I WAS A LABOURER I was a labourer in the smoky valley, within the high walls, the tall dark walls of the mills, where the hills go up to the wild moor. I am a dog of the dales, broad is my speech, and my ways are not the smooth ways of the south, but hard, and used to keener weather. All week I worked among the looms while the cloth slacked out and the shuttles clacked swiftly, as the woof was shot through the warp and through my brain dim with the webs of years. All week I was the servant of the loom, chained to the steel for the promise of meagre coin, six days a week, but Sunday comes soon, and I am my master for the waking day that found me with my whippet on the moor. O my faithful lass! Soft was her fell; her eyes were like deep pools stained with peat, shafted with light; and intelligent. She was long in the body, but strong of limb and rib, and her muscles moved under the skin like currents in a bay of the river. She was swift as the wind or as the summer swallow, and I would pit her with the local dogs, backing her swiftness with my sweaty coin and many a shilling have I won with her to spend on some wet evening in a pub or buy the tickets at the picture palace when I took out the girl I meant to marry -- but that is all forgotten with the flesh. I was a labourer in the smoky valley: I am a brittle bone projecting from the sand. -- Sean Jennett (born 1910)