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Wild Life in a Southern County

by Richard Jefferies · English · Gutenberg #36949 · 569,874 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Wild Life in a Southern County

Author: Richard Jefferies


        
Release date: August 2, 2011 [eBook #36949]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36949

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Wild Life in a Southern County
By Richard Jefferies
Published by Smith, Elder, & Co, London.
This edition dated 1879.
Wild Life in a Southern County, by Richard Jefferies.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________
WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY, BY RICHARD JEFFERIES.


PREFACE.

There is a frontier line to civilisation in this country yet, and not
far outside its great centres we come quickly even now on the borderland
of nature.  Modern progress, except where it has exterminated them, has
scarcely touched the habits of bird or animal; so almost up to the very
houses of the metropolis the nightingale yearly returns to her former
haunts.  If we go a few hours' journey only, and then step just beyond
the highway--where the steam ploughing engine has left the mark of its
wide wheels on the dust--and glance into the hedgerow, the copse, or
stream, there are nature's children as unrestrained in their wild, free
life as they were in the veritable backwoods of primitive England.  So,
too, in some degree with the tillers of the soil: old manners and
customs linger, and there seems an echo of the past in the breadth of
their pronunciation.

But a difficulty confronts the explorer who would carry away a note of
what he has seen, because nature is not cut and dried to hand, nor
easily classified, each subject shading gradually into another.  In
studying the ways, for instance, of so common a bird as the starling it
cannot be separated from the farmhouse in the thatch of which it often
breeds, the rooks with whom it associates, or the friendly sheep upon
whose backs it sometimes rides.  Since the subjects are so closely
connected, it is best, perhaps, to take the places they prefer for the
convenience of division, and group them as far as possible in the
districts they usually frequent.

The following chapters have, therefore, been so arranged as to
correspond in some degree with the contour of the country.  Commencing
at the highest spot, an ancient entrenchment on the Downs has been
chosen as the starting-place from whence to explore the uplands.
Beneath the hill a spring breaks forth, and, tracing its course
downwards, there next come the village and the hamlet.  Still farther
the streamlet becomes a broad brook, flowing through meadows in the
midst of which stands a solitary farmhouse.  The house itself, the
garden and orchard, are visited by various birds and animals.  In the
fields immediately around--in the great hedges and the copse--are
numerous others, and an expedition is made to the forest.  Returning to
the farm again as a centre, the rookery remains to be examined, and the
ways and habits of the inhabitants of the hedges.  Finally come the fish
and wild-fowl of the brook and lake;--finishing in the Vale.

R.J.


CHAPTER ONE.

THE DOWNS--THE ENTRENCHMENT--WAYS OF LARKS--HARES--A COMBAT--HAPPINESS
OF ANIMALS--ANTS--A LONG JOURNEY.

The most commanding down is crowned with the grassy mound and trenches
of an ancient earthwork, from whence there is a noble view of hill and
plain.  The inner slope of the green fosse is inclined at an angle
pleasant to recline on, with the head just below the edge, in the summer
sunshine.  A faint sound as of a sea heard in a dream--a sibilant `sish,
sish,'--passes along outside, dying away and coming again as a fresh
wave of the wind rushes through the bennets and the dry grass.  There is
the happy hum of bees--who love the hills--as they speed by laden with
their golden harvest, a drowsy warmth, and the delicious odour of wild
thyme.  Behind the fosse sinks, and the rampart rises high and steep--
two butterflies are wheeling in uncertain flight over the summit.  It is
only necessary to raise the head a little way, and the cool breeze
refreshes the cheek--cool at this height while the plains beneath glow
under the heat.

Presently a small swift shadow passes across--it is that of a hawk
flying low over the hill.  He skirts it for some distance, and then
shoots out into the air, comes back half-way, and hangs over the fallow
below, where there is a small rick.  His wings vibrate, striking the air
downwards, and only slightly backwards, the tail depressed counteracting
the inclination to glide forwards for awhile.  In a few moments he
slips, as it were, from his balance, but brings, himself up again in a
few yards, turning a curve so as to still hover above the rick.  If he
espies a tempting morsel he drops like a stone, and alights on a spot
almost exactly below him--a power which few birds seem to possess.  Most
of them approach the ground gradually, the plane of their flight sloping
slowly to the earth, and the angle decreasing every moment till it
becomes parallel, when they have only to drop their legs, shut their
wings, and, as it were, stand upright in the air to find themselves safe
on the sward.  By that time their original impetus has diminished, and
they feel no shock from the cessation of motion.  The hawk, on the
contrary, seems to descend nearly in a perpendicular line.

The lark does the same, and often from a still greater height descending
so swiftly that by comparison with other birds it looks as if she must
be dashed to pieces; but when within a few yards of the ground, the
wings are outstretched, and she glides along some distance before
alighting.  This latter motion makes it difficult to tell where a lark
actually does alight.  So, too, with snipe: they appear to drop in a
corner of the brook, and you feel positive that a certain bunch of
rushes is the precise place; but before you get there the snipe is up
again under your feet, ten or fifteen yards closer than you supposed,
having shot along hidden by the banks, just above the water, out of
sight.

Sometimes, after soaring to an unusual elevation, the lark comes down,
as it were, in one or two stages: after dropping say fifty feet, the
wings are employed, and she shoots forward horizontally some way, which
checks the velocity.  Repeating this twice or more, she reaches the
ground safely.  In rising up to sing she often traces a sweeping spiral
in the air at first, going round once or twice; after which, seeming to
settle on the line she means to ascend, she goes up almost
perpendicularly in a series of leaps, as it were--pausing a moment to
gather impetus, and then shooting upwards till a mere speck in the sky.
When ten or twelve larks are singing at once, all within a narrow
radius--a thing that may be often witnessed from these downs in the
spring--the charm of their vivacious notes is greater than when one
solitary bird alone discourses sweet music which is lost in the blue
dome overhead.

At that time they seem to feed only a few minutes consecutively, and
then, as if seized with an uncontrollable impulse, rush up into the air
to deliver a brief song, descend, and repeat the process for hours.
They have a way, too, of rising but six or eight yards above the earth,
spreading the wings out and keeping them nearly still, floating slowly
forward, all the while uttering one sweet note softly.  The sward by the
roadside appears to have a special attraction for them; they constantly
come over from the arable fields, alight there, and presently return.
In the early spring, when love-making is in full progress, the
cornfields where the young green blades are just showing, become the
scene of the most amusing rivalry.  Far as the eye can see across the
ground it seems alive with larks--chasing each other to and fro, round
and round, with excited calls, flying close to the surface, continually
alighting, and springing up again.  A gleam of sunshine and a warm south
wind brings forth these merry antics.  So like in general hue is the
lark to the lumps of brown earth that even at a few paces it is
difficult to distinguish her.  Some seem always to remain in the
meadows; but the majority frequent the arable land, and especially the
cornfields on the slopes of the downs, where they may be found in such
numbers as rival or perhaps exceed those of any other bird.

At first sight starlings seem more numerous; but this arises from their
habit of gathering together in such vast flocks, blackening the earth
where they alight.  But you may walk a whole day across the downs and
still find larks everywhere; so that though scattered abroad they
probably equal or exceed the starlings, who show so much more.  They are
by no means timid, being but little disturbed here: you can get near
enough to watch every motion, and if they rise it is only to sing.  They
never seem to know precisely where they are going to alight--as if,
indeed, they were nervously particular and must find a clod that pleases
them, picking and choosing with the greatest nicety.

Many other birds exhibit a similar trait: instead of perching on the
first branch, they hesitate, and daintily decline the bough not quite to
their fancy.  Blackbirds will cruise along the whole length of a hedge
before finding a bush to their liking; they look in several times ere
finally deciding.  Wood-pigeons will make straight for a tree, and
slacken speed and show every sign of choosing it, and suddenly, without
the slightest cause apparently, go half a mile farther.  The partridge
which you could vow had dropped just over the hedge has done no such
thing; just before touching the ground she has turned at right angles
and gone fifty yards down it.

The impression left after watching the motions of birds is that of
extreme mobility--a life of perpetual impulse checked only by fear.
With one or two exceptions, they do not appear to have the least idea of
saving labour by clearing one spot of ground of food before flying
farther: they just hastily snatch a morsel and off again; or, in a tree,
peer anxiously into every crack and crevice on one bough, and away to
another tree a hundred yards distant, leaving fifty boughs behind
without examination.  Starlings literally race over the earth where they
are feeding--jealous of each other lest one should be first, and so they
leave a tract all around not so much as looked at.  Then, having run a
little way, they rise and fly to another part of the field.  Each
starling seems full of envy and emulation--eager to outstrip his fellow
in the race for titbits; and so they all miss much of what they might
otherwise find.  Their life is so gregarious that it resembles that of
men in cities: watching one another with feverish anxiety--pushing and
bustling.  Larks are much calmer, and always appear placid even in their
restlessness, and do not jostle their neighbours.

See--the hawk, after going nearly out of sight, has swept round, and
passes again at no great distance; this is a common habit of his kind,
to beat round in wide circles.  As the breeze strikes him aslant his
course he seems to fly for a short time partly on one side, like a
skater sliding on the outer edge.

There is a rough grass growing within the enclosure of the earthwork and
here and there upon the hills, which the sheep will not eat, so that it
remains in matted masses.  In this the hares make their forms; and they
must, somehow, have a trick of creeping into their places, since many of
the grass-blades often arch over, and if they sprang into the form
heedlessly this could not be the case, as their size and weight would
crush it down.  When startled by a passer-by the hare--unless there is a
dog--goes off in a leisurely fashion, doubtless feeling quite safe in
the length of his legs, and after getting a hundred yards or so sits
upon his haunches and watches the intruder.  Their `runs' or paths are
rather broader than a rabbit's, and straighter--the rabbit does not
ramble so far from home; he has his paths across the meadow to the hedge
on the other side, but no farther.  The hare's track may be traced for a
great distance crossing the hills; but while the roads are longer they
are much fewer in number.  The rabbit makes a perfect network of `runs,'
and seems always to feed from a regular path; the hare apparently feeds
anywhere, without much reference to the `runs,' which he uses simply to
get from one place to another in the most direct line, and also, it may
be suspected, as a promenade on which to meet the ladies of his
acquaintance by moonlight.

It is amusing to see two of these animals drumming each other; they
stand on their hind legs (which are very long) like a dog taught to beg,
and strike with the fore-pads as if boxing, only the blow is delivered
downwards instead of from the shoulder.  The clatter of their pads may
be heard much farther than would be supposed.  Round and round they go
like a couple waltzing; now one giving ground and then the other, the
fore-legs striking all the while with marvellous rapidity.  Presently
they pause--it is to recover breath only; and, `time' being up, to work
they go again with renewed energy, dancing round and round, till the
observer cannot choose but smile.  This trick they will continue till
you are weary of watching.

There are holes on the hills, not above a yard deep and entering the
slope horizontally, which are said to be used by the hares more in a
playful mood than from any real desire of shelter.  Yet they dislike
wet; most wild animals do.  Birds, on the contrary, find it answer their
purpose, grubs and worms abounding at such times.  Though the hare is of
a wandering disposition he usually returns to the same form, and, if
undisturbed, will use it every day for a length of time, at night
perhaps being miles away.  If hard pressed by the dogs he will leap a
broad brook in fine style, but he usually prefers to cross by a bridge.
In the evening, as it grows dusk, if you watch from the elevation of the
entrenchment, you may see these creatures steal out into the level
cornfield below, first one, then two, presently five or six--looming
much larger than they really are in the dusk, and seeming to appear upon
the scene suddenly.  They have a trick of stealing along close to the
low mounds which divide arable fields, so that they are unobserved till
they turn out into the open ground.

It is not easy to distinguish a hare when crouching in a ploughed field,
his colour harmonises so well with the clods; so that an unpractised eye
generally fails to note him.  An old hand with the gun cannot pass a
field without involuntarily glancing along the furrows made by the
plough to see if their regular grooves are broken by anything hiding
therein.  The ploughmen usually take special care with their work near
public roads, so that the furrows end on to the base of the highway
shall be mathematically straight.  They often succeed so well that the
furrows look as if traced with a ruler, and exhibit curious effects of
vanishing perspective.  Along the furrow, just as it is turned, there
runs a shimmering light as the eye traces it up.  The ploughshare, heavy
and drawn with great force, smooths the earth as it cleaves it, giving
it for a time a `face' as it were, the moisture on which reflects the
light.  If you watch the farmers driving to market, you will see that
they glance up the furrows to note the workmanship and look for game;
you may tell from a distance if they espy a hare by the check of the
rein and the extended hand pointing.

The partridges, too, cower as they hear the noise of wheels or
footsteps, but their brown backs, rounded as they stoop, do not deceive
the eye that knows full well the irregular shape taken by lumps of
earth.  Both hares and rabbits may be watched with ease from an
elevation, and if you remain quiet will rarely discover your presence
while you are above them.  They keep a sharp look-out all round, but
never think of glancing upwards, unless, of course, some unusual noise
attracts attention.

Looking away from the brow of the hill here over the rampart, see,
yonder in the narrow hollow a flock is feeding: you can tell even so far
off that it is feeding, because the sheep are scattered about, dotted
hither and thither over the surface.  It is their habit the moment they
are driven to run together.  Farther away, slowly travelling up a
distant down, another flock, packed close, rises towards the ridge, like
a thick white mist stealthily ascending the slope.

Just outside the trench, almost within reach, there lies a small white
something, half hidden by the grass.  It is the skull of a hare,
bleached by the winds and the dew and the heat of the summer sun.  The
skeleton has disappeared, nothing but the bony casing of the head
remains, with its dim suggestiveness of life, polished and smooth from
the friction of the elements.  Holding it in the hand the shadow falls
into and darkens the cavities once filled by the wistful eyes which
whilom glanced down from the summit here upon the sweet clover fields
beneath.  Beasts of prey and wandering dogs have carried away the bones
of the skeleton, dropping them far apart; the crows and the ants
doubtless had their share of the carcass.  Perhaps a wound caused by
shot that did not immediately check his speed, or wasting disease
depriving him of strength to obtain food, brought him low; mayhap an
insidious enemy crept on him in his form.

The joy in life of these animals--indeed, of almost all animals and
birds in freedom--is very great.  You may see it in every motion: in the
lissom bound of the hare, the playful leap of the rabbit, the song that
the lark and the finch _must_ sing; the soft, loving coo of the dove in
the hawthorn; the blackbird ruffling out his feathers on a rail.  The
sense of living--the consciousness of seeing and feeling--is manifestly
intense in them all, and is in itself an exquisite pleasure.  Their
appetites seem ever fresh: they rush to the banquet spread by Mother
Earth with a gusto that Lucullus never knew in the midst of his artistic
gluttony; they drink from the stream with dainty sips as though it were
richest wine.  Watch the birds in the spring; the pairs dance from bough
to bough, and know not how to express their wild happiness.  The hare
rejoices in the swiftness of his limbs: his nostrils sniff the air, his
strong sinews spurn the earth; like an arrow from a bow he shoots up the
steep hill that we must clamber slowly, halting half-way to breathe.  On
outspread wings the swallow floats above, then slants downwards with a
rapid swoop, and with the impetus of the motion rises easily.  Therefore
it is that this skull here, lying so light in the palm of the hand, with
the bright sunshine falling on it, and a shadowy darkness in the vacant
orbits of the eyes, fills us with sadness.  `As leaves on leaves, so men
on men decay;' how much more so with these creatures whose generations
are so short.

If we look closely into the grass here on the slope of the fosse it is
animated by a busy throng of insects rushing in hot haste to and fro.
They must find it a labour and a toil to make progress through the green
forest of grass-blade and moss and heaths and thick thyme bunches,
over-topping them as cedars, but cedars all strewn in confusion,
crossing and interlacing, with no path through the jungle.  Watch this
ant travelling patiently onward, and mark the distance traversed by the
milestone of a tall bennet.

First up on a dry white stalk of grass lingering from last autumn; then
down on to a thistle leaf, round it, and along a bent blade leading
beneath into the intricacy and darkness at the roots.  Presently, after
a prolonged absence, up again on a dead fibre of grass, brown and
withered, torn up by the sheep but not eaten: this lies like a bridge
across a yawning chasm--the mark or indentation left by the hoof of a
horse scrambling up when the turf was wet and soft.  Half-way across the
weight of the ant overbalances it, slight as that weight is, and down it
goes into the cavity: undaunted, after getting clear, the insect begins
to climb up the precipitous edge and again plunges into the wood.
Coming to a broader leaf, which promises an open space, it is found to
be hairy, and therefore impassable except with infinite trouble; so the
wayfarer endeavours to pass underneath, but has in the end to work round
it.  Then a breadth of moss intervenes, which is worse than the vast
prickly hedges with which savage kings fence their cities to the
explorer, who can get no certain footing on it, but falls through and
climbs up again twenty times, and burrows a way somehow in the shady
depths below.

Next, a bunch of thyme crosses the path: and here for a lengthened
period the ant goes utterly out of sight, lost in the interior, slowly
groping round about within, and finally emerging in a glade where your
walking-stick, carelessly thrown on the ground, bends back the grass and
so throws open a lane to the traveller.  In a straight line the distance
thus painfully traversed may be ten or twelve inches; certainly in
getting over it the insect has covered not less than three times as
much, probably more--now up, now down, backwards and sideways, searching
out a passage.

As this process goes on from morn till night through the long summer's
day, some faint idea may be obtained of the journeys thus performed,
against difficulties and obstacles before which the task of crossing
Africa from sea to sea is a trifle.  How, for instance, does the ant
manage to keep a tolerably correct course, steering straight despite the
turns and labyrinthine involutions of the path?  It is never possible to
see far in front--half the time not twice its own length; often and
often it is necessary to retrace the trail and strike out a fresh one--a
step that would confuse most persons even in an English wood with which
they were unacquainted.

Yet by some power of observation, perhaps superior in this respect to
the abilities of greater creatures, the tiny thing guides its footsteps
without faltering down yonder to the nest in the hollow on the bank of
the ploughed field.  I say by observation, and the exercise of faculties
resembling those of the mind, because I have many times tried the
supposed unerring instinct of the ant, and found it fail: therefore it
must possess a power of correcting error which is the prerogative of
reason.  Ants cannot, under certain conditions, distinguish their own
special haunts.  Across a garden path I frequented there was the track
of innumerable ants; their ceaseless journeyings had worn a visible path
leading from the border on one side to the border on the other, where
was a tiny hole, into which they each disappeared in turn.  Happily, the
garden was neglected, otherwise the besom of the gardener would have
swept away all traces of the highway they had made.  Watching the stream
of life pouring swiftly along the track, it seemed to me that, like men
walking hurriedly in well-known streets, they took no note of marks or
bearings, but followed each other unhesitatingly in the groove.

When street-pavements are torn up, the human stream disperses and flows
out on either side till it discovers by experience the most convenient
makeshift passage.  What would be the result if this Watling-street of
the ants were interrupted?  With a fragment of wood I rubbed out three
inches of the path worn in the shallow film of soil deposited over the
old gravel, smoothing that much down level.  Instantly the crowd came to
a stop.  The foremost ant halted at the edge where the groove now
terminated, turned round, and had an excited conversation with the next
by means of their antennae; a third came up, a fourth and fifth--a crowd
collected, in fact.  Now, there was no real obstruction--nothing to
prevent them from rushing across to the spot where the path recommenced.
Why, then, did they pause?  Why, presently, begin to explore, right and
left, darting to one side and then to the other examining?  Was it not
because an old and acquired habit was suddenly uprooted?  Surely
infallible instinct could have carried them across the space of three
inches without any trouble of investigation?

In a few seconds one of the exploring parties, making a curve, hit the
other end of the path, and the news was quickly spread, for the rest
followed almost immediately.  Placing a small pebble across the track on
another occasion caused almost the same amount of interference with the
traffic.  Near the hole into which the ants plunged under the border,
and on the edge of the bank, so to say, the path they had worn was not
visible--the ground was hard and did not take impression; and there,
losing the guidance of the groove, they often made mistakes.  Instead of
hitting the right hole, many of them missed it and entered other holes
left by boring worms, and after a short time reappeared to search again,
till, finding the cavern, they hastily plunged into it.  This was
particularly the case when a solitary insect came along.  Therefore it
would seem that the ant works its way tentatively, and, observing where
it fails, tries another place and succeeds.


CHAPTER TWO.

A DROUGHT--ANCIENT GARRISON OF THE ENTRENCHMENT--TRADITIONS OF FOREST--
CURIOUS PONDS--A MIRAGE.

Once now and then in the cycle of the years there comes a summer which
to the hills is almost like a fever to the blood, wasting and drying up
with its heat the green things upon which animal life depends, so that
drought and famine go hand in hand.  The days go by and grow to weeks,
the weeks lengthen to months, and still no rain.  The sun pours down his
burning rays, which become hotter as the season advances; the sky is
blue and beautiful over the hills--beautiful, but pitiless to the
bleating flocks beneath.  The breeze comes up from the south, bringing
with it white clouds sailing at an immense height, with openings between
like azure lakes or aerial Mediterraneans landlocked by banks of vapour.

These, if you watch them from the rampart, slowly dissolve; fragments
break away from the mass as the edges of the polar glaciers slip off the
ice-cliff into the sea, only these are noiseless.  The fragment detached
grows visibly thinner and more translucent, its margin stretching out in
an uneven fringe: the process is almost exactly like the unravelling of
a spotless garment, the threads wavering and twisting as they are
carried along by the current, diminishing till they fade and are lost in
the ocean of blue.  This breaking of the clouds is commonly seen in
weather that promises to be fine.  From the brow here, you may note a
solitary cloud just risen above the horizon; it floats slowly towards
us; presently it divides into several parts; these, again, fall away in
jagged, irregular pieces like flecks of foam.  By the time it has
reached the zenith these flecks have lengthened out, and shortly
afterwards the cloud has entirely melted and is gone.  The delicate hue,
the contrast of the fleecy white with the deepest azure, the
ever-changing form, the light shining through the gauzy texture, the
gentle dreamy motion, lend these clouds an exquisite beauty.

After a while the faint breeze increases, but changes in character; it
blows steadily, and the `sish sish' of the bennets as it rushes through
them becomes incessant.  A sense of oppression weighs on the chest--in
the midst of the wind, on the verge of the hill, you sigh for a breath
of air.  This is not air: it is simply heat in motion.  It is like the
simoom of the desert--producing a feeling of intense weariness.
Previously the distant ridges of the downs were shaded by a dim haze
hovering over them, toning the rolling curves and softening the bolder
bluffs.  Now they become distinct; each line is drawn clearly and stands
out; the definition is like that which occurs before rain, only without
the illusion of nearness.

But the hot wind blows and the rain does not come: the sky is open and
free from clouds, less blue perhaps, but harder in tint.  The nights are
bright and clear and warm; you may sit here on the turf till midnight
and find no dew, and still feel the languid, enervating influence of the
hot blast.  This goes in time, and is succeeded by heavy morning mists
hanging like a cloak over the hills and filling up the hollows.  They
roll away as the day advances, and there is the sun bright as ever in
the midst of the cloudless sky.  The shepherds say the mists carry away
the rain; certainly it does not come.

Every now and then promising signs exhibit themselves.  A black bank of
vapour receives the setting sun, and in the east huge mountainous clouds
with beetling precipices and caverns, in which surely the thunder lurks,
swell and roll upwards in the hush of the evening.  The farmer unrolls
his canvas over the new-made hayrick, which is not yet thatched,
thinking that a torrent will descend in the night; but no, the morrow is
the same.  It is a peculiarity of our usually changeable climate that
when once the weather has become thoroughly settled either to dry or
wet, no signs of alteration are of any value, true as they may be at
other times.

So the heat continues and the drought increases.  The `land-springs'
breaking out by the sides of the fields have long since disappeared; the
true springs run feebly as the stores of water in the interior of the
earth gradually grow less.  Great cracks open in the clay of the meadows
down below in the vale--rifts, wide and deep, into which you may thrust
your walking-stick to the handle.  Up here on the hills the turf grows
hard and inelastic; it loses that `springy' feel under the foot which
makes it so pleasant to walk upon.  The grass becomes dull in tint and
touches like wire--all the sap dried from it, and nothing but fibre
left.  Beneath the chalk is moistureless, and nothing can grow on it.
The byroads and paths made with the chalk or `rubble' glare in the
sunlight, and the flints scattered so thickly about the ploughed fields
seem to radiate heat.  All things that should look green are brown and
dusty; even the leaves on the elms seem dusty.  The wheat only
flourishes, tall and strong--deep tinted yellow here, a ruddy, golden
bronze yonder, with ears full and heavy, rich and glorious to gaze upon.
Insects multiply and replenish the earth after their fashion
exceedingly; the spiders are busy as may be, not only those that watch
from their webs lying in wait, but those that chase their prey through
the grass as dogs do game.

But under the beautiful sky and the glorious sun there rises up a
pitiful cry the livelong day: it is the quavering bleat of the sheep as
their strength slowly ebbs out of them for the lack of food.  Green
crops and roots fail, the aftermath in the meadows beneath will not
grow, week after week `keep' becomes scarcer and more expensive, and
there is, in fact, a famine.  Of all animals a starved sheep is the most
wretched to contemplate, not only because of the angularity of outline,
and the cavernous depressions where fat and flesh should be, but because
the associations of many generations have given the sheep a peculiar
claim upon humanity.  They hang entirely on human help.  They watch for
the shepherd as though he were their father; and when he comes he can do
no good, so that there is no more painful spectacle than a fold during a
drought upon the hills.

Once upon a time, passing on foot for a distance of some twenty-five
miles across these hills and grassy uplands, I could not help comparing
the scene to what travellers tell us of desert lands and foreign
famines.  The whole of that long summer's day, as I hastened southwards,
eager for the beach and the scent of the sea, I passed flocks of dying
sheep: in the hollows by the way their skeletons were here and there to
be seen, the gaunt ribs protruding upwards in the horrible manner that
the ribs of dead creatures do.  Crowds of flies buzzed in the air.  Upon
the hurdles perched the crow, bold with over-feasting, and hardly
turning to look at me, waiting there till the next lamb should fall and
the `spirit of the beast go downwards.'  Happy England, that experiences
these things so seldom, and even then so locally that barely one in ten
hears of or sees them!

The cattle of course suffer too; all day long files of water-carts go
down into the hollows where the springs burst forth, and at such times
half the work of the farm consists in fetching the precious liquid
perhaps a mile or more.  Even in ordinary summers there is often a
difficulty of this kind; and there are some farmhouses whose water for
household uses has to be brought fully half a mile.  Of recent years
more wells have been sunk, but there are still too few for the purpose.
The effect of water in determining the settlements of human beings is
clearly shown here.  You may walk mile after mile on the ridges and pass
nothing but a shed; the houses are in the hollows, the `coombes' or
`bottoms,' as they are called, where the springs run.  The villages on
the downs are generally on a `bourne,' or winter watercourse.

In summer it is a broad winding trench with low green banks, along whose
bed you may stroll dry-shod, with the yellow corn on either hand
reaching above your head.  A few sedges here and there, and that
peculiar whitened appearance left when water has passed over vegetation,
betoken that once there was a stream.  It is like the watercourses and
rivers of the East, which are the roads of the traveller till the storm
comes, and, lo! in the morning is a rushing flood.  Near the village
some water is to be seen in the pond which has been deepened out to hold
it, and which is, too, kept up here by a spring.

In winter the bourne often has the appearance of a broad brook: you may
observe where the current has arranged the small flints washed in from
the fields by the rain.  As the villages are on the lesser `bournes,' so
the towns are placed on the banks of the rivers these fall into.  There
may generally be found a row of villages and hamlets on the last slope
of the downs, where the hills sink finally away into the plain and vale,
so that if anyone went along the edge of the hills he would naturally
think the district well populated.  But if instead of following the edge
he penetrated into the interior he would find the precise contrary to be
the case.  Just at the edge there is water, the `heads' of the
innumerable streams that make the vale so verdant.  In the days when
wealth consisted chiefly in flocks and herds, men would naturally settle
where there were `water-brooks.'

When at last the drought ceases, and the rain does come, it often pours
with tropical vehemence; so that the soil of the fields upon the slopes
is carried away into the brooks, and the furrows are filled up level
with the sand washed out from the clods, the lighter particles of earth
floating suspended in the stream, the heavier sand remaining behind.
Then, sometimes, as the slow labourer lingers over the ground, with eyes
ever bent downwards, he spies a faint glitter, and picks up an antique
coin in his horny fingers: coins are generally found after a shower, on
the same principle that the gold-seekers wash away the auriferous soil
in the `cradle,' and lay bare the yellow atoms.  Such coins, too, are
sometimes of the same precious metal, ancient and rude.  Sometimes the
edge of the hoe clinks against a coin, thus at last discovered after so
many centuries; yet which for years must have lain so near the surface
as to have been turned over and over again by the ploughshare, though
unnoticed.

The magnitude of the space enclosed by the earthwork, the height of the
rampart and depth of the fosse, show that it was originally intended to
be occupied by a large force.  With modern artillery, the mitrailleuse,
and above all the breech-loading rifle, a comparatively small number of
men could hold a commanding position like this: a steep ascent on three
sides, and on the fourth a narrow level ridge, easily swept by their
fire.  But when this entrenchment was thrown up--the chalky earth and
flints probably carried up in osier-baskets, for they do not seem to
have had wheelbarrows in those times--every single yard of rampart
required its spear or threatening arrow, so as to present an unbroken
rank along the summit.  If not; the enemy approaching to close quarters
and attacking several places at once would find gaps through which they
might pour into the camp.  It seems, therefore, evident that these works
once sheltered an army; and, looking at their massive character, it is
difficult to resist the conclusion that they were not temporary trenches
merely, but were permanently garrisoned.

There is another alternative; they may have been a place of refuge for
the surrounding population in the nameless wars waged between rival
kings.  In that case they would, when resorted to, contain a still
larger number of persons; women and children and aged men would be
included, and to these must be added cattle and sheep.  Now, reflecting
upon these considerations, and recollecting the remarks previously made
upon the lack of water on these hills, the very curious question arises,
How did such an army, or such a refugee population with cattle and
horses, supply themselves with sufficient water for drinking purposes?
The closest examination of the camp itself fails to yield even a
suggestion for an answer.

There is not the slightest trace of a well, and it may fairly be
questioned whether a well would have been practicable at that date.  For
this bold brow itself stands high enough; but then, in addition, it is
piled on an elevated plateau or table-land, beneath which again is the
level at which springs break out.  The wells of the district all
commence on this table-land or plain.  A depression, too, is chosen for
the purpose, and their depth is about ninety feet on the average: many
are much deeper.  But when to this depth the task of digging right down
through the hill piled up above the plain is added, the difficulty
becomes extreme.

On walking round the entrenchment at the bottom of the fosse, and
keeping an eye upon the herbage--the best of all guides--one spot may be
noticed where there grows a little of that `rowetty' grass seen in the
damp furrows of the meadows.  But there is no sign whatever of a basin
or excavation to catch and contain this slight moisture--slight indeed,
for the earth is as hard and impenetrable here as elsewhere, and this
faint moisture is evidently caused by the rainfall draining down the
slope of the rampart.  Looking next outside the works for the source of
such a supply, a spring will be found in a deep coombe, or bottom, about
800 yards--say, half a mile--from the nearest part of the fosse,
reckoning in a straight line.  Then, in bringing up water from this
spring, which may be supposed to have been done in skins, a double
ascent had to be made: first up on to the level plateau, here very
narrow, next up the steep down itself.  Those only who have had
experience of the immense labour of watering cattle on the hills can
estimate the work this must have been.  An idea is obtained of the value
of an elevated position in early warfare, when men for the sake of its
advantage were found willing to submit to such toil.

That, however, is not all--foraging parties fetching water must have
been liable to be cut off from the main body; there were no cannon then
to cover a sortie, and if the enemy were in sufficient force and took
possession of the spring, they could compel an engagement, or drive the
besieged to surrender rather than endure the tortures of thirst.  So
that a study of these English hills--widely different as are the
conditions of time and place--may throw a strong light upon many an
incident of ancient history.  There are no traces remaining of any
covered way or hollow dyke leading down the slope in the direction of
the spring; but some such traces do seem to exhibit themselves in two
places--at the rear of the earthwork along the ridge of the hill, and
down the steepest and shortest ascent.  The first does not come up to
the entrenchment, being separated by a wide interval; the latter does,
and may possibly have been used as a covered way, though now much
obliterated and too shallow for the purpose.  The rampart itself is in
almost perfect preservation; in one spot the soil has slightly slipped,
but form and outline are everywhere distinct.

In endeavouring, however, for a moment to glance back into the unwritten
past, and to reconstruct the conditions of some fourteen or fifteen
centuries since, it must not be forgotten that the downs may then have
presented a different appearance.  There is a tradition lingering still
that they were in the olden times almost covered with wood.  I have
tried to fix this tradition--to focus it and give it definite shape; but
like a mist visible from a distance yet unseen when you are actually in
it, it refuses to be grasped.  Still, there it is.  The old people say
that the king--they have no idea which king--could follow the chase for
some forty miles across these hills, through a succession of copses,
woods, and straggling covers, forming a great forest.  To look now from
the top of the rampart over the rolling hills, the idea is difficult to
admit at first.  They are apparently bare, huge billowy swells of green,
with wide hollows, cultivated on the lower levels, but open and
unenclosed for mile after mile, almost without hedges, and seemingly
treeless save for the gnarled and stunted hawthorns--apparently a bare
expanse; but more minute acquaintance leads to different conclusions.

Here, to begin with, on the same ridge as the earthwork and not a
quarter of a mile distant, is a small clump of wind-harassed trees,
growing on the very edge.  They are firs and beech, and, though so
thoroughly exposed to furious gales, have attained a fair height even in
that thin soil.  Beech and fir, then, can grow here.  Away yonder on
another ridge is another such a clump, indistinct from the distance;
though there is a pleasant breeze blowing and their boughs must sway to
it, they appear motionless.  With the exception of the poplar, whose
tall top as it slowly bends to the blast describes such an arc as to
make its motion visible afar, the most violent wind fails to enable the
eye to separate the lines of light coming so nearly parallel from the
branches of an elm or an oak, even at a comparatively short distance.
The tree looks perfectly still, though you know it must be vibrating to
the trunk and loosening the earth with the wrench at its anchoring
roots.

In more than one of the deep coombes there is a row of elms--out of
sight from this post of vantage--whose tops are about level with the
plain, where you may stand on the edge and throw a stone into the rook's
nest facing you.  On a lower spur, which juts out into the valley, is a
broad ash wood.  Little more than a mile from hence, on the most barren
and wildest part of the down, there yet linger some stunted oaks
interspersed among the ash copses which to this day are called `the
Chace' and are proved by documentary evidence to stand on the site of an
ancient deer forest.  A deer forest, too, there is (though seven or
eight miles distant, yet on the same range of hills) to this very day
tenanted by the antlered stag.  Such evidence could be multiplied; but
this is enough to establish the fact that for the whole breadth of the
hills to have been covered with wood is well within possibility.

I may even go further, and say that, if left to itself, it would in a
few generations revert to that condition; for this reason: that when a
clump of trees is planted here, experience has shown that it is not so
much the wind or the soil which hinders their growth as the attacks of
animals wild and tame.  Rabbits in cold, frosty weather have a
remarkable taste for the bark of the young ash-saplings: they nibble it
off as clean as if stripped with a knife, of course frequently killing
the plant.  Cattle--of which a few wander on the hills--are equally
destructive to the young green shoots or `tops' of many trees.  Young
horses especially will bark almost any smooth-barked tree, not to eat,
but as if to relieve their teeth by tearing it off.  In the meadows all
the young oaks that spring up from dropped acorns out in the grass are
invariably torn up by cattle and the still closer-cropping sheep.  If
the sheep and cattle were removed, and the plough stood still for a
century, ash and beech and oak and hawthorn would reassert themselves,
and these wide, open downs become again a vast forest, as doubtless they
were when the beaver and the marten, the wild boar and the wolf, roamed
over the country.

This great earthwork, crowning a ridge from whence a view for many miles
could have been obtained over the tops of the primeval trees, must then
have had a strangely different strategical position to what it now
seemingly occupies in the midst of almost treeless hills.  Possibly,
too, the powerful effect of so many square miles of vegetation in
condensing vapour may have had a distinct influence upon the rainfall,
and have rendered water more plentiful than now: a consideration which
may help to explain the manner in which these ancient forts were held.

The general deficiency of moisture characteristic of these chalk hills
is such that it is said agriculture flourishes best upon them in what is
called a `dropping' summer, when there is a shower every two or three
days, the soil absorbing it so quickly.  For the grass and hay crops
down below in the vale, and for the arable fields there with a stiff
heavy soil, on the other hand, a certain amount of dry weather is
desirable, else the plough cannot work in its seasons nor the crops
ripen or the harvest be garnered in.  So that the old saying was that in
a drought the vale had to feed the hill, and in a wet year the hill had
to feed the vale: which remains true to a considerable extent, so far at
least as the cattle are concerned, and was probably true of men and
their food also before the importation of corn in such immense
quantities placed both alike free from anxiety on that account.  This
deficiency of moisture being borne in mind, it is a little curious to
find ponds of water on the very summit of the down.

Scarcely a quarter of a mile from the earthwork, and on a level with
it--close to the clump of firs and beech alluded to previously--there
may be seen on this warm summer day a broad, circular, pan-like
depression partially filled with water.  Being on the very top of the
ridge, and only so far sunk as to hold a sufficient quantity, there is
little or no watershed to drain into the pond; neither is there a spring
or any other apparent source of supply.  It would naturally be imagined
that in this exposed position, even if filled to the brim by heavy
storms of rain, a week of sultry sunshine would evaporate it to the last
drop; instead of which, excepting, of course, unusually protracted
spells of dry weather such as only come at lengthy intervals, there will
always be found some water here; even under the blazing sunshine a
shallow pool remains, and in ordinary times the circular basin is half
full.

It is of quite modern construction, and, except indirectly, has no
bearing upon the water-supply of the earthwork, having been made within
a few years only for the convenience of the stock kept upon the hill
farms.  Some special care is taken in puddling the bottom and sides to
prevent leakage, and a layer of soot is usually employed to repel boring
grubs or worms which would otherwise make their holes through and let
the water soak into the thirsty chalk beneath.  In wet weather the pond
quickly fills; once full, it is afterwards kept up by the condensation
of the thick, damp mists, the dew and cloud-like vapours, that even in
the early mornings of the hot summer days so frequently cling about the
downs.  These more than supply the waste from evaporation, so that the
basin may be called a dew-pond.  The mists that hang about the ridges
are often almost as laden with moisture as a rain-cloud itself.  They
deposit a thick layer of tiny bead-like drops upon the coat of the
wayfarer, which seem to cling after the manner of oil.  Though these
hills have not the faintest pretensions to be compared with mountains,
yet when the rainy clouds hang low they often strike the higher ridges,
which from a distance appear blotted out entirely, and are then
receiving a misty shower.

Then there rise up sometimes thick masses of vapour which during the
night have gathered over the brooks and water-meadows, the marshy places
of the vale, and now come borne on the breeze rolling along the slopes;
and, as these pass over the dew-pond, doubtless its colder water
condenses that portion which draws down into the depression where it
stands.  In winter the vapours clinging about the clumps of beech freeze
to the boughs, forming, not a rime merely, like that seen in the vale,
but a kind of ice-casing, while icicles also depend underneath.  Now, if
a wind comes sweeping across the hill with sudden blast, these
glittering appendages rattle together loudly, and there falls a hail of
jagged icy fragments.  When one has seen the size and quantity of these,
it becomes more easy to understand the amount of water which an
intangible vapour may carry with it to be condensed into the pond or
congealed upon the tree.

There is another such a pond half a mile or more from the earthwork in
another direction, but also on a level, making two upon this high and
exposed down.  Many others are scattered about--they have become more
numerous of late years.  Several are situate on the lower plateau, which
is also dry enough.  Toiling over the endless hills in the summer heats,
I have often been driven by necessity of thirst to taste a little of the
water contained in them, though well knowing the inevitable result.  The
water has a dead flavour: it is not stagnant in the sense of impurity,
but dead, even when quite clear.  In a few moments after tasting it, the
mouth dries, with a harsh unpleasant feeling as if some impalpable dusty
particles had got into the substance of the tongue.  This is caused
probably by suspended chalk, of which it tastes; for assuaging thirst,
therefore, it is worse than useless in summer: very different is the
exquisitely limpid cool liquid which bubbles out in the narrow coombes
far below.

The indirect bearing of the phenomena of these dew-ponds upon the
water-supply of the ancient fort is found in the evidence they supply
that under different conditions the deposit of moisture here might have
been very much larger.  The ice formed upon the branches of the beech
trees in winter proves that water is often present in the atmosphere in
large quantities; all it requires is something to precipitate it.
Therefore, if these hills were once clothed with forest, as previously
suggested, it appears possible that the primitive inhabitants, after
all, may have carried on their agriculture with less difficulty, and
have been able to store up water in their camps with greater ease, than
would be the case at present.  This may explain the traces of primeval
cultivation to be seen here on the barest bleakest, and most unpromising
hillsides.  Such traces may be discovered at intervals all along the
slope, on the summit, and near the foot of the down at the rear of the
entrenchment.

It is easy to pass almost over them without observing the nearly
obliterated marks--the faint lines left on the surface by the implements
of men in the days when the first Caesar was yet a living memory.  These
marks are like some of the little used paths which traverse the hills:
if you look along way in front you can see them tolerably distinctly,
but under your feet they are invisible, the turf being only so slightly
worn by wayfarers.  So, to find the signs of ancient fields, look for
them from a distance as you approach along the slope; then you will see
squares and parallelograms dimly defined upon the sward by slightly
raised and narrow banks, green with the grass that has grown over them
for so many centuries.

They have the appearance sometimes of shallow terraces raised one above
the other, rising with the slope of the down.  This terrace formation is
perhaps occasionally artificial; but in some cases, I think, the natural
conformation of the ground has been taken advantage of, having seen
terraces where not the faintest trace of cultivation was visible.  It is
not always easy either to distinguish between the genuine enclosures of
ancient days and the trenches left after the decay of comparatively
modern fir-plantations, which it is usual to surround with a low mound
and ditch.  Long after the fir trees have died out the green mound
remains; but there are rules by which the two, with a little care, may
be distinguished.

The ancient field, in the first place, is generally very much smaller;
and there are usually three or four or more in close proximity, divided
by the faint green ridges, sometimes roughly resembling in ground-plan
the squares of a chess-board.  The mound that once enclosed a
fir-plantation is much higher, and would be noticed by the most casual
observer.  It encircles a wide area, often irregular in shape, oval or
circular, and does not present the regular internal divisions of the
other--which, indeed, would be unnecessary and out of place in a copse.

It has become the fashion of recent years to break up the sward of the
downs, to pare off the turf and burn it, and scatter the ashes over the
soil newly turned up by the plough; the idea being mainly to keep more
sheep by the aid of turnips and green crops than could be grazed upon
the grass.  In places it answers--in many others not; after two or three
crops the yield sometimes falls to next to nothing.  There is a ploughed
field here right upon the ridge of the down, close to the ancient
earthwork, where in dry summers I have seen ripening oats barely a foot
high, and barley equally short.  With all the resources of modern
agriculture, artificial manure, deeper ploughing, and more complete
cleaning, such results do not seem altogether commensurate with the
labour bestowed.  Of course it is not always so, else the enterprise
would be at once abandoned.  But when I come to think of the ancient
tillage in the terraces upon the barren slopes, I find it difficult to
see how, with their rude implements, the men of those times could have
procured any sustenance from their soil, unless I suppose the conditions
different.

If there was forest all around, to condense the vapours rolling over and
deposit a heavy dew or grateful rainfall, then they may have found the
stubborn earth more fruitful.  Trees and brakes, and thickets, too,
would give shelter and protect the rising growth from the bitter winds;
while when first tilled the soil itself would be rich from the decay of
accumulated leaves, dead boughs, and vegetable matter.  So that the
terrace gardens may have yielded plentifully then, and were probably
surrounded with stockades to protect them from the ravages of the beasts
of the forest.  Now the very site of the ancient town can scarcely be
distinguished: the sheep graze, the lambs gambol gaily over it in the
sunshine, and the shepherd dozes hard by on the slope while his dog
watches the flock.

A long day of rain is often followed by a moderately fine evening--the
clouds breaking up as the sun nears the horizon.  It happened one summer
evening, after just such a day of continuous showers, that I was in a
meadow about two miles distant from the hills.  The rain had ceased, and
the sky was clear overhead of all but a thin film of cloud, through
which the blue was visible in places.  But westward there was still a
bank of vapour concealing the sinking sun; and eastwards, towards the
downs, it was also thick and dark.  I walked slowly along with a gun, on
the inner side of a great hedge which hid the hills, waiting every now
and then behind a projecting bush for a rabbit to come out--a couple
being wanted.  In heavy rain, such as had lasted all day, they generally
remain within their `buries'--or if one slips out, he usually keeps on
the bank, sheltered by stoles and trees, and nibbling a little of the
grass that grows there and is comparatively dry.  But as evening
approaches and the rain ceases, they naturally come forth to break a
long fast, and may then be shot.

Some little time passed thus, when, in sauntering along, I came to a gap
in the hedge, and glanced through it in the direction of the downs,
there partly visible.  The idea at once occurred to me that the part of
the hills seen through the gap was remarkably high--very much higher and
more mountainous than any I had ever visited; and actually, in the
abstraction of the moment, half-intent on the rabbits and half perhaps
thinking of other things, I resolved to explore that section more
thoroughly.  Yet, after walking a few yards further, somehow it seemed
singular that the great elevation of this down should never previously
have been so apparent.  In short, growing curious in the matter, I
returned to the gap and looked again.

There was no mistake: there was the down rising up against the sky--a
huge dusky mountainous hill, exactly the same in outline as I remembered
it, quite familiar, and yet entirely strange.  There was the old barn
near the foot of the slope; above it the black line of a low hedge and
mound; on the summit the same old clump of trees; and lastly, a tall
column of black smoke rising upwards, as if from a steam plough at work.
It was all just the same, but lifted up into the air--the hill grown
into a mountain.  A second and longer gaze failed to discover the
explanation of the apparition: the eye was completely deceived, and yet
the mind was not satisfied.  But upon getting up into the gap of the
hedge, so as to obtain a better view from the mound, the cause of the
illusion was at once visible.

Looking through the gap was like looking through a narrow window, only a
short section of the hill being within sight; from the elevation of the
mound the whole range of hills could be seen at the same time.  Then it
became immediately apparent that on either side of this great mountain
the continuation of the down right and left remained still at its former
level.  Upon the central hill a cloud was resting, and had for the time
taken its exact shape.  The ridge itself was dark, and the dark grey
vapour harmonised precisely with its hue; so that the real hill and the
cloud merged into each other.  Either the barn and clump of trees were
reproduced or perhaps enlarged and distorted by the refraction: the
seeming column of smoke was a fragment of a blacker colour which chanced
to be in a nearly perpendicular position.  Even when recognised as such,
the illusion was still perfect; nor could the eye separate the hill from
the unsubstantial vapour.

As I watched it, the apparent column of smoke bent, and its upper part
floated away, enlarging just as smoke, its upward motion overcome by the
wind, slowly yields to the current.  Soon afterwards the light breeze
stretched out one end of the mass of cloud, began to roll up the other,
and presently lifted it, revealing the real ridge beneath, which grew
momentarily more distinctly defined.  Finally, the misty bank hung
suspended over the down, and slowly sailed eastwards with the wind.
Some time afterwards I saw a similar mirage-like enlargement of the down
by cloudy vapour resting on it and assuming its contour; but the
illusion was not so perfect, because seen from a more open spot,
allowing an extended view of the range, and because the cloud was
lighter in colour than the hill to which it clung.

These clouds were, of course, passing at a very low elevation above the
earth: in rainy weather, although but a few hundred feet high, the
ridges are frequently obscured with cloud.  The old folk in the vale,
whose whole lives have been spent watching and waiting on the weather,
say that the hills `draw' the thunder--that wherever a storm arises it
always `draws' towards them.  If it comes from the west it often
splits--one storm going along the ridges to the south, and the other
passing over detached hills to the northward; so that the basin between
is rarely visited by thunder overhead.  They have, too, an old
superstition--based apparently, on a text of the Bible--that the thunder
always rises originally in the north, though it may reach them from a
different direction.  For it is their belief also that thunder `works
round;' so that after a heavy storm, say in the afternoon, when the air
has cleared to all appearance, they will tell you that the sunshine and
calm are a deception.  In a few hours' time, or in the course of the
night, the storm will return, having `worked round:' and indeed in that
locality this is very often the case.  It is to be observed that even a
small copse will for a short distance in its rear quite divert the
course of a breeze; so that a weathercock placed on the leeside is
entirely untrustworthy: if the wind really blows from the south and over
the copse, the weathercock will sometimes point in precisely the
opposite direction, obeying the `undertow' of the gale, as it were,
drawing backwards.

In summer especially, I fancy, an effect is sometimes produced by a
variation in the electrical condition of comparatively small areas,
corresponding perhaps with the difference of soil--one becoming more
heated than another.  Showers are certainly often of a remarkably local
character: a walk of half a mile along a road dark from recent rain will
frequently bring you to a place where the dust is white and thick as
ever, the line of demarcation sharply marked across the highway.  In
winter rain takes a wider sweep.

From the elevation of the earthwork on the downs--with a view of mile
after mile of plain and vale below--it is easy on a showery summer day
to observe the narrow limits of the rain.  Dusky streamers, like the
train of a vast dark robe, slope downwards from the blacker
water-carrying cloud above--downwards and backwards, the upper cloud
travelling faster than the falling drops.  Between the hill and the rain
yonder intervenes a broad space of several miles, and beyond it again
stretches a clear opening to the horizon.  The streamers sweep along a
narrow strip of country which is drenched with rain, while on either
side the sun is shining.

It seems reasonable to imagine that in some way that strip of country
acts differently for the time being upon the atmosphere immediately
above it.  So singularly local are these conditions, sometimes, that one
farmer will show you a flourishing crop of roots which was refreshed by
a heavy shower just in the nick of time, while his neighbour is loudly
complaining that he has had no rain.  When the sky is overcast--large
masses of cloud, with occasional breaks, passing slowly across it at a
considerable elevation without rain--sometimes through these narrow
slits long beams of light fall aslant upon the distant fields of the
vale.  They resemble, only on a greatly lengthened scales the beams that
may be seen in churches of a sunny afternoon, falling from the upper
windows on the tiled floor of the chancel, and made visible by motes in
the air.  So through such slits in the cloudy roof of the sky the rays
of the sun shoot downwards, made visible on their passage by the
moisture or the motes floating in the atmosphere.  They seem to linger
in their place as the clouds drift with scarcely perceptible motion; and
the labourers say that the sun is sucking up water there.

In the evening of a fine day the mists may be seen from hence as they
rise in the meadows far beneath: beginning first over the brooks, a long
white winding vapour marking their course, next extending over the moist
places and hollows.  Higher in the air darker bars of mist, separate and
distinct from the white sheet beneath them, perhaps a hundred feet above
it, gradually come into sight as they grow thicker and blacker, one here
one yonder--long and narrow in shape.  These seem to approach more
nearly in character to the true cloud than the mist which hardly rises
higher than the hedges.  The latter will sometimes move or draw across
the meadows when there is no apparent wind, not sufficient to sway a
leaf, as if in obedience to light and partial currents created by a
variation of temperature in different parts of the same field.

Once now and then, looking at this range of hills from a distance of two
or three miles on moonless nights, when it has been sufficiently clear
to distinguish them, I have noticed that the particular down on which
the earthwork is situate shows more distinctly than the others.  By day
no difference is apparent; but sometimes by night it seems slightly
lighter in hue, and stands out more plainly.  This may perhaps be due to
some unobserved characteristic of the herbage on its slope, or possibly
to the chalky subsoil coming there nearer to the surface.  The power of
reflecting light possessed by the earth, and varied by different soils
or by vegetation, is worth observation.


CHAPTER THREE.

THE HILLSIDE HEDGE: ITS BIRDS AND FLOWERS--A GREEN TRACK--THE
SPRING-HEAD.

A low thick hawthorn hedge runs along some distance below the earthwork
just at the foot of the steepest part of the hill.  It divides the
greensward of the down from the ploughed land of the plain, which
stretches two or three miles wide, across to another range opposite.  A
few stunted ash trees grow at intervals among the bushes, which are the
favourite resort of finches and birds that feed upon the seeds and
insects they find in the cultivated fields.  Most of these cornfields
being separated only by a shallow trench and a bank bare of underwood,
the birds naturally flock to the few hedges they can find.  So that,
although but low and small in comparison with the copse-like hedges of
the vale, the hawthorn here is often alive with birds: chaffinches and
sparrows perhaps in the greatest numbers, also yellowhammers.

The colour of the yellowhammer appears brighter in spring and early
summer: the bird is aglow with a beautiful and brilliant yet soft
yellow, pleasantly shaded with brown.  He perches on the upper boughs of
the hawthorn or on a rail, coming up from the corn as if to look around
him--for he feeds chiefly on the ground--and uttering two or three short
notes.  His plumage gives a life and tint to the hedge, contrasting so
brightly with the vegetation and with other birds.  His song is but a
few bars repeated, yet it has a pleasing and soothing effect in the
drowsy warmth of summer.  Yellowhammers haunt the cornfields
principally, though they are not absent from the meadows.

To this hedge the hill-magpie comes: some magpies seem to keep almost
entirely to the downs, while others range the vale, though there is no
apparent difference between them.  His peculiar uneven and, so to say,
flickering flight, marks him at a distance as he jauntily journeys along
beside the slope.  He visits every fir copse and beech clump on his way,
spending some time, too, in and about the hawthorn hedge, which is a
favourite spot.  Sometimes in the spring, while the corn is yet short
and green, if you glance carefully through an opening in the bushes or
round the side of the gateway, you may see him busy on the ground.  His
restless excitable nature betrays itself in every motion: he walks now
to the right a couple of yards, now to the left in a quick zigzag, so
working across the field towards you; then with a long rush he makes a
lengthy traverse at the top of his speed, turns and darts away again at
right angles, and presently up goes his tail and he throws his head down
with a jerk of the whole body as if he would thrust his beak deep into
the earth.  This habit of searching the field apparently for some
favourite grub is evidence in his favour that he is not so entirely
guilty as he has been represented of innocent blood: no bird could be
approached in that way.  All is done in a jerky, nervous manner.  As he
turns sideways the white feathers show with a flash above the green
corn; another movement, and he looks all black.

It is more difficult to get near the larger birds upon the downs than in
the meadows, because of the absence of cover; the hedge here is so low,
and the gateway open and bare, without the overhanging oak of the
meadows, whose sweeping boughs snatch and retain wisps of the hay from
the top of a waggon-load as it passes under.  The gate itself is
dilapidated--perhaps only a rail, or a couple of `flakes' fastened
together with tar-cord: there are no cattle here to require strong
fences.

In the young beans yonder the wood-pigeons are busy--too busy for the
farmer; they have a habit as they rise and hover about their
feeding-places, of suddenly shooting up into the air, and as suddenly
sinking again to the level of their course, describing a line roughly
resembling the outline of a tent if drawn on paper, a cone whose sides
droop inward somewhat.  They do this too, over the ash woods where they
breed, or the fir trees; it is not done when they are travelling
straight ahead on a journey.

The odour of the bean-flower lingering on the air in the early summer is
delicious; in autumn when cut the stalk and pods are nearly black, so
that the shocks on the side of the hills show at a great distance.  The
sward, where the slope of the down becomes almost level beside the
hedge, is short and sweet and thickly strewn with tiny flowers, to which
and to the clover the bees come, settling, as it were, on the ground, so
that as you walk you nearly step on them, and they rise from under the
foot with a shrill, angry buzz.

On the other side the plough has left a narrow strip of green running
along the hedge: the horses, requiring some space in which to turn at
the end of each furrow, could not draw the share any nearer, and on
this narrow strip the weeds and wild flowers flourish.  The
light-sulphur-coloured charlock is scattered everywhere--out among the
corn, too, for no cleaning seems capable of eradicating this plant; the
seeds will linger in the earth and retain their germinating power for a
length of time, till the plough brings them near enough to the surface,
when they are sure to shoot up unless the pigeons find them.  Here also
may be found the wild garlic, which sometimes gets among the wheat and
lends an onion-like flavour to the bread.  It grows, too, on the edge of
the low chalky banks overhanging the narrow waggon-track, whose ruts are
deep in the rubble--worn so in winter.

Such places, close to cultivated land yet undisturbed, are the best in
which to look for wild flowers; and on the narrow strip beside the hedge
and on the crumbling rubble bank of the rough track may be found a
greater variety than by searching the broad acres beyond.  In the season
the large white bell-like flowers of the convolvulus will climb over the
hawthorn, and the lesser striped kind will creep along the ground.  The
pink pimpernel hides on the very verge of the corn, which presently will
be strewn with the beautiful `blue-bottle' flower, than whose exquisite
hue there is nothing more lovely in our fields.  The great scarlet poppy
with the black centre, and `eggs and butter'--curious name for a
flower--will, of course, be there: the latter often flourishes on a high
elevation, on the very ridges, provided only the plough has been near.

At irregular intervals along the slope there are deep hollows--shallow
near the summit, deepening and widening as they sink, till by the hedge
at the foot they broaden out into a little valley in themselves.  These
great green grooves furrow the sides of the downs everywhere, and for
that reason it is best to walk either on the ridge or in the plain at
the bottom: if you follow the slope half-way up you are continually
descending and ascending the steep sides of these gullys, which adds
much to the fatigue.  At the mouths of the hollows, close to the hedge,
the great flint stones and lumps of chalky rubble rolling down from
above one by one in the passage of the years have accumulated: so that
the turf there is almost hidden as by a stony cascade.

On the ridge here is a thicket of furze, grown shrub-like and strong,
being untouched by woodman's tool; here the rabbits have their `buries,'
and be careful how you thread your way between the bushes, for the
ground is undermined with innumerable flint-pits long abandoned.  This
is the favourite resort of the chats, who perch on the furze or on the
heaps of flints, perpetually iterating their one note, from which their
name seems taken.  Within the enclosure of the old earthwork itself the
flint-diggers have been at work: they occasionally find a few fragments
of rusty metal, doubtless relics of ancient weapons; but little worth
preserving is ever found there.  Such treasures are much more frequently
discovered in the cornfields of the plain immediately beneath than here
in the camp where one would naturally look for them.

The labourers who pick up these things often put an immensely
exaggerated value on them: a worn Roman coin of the commonest kind, of
which hundreds are in existence, they imagine to be worth a week's wages
till after refusing its real value from a collector they finally visit a
watchmaker whose aquafortis test proves the supposed gold to be brass.
So, too, with fossils: a man brought me a common echinus, and expected a
couple of `crownds' at least for it; nothing could convince him that,
although not often found just in that district, in others they were
numerous.  The `crownd' is still the unit, the favourite coin of the
labourers, especially the elder folk.  They use the word something in
the same sense as the dollar, and look with regret upon the gradual
disappearance of the broad silver disc with the figure of `Saint Gaarge'
conquering the dragon.

Everywhere across the hills traces of the old rabbit-warrens may be
found in the names of places.  Warren Farms, Warren Houses, etc, are
common; and the term is often added to the names of the villages to
distinguish an outlying part of the parish.  From the earthwork the
sites of four such warrens, now cultivated, can be seen within the
radius of as many miles.  Rabbits must have swarmed on the downs in the
olden times.  In the season when the couch and weeds are collected in
heaps and burned, the downs--were it not for the silence--might seem the
scene of a mighty conflict the smoke of the battle rolling along the
slopes and hanging over the plains, rising up from the hollows in dusky
clouds.  But the cannon of the shadowy army give forth no thunderous
roar.  These smouldering fires are not, of course, peculiar to the
hills, but the smoke shows so much more at that elevation.

At evening, if you watch the sunset from the top of the rampart, as the
red disc sinks to the horizon and the shadows lengthen--the trees below
and the old barn throwing their shadows up the slope--the eye is
deceived by the position of the light and the hill seems much higher and
steeper, looking down from the summit, than it does at noonday.  It is
an optical delusion.  Here on the western side the grass is still dry--
in the deep narrow valleys behind the sun set long since over the
earthwork and ridge, and the dew is already gathering thickly on the
sward.

A broad green track runs for many a long, long mile across the downs,
now following the ridges, now winding past at the foot of a grassy
slope, then stretching away through cornfield and fallow.  It is
distinct from the waggon-tracks which cross it here and there, for these
are local only, and if traced up land the wayfarer presently in a maze
of fields, or end abruptly in the rickyard of a lone farmhouse.  It is
distinct from the hard roads of modern construction which also at wide
intervals cross its course, dusty and glaringly white in the sunshine.
It is not a farm track--you may walk for twenty miles along it over the
hills; neither is it the king's highway.

For seven long miles in one direction there is not so much as a wayside
tavern; then the traveller finds a little cottage, with a bench under a
shady sycamore and a trough for a thirsty horse, situate where three
such modern roads (also lonely enough) cross the old green track.  Far
apart, and far away from its course hidden among their ricks and trees a
few farmsteads stand, and near them perhaps a shepherd's cottage:
otherwise it is an utter solitude, a vast desert of hill and plain;
silent too, save for the tinkle of a sheep bell, or, in the autumn, the
moaning hum of a distant threshing machine rising and falling on the
wind.

The origin of the track goes back into the dimmest antiquity; there is
evidence that it was a military road when the fierce Dane carried fire
and slaughter inland, leaving his `nailed bark' in the creeks of the
rivers, and before that when the Saxons pushed up from the sea.  The
eagles of old Rome, perhaps, were borne along it, and yet earlier the
chariots of the Britons may have used it--traces of all have been found;
so that for fifteen centuries this track of the primitive peoples has
maintained its existence through the strange changes of the times, till
now in the season the cumbrous steam-ploughing engines jolt and strain
and pant over the uneven turf.

To-day, entering the ancient way, eight miles or so from the great
earthwork, hitherto the central post of observation, I turn my face once
more towards its distant rampart, just visible, showing over the hills a
line drawn against the sky.  Here, whence I start, is another such a
camp, with mound and fosse; beyond the one I have more closely described
some four miles is still a third, all connected by the same green track
running along the ridges of the downs and entirely independent of the
roads of modern days.  They form a chain of forts on the edge of the
down-land overlooking the vale.  At starting the track is but just
distinguishable from the general sward of the hill: the ruts are
overgrown with grass--but the tough `tussocky' kind, in which the hares
hide, avoids the path, and by its edge marks the way.  Soon the ground
sinks, and then the cornfields approach, extending on either hand--
barley, already bending under the weight of the awn, swaying with every
gentle breath of air, stronger oats and wheat, broad squares of swede
and turnip and dark-green mangold.

Plough and harrow press hard on the ancient track, and yet dare not
encroach upon it.  With varying width, from twenty to fifty yards, it
runs like a green riband through the sea of corn--a width that allows a
flock of sheep to travel easily side by side, spread abroad, and snatch
a bite as they pass.  Dry, shallow trenches full of weeds, and low
narrow mounds, green also, divide it from the arable land; and on these
now and then grow storm-stunted hawthorn bushes, gnarled and aged.  On
the banks the wild thyme grows in great bunches, emitting an exquisite
fragrance--luxurious cushions these to rest upon beneath the shade of
the hawthorn, listening to the gentle rustle of the wheat as the wind
rushes over it.  Away yonder the shadows of the clouds come over the
ridge, and glide with seeming sudden increase of speed down-hill, then
along the surface of the corn, darkening it as they pass, with a bright
band of light following swiftly behind.  It is gone, and the beech copse
away there is blackened for a moment as the shadow leaps it.  On the
smooth bark of those beeches the shepherd lads have cut their names with
their great clasp-knives.

Sometimes in the evening, later on, when the wheat is nearly ripe, such
a shepherd lad will sit under the trees there; and as you pass along the
track comes the mellow note of his wooden whistle, from which poor
instrument he draws a sweet sound.  There is no tune--no recognisable
melody: he plays from his heart and to himself.  In a room doubtless it
would seem harsh and discordant; but there, the player unseen, his
simple notes harmonise with the open plain, the looming hills, the ruddy
sunset as if striving to express the feelings these call forth.

Resting thus on the wild thyme under the hawthorn, partly hidden and
quite silent, we may see stealing out from the corn into the fallow hard
by first one, then two, then half a dozen or more young partridge
chicks.  With them is the anxious mother, watching the sky chiefly, lest
a hawk be hovering about; nor will she lead them far from the cover of
the wheat.  She stretches her neck up to listen and look: then,
reassured, walks on, her head nodding as she moves.  The little ones
crowd after, one darting this way, another that, learning their lesson
of life--how and where to find the most suitable food, how to hide from
the enemy: imitation of the parent developing hereditary inclinations.

At the slightest unwonted sound or movement, she first stretches her
neck up for a hurried glance, then, as the labouring folk say, `quats'--
i.e. crouches down--and in a second or two runs swiftly to cover, using
every little hollow of the ground skilfully for concealment on the way,
like a practised skirmisher.  The ants' nests, which are so attractive
to partridges, are found in great numbers along the edge of the
cornfields, being usually made on ground that is seldom disturbed.  The
low mounds that border the green track are populous with ants, whose
nests are scattered thickly on these banks, as also beside the paths and
waggon-tracks that traverse the fields and are not torn up by the
plough.  Any beaten track such as this old path, however green, is
generally free from them on its surface: ants avoid placing their nests
where they may be trampled upon.  This may often be noticed in gardens:
there are nests at and under the edge of the paths, but none where
people walk.  It is these nests in the banks and mounds which draw the
partridges so frequently from the middle of the fields to the edges
where they can be seen; they will come even to the banks of frequented
roads for the eggs of which they are so fond.

Now that their courting-time is over, the larks do not sing so
continuously.  Later on, when the ears of wheat are ripe and the reapers
are sharpening their sickles, if you walk here, with the corn on either
hand, every ten or twenty yards a cloud of sparrows and small birds will
rise from it, literally hiding the hawthorn bush on which they settle,
so that the green tree looks brown.  Wait a little while, and with
defiant chirps back they go, disappearing in the wheat.

The sparrows will sometimes flutter at the top of the stalk, hovering
for a few moments in one spot as if trying to perch on the ears; then,
grasping one with their claws, they sink with it and bear it to the
ground, where they can revel at their leisure.  A place where a
hailstorm or heavy rain has beat down and levelled the tall corn flat is
the favourite spot for these birds; they rise from it in hundreds at a
time.  But some of the finches are probably searching for the ripe seeds
of the weeds that spring up among the corn; they find also a feast of
insects.

Leaving now the gnarled hawthorn and the cushion of thyme, I pass a
deserted sheep-pen, where in the early year the tender lambs were
sheltered from the snow and wind.  Mile after mile, and still no sign of
human life--everywhere silence, solitude.  Hill after hill and plain
after plain.  Presently the turf is succeeded by a hard road--flints
ground down into dust by broad waggon-wheels bearing huge towering loads
of wool or heavy wheat.  Just here the old track happens to answer the
purposes of modern civilisation.  Fast this, and again it reverts to
turf, leaving now the hills for a mile or two to cross a plain lying
between a semicircle of downs; and here at last are hedges of hawthorn
and hazel and stunted crab tree.

Round black marks upon the turf, with grey ashes scattered about and
half-consumed sticks, show where the gipsies have recently bivouacked,
sheltered somewhat at night by the hedges.  Near by is an ancient
tumulus, on which grows a small yet obviously aged sycamore tree,
stunted by wind and storm, and under it the holes of rabbits--drilling
their habitations into the tomb of the unknown warrior.  In his day,
perhaps, the green track wound through a pathless wood long since
cleared.  Soon the hedges all but disappear, the ground rises once more,
nearing the hills; and here the way widens out--first fifty, then a
hundred yards across--green sward dotted with furze and some brake fern,
and bunches of tough dry grass.  Above on the summit is another ancient
camp, and below two more turf-grown tumuli, low and shaped like an
inverted bowl.  Many more have been ploughed down, doubtless, in the
course of the years: sometimes still, as the share travels through the
soil there is a sudden jerk, and a scraping sound of iron against stone.

The ploughman eagerly tears away the earth, and moves the stone to find
a thin jar, as he thinks--in fact, a funeral urn.  Like all uneducated
people, in the far East as well as in the West, he is imbued with the
idea of finding hidden treasure, and breaks the urn in pieces to
discover--nothing; it is empty.  He will carry the fragments home to the
farm, when, after a moment's curiosity, they will be thrown aside with
potsherds, and finally used to mend the floor of the cowpen.  The track
winds away yet further, over hill after hill; but a summer's day is not
long enough to trace it to the end.

In the narrow valley, far below the frowning ramparts of the ancient
fort that has been more specially described, a beautiful spring breaks
forth.  Three irregularly circular green spots, brighter in colour than
the dry herbage around, mark the outlets of the crevices in the earth
through which the clear water finds its way to the surface.  Three tiny
threads of water, each accompanied by its riband of verdant grasses,
meander downwards some few yards, and then unite and form a little
stream.  Then the water in its channel first becomes visible, glistening
in the sun; for at the sources the aquatic grasses bend over, growing
thickly, and hide it from view.  But pressing these down, and parting
them with the hand, you may trace the exact place where it rises, gently
oozing forth without a sound.

Lower down, where the streamlet is stronger and has worn a groove--now
rushing over a floor of tiny flints, now partly buoyed up and chafing
against a smooth round lump of rubble--there is a pleasant murmur
audible at a short distance.  Still farther from the source, where,
grown wider, the shallow water shoots swiftly over a steeper gradient,
the undulations of its surface cross each other, plaiting a pattern like
four strands interwoven.  The resemblance to the pattern of four rushes
which the country children delight to plait together as they wander by
the brooks is so close as almost to suggest the derivation of the art of
weaving rushes, flags, and willows by the hand.  The sheep grazing at
will in the coombe eat off the herbage too closely to permit of many
flowers.  Where the springs join and irrigate a broader strip there
grows a little watercress, and some brooklime, said to be poisonous and
occasionally mistaken for the cress; a stray cuckoo-flower shows its
pale lilac petals in spring, and a few bunches of rushes are scattered
round.  They do not reach any height or size; they seem dry and sapless,
totally unlike the tall green succulent rush of the meadows far below.

A water-wagtail comes now and then; sometimes the yellow variety, whose
colour in the spring is so bright as to cause the bird to resemble the
yellowhammer at the first glance.  But besides these the spring-head is
not much-frequented by birds; perhaps the clear water attracts less
visible insect life, and, the shore of the stream being hard and dry,
there is no moisture where grubs and worms may work their way.  Behind
the fountain the steep green wall of the coombe rises almost
perpendicularly--so steep as not to be climbed without exertion.  At the
summit are the cornfields of the level plain which here so suddenly
sinks without warning.  The plough has been drawn along all but on the
very edge, and the tall wheat nods at the verge.  From thence a strong
arm might send a flat round stone skimming across to the other side of
the narrow hollow, and its winding course is apparent.

Like a deep groove it cuts a channel up towards the hills, becoming
narrower as it approaches; and the sides diminish in height, till at the
neck a few rails and a gate can close it, being scarcely broader than a
waggon-track.  There, at the foot of the down, it ends, overlooked by a
barn, the home of innumerable sparrows, whose nests are made under the
eaves, everywhere their keen eyes can find an aperture large enough to
squeeze into.

Looking down the steep side of the coombe, near the bottom there runs
along a projecting ledge, or terrace, like a natural footway.  On the
opposite side is another corresponding ledge, or green turf-covered
terrace; these follow the windings of the valley, decreasing in width as
it diminishes, and gradually disappearing.  In its broadest part one of
them is used as a waggon-track, for which it is admirably adapted, being
firm and hard, even smoother than the bottom of the coombe itself.  If
it were possible to imagine the waters of a tidal river rising and
ebbing up and down this hollow these ledges would form its banks.  Their
regular shape is certainly remarkable, and they are not confined to this
one place.  Such steep-sided narrow hollows are found all along the edge
of this range of downs, where they slope to the larger valley which
stretches out to the horizon.  There are at least ten of them in a space
of twelve miles, many having similar springs of water and similar
terrace-like ledges, more or less perfect.  Towards the other extremity
of this particular coombe--where it widens before opening on the
valley--the spring spreads and occupies a wider channel, beside which
there is a strip of osier-bed.

When at the fountain-head, and looking down the current the end of the
coombe westwards away from the hills seems to open to the sky; for the
ground falls rapidly, and the trees hide any trace of human habitation.
The silent hills close in the rear, capped by the old fort; the silent
cornfields come to the very edge above; the silent steep green walls
rise on either hand, so near together that the swallows in the blue
atmosphere high overhead only come into sight for a second as they shoot
swiftly across.  In the evening the red sun, enlarged and bulging as if
partly flattened, hangs suspended, as it seems, at the very mouth of the
trough-like hollow.  It is natural in the silence and the solitude for
thoughts of the lapse of time to arise--of the endless centuries since,
by some slow geological process, this hollow was formed.  Fifteen
hundred years ago the men of the camp above came hither to draw water;
still the spring oozes and flows, and the sun sinks at the western
mouth.  So too, doubtless, the sun shone into the hollow in the evening
cycle upon cycle ere then.

Up the blade of grass here a tiny white-shelled snail has crawled,
feeling in its dull, dim way that evening is approaching.  The coils of
the little shell are exquisitely turned--the workmanship is perfect; the
creature within, there can be no question, is equally perfect in its way
and finds a joy in the plants on which it feeds.  On the ground below,
hidden among the fibres near the roots of the grass, lies another tiny
shell; but it is empty, the life that once animated it has fled--
whither?  Presently the falling dew will condense upon it, and at the
opening one round drop will stand; after awhile to add its mite to the
ceaseless flow of the fountain.  Could any system of notation ever
express the number of these creatures that have existed in the past?  If
time is measured by the duration of life, reckoned by their short spans
eternity upon eternity has gone by.  To me the greatest marvel is the
countless, the infinite number of the organisms that have existed, each
with its senses and feelings, whose bodies now help to build up the
solid crust of the earth.  These tiny shells have had millions of
ancestors: Nature seems never weary of repeating the same model.

In the osier-bed the brook-sparrow chatters; there, too, the first
pollard willow stands, or rather leans, hollow and aged, across the
water.  This tree is the outpost of a thousand others that line the
banks of the stream for mile after mile yonder down in the valley.  How
quickly this little fountain grows into a streamlet and then to a
considerable brook!--without apparently receiving the waters of any
feeders.  In the first half-mile it swells sufficiently, if bayed up
properly, to drive a mill--as, indeed, many of the springs issuing from
these coombes do just below the mouth.  In little more than a mile,
measuring by its windings, it becomes broad enough to require some
effort to leap it, and then deepens into a fair-sized brook.

The rapidity of the increase is accounted for by the fact that every
field it passes whose surface inclines towards it is a watershed from
which an unseen but considerable drainage takes place.  When no brook
passes through the fields the water stands and soaks downwards, or
evaporates slowly: directly a ditch is opened it fills, and the effect
of a stream is not only to collect water till then unseen, but to
preserve it from evaporation or disappearance into the subsoil.
Probably, if it were possible to start an artificial stream in many
places, after a while it would almost keep itself going at times,
provided, of course, that the bottom was not porous.  Below the mouth of
the coombe the water has worn itself a channel quite six feet deep in
the chalk--washing out the flints that now lie at the bottom.  Hawthorn
bushes bend over it, and great briars uncut since their first shoot was
put forth; the elder, too, grows luxuriously, whose white flowers,
emitting a rich but sickly odour, the village girls still gather to make
elder-water to remove freckles.  These bushes hide the deep gully in
which the current winds its way--so deep that no cattle can get down to
drink.

A cottage stands on the very edge a little further along; the residents
do not dip their water from the running stream, but have made a small
pool beside it, with which no doubt it communicates, for the pool, or
`dipping-place,' is ever full of cool, clear, limpid water.  The plan is
not without its advantages, because the stream itself, though usually
clear, is liable to become foul from various causes--such as a flood,
when it is white from suspended chalk, or from cattle higher up above
the gully coming to slake their thirst and stirring the sandy grit of
the bottom.  But the little pool long remains clear, because the water
from the stream to enter it has to strain itself through the narrow
partition of chalky rubble.

So limpid is the current in general, that the idea of seeing trout
presently when it shall widen out naturally arises.  But before then the
soil changes, and clay and loam spoil the clean, sandy, or gravelly
bottom trout delight in.  In one such stream hard by, however, the
experiment of keeping trout has been tried, and with some success: it
could be done without a doubt if it were not that after a short course
all the streams upon this side of the downs enter the meadows, and
immediately run over a mud bottom.  With care, a few young fish were
maintained in the upper waters, but it was only as an experiment; left
to themselves they would speedily disappear, and of course no angling
could be thought of.

On the opposite side of the range of hills, where they decline in height
somewhat, but still roll on for a great distance, the contrary is the
case.  The springs that run in that direction pass over a soil that
gives a good clear bottom, and gradually assume the character of rivers;
narrow, indeed, and shallow, but clear, sweet, and beautiful.  There, as
you wander over the down, and push your way through one of those
extensive nutwoods which grow on the hills, acres and acres of hazel
bushes, suddenly you come to the edge of a steep cliff, falling all but
perpendicularly, and lo! at the foot is a winding river, bordered by
broad green meads dotted with roan-and-white cattle.

Here in the season the angler may be seen skilfully tempting the
speckled trout.  Across the meads a grove of elm and oak, and the dull
red of old houses dimly seen between, and the low dark crenellated tower
of a village church.  Behind the downs rise again, their slopes in
spring a mass of colour--green corn, squares of bright yellow mustard,
bright crimson trifolium, and brown fallows.


CHAPTER FOUR.

THE VILLAGE--THE WASHPOOL--VILLAGE INDUSTRIES--THE BELFRY--JACKDAWS--
VILLAGE CHRONICLES.

A short distance below the cottagers' `dipping-place' just mentioned,
the same stream, leaving the deep groove or gully, widens suddenly into
a large clear pool, shaded by two tall fir trees and an equally tall
poplar.  The tops of these trees are nearly level with the plain above
the verdant valley in which the stream flows, and, being side by side,
the difference in the manner of their growth is strongly contrasted.
The branches of the fir gracefully depend, as if weighted downwards by
the burden of the heavy deep green fringe they carry--a fringe tipped
with bullion in the spring, for the young shoots are of so light a green
as to shade into a pale yellow.  The branches of the poplar, on the
contrary, point upwards--growing nearly vertically; so that the outline
of the tree resembles the tip of an immensely exaggerated artist's
brush.  This formation is ill adapted for nest-building, as it affords
little or no surface to build on, and so the poplar is but seldom used
by birds.

The pool beneath is approached by a broad track--it cannot be called
road--trampled into innumerable small holes by the feet of flocks of
sheep, driven down here from the hills for the periodical washing.  At
that time the roads are full of sheep day after day, all tending in the
same direction; and the little wayside inns, and those of the village
which closely adjoins the washpool, find a sudden increase of custom
from the shepherds.  There is no written law regulating the washing, but
custom has fixed it as firmly as an Act of Parliament: each shepherd
knows his day, and takes his turn, and no one attempts to interfere with
the monopoly of the men who throw the sheep in.  The right of wash here
is upheld as sternly as if it were a bulwark of the Constitution.

Sometimes a landowner or a farmer, anxious to make improvements, tries
to enclose the approach or to utilise the water in fertilising meadows,
or in one way or another to introduce an innovation.  He thinks perhaps
that education, the spread of modern ideas, and the fact that labourers
travel nowadays, have weakened the influence of tradition.  He finds
himself entirely mistaken: the men assemble and throw down the fence, or
fill up the new channel that has been dug; and, the general sympathy of
the parish being with them and the interest of the sheep-farmers behind
them to back them up, they always carry the day, and old custom rules
supreme.

The sheep greatly dislike water.  The difficulty is to get them in;
after the dip they get out fast enough.  Only if driven by a strange
dog, and unable to escape on account of a wall or enclosure, will they
ever rush into a pond.  If a sheep gets into a brook and cannot get
out--his narrow feet sink deep into the mud--should he not be speedily
relieved he will die, even though his head be above water, from chill
and fright.  Cattle, on the other hand, love to stand in water on a warm
day.

In rubbing together and struggling with the shepherds and their
assistants a good deal of wool is torn from the sheep and floats down
the current.  This is caught by a net stretched across below, and
finally comes into the possession of one or two old women of the
village, who seem to have a prescriptive right to it on payment of a
small toll for beer-money.  These women are also on the look-out during
the year for such stray scraps of wool as they can pick up from the
bushes beside the roads and lanes much travelled by sheep--also from the
tall thistles and briars, where they have got through a gap.  This wool
is more or less stained by the weather and by particles of dust but it
answers the purpose, which is the manufacture of mops.

The old-fashioned wool mop is still a necessary adjunct of the
farmhouse, and especially the dairy, which has to be constantly
`swilled' out and mopped clean.  With the ancient spinning-wheel they
work up the wool thus gathered; and so, even at this late day, in odd
nooks and corners, the wheel may now and then be found.  The peculiar
broad-headed nail which fastens the mop to the stout ashen `steale,' or
handle, is also made in the village.  I spell `steale' by conjecture,
and according to pronunciation.  It is used also of a rake: instead of a
rake-handle they say rake-steale.  Having made the mops, the women go
round with them to the farmhouses of the district, knowing their regular
customers--who prefer to buy of them, not only as a little help to the
poor, but because the mops are really very strongly made.

In the meadows of the vale the waters of the same stream irrigate
numerous scattered withy-beds, pollard willow trees, and tall willow
poles growing thickly in the hedges by the brook.  The most suitable of
these poles are purchased from the farmers by the willow handicraftsmen
of the village up here, to be split into thin flexible strips and
plaited or woven into various articles.  These strips are made into
ladies' workbaskets and endless knick-knacks.  The flexibility of the
willow is surprising when reduced to these narrow pieces, scarcely
thicker than stout paper.  This industry used to keep many hands
employed.  There were willow-looms in the village, and to show their
dexterity the weavers sometimes made a shirt of willow--of course only
as a curiosity.  The development of straw weaving greatly interfered
with this business; and now it is followed by a few only, who are
chiefly engaged in preparing the raw material to go elsewhere.

From the ash woods on the slopes, and the copses, of the fields, large
ash-poles are brought, which one or two old men in the place spend their
time splitting up for `flakes'--a `flake' being a frame of light wood,
used after the manner of a hurdle to stop a gap, or pitched in a row to
part a field into two.  Hurdle-making is another industry; but of late
years hurdles have been made on a large scale by master carpenters in
the market towns, who employ several men, and undersell the village
maker.

The wheelwright is perhaps the busiest man in the place; he not only
makes and mends waggon and cart wheels, and the body of those vehicles,
but does almost every other kind of carpentering.  Sometimes he combines
the trade of a builder with it--if he has a little capital--and puts up
cottages, barns, sheds, etc, and his yard is strewn with timber.  There
is generally a mason, who goes about from farm to farm mending walls and
pigsties, and all such odd jobs, working for his own hand.

The blacksmith of course is there--sometimes more than one--usually with
plenty to do; for modern agriculture uses three times as much machinery
and ironwork as was formerly the case.  At first the blacksmiths did not
understand how to mend many of these new-fangled machines, but they have
learned a good deal, though some of the pieces still have to be replaced
from the implement factories if broken.  Horses come trooping in to have
new shoes put on.  Sometimes a village blacksmith acquires a fame for
shoeing horses which extends far beyond his forge, and gentlemen
residing in the market towns send out their horses to him to be shod.
He still uses a ground-ash sapling to hold the short chisel with which
he cuts off the glowing iron on the anvil.  He keeps bundles of the
young, pliant ground-ash sticks, which twist easily and are peculiarly
tough; and, taking one of these, with a few turns of his wrist winds it
round the chisel so as to have a long handle.  One advantage of the wood
is that it `gives' a little and does not jar when struck.

The tinker, notwithstanding his vagrant habits, is sometimes a man of
substance, owning two or more small cottages, built out of his savings
by the village mason--the materials perhaps carted for him free by a
friendly fanner.  When sober and steady, he has a capital trade: his
hands are never idle.  Milk-tins, pots, pans, etc, constantly need
mending; he travels from door to door, and may be seen sitting on a
stool in the cart-house in the farmyard, tinkering on his small portable
anvil, with two or three cottagers' children--sturdy, yellow-haired
youngsters--intently watching the mystery of the craft.

In despite of machine-sewn boots and their cheapness, the village
cobbler is still an institution, and has a considerable number of
patrons.  The labourers working in the fields need a boot that will keep
out the damp, and for that purpose it must be hand-sewn: the cobbler,
having lived among them all his life, understands what is wanted better
than the artisan of the cities, and knows how to stud the soles with
nails and cover toe and heel with plates till the huge boot is literally
iron-clad.  Even the children wear boots which for their size are
equally heavy: many of the working farmers also send theirs to be
repaired.  The only thing to be remembered in dealing with a village
cobbler is, if you want a pair of boots, to order them six months
beforehand, or you will be disappointed.  The business occupies him
about as long as it takes a shipwright to build a ship.

Under the trees of the lane that connects one part of the village with
another stands a wooden post once stout now decaying; and opposite it at
some distance the remnants of a second.  This was a rope-walk, but has
long since fallen into disuse; the tendency of the age having for a long
time been to centralise industry of all kinds.  It is true that of late
years many manufacturers have found it profitable to remove their
workshops from cities into the country, the rent of premises being so
much less, water to be got by sinking a well, less rates, and wages a
little cheaper.  They retain a shop and office in the cities, but have
the work done miles away.  But even this is distinctly associated with
centralisation.  The workmen are merely paid human machines; they do not
labour for their own hands in their own little shops at home, or as the
rope-maker slowly walked backwards here, twisting the hemp under the
elms of the lane, afterwards, doubtless, to take the manufactured
article himself to market and offer his wares for sale from a stand in
the street.

The millwright used to be a busy man here and there in the villages, but
the railways take the wheat to the steam mills of cities, and where the
water-mills yet run, ironwork has supplanted wood.  In some few places
still the women and girls are employed making gloves of a coarse kind,
doing the work at home in their cottages; but the occupation is now
chiefly carried on nearer to the great business centres than this.
Another extinct trade is that of the bell foundry.  One village situate
in the hills hard by was formerly celebrated for the church bells cast
there, many of which may be found in far distant towers ringing to this
day.

Near the edge of the hill, just above the washpool, stands the village
church.  Old and grey as it is, yet the usage of the pool by the
shepherds dates from still earlier days.  Like some of the farmhouses
further up among the hills, the tower is built of flints set in cement,
which in the passage of time has become almost as hard as the flint
itself.  The art of chipping flint to a face for the purpose of making
lines or patterns in walls used to be carried to great perfection, and
even old garden walls may be seen so ornamented.

The tower is large and tall, and the church a great one; or so it
appears in comparison with the small population of the place.  But it
may be that when it was built there were more inhabitants; for some
signs remain that here--as in many other such villages--the people have
decreased in numbers: the population has shifted elsewhere.  An adjacent
parish lying just under the downs has now not more than fifty
inhabitants; yet in the olden time a church stood there--long since
dismantled: the ancient churchyard is an orchard, no one being permitted
to dig or plough the ground.

Entering the tower by the narrow nail-studded door, it is not so easy to
ascend the winding geometrical stone staircase, in the confined space
and the darkness, for the arrow-slits are choked with cobwebs and the
dust of years.  A faint fluttering sound comes from above, as of wings
beating the air in a confined space--it is the jackdaws in the belfry;
just as the starlings and swallows in the huge old-fashioned chimneys
make a similar murmuring noise before they settle.  Passing a slit or
two--the only means of marking the height which has been reached--and
the dull tick of the old clock becomes audible: slow and accompanied
with a peculiar grating vibration, as if the frame of the antique works
had grown tremulous with age.  The dial-plate outside is square, placed
at an angle to the perpendicular lines of the tower: the gilding of the
hour-marks has long since tarnished and worn away before the storms, and
they are now barely distinguishable; and it is difficult to tell the
precise time by the solitary pointer, there being no minute hand.

Past another slit, and the narrow stone steps--you must take care to
keep close to the outer wall where they are widest, for they narrow to
the central pillar--are scooped out by the passage of feet during the
centuries; some, too, are broken, and others are slippery with something
that rolls and gives under the foot.  It is a number of little sticks
and twigs which have fallen down from the jackdaws' nests above: higher
up the steps are literally covered with them, so that you have to kick
them aside before you can conveniently ascend.  These sticks are nearly
all of the same size, brown and black from age and the loss of the sap,
the bark remaining on.  It is surprising how the birds contrive to find
so many suitable to their purpose, searching about under the trees; for
they do not break them off, but take those that have fallen.

The best place for finding these sticks--and those the rooks use--is
where a tree has been felled or a thick hedge cut some months before.
In cutting up the smaller branches into faggots the men necessarily
frequently step on them, and so break off innumerable twigs too short to
be tied up in the bundle.  After they have finished faggoting, the women
rake up the fragments for their cottage fires; and later on, as the
spring advances, the birds come for the remaining twigs, of which great
quantities are left.  These they pick up from among the grass; and it is
noticeable that they like twigs that are dead but not decayed: they do
not care for them when green, and reject them when rotten.  Have they
discovered that green wood shrinks in drying, and that rotten wood is
untrustworthy?  Rooks, jackdaws, and pigeons find their building
materials in this way, where trees or hedges have been cut; yet even
then it must require some patience.  They use also a great deal of
material rearranged from the nests of last year--that is, rooks and
jackdaws.

Stepping out at last into the belfry, be careful how you tread; for the
flooring is worm-eaten, and here and there planks are loose: keep your
foot, if possible, on the beams, which at least are fixed.  It is a
giddy height to fall from down to the stone pavement below, where the
ringers stand.  Their ropes are bound round with list or cloth, or some
such thing, for a better grasp for the hand.  High as it is to this the
first floor, if you should attempt to ring one of these bells, and
forget to let the rope slip quickly, it will jerk you almost to the
ceiling: thus many a man has broken his bones close to the font where he
was christened as a child.

Against the wall up here are iron clamps to strengthen the ancient
fabric, settling somewhat in its latter days; and, opening the
worm-eaten door of the clock-case--the key stands in it--you may study
the works of the old clock for a full hour, if so it please you; for the
clerk is away labouring in the field, and his aged wife, who produced
the key of the church and pointed the nearest way across the meadow, has
gone to the spring.  The ancient building, standing lonely on the hill,
is utterly deserted; the creak of the boards under foot or the grate of
the rusty hinge sounds hollow and gloomy.  But a streak of sunlight
enters from the arrow-slit, a bee comes in through the larger open
windows with a low inquiring buzz; there is a chattering of
sparrows, the peculiar shrill screech of the swifts, and a
`jack-jack-daw-jack-daw'-ing outside.  The sweet scent of clover and of
mown grass comes upon the light breeze--mayhap the laughter of haymakers
passing through the churchyard underneath to their work, and idling by
the way as haymakers can idle.

The name of the maker on the clock shows that it was constructed in a
little market town a few miles distant a century ago, before industries
were centralised and local life began to lose its individuality.  There
are sparrows' nests on the wooden case over it, and it is stopped now
and then by feathers getting into the works: it matters nothing here;
_Festina lente_ is the village motto, and time is little regarded.  So,
if you wish, take a rubbing, with heelball borrowed from the cobbler, of
the inscriptions round the rims of the great bells; but be careful even
then, for the ringers have left one carelessly tilted, and if the rope
should slip, nineteen hundredweight of brazen metal may jam you against
the framework.

The ringers are an independent body, rustics though they be--
monopolists, not to be lightly ordered about, as many a vicar has found
to his cost, having a silent belfry for his pains, and not a man to be
got, either, from adjacent villages.  It is about as easy to knock this
solid tower over with a walking-stick as to change village customs.  But
if towards Christmas you should chance to say to the ringers that such
and such a chime seemed rung pleasantly, be certain that you will hear
it night after night coming with a throbbing joyfulness through the
starlit air--every note of the peal rising clear and distinct at the
exact moment of time, as if struck by machinery, yet with a quivering
undertone that dwells on the ear after the wave of sound has gone.  Then
go out and walk in the garden or field, for it is a noble music;
remember, too, that it is a music that has echoed from the hills
hundreds and hundreds of years.  Rude men as they are, these bellringers
gratefully respond to the least appreciation of their art.

A few more turns about the spiral staircase, and then step out on the
roof.  The footstep is deadened by the dull coloured lead, oxidised from
exposure.  The tarnished weathercock above revolves so stiffly as to be
heedless of the light air,--only facing a strong breeze.  The irreverent
jackdaws, now wheeling round at a safe distance, build in every coign of
vantage, no matter how incongruous their intrusion may be--on the wings
of an angel, behind the flowing robe of Saint Peter, or yonder in the
niche, grey and lichen-grown, where stood the Virgin Mary before
iconoclastic hands dashed her image to the ground.  If a gargoyle be
broken or choked so that no water comes through it, they will use it,
but not otherwise.  And they have nests, too, just on the ledge in the
thickness of the wall, outside those belfry windows which are partially
boarded up.  Anywhere, in short, high up and well sheltered, suits the
jackdaw.

When nesting time is over, jackdaws seem to leave the church and roost
with the rooks; they use the tower much as the rooks do their hereditary
group of trees at a distance from the wood they sleep in at other
seasons.  How came the jackdaw to make its nest on church towers in the
first place?  The bird has become so associated with churches that it is
difficult to separate the two; yet it is certain that the bird preceded
the building.  Archaeologists tell us that stone buildings of any
elevation, whether for religious purposes or defence, were not erected
till a comparatively late date in this island.  Now, the low huts of
primeval peoples would hardly attract the jackdaw.  It is the argument
of those who believe in immutable and infallible instinct that the
habits of birds, etc, are unchangeable: the bee building a cell to-day
exactly as it built one centuries before our era.  Have we not here,
however, a modification of habit?

The jackdaw could not have originally built in tall stone buildings.
Localising the question to this country, may we not almost fix the date
when the jackdaw began to use the church, or the battlements of the
tower, by marking the time of their first erection?  The jackdaw was
clever enough, and had reason sufficient to enable him to see how these
high, isolated positions suited his peculiar habits; and I am bold
enough to think that if the bee could be shown a better mode of building
her comb, she would in time come to use it.

In the churchyard, not far from the foot of the tower where the jackdaws
are so busy, stands a great square tomb, built of four slabs of stone on
edge and a broader one laid on the top.  The inscription is barely
legible, worn away by the ironshod heels of generations of ploughboys
kicking against it in their rude play, and where they have not chipped
it, filled with lichen.  The sexton says that this tomb in the olden
days was used as the pay-table upon which the poor received their weekly
dole.  His father told him that he had himself stood there hungry, with
the rest--not broken-down cripples and widows, but strong, hale men,
waiting till the loaves were placed upon the broad slab, so that the
living were fed literally over the grave of the dead.

The farmers met every now and then in the vestry and arranged how many
men each would find work for--or rather partial work--so that the amount
of relief might be apportioned.  Men coming from a distance, or even
from the next parish, were jealously excluded from settling, lest there
should be more mouths to feed; if a family, on the other hand, could by
any possibility be got rid of, it was exiled.  There were more hands
than work; now the case is precisely opposite.  A grim witness, this old
tomb, to a traditionary fragment in that history of the people which is
now placed above a mere list of monarchs.

The oldest person in the village was a woman--as is often the case--
reputed to be over a hundred: a tidy cottager, well tended, feeble in
body, but brisk of tongue.  She reckoned her own age by the thatch of
the roof.  It had been completely new thatched five times since she
could recollect.  The first time she was a great girl, grown up: her
father had it thatched twice afterwards; her husband had it done the
fourth time, and the fifth was three years ago.  That made about a
hundred years altogether.

The straw had lasted better lately, because there were now no great elm
trees to drip, drip on it in wet weather.  Cottagers are frequently
really squatters, building on the waste land beside the highway close to
the hedgerow, and consequently under the trees.  This dripping on the
roof is very bad for thatch.  Straw is remarkably durable, even when
exposed to the weather, if good in the first place and well laid on.  It
may be reckoned to last twenty years on an average, perhaps more.  Five
thatchings, then, made eighty years; add three years since the last
thatching; and the old lady supposed she was seventeen or eighteen at
the first--i.e. just a century since.  But in all likelihood her
recollections of the first thatching were confused and uncertain: she
was perhaps eight or ten at that time, which would reduce her real age
to a little over ninety.  A great part of the village had twice been
destroyed by fire since she could remember.  These fires are or were
singularly destructive in villages--the flames running from thatch to
thatch, and, as they express it, `wrastling' across the intervening
spaces.  A pain is said to `wrastle,' or shoot and burn.  Such fires are
often caused by wood ashes from the hearth thrown on the dustheap while
yet some embers contain sufficient heat to fire straw or rubbish.

The old woman's memories were wholly of gossipy family history; I have
often found that the very aged have not half so much to tell as those of
about sixty to seventy years.  The next oldest was a man about eighty;
all he knew of history was that once on a time some traitor withdrew the
flints from the muskets of the English troops, substituting pieces of
wood, which, of course, would not ignite the powder, and thus they were
beaten.  Of date, place, or persons he had no knowledge.  He `minded' a
great snowfall when he was a boy, and helping to drag the coaches out
and making a firm road for them with hurdles.  Once while grubbing a
hedge near the road he found five shillings' worth of pennies--the great
old `coppers'--doubtless hidden by a thief.  He could not buy so much
with one of the new sort of coppers: liked them as King George made
best.

An old lady of about seventy, living at the village inn, a very brisk
body, seemed quite unable to understand what was meant by history, but
could tell me a story if I liked.  The story was a rambling narrative of
an amour in some foreign country.  The lady, to conceal a meeting with
her paramour, which took place in the presence of her son, who was an
imbecile (or, in her own words, had `no more sense than God gave him,' a
common country expression for a fool), went upstairs and rained raisins
on him from the window.  The son told the husband what had happened;
but, asked to specify the time, could only fix it by, `When it rained
raisins.'  This was supposed to be merely a fresh proof of his
imbecility, and the lady escaped.

In this imperfect narrative is there not a distorted version of a
chapter in the `Pentameron'?  But how did it get into the mind of an
illiterate old woman in an out-of-the-way village?  Nothing yet of
Waterloo, Culloden, Sedgmoor, or the civil war; but in the end an old
man declared that King Charles had once slept in an old house just about
to be pulled down.  But then `King Charles' slept according to local
tradition, in most of the old houses in the country.  However, I
resolved to visit the place.

Tall yew hedges, reaching high overhead, thick and impervious, such as
could only be produced in a hundred years of growth and countless
clippings, enclosing a green pleasaunce, the grass uncut for many a
year, weeds overrunning the smooth surface on which the bowls once
rolled true to their bias.  In the shelter of these hedges, upon the
sunny side, you might walk in early spring when the east wind is
harshest, without a breath penetrating to chill the blood, warm as
within a cloak of sables, enjoying that peculiar genial feeling which is
induced by sunshine at that period only, and which is somewhat akin to
the sense of convalescence after a weary illness.  Thus, sauntering to
and fro, your footstep, returning on itself, passed the thrush sitting
on her nest calm and confident.

No modern exotic evergreens ever attract our English birds like the true
old English trees and shrubs.  In the box and yew they love to build;
spindly laurels and rhododendrons, with vacant draughty spaces
underneath, they detest, avoiding them as much as possible.  The common
hawthorn hedge round a country garden shall contain three times as many
nests, and be visited by five times as many birds, as the foreign
evergreens, so costly to rear and so sure to be killed by the first
old-fashioned frost.

The thrushes are singularly fond of the yew berry; it is of a sticky
substance, sweet and not unpleasant.  Holly berries, too, are eaten; and
holly hedges, despite their prickly leaves, are favourites with garden
birds.  It would be possible, I think, to so plan out a garden as to
attract almost every feathered creature.

A fine old filbert walk extends far away towards the orchard: the
branches meet overhead.  In autumn the fruit hangs thick; and what is
more exquisite, when gathered from the bough and eaten, as all fruit
should be, on the spot?  I cannot understand why filbert walks are not
planted by our modern capitalists, who make nothing of spending a
thousand pounds in forcing-houses.  I cannot help thinking that true
taste consists in the selection of what is thoroughly characteristic of
soil and climate.  Those magnificent yew hedges, the filbert walk--all,
in fact are to be levelled to make way for a garish stucco-fronted
hunting-box, with staring red stables and every modern convenience.  The
sun-dial shaft is already heaved up and broken.

The old mansion was used as a grammar school for a great many years, but
has been deserted for the last quarter of a century; and melancholy
indeed are the silent hollow halls and dormitories.  The whitewashed
walls are yellow and green from damp, and covered in patches with
saltpetre efflorescence; but they still bear the hasty inscriptions
scrawled on them by boyish hands--some far back in the eighteenth
century.  The history of this little kingdom, with its dynasties of
tutors and masters, its succeeding generations of joyous youth, might be
gathered from these writings on the walls: sketches in burned stick or
charcoal of extinct monarchs of the desk; rude doggerel verses; curious
jingles of Latin and English words of which every great school has its
specimens; dates of day and month when doubtless some daring expedition
was carried out; and here and there (originally hidden behind furniture,
we may suppose) bitter words of hatred against the injustice of ruling
authorities--arbitrary ushers and cruel masters.

The casements, broken and blown in, have permitted all the winds of
heaven to wreak their will; and the storms sweeping over from the
adjacent downs beat as they choose upon the floor.  Within an upper
window--now obviously enough a wind-door--two swallows' nests have been
built against the wall close to the ceiling, and their pleasant twitter
greets you as you enter; and so does the whistling of the starlings on
the roof.  But without there, below, the ring of the bricklayer's trowel
as he chips a brick has already given them notice to quit.


CHAPTER FIVE.

VILLAGE ARCHITECTURE--THE COTTAGE PREACHER--COTTAGE SOCIETY--THE
SHEPHERD--EVENTS OF THE VILLAGE YEAR.

Some few farmhouses, with cow-yards and rickyards attached, are planted
in the midst of the village; and these have cottages occupied by the
shepherds and carters, or other labourers, who remain at work for the
same employer all the year.  These cottages are perhaps the best in the
place, larger and more commodious, with plenty of space round them, and
fair-sized gardens close to the door.  The system of hiring for a
twelvemonth has been bitterly attacked; but as a matter of fact there
can be no doubt that a man with a family is better off when settled in
one spot with constant employment, and any number of odd jobs for his
wife and children.  The cottages not attached to any particular farm--
belonging to various small owners--are generally much less convenient;
they are huddled together, and the footpaths and rights of way
frequently cross, and so lead to endless bickering.

Not the faintest trace of design can be found in the ground-plan of the
village.  All the odd nooks and corners seem to have been preferred for
building sites; and even the steep side of the hill is dotted with
cottages, with gardens at an angle of forty-five degrees or more, and
therefore difficult to work.  Here stands a group of elm trees; there
half-a-dozen houses; next a cornfield thrusting a long narrow strip into
the centre of the place; more cottages built with the back to the road,
and the front door opening just the other way; a small meadow, a well, a
deep lane, with banks built up of loose stone to prevent them slipping--
only broad enough for one waggon to pass at once--and with cottages high
above reached by steps; an open space where three more crooked lanes
meet; a turnpike gate, and, of course, a beerhouse hard by it.

Each of these crooked lanes has its group of cottages and its own
particular name; but all the lanes and roads passing through the village
are known colloquially as `the street'.  There is an individuality, so
to say, in these by-ways, and in the irregular architecture of the
houses, which does not exist in the straight rows, each cottage exactly
alike, of the modern blocks in the neighbourhood of cities.  And the
inhabitants correspond with their dwelling in this respect--most of
them, especially the elder folk, being `characters' in their way.

Such old-fashioned cottages are practically built around the chimney;
the chimney is the firm nucleus of solid masonry or brickwork about
which the low walls of rubble are clustered.  When such a cottage is
burned down the chimney is nearly always the only thing that remains,
and against the chimney it is built up again.  Next in importance is the
roof, which, rising from very low walls, really encloses half of the
inhabitable space.

The one great desire of the cottager's heart--after his garden--is
plenty of sheds and outhouses in which to store wood, vegetables, and
lumber of all kinds.  This trait is quite forgotten as a rule by those
who design `improved' cottages for gentlemen anxious to see the
labourers on their estates well lodged; and consequently the new
buildings do not give so much satisfaction as might be expected.  It is
only natural that to a man whose possessions are limited, things like
potatoes, logs of wood, chips, odds and ends should assume a value
beyond the appreciation of the well-to-do.  The point should be borne in
mind by those who are endeavouring to give the labouring class better
accommodation.

A cottage attached to a farmstead, which has been occupied by a steady
man who has worked on the tenancy for the best part of his life, and
possibly by his father before him, sometimes contains furniture of a
superior kind.  This has been purchased piece by piece in the course of
years, some representing a a little legacy--cottagers who have a trifle
of property are very proud of making wills--and some perhaps the last
remaining relics of former prosperity.  It is not at all uncommon to
find men like this, whose forefathers no great while since held farms,
and even owned them, but fell by degrees in the social scale, till at
last their grandchildren work in the fields for wages.  An old chair or
cabinet which once stood in the farmhouse generations ago is still
preserved.

Upon the shelf may be found a few books--a Bible, of course; hardly a
cottager who can read is without his Bible--and among the rest an
ancient volume of polemical theology, bound in leather; it dates back to
the days of the fierce religious controversies which raged in the period
which produced Cromwell.  There is a rude engraving of the author for
frontispiece, title in red letter, a tedious preface, and the text is
plentifully bestrewn with Latin and Greek quotations.  These add greatly
to its value in the cottager's eyes, for he still looks upon a knowledge
of Latin as the essential of a `scholard.'  This book has evidently been
handed down for many generations as a kind of heirloom, for on the blank
leaves may be seen the names of the owners with the inevitable addition
of `his' or `her book.'  It is remarkable that literature of this sort
should survive so long.

Even yet not a little of that spirit which led to the formation of so
many contending sects in the seventeenth century lingers in the cottage.
I have known men who seemed to reproduce in themselves the character of
the close-cropped soldiers who prayed and fought by turns with such
energy.  They still read the Bible in its most literal sense, taking
every word as addressed to them individually, and seriously trying to
shape their lives in accordance with their convictions.

Such a man, who has been labouring in the hay-field all day, in the
evening may be found exhorting a small but attentive congregation in a
cottage hard by.  Though he can but slowly wade through the book, letter
by letter, word by word, he has caught the manner of the ancient writer,
and expresses himself in an archaic style not without its effect.
Narrow as the view must be which is unassisted by education and its
broad sympathies, there is no mistaking the thorough earnestness of the
cottage preacher.  He believes what he says, and no persuasion,
rhetoric, or force could move him one jot.  His congregation approve his
discourse with groans and various ejaculations.  Men of this kind won
Cromwell's victories; but to-day they are mainly conspicuous for upright
steadiness and irreproachable moral character, mingled with some surly
independence.  They are not `agitators' in the current sense of the
term; the local agents of labour associations seem chosen from quite a
different class.

Pausing once to listen to such a man, who was preaching in a roadside
cottage in a loud and excited manner, I found he was describing, in
graphic if rude language, the procession of a martyr of the Inquisition
to the stake.  His imagination naturally led him to picture the
circumstances as corresponding to the landscape of fields with which he
had been from youth familiar.  The executioners were dragging the victim
bound along a footpath across the meadows to the pile which had been
prepared for burning him.  When they arrived at the first stile they
halted, and held an argument with the prisoner, promising him his life
and safety if he would recant, but he held to the faith.

Then they set out again, beating and torturing the sufferer along the
path, the crowd hissing and reviling.  At the next stile a similar scene
took place--promise of pardon, and scornful refusal to recant, followed
by more torture.  Again, at the third and last stile, the victim was
finally interrogated, and, still firmly clinging to his belief, was
committed to the flames in the centre of the field.  Doubtless there was
some historic basis for the story; but the preacher made it quite his
own by the vigour and life of the local colouring in which he clothed
it, speaking of the green grass, the flowers, the innocent sheep, the
faggots, and so on, bringing it home to the minds of his audience to
whom faggots and grass and sheep were so well known.  They worked
themselves into a state of intense excitement as the narrative
approached its climax, till a continuous moaning formed a deep undertone
to the speaker's voice.  Such men are not paid, trained, or organised;
they labour from goodwill in the cause.

Now and then a woman, too, may be found who lectures in the little
cottage room where ten or fifteen, perhaps twenty, are packed almost to
suffocation; or she prays aloud and the rest respond.  Sometimes, no
doubt, persons of little sincerity practise these things from pure
vanity and the ambition of preaching--for there is ambition in cottage
life as elsewhere; but the men and women I speak of are thoroughly in
earnest.

Cottagers have their own social creed and customs.  In their
intercourse, one point which seems to be insisted upon particularly is a
previous knowledge or acquaintance.  The very people whose morals are
known to be none of the strictest--and cottage morality is sometimes
very far from severe--will refuse, and especially the women, to admit a
strange girl, for instance, to sleep in their house for ample
remuneration, even when introduced by really respectable persons.
Servant-girls in the country where railways even now are few and far
between often walk long distances to see mistresses in want of
assistance, by appointment.  They get tired; perhaps night approaches
and then comes the difficulty, of lodging them if the house happens to
be full.  Cottagers make the greatest difficulty, unless by some chance
it should be discovered that they met the girl's uncle or cousin years
ago.

To their friends and neighbours, on the contrary, they are often very
kind, and ready to lend a helping hand.  If they seldom sit down to a
social gathering among themselves, it is because they see each other so
constantly during the day, working in the same fields, and perhaps
eating their luncheon a dozen together in the same outhouse.  A visitor
whom they know from the next village is ever welcome to what fare there
is.  On Sundays the younger men often set out to call on friends at a
distance of several miles, remaining with them all day; they carry with
them a few lettuces, or apples from the tree in the garden (according to
the season), wrapped up in a coloured handkerchief, as a present.

Some of the older shepherds still wear the ancient blue smock-frock,
crossed with white `facings' like coarse lace; but the rising generation
use the greatcoat of modern make, at which their forefathers would have
laughed as utterly useless in the rain-storms that blow across the open
hills.  Among the elder men, too, may be found a few of the huge
umbrellas of a former age, which when spread give as much shelter as a
small tent.  It is curious that they rarely use an umbrella in the
field, even when simply standing about; but if they go a short journey
along the highway, then they take it with them.  The aged men sling
these great umbrellas over the shoulder with a piece of tar-cord, just
as a soldier slings his musket, and so have both hands free--one to
stump along with a stout stick and the other to carry a flag basket.
The stick is always too lengthy to walk with as men use it in cities,
carrying it by the knob or handle; it is a staff rather than a stick,
the upper end projecting six or eight inches above the hand.

If any labourers deserve to be paid well, it is the shepherds: upon
their knowledge and fidelity the principal profit of a whole season
depends on so many farms.  On the bleak hills in lambing time the
greatest care is necessary; and the fold, situated in a hollow if
possible, with the down rising on the east or north, is built as it were
of straw walls, thick and warm, which the sheep soon make hollow inside,
and thus have a cave in which to nestle.

The shepherd has a distinct individuality, and is generally a much more
observant man in his own sphere than the ordinary labourer.  He knows
every single field in the whole parish, what kind of weather best suits
its soil, and can tell you without going within sight of a given farm
pretty much what condition it will be found in.  Knowledge of this
character may seem trivial to those whose days are passed indoors; yet
it is something to recollect all the endless fields in several square
miles of country.  As a student remembers for years the type and paper,
the breadth of the margin--can see, as it were, before his eyes the
bevel of the binding and hear again the rustle of the stiff leaves of
some tall volume which he found in a forgotten corner of a library, and
bent over with such delight, heedless of dust and `silver-fish' and the
gathered odour of years--so the shepherd recalls _his_ books, the
fields; for he, in the nature of things, has to linger over them and
study every letter: sheep are slow.

When the hedges are grubbed and the grass grows where the hawthorn
flowered, still the shepherd can point out to you where the trees
stood--here an oak and here an ash.  On the hills he has often little to
do but ponder deeply, sitting on the turf of the slope, while the sheep
graze in the hollow, waiting for hours as they eat their way.  Therefore
by degrees a habit of observation grows upon him--always in reference to
his charge; and if he walks across the parish off duty he still cannot
choose but notice how the crops are coming on, and where there is most
`keep.'  The shepherd has been the last of all to abandon the old custom
of long service.  While the labourers are restless, there may still be
found not a few instances of shepherds whose whole lives have been spent
upon one farm.  Thus, from the habit of observation and the lapse of
years, they often become local authorities; and when a dispute of
boundaries or water rights or right of way arises, the question is
frequently finally decided by the evidence of such a man.

Every now and then a difficulty happens in reference to the old green
lanes and bridle-tracks which once crossed the country in every
direction, but get fewer in number year by year.  Sometimes it is
desired to enclose a section of such a track to round off an estate:
sometimes a path has grown into a valuable thoroughfare through increase
of population; and then the question comes, Who is to repair it?  There
is little or no documentary evidence to be found--nothing can be traced
except through the memories of men; and so they come to the old
shepherd, who has been stationary all his life, and remembers the
condition of the lane fifty years since.  He always liked to drive his
sheep along it--first, because it saved the turnpike tolls; secondly,
because they could graze on the short herbage and rest under the shade
of the thick bushes.  Even in the helplessness of his old age he is not
without his use at the very last, and his word settles the matter.

In the winter twilight, after a fall of snow, it is difficult to find
one's way across the ploughed fields of the open plain, for it melts on
the south of every furrow, leaving a white line where it has ledged on
the northern side, till the furrows resemble an endless succession of
waves of earth tipped with foam-flecks of snow.  These are dazzling to
the eyes, and there are few hedges or trees visible for guidance.  Snow
lingers sometimes for weeks on the northern slopes of the downs--where
shallow dry dykes, used as landmarks, are filled with it: the dark mass
of the hill is streaked like the black hull of a ship with its line of
white paint.  Field work during what the men call `the dark days afore
Christmas' is necessarily much restricted and they are driven to find
some amusement for the long evenings--such as blowing out candles at the
ale-house with muzzle-loader guns for wagers of liquor, the wind of the
cap alone being sufficient for the purpose at a short distance.

The children never forget Saint Thomas's Day, which ancient custom has
consecrated to alms, and they wend their way from farmhouse to farmhouse
throughout the parish; it is usual to keep to the parish, for some of
the old local feeling still remains even in these cosmopolitan times.
At Christmas sometimes the children sing carols, not with much success
so far as melody goes, but otherwise successfully enough; for
recollections of the past soften the hearts of the crustiest.

The young men for weeks previously have been practising for the
mumming--a kind of rude drama requiring, it would seem, as much
rehearsal beforehand as the plays at famous theatres.  They dress in a
fantastic manner, with masks and coloured ribbons; anything grotesque
answers, for there is little attempt at dressing in character.  They
stroll round to each farmhouse in the parish, and enact the play in the
kitchen or brewhouse; after which the whole company are refreshed with
ale, and, receiving a few coins, go on to the next homestead.  Mumming,
however, has much deteriorated, even in the last fifteen or twenty
years.  On nights when the players were known to be coming, in addition
to the farmer's household and visitors at that season, the cottagers
residing near used to assemble, so that there was quite an audience.
Now it is a chance whether they come round or not.

A more popular pastime with the young men, and perhaps more profitable,
is the formation of a brass band.  They practise vigorously before
Christmas, and sometimes attain considerable proficiency.  At the proper
season they visit the farms in the evening, and as the houses are far
apart, so that only a few can be called at in the hours available after
work, it takes them some time to perambulate the parish.  So that for
two or three weeks about the end of the old and the beginning of the new
year, if one chances to be out at night, every now and then comes the
unwonted note of a distant trumpet sounding over the fields.  The custom
has grown frequent of recent years, and these bands collect a good deal
of money.

The ringers from the church come too, with their hand-bells and ring
pleasant tunes--which, however, on bells are always plaintive--standing
on the crisp frozen grass of the green before the window.  They are well
rewarded, for bells are great favourites with all country people.

What is more pleasant than the jingling of the tiny bells on the harness
of the cart-horses?  You may hear the team coming with a load of straw
on the waggon three furlongs distant; then step out to the road, and
watch the massive yet shapely creatures pull the heavy weight up the
hill, their glossy quarters scarcely straining, but heads held high
showing the noble neck, the hoofs planted with sturdy pride of strength,
the polished brass of the harness glittering, and the bells merrily
jingling!  The carter, the thong of his whip nodding over his shoulder,
walks by the shaft, his boy ahead by the leader, as proud of his team as
the sailor of his craft: even the whip is not to be lightly come by, but
is chosen carefully, bound about with rows of brazen rings; neither
could you or I knot the whipcord on to his satisfaction.

For there is a certain art even in so small a thing, not to be learned
without time and practice; and his pride in whip, harness, and team is
surely preferable to the indifference of a stranger, caring for nothing
but his money at the end of the week.  The modern system--men coming one
day and gone the next--leaves no room for the growth of such feelings,
and the art and mystery of the craft loses its charm.  The harness
bells, too, are disappearing; hardly one team in twenty carries them
now.

Those who labour in the fields seem to have far fewer holidays than the
workers in towns.  The latter issue from factory and warehouse at
Easter, and rush gladly into the country: at Whitsuntide, too, they
enjoy another recess.  But the farmer and the labourer work on much the
same, the closing of banks and factories in no way interfering with the
tilling of the earth or the tending of cattle.  In May the ploughboys
still remember King Charles, and on what they call `shick-shack day'
search for oak-apples and the young leaves of the oak to place with a
spray of ash in their hats or button-holes: the ash spray must have even
leaves; an odd number is not correct.  To wear these green emblems was
thought imperative even within the last twenty years, and scarcely a
labourer could be seen without them.  The elder men would tell you--as
if it had been a grave calamity--that they could recollect a year when
the spring was so backward that not an oak leaf or oak-apple could be
found by the most careful search for the purpose.  The custom has fallen
much into disuse lately: the carters, however, still attach the ash and
oak leaves to the heads of their horses on this particular day.

Many village clubs or friendly societies meet in the spring, others in
autumn.  The day is sometimes fixed by the date of the ancient feast.
The club and fete threaten, indeed, to supplant the feast altogether:
the friendly society having been taken under the patronage of the higher
ranks of residents.  Here and there the feast-day, however (the day on
which the church was dedicated), is still remembered, as in this
village, where the elder fanners invite their friends and provide
liberally for the occasion.  Some of the gipsies still come with their
stalls, and a little crowd assembles in the evening; but the glory of
the true feast has departed.

The elder men, nevertheless, yet reckon by the feast-day; it is a fixed
point in their calendar, which they construct every year, of local
events.  Such and such a fair is calculated to fall so many days after
the first full moon in a particular month; and another fair falls so
long after that.  An old man will thus tell you the dates of every fair
and feast in all the villages and little towns ten or fifteen miles
round about.  He quite ignores the modern system of reckoning time,
going by the ancient ecclesiastical calendar and the moon.  How deeply
the ancient method must have impressed itself into the life of these
people to still remain a kind of instinct at this late day!

The feasts are in some cases identified with certain well-recognised
events in the calendar of nature; such as the ripening of cherries.  It
may be noticed that these, chancing thus to correspond pretty accurately
on the average with the state of fruit, are kept up more vigorously than
those which have no such aid to the memory.  The Lady-Day fair and
Michaelmas fair at the adjacent market town are the two best recognised
holidays of the year.  The fair is sometimes called `the mop,' and
stalwart girls will walk eight or nine miles rather than miss it.
Maidservants in farmhouses always bargain for a holiday on fair day.
These two main fairs are the Bank Holidays of rural life.  It is curious
to observe that the developments of the age, railroads and
manufactories, have not touched the traditional prestige of these
gatherings.

For instance, you may find a town which, by the incidence of the
railroad and the springing up of great industries, has shot far ahead of
the other sleepy little places; its population may treble itself, its
trade be ten times as large, its attractions one would imagine
incalculably greater.  Nothing of the kind: its annual fair is not
nearly so important an event to the village mind as that of an old-world
slumberous place removed from the current of civilisation.  This place,
which is perhaps eight or nine miles by road, with no facilities of
communication, has from time immemorial had a reputation for its fair.
There, accordingly, the scattered rural population wends, making no
account of distance and very little of weather: it is a country maxim
that it always rains on fair day, and mostly thunders.  There they
assemble and enjoy themselves in the old-fashioned way, which consists
in standing in the streets, buying `fairings' for the girls, shooting
for nuts, visiting all the shows, and so on.

To push one's way through such a crowd is no simple matter; the
countryman does not mean to be rude, but he has not the faintest
conception that politeness demands a little yielding.  He has to be
shoved, and makes no objection.  A city crowd is to a certain extent
mobile--each recognises that he must give way.  A country crowd stand
stock still.

The thumping of drums, the blaring of trumpets, the tootling of
pan-pipes in front of the shows, fill the air with a din which may be
heard miles away, and seem to give the crowd intense pleasure--far more
than the crack band of the Coldstream Guards could impart.  Nor are they
ever weary of gazing at the `pelican of the wilderness' as the showman
describes it--a mournful bird with draggled feathers standing by the
entrance, a traditional part of his stock-in-trade.  One attraction--
perhaps the strongest--may be found in the fact that all the countryside
is sure to be there.  Each labourer or labouring woman will meet
acquaintances from distant villages they have not seen or heard of for
months.  The rural gossip of half a county will be exchanged.

In the autumn after the harvest the gleaning is still an important time
to the cottager, though nothing like it used to be.  Reaping by
machinery has made rapid inroads, and there is not nearly so much left
behind as in former days.  Yet half the women and children of the place
go out and glean, but very few now bake at home; they have their bread
from the baker, who comes round in the smallest hamlets.  Possibly they
had a more wholesome article in the olden time, when the wheat from
their gleanings was ground at the village mill, and the flour made into
bread at home.  But the cunning of the mechanician has invaded the
ancient customs; the very sheaves are now to be bound with wire by the
same machine that reaps the corn.  The next generation of country folk
will hardly be able to understand the story of Ruth.


CHAPTER SIX.

THE HAMLET--COTTAGE ASTROLOGY--GHOST LORE--HERBS--THE WAGGON AND ITS
CREW--STILES--THE TRYSTING-PLACE--THE THATCHER--SMUGGLERS--AGUE.

In most large rural parishes there is at least one small hamlet a mile
or two distant from the main village.  A few houses and cottages stand
loosely scattered about the fields, no two of them together; so
separated, indeed, by hedges, meadows, and copses as hardly to be called
even a hamlet.  The communication with the village is maintained by a
long, winding narrow lane; but foot-passengers follow a shorter path
across the fields, which in winter is sure to be ankle-deep in mud, by
the gateways and stiles.  The lane, at the same time, is crossed by a
torrent, which may spread out to thirty yards wide in the hollow,
shallow at the edges, but swift and deep in the middle.

If you wait a couple of hours it will subside, as the farmers lower down
the brook pull up the hatches to let the flood pass.  If you are in a
hurry, you must climb up into the double mound beside the lane, and
force your way along it between thorns and stoles, till you reach the
channel through which the current is rushing.  Across that an old tree
trunk will probably lie, and by grasping a bough as a handrail it is
possible to get over.  But either way, by lane or footpath, you are sure
to get what the country folk call `watchet' i.e. wet.  So that in winter
the hamlet is practically isolated; for even in moderately good weather
the lane is an inch or two deep in finely puddled adhesive mud.  It is
so shaded by elms and thick hedges that the dirt requires a length of
time to dry, while the passage of hundreds of sheep tread and puddle it
as only sheep can.

In summer the place is lovely; but then the inhabitants are one and all
busy in the fields, and have little time for social intercourse or for
travel into the next parish.  It is ten to one if you knock at a cottage
door you will find it locked, if indeed, you get so fax as that, a
padlock being often on the garden gate.  Being so isolated and apart
from the current of modern life and manners, the hamlet folk retain
something of the old-fashioned way of thinking.  They do not believe
their own superstitions with the implicit credence of yore, but they
have not yet forgotten them.  I have known women, for instance, who
seriously asserted that such-and-such an aged person possessed a magic
book which contained spells, and enabled her to foresee some kinds of
coming events.  The influence of the moon, so firm an article of faith
among their forefathers, is not altogether overlooked; and they watch
for the new moon carefully.  If the crescent slopes, it will be wet
weather.  But if the horns of the crescent touch, or nearly, a vertical
line, if it stands upright, then it will be fine.  Something, too, must
be allowed for the degree of sharpness of definition of the crescent,
which reveals the state of the atmosphere.  And the cottage astrologer
has a whole table of the quarters, aspects, and so on, and lays much
stress upon the day and hour of the change: indeed, it is a very
complicated business to understand the moon.

The belief in the power of certain persons to `rule the planets' is
profound; so profound that neither ridicule, argument, nor authority
will shake it in the minds of the hamlet girls, and it abides with them
even when they are placed amidst the disenchanting realities of town
life.  When `in service,' they buy dream-books, and consult
fortune-tellers.  The gipsies, in passing through the country, choose
the by-ways and lanes; they thus avoid the tolls, have a chance of
poaching, and find waste places to camp in, though possibly something of
the true nomadic instinct may urge them to leave the beaten tracks and
wander over lonely regions.  They camp near the hamlet as they travel to
and from the great sheep fairs which are held upon the hills, and
perhaps stay a few days; and by them, to some extent, the belief in
astrology and palmistry is strengthened.

The carters, who have to spend some considerable time every day with
their horses in the stable, still retain a large repertory of legendary
ghost lore.  They know the exact spot in the lane where, at a certain
hour of the night, the white spectre of a headless horse, rushing past
with incredible swiftness and without the sound of a hoof, brushes the
very coat of the traveller, and immediately disappears in the darkness.
Another lane is haunted by a white woman, whose spectre crosses it in
front of the spectator and then appears behind him.  If he turns his
head or looks on one side in order to escape the sight of the
apparition, it instantly crosses to that side.  Indeed, no matter in
which direction he glances, the flickering figure floats before him,
till, making a run for it, he passes beyond the limits of the haunted
ground.

Near by the hollow, where the stream crosses the lane, is another
spirit, but of an indefinite kind, that does not seem to take shape, but
causes those who go past at the time when it has power to feel a mortal
horror.  A black dog may be seen in at least two different places: the
wayfarer is suddenly surprised to find a gigantic animal of the deepest
jet trotting by his side, or he sees a dark shadow detach itself from
the bushes and take the form of a dog.  The black dog has perhaps more
vitality, and survives in more localities, than all the apparitions that
in the olden times were sworn to by persons of the highest veracity.
They may still be heard of in many a nook and corner.  I have known
people of the present day who were positive that there really was
`something' weird in the places where the dog was said to appear.

It is supposed that horses are peculiarly liable to take fright and run
away, to shy, or stumble, and break their knees, at a certain spot in
the road.  They go very well till just on passing the fatal spot a
sudden fear seizes them as if they could see something invisible to men;
sometimes they bolt headlong, sometimes stand stock still and shiver; or
throw the rider by a rapid side movement.  In the daytime--for this
supernatural effect is felt in broad day as well as at night--the horse
more frequently falls or stumbles, as if checked by an invisible force
in the midst of his career.  This, too, is a living superstition, and
some persons will recount a whole string of accidents that have happened
within a few yards; till at last, such is the force of iteration, the
most incredulous admit it to be a series of remarkable coincidences.
These last two, the black dog and the dangerous place in the road, are
believed in by people of a much higher grade than carters.  Altogether,
the vitality of superstition in the country is very much greater than is
commonly suspected.  It is now confined, as it were, to the inner life
of the people: no one talks of such things openly, but only to their
friends, and thus a stranger might remark on the total extinction of the
belief in the supernatural.  But much really remains.

The carters have a story about horses which had spent the night in a
meadow being found the next morning in a state of exhaustion, as if they
had been ridden furiously during the hours of darkness.  They were
totally unfit for work next day.  Instances are even given where men
have hidden in a tree with a gun, and when the horses began to gallop
fired at something indistinct sitting on their haunches, which something
at once disappeared, and the excitement ceased.  But these things are
said to have happened a long time ago.

So, also, there is a memory of a man digging stone in a quarry and
distinctly hearing the strokes of a pick beneath him.  When he wheeled
his barrow the subterranean quarryman wheeled his, and shortly after he
had shot the stones out there came a rumbling from below as if the other
barrow had been emptied.  The very quarry is pointed out where this
extraordinary phenomenon took place.  It is curious how a story of this
kind, something like which is, I think, told of the Hartz Mountains,
should have got localised in a limestone quarry so far apart in distance
and character.  How well I remember the ancient labourer who told me
this legend as a boy!  It is easy to philosophise on it now, and
speculate upon the genesis of the tale, which may have originated in a
cavernous hollow resounding to the tools; but then it was a reality, and
I recollect always giving a wide berth to that quarry at night.  As the
old man told it, it was indeed hardly a legend; for he could disclose
every detail, and what has here occupied a few sentences took him the
best part of an hour to relate.

Now and then the western clouds after the sunset assume a shape
resembling that of a vast extended wing, as of a gigantic bird in full
flight--the extreme tip nearly reaching the zenith, the body of the bird
just below the horizon.  The resemblance is sometimes so perfect that
the layers of feathers are traceable by an imaginative eye.  This, the
old folk say, is the wing of the Archangel Michael, and it bodes no good
to the evil ones among the nations, for he is on his way to execute a
dread command.

Herbs are still believed in implicitly by some.  Not long since I met a
labourer, one of the better class too, whom I had known previously, and
now found deeply depressed because of the death of a son.  The poor
fellow had had every attention; the clergyman had exerted himself, and
wine and nourishing luxuries had not been spared, nor the best of
medical advice.  That he admitted, but still regretted one thing.  There
was a herb, which grew beside rivers, and was known to but a few, that
was a certain cure for the kind of wasting disease which had baffled
educated skill.  There was an old man living somewhere by a river fifty
miles away, who possessed the secret of this herb, and by it had
accomplished marvellous cures.  He had heard of him, but could not by
any inquiry ascertain his exact whereabouts; and so his child died.
Everything possible had been done, but still he regretted that this herb
had not been applied.

Nothing is done right now, according to the old men of the hamlet; even
the hayricks are built badly and `scamped.'  The `rickmaker' used to be
an important person, generally a veteran, who had to be conciliated with
an extra drop of good liquor before he could be got to set to work in
earnest.  Then he spread the hay here, and worked it in there, and had
it trodden down at the edge, and then in the middle, and, like the
centurion, sent men hither and thither.  His rick, when complete, did
not rise perpendicularly, but each face or square side sloped a little
outwards--including the ends--a method that certainly does give the rick
a very shapely look.

But now the new-fangled `elevator' carries up the hay by machinery from
the waggon to the top, and two ricks are run up while they would
formerly have just been carefully laying the foundation for one of
faggots to keep off the damp.  The poles put up to support the
rick-cloth interfere with the mathematically correct outward slope at
the ends, upon which the old fellow prided himself; so they are carried
up straight like the end wall of a cottage, and are a constant source of
contempt to the ancient invalid.  However, he consoles himself with the
reflection that most of the men employed with the `elevator' will
ultimately go to a very unpleasant place, since they are continuously
swearing at the horse that works it, to make him go round the faster.

After an old cart or waggon has done its work and is broken up, the
wooden axletree, which is very solid, is frequently used for the top bar
of a stile.  It answers very well, and, being of seasoned wood that has
received a good many coats of red paint, will last a long time.  The
life of a waggon is not unlike that of a ship.  On the cradle it is the
pride of the craftsman who builds it, and who is careful to reproduce
the exact `lines' which he learned from his master as an apprentice, and
which have been handed down these hundred years and more.  The builders
of the Chinese junks are said never to saw a piece of timber into the
shape required, nor to bend it by softening the fibres by hot steam, but
always use a beam that has grown crooked naturally.  This plan gives
great strength, but it must take years to accumulate the necessary
curved trees.  The waggon-builder, in like manner, has a whole yard full
of timber selected for much the same reason--because it naturally curves
in the way he desires, or is specially fitted for his purpose.

For, like a ship, the true old-fashioned waggon is full of curves, and
there is scarcely a straight piece of wood about it.  Nothing is angular
or square; and each piece of timber, too, is carved in some degree,
bevelled at the edges, the sharp outline relieved in one way or another,
and the whole structure like a ship, seeming buoyant, and floating as it
were, easily on the wheels.  Then the painting takes several weeks, and
after that the lettering of the name; and when at last completed it is
placed outside by the road, that every farmer and labourer who goes by
may pause and admire.  In about twelve months, if the builder be
expeditious (for him), the new vessel may reach her port under the open
shed at the farm, and then her life of voyages begins.

Her cargoes are hay and wheat and huge mountainous loads of straw, and
occasionally hurdles for the shepherd.  Nor are her voyages confined to
the narrow seas of the fields adjoining home; now and then she goes on
adventurous expeditions to distant market towns, carrying mayhap a cargo
of oak-bark, stripped from fallen trees, to the tan-yard.  Then she is
well victualled for the voyage, and her course mapped out on the chart
in order to avoid the Scylla of steep hills and stony ways and the
Charybdis of tollgates, besides being duly cautioned against the sirens
that chant so sweetly from the taps of the roadside inns.  Or she sails
down to the far-away railway station after coal--possibly two or more
vessels in the same convoy--if the steam plough be at work and requires
the constant services of these tenders.

She has her own special crew--her captain the carter--and for forecastle
men a lad or two, and often a couple of able-bodied seamen in the shape
of labourers, to help to load up.  When on the more distant voyages to
unknown shores, she takes a supercargo--the farmer's son--to check the
bills of lading; for on those strange coasts who knows what treachery
there may be brewing?  There are arms aboard, in the form of forks or
prongs; and commonly one or more passengers go out in her--women with
vast bundles and children--not to mention the merchandise of sugars and
of teas from Cathay, which are shipped for delivery at half the cottages
and farmsteads _en route_ homewards.  Wherefore, you see, the captain
had needs be a sober and godly man, having all these and manifold other
responsibilities upon his mind.

Besides which he has to make a report upon the state of the crops on
every farm he passes, and what everybody is doing, and if they have
begun reaping; also to hail every vessel he passes outward or homeward
bound, and enter her answers in his log, and to keep his weather-eye
open and a sharp watch to windward, lest storms should arise and awake
the deep, and if the gale increases to batten down his hatches and make
all snug with the tarpaulin.  He must bear in mind the longitude of
those ports where there are docks, lest his team should cast a shoe or
any of the running rigging want splicing, or the hull spring a leak--for
the blacksmith's forges are often leagues apart, and he may lose his
certificate if he strands his ship or founders on the open ocean of the
downs.  Sometimes, if the currents run unexpectedly strong, and he is
deeply laden, he has to borrow or hire a tug from the nearest farm,
getting an extra horse to pull up the hill.

When he reaches harbour, and has leave ashore, a jollier seaman never
cracked a whip.  Perhaps the happiest time with the ploughboys is when
they are out with the waggon, having a little change, no harder work
than walking, sips at the `pots' handed to the captain by his mates, and
nothing to think about.  Nor was there ever a more popular song in the
country than--

  We'll jump into the waggon,
  And we'll all take a ride!

Though in winter, when the horses' shoes have to be roughed for the
frost, or, worse, when the wheels sink deep into the spongy turf, and
rain and sleet and snow make the decks slippery, it is not quite so
jolly.  Yet even then, so strong is the love of motion, a run with the
waggon is preferred to stationary work.

The captain, when bound on a voyage, generally slips his cable or weighs
anchor with the rising sun.  His crew are first-rate helmsmen; and to
see them sweep into the rickyard through the narrow gateway, with a
heavy deck cargo piled to the skies, all sail set, a stiff breeze, and
the timbers creaking, is a glorious sight!  Not a scrape against the
jetty, though `touch and go' is the sign of a good pilot.  His greatest
trouble is when his cargo shifts out of sight of land: sometimes the
vessel turns on her beam-ends with a too ponderous and ill-built load of
straw, and then the wreck lies right in the fairway of all the ships
coming up the channel.  To load a waggon successfully is indeed a work
of art: on the hills where the waggons have to run `sidelong' to pick up
the crops, one side higher than the other, no one but an experienced
hand can make the stuff stay on.  Then there is often a tremendous
bumping and scraping of the keel on the rocks of the newly-mended roads,
and the nasty chopping seas of the deep ruts, besides the long regular
Atlantic swells of the furrows and `lands.'  So that the cargo had need
to be firmly placed in the hold.

Every now and then she goes into dock and gets a new streak of paint and
a thorough overhauling.  The running rigging of the harness has to be
polished and kept in good condition, and the crew are rarely idle if the
captain knows his business.  You should never let your `fo'castle' hands
loll about; the proverb about the devil and the idle hands is
notoriously true aboard ship, and in the stables.

How many a man's life has centred about the waggon!  As a child he rides
in it as a treat to the hay-field with his father; as a lad he walks
beside the leader, and gets his first ideas of the great world when they
visit the market town.  As a man he takes command and pilots the ship
for many a long, long year.  When he marries, the waggon, lent for his
own use, brings home his furniture.  After a while his own children go
for a ride in it, and play in it when stationary in the shed.  In the
painful ending the waggon carries the weak-kneed old man in pity to and
from the old town for his weekly store of goods, or mayhap for his
weekly dole of that staff of life his aged teeth can hardly grind.  And
many a plain coffin has the old waggon carried to the distant churchyard
on the side of the hill.  It is a cold spot--as life, too, was cold and
hard; yet in the spring the daisies will come, and the thrushes will
sing on the bough.

Built at first of seasoned wood, kept out of the weather under cover,
repainted, and taken care of, the waggon lasts a lifetime.  Many times
repaired, the old ship outlasts its owner--his name on it is painted
out.  But that step is not taken for years: there seems to be a
superstitious dislike to obliterating the old name, as if the dead would
resent it, and there it often remains till it becomes illegible.
Sometimes the second owner, too, goes, and the name fresh painted is
that of the third.  When at last it becomes too shaky for farm use, it
is perhaps bought by some poor working haulier, who has a hole cut in
the bottom with moveable cover, and uses it to bring down flints from
the hills to mend the roads.  But if any of the old folk live, they will
not sell the ancient vessel: it stands behind the rickyard under the
elms till the rain rots the upper work, and it is then broken up, and
the axletree becomes the top bar of a stile.

Each field has its characteristic stile--or rather two, one each side
(at the entrance and exit of the footpath), and these are never alike.
Walking across the fields for a couple of miles or more, of all the
stiles that must of necessity be surmounted no two are similar.  Here is
one well put together--not too high, the rail not too large, and
apparently an ideal piece of workmanship; but on approaching, the ground
on the opposite side drops suddenly three or four feet--at the bottom is
a marshy spot crossed by a narrow bridge of a single stone, on which you
have to be careful to alight, or else plunge ankle-deep in water.  If
clever enough to drop on the stone, it immediately tilts up slightly,
for, like the rocking-stones of Wales, it is balanced somewhere, and has
a see-saw motion well calculated to land the timid in the ditch.

The next is approached by a line of stepping-stones--to avoid the mud
and water--whose surfaces are so irregular as barely to afford a
footing.  The stile itself is nothing--very low and easy to pass: but
just beyond it a stiff, stout pole has been placed across to prevent
horses straying, and below that a couple of hurdles are pitched to
confine the sheep.  This is almost too much; however, by patience and
exertion, it is managed.

Then comes a double mound with two stiles--one for each ditch--made very
high and intended for steps; but the steps are worn away, and it is
something like climbing a perpendicular ladder.  Another has a toprail
of a whole tree, so broad and thick no one can possibly straddle it, so
some friend of humanity has broken the second rail, and you creep under.
Finally comes a steep bank, six or seven feet high, with rude steps
formed of the roots of trees worn bare by iron-tipped boots, and of mere
holes in which to put the toe.  At the top the stile leans forward over
the precipice, so that you have to suspend yourself in mid-air.
Fortunately, almost every other one has a gap worn at the side just
large enough to squeeze through after coaxing the briars to yield a
trifle.  For it is intensely characteristic of human nature to make gaps
and short cuts.

All the lads of the hamlet have a trysting-place at the cross-roads, or
rather cross-lanes, where there is often an open waste space and a small
clump of trees.  If there is any mischief in the wind, there the council
of war is sure to be held.  There is a great rickyard not far distant,
where in one of the open sheds is the thatcher's workshop.

He is a very pronounced character in his way, with his leathern pads for
the knees that he may be able to bear lengthened contact against the
wooden rungs of the ladder, his little club to drive in the stakes, his
shears to snip off the edges of the straw round the eaves, his iron
needle of gigantic size with which to pass the tar-cord through when
thatching a shed, and his small sharp billhook to split out his
thatching stakes.  These are of willow, cut from the pollard trees by
the brook, and he sits on a stool in the shed and splits them into three
or four with the greatest dexterity, giving his billhook a twist this
way and then that, and so guiding the split in the direction required.
Then holding it across his knee, he cuts the point with a couple of
blows and casts the finished stake aside upon the heap.

A man of no little consequence is the thatcher the most important
perhaps of the hamlet craftsmen.  He ornaments the wheat ricks with
curious twisted tufts of straw, standing up not unlike the fantastic
ways in which savages are represented doing their hair.  But he does not
put the thatch on the wheat half so substantially as formerly because
now only a few remain the winter--the thatch is often hardly on before
it is off again for the threshing machine--for the `sheening,' as they
call it.  On the hayricks, which stand longer, he puts better work,
especially on the southern and western sides or angles, binding it down
with a crosswork of bonds to prevent the gales which blow from those
quarters unroofing the rick.

It is said to be an ill wind that blows nobody any good: now the wind
never blew that was strong enough to please the thatcher.  If the
hurricane roughs up the straw on all the ricks, in the parish, unroofs
half-a-dozen sheds, and does not spare the gables of the
dwelling-houses, why he has work for the next two months.  He is
attended by a man to carry up the `yelms,' and two or three women are
busy `yelming'--i.e., separating the straw, selecting the longest and
laying it level and parallel, damping it with water, and preparing it
for the yokes.  These yokes must be cut from boughs that have grown
naturally in the shape wanted, else they are not tough enough.  A tough
old chap, too, is the thatcher, a man of infinite gossip, well
acquainted with the genealogy of every farmer, and, indeed, of everybody
from Dan to Beersheba, of the parish.

The memory of the smugglers is not yet quite extinct.  The old men will
point out the route they used to follow, and some of the places where
they are said to have stored their contraband goods.  Smuggling suggests
the sea, but the goods landed on the beach had afterwards to be conveyed
inland for sale, so that the hamlet, though far distant from the shore,
has its traditions of illicit trade.  The route followed was a wild and
unfrequented one, and the smugglers appear to have kept to the downs as
much as possible.  More than one family--well-to-do for the hamlet or
village where a small capital goes a long way--are said to have
originally derived their prosperity from assisting the storage or
disposal of smuggled goods; and the sympathies of the hamlet would be
with the smugglers still.

The old folk, too, talk of having the ague, and say that it was quite
common in their early days; but it is rare to hear of a case now.
Possibly the better drainage of the fields and the better food and
lodging enjoyed by the labourers have something to do with this.  There
are, of course, no scientific or precise data for exact comparison; but,
judging from the traditions transmitted down, the hamlet is much more
healthy at the present day than it was in the olden times.


CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE FARMHOUSE--TRADITIONS--HUNTING PICTURES--THE FARMER'S YEAR--SPORT--
THE AUCTION FESTIVAL--A SUMMER'S DAY--BEAUTY OF WHEAT.

The stream, after leaving the village and the washpool, rushes swiftly
down the descending slope, and then entering the meadows, quickly loses
its original impetuous character.  Not much more than a mile from the
village it flows placidly through meads and pastures, a broad, deep
brook, thickly fringed with green flags bearing here and there large
yellow flowers.  By some old thatched cattle-sheds and rickyards,
overshadowed with elm trees, a strong bay or dam crosses it, forcing the
water into a pond for the cattle, and answering the occasional purpose
of a ford; for the labourers in their heavy boots walk over the bay,
though the current rises to the instep.  They call these sheds, some few
hundred yards from the farmhouse, the `Lower Pen.'  Wick Farm--almost
every village has its outlying `wick'--stands alone in the fields.  It
is an ancient rambling building, the present form of which is the result
of successive additions at different dates, and in various styles.

When a homestead, like this, has been owned and occupied by the same
family for six or seven generations, it seems to possess a distinct
personality of its own.  A history grows up round about it; memories of
the past accumulate, and are handed down fresh and green, linking to-day
and seventy years ago as if hardly any lapse of time had intervened.
The inmates talk familiarly of the `comet year,' as if it were but just
over; of the days when a load of wheat was worth a little fortune; of
the great snows and floods of the previous century.  They date events
from the year when the Foremeads were purchased and added to the
patrimony, as if that transaction, which took place ninety years before,
was of such importance that it must necessarily be still known to all
the world.

The house has somehow shaped and fitted itself to the character of the
dwellers within it: hidden and retired among trees, fresh and green with
cherry and pear against the wall, yet the brown thatch and the old
bricks subdued in tone by the weather.  This individuality extends to
the furniture; it is a little stiff and angular, but solid, and there
are nooks and corners--as the window-seat--suggestive of placid repose:
a strange opposite mixture throughout of flowery peace and silence, with
an almost total lack of modern conveniences and appliances of comfort--
as though the sinewy vigour of the residents disdained artificial ease.

In the oaken cupboards--not black, but a deep tawny colour with age and
frequent polishing--may be found a few pieces of old china, and on the
table at tea-time, perhaps, other pieces, which a connoisseur would
tremble to see in use, lest a clumsy arm should shatter their fragile
antiquity.  Though apparently so little valued, you shall not be able to
buy these things for money--not so much because their artistic beauty is
appreciated, but because of the instinctive clinging to everything old,
characteristic of the place and people.  These have been there of old
time: they shall remain still.  Somewhere in the cupboards, too, is a
curiously carved piece of iron, to fit into the hand, with a front of
steel before the fingers, like a skeleton rapier guard; it is the
ancient steel with which, and a flint, the tinder and the sulphur match
were ignited.

Up in the lumber-room are carved oaken bedsteads of unknown age;
linen-presses of black oak with carved panels, and a drawer at the side
for the lavender-bags; a rusty rapier, the point broken off; a flintlock
pistol, the barrel of portentous length, and the butt weighted with a
mace-like knob of metal, wherewith to knock the enemy on the head.  An
old yeomanry sabre lies about somewhere, which the good man of the time
wore when he rode in the troop against the rioters in the days of
machine-burning--which was like a civil war in the country, and is yet
recollected and talked of.  The present fanner, who is getting just a
trifle heavy in the saddle himself, can tell you the names of labourers
living in the village whose forefathers rose in that insurrection.  It
is a memory of the house, how one of the family paid 40 pounds for a
substitute to serve in the wars against the French.

The mistress of the household still bakes a batch of bread at home in
the oven once now and then, priding herself that it is never `dunch,' or
heavy.  She makes all kinds of preserves, and wines too--cowslip,
elderberry, ginger--and used to prepare a specially delicate biscuit,
the paste being dropped on paper and baked by exposure to the sun's rays
only.  She has a bitter memory of some money having been lost to the
family sixty years ago through roguery, harping upon it as a most
direful misfortune: the old folk, even those having a stocking or a
teapot well filled with guineas, thought a great deal of small sums.
After listening to a tirade of this kind, in the belief that the family
were at least half-ruined, it turns out to be all about 100 pounds.  Her
grandmother after marriage travelled home on horseback behind her
husband; there had been a sudden flood, and the newly-married couple had
to wait for several hours till the waters went down before they could
pass.  Times are altered now.

Since this family dwelt here, and well within what may be called the
household memory, the very races of animals have changed or been
supplanted.  The cows in the field used to be longhorns, much more
hardy, and remaining in the meadows all the winter, with no better
shelter than the hedges and bushes afforded.  Now the shorthorns have
come, and the cattle are housed carefully.  The sheep were horned--up in
the lumber-room two or three horns are still to be found.  The pigs were
of a different kind, and the dogs and poultry.  If the race of men have
not changed they have altered their costume; the smock-frock lingered
longest, but even that is going.

Some of the old superstitions hung on till quite recently.  The value of
horses made the arrival of foals an important occasion, and then it was
the custom to call in the assistance of an aged man of wisdom--not
exactly a wizard, but something approaching it nearly in reputation.
Even within the last fifteen years the aid of an ancient like this used
to be regularly invoked in this neighbourhood; in some mysterious way
his simple presence and good-will--gained by plentiful liquor--was
supposed to be efficacious against accident and loss.  The strangeness
of the business was in the fact that his patrons were not altogether
ignorant or even uneducated--they merely carried on the old custom, not
from faith in it, but just because it was the custom.  When the wizard
at last died nothing more was thought about it.  Another ancient used to
come round once or twice in the year, with a couple of long ashen
staves, and the ceremony performed by him consisted in dancing these two
sticks together in a fantastic manner to some old rhyme or story.

The parlour is always full of flowers--the mantelpiece and grate in
spring quite hidden by fresh green boughs of horse-chestnut in bloom, or
with lilac, blue bells, or wild hyacinths; in summer nodding grasses
from the meadows, roses, sweet-briar; in the autumn two or three great
apples, the finest of the year, put as ornaments among the china, and
the corners of the looking-glass decorated with bunches of ripe wheat.
A badger's skin lies across the back of the armchair; a fox's head, the
sharp white tusks showing, snarls over the doorway; and in glass cases
are a couple of stuffed kingfishers, a polecat; a white blackbird, and a
diver--rare here--shot in the mere hard by.

On the walls are a couple of old hunting pictures, dusky with age, but
the crudity of the colours by no means toned down or their rude contrast
moderated: bright scarlet coats, bright white horses, harsh green grass,
prim dogs, stiff trees, human figures immovable in tight buckskins;
running water hard as glass, the sky fixed, the ground all too small for
the grouping, perspective painfully emphasised, so as to be itself made
visible; the surface everywhere `painty'--in brief, most of the possible
faults compressed together, and proudly fathered by the artist's name in
full.

One representing a meet, and the other full cry, the pack crossing a
small river; the meet still and rigid, every horseman in his place--not
a bit jingling, or a hoof pawing, or anything in motion.  Now the beauty
of the meet, as distinct from a drilled cavalry troop, is its animation:
horses and riders moving here and there, gathering together and
spreading out again, new-comers riding smartly up, in continuous
freshness of grouping, and constant relief to the eye.  The other--in
full cry--all polished and smooth and varnished as when they left the
stable; horses with glossy coats, riders upright and fatigueless, dogs
clean, and not a sign of poaching on the turf.  The dogs are coming out
of the water with their tails up and straight--dogs as they trail their
flanks out of a brook always, in fact, droop their tails, while their
bodies look smaller and the curves project, because the water lays the
hair flat to the body till several shakes send it out again.  Not a
speck on a top-boot, not a coat torn by a thorn, and the horses as plump
as if fresh from their mangers, instead of having worked it down.  Not a
fleck of foam; the sun, too, shining, and yet no shadow--all glaring.
And, despite of all, deeply interesting to those who know the
countryside and have a feeling knowledge of its hunting history.

For the horses are from life, and the men portraits; the very hedges and
brooks faithful--in ground-plan, at least.  The costume is true to a
thread, and all the names of the riders and some of the hounds are
written underneath.  So that a hunter sees not the crude colour or
faulty drawing, but what it is intended to represent.  Under its
harshness there is the poetry of life.  But looking at these pictures
the reflection will still arise how few really truthful hunting scenes
we have on canvas in this the country of hunting.  The best are so
conventional, and have too much colour.  All nature in the season is
toned down and subdued--the gleaming red and bright yellows of the early
autumn leaves soaked and soddened to a dull brown; the sky dark and
louring--if it is bright there is frost; the glossy coat of the horses,
and the scarlet; or what coloured cloth it may be, of the riders
deadened by rain and the dewdrops shaken from the bushes.  Think for a
moment of a finish as it is in reality, and not in these gaudy,
brilliant colour-studies.

A thick mist clings in the hollow there by the osier-bed where the pack
have overtaken the fox, so that you cannot see the dogs.  Beyond, the
contour of the hill is lost in the cloud trailing over it; the
foreground towards us shows a sloping ploughed field, a damp brown, with
a thin mist creeping along the cold furrows.  Yonder, three vague and
shadowy figures are pushing laboriously forward beside the leafless
hedge; while the dirt-spattered bays hardly show against its black
background and through the mist.  Some way behind, a weary grey,--the
only spot of colour, and that dimmed--is gamely struggling--it is not
leaping--through a gap beside a gaunt oak tree, whose dark buff leaves
yet linger.  But out of these surely an artist who dared to face Nature
as she is might work a picture.

The year really commences at Wick farmhouse immediately before the
autumn nominally begins--nominally, because there is generally a sense
of autumn in the atmosphere before the end of September.  Just about
that time there comes a slackening of the work requiring earnest
personal supervision.  When the yellow corn has been cut and carted, and
the threshing machine has prepared a sample for the markets--when the
ricks are thatched, and the steam plough is tearing up the stubble--then
the farmer can spare a day or so free from the anxieties of harvest.
There is plenty of work to be done; in fact the yearly rotation of
labour may be said to begin in the autumn too, but it does not demand
such hourly attention.  It is the season for picnics--while the sun is
yet warm and the sward dry--on the downs among the great hazel copses,
or the old entrenchment with its view over a vast landscape, dimmed,
though, by yellow haze, or by the shallow lake in the vale.

With the exception of knocking over a young rabbit now and then for
household use, the farmer, even if he is independent of a landlord, as
in this case, does not shoot till late in the year.  Old-fashioned folk,
though not in the least constrained to do so, still leave the first pick
of the shooting to some neighbouring landowner between whose family and
their own friendly relations have existed for generations.  It is true
that the practice becomes rarer yearly as the old style of men die out
and the spirit of commerce is imported into rural life: the rising race
preferring to make money of their shooting, by letting it, instead of
cultivating social ties.

At Wick, however, they keep up the ancient custom, and the neighbouring
squire takes the pick of the wing-game.  They lose nothing for their
larder through this arrangement--receiving presents of partridges and
pheasants far exceeding in number what could possibly be killed upon the
farm itself; while later in the year the boundaries are relaxed on the
other side, and the farmer kills his rabbit pretty much where he likes,
in moderation.

He is seldom seen without a gun on his shoulder from November till
towards the end of January.  No matter whether he strolls to the arable
field, or down the meadows, or across the footpath to a neighbour's
house, the inevitable double-barrel accompanies him.  To those who live
much out of doors a gun is a natural and almost a necessary companion,
whether there be much or little to shoot; and in this desultory way,
without much method or set sport, he and his friends, often meeting and
joining forces, find sufficient ground game and wildfowl to give them
plenty of amusement.  When the hedges are bare of leaves the
rabbit-burrows are ferreted: the holes can be more conveniently
approached then, and the frost is supposed to give the rabbit a better
flavour.

About Christmas-time, half in joke and half in earnest, a small party
often agree to shoot as many blackbirds as they can, if possible to make
up the traditional twenty-four for a pie.  The blackbird pie is, of
course, really an occasion for a social gathering, at which cards and
music are forthcoming.  Though blackbirds abound in every hedge, it is
by no means an easy task to get the required number just when wanted.
After January the guns are laid aside, though some ferreting is still
going on.

The better class of farmers keep hunters, and ride constantly to the
hounds; so do some of the lesser men who `make' hunters, and ride not
only for pleasure but possible profit from the sale.  Hunting is, to a
considerable extent a matter of locality.  In some districts it is the
one great winter amusement, and almost every farmer who has got a horse
rides more or less.  In others which are not near the centres of
hunting, it is rather an exception for the farmers to go out.  On and
near the Downs coursing hares is much followed.  Then towards the
spring, before the grass begins to grow long, comes the local
steeplechase--perhaps the most popular gathering of the year.  It is
held near some small town, often rather a large village than a town,
where it would seem impossible to get a hundred people together.  But it
happens to be one of the fixed points, so to say, in a wide hunting
district, and is well known to every man who rides a horse within twenty
miles.

Numerous parties come to the race-ground from the great houses of the
neighbourhood.  The labouring people flock there _en masse_; some
farmers lend waggons and teams to the labourers that they may go.  An
additional--a personal--interest attaches to many of the races because
the horses are local horses, and the riders known to the spectators.
Some of these meetings are movable; they are held near one town one year
and another the next, so as to travel round the whole hunting district--
returning, say, the fourth year to the first place.  Most of the market
towns of any importance have their annual agricultural show now, which
is well attended.

In the spring comes the rook-shooting; the date varies a week or so
according to the season, whether it has been mild and favourable or hard
and late.  This still remains a favourite occasion for a party.
Sheep-shearing in sheep districts, as the Downs, is also remembered;
some of the old folk make much of it; but as a general rule this ancient
festival has fallen a good deal into disuse.  It is not made the grand
feast it once was for master and man alike--at least, not in these
parts.  With the change that has come across agriculture at large a
variation has taken place in the life of the people.  New festivals, and
of a different character, have sprung up.

The most important of these is the annual auction on the farm: the
system of selling by auction which has become so widely diffused has,
indeed, quite revolutionised agriculture in many ways.  Where the farm
is celebrated for a special breed of sheep, the great event of the year
is the annual auction at home of ram lambs.  Where the farm is famous
for cattle, the chief occasion is the yearly sale of young shorthorns.
And recently, since steam plough and artificial manure and general high
pressure have been introduced, many large arable farmers sell their corn
crops standing.  The purchaser pays a certain price for the wheat as it
grows, reaps it when ripe, and makes what profit he can.

In either case the auctioneer is called in, a dinner is prepared, and
everybody who likes to come is welcome.  If there happens to be a great
barn near the homestead it is usually used for the dinner.  The marquee
has yet to be invented which will keep out a thunderstorm--that common
interruption of country meetings--like an old barn.  But barns are not
always available, and a tent is then essential.  Though the spot may be
lonely and several miles from a town or station, a large number of
persons are sure to be there; and if it is an auction of sheep or cattle
with a pedigree, many of them will be found to have come from the other
end of the kingdom, and sometimes agents are present from America or the
colonies.  Much time is consumed in an examination of the stock, and
then the dinner begins--at least two hours later than was announced.
But this little peculiarity is so well understood by all interested as
to cause no inconvenience.

Scarcely any ale is to be seen; it is there if asked for; but the great
majority now drink sherry.  The way in which this wine has supplanted
the old-fashioned October ale is remarkable, and a noticeable sign of
the times.  At home the farmer may still have his foaming jug, but
whenever farmers congregate together on occasions like this, sherry is
the favourite.  When calling at the inns in the towns on market days--
much business is transacted at the inns--spirits are usually taken, so
that ale is no longer the characteristic country liquor.  With the
sherry cigars are handed round--another change.  It is true the elderly
men stick to their long clay pipes, and it is observable that some of
the younger after a while go back to the yard of clay; but on the whole
the cigar is now the proper thing.

Then follow a couple of toasts, the stockowner's and auctioneer's--
usually short--and an adjournment takes place--if it be stock, to the
yards; if corn, the cloth is cleared of all but the wine, and the sale
proceeds there and then.  In either case the sherry and the cigars go
round--persons being employed to press them freely upon all; and
altogether a very jovial afternoon is spent.  Some of

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