Commentary

1. I was one of the choir-boys at that time…

A choir-boy is a boy employed in church-singing. Note the difference between choir and chorus. Choir is a group of singers trained to sing together, especially in a church, but you may say ‘a students’ choir’. Chorus is a more general word. It may refer to any group of singers and what is sung by them, or to part of a song sung together. People may speak in chorus (=all together), we may hear a chorus of voices.

2. …and we and the players were to appear at the manor-house…

The manor-house is the principal residence of landed estate (=manor), part of which is occupied by tenants, who farm it and pay a rent to the lord of the manor. Andrew was one of the tenants.

3. ‘Lord, how I should like to join in that meal of beef…’

Note the use of prepositions after the verb to join: generally no preposition is used after it; in is used after this verb before words denoting process; here to join means to take part in some process. Thus we join some company, but we join in a discussion (argument, quarrel, competition).

4. …that you happy ones be going to just now!

The forms be for are, ye for you, ’twas for it was and some others are used by Hardy to convey the dialectal manner of speech peculiar to Dorsetshire. Most of these forms are obsolete, some of them are also to be found in other local dialects and in poetry.

5. …can ye lend me a fiddle…?

Fiddle is a synonym for violin but the former is older; it is used when dealing with folk music and may stand for any fiddle-shaped instrument, whereas a violin is always a small fiddle. When speaking of a symphony orchestra we use the word violin, we also say a violin recital, a violin concerto. But the word fiddle is used in the idiom to play second fiddle (to somebody).

6. …Andrew knew no more of music than the Giant O’Cernel…

The Giant O’Cernel is a huge figure of a giant carved in the chalky cliffs above Abbot’s Cernel, near Dorchester. The figure is known to all people living nearby. The mentioning of the giant O’Cernel is one of Hardy’s means to create a local colouring.

7. Andrew … went in boldly, his fiddle under his arm.

The sentence contains the Nominative Absolute Construction used as adverbial modifier of attendant circumstances. This use is typical of descriptive prose.

8. ‘I’ve had a misfortune, mem,’ he says…

In this and the following sentences a shift of tenses is observed. The writer resorts to the Present Indefinite Tense instead of the Past Indefinite to make the narration more vivid, helping the listeners to see the scene, as if everything were going in their presence. This use of the Present Indefinite Tense is traditionally called the historic present.

9. Andrew’s face looked as if it were made of rotten apple…

In this sentence the writer employs a simile ['sımılı], figure of speech in which two objects are compared, one of them being likened to the other. A simile is a kind of comparison, but the latter is more general and is not necessarily used for artistic purposes, e.g. Her spelling is better than mine. A simile is introduced with the help of special grammatical means such as conjunctions than, as if, like, or may be suggested by such verbs as remind, resemble, seem.