Jinny

Song

She tied up her few things

And laced up her shoe strings

And put on her bonnet worn through at the crown

Her apron tied tighter

Than snow her caps whiter

She lapt up her earnings and left our old town

The Dog barked again

All the length o’ his chain

And licked her hand kindly and huffed her good bye

Old hens prated loudly

The Cock strutted proudly

And the horse at the gate turned to let her go bye

The Thrasher man stopping

The old barn floor wopping

Wished oer the door cloth her luck and no harm

Bees hummed round the thistle

While the red Robins whistle

And she just one look on the old mossy farm

‘Twas Michaelmas season

They’d got corn and pears in

And all the Fields cleared save some ru[c]kings and tythes

Cute piegon flocks muster

Round beans shelling cluster

And done are the whettings o reap hooks and scythes

Next years flowers a springing

Will miss Jinneys singing

She opened her Bible and turned a leaf down

In her bosoms forewarnings

She lapt up her earnings

And ere the suns set ‘ll be in her own town

Edmund Blunden (ed),

"Madrigals and Chronicles:
Being newly found Poems written by John Clare"

(Beaumont Press, 1924)

Recorded by Vikki Clayton as "Singing Jinny" on her 1993 CD of Clare songs.

If you were a farm labourer in the early 19th century, you'd be thinking about moving to another employer at Michaelmas.  The traditional Quarter Day, known in the Anglican calendar as the feast of St. Michael, or Michaelmas was the time when farmers hired shepherds, plowmen, labourers and many other agricultural workers.  In this Clare poem we encounter Jinny, who is moving back to her home town... I have always wondered about the 'back story'?  Why she was moving?