Caleb’s Reviews > Silas Marner > Status Update

‘That’s “Over the hills and far away,” that is. My father used to say to me, whenever we heard that tune, “Ah, lad, I come from over the hills and far away.” There’s a many tunes I don’t make head or tail of; but that speaks to me like the blackbird’s whistle. I suppose it’s the name: there’s a deal in the name of a tune.’

His steps never wandered to the hedge-banks and the lane-side in search of the once familiar herbs: these too belonged to the past, from which his life had shrunk away, like a rivulet that has sunk far down from the grassy fringe of its old breadth into a little shivering thread, that cuts a groove for itself in the barren sand.