Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Old Silence
Ronald Blythe, Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (New York: Pantheon, 1969), p. 84 (George Kirkland speaking):
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In those days, son followed father. That was the usual thing. So all of us boys followed father. Nearly all the village boys did this. We just had to watch and carry on. One or two broke away but it didn't seem a natural thing to do. People didn't need to ask a lad what he wanted to do when he grew up if they knew what his father did. You hear that farming was unpopular then, but it wasn't deep down. We began watching at an early age; that was our training. I watched the shepherd and did what he did. He didn't have to speak very often, which was just as well as he was a man who liked to keep words to himself. They used to call him Old Silence.
