A Particular Tail

Today, the 1st of August, it is sunny and warm. On just such a day, some sixty years ago, a little child I lay deep in the golden corn of a Burwell field, and was told this story. I don't know whether it really took place in Burwell, or anywhere else, or perhaps only in a book -- but that drowsy afternoon it came alive for me, and somewhere has jogged along in my memory all these years. (Caroline, 2007)

 
The Story of the Burwell Donkey

Once upon a time, many years ago in Burwell there lived a farmer and his donkey. Every morning, as the farmer came sleepily out of his house, still pulling on his boots, and mostly before the sun had even spread its first ray across the horizon, the donkey trotted out of his stable and was backing himself into the shafts of his little cart before the farmer had crossed the yard.

Harnessed up, the donkey carefully pulled his cart round the gatepost, then, turning right along the Causeway, trotted off towards the station. There the farmer collected newspapers and parcels, and together they went the round of the village delivering them. Back in the yard once more, the farmer went to his breakfast, and the donkey to his hay.

Twice more each day they went out together, and in the late evening both retired to sleep -- though what each dreamed of, no-one has ever told.

The donkey was well-known and well-liked -- quiet and amiable he stopped and started, stood and waited, and changed in no way whether in summer or winter, in sun or in rain, in flood or in snow. Except that when it was cold he trotted a little more quickly, especially on the way home; and when it was sunny he wore an old straw hat, with some rosemary and thyme to keep the flies away.

Just once a year, a change came over the donkey. No-one could tell -- not even the farmer who knew him well -- when it would be, but on the morning of the appointed day, the donkey, as usual, came out of his stable, backed between the shafts of the cart, was harnessed up, moved carefully out through the gate, turned right towards the station, trotted along the Causeway -- but only a little way, then suddenly he stopped. No amount of asking or pushing or shouting or pulling, could make him move; and the farmer liked him too well to think of taking a stick to him! There was nothing else for it: it was the day chosen by the donkey for his annual holiday; so, the farmer took off the harness and, leaving the donkey to please himself, walked back to the yard, hung the harness on the stable wall and took down a long rope. This he attached to the little cart which he pulled himself, all three times in the day, round the village and back home again. As darkness spread over the farmhouse and yard, the donkey's busy hooves could be heard tip-tapping along the Causeway, as he came home from his holiday, to sample the fresh hay, and carrots, in his manger, to take a long drink of cold water, and to sleep peacefully the night through.

Next morning, and every morning for about a year, the donkey and the farmer would go their rounds as usual, and nothing in the donkey's behaviour ever showed what he thought, or why he chose the day he would not work.

And where did he go on his holiday? He ambled around the village and the fields, he looked into windows, into barns and into stables, he put his nose into the flower-beds, he peered into the Lode, he watched the little boys with their fishing canes and their jam-jars, he hee-hawed at the chickens to make them fly up, he nibbled at the grass and the plants, he stood awhile under the trees as though deep in thought, he rolled in the meadow and slept stretched full length in the sun -- in the field at the bottom of Parsonage Lane, near the smithy. He let the children play with him and even clamber on his back -- and once, he was seen carrying a cat and its kitten, tight up by his stubby mane. But in all he did, he never took, or broke, or stepped on, anything he shouldn't.

Both donkey and farmer lived companionably to a good age, but one morning the donkey could no longer trot out of his stable -- going in, the farmer saw him lying in the straw, deep in his last sleep. It was said that the farmer buried him, and put a stone to mark the place -- but he never told where. Not long afterwards the farmer too went into that deepest of sleeps, and he and his marker-stone are in the churchyard.
 

Children fishing in the Lode, c.1936

Intellectual Property of CMTilbury, August 2007

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