STEART—STOGURSEY—THE FOLK-SPEECH OF ZUMMERZET—GLATT-HUNTING AT KILVE—ST.
AUDRIES
TO touch the coast on the left-hand of the Parret estuary is to
adventure into a little-visited land. But although the way is long—the
distance is six miles to Steart Point—the road is sufficiently easy,
being downhill from Cannington to Cannington Park, scene of the battle
of Cynuit, and to Otterhampton; and then flat for the remaining four
miles. At Otterhampton, a village of a few farms and cottages, the
church contains a memorial to a former rector, the Rev. Dr. Jeffery, who
held the living for no fewer than sixty-seven years, from 1804 to 1871.
The river bends abruptly and nears the road at a point a mile and a half
out, where the little waterside hamlet of Combwich—“Cummidge,” as it is
styled locally—stands looking on to muddy creeks and the broad grey
bosom of the Parret itself, with a colour like that of a London fog.
Bridgwater spire is plainly visible, far off to the right, across the
levels: sailing barges are loading the bricks made here from the kilns
close at hand, and carts rattle and rumble along the few narrow alleys
that form the only streets of the place. Away across the river, a
whitewashed house marks the position of a little-used ferry from the
out-of-the-world district of Pawlett Hams to this even more outlandish
peninsula of Steart.
Steart Point thrusts out a long tongue of land over against Burnham,
whose houses and tall white lighthouse seem so near across the levels,
yet are almost two miles distant, over the rivermouth and the mud-flats.
The name of “Steart” has come down to us little altered from Anglo-Saxon
times, an “a” replacing the “o” with which it appears to have originally
been spelled. It is the same name as that of the Start in South Devon,
and signifies a boldly projecting neck of land, “starting” out to sea.
Otherwise there is no likeness between that Devonian promontory of
cruel, black jagged rocks and this flat, muddy and shingly fillet of
land.
The fisher village of Steart is a singular place: a fishing village
without boats! The shrimps, eels and flounders usually caught here are
taken in nets set by the men of Steart going down to the sea at low
water on “mud-horses.” Everything is conditioned here by the deep mud of
the foreshore, which may only be crossed by special appliances, evolved
locally. Chief among these is the “mud-horse,” which, it may at once be
guessed, is no zoological freak. If it is related to anything else on
earth, it may perhaps be set down as a hybrid production: a cross
between a towel-horse and a toboggan sledge.
When the fishermen of Steart prepare to go forth a-fishing, they proceed
to undress themselves to the extent of taking off their trousers and
putting on a cut-down pair, very little larger than bathing-drawers.
Mud-boots clothe their feet. Then they bring down their wooden “horses,”
and, leaning against the upright breast-high framework, give a vigorous
push, and so go slithering along the buttery surface of the flats; the
nearest approach to that fabulous body of cavalry, the “Horse Marines,”
any one is ever likely to see:
There was an old fellow of Steart,
Who went catching eels in the dirt.
When they asked “Any luck?”—
“Up to eyes in the muck!”
Said that rueful old fellow of Steart.
The traveller has to pass the little church and scattered cottages of
Otterhampton on the way to Steart; and on the return, if he wishes to
keep near the coast, he comes through Stockland Bristol, a pretty rustic
village, with prosperous-looking manor-house and an entirely modern
church. Beyond it are Upper Cock and Lower Cock farms, that take their
names from a tumulus down in the levels near the estuary known as
“Ubberlowe.”
“Upper Cock,” in its original form, was “Hubba Cock”; “Cock” signifying
a heap, and comparing with “haycock.” “Ubbalowe” is properly
“Hubbalowe,” _i.e._ “Hubba’s heap,” both names pointing to the
probability that here was buried the chieftain Hubba, who, as we have
already seen, fell at Cynuit.
From this point a succession of winding lanes leads down again to the
curving shore of Bridgwater Bay at Stolford. Here meadows, a farmstead
with well-filled rickyards, and a compound heavily walled and buttressed
against flooding from the salt marshes, border upon a raised beach of
very large blue-grey stones, which replaces the mud that gathers round
the Parret estuary. Here at low spring tides traces may yet be found of
the submarine forest off-shore. A sample of the foreshore taken at
Stolford usually suffices explorers, and fully satisfies their
curiosity; for the clattering loose stones of the heaped-up beach form
an extremely tiring exercise-ground.
[Illustration: THE “MUD HORSE.”]
These level lands of highly productive meadows, lying out of the beaten
track, below the greatly frequented high road that runs out of
Bridgwater to Nether Stowey, and so on along the ridge to Holford and
West Quantoxhead, are much more extensive than a casual glance at the
map would convey. They are at one point over five miles across. The
centre of this district is Stogursey, which is, as it were, a kind of
capital, if a large agricultural village may be thus dignified.
Stogursey is a considerable village, taking the second half of its name
from the de Courcy family, who once owned it, but the thick speech of
Somerset rendered the place-name into “Stogursey” so long ago that even
maps have adopted the debased form; some, however, inserting a small
(Stoke Courcy) in brackets, under the generally accepted form. The
visitor will at the same time notice, in the title of the local parish
magazine, that efforts are being made by the clergy to restore the
original name. The church was built by those old Norman lords, but the
family died out so very long ago, that no memorials of them remain in
it; and the net result of all their ancient state and glory is—a name!
It is a large and fine church, in the Norman and Transitional Norman
styles; consisting of a large and lofty nave without aisles, a central
tower, north and south transepts, and deep chancel. The clustered shafts
supporting the central tower have elaborately sculptured Norman capitals
of a distinctly Byzantine character. A variant of the place-name is seen
on a monument to one Peregrine Palmer, where it appears as “Stoke
Curcy.” The Palmer family is seen, on another monument, revelling in a
pun beneath the Palmer coat of arms: in this wise, “Palma virtuti.”
[Illustration: STOLFORD.]
But the Verney aisle of this beautiful church contains more interesting
memorials than those of Palmers; notably two altar-tombs with effigies
of the Verneys of Fairfield. The earliest is that of Sir Ralph Verney,
1352. The other, that of Sir John Verney, who died in 1461, is of very
beautiful workmanship, and displays, among other shields of arms, the
punning device of the family: three ferns—“verns,” as a rural Somerset
man would say, in that famous “Zummerzet” doric that is not yet wholly
extinct.
No one could justly declare the village of Stogursey to be picturesque.
Nor is it ugly; but at the radiant close of some summer day, when an
afterglow remains in the sky, the village takes a beautiful colouring
that cries aloud for the efforts of some competent watercolourist. It is
an effect, as you look eastward down the long broad village street to
the church, standing in a low situation at the end, of a rich
red-yellow, like that of a ripening cornfield, on houses, cottages, and
church alike, with the lead-sheathed spire gleaming like oxidised silver
against the chilly blue-grey of the eastern sky at evening, spangled
already, before the sun has finally gone to bed, with the cold,
unimpassioned twinkle of the stars. Daylight heavily discounts this
romantic effect, for then you perceive that the lovely hue on the
church-tower at evening was the dying sunset’s transfiguration of the
yellow plaster with which the tower was faced at some time in the
Georgian period.
But Stogursey has a castle, or the remains of one, styled by villagers
“the Bailey.” The stranger looks in vain for it in the village street.
Stogursey Castle stands in a meadow, surrounded by a stream which in the
olden days was made, not only to form the moat, but to turn the wheels
of the Castle mill. The mill-leat still runs on one side of the lane
branching from the main village street; a lane now smelling violently of
tanneries, and lined with cottages of a decrepit “has been” character;
for it should be said that Stogursey is a decaying place. Changes in
method of agriculture; changes in methods of communication, making for
swifter and cheaper import of corn and other products of the soil;
changes, in fact, in everything have all conspired to injuriously affect
the place. The few remaining local shops do not look prosperous, and the
village is full of private houses whose windows clearly show them to
have once been shops, that gave up the pretence of business long ago.
These bay-windowed, many-paned shop-fronts retired from business are
familiar all over rural England. The villagers generally turn them to
account as conservatories for geraniums and other flowers, and a
pleasant sight, treated in this way, they often are. But there is a
future for the Stogursey district; if not for the shopkeepers, certainly
for the farmers. No light railway yet serves it, but the need of such an
enterprise is great; and when it comes it will effect great changes in
local fortunes.
[Illustration: STOGURSEY CASTLE.]
“Stoke,” as it was styled originally, is a place of greater antiquity
than any neighbouring village, as its name would imply; indicating as it
does a stockaded post in a wild and dangerous district innocent of
settled houses.
That post was probably on the site of the castle whose scanty ruins
remain. The de Courcy castle was destroyed as early as the time of King
John, when it passed by the second marriage of Alice de Courcy to one
Fulke de Breauté, who set up here as a robber lord, and issued from this
stronghold from time to time for the purpose of levying involuntary
contributions from all who passed to and fro on the highway yonder, from
Bridgwater to Quantoxhead. His castle can never have been strong, for
its situation forbade strength, but the district was remote and little
known, and people who were plundered on the ridgeway road had little
inducement to plunge down here after this forceful taker of secular
tithes. But de Breauté’s proceedings at length grew so scandalous that a
strong force was sent at the instance of Hubert de Burgh, Chief
Justiciar of the realm, and this thieves’ kitchen was burnt and more or
less levelled with the ground. The subsequent history of the castle is
vague, but it would appear to have been at some time rebuilt, for it was
again, and finally, destroyed in 1455. A glance at the remains will show
that it could never have been seriously defended against any determined
attack. The moat, still in places filled with water, was deep as could
be made, for it was the only external defence. Fragments of curtain-wall
and portions of towers with loop-holes for arrows remain; and the
entrance-towers may yet be traced, although a modern cottage has been
built on to them, in all the incongruousness of red brick and rough-cast
plaster. Such is the modern economical way with the shattered walls of
this old robber’s hold. For the rest, the enclosure is a tangled mass of
undergrowth and ivy-clad ruins of walls, and the meadow without is
uneven with the ancient foundations of outworks that disappeared
centuries ago.
The roads leading back from Stogursey to the coast have a distressing
lack of signposts, and the district is for long distances without
habitations, so that the way to Lilstock may well be missed. That they
are fine roads for the cyclist, with never a motor-car about, is not
sufficient to recompense the explorer who cannot find his way. And
Lilstock—Little Stock originally; that is to say, some ancient small
coastwise stockaded fort—is, perhaps, not worth finding, after all; for
it appears to consist solely of a tin tabernacle, by way of church, and
a lonely cottage amid elms, at the end of everything; a veritable
dead-end. You climb to the lonely beach and have it all to yourself; the
grey sea lazily splashing amid the ooze and scattered boulders, and a
great empty sky above.
It is all the same beside the sea to Kilve, and rough walking too; the
rebuilt church of Kilton prominent inland, on the left; very modern, but
with a relic of a century ago in the shape of a battered old
barrel-organ with a set of mechanical psalm and hymn tunes, that used to
be ground out every Sunday to the long-suffering congregation, who must,
by dint of sheer damnable iteration, have come to loathe this unchanging
psalmody with a peculiar hatred.
We come now into the marches of West Somerset, where the folk-speech
still to some extent remains; but the famous broad “Zummerzet” speech of
these parts nowadays survives in its olden force only in the pages of
dialect novels. The dialect novel is a thing of convention, like the
dramatic stage, and is not necessarily a direct transcript from life. In
novels of rural life, in rustic plays, and in illustrated jokes in which
villagers appear, the countryman still wears a smock-frock and talks as
his great-grandfather was accustomed to talk. Frequently, too, he wears
a beaver hat, with a nap on it as luxuriant as the bristles of a
boot-brush; and he is made to smoke “churchwarden” clay pipes about a
yard long. Real rustics do not do these things nowadays. I only wish
they did; for then exploring in the byways would be much more
interesting. Nowadays, the unaccustomed Londoner can quite easily
understand anything a Somersetshire man, even of the most rustic type,
has to say.
This, however, is not to be taken as an assertion that all the old
characteristic words and phrases have died out, or that the accent is
altogether a thing of the past. The Somerset speech is really part and
parcel of that delightful West of England trick of the tongue which
still grows gradually more noticeable to the stranger as he progresses
westward. You will not notice this in any measure until you have passed
an imaginary line, which may be drawn from Oxford in the north, to
Southampton in the south, passing on the way such places as Wantage,
Newbury, Andover, and Winchester. Westward of this frontier-line, the
West of England, linguistically, commences. Somerset, by some
unexplained accident, was notoriously the home of the broadest speech;
but recent years have witnessed the singular phenomena (singular when
taken in conjunction) of Somerset folk-speech losing much of its
old-time character, and that of Devon, which had also largely fallen
into disuse, returning in almost its olden strength.
Much of this old manner of talking has been preserved in the
publications of the English Dialect Society, in which we find embedded,
among more stolid phrases, amusing scraps of rustic dialogues,
illustrating the local shibboleths. Here we have, for example, a rural
domestic quarrel, rendered in broad “Zummerzet.” It has not been thought
desirable to reproduce the somewhat pedantic inflection-marks given in
the Society’s publications, tending as they do towards the unnecessary
mystification of those who do not happen to be philologists. The
spelling has also been altered here and there, to bring it more into
line with the enunciation usually heard by the ordinary person.
The woman in this first specimen says, “Uneebaudee mud su waul bee u
tooüd uundur u aaruz bee u foauz tu leave saeumz aay bee, laung u dhee.
Tuz skandluz un sheemfeal aew aay bee zaard.”[3]
Footnote 3:
“Anybody might so well be a toad under a harrow as be forced to live
same as I be, long of thee. ’Tis scandalous and shameful how I be
served.”
To this pitiful complaint the husband answers, “U uumunz auvees zaard
wuul neef uur udn aat ubeawt, un dhee aart nuvvur aat ubeawt.”[4]
Footnote 4:
“A woman’s always served well if her isn’t hit about; and thee art
never hit about.”
Here is another example from the collection already quoted from:
“Taumee, haut bee yue aiteen on? Spaat ut aewt turaaklee!”
Perhaps the reader may be left to translate this. But how about the
following, spoken by a waggoner on a hot day? “Mudn maek zu boalz t’ax
vur koop u zaydur, aay spoüz? Aay zuuree aay bee dhaat druy, aay küdn
spaat zik-spuns.”[5]
Footnote 5:
“Mustn’t make so bold as to ask for a cup of cider, I suppose? I
assure you I be that dry, I couldn’t spit sixpence.”
Here again is some time-honoured “Zummerzet.” “Come, soce! Yur’s yur
jolly goed health. Drink ut oop tu onct!”
“Naw; daze muy ole buttonz neef aay due! Aay diddn nuvvur hold wi’
u-swillen of ut deown same uz thaet. Hurry no maen’s cattle tul ye’ve
got’n ass o’ yur aeown! Hurry, hurry; ’tuz this yur hurryen what tarns
everythen arsy-varsy vor me! Muy uymurz! what ood muy oal graanfer saay
tu th’ likes of ut? Wooden dh’oal maen laet aewt!”
[Illustration: KILVE CHURCH.]
Among the curious expressions found in this last speech, that of “soce”
is prominent. The word is a familiar expression in these parts. It is
used between equals, and is equivalent to “my boy,” “old chap,” etc.
Philologists generally consider it to be a survival from monastic times,
when itinerant monkish preachers are supposed to have been styled,
“socii,” _i.e._ “associates,” or “brethren,” or to have themselves used
the expression in addressing their congregations.
“This yur,” that is to say, reduced to ordinary pronunciation, “this
here” is, on the other hand, equivalent to a strong disapproval of the
subject under discussion. It means “this new-fangled,” unfamiliar, or
unpleasant thing.
The village of Kilve lies down along a lane leading to the right from
the road just past Holford, and rambles disjointedly down to the rugged
little church. Church, ruined priory, and a large farmhouse stand
grouped together in the meadows, beside the little brook called Kilve
Pill, a quarter of a mile from the low blue-has cliffs of the muddy and
boulder-strewn lonely shore sung by Wordsworth, as “Kilve’s delightful
shore.”
Kilve church is as rude and rugged as some old fortress, and probably
its tower was originally designed with a view to defence. It is
constructed of very rudely shaped blocks of blue limestone, many of them
of great size, mortared together in rough fashion. For the rest, it is a
small aisleless building, chiefly of Norman date, with a south
transept-chapel of Perpendicular character, and a simple Norman
bowl-font.
Giant, widespreading poplar trees adjoin the Priory farmhouse and the
ruins of the Priory, or Kilve Chantry. This was a foundation by one Sir
Simon de Furneaux, in 1329, to house five priests. The particular
reasons that induced Sir Simon to establish his chantry in this lonely
spot do not appear, for the history of the place is vague; but whatever
they were, they did not appeal to Sir Richard Stury, to whom the
property came, some sixty years later, on his marriage with Alice, the
last of this branch of the Furneaux family. He abolished the
establishment, and the building stood empty for centuries, or was used
as a barn by the neighbouring farmer. Another use, not so much spoken
of, was as a storehouse for smuggled goods. A long succession of farmers
at the Priory farm were, in fact, more smugglers than farmers. The
church-tower was said also to have been used by them. The present
roofless condition of the buildings is due to a fire, many years ago,
supposed to have been caused by a conflagration of these smuggled
spirits.
[Illustration: KILVE; THE CHANTRY.]
In these latter days, now that many townsfolk on holiday seek quiet,
secluded spots, there are few among the rustic cottages of Kilve that do
not house visitors, and nowadays the Priory farm is in summer as much a
boarding-house as farmstead; while amateur geologists may be found at
low water on the “delightful,” if muddy, shore, searching for “St.
Keyna’s serpents”; or, in other words, ammonites, which, with other
fossils, abound in the blue lias clay. They are “St. Keyna’s serpents,”
because the saint, coming to Somerset, transformed all the snakes of
these parts into stone!
Kilve, in common with other villages situated on this part of the
Somerset shore, indulges in a curious kind of sport: that of “hunting
the conger.” It is in the autumn that the unfortunate conger-eel is
taken unawares, through the low tides that then generally prevail. The
conger, known here as the “glatt,” is the big brother of the ordinary
sand-eel, who is dug out of the foreshore, all round our coasts. He
lives in the blue lias mud hereabouts, generally beneath the boulders
that are sprinkled about the shore like currants in a bun; and is clever
enough, in the ordinary way, to have his home well below low-water mark.
But the treacherous spring-tides are the undoing of him; laying bare
perhaps a hundred and sixty feet more of mud than usual. At such times a
large proportion of the rustic population anywhere near the shore
assembles and proceeds to the muddy or sandy flats, accompanied by
fox-terriers and other dogs, and armed with stout six or eight-feet-long
sticks, cut from the hedges and sharpened at one end to a chisel-like
edge. If there be by any chance a belated visitor in those October days
when hunting the glatt is usually in full swing he is apt to imagine the
simple villagers are trying to take a rise out of his ignorance of
country life, when, in answer to his questions, they tell him they are
off hunting conger-eels—and with dogs! But it is simple truth. Hunting
the wild red deer on Exmoor is the aristocratic sport of this
countryside, and hunting the conger is the democratic; and where in a
purely inland district your sporting rustic may keep his lurcher, here
the rural sportsman values his terrier or spaniel in proportion to his
merits as “a good fish dog.”
There is not that smartness among the pursuers of the glatt which is the
mark of the hunting-field in the chase of the fox or the deer, and
renders a fox-hunt or a meet of staghounds so spectacular a sight. Smart
clothes are not the proper equipment of the glatt-hunter, whose hunting
chiefly consists in wading, ankle-deep, through the mud, heaving up huge
boulders, and mud-whacking after the wriggling, writhing congers, while
the dogs rush frantically among the crowd, scraping holes in the mud and
essaying the not very easy task of seizing the slippery fish. In fact,
the oldest clothes are not too bad for this sport; and the spectacle of
a company of such sportsmen as these, properly habited for the occasion,
is rather that of an assemblage of scarecrows than that of a number of
self-respecting members of the community. That this precaution of
wearing the oldest possible garments is not an excess of caution becomes
abundantly evident at the conclusion of a rousing day’s sport, when the
mud has been flying in proportion to the enthusiasm of the chase, and
every one has become abundantly splashed, from top to toe. The congers,
or “glatts,” captured on these occasions scale, as a rule, about four or
five pounds, but occasionally run to twenty pounds.
Over the meadows by church-path from Kilve to East Quantoxhead, is a
pleasant stroll, bringing you into the village by the old watermill and
the village pond. Not, mark you, an ordinary village pond with muddy
margin and half-submerged old superannuated pails and the like discarded
objects long past use, but a crystal-clear lakelet, with stone and turf
parapet, well-stocked with trout—and the fishing preserved too, members
of that branch of the Luttrell family living in the adjoining
manor-house coming down occasionally to cast a fly. This is not angling
in such public circumstances as might be supposed, for the village is
very small and retired, and few strangers find their way hither. Indeed,
things here are so little conventional that you enter the churchyard
through a farmyard.
Church and manor-house stand side by side, both built of the local
blue-grey limestone. In the chancel of the little aisleless church,
stands a Luttrell altar-tomb of alabaster, inscribed to Hugh Luttrell,
1522, and his son, Andrew, 1538, with shields displaying their arms and
those of the Wyndhams and other families with whom they have
intermarried.
[Illustration: ST. AUDRIES.]
The large, square-shaped manor-house adjoining is the ancient home of
the Luttrells, who were seated here at East Quantoxhead long centuries
before they acquired the greater estates of Dunster and Minehead; being
descended on the distaff side from that Ralph Paganel who held this and
other manors from William the Conqueror.
The tall, ugly masonry retaining-wall that fringes the hollow road for a
long distance as you come uphill from East to West Quantoxhead, is that
of St. Audries, the park of Sir Alexander Acland Hood. Where this ends,
on the hilltop, the lovely park, sloping down to the seashore, is
disclosed, like a dream of beauty. West Quantoxhead and St. Audries are
convertible terms, the parish church being dedicated to St. Etheldreda,
popularly known in mediæval times as “St. Audrey.” The mansion in the
park, the rectory, the post-office, and a few scattered cottages
constitute all the village. The church itself is modern, having been
built by Sir Peregrine Acland Hood in 1857. It is far better,
architecturally, than the mere date of it would suggest; doubtless
because the architect relied more upon the traditional local style than
on his own initiative. Although having stood for over half a century,
the church looks astonishingly new. The mansion itself, a happy
combination of stateliness and domestic comfort, and built of red brick
and stone, is glimpsed romantically between the fine clumps of trees
with which the park is studded; and in a cleft you note the blue sea—for
the Severn Sea is not so muddy and so dun-coloured under sunny
conditions as some would have us suppose. Down on the beach, where a
waterfall plunges boldly over the cliffs of curiously stratified rock,
the Somerset coast proves itself again to be more picturesque than it is
generally allowed to be. The Devon and Somerset staghounds sometimes
meet on the lawn, in front of St. Audries House, as the Quantock pack
were used to do.
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