One Night He Came Home In The Usual Manner From Market, Delivered The
Cash, And Went To His Cottage.
Next day a little girl was sent on an
innocent errand to the cottage, with orders while she was there to look
sharply round and observe if there were any ashes on the floor.
She came
back with the news that there was a heap of wood ashes. Immediately a
posse set out, and the drover was arrested. The use of the ashes by
sheep-stealers was to suck up and remove stains of blood, which were
certain to be left in cutting up the animal. Sufficient proof was found
in the cottage to condemn the honest thief to be hung; great exertions
were, however, made in his behalf; and principally, it is supposed, on
account of his character for carrying large sums of money untouched, he
was saved. There is a story of the smugglers - once notorious folk on
these hills - teaching their horses to understand the usual words of
command backwards. If they were driving pack-horses along at night with a
load of brandy landed from a lugger, and were met by the revenue men, who
ordered them to stop that the packs might be searched, the smugglers,
like good and loyal subjects, called 'Whoa! whoa!' Instantly the horses
set off at a tearing gallop, for they understood 'Whoa!' as' Gee-up!'
By a farmer's door I found a tall branch of oak lying against the porch.
The bark was dry, and the leaves were shrivelled, but the bough had been
originally taken green from the tree. These boughs are discovered against
the door on the morning of the 29th of May, and are in memory of the
escape of King Charles from his enemies by hiding in an oak. The village
ringers leave them, and then go to the church and ring a peal, for which
they expect cider or small coin from each loyal person honoured with an
oak branch. Another custom, infinitely more ancient, is that of singing
to the apple trees in early spring, so that the orchards may be induced
to bear a good crop. The singers come round and visit each orchard; they
have a rhyme specially for the purpose, part of the refrain of which is
that a cup of good cider cannot do any one harm - a hint which brings out
a canful. In strange contrast to these genial customs, which accord so
well with flowery fields, I heard an instance of the coldest
indifference. An old couple lived for many years in a cottage; at last
the wife died, and the husband, while the body was in the house, had his
meals on the coffin as a table.
A hundred years since, before steam, the corn was threshed out by the
flail - a slow, and consequently expensive process. Many efforts were made
to thresh quicker. Among others, wooden machines were put up in some of
the villages, something resembling a water-wheel placed horizontally.
This was moved by horses walking round and round, and drove machinery in
the barn by belt or shafting. The labourers, greatly incensed - for they
regarded threshing by the flail as their right - tried to burn them, but
the structures were guarded and still exist. Under the modern conditions
of farming they are still found useful to cut chaff, crack corn, and so
on. The ancient sickle is yet in use for reaping in Somerset; the reapers
sharpen it by drawing the edge through an apple, when the acid bites and
cleans the steel. While we were sauntering through a village one morning,
out rushed the boys from school, and instantly their tongues began to wag
of those things on which their hearts were set. 'I know a jay's nest,
said one; 'I know an owl's nest,' cried a second; a third hastened to
claim knowledge of a pigeon's nest. It will be long before education
drives the natural love of the woods out of the children's hearts. Of old
time a village school used to be held in an ancient building, the lower
part of which was occupied as almshouses. Underneath the ancient folk
lived as best they might, while the young folk learned and gave their
class responses, or romped on the floor overhead. The upper part of the
building belonged to one owner, the lower part to another landlord. It
came about that the roof decayed and the upper owner suggested to the
lower owner that they should agree in bearing the cost of repairs. Upon
which the owner of the basement remarked that he contemplated - pulling
his part down. -
In these hamlets along the foot of the hills ancient stone crosses are
often found. One of them has retained its top perfect, and really is a
cross, not a shaft only. This is, I think, rare. Sometimes in the village
street, the slender column grey against the green trees, sometimes in the
churchyard, these crosses come on the mind like a sudden enigma. It
requires an effort to grasp their meaning, so long have the ideas passed
away which led to their erection. They almost startle modern thought. How
many years since the peasant women knelt at their steps! On the base of
one which has a sculptured shaft the wall-rue fern was growing. A young
starling was perched on the yew by it; he could but just fly, and
fluttered across to the sill of the church window. Young birds called
pettishly for food from the bushes. Upon the banks hart's-tongue was
coming up fresh and green, and the early orchis was in flower. Fern and
flower and fledglings had come again as they have come every year since
the oldest of these ancient shafts was erected, for life is older, life
is greyer, than the weather-beaten mouldings. But life, too, is fresh and
young; the stern thought in the stone becomes more cold and grim as the
centuries pass away.
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