Wild Life in a Southern County Part 5

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 superst.i.tious 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 pa.s.s: 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 s.p.a.ce 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 a.s.sisting 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 acc.u.mulate, 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 b.u.t.t weighted with a mace-like k.n.o.b 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 subst.i.tute 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 pa.s.s. 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 superst.i.tions 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 a.s.sistance 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 gra.s.ses 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-gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gra.s.s, prim dogs, stiff trees, human figures immovable in tight buckskins; running water hard as gla.s.s, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 cla.s.s 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 gra.s.s 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 ma.s.se_; 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 the company do not separate till long after the conclusion of the sale: the American or colonial agent perhaps stays a night at the farmstead. In the house itself there is all this time yet more liberal hospitality proffered: it is quite open-house hospitality, master and mistress vying in their efforts to make everyone feel at home. These gatherings do much to promote a friendly spirit in the neighbourhood.

In the summer the farmer is too much occupied to think of amus.e.m.e.nt. It is a curious fact that very few really downright country people care for fishing; a gun and a horse are as necessary as air and light but the rod is not a favourite. There seems to be greater enthusiasm than ever about horses; whether people bet or not, they talk and think and read more of horses than they ever did before.

In this locality Clerk's Ale, which used to be rather an event is quite extinct. The Court Leet is still held, but partakes slightly of the nature of a harmless farce. The lord of the manor's court is no terror now. A number of gentlemen, more for the custom's sake than anything, sit in solemn conclave to decide whether or no an old pollard tree may be cut down, how much an old woman shall pay in quit-rent for her hovel, or whether there was or was not a gateway in a certain hedge seventy years ago. However, it brings neighbours together, and causes the inevitable sherry to circulate briskly.

The long summer days begin very early at Wick. About half-past two of a morning in June a faint twittering under the eaves announces that the swallows are awaking, although they will not commence their flight for awhile yet. At three o'clock the cuckoo's call comes up from the distant meadows, together with the sound of the mower sharpening his scythe, for he likes to work while the dew is heavy on the gra.s.s, both for coolness and because it cuts better. He gets half a day's work done before the sun grows hot, and about eight or nine o'clock lies down under the hedge for a refreshing nap. Between three and four the thrushes open song in the copse at the corner of the Home-field, and soon a loud chorus takes up their ditty as one after the other joins in.

Then the nailed shoes of the milkers clatter on the pitching of the courtyard as they come for their buckets; and immediately afterwards stentorian voices may be heard in the fields bellowing 'Coom up!