CULBONE AND ITS REVELS—WHORTLEBERRIES
THE way parallel with the shore to Culbone lies at the back of the
“Ship” inn at Porlock Weir, steeply up the wooded hillside that looks
along down to the sea. The recluse situation of Culbone is shadowed
forth, in company with those of two other lonely parishes of this
neighbourhood, by the old local rhyme, often quoted:
To Culbone, Oare, and Stoke Pero,
Parishes three, no parson will go.
The reason for this old-time clerical distaste is found partly in these
circumstances of solitude in which the opportunities for doing good must
needs be small; but chiefly, perhaps, in the fact that the pay was not
sufficient. The living of Culbone is stated by Crockford to be £41 net
per annum; that of Oare, £93; Stoke Pero, £75. Culbone and Oare are,
nowadays, held in conjunction by one parson, who thus enjoys an income
of £134—if a person may correctly be said to “enjoy” these less than
clerk’s wages.
The population of Culbone is thirty-four, and the spiritual care of them
thus costs £1 4_s._ 1_d._ and an infinitesimal fraction of a farthing,
per annum per head; but the spiritual shepherding of Stoke Pero, whose
population is thirty-eight, comes to nearly £2 per head.
[Illustration: THE LODGE, ASHLEY COMBE.]
The only way to Culbone lies past the entrance-lodge of the beautiful
estate of Ashley Combe, the property of the Earl of Lovelace, but
formerly that of Lord Chancellor King. The clock-tower of the house, in
the likeness of an Italian campanile, is seen peering up from amid the
massed woodlands. Ashley Combe is a place beautifully situated and
finely appointed, and is splendidly situated for stag-hunting with the
Devon and Somerset hounds. Until recently, and for a number of years
past, it was rented, chiefly for hunting purposes, by the Baroness de
Tainteignes.
A narrow wooden gateway in an arch of the entrance-lodge to Ashley Combe
leads into the footpath through the woods that forms the sole means of
reaching Culbone church. Here is nothing to vulgarise the way, and only
an occasional felled tree is evidence of some human being having
recently been in these wilds.
A silence that is not that of emptiness and desolation, but rather of
restfulness and content, fills the lovely underwoods that clothe the
hillsides of Culbone. “Sur-r-r-r,” sighs the summer breeze in the
grey-green alders, the dwarf oaks, and slim ashes. It is like the peace
of God.
Deep down on the right—so deep that you do but occasionally hear the
wash of the waves—is the dun-coloured Severn Sea, glimpsed more or less
indistinctly through the massed stems. The path winds for a mile through
these solitudes, mounting and descending steeply, and clothed in a few
places with slippery pine-needles that render walking uphill almost
impossible, and the corresponding descents something in the likeness of
glissades.
Culbone church is suddenly disclosed in an opening of the woods,
standing on a little plateau amid the hills, with but two houses in
sight, and those the cottages of what the country folk call “kippurs”:
that is to say, keepers. St. Francis preached to the birds, and the
casual visitor to Culbone is apt to think the vicar of Culbone’s only
congregation must be the birds and beasts of this wild spot. But a visit
paid on some summer Sunday would prove that, however few the
parishioners, the visitors from Porlock, drawn by curiosity to take part
in the service in what is supposed to be the “smallest church in
England,” are many. The attendance is then, in fact, often more than the
little building can accommodate, and service is frequently held in the
churchyard.
[Illustration: CULBONE CHURCH.]
It is a singular little building thus suddenly disclosed to the
stranger’s gaze: a white-walled structure of few architectural
pretensions, but exhibiting examples of rude Early English and
Perpendicular work. A shingled “extinguisher” spirelet rises direct from
the west end of the roof: own brother (but a very infant brother) to the
bulgeous, truncated spire of Porlock. The length of Culbone church is
but thirty-three feet, and the breadth twelve feet, but it is quite
complete within these limits. The nave roof, internally, is of the usual
West of England “cradle” type, of Perpendicular date. It is, of course,
an aisleless nave; but here will be found a tiny chancel and a
chancel-screen, with a font to serve those rare occasions when a baptism
takes place, and a family-pew for the Lovelace family on those rare
occasions when the Earl is not earning an honest addition to his income
by letting Ashley Combe.
A few tombstones, with the usual false rhymes “wept,” “bereft,” are
disposed about. On one of them you read the strange Christian name of
“Ilott,” for a woman. By the south porch stands the base of a
fourteenth- or fifteenth-century cross, stained with lichens.
Culbone is found in Domesday Book under the name of “Chetenore,” and
appears in old records as “Kitenore,” “Kytenore,” and “Kitnore”: “ore”
standing in the Anglo-Saxon for “seashore.” The present name derives
from the dedication of the church to “St. Culbone,” a corruption of
“Columban.”
St. Columban, or Columbanus, was an Irish saint, born A.D. 543, in
Leinster. The author of the “Lives of the Saints” says he “seems to have
been of a respectable family”; which was an advantage not commonly
enjoyed by saints, as the histories of these holy men show us. The
greater therefore, the credit due them for qualifying for saintship.
Columban, as a student, came very near disaster. He was a good-looking
young Irishman, and, as such, very attractive to the dark-eyed colleens
of his native land, who interrupted his studies in grammar, rhetoric,
and divinity so seriously with their winning ways that he fled at last,
on the advice of a mystic old woman, to Lough Erne. Thence he repaired
to Bangor, in Carrickfergus, and placed himself under the rule of Abbot
Congall. At length, leaving this seclusion, he set out upon a life of
itinerant preaching on the Continent, chiefly in Burgundy, whence he was
expelled for his too plain speech, criticising the conduct of the Court.
His last years were spent in meditation; and in peace and quiet he died
at length, on November 21st, A.D. 615, aged seventy-two.
Solitary places were especially affected by St. Columban, who liked
nothing better than the sole companionship of nature. There is thus a
peculiar fitness in the church of so retired a place as this being
dedicated to him.
But, quiet though it may now always be, Culbone was, in the eighteenth
century, the scene of an annual fair that, for merriment and
devil-me-care jollity, seems to have been fully abreast with other
country romps and revels.
The Reverend Richard Warner, coming to Culbone in 1799, in his “Walk
through the Western Counties,” says:
“Quiet and sequestered as this romantic spot at present is, it has
heretofore borne an honourable name in the annals of rustic revelry. Its
rocks have echoed to the shouts of multitudinous mirth, and its woods
rung with the symphonious music of all the neighbouring bands: in plain
English, a revel, or fair, was wont to be held here in times of yore.”
In still plainer English, there used formerly to be a fair held in
Culbone churchyard.
Entering upon the meditations of the Reverend Richard Warner, striving
to write plain English, and failing in the attempt, came an old
reminiscent, ruminating blacksmith, with an artless tale, recounted,
apparently, by the Reverend Richard as a moral anecdote.
“About forty-five years agone, sir,” said the blacksmith, “I was at a
noble revel in this spot; three hundred people at least were collected
together, and rare fun, to be sure, was going forward. A little warmed
with dancing, and somewhat flustered with ale (for certainly Dame
Mathews did sell stinging good stuff!) I determined to have a touch at
skittles, and sport away a sixpence or shilling, which I could do
without much danger, as I had a golden half-guinea in my pocket. To
play, therefore, I went; but, the liquor getting into my head, I could
not throw the bowl straight, and quickly lost the game, and two
shillings and ninepence to boot. Not liking to get rid of so much money
in so foolish a manner, and not thinking the fault was in myself—for too
much ale, you know, sir, is apt to make one over-wise—I resolved to win
back the two and ninepence, and then leave off; and accordingly set to
play a second time. The same ill-luck followed me, and in an hour and a
half I had not only lost the remainder of my money but about sixteen
shillings more out of a guinea I borrowed of a friend. This terrible
stroke quite sobered me. I could not help thinking what a wicked
scoundrel I must be, to go and run into ruin, and deprive my wife and
child of food, merely to indulge myself in a game, which, instead of
being an amusement had put me in a terrible passion, and made me curse
and swear more than ever I did in my life. Desperately vexed at my
folly, I went into the wood hard by, and sat down by the side of the
waterfall to reflect on the situation. I could plainly hear the singing
and laughing of the revel, but it was now gall and wormwood to me, and I
had almost resolved to escape from my own reproaches and the distress of
my wife by throwing myself down the cliff, upon the shore, when
Providence was so good as to preserve me from this additional
wickedness, and to put a thought into my head which saved me from the
consequences of despair. Cool and sober, for I had washed myself in the
stream and drank pretty largely of it, it struck me that if I went back
to the skittle-ground and ventured the remaining five shillings, I
should have a good chance of winning back my money from those who had
beaten me before, as _I_ was now fresh, and _they_ all overcome with
ale. Accordingly I returned to the churchyard and took up the bowl,
though pretty much jeered at by the lads who had been winners. The case,
however, was altered. I had now the advantage; could throw the bowl
straight; took every time a good aim, and more than once knocked down
all _nine_ pins. To make short my story, sir, it was only night that put
an end to my good luck; and when I left off play, I found I had got back
my own half-guinea, the guinea I had borrowed, and fifteen shillings in
good silver.” The blacksmith’s cleverness at getting back his own, and
incidentally a proportion of other people’s money is amusing enough; and
so is the attitude of the Reverend Richard Warner, amiably finding a
moral in it. There is an obvious enough lesson here, but not an
improving one, of the blameless copybook kind.
The neighbourhood of Porlock and Culbone, and, in fact, all the district
on to Lynmouth, is noted for its whortleberries; “urts,” as the country
people call them. Up the Horner valley, and on the wild widespread
commons that stretch away—a glorious expanse of furze, bracken, and
gorse—to Countisbury, the whortleberry bushes grow in profusion. But
“Bushes” is a term that, without explanation, is apt to be misleading,
for here the whortleberry plant grows only to a height of from six to
nine inches. The whortleberry, in other parts of the country called
bilberry, whinberry, and blueberry, is a familiar many-branched little
plant with small ovate leaves that range in colour from a light
yellow-green to that of burnished copper. Its fruit is perfectly round,
about the size of a large pea, and of a dark-blue colour, with a
slightly lighter bloom upon it, resembling the bloom on a plum. The
berries ripen in July and August, and are sweet, with a sub-acid
flavour. They form a very favourite dish in these parts, stewed, or made
into tarts and puddings, and in such cases strongly resemble
black-currants. Whortleberries generally command eightpence a quart in
the shops; but they are also largely picked for the use of dyers, who
use them for the production of a purple dye. It is understood that large
quantities of them are thus sent to Liverpool. The whortleberry harvest
being in full swing during the schools’ summer holidays, the boys and
girls of Porlock and round about are generally to be found on the
commons and the moors, busily engaged, with all the baskets they can
manage to commandeer, in the picking. Four or five quarts can readily be
gathered by one of these experts in the course of a day.
To this prime habitat of the whortleberry we come, by old road or new,
passing one or other of the coaches that in summer ply a busy trade in
carrying pleasure-seekers through a district innocent of railways. At
the crest of the moorland, where a weatherworn, wizened signpost says
simply “To Oare,” we enter upon a much-discussed district.
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