Some while ago there was a ferryman, who earned his living rowing people to and fro across the mouth of a river, where it joined the sea. And the ferryman had a daughter who was little and light, and sang as she looked for mussels along the shore, or pinned up the linen to dry, so her father and mother called her Birdy.
Every morning of the year, except for Sundays, the bal-men and bal-maidens, who worked in the tin mine, came down to the bank of the river, and hailed Birdy’s father, and he rowed the boat across to fetch them. Then they climbed the hill opposite and went to work in the mine, fetching up and finishing tin to make into shining ingots.
There was Steady Jack who held the borer, and Hefty Jack who hit the borer with a hammer till it made a deep hole in the rock, and Careful Jack who packed the gunpowder in the hole, and Fire Jack who lit the fuse, and Standback Jack who cried the warning, and when each had done his part there was a flash of light, and a big bang, and the black tin came tumbling down from the walls of the tunnel, and everyone shovelled and carted it away and pulled it up with ropes and pulleys till it came to grass.
And every man jack of the miners had a candle stuck in a clay ball on his hatcap, and a pair of spare candles hanging from his buttonhole by the uncut wicks.
They all needed something to eat at croust time, and so every morning Birdy’s mother baked nice big pasties, and Birdy helped her fold them and crimp them into shape. Every morning the tinners bought them on the way by.
And then one morning when the tinners came by there was a new boy with them — a scrap of a boy, not much bigger than Birdy. Careful Jack said, “This is Prentice Jack, come to be the fetch and carry man, and help us at our tasks, and can he have a pasty too this morning?”
Prentice Jack said, “My name is Thomas, really. And I can’t have a pasty that I haven’t a penny to pay for.”
“You’ll only need a little one,” said Birdy. “Have mine, and I’ll bake me another, and paying will keep till your wage-day.”
Thomas thanked her, and off he went, last in line up the grassy hill to the mine.
