting there romancing over them useless lads. Now, get gone, and d
on’t forget to look for that nest.’ Agnes flicked her tea towel lovingly at her nineteen-year-old daughter. Meg was a grown woman who knew her own mind now, and Agnes feared she’d lost her little girl.
Meg walked through the farmyard. The sun was still hot and the smell of the dry earth and the chickweed and groundsel crushed beneath her feet filled the air, as she opened the yard gate and walked up the wooded outrake to the meadow that her father was mowing with his scythe. She knew it was hard work, but her father had put his foot down when her mother suggested that he pay one of the neighbour’s lads to help him, saying that he could manage it himself and needed no one. So when she saw him covered in sweat and swearing at his lot, she didn’t feel much sympathy.
‘Are you hot and bothered, Father?’ Meg passed him the jug of ginger beer and looked around her.
‘I bloody well am, lass. It’s hard work is this, and it’ll take me until nightfall to mow this meadow.’ Tom Oversby wiped his brow free of sweat, after taking a long gulp of the fiery brew. ‘I’ll have to ask you or your mother to milk the cows tonight. I want to crack on and get this done.’ He looked at his daughter, who seemed to feel no love for the farm that would be hers one day.
‘I suppose I could do the milking, as long as that awkward old Buttercup doesn’t stand on my foot. I’m sure she does it on purpose every time I fasten her up in her bink. I hate the creature.’ Meg sighed, thinking of how much she had to do nearly every day and wishing her father wasn’t too stubborn to hire a farmhand.
‘You show her who’s boss, she’s nobbut a cow.’ Tom leaned on the end of his scythe and looked around him. ‘Did you see anybody, while you were over in t’ other dale?’
‘No, only Uncle Harry, and of course Mr Cockett was kind enough to give me a lift, as you know. Gunnerside was busy, but I didn’t see anybody I know; and no, I didn’t talk to any lead-miners. Mother has already lectured me about that.’ Meg knew what was expected of her in the future. She was supposed to marry a steady lad from a good farming family, ensuring that her home of Beck Side was in safe hands after her parents’ time.
‘I never even mentioned that. But she’ll be right in what she says. You want nowt by looking at one of them. We are only saving you from heartache – we want the best for you and the farm. I’m not putting all my sweat into it just for it to be frittered away after my day in the hands of some beer-swilling navvy miner.’
‘Father, I only dance with them. You’d think I’d committed a mortal sin; it’s not like I’m about to run away with one of them,’ Meg said with her head bowed, remembering the lecture she had endured when her father had heard, through one of his farming friends, that two of the lead-mining lads had been at her side all night at the Spring Ball, and at previous dances.
‘Aye, well, see on it keeps that way. Happen you shouldn’t go with me when I next go over that way. You are best staying at home.’ Tom put down his drink and drew out the whetstone that he kept in his breeches pocket. The sandstone made the blade gleam in the sunlight, as it did the job of sharpening the scythe to cut the green grass that would be harvested later in the week for the farm animals to feed on through the winter. He then wiped his grey sweat-filled hair with his checked flat cap and placed it back on his head. He was as brown as a berry, his face weathered like the countryside around him and his body as wiry as the hawthorn tree he was taking shade under.
Meg said nothing. She knew that if she protested too much, her father would instantly know that her head had been turned by her dance partners. So instead she picked up the jug of ginger beer and walked to the edge of the field with it, placing it in the shade of the hedge before returning. ‘I’ll be away, then. Mother’s baking and I’ve to collect the eggs, and then I’ll milk the cows.’
‘Aye, alright, get yourself a move-on.’ Tom put down his whetstone and started slowly dragging the sharp edge of the scythe through the long meadow grass, in an age-old rhythm that he’d known since he was a lad. His father had mowed the same field, and his grandfather before him. What a pity he didn’t have a son to carry it on, he thought, as he watched his headstrong lass walking down the mown swathes of grass.
Meg muttered to herself as she collected the eggs from the hen-house. The hut was full of flies, and the smell of the hen droppings meant she was glad when she had finished taking the eggs from the hay-filled nests and emerged into the bright, fresh sunlight. She left one egg behind, to deceive the hens into thinking it was safe for them to lay more in the same place. Now, to track down the one hen that knew otherwise.
She walked over to the cowshed and went to the huge clump of nettles that her mother had described. She thought twice about tackling them with her bare hands, so she put down the bucket of eggs and reached for the mucking-out fork to flatten the weeds. No sooner had she done so than she saw the beady-eyed old hen that had a mind of its own looking at her, with its brown feathers covering her eggs. Or was it eggs? Meg laughed and whispered, ‘So that’s what is so precious to you, is it?’ as a small, fluffy chick’s head peered from under its mother’s wing. ‘You’re alright, I’ll not harm your babies. I’ll leave you be, but we’ll have to put you in your own pen tonight, else a fox or the farmyard cat will get them.’ She lifted the flattened nettles back into place and smiled; it would be good to have some chicks about the place, even though it meant more work.
‘Did you find a nest?’ Agnes lifted her head and looked at her daughter as she put the eggs into an enamel dish, ready to wash.
‘I found where she had laid them, but they are not eggs any longer. She’s got a brood underneath her wings. Another day and they’d have made themselves known to all of us. I don’t know how we have not spotted her before, with her being right next to the cowshed door,’ Meg laughed.
‘Is your father alright? I bet he’s jiggered. Why he’ll not take on any help, I do not know, the stubborn devil.’ Agnes wiped her hands on her apron and dusted her apple pie with a coating of sugar.
‘Aye, he’s alright; browner than ever, with being out in the sun again all day. He’s asked if one of us will do the milking, as he’s going to be late in for his supper. I’ll do it, despite Buttercup being an awkward old devil.’ Meg wiped each one of the eggs with a damp cloth and put the collection in the coolness of the slate-shelved pantry. ‘I’ll have a sup of tea, and then I’ll move them chickens into that little coop that Father made last year. It’ll hold them until they get older.’
‘I don’t know what he’d do without you, our Meg. You might not have been the lad he wanted, but you are just as good as any sons that I could have had. He wants to think himself lucky.’ Agnes sighed and held back a tear. Her heart had been broken after having Meg and losing her twin brother at birth. It had been even worse when the doctor had told her she would not be able to carry any more babies, but it had been Tom who had felt it more. He’d always set his heart on a son – one to take over the farm, after his day.
‘Aye, well, that’s how it is. He can’t trade me in for a lad. And I can’t make him see that I can farm as well as one. So the stubborn old devil will have to sweat out in the fields till his supper.’ Meg lifted the iron kettle from the Yorkshire range and poured her mother and herself a cup of tea.
‘Meg, don’t forget he is your father: show him some respect.’ Agnes pulled her daughter up short.
‘I will do, when he recognizes me for what I am, and doesn’t try to keep me at home at his beck and call. But I’m always a disappointment to him, no matter what I do.’ Meg supped her tea as she looked out of the kitchen window, thinking of the things she would really like to do, instead of being her father’s farm lad. She loved her home, the farm, with its drystone-walled fields and the long whitewashed house that was cold in summer, but warm in winter. She knew it was centuries old and had always been in her family, but sometimes she yearned to escape.
‘You will never be a disappointment to us, Megan, so I’ll not have you say that.’ Agnes put her arm around her daughter and kissed her on her
cheek. ‘He’ll realize that one day, when he’s got grandbairns around his feet and a son-in-law who is as big a farmer as he is. That will be all he wants, when the time’s right.’
Meg looked at her mother. Her hair, which was once as black as her own, was starting to turn grey, and her figure, once slim and petite, was now broadening out, like most women of her age. ‘You see, you are just as bad. I’m expected to marry and be happy with a farmer, and do as I’m told. What if I don’t want to farm? What if I want to leave this dale and see more of the world? There must be more than sheep, cows and hen-muck.’ Meg scowled at her mother as she sipped her tea and thought about the places and other countries she had been taught about in school. How she wanted to see more of the world and escape a life of drudgery, like her mother’s.
‘Quiet now, Meg; you be thankful for what you’ve got. There’s many a lass in those northern mill towns would swap places with you any day. You know nothing yet.’ Agnes sat down and looked across at her dissatisfied daughter. She remembered how, when she was young, she had had similar dreams herself, but then Tom had come along and she’d settled down to running the farm with him, investing for a good life in the future for the ungrateful Meg and themselves, by putting every waking hour into their farm. The farm that fed them well and protected them from some of the harsh realities of the world outside the dale. One day her headstrong daughter would realize just how lucky she was with her lot.
Meg pushed her chair back from the table. ‘I’ll go and move those chickens, and then I’ll milk the cows. After all, what else have I got to do?’ She fought back the tears; she actually didn’t know what she wanted from life, but she knew that what she had now wasn’t enough.
She placed the fluffy yellow chicks in her apron, after battering the stinging nettles down with a brush, and encouraged the old hen to follow her brood into the netted coop, with the aid of grains of corn and the chirping of her chicks. Meg watched as the old bird clucked around her brood, making sure they were all there and accounted for. Usually she would have loved taking care of the new family, but she was battling with her desire to spread her own wings, and at this moment the old hen and her brood simply reminded her of what was expected of her.