As the morning developed, the promise of a fine day was fulfilled; and after we passed the brick-kiln country near Brentford, we proceeded in a zig-zag direction towards Uxbridge and Rickmansworth. The further we went … a feeling of admiration for the picturesque beauty of the country and the artificial river, lying and running unheeded so near to the metropolis.
Our horses are … docile, intelligent and well behaved … and for many miles they are left to go on unled, chewing their provender in their milking-can nosebags … At bridges where the towing path does not pass under the arch the mere unhooking of the rope is sufficient, and the horse, freed from the weight of the barge, walks quickly up the incline over the bridge and down to the path, even when, as is frequently the case, it changes to the other side … There he patiently waits until his burden floats through …
Small as the Stourport cabin is … cabins just as small are made to accommodate large families … There is the boatman, and his wife, a stout, sunburnt woman; and children, varying in number from two to ten, and in ages from three weeks to ten years …
The boatmen were preparing for the passage of the Blisworth tunnel (nearly two miles in length) an underground journey of an hour’s duration. At the mouth of the tunnel were a large number of leggers, waiting to be employed … To beguile the tedium of the slow, dark journey – to amuse the leggers whose work s fearfully hard … and above all to avail themselves of the atmospheric effects of the tunnel; the boatmen at the tillers nearly all sing …
… the ruling favourite is the plaintive ballad … it generally contains a story, and …fits easily into a slow, drawling, breath-taking tune …
There may have been a dozen of these ballads chanted in the Blisworth tunnel at the same time … They came upon our ears, mixed with the splashing of water, in drowsy cadence, and at long intervals, like … moaning. The effect upon the mind was, in this dark passage, to create a … belief in the existence of misery and the utter nothingness of the upper world.
John Hollingshead, in Household Words, September 1858, in Strike the Bell, edited by Roy Palmer.