But The Wonderful Thing About A Name Like Charmes Is That It Hands
Down The Dead.
For some dead man gave it a keen name proceeding from
his own immediate delight, and made general what had been a private
pleasure, and, so to speak, bequeathed a poem to his town.
They say
the Arabs do this; calling one place 'the rest of the warriors', and
another 'the end', and another 'the surprise of the horses': let those
who know them speak for it. I at least know that in the west of the
Cotentin (a sea-garden) old Danes married to Gaulish women discovered
the just epithet, and that you have 'St Mary on the Hill' and 'High
Town under the Wind' and 'The Borough over the Heath', which are
to-day exactly what their name describes them. If you doubt that
England has such descriptive names, consider the great Truth that at
one junction on a railway where a mournful desolation of stagnant
waters and treeless, stonewalled fields threatens you with experience
and awe, a melancholy porter is told off to put his head into your
carriage and to chant like Charon, 'Change here for Ashton under the
Wood, Moreton on the Marsh, Bourton on the Water, and Stow in the
Wold.'
Charmes does not fulfil its name nor preserve what its forgotten son
found so wonderful in it. For at luncheon there a great commercial
traveller told me fiercely that it was chiefly known for its
breweries, and that he thought it of little account.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 52 of 361
Words from 13896 to 14153
of 97758
