HAMLET FOLK.
It happened one Sunday morning in June that a swarm of bees issued
from a hive in a cottage garden near Okebourne church. The queen at
first took up her position in an elm tree just outside the churchyard,
where a large cluster of bees quickly depended from a bough. Being at
a great height the cottager could not take them, and, anxious not to
lose the swarm, he resorted to the ancient expedient of rattling
fire-tongs and shovel together in order to attract them by the
clatter. The discordant banging of the fire-irons resounded in the
church, the doors being open to admit the summer air; and the noise
became so uproarious that the clerk presently, at a sign from the
rector, went out to stop it, for the congregation were in a grin. He
did stop it, the cottager desisting with much reluctance; but, as if
to revenge the bee-master's wrongs, in the course of the day the
swarm, quitting the elm, entered the church and occupied a post in the
roof.
After a while it was found that the swarm had finally settled there,
and were proceeding to build combs and lay in a store of honey. The
bees, indeed, became such a terror to nervous people, buzzing without
ceremony over their heads as they stood up to sing, and caused such a
commotion and buffeting with Prayer-books and fans and handkerchiefs,
that ultimately the congregation were compelled to abandon their pews.
All efforts to dislodge the bees proving for the time ineffectual, the
rector had a temporary reading-desk erected in the porch, and there
held the service, the congregation sitting on chairs and forms in the
yard, and some on the stone tombs, and even on the sward under the
shade of the yew tree.
In the warm dry hay-making weather this open-air worship was very
pleasant, the flowers in the grass and the roses in the little plots
about the tombs giving colour and sweet odours, while the swallows
glided gracefully overhead and sometimes a blackbird whistled. The
bees, moreover, interfered with the baptisms, and even caused several
marriages to be postponed. Inside the porch was a recess where the
women left their pattens in winter, instead of clattering iron-shod
down the aisle.
Okebourne village was built in an irregular way on both sides of a
steep coombe, just at the verge of the hills, and about a mile from
the Chace; indeed, the outlying cottages bordered the park wall. The
most melancholy object in the place was the ruins of a windmill; the
sails and arms had long disappeared, but the wooden walls, black and
rotting, remained. The windmill had its genius, its human
representative--a mere wreck, like itself, of olden times. There never
was a face so battered by wind and weather as that of old Peter, the
owner of the ruin. His eyes were so light a grey as to appear all but
colourless. He wore a smock-frock the hue of dirt itself, and his
hands were ever in his pockets as he walked through rain and snow
beside his cart, hauling flints from the pits upon the Downs.
If the history of the cottage-folk is inquired into it will often be
found that they have descended from well-to-do positions in life--not
from extravagance or crime, or any remarkable piece of folly, but
simply from a long-continued process of muddling away money. When the
windmill was new, Peter's forefathers had been, for village people
well off. The family had never done anything to bring themselves into
disgrace; they had never speculated; but their money had been
gradually muddled away, leaving the last little better than a
labourer. To see him crawling along the road by his load of flints,
stooping forward, hands in pocket, and then to glance at the distant
windmill, likewise broken down, the roof open, and the rain and winds
rushing through it, was a pitiful spectacle. For that old building
represented the loss of hope and contentment in life as much as any
once lordly castle whose battlements are now visited only by the
jackdaw. The family had, as it were, foundered and gone down.
How they got the stray cattle into the pound it is difficult to
imagine; for the gate was very narrow, and neither bullocks nor horses
like being driven into a box. The copings of the wall on one side had
been pushed over, and lay in a thick growth of nettles: this, almost
the last of old village institutions, was, too, going by degrees to
destruction.
Every hamlet used to have its representative fighting-man--often more
than one--who visited the neighbouring villages on the feast days,
when there was a good deal of liquor flowing, to vaunt of their
prowess before the local champions. These quickly gathered, and after
due interchange of speeches not unlike the heroes of Homer, who
harangue each other ere they hurl the spear, engaged in conflict dire.
There was a regular feud for many years between the Okebourne men and
the Clipstone 'chaps;' and never did the stalwart labourers of those
two villages meet without falling to fisticuffs with right goodwill.
Nor did they like each other at all the worse, and after the battle
drank deeply from the same quart cups. Had these encounters found an
historian to put them upon record, they would have read something like
the wars (without the bloodshed) between the little Greek cities,
whose population scarcely exceeded that of a village, and between
which and our old villages there exists a certain similarity. A
simplicity of sentiment, an unconsciousness as it were of themselves,
strong local attachments and hatreds, these they had in common, and
the Okebourne and Clipstone men thwacked and banged each other's broad
chests in true antique style.
Hilary said that when he was a boy almost all the cottages in the
place had a man or woman living in them who had attained to extreme
old age. He reckoned up cottage after cottage to me in which he had
known old folk up to and over eighty years of age. Of late the old
people seemed to have somehow died out: there were not nearly so many
now.
Okebourne Wick, a little hamlet of fifteen or twenty scattered houses,
was not more than half a mile from Lucketts' Place; on the Overboro'
road, which passed it, was a pleasant roadside inn, where, under the
sign of The Sun, very good ale was sold. Most of the farmers dropped
in there now and then, not so much for a glass as a gossip, and no one
from the neighbouring villages or from Overboro' town ever drove past
without stopping. In the 'tap' of an evening you might see the
labourers playing at 'chuck-board,' which consists in casting a small
square piece of lead on to certain marked divisions of a shallow
tray-like box placed on the trestle-table. The lead, being heavy,
would stay where it fell; the rules I do not know, but the scene
reminded me of the tric-trac contests depicted by the old Dutch
painters.
Young Aaron was very clever at it. He pottered round the inn of an
evening and Saturday afternoons, doing odd jobs in the cellar with the
barrels; for your true toping spirit loves to knock the hoops and to
work about the cask, and carry the jugs in answer to the cry for some
more 'tangle-legs'--for thus they called the strong beer. Sometimes a
labourer would toast his cheese on a fork in the flame of the candle.
In the old days, before folk got so choice of food and delicate of
palate, there really seemed no limit to the strange things they ate.
Before the railways were made, herds of cattle had of course to travel
the roads, and often came great distances. The drovers were at the
same time the hardiest and the roughest of men in that rough and hardy
time. As night came on, after seeing their herd safe in a field, they
naturally ate their supper at the adjacent inn. Then sometimes, as a
dainty treat with which to finish his meal, a drover would call for a
biscuit, large and hard, as broad as his hand, and, taking the tallow
candle, proceed to drip the grease on it till it was well larded and
soaked with the melted fat.
At that date, before the Government stamp had been removed from
newspapers, the roadside inn was the centre and focus of all
intelligence. When the first railway was constructed up in the North
the Okebourne folk, like the rest of the world, were with good reason
extremely curious about this wonderful invention, and questioned every
passer-by eagerly for information. But no one could describe it, till
at last a man, born in the village, but who had been away for some
years soldiering, returned to his native place. He had been serving in
Canada and came through Liverpool, and thus saw the marvel of the age.
At the Sun the folk in the evening crowded round him, and insisted
upon knowing what a steam-engine was like. He did his best to describe
it, but in vain; they wanted a familiar illustration, and could not be
satisfied till the soldier, by a happy inspiration, said the only
thing to which he could compare a locomotive was a great cannon on a
timber-carriage. To us who are so accustomed to railways it seems a
singular idea; but, upon reflection, it was not so inapt, considering
that the audience had seen or heard something of cannons, and were
well acquainted with timber-carriages. The soldier wished to convey
the notion of a barrel or boiler mounted on wheels.
They kept up the institution of the parish constable, as separate and
distinct from the policeman, till very recently at Okebourne, though
it seems to have lapsed long since in many country places. One year
Hilary, with much shrugging of shoulders, was forced into the office;
and during his term there was a terrible set-to between two tribes of
gipsies in the Overboro' road. They fought like tigers, making the
lovely summer day hideous with their cries and shrieks--the women, the
fiercer by far, tearing each other's hair. One fiendish creature drew
her scissors, and, using them like a stiletto, drove the sharp point
into a sister 'gip's' head.
'Where's the constable?' was the cry. Messengers rushed to Lucketts'
Place; the barn, the sheds, the hayfield, all were searched in
vain--Hilary had quite disappeared. At the very first sound he had
slipped away to look at some cattle in Chequer's Piece, the very last
and outlying field of the farms, full a mile away, and when the
messengers got to Chequer's Piece of course he was up on the Down. So
much for the parish constable's office--an office the farmers shirked
whenever they could, and would not put in force when compelled to
accept it.
How could a resident willingly go into a neighbour's cottage and
arrest him without malice and scandal being engendered? If he did his
duty he was abused; if he did not do it, it was hinted that he
favoured the offender. As for the 'gip' who was stabbed, nothing more
was heard of it; she 'traipsed' off with the rest.
Sometimes when the 'tangle-legs' got up into their heads the labourers
felt an inclination to resume the ancient practices of their
fore-fathers. Then you might see a couple facing each other in the
doorway, each with his mug in one hand, and the other clenched,
flourishing their knuckles. 'Thee hit I.' 'Thee come out in th' road
and I'll let thee knaw.' The one knew very well that the other dared
not strike him in the house, and the other felt certain that, however
entreated, nothing would induce his opponent to accept the invitation
and 'come out into th' road.'
The shadows of the elm have so far to fall that they become enlarged
and lose the edge upon reaching the ground. I noticed this one
moonlight night in early June while sitting on a stile where the
footpath opened on the Overboro' road. Presently I heard voices, and
immediately afterwards a group came round the curve of the highway.
There were three cottage women, each with a basket and several
packages; having doubtless been into Overboro' town shopping, for it
was Saturday. They walked together in a row; and in front of them,
about five yards ahead, came a burly labourer of the same party,
carrying in his arms a large clock.
He had taken too much ale, and staggered as he walked, two steps aside
to one forward, and indeed could hardly keep upright. His efforts to
save himself and the clock from destruction led to some singular
flexures of the body, and his feet traced a maze as he advanced,
hugging the clock to his chest. The task was too much for his
over-taxed patience: just opposite the stile he stood still, held his
load high over his head, and shouting, 'Dang th' clock!' hurled it
with all his force thirty feet against the mound, at the same time
dropping a-sprawl. The women, without the least excitement or
surprise, quietly endeavoured to assist him up; and, as he resisted,
one of them remarked in the driest matter-of-fact tone, 'Ourn be just
like un--as contrary as the wind.' She alluded to her own husband.
When I mentioned this incident afterwards to Mrs. Luckett, she said
the troubles the cottage women underwent on account of the 'beer' were
past belief. One woman who did some work at the farmhouse kept her
cottage entirely by her own exertions; her husband doing nothing but
drink. He took her money from her by force, nor could she hide it
anywhere but what he would hunt it out. At last in despair she dropped
the silver in the jug on the wash-hand basin, and had the satisfaction
of seeing him turn everything topsy-turvy in a vain attempt to find
it. As he never washed, it never occurred to him to look in the
water-jug.
The cottage women when they went into Overboro' shopping, she said,
were the despair of the drapers. A woman, with two or three more to
chorus her sentiments, would go into a shop and examine half-a-dozen
dress fabrics, rubbing each between her work-hardened fingers and
thumb till the shopkeeper winced, expecting to see it torn. After
trying several and getting the counter covered she would push them
aside, contemptuously remarking, 'I don't like this yer shallygallee
(flimsy) stuff. Haven't'ee got any gingham tackle?' Whereat the poor
draper would cast down a fresh roll of stoutest material with the
reply: 'Here, ma'am. Here's something that will wear like pin-wire.'
This did better, but was declared to be 'gallus dear.'
Even within recent years, now and then a servant-girl upon entering
service at the farmhouse would refuse to touch butcher's meat. She had
never tasted anything but bacon at home, and could only be persuaded
to eat fresh meat with difficulty, being afraid she should not like
it. One girl who came from a lonely cottage in a distant
'coombe-bottom' of the Downs was observed never to write home or
attempt to communicate with her parents. She said it was of no use; no
postman came near, and the letters they wrote or the letters written
to them never reached their destination. 'Coombe-bottom' is a curious
duplication--either word being used to indicate a narrow valley or
hollow. An unfortunate child who lived there had never been so well
since the stone roller went over his head. She had a lover, but he was
'a gurt hummocksing noon-naw,' so she was not sorry to leave him. The
phrase might be translated, 'great loose-jointed idiot.'
They sometimes had lettuce-pudding for dinner, and thought nothing of
eating raw bacon. In the snow the men wound hay-bands round their legs
to serve as gaiters, and found it answered admirably. One poor girl
had been subject to fits ever since a stupid fellow, during the
haymaking, jokingly picked up a snake and threw it round her neck. Yet
even in that far-away coombe-bottom they knew enough to put an
oyster-shell in the kettle to prevent incrustation.
The rules of pronunciation understood about Okebourne seemed to
consist in lengthening the syllables that are usually spoken quick,
and shortening those that are usually long. Hilary said that years ago
it really appeared as if there was something deficient in the organs
of the throat among the labourers, for there were words they
positively could not pronounce. The word 'reservoir,' for instance,
was always 'tezzievoy;' they could not speak the word correctly. He
could not explain to me a very common expression among the men when
they wished to describe anything unusual or strange for which they had
no exact equivalent. It was always 'a sort of a meejick.' By degrees,
however, we traced it back to 'menagerie.' The travelling shows of
wild beasts at first so much astonished the villagers that everything
odd and curious became a menagerie, afterwards corrupted to 'meejick.'
'Caddle no man's cattle' was a favourite proverb with a population who
were never in a hurry. 'Like shot out of a show'l,' to express extreme
nimbleness, was another. A comfortless, bare apartment was 'gabern;'
anything stirred with a pointed instrument was 'ucked'--whether a cow
'ucked' the fogger with her horn or the stable was cleaned out with
the fork. The verb 'to uck' was capable indeed of infinite
conjugation, and young Aaron, breaking off a bennet, once asked me to
kindly 'uck' a grain of hay-dust out of his eye with it. When a heron
rose out of the brook 'a moll ern flod away.'
With all their apparent simplicity some of the cottage folk were quite
up to the value of appearances. Old Aaron had a little shop; he and
his wife sold small packets of tea, tobacco, whipcord, and so forth.
Sometimes while his wife was weighing out the sugar, old
Aaron--wretched old deceiver--would come in rustling a crumpled piece
of paper as if it were a banknote, and handing it to her with much
impressiveness of manner whisper loudly, 'Now you take un and put un
away; and mind you don't mix um. You put he along with the fives and
not with the tens.'
Hilary once showed me the heel of a boot which had just been mended by
the hedge carpenter and cobbler who worked for him; and offered to bet
that not all the scientific people in Europe, with microscope,
spectrum analysis, all their appliances, could tell what leather the
new heel-piece was made of. Unable to guess, I gave it up; it was of
bacon. A pig that was never a 'good doer' was found in a ditch dead.
There is always a competition among the labourers for a dead pig or
sheep; it was the cobbler's turn, and he had it, cut it up, and salted
it down. But when in course of time he came to partake of his side of
bacon, behold it was so tough and dried up that even he could not gnaw
it. The side hung in the cottage for months, for he did not like to
throw it away, and could not think what to do with it, for the dogs
could not eat it. At last the old fellow hit upon the notion of using
it as leather to mend shoes; so half his customers walked about the
world on bacon heels.
So far as I could discover, the cottage folk did not now use many
herbs. They made tea sometimes of the tormentil, whose little yellow
flowers appear along the furrows. The leaves of the square-stemmed
figwort, which they called 'cresset' or 'cressil,' were occasionally
placed on a sore; and the yarrow--locally 'yarra'--was yet held in
estimation as a salve or ointment.
It would be possible for any one to dwell a long time in the midst of
a village, and yet never hear anything of this kind and obtain no idea
whatever of the curious mixture of the grotesque, the ignorance and
yet cleverness, which go to make up hamlet life. But so many labourers
and labouring women were continually in and out of the kitchen at
Lucketts' Place that I had an opportunity of gathering these items
from Mrs. Luckett and Cicely. Years since they had employed even more
labour, before machinery came into use so much: then as many as
twenty-four women might have been counted in one hayfield, all in
regular rank like soldiers, turning the hay 'wallows' with their
rakes. 'There's one thing now you have forgotten,' said Cicely. 'They
pick the canker-roses off the briars and carry them in the pocket as a
certain preventive of rheumatism.'