Hey? You don't tell
me, after singing the song, that you never heard tell of Sally
Hancock? Well, if--! Here, take and fill my mug, somebody!
'Tis an instructive tale, too. . . . This Sally was a Saltash
fishwoman, and you must have heard of _them_, at all events.
There was Bess Rablin, too, and Mary Kitty Climo, and Thomasine
Oliver, and Long Eliza that married Treleaven the hoveller, and
Pengelly's wife Ann; these made up the crew Sally stroked in the
great race. And besides these there was Nan Scantlebury--she took
Bess Rablin's oar the second year, Bess being a bit too fond of
lifting her elbow, which affected her health--and Phemy Sullivan, an
Irishwoman, and Long Eliza's half-sister Charlotte Prowse, and
Rebecca Tucker, and Susan Trebilcock, that everybody called "Apern,"
and a dozen more maybe: powerful women every one, and proud of it.
The town called them Sally Hancock's Gang, she being their leader,
though they worked separate, shrimping, cockling, digging for lug and
long-lining, bawling fish through Plymouth streets, even a hovelling
job at times--nothing came amiss to them, and no weather. For a trip
to Plymouth they'd put on sea-boots belike, or grey stockings and
clogs: but at home they went bare-legged, and if they wore anything
'pon their heads 'twould be a handkerchief, red or yellow, with a
man's hat clapped a-top; coats too, and guernseys like men's, and
petticoats a short few inches longer; for I'm telling of that
back-along time when we fought Boney and while seafaring men still
wore petticoats--in these parts at any rate.
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