The Starting—Peterborough Cathedral—Anglo-Saxon Names—Kæmpe
Viser—Steam—Norman Barons—Chester Ale—Sion Tudor—Pretty Welsh Tongue.
So our little family, consisting of myself, my wife Mary, and my daughter
Henrietta, for daughter I shall persist in calling her, started for Wales
in the afternoon of the 27th July, 1854. We flew through part of Norfolk
and Cambridgeshire in a train which we left at Ely, and getting into
another, which did not fly quite so fast as the one we had quieted,
reached the Peterborough station at about six o’clock of a delightful
evening. We proceeded no farther on our journey that day, in order that
we might have an opportunity of seeing the cathedral.
Sallying arm in arm from the Station Hotel, where we had determined to
take up our quarters for the night, we crossed a bridge over the deep
quiet Nen, on the southern bank of which stands the station, and soon
arrived at the cathedral—unfortunately we were too late to procure
admission into the interior, and had to content ourselves with walking
round it and surveying its outside.
It is named after, and occupies the site, or part of the site of an
immense monastery, founded by the Mercian King Peda, in the year 665, and
destroyed by fire in the year 1116, which monastery, though originally
termed Medeshamsted, or the homestead on the meads, was subsequently
termed Peterborough, from the circumstance of its having been reared by
the old Saxon monarch for the love of God and the honour of Saint Peter,
as the Saxon Chronicle says, a book which I went through carefully in my
younger days, when I studied Saxon, for, as I have already told the
reader, I was in those days a bit of a philologist. Like the first, the
second edifice was originally a monastery, and continued so till the time
of the Reformation; both were abodes of learning; for if the Saxon
Chronicle was commenced in the monkish cells of the first, it was
completed in those of the second. What is at present called Peterborough
Cathedral is a noble venerable pile, equal upon the whole in external
appearance to the cathedrals of Toledo, Burgos and Leon, all of which I
have seen. Nothing in architecture can be conceived more beautiful than
the principal entrance, which fronts the west, and which, at the time we
saw it, was gilded with the rays of the setting sun.
After having strolled about the edifice surveying it until we were weary,
we returned to our inn, and after taking an excellent supper retired to
rest.
At ten o’clock next morning we left the capital of the meads. With
dragon speed, and dragon noise, fire, smoke, and fury, the train dashed
along its road through beautiful meadows, garnished here and there with
pollard sallows; over pretty streams, whose waters stole along
imperceptibly; by venerable old churches, which I vowed I would take the
first opportunity of visiting: stopping now and then to recruit its
energies at places, whose old Anglo-Saxon names stared me in the eyes
from station boards, as specimens of which, let me only dot down Willy
Thorpe, Ringsted, and Yrthling Boro. Quite forgetting everything Welsh,
I was enthusiastically Saxon the whole way from Medeshamsted to
Blissworth, so thoroughly Saxon was the country, with its rich meads, its
old churches and its names. After leaving Blissworth, a thoroughly Saxon
place by-the-bye, as its name shows, signifying the stronghold or
possession of Bligh or Blee, I became less Saxon; the country was rather
less Saxon, and I caught occasionally the word “by” on a board, the
Danish for a town; which “by” waked in me a considerable portion of
Danish enthusiasm, of which I have plenty, and with reason, having
translated the glorious Kæmpe Viser over the desk of my ancient master,
the gentleman solicitor of East Anglia. At length we drew near the great
workshop of England, called by some, Brummagem or Bromwicham, by others
Birmingham, and I fell into a philological reverie, wondering which was
the right name. Before, however, we came to the station, I decided that
both names were right enough, but that Bromwicham was the original name;
signifying the home on the broomie moor, which name it lost in polite
parlance for Birmingham, or the home of the son of Biarmer, when a
certain man of Danish blood, called Biarming, or the son of Biarmer, got
possession of it, whether by force, fraud, or marriage—the latter,
by-the-bye, is by far the best way of getting possession of an
estate—this deponent neither knoweth nor careth. At Birmingham station I
became a modern Englishman, enthusiastically proud of modern England’s
science and energy; that station alone is enough to make one proud of
being a modern Englishman. Oh, what an idea does that station, with its
thousand trains dashing off in all directions, or arriving from all
quarters, give of modern English science and energy. My modern English
pride accompanied me all the way to Tipton; for all along the route there
were wonderful evidences of English skill and enterprise; in chimneys
high as cathedral spires, vomiting forth smoke, furnaces emitting flame
and lava, and in the sound of gigantic hammers, wielded by steam, the
Englishman’s slave. After passing Tipton, at which place one leaves the
great working district behind; I became for a considerable time a
yawning, listless Englishman, without pride, enthusiasm, or feeling of
any kind, from which state I was suddenly roused by the sight of ruined
edifices on the tops of hills. They were remains of castles built by
Norman Barons. Here, perhaps, the reader will expect from me a burst of
Norman enthusiasm: if so he will be mistaken; I have no Norman
enthusiasm, and hate and abominate the name of Norman, for I have always
associated that name with the deflowering of helpless Englishwomen, the
plundering of English homesteads, and the tearing out of poor
Englishmen’s eyes. The sight of those edifices, now in ruins, but which
were once the strongholds of plunder, violence, and lust, made me almost
ashamed of being an Englishman, for they brought to my mind the
indignities to which poor English blood has been subjected. I sat silent
and melancholy, till looking from the window I caught sight of a long
line of hills, which I guessed to be the Welsh hills, as indeed they
proved, which sight causing me to remember that I was bound for Wales,
the land of the bard, made me cast all gloomy thoughts aside and glow
with all the Welsh enthusiasm with which I glowed when I first started in
the direction of Wales.
On arriving at Chester, at which place we intended to spend two or three
days, we put up at an old-fashioned inn in Northgate Street, to which we
had been recommended; my wife and daughter ordered tea and its
accompaniments, and I ordered ale, and that which always should accompany
it, cheese. “The ale I shall find bad,” said I; Chester ale had a
villainous character in the time of old Sion Tudor, who made a first-rate
englyn upon it, and it has scarcely improved since; “but I shall have a
treat in the cheese, Cheshire cheese has always been reckoned excellent,
and now that I am in the capital of the cheese country, of course I shall
have some of the very prime.” Well, the tea, loaf and butter made their
appearance, and with them my cheese and ale. To my horror the cheese had
much the appearance of soap of the commonest kind, which indeed I found
it much resembled in taste, on putting a small portion into my mouth.
“Ah,” said I, after I had opened the window and ejected the
half-masticated morsel into the street, “those who wish to regale on good
Cheshire cheese must not come to Chester, no more than those who wish to
drink first-rate coffee must go to Mocha. I’ll now see whether the ale
is drinkable;” so I took a little of the ale into my mouth, and instantly
going to the window, spirted it out after the cheese. “Of a surety,”
said I, “Chester ale must be of much the same quality as it was in the
time of Sion Tudor, who spoke of it to the following effect:—
“Chester ale, Chester ale! I could ne’er get it down,
’Tis made of ground-ivy, of dirt, and of bran,
’Tis as thick as a river below a huge town!
’Tis not lap for a dog, far less drink for a man.’
Well! if I have been deceived in the cheese, I have at any rate not been
deceived in the ale, which I expected to find execrable. Patience! I
shall not fall into a passion, more especially as there are things I can
fall back upon. Wife! I will trouble you for a cup of tea. Henrietta!
have the kindness to cut me a slice of bread and butter.”
Upon the whole we found ourselves very comfortable in the old-fashioned
inn, which was kept by a nice old-fashioned gentlewoman, with the
assistance of three servants, namely, a “boots” and two strapping
chambermaids, one of which was a Welsh girl, with whom I soon scraped
acquaintance, not, I assure the reader, for the sake of the pretty Welsh
eyes which she carried in her head, but for the sake of the pretty Welsh
tongue which she carried in her mouth, from which I confess occasionally
proceeded sounds which, however pretty, I was quite unable to understand.