Gammer Tansy Holt

Role Hayward of the barrow path at Holt End Status alive Age 83

Gammer Tansy is eighty-three, five feet tall in her boots, and walks the hill path to the Founder’s barrow every morning with a crook and a basket, whether or not there is anything to do when she gets there. The hayward before her was her mother, and the one before that her grandmother.

Who she is

The Holts have kept the barrow path since the Founder was buried, which in Holt End means trimming the gorse, keeping sheep off the mound, and singing to the thing in the door at midsummer. Tansy learned the barrow-verse at six. She has never been inside the barrow and has no intention of going.

What she wants

The Holts have grazed the Sallow Hills under the lease for eleven generations, and if the lease lapses so does every sheep-run in Holt End. Tansy wants the rent paid, and she wants the hill folk to have a voice in it: if the vale is to make a song, she has told the Wardens, it had better have a verse from the hills. She was pleased with them, because they asked her permission before they asked her the way.

Dealings with the Wardens

On the evening of day 5 she fed the Wardens mutton and barley at her fire, heard why they had come, and sang them the barrow-verse three times, until Odda Quarrel had it. On the morning of day 6 she walked them to the barrow door and waited outside with Kit Farrow. When the others came out carrying the Founder’s sword, she looked at it for a long time and said only that it wanted oiling.