hay-rope

‘My lord, I was never so glad to go; for the hay must be in, and the ricks unthatched, and none of them can make spars like me, and two men to twist every hay-rope, and mother thinking it all right, and listening right and left to lies, and cheated at every pig she kills, and even the skins of the sheep to go —’

Lorna Doone Richard Doddridge 2004

Therefore I girded my own body with a dozen turns of hay-rope, twisting both the ends in under at the bottom of my breast, and winding the hay on the skew a little, that the hempen thong might not slip between, and so cut me in the drawing.

Lorna Doone Richard Doddridge 2004

In Bellmullet on Saint John's eve, when we stood in the market square watching the fire-play, flaming sods of turf soaked in paraffine, hurled to the sky and caught and skied again, and burning snakes of hay-rope, I remember a little girl in the crowd, in an ecstasy of pleasure and dread, clutched Synge by the hand and stood close in his shadow until the fiery games were done.

Synge and the Ireland of His Time 1897

We will put him to twist a hay-rope till he is outside, and then we will shut the door on him.

Poets and Dreamers Studies and translations from the Irish Lady Gregory 1892

Tell them what they have to say, that no one at all in this country ever saw a hay-rope, and put a good skin on the lie yourself.

Poets and Dreamers Studies and translations from the Irish Lady Gregory 1892

But will _he_ believe that we never saw a hay-rope?

Poets and Dreamers Studies and translations from the Irish Lady Gregory 1892

Wait, I have a good idea now; say there is a coach upset at the bottom of the hill, and that they are asking for a hay-rope to mend it with.

Poets and Dreamers Studies and translations from the Irish Lady Gregory 1892

We will say then that no one ever saw a hay-rope made, that there is no one at all in the house to make the beginning of it.

Poets and Dreamers Studies and translations from the Irish Lady Gregory 1892

But what excuse can we make for saying we want a hay-rope?

Poets and Dreamers Studies and translations from the Irish Lady Gregory 1892

Her mother said you had to take your two hands to a one of them, like as if you were twisting a big _suggawn_ (hay-rope); and they looked almost too heavy for her small head, no matter how closely they were wound about it.

Strangers at Lisconnel Jane Barlow 1887