"Kendal," "Flintergill Billy,"
"Three bease an' a Cow" &c. He was a warpdresser by trade, and for a time
worked along with me at Messrs Butterfield Bros.' Prospect Mill. He often
used to tell us that his father had "two bease an' a cow" on his farm at
"Flintergill." Yes; "Billy" was as queer a chap as one could well
imagine--such a specimen as one often reads about in comic almanacs, but
seldom sees. At one period of his stay in Keighley, "Billy" lived at
Paradise--a row of cottages just below the Prospect Mill. His wife was a
weaver in the mill, and one baking day, I remember, she gave her husband
strict orders "ta hev t' fire under t' oven when she com' fra her wark."
"Kendal" was working alongside me at warp-dressing, and just before
stopping time the thought chanced to strike him that he had to have the
fire going. Away home he darted, and on his return he stated, in reply to
my question, that he thought all was right. Soon afterwards I happened to
ask if he had put the fire under the pan or the oven, and he had to
acknowledge that he did not know where he had put it. He set off home
again to see how things stood, and lo and behold! he had put the fire
under the pan. Now, "Billy" was not blessed with a superabundance of
sense, and (perhaps flurried by the thought that if the oven was not
ready in time he would "get his ear-hoil weel combed" by his wife) he
scaled the fire out of the range, and re-kindled it under the oven with
the clothes-pegs. The idea of pushing the fire across under the oven did
not seem to occur to poor "Billy's" brain. The fact remains that he had
just got the clothes-pegs nicely alight when in popped his wife . . . For
various reasons I draw the curtain over the closing scenes in the little
farce.--"Billy" never would allow it to be said that his wife ever bossed
him. Indeed it used to be a standing boast with "Kendal" in public-house
company that he "could mak' their Martha dew just as he wanted her; he
hed nobbut ta stamp his fooit, an' shoo did it in a minit." He was
boasting, as usual, one day, when in came "Martha," and, without any
words of explanation, seized her "lord and master" by the hair of the
head, and dragged him out of the door. The company fully appreciated the
situation, and with one voice shouted, "Stamp, Flintergill, stamp!" But
there was no stamping. "Martha" pre-eminently proved her authority as
"boss," whether poor, hen-pecked "Flintergill" came in as "foreman" or
"deputy,