OX BELLS & FIREFLIES: A MEMOIR. by Buckler, Ernest - 1968

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1968. 302 pp, 8vo (8 1/2" H). B&w illustrations. "Oxen were still yoked to sledges and the scythe and the ax and the crosscut saw were common everyday tools when Ernest Buckler grew up on a Nova Scotia farm at the edge of the wilderness. (This book) recalls those days. With sudden stabbing immediacy it brings the reader a bird sound, an odor, acrid or delicious, a remembered vagary of wind or sun, the timbre of a voice, or the true look of the men and women who peopled the Nova Scotia of Mr. Buckler's boyhood. It brings back as well the whole texture of a life that now exists only in our memories of the snowbound world of Whittier and the farm life of our grandfathers' times - a life so deeply rooted in the eleentals of earth and rock, wind and weather, and so closely paced to the rhythm of the seasons, of birth, growth and death, that each change on the face of nature (a blood-red sunset, a frost at dawn, the first pales leaves on a silver birch) is resonant with meaning." Tiny foxing marks on to and fore-edge of text block, tiny chip in rear pastedown. Dust jacket has light edge wear and wrinkling with small tears (archivally taped) - mainly at the top/bottom of spine and flap-folds, a few tiny foxing marks at top of rear flap.. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good-/Very Good-. Illus. by Walter Richards..