Wellcombe—Mr. Hawker Postman to Wellcombe—The Miss Kitties—Advertisement
of Roger Giles—Superstitions—The Evil Eye—The Spiritual Ether—The
Vicar’s Pigs Bewitched—Horse killed by a Witch—He finds a lost Hen—A
Lecture against Witchcraft—Its Failure—An Encounter with the
Pixies—Curious Picture of a Pixie Revel—The Fairy-Ring—Antony
Cleverdon and the Mermaids.
ABOUT three miles from Morwenstow as the crow flies, and five or six by
road, on the coast, is a little church and hamlet called Wellcombe. The
church probably occupies the site of a cell of St. Nectan, and is
dedicated to him. It is old and was interesting.[31] The parish forms a
horseshoe with the heels toward the sea, which is here reached by a
rapidly descending glen ending in a cove. It is a small parish, with
some 230 inhabitants, people of a race different from those in the
adjoining parishes, with black eyes and hair, and dark-skinned.
“Dark-grained as a Wellcombe woman,” is a saying in the neighbourhood
when a brunette is being described. The people are singularly ignorant
and superstitious: they are a religious people, and attend church with
great regularity and devotion.
The chief landowner and lord of the manor is Lord Clinton, and the
vicarage is in his gift. It is worth only seventy pounds, and there is
neither glebe nor parsonage house; consequently Wellcombe formerly went
with Hartland or Morwenstow.
When Mr. Hawker became vicar of Morwenstow, Wellcombe was held by the
vicar of Hartland; but on his death, in 1851, Lord Clinton gave it to
Mr. Hawker.
Mr. Hawker accordingly took three services every Sunday. He had his
morning prayer at Morwenstow, at eleven, and then drove over to
Wellcombe, where he had afternoon service at two P.M., and then returned
to Morwenstow for evening prayer at five P.M.
He never ate between services. Directly morning prayer was over, he got
into his gig; a basket of pipes, all loaded, was handed in, and he drove
off to Wellcombe, smoking all the way; and, after having taken duty, he
smoked all the way back. Once a month he celebrated the holy communion
at Wellcombe; and then, through the kindness of the rector of
Kilkhampton, the morning service at Morwenstow was not allowed to fall
through.
Mr. Hawker for long acted as postman to Wellcombe. The inhabitants of
that remote village did not often get letters; when missives arrived for
them, they were left at Morwenstow vicarage, and on the following Sunday
a distribution of the post took place in the porch after divine service.
But the parishioners of Wellcombe were no “scholards”; and the vicar was
generally required to read their letters to them, and sometimes to write
the answers.
On one occasion he was reading a letter to an old woman of Wellcombe,
whose son was in Brazil. Part of the letter ran as follows: “I cannot
tell you, dear mother, how the muskitties [mosquitoes] torment me. They
never leave me alone, but pursue me everywhere.”
“To think of that!” interrupted the old woman. “My Ezekiel must be a
handsome lad! But I’m interrupting. Do you go on, please, parson.”
“Indeed, dear mother,” continued the vicar, reading, “I shut my door and
window of an evening, to keep them out of my room.”
“Dear life!” exclaimed the old woman, “what will the world come to
next!”
“And yet,” continued the vicar, “they do not leave me alone. I believe
they come down the chimney to get at me.”
“Well, well, now, parson!” exclaimed the mother, holding up her hands;
“to think how forward of them!”
“Of whom?”
“Why, the Miss Kitties, sure. When I were young, maidens would have
blushed to do such a thing. And come down the chimbley too!” After a
pause, mother’s pride overmastering sense of what befitted her sex: “But
Ezekiel must be rare handsome, for the maidens to be after him so. And,
I reckon, the Miss Kitties is quality-folk too.”
Mr. Hawker thus describes the Wellcombe people: “They have amongst them
no farrier for their cattle, no medical man for themselves, no
beer-house, no shop; a man who travels for a distant town (Stratton)
supplies them with sugar by the ounce, or tea in smaller quantities
still. Not a newspaper is taken in throughout the hamlet, although they
are occasionally astonished and delighted by the arrival, from some
almost forgotten friend in Canada, of an ancient copy of _The Toronto
Gazette_. This publication they pore over to weariness; and on Sunday
they will worry the clergyman with questions about transatlantic places
and names, of which he is obliged to confess himself utterly ignorant.
An ancient dame once exhibited her prayer-book, very nearly worn out,
printed in the reign of George II., and very much thumbed at the page
from which she assiduously prayed for the welfare of Prince Frederick.”
The people of Wellcombe were very ignorant. Indeed, a good deal of
ignorance lingered late in the West of England. The schoolmaster had not
thrown a great blaze of light on the Cornish mind in the first half of
the present century.
I give a specimen of English composition by a schoolmaster of the old
style in Devonshire; and it may be guessed that the Cornish fared not
better for teachers than their Wessex neighbours.
This is an advertisement, said to have been written over a little shop:—
ROGER GILES, Surgin, Parish clark and Skulemaster, Groser, and
Hundertaker, Respectably informs ladys and gentlemen that he drors
teef without wateing a minit, applies laches every hour, blisters on
the lowest tarms, and vizicks for a penny a peace. He sells
Godfather’s Kordales, kuts korns, bunyons, dokters hosses, clips
donkies, wance a munth, and undertakes to luke arter every bodies
nayls by the ear. Joes-harps, penny wissels, brass kanel-sticks,
fryinpans, and other moozikal hinstrumints hat grately reydooced
figers. Young ladys and genelmen larnes their grammur and langeudge,
in the purtiest manner, also grate care taken off their morrels and
spellin. Also zarm-zinging, tayching the base vial, and all other
zorts of vancy-work, squadrils, pokers, weazils, and all country
dances tort at home and abroad at perfekshun. Perfumery and znuff,
in all its branches. As times is cruel bad, I begs to tell ey that i
his just beginned to sell all sorts of stashonary ware, cox, hens,
vouls, pigs, and all other kinds of poultry. Blakin-brishes,
herrins, coles, skrubbin-brishes, traykel, godly bukes and bibles,
mise-traps, brick-dist, whisker-seed, morrel pokkerankerchers, and
all zorts of swatemaits, including taters, sassages, and other
gardin stuff, bakky, zigars, lamp oyle, tay-kittles, and other
intoxzikatin likkers; a dale of fruit, hats, zongs, hare oyle,
pattins, bukkits, grindin stones, and other aitables, korn and
bunyon zalve and all hardware. I as laid in a large azzortment of
trype, dogs’ mate, lolipops, ginger-beer, matches, and other
pikkles, such as hepsom salts, hoysters, Winzer sope, anzetrar.
P.S.—I tayches gografy, rithmetic, cowstiks, jimnastiks, and other
chynees tricks.
I should have held this to be an invention inspired by Caleb Quotem, in
George Colman’s play “The Review,” but that Mr. Burton of the Curiosity
Shop, Falmouth, has shown me old signboards almost as absurd.
The people of Wellcombe were not only ignorant, but superstitious. Mr.
Hawker shared at least some of their superstitions. Living as he did in
a visionary dream-world of spirits, he was ready to admit, without
questioning, the stories he heard of witchcraft and the power of the
evil eye.
Whenever he came across any one with a peculiar eyeball, sometimes
bright and clear, and at others covered with a filmy gauze, or a double
pupil, ringed twice, or a larger eye on the left than on the right side,
he would hold the thumb, fore and middle fingers in a peculiar manner,
so as to ward off the evil effect of the eye.
He had been descanting one day on the blight which such an eye could
cast, when his companion said: “Really, Mr. Hawker, you do not believe
such rubbish as this in the nineteenth century.”
He turned round and said gravely: “I do not pretend to be wiser than the
Word of God. I find that the evil eye is reckoned along with ‘blasphemy,
pride and foolishness,’ as things that defile a man.”[32]
Mr. Hawker had a theory that there was an atmosphere which surrounded
men, imperceptible to the senses, which was the vehicle of spirit, in
which angels and devils moved, and which vibrated with spiritual
influences affecting the soul. Every passion man felt set this ether
trembling, and made itself felt throughout the spiritual world. A
sensation of love or anger or jealousy felt by one man was like a stone
thrown into a pool; and it sent a ripple throughout the spiritual
universe which touched and communicated itself to every spiritual being.
Some mortal men, having a highly refined soul, were as conscious of
these pulsations as disembodied beings; but the majority are so numbed
in their spiritual part as to make no response to these movements.
He pointed out that photography has brought to light and taken
cognisance of a chemical element in the sun’s rays of which none
formerly knew anything, but the existence of which is now proved; so, in
like manner, was there a spiritual element in the atmosphere of which
science could not give account, as its action could only be registered
by the soul of man, which answered to the calms and storms in it as the
barometer to the atmosphere and the films of gold-leaf in the
magnetometer to the commotions of the magnetic wave.
There was an old woman at Morwenstow who he fully believed was a witch.
If any one combated his statement he would answer: “I have seen the five
black spots placed diagonally under her tongue, which are evidences of
what she is. They are like those in the feet of swine, made by the
entrance into them of the demons at Gadara.”
This old woman came every day to the vicarage for skimmed milk. One day
there was none and she had to leave with an empty can. “As she went
away,” said the vicar, “I saw her go mumbling something beside the
pig-sty. She looked over at the pigs and her eye and incantation worked.
I ran out ten minutes after to look at my sow, which had farrowed
lately; and there I saw the sow, which, like Medea, had taken a hatred
to her own offspring, spurning them away from her milk; and there sat
all the nine sucking-pigs on their tails, with their fore-paws in the
air, begging in piteous fashion; but the evil eye of old Cherry had
turned the mother’s heart to stone, and she let them die one by one
before her eyes.”
Some years agone a violent thunderstorm passed over the parish and
wrought great damage in its course. Trees were rooted up, cattle killed,
and a rick or two set on fire.
“It so befel that I visited, the day after, one of the chief
agricultural inhabitants of the village; and I found the farmer and his
men standing by a ditch wherein lay, heels upward, a fine young horse,
quite dead. ‘Here, sir,’ he shouted, as I came on, ‘only please to look:
is not this a sight to see?’ I looked at the poor animal and uttered my
sympathy and regret at the loss. ‘One of the fearful results,’ I said,
‘of the storm yesterday.’ ‘There, Jem,’ said he to one of his men
triumphantly, ‘didn’t I say the parson would find it out? Yes, sir,’ he
said, ‘it is as you say: it is all that wretched old Cherry Parnell’s
doing, with her vengeance and her noise.’ I stared with astonishment at
this unlooked-for interpretation which he had put into my mouth, and
waited for him to explain. ‘You see, sir,’ he went on to say, ‘the case
was this: Old Cherry came up to my place, tottering along, and mumbling
that she wanted a fagot of wood. I said to her: “Cherry, I gave you one
only two days agone, and another two days before that; and I must say
that I didn’t make up my woodrick altogether for you.” So she turned
away, looking very grany, and muttering something. Well, sir, last night
as I was in bed, I and my wife, all to once there bursted a thunderbolt
and shaked the very room and house. Up we started, and my wife says:
“Oh, father, old Cherry’s up! I wish I had gone after her with that
there faggot.” I confess I thought in my mind, I wish she had; but it
was too late then, and I would try to hope for the best. But now, sir,
you see with your own eyes what that revengeful old woman has been and
done. And I do think, sir,’ he went on to say, changing his tone to a
kind of indignant growl, ‘I do think, that when I call to mind how I’ve
paid tithe and rates faithfully all these years and kept my place in
church before your reverence every Sunday and always voted in the
vestries that what hath and be ought to be—I do think that such ones as
old Cherry Parnell never ought to be allowed to meddle with such things
as thunder and lightning.’”
A farmer came to Mr. Hawker once with the complaint: “Parson, I’ve lost
my brown speckled hen; I reckon old Cherry have been and conjured her
away. I wish you’d be so gude as to draw a circle, and find out where my
brown speckled hen have been spirited away to.”
The vicar had his cross-handled walking-stick in his hand, a sort of
Oriental pastoral staff; and he forthwith drew a circle in the dust and
sketched a pentacle within it—Solomon’s seal, in fact—whilst he thought
the matter over.
“I believe, Thomas,” said he, “the brown speckled hen has never got out
of your lane; the hedges are walled and high.”
In the afternoon back came the farmer. “Parson, you’ve done for old
Cherry with your circle. I found the brown speckled hen in our lane.”
Not twenty miles from Morwenstow, a few years ago, occurred the
following circumstances, which I know are true, and which I give here as
an illustration of the superstition which prevails in Devon and
Cornwall.
A boy of the parish of Bratton Clovelly, proving intelligent in the
national school, was sent by the rector to Exeter to the training
college, in time passed his examination and obtained his certificate. He
then returned for a holiday to his native village and volunteered to
deliver in the schoolroom a lecture on “Popular Superstitions.”
The lecture was announced, the rector took the chair, the room was
crowded, and a very fair discourse was delivered against the prevailing
belief in witchcraft. The lecturer was heard patiently to the close, and
then up rose one of the principal farmers in the place, Brown by name.
“Mr. Lecturer,” said he, “and all good people here assembled: You’ve had
your say against witchcraft, and you says that there ain’t nothing of
the sort. Now, I’ll tell’y a thing or two—facts; and a pinch of facts is
worth a bushel of reasons. There was, t’other day, my cow Primrose, the
Guernsey, and as gude a cow for milk as ever was. Well, on that day,
when my missus put the milk on the fire to scald ’un, it wouldn’t hot.
She put on a plenty of wood, and turves, and brimmel-bushes, but
’twouldn’t hot noways. And sez she to me, as I comes in, ‘I’ll tell’y
what tez, Richard, Primrose has been overlooked by old Betty Spry. Now,
you go off as fast as you can to the White Witch up to Exeter.’ Well, I
did so; and when I came to the White Witch, as lives nigh All Hallows on
the Walls, I was shown into a room; and there was a farmer stamping
about, in just such a predicament as me. Sez I, ‘Are you come to see the
White Witch?’—‘Ah, that I be!’ sez he; ‘my old cow has fallen ill, and
won’t give no milk.’—‘Why,’ sez I, ‘my cow’s milk won’t hot, and the
missus has put a lot of fire underneath.’—‘Do you suspect anybody?’ sez
he.—‘I do,’ sez I; ‘there’s old Betty Spry has an evil eye, and her’s
the one as has done it.’ Just then the door opens, and the maiden looks
in, and sez to me, ‘Mr. Brown, the White Witch will speak with you.’ And
then I am shown into the next room. Well, directly I come in, sez he to
me, ‘I know what you’ve come for before you speak a word: your cow’s
milk won’t scald. I’ll tell’y why: she’s been overlooked by an old woman
named Betty Spry.’ He said so to me, as sure as eggs is eggs, and I
never had told him not one word. Then sez he to me, ‘You go home, and
get sticks out four different parishes, and set them under the milk, and
her’ll boil.’ Well, I paid ’un a crown, and then I came here; and I
fetched sticks from Lew Trenchard, and from Stowford, and from German’s
Week, and from Broadwood Widger; and no sooner were they lighted under
the pan than the milk boiled.”
Then up rose Farmer Tickle, very red in the face, and said: “Mr.
Lecturer: You’ve said that there be no such things as spirits and
ghosts. I’ll tell’y something. I was coming over Broadbury one night,
and somehow or other I lost my way. I was afraid of falling into the
bog—you know all about that bog, don’t’y, by the old Roman castle? There
was a gentleman—a sort of traveller, in my recollection—was driving over
Broadbury in a light tax-cart, and suddenly he went into the bog, and
his horse and cart were swallowed up, and he had much ado to save
himself. Well, he didn’t want to lose his tax-cart and harness, for the
tax-cart contained bales of cloth and the harness was new; so he went to
the blacksmith at the cross, and got him to come there with his man and
grappling-irons. They let the irons down into the bog, and presently
they got hold of something and began to draw it up. It was a horse; and
they threw it on the side and said, ‘There, sir, now you have your
horse.’—‘No,’ answered he, looking hard at it, ‘this is a hunter, with
saddle and stirrups. Let down the irons again.’ So they felt about once
more, and presently they pulled up another horse and laid him on the
side. ‘There, sir, is this yours?’ sez the blacksmith; ‘he’s in
gig-harness all right.’—‘No,’ sez the traveller; ‘my horse was a dapple,
and this is a grey. Down with the irons again.’ This time they cries
out, ‘Yo, heave-oh! we’ve got hold of the tax-cart!’ But when they
pulled ’un up it was a phaeton. So they let their grappling-irons down
again, and presently up came another horse, and this was in harness; but
sez the traveller, ‘He’s not mine, for mine was a mare. Try again, my
fine fellows.’ Next as came up had no harness at all on; and the next
had blinkers with Squire G——’s crest on them. Well, they worked all day,
and they got up a dozen horses and three carriages, but they never found
the traveller’s tax-cart and the dapple mare.
“But, Lor’ bless me! I’ve been wandering again on Broadbury, and now I
must return to the point. Knowing what I did about the bog, I was a bit
frighted of falling into her. Presently I came to a bit of old quarry
and rock, and I thought there might be some one about, so I shouted at
the top of my voice, ‘Farmer Tickle has lost his way.’ Well, just then a
voice from among the stones answered me, and said, ‘Who? who?’—‘Farmer
Tickle of X——, I say.’ Then the voice answered again, asking: ‘Who? who?
who?’—‘Are ye hard of hearing?’ I shouted. ‘I say tez Farmer Tickle, as
live in the old rummling farm of Southcot in X—— parish.’ As imperent as
possible again the voice asked: ‘Who? who? who?’ ’Tez Farmer Tickle, I
tell’y!’ I shouted; ‘and if you axes again I’ll come along of you with
my stick.’—‘Who? who? who?’ I ran to the rocks and beat about with my
stick; and then a great white thing rushed out——”
“It was an owl,” said the lecturer scornfully.
“An owl!” echoed Farmer Tickle. “I put it to the meeting. A man as says
this was an owl, and not a pixie, would say anything!” and he sat down
amidst great applause.
Then up rose Farmer Brown once more.
“Gentlemen, and labouring men, and also women,” he began, “I’ll give you
another pinch of facts. Before I was married I was going along by
Culmpit one day, when I met old Betty Spry, and she sez to me, ‘Cross my
hand with silver, my pretty boy, and I’ll tell you who your true love
will be.’ So I thinks I’d like to know that, and I gives her a sixpence.
Then sez she, ‘Mark the first maiden that you meet as you go along the
lane that leads to Eastway House: she’s the one that will make you a
wife.’ Well, I was going along that way, and the first maiden I met was
Patience Kite. I thought she was comely and fresh-looking; so, after
going a few steps on, I turns my head over my shoulder and looks back at
her; and what in the world should she be doing at exactly the same
minute but looking back at me! Then I went after her and said,
‘Patience, will you be Mrs. Brown?’ and she said, ‘I don’t mind, I’m
noways partickler.’ And now she is my wife. Look at her yonder, as red
as a turkey-cock; there she sits, and so you may know my story is true.
But how did Betty Spry know this before ever I had spoken the words?
That beats me!”
Then, once more, up stood Farmer Tickle.
“Mr. Lecturer, Mr. Chairman, I puts it to you. First and last we must
come to Holy Scripter. Now, I ask you, Mr. Chairman, being our parson,
and you, Mr. Lecturer, being a scholard, and all you as have got Bibles,
whether Holy Scripter does not say, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live,’—whether Holy Scripter does not say that the works of the flesh
are idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, and such like?
Now, if witchcraft be all moonshine, then I reckon so be hatred,
variance, and emulations too. Now, I put it to the meeting, which is
true? Which does it vote for, the Holy Bible and witchcraft, or Mr.
Lecturer and his new-fangled nonsense? Those in favour of Scripter and
witches hold up their hands.”
Need I say that witchcraft carried the day.
One of Mr. Hawker’s parishioners had an encounter with pixies. Pixies,
it must be explained, are elves, who dance on the sward and make
fairy-rings; others work in mines; others, again, haunt old houses.
This man had been to Stratton market. On his way home, as he was passing
between dense hedges, suddenly he saw a light, and heard music and
singing. He stood still, and looked and listened. Passing through the
hedge, he saw the little people in a ring dancing; and there sat on a
toadstool an elf with a lantern in his hand, made of a campanula, out of
which streamed a greenish-blue light. As the pixies danced, they sang.
“Sir,”—this is the man’s own account,—“I looked and listened a while,
and then I got quietly hold of a great big stone, and heaved it up, and
I dreshed in amongst them all; and then I up on my horse, and galloped
away as hard as I could, and never drew rein till I came home to
Morwenstow. But, when the stone fell among them all, out went the light.
You don’t believe me? But it be true, true as gospel; for next day I
went back to the spot, and there lay the stone, just where I had dreshed
it.”
I have got a curious oil-painting in Lew Trenchard House, dating from
the reign of William and Mary as I judge by the costume. It represents a
pixie revel. In the background is an elfin city, illumined by the moon.
Before the gates is a ring of tiny beings, dancing merrily around what
is probably a corpse-candle: it is a candle-stump, standing on the
ground, and the flame diffuses a pallid white light.
In the foreground is water, on which floats a pumpkin, with a quarter
cut out of it, so as to turn it into a boat with a hood. In this the
pixie king and his consort are enthroned, while round the sides of the
boat sit the court, dressed in the costume of the period of William of
Orange. On the hood sits a little elf, with a red toadstool, as an
umbrella, over the heads of the king and queen. In the bow sits
Jack-o’-lantern, with a cresset in his hands, dressed in a red jacket.
Beside him is an elf playing on a Jew’s-harp, which is as large as
himself; and another mischievous red-coated sprite is touching the
vibrating tongue of the harp with a large extinguisher, so as to stop
the music.
The water all round the royal barge is full of little old women and
red-jacketed hobgoblins in egg-shells and crab-shells; whilst some of
the pixies, who have been making a ladder of an iron boat-chain, have
missed their footing, and are splashing about in the water. In another
part of the picture the sprites appear to be illumining the window of a
crumbling tower.
Mr. Hawker had a curious superstition about fairy-rings. There was one
on the cliff. Some years ago he was visited by Lady ——, who drove over
from Bude. As he walked with her on the sward, they came to the ring in
the grass, and she was about to step into it, when he arrested her
abruptly, and said: “Beware how you set foot within a fairy-ring: it
will bring ill-luck.”
“Oh, nonsense, Mr. Hawker! the circle is made by toadstools. See, here
is one: I will pick it.”
“If you do, there will be shortly a death in your house.”
She neglected the warning, and picked one of the fairy champignons.
Within a week a little daughter died.
Another similar coincidence confirmed him in his belief. The curate of
Bridgerule and his wife came to see him, and much the same scene took
place. The curate, in spite of his warning, kicked over a toadstool in
the ring, and handed it to his wife.
Ten days after, Mr. Hawker got a heart-broken letter from the wife, an
Irish lady, in which she said: “Oh, why did we neglect your prophecy!
why did we give no heed to your word! When we returned to Bridgerule,
our little Mary sickened; and now we have just laid her in her grave.”
He was staying with a friend. Suddenly the table gave a crack. Mr.
Hawker started, and, laying his hand on the table, said: “Mark my words,
there has been a death in my family.”
By next post came news of the death of one of the Miss I’ans.
At Wellcombe was an old man, Antony Cleverdon, from whom Mr. Hawker
learned many charms, some of which he has given in his _Footprints of
Former Men_. This old man, commonly called Uncle Tony, was a source of
great amusement to the vicar, who delighted to visit and converse with
him.
“Sir,” said Uncle Tony to him one day, “there is one thing I want to ask
you, if I may be so free, and it is this: Why should a merrymaid (the
local name for mermaid), that will ride upon the waters in such terrible
storms, never lose her looking-glass and comb?”
“Well, I suppose,” answered the vicar, “that, if there are such
creatures, Tony, they must wear their looking-glasses and combs fastened
on somehow—like fins to a fish.”
“See!” said Tony, chuckling with delight, “what a thing it is to know
the Scriptures like your reverence: I never should have found it out.
But there’s another point, sir, I should like to know, if you please:
I’ve been bothered about it in my mind hundreds of times. Here be I,
that have gone up and down Wellcombe cliffs and streams fifty years come
next Candlemas, and I’ve gone and watched the water by moonlight and
sunlight, days and nights, on purpose, in rough weather and smooth (even
Sundays too, saving your presence)—and my sight as good as most
men’s—and yet I never could come to see a merrymaid in all my life!
How’s that, sir?”
“Are you sure, Tony,” the vicar rejoined, “that there are such things in
existence at all?”
“Oh, sir, my old father seen her twice! He was out once by night for
wreck (my father watched the coast like many of the old people
formerly), and it came to pass that he was down by the Duck Pool on the
sand at low-water tide, and all at once he heard music in the sea. Well,
he croped on behind a rock, like a coast-guard man watching a boat, and
got very near the noise. He couldn’t make out the words, but the sound
was exactly like Bill Martin’s voice that singed second counter in
church: at last he got very near, and there was the merrymaid very plain
to be seen, swimming about on the waves like a woman bathing, and
singing away. But my father said it was very sad and solemn to hear—more
like the tune of a funeral hymn than a Christmas carol, by far—but it
was so sweet that it was as much as he could do to hold back from
plunging into the tide after her. And he an old man of sixty-seven, with
a wife and a houseful of children at home! The second time was down here
by Wellcombe Pits. He had been looking out for spars: there was a ship
breaking up in the Channel, and he saw some one move just at half-tide
mark. So he went on very softly, step and step, till he got nigh the
place; and there was the merrymaid sitting on a rock—the bootifullest
merrymaid that eye could behold—and she was twisting about her long
hair, and dressing it just like one of our girls getting ready for her
sweetheart on a Sunday. The old man made sure he should greep hold of
her round the waist, before ever she found him out; and he had got so
near that a couple of paces more, and he would have caught her, as sure
as tithe or tax, when, lo and behold, she looked back and glimpsed him!
So in one moment she dived head foremost off the rock, and then tumbled
herself topsy-turvy about in the water, and cast a look at my poor
father, and grinned like a seal!”
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