THE BAT CLEFTER

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 12016, 19 December 1924, Page 14

THE BAT CLEFTER

A WDItKER AMONG THE WILLOWS. (By 0.H.E.8., in the lamdon • “Daily Chronicle.”) a, Down in the low meadows .1 saw the willow men to-day. They " are justcomjnencing their season’s work-; they had come to fell tv;*c-nty trees , their employer purchased in the summer,., “Aye,” said one among them to me, “bat olefters we be: an’ us reo--. kon we’m the neatest and carefullest fellers in the hull timber trade. Ours, ye see, he special work, for wp do’t by rifle, as ’twere. Oiir - trees mustbe cut into lengths—each: an’ all. on ’em two feet four long—and often, hy goin’ right down into. the earth, we gib an ex try length which might mean a matter o’ a - dozen to twenty-bats.” “And that,” I replied, “means much in these days.*” : >The bat defter nodded. * ’ , “Willow,*’ he agreed, “do be a master price. An’ ye had need know what ye’re doin’ when, yet set to work on’t; Look at: my job now. Ido the cleftin’ —take, tbs lengths, and split ’em up into batlings, or;clefts, as we often call ’em... I ha’ to watch the bark, an’ keep ■a - look-out / for knots and galls and bad places, and mind 4 keep ’em on the hack of the cleft. The face, ye see, mustn’t ha’ no blemishBat makers say, ‘gie me, a good face, and we’ll manage the backs oursel’s' “But it ain’t what it need to be, when your dad was called the ‘Willow King.’ A soore o’ year_ ago, t-h-at were; there’s so many: 'in it now, an’ the price o’ trees four times what it was. ■ .

“An’ everyone’s dead nuts on white .willow; ’tis a great mistake, 1 A ‘butterfly stain’ is the bat to wear. They nivir go hack to he: pegged and boundDon’t look quite ’so pretty, p’r’apv, hut if you’re thinkin’ o’ buying a hat, do ye-take my: advice an’ git a stainy.”