Friday Poem: The Foddering Boy

This run of mild, wet weather can turn on a sixpence, rendering known ground inhospitable and alien. Here, John Clare sums up a bitter winter day two hundred years ago, but for those who work the land, no doubt this scene is all-too familiar.

The Foddering Boy

by John Clare

The foddering boy along the crumping snows

With straw-band-belted legs and folded arm

Hastens and on the blast that keenly blows

Oft turns for breath and beats his fingers warm

And shakes the lodging snows from his clothes.

Buttoning his doublet closer from the storm

And slouching his brown beaver o’er his nose.

Then faces it again - and seeks the stack

Within its circling fence - where hungry lows

Expecting cattle making many a track

About the snows - impatient for the sound

When in huge fork-fulls trailing at his back

He litters the sweet hay about the ground

And brawls to call the staring cattle round.

John Clare - Selected Poems

Edt. RKR Thornton. Pub. Orion

Foddering - the act of feeding animals with fodder

Beaver - a heavy wooden cloth with a napped surface suitable for outdoor clothing. N.B. For me, the beaver conjured an image of a medieval metal bevor of a suit of armour, that protected the chin, neck and throat.

Doublet - interesting that this term was still in use in the early C19th.