FARM GIRL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 554, 3 February 1950, Page 18

FARM GIRL

THE FARM ON THE HILL, by Alison Uttley;. Faber and Faber, English price, 12/6, S the author of 15 or so ‘books for children-about Sam Pig, Tim Rabbit, Brock the Badger and others-Mrs. Uttley is a good deal better known than as a naturalist or at least a loving observer of country ways. But there it is, she is also the author of ten or a dozen grown-up books, packed full of memories of the life of country-folk in England backwards for the last half century or so. The latest of these is a companion to The Country Child; in it the same child, Susan Garland, lives her simple but growing life. She goes to her first party, has success at school, and learns her first Latin-through the magic medium of flower names in the most magic of all flower books, Johns’ Flowers of the Field, which she finds (price six shil-lings)-in the little shop in Broomy Bale and stands quietly reading till her father comes back from the blacksmith’s, ""Cap-sella-bursa-pastorisis is Latin for Shepherd’s purse" she tells him, as she climbs into the pony cart. It is a quiet story of quiet country life, the slow and regular daily round with the steadiness of the rise of the frothing milk in the bucket, one season’s unhurried work following another without fret or stress or noisy frazzle. A book to call wp pleasant memories of cream skimmied from round -lakes of milk, of irons rubbed on swax cloth on steamy ironing-day, and of spicy smells of home-cured bacon. all in the

far-off, doubly pre-war days.

J.