half a gallon, standing on the dresser full of butter-milk and thinned with water. they called it a bumper, and it was always kept nearly full for anyone that was thirsty, if you asked for a drink.
I recollect when there were no houses nor gardens on the Green, and when I was a boy we had the whole place to run on. We were often, in the winter time when it was moon- light in the evenings, playing hares and hounds on Cregneish Green, but the owner sold it to those who wished to build, and they enclosed the most of it with walls, so there is not a place for the children to play but on the Mull.
In those days they seldom took a cart to the mill, but put the sack across the horse's back. I have been many times at the Colby Mill myself with a sack of corn, and getting the meal again the same way. They had a thing like the two legs of a pair of pants, made of straw, which they fastened on the horse's back so that the sack would not slip off. We used to carry the manure on our backs* in boxes made of straw. We called them "clein," but some of them a "creel."
"Chimer-lye" is the English name in the Island for "mooin."† The people in my young
* In the Shetlands (see Catton, page 106), they carry the manure in straw baskets, called "kishey," on their backs or ponies, the same as they used to do in the Highlands formerly, and in Scotland and West England.
† Chimer-lye or Chamber-lye, is the Lonsdale dialect—chammer-lye, is the fetid or stale urine.— C.R.
