When The
Shower Was Nearly Over I Heard The Wing-Beats And Low Guttural Voice Of
A Cuckoo; He Did
Not see my crouching form in the hollow and settled on
a projecting block of stone close to me - not
Three yards from my head.
Presently he began to call, and it struck me as very curious that his
voice did not sound louder or different in quality than when heard at a
distance of forty or fifty yards. When he had finished calling and
flown away I crept out of my hole and walked back over the wet heath,
thinking now of the cuckoo and now of that half natural, half
supernatural but not very sublime being who, as I have said, was
formerly a haunter of these parts. This was a question that puzzled my
mind. It is easy to say that legends of the Devil are common enough all
over the land, and date back to old monkish times or to the beginning
of Christianity, when the spiritual enemy was very much in man's
thoughts; the curious thing is, that the devil associated in tradition
with certain singular features in the landscape, as it is here in this
Surrey village, and in a thousand other places, has little or no
resemblance to the true and only Satan. He is at his greatest a sort of
demi-god, or a semi-human being or monster of abnormal power and wildly
eccentric habits, but not really bad. Thus, I was told by a native of
Churt that when the Devil met with that serious accident which gave its
name to the Poor Devil's Bottom, his painful cries and groans attracted
the villagers, and they ministered to him, giving him food and drink
and applying such remedies as they knew of to his hurts until he
recovered and got out of the hole. Whether or not this legend has ever
been recorded I cannot say; one is struck with its curious resemblance
to some of the giant legends of the west of England. Near Devizes there
is a deep impression in the earth about which a very different story is
told: it is called the Devil's Jumps and is, I believe, supposed to be
an entrance to his subterranean dwelling-place. He jumps down through
that hole, the earth opens to receive him, and closes behind him. And
it is (or was) believed that if any person will run three times round
the hole the Devil will issue from it and start off in chase of a hare!
Why he comes forth and chases a hare nobody knows.
It was only recently, when in Cornwall, the most legendary of the
counties, that I found out who and what this rural village devil I had
been thinking of really was. In Cornwall one finds many legends of the
Devil, as many in fact as in Flintshire, where the Devil has left so
many memorials on the downs, but they are few to those relating to the
giants. These legends were collected by Robert Hunt, and first
published over half a century ago in his Popular Romances of the
West of England, and he points out in this work that "devil" in
most of the legends appears to be but another name for "giant," that in
many cases the character of the being is practically the same. He
believes that traditions of giants, which probably date back to
prehistoric times, were once common all over the country, that they
were always associated with certain impressive features in the
landscape - grotesque hills, chasms and hollows in the downs and huge
masses of rock; that the early teachers of Christianity, anxious to
kill these traditions, or to blot out a false belief or superstition
with the darker and more terrible image of a powerful being at war with
man, taught that "giant" was but another name for Devil. If this is so,
the teaching was not altogether good policy. The giants, it is true,
were an awesome folk and flung immense rocks about in a reckless manner
and did many other mad things; and there were some that were wholly
bad, just as there are rogue elephants and as there are black sheep in
the human flock, but they were not really bad as a rule, and certainly
not too intelligent. Even little men with their cunning little brains
could get the better of them. The result of such teaching could only be
that the Devil would be regarded as not the unmitigated monster they
had been told that he was, nor without human weaknesses and virtues.
When we say now that he is not "as black as he is painted" we may be
merely repeating what was being said by the common people of England in
the days of St. Augustine and St. Colomb, and of the Irish missionaries
in Cornwall.
XII
A WILTSHIRE VILLAGE
"What is your nearest village?" I asked of a labourer I met on the road
one bleak day in early spring, after a great frost: for I had walked
far enough and was cold and tired, and it seemed to me that it would be
well to find shelter for the night and a place to settle down in for a
season.
"Burbage," he answered, pointing the way to it.
And when I came to it, and walked slowly and thoughtfully the entire
length of its one long street or road, my sister said to me:
"Yet another old ancient village!" and then, with a slight tremor in
her voice, "And you are going to stay in it!"
"Yes," I replied, in a tone of studied indifference: but as to whether
it was ancient or not I could not say; - I had never heard its name
before, and knew nothing about it: doubtless it was characteristic -
"That weary word," she murmured.
- But it was neither strikingly picturesque, nor quaint, nor did I wish
it were either one or the other, nor anything else attractive or
remarkable, since I sought only for a quiet spot where my brain might
think the thoughts and my hand do the work that occupied me.
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