The son of a farmer is proposing to a young woman. As he explains the chores he used to perform, each page shows him as a boy tending the creatures on the farm –the horses, the sheep, the chickens, the pigs, the dogs, even the children, and finally the turkey– and ends with his repeated proposal: “Says I, My pretty lass, will you come to the banks of the Aire oh?” Caldecott’s rhythmical lines vividly evoke the outdoor life of the English countryside in the day-to-day scenes of a farm.