Old Drumble (19 page)

quid
One pound in old money.

rampage
To behave violently, out of control.

raupo
A tall New Zealand swamp plant, a bulrush.

Rawleighs Man
A travelling salesman for the Rawleighs Company, selling many household and medical items to people who couldn’t get to town.

rheumatism
What we now call arthritis.

Rhode Island Red
A breed of hen.

ringbark
To chop a ring of bark from around a tree, killing it.

rubbing strake
A length of timber to protect the side of a boat from rubbing against a wharf.

run-in
Trouble, an argument.

saddle-tweed
A thick woollen material used for men’s trousers. They were warm and hard-wearing.

saleyards
Wooden-fenced yards where stock are sold.

sand-shoes
Cheap canvas shoes like sneakers, worn by many people without jobs during the 1920s and 1930s.

scow
Flat-bottomed sailing ship common on the New Zealand coast up to about the Second World War.

School Journal
A reader or magazine in New Zealand schools.

schooner
A very tall beer glass that holds a lot.

setting
A number of eggs set under a clucky hen for hatching.

shambles
A mess.

shelter-belt
A row of trees for breaking the wind.

shy off
Avoid doing something.

skedaddled
Ran off.

skewer
To pierce something; to look sharply at somebody.

skinful
Enough to make somebody drunk.

skittle
Knock over.

skulduggery
Dishonest trick.

sleepers
Heavy hardwood beams that railway lines used to be laid upon. Nowadays, they’re often concrete.

Soldiers’ Settlement
A district of farms settled by returned soldiers after the Great War.

sool
To set a dog on to somebody.

spab
Sparrow.

spalpeen
A boy.

sprag
A sharp piece of wire.

Stan Goosman
The owner of a large fleet of trucks. He became a member of parliament, Minister of Railways and Public Works, and was knighted.

steer
Castrated bull.

stock route
A road or track for driving stock. Stock routes used to take mobs of sheep and cattle around the backs of towns and settlements, where they had the right of way over vehicles.

stone-bruise
Children went bare-foot, without shoes on the metalled roads, and got bruises which sometimes became infected and had to have poultices put on them, or be lanced.

strainer post
A heavy, stayed fence post that takes the strain of the wires, especially at the corner or the end of a fence.

“Strike a light!”
Like saying, “Heck!” or “Gee!”

strong-eye
A dog, usually a border collie, that can hold sheep with its eye, and control them.

struck, to strike
To grow a plant cutting to the stage where it has roots.

stud
A little metal device that went through buttonholes and kept your separate collar attached to its shirt.

suet pudding
A scrumptious boiled pudding made from flour and white kidney fat.

sugarbag
A bag of fine sacking holding 70 pounds or about 32 kilograms of sugar.

swaggers
Men without work, carrying their swags and walking the roads.

swing the billy
Hang the billy over the fire to make a brew of tea.

taihoa
Hold on, take it easy.

tank
Most people used to catch the rain off roofs in tanks, for cooking, washing, and drinking.

tankstand
The wooden frame that a tank stood upon. It was often enclosed to make a shed.

taradiddle
Nonsense.

tatie
A potato.

tenner
Ten pounds in old money.

Tom Sawyer
The boy in
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
by Mark Twain. It’s a marvellous book! Tell your teacher I said she had to read it to you.

tomahawk
A small, short-handled axe.

totara
A big New Zealand tree. Its red wood was used for piles, the short posts that houses stood upon, because it didn’t rot in the ground.

trap
Mouth.

Tuppenny
A nickname made from tuppence or two pence (pennies) in our old money.

umpteen
Lots.

vicar
The minister of the local Anglican church.

Waikato Times
A Hamilton newspaper.

wash-house
An earlier name for a bathroom, usually one that had a bath and hand basin, as well as a copper and tubs for doing the washing.

wax matches
Wax matches were easier to light, harder to blow out, and were thought to cause fires, so we stopped making them many years ago.

Weekly News, The Auckland Weekly
A magazine very popular throughout New Zealand for its local news and its photographs. It was often used as wallpaper.

wet fly
A trout hook made to look like a sunken fly, and usually cast or fished downstream.

whopper
A big lie.

works
The freezing works where sheep and cattle are killed and their meat frozen.

windy
Scared.

yahoos
Louts, hooligans.

year dot, the
A long time ago.

Jack Lasenby lives and works in Wellington, spinning yarns and telling tales to delight children of all ages. He grew up in Waharoa, and watched drovers and their dogs, so he knows what he’s talking about.

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HarperCollins
Publishers

First published in 2008
This edition published in 2010
by HarperCollins
Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1, Auckland

Copyright © Jack Lasenby 2008

Jack Lasenby asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

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National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Lasenby, Jack.
Old Drumble / Jack Lasenby.
ISBN 978 1 8695 0674 2 (pbk.)
ISBN 978 0 7304 0128 5 (ePub)
[1. Farm life—Fiction. 2. Livestock—Fiction. 3. Waharoa (N.Z.)—Fiction.]
I. Title.
NZ823.3—dc 22

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