Pottery towns they are found a practical hindrance to labour in the summer months. Staffordshire people everywhere love festivities. The cheery hospitable nature which distinguishes them was noted in Elizabeth's time by Drayton in his Characteristics of Counties. Punning on the name, he says:
"And Staffordshire bids 'Stay, and I will beet the fire,
And nothing will I ask but goodwill to my hire.'"
The same temper of "goodwill" and friendliness is met with throughout the county; and so is the same racy humour and readiness of speech. A stranger would suppose the people were continually quoting proverbs, but as often as not their epigrammatic sayings are the coinage of their own brain. "It's plain, Martha, as you haven't been used to have plenty, for you don't know how to use plenty," said a farmer's wife (true fellow-countrywoman of Mrs. Poyser), rebuking her handmaiden for "cutting the loaf to waste." "Giving's afore buying any day," said a small page boy, expressing satisfaction at an unexpected present. "Nay," said an old farmer, whose sons one after another failed in business, and appealed to him to set them up again, "if I was to be putting them on dry stockings every time they come in with wet feet, they'd never be off the hearthstone." "I mun work, or else I mun keep tooth-holiday," said a worn-out but plucky old labourer.
When people naturally talk in this way, it is difficult for the folklorist to distinguish standard proverbs from improvised ones; here, however are two or three specimens. "Merry nights make sorry days." "He'll neither be satisfied full nor fasting." "To get a wooden suit"—to be dead and buried. "To give a pea for a bean"—to give a present with an eye to future profits.
In physical characteristics the Staffordshire people are generally short and sturdy, with large heads, square faces, and strong jaws, and full sonorous voices; utterly
