It Is Perhaps Equally Hard
To Realise That This One Mind Of A Particular Village Is Individual,
Wholly Its Own, Unlike That Of Any Other Village, Near Or Far.
For one
village differs from another; and the village is in a sense a body, and
this body and the mind that inhabits it, act and react on one another,
and there is between them a correspondence and harmony, although it may
be but a rude harmony.
It is probable that we that are country born and bred are affected in
more ways and more profoundly than we know by our surroundings. The
nature of the soil we live on, the absence or presence of running
water, of hills, rocks, woods, open spaces; every feature in the
landscape, the vegetative and animal life - everything in fact that we
see, hear, smell and feel, enters not into the body only, but the soul,
and helps to shape and colour it. Equally important in its action on us
are the conditions created by man himself: - situation, size, form and
the arrangements of the houses in the village; its traditions, customs
and social life.
On that airy mirador which I occupied under (not in) the clouds,
after surveying the village beneath me I turned my sight abroad and
saw, near and far, many many other villages; and there was no other
exactly like Burbage nor any two really alike.
Each had its individual character. To mention only two that were
nearest - East Grafton and Easton, or Easton Royal. The first, small
ancient rustic-looking place: a large green, park-like shaded by well-
grown oak, elm, beech, and ash trees; a small slow stream of water
winding through it: round this pleasant shaded and watered space the
low-roofed thatched cottages, each cottage in its own garden, its porch
and walls overgrown with ivy and creepers. Thus, instead of a straight
line like Burbage it formed a circle, and every cottage opened on to
the tree-shaded village green; and this green was like a great common
room where the villagers meet, where the children play, where lovers
whisper their secrets, where the aged and weary take their rest, and
all subjects of interest are daily discussed. If a blackcap or
chaffinch sung in one of the trees the strain could be heard in every
cottage in the circle. All hear and see the same things, and think and
feel the same.
The neighbouring village was neither line, nor circle, but a cluster of
cottages. Or rather a group of clusters, so placed that a dozen or more
housewives could stand at their respective doors, very nearly facing
one another, and confabulate without greatly raising their voices.
Outside, all round, the wide open country - grass and tilled land and
hedges and hedgerow elms - is spread out before them. And in sight of
all the cottages, rising a little above them, stands the hoary ancient
church with giant old elm-trees growing near it, their branches laden
with rooks' nests, the air full of the continuous noise of the
wrangling birds, as they fly round and round, and go and come bringing
sticks all day, one to add to the high airy city, the other to drop as
an offering to the earth-god beneath, in whose deep-buried breast the
old trees have their roots.
But the other villages that cannot be named were in scores and
hundreds, scattered all over Wiltshire, for the entire county was
visible from that altitude, and not Wiltshire only but Somerset, and
Berkshire and Hampshire, and all the adjoining counties, and finally,
the prospect still widening, all England from rocky Land's End to the
Cheviots and the wide windy moors sprinkled over with grey stone
villages. Thousands and thousands of villages; but I could only see a
few distinctly - not more than about two hundred, the others from their
great distance - not in space but time - appearing but vaguely as spots
of colour on the earth. Then, fixing my attention on those that were
most clearly seen, I found myself in thought loitering in them,
revisiting cottages and conversing with old people and children I knew;
and recalling old and remembered scenes and talks, I smiled and by-and-
by burst out laughing.
It was then, when I laughed, that visions, dreams, memories, were put
to flight, for my wise sister was studying my face, and now, putting
her hand on mine, she said, "Listen!" And I listened, sadly, since I
could guess what was coming.
"I know," she said, "just what is at the back of your mind, and all
these innumerable villages you are amusing yourself by revisiting, is
but a beginning, a preliminary canter. For not only is it the idea of
the village and the mental colour in which it dyes its children's mind
which fades never, however far they may go, though it may be to die at
last in remote lands and seas - "
Here I interrupted, "O yes! Do you remember a poet's lines to the
little bourne in his childhood's home? A poet in that land where poetry
is a rare plant - I mean Scotland. I mean the lines:
How men that niver have kenned aboot it
Can lieve their after lives withoot it
I canna tell, for day and nicht
It comes unca'd for to my sicht."
"Yes," she replied, smiling sadly, and then, mocking my bad Scotch,
"and do ye ken that ither one, a native too of that country where, as
you say, poetry is a rare plant; that great wanderer over many lands
and seas, seeker after summer everlasting, who died thousands of miles
from home in a tropical island, and was borne to his grave on a
mountain top by the dark-skinned barbarous islanders, weeping and
lamenting their dead Tusitala, and the lines he wrote - do you remember?
Be it granted to me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of my home! and to hear again the call -
Hear about the graves of the martyrs, the pee-wees crying,
And hear no more at all!"
"Oh, I was foolish to quote those lines on a Scotch burn to you,
knowing how you would take such a thing up!
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