have a tree that was no real good to him and damaged his neighbour’s
patch by keeping sunshine off; but very few men would help a neighbour
by cutting down a tree. My grandfather writes to my father, 5 January
1853, “I saw ***** yesterday, and he told me he was glad to say that Mr
*****’s great elm tree was blown down, for it did so much injury to his
garden. I should say that, for profit, the tree ought to have been
thrown long ago, for it was equally large forty years ago as now:
therefore it will (I think) be found decayed in the bottom--if so, much
lessened in value.” He writes on 17 September 1857, “Mr ***** has cut
down an ash tree in my hedge. I have no wish to go to law about it, but
one cannot stand by and see one’s property taken with impunity.... The
rule is, if you can pass a shovel to take up sufficient earth for lading
the hedge, the tree belongs to the field of the opposite party; but if
you must go outside it, the tree of course belongs to the hedge.” The
neighbour said there was “width enough for the fattest man in the
parish” between the tree and hedge. There was an arbitration, and the
tree was awarded to my grandfather. I suppose the fattest man in the
parish was no wider than a shovel, or else the neighbour had made room
for him by digging into the hedge.
A man diverted a watercourse, and in heavy rains the water stirred his
cesspool up and spread the contents on another man’s land below. He said
it would enrich the land--“it is worth some pounds a year”--but the
other man would not have it--“if it is so very valuable as he makes out,
why trouble other people with it?” My grandfather writes to my father,
21 January 1864, “As fast as ***** turns the water and makes up the
embankment, at some time or other (no one sees him) his neighbour breaks
it down.”
At the same time another man was diverting another watercourse and
stopping his cesspool up, thereby impoverishing a neighbour’s land
below; and that neighbour was aggrieved--“it has always runned under his
stables for time out of mind.” My grandfather mentions people who could
say which way these cesspools overflowed in former times. “They are all
old men; and let them die, there would be but little evidence that would
be substantial. Would it not be worth while to get their depositions
taken now?”
In ancient Rome there was a case of a man fixing gargoyles on his house
in such a manner that they shot the rainwater off his roof into the
front door of his neighbour opposite. We have that spirit here. The end
of one man’s garden was opposite another man’s house, and the other
man’s pig got into the garden and did some damage there. So the injured
man cleaned out his own pigstye and made a nice manure heap in his
garden, within a few feet of the other man’s front door, in just the
right position for the prevalent winds to blow the perfume in.
A man’s latch-string was cut, and he could not get into his house. Being
asked what he would do, he said decisively, “Coot thetty coot’n,”
literally, cut that which cut it (_thetty_ being the Anglo-Saxon
_thætte_) but meaning, cut the latch-string of the man who has cut mine.
Even when ordinary words are used, they are not always used in the
accepted way. A youth married one of his loves and went on flirting with
the others, but was found out at last. And he was greeted with, “Just
come you here now, I’ve got something for you with your tea: your little
secrecies is become the greatest of publicities.”
In another household the wife gave force to her remarks by throwing
plates and dishes at her husband’s head. (She also had something for him
with his tea.) He knew exactly how to dodge them; and, as his usual seat
was in a line between his wife’s seat and the door, the things came
whizzing out across the lane, to the astonishment of passers-by who did
not know her ways.
Time softens these asperities. A bereaved husband was speaking of his
wife in her last illness. “Her sat up sudden in the bed, and saith ‘I be
a-goin’ up the Clave.’ [Lustleigh Cleave.] And I saith to her, ‘Thee
canst not go up the Clave: thee be a-dyin’.’ And her saith to me, ‘Ye
wicked, dommed, old mon.’ Poor dear soul, they was the very last words
as ever her spoke.”
People in Devon are very dexterous in their choice of adjectives. At a
supper here I thought the company had overeaten itself and might feel
unwell next day. I inquired in due course, and was answered, “Us be
feelin’ lovely.”--A labourer was discontented with his board and
lodging: whereupon his host explained to me, “Us cannot give’n riotous
livin’ on 18 pence a day.”--My finger-bowls came in for criticism here.
“Gentlefolk don’t soil their fingers a-pickin’ up their meat; and if
they did, how could they cleanse’n in they paltry basons?”
There is a cave amongst the rocks on the hill behind this house. I heard
years ago, “Folk say it be a superstitious place, and they do tell of
spiritual men uprisin’ there.” Spiritual men are ghosts; but I have only
seen a spirituous man there, and he went down, not up.
A friend of my father’s writes to him from Moreton, 13 November 1843,
“We are going to have a ringing match here tomorrow. There has been
nothing else but this noise the last three or four days.” Blunt’s _Use
and Abuse of the Church Bells_, 1846, gives a pretty picture of it all.
“Toward the latter half of the last century the ringing of the church
bells became a fashionable amusement among the yeomanry and gentry, and
was degraded to the level on which the hurdle-race and steeple-chase now
stand. This amusement, however, at any rate in most parts of the
country, has long ago ‘become vulgar’ and ‘gone out of fashion’; till at
last our belfries are left in a state of filthy dilapidation,
receptacles for dirt and rubbish of all kinds, and very frequently the
drinking-place of the most profane and profligate persons of the parish,
who ring the bells for their amusement,” and so on.
My grandfather writes on 23 March 1861, “Mr ***** put some eggs under
the jackdaws in the tower in hopes they would build in the town place,
which they no doubt will some day.” It was the church tower, where the
bells are hung; and Mr ***** was a churchwarden. The eggs, of course,
were rooks’ eggs: he desired a rookery in the elms outside.
He writes on 26 December 1847, “The church singers by their inveteracy
have rather disturbed the neighbourhood both Friday night and last
night. [They used to bring the church bass-viol and violin and flute.] I
order them not to come near, but unfortunately I am surrounded by a
road, and they will pass near me: which my dogs notice.”
The dogs here were formidable. He writes, 10 May 1846, “I must get rid
of Bess. She sat on a man to-day in the road.... If you strike Ben, you
make him savage--I do not dare to repeat a blow to him--though such a
good tempered old fellow.” There was always a Ben here, and this Ben was
born in 1839 and died in 1852. My grandfather writes, 3 March, “Poor old
Ben died on Monday, and was buried in the garden, just below where Fanny
was buried. [Fanny, another old dog, died just before.] He lay down
there on Saturday--I never before saw him lie there: one would almost
think he found he was dying, and chose his place of burial.”
There are plenty of vipers hereabouts, but I never thought much of them
until one killed my dog, 8 April 1920. She was a small sheep-dog, Rose
by name, and she was out for a walk with me and was rummaging about in a
hedge; and there the viper got her in the pad, between the second and
third toes of the left fore-paw. These hedges harbour snakes. My
grandfather writes to my father, 2 May 1852, “A fine sunny morning, and
we went out for a walk to see if we could find any snakes in our hedges,
for now is the time to see them, before the hedges get covered.”
He writes on 25 April 1858, “When I was at the Cleave on Friday, a viper
made its appearance and then another and so on till there were four, all
in a few minutes. It being very warm, this was (I think) their first
appearance from their winter hiding place: they were very lean.” He
speaks of fishing in the Bovey down below the Cleave, 17 May 1846,
“There is a timidity about me, I am looking every step I plant my foot,
fearing the ‘varmints’ as Farmer ***** calls them: not so before
now--would brush by everything, and even step on them.”
He also writes, 22 March 1855, “Tuesday was the first day of summer, and
it was so warm and pleasant that a lizard got on a shawl that was put
out on the side of the hedge in the eye of the sun, where he appeared
very comfortable in his warm bed. But the poor thing lost his life in
consequence.” The people here call lizards crocodiles, and always
slaughter them as noxious things. I never heard of a lizard doing any
harm here, excepting one that was licked up by a cow and got down into
her lung and killed her.
Some years ago a venerable lady came down to stay with me, and she wore
a wide-brimmed hat with feathers enough to cover a swan. One afternoon I
left her sitting on the hill side, looking at the view, while I went
after something else; and presently I saw a buzzard hovering right over
her with its head bent forward and staring intently down. Up there the
buzzard could only see the feathers and very little else; and I feared
she would be terribly upset, if this huge bird dropped down on her and
carried off the hat. And the bird could easily have done it, as these
buzzards measure forty or fifty inches across their outspread wings.
An owl came down the chimney of the Higher Parlour here and bounced into
the room, its great eyes blinking through a cloud of soot; and it rather
scared a couple of young people who were having a quiet flirtation
there. And once the Higher Parlour was attacked by bees. Some honey had
been taken from the hives and put into a cupboard there, and they came
after it--there must have been ten thousand of them in the room at once.
That was in the happy days before disease was brought here from the Isle
of Wight. The bees are all dead now; but usually there were a dozen
hives, and sometimes many more--the old straw hives, each standing on a
sort of one-legged table and covered with a sheaf of straw like an
extinguisher. It was pleasant on a sunny day to see the bees out playing
round the hives, and the cats all stretched out in the grass below,
waiting there to eat the mice that came to eat the honey.
When bees were swarming, we went out with bells and gongs and metal pans
and made a hideous noise, relying on the old belief that clanging metal
tempted swarms to pitch close by instead of flying away. But, by
Lubbock’s showing, it was all in vain, as bees are deaf. In describing
his experiments, _Ants, Bees and Wasps_, page 290, ed. 1898, he says--“I
tried one of my bees with a violin. I made all the noise I could, but to
my surprise she took no notice. I could not even see a twitch of the
antennæ.” Bertini made a marble statue of Jenner vaccinating a child.
Some modern man might rival it with Lubbock playing to a bee.
Whether the bees heard us or not, they usually pitched close by; and
then the next thing was to gather some bame and cut down boughs of
halse. (Bame is balm, and halse is hazel.) Then some sugar was put into
a clean straw hive and was rubbed in with the bame, the sap making a
sort of syrup; and then the hive was held out (upside down) underneath
the swarm. If the swarm had pitched on the branch of a tree--as was
usually the case--it could be jerked off bodily into the hive by giving
the branch a knock: failing that, it might be swept in sideways with a
brush. But, if the queen was left behind, the other bees went back to
her; and then we had to try again. When the swarm was in, the hive was
put down on a sheet (the right way up) and was covered over with the
boughs of halse. And at nightfall, when the bees had gone to sleep, the
hive was taken up again and placed upon its little table and roofed in
with its sheaf of straw, and hoops were slipped on over the sheaf to
keep it in its place.--But the swarms did not always pitch close by:
sometimes they went soaring up, and then away across the valley, far
beyond pursuit.
A few summers ago a stray swarm took possession of the letterbox near
Lustleigh Cleave. Bees came out, when letters were put in; and, when the
letters were taken out, the postman was so badly stung that he refused
to go again. So the usual notice of Hours of Collection was superseded
by a notice of Ware Bees. After proper correspondence the superintendent
at Newton Abbot authorised the sub-postmaster at Lustleigh to pay a
bee-man to clear out the bees. These bee-men take up bees in handfuls,
and seem never to be stung; but the fact is they have been stung so
often that the sting has ceased to take effect. One of them told me that
he had been stung a hundred times in a day and hardly felt it. He
cleared the box; and as he saved the swarm and got the honey and was
paid as well, it was not unremunerative work.
At a farm of mine I noticed a stain and a bulge in a bedroom ceiling,
and thought the rain was coming through the thatch. It was a colony of
bees up there making such a quantity of honey that the ceiling could not
stand the weight. The room was occupied by summer lodgers, and I fancied
they would not forget their farmhouse-lodgings, if the honey and the
bees fell through while they were there.
Bees are mentioned in the old Court Rolls of Wreyland Manor, but only as
estrays. If stray creatures came to any of the tenements, the court
adjudged them to the lord of the manor, unless the rightful owner put in
a claim within twelve months and proved his ownership. There are
difficulties in proving that a swarm of bees is yours, after you have
once lost sight of it. Ponies, cattle, sheep and goats were claimed
successfully; but the lord of the manor always got the swarms. Amongst
others, he got a swarm that came to Wilmead on Midsummer-day in 1484 and
was valued at twelvepence--a considerable sum at that date, as the
penalty for assaults was only threepence, unless they had drawn blood,
in which case it was ninepence.
In dealing with the Domesday survey _The Victoria History of the
Counties of England_ makes these remarks on bees, _Devon_, vol. 1, page
400--“There is only a single notice of bee-keeping in Devon. At
Lustleigh were five honeyers who paid seven sestiers of honey. No
certain conclusion can be arrived at from this entry. Either bee-keeping
was so common and taken such small account of as not to deserve mention,
or bee-keeping was not practised at all, except at Lustleigh on the
borders of Dartmoor.” It does not remark that there is only a single
notice of donkey-keeping in Devon: there were two donkeys at Diptford.
Unluckily for Lustleigh, Domesday says these honeyers were at
Sutreworda; and Sutreworda was clearly a much larger place than
Lustleigh ever was, and in another district. By taking Sutreworda for
Lustleigh and Wereia for Wrey, the _Victoria History_ has made itself a
nuisance in this valley.
As for Sutreworda, the argument is merely this--the Honour of Marshwood
had estates that formerly belonged to Walter of Douai; and, as it had a
Lustleigh and no Sutreworda, and he had a Sutreworda and no Lustleigh,
Sutreworda must be Lustleigh under another name. But there were
Marshwood estates in Devon that never belonged to Walter, and he had
estates in Devon that never passed to Marshwood, whereas the argument
supposes that the two sets were the same. There is a similar argument
about the Honour of Gloucester and Godwin the Thane, to show that his
Wereia is Wrey. But this is weaker still. No doubt, John de Umfravill
held some of the Gloucester estates in Devon, and he held Wrey; but
there is a document of about 1285 showing that he held it from the Crown
direct.
There is yet another argument for putting Wereia here. Domesday says
that Godwin had a virgate of land at Wereia free of tax, and the Inquest
of the Geld says that he had a virgate in Teignbridge Hundred free of
tax. No doubt, his Teignbridge virgate may be his virgate at Wereia; but
it may just as well be his virgate in four other estates of his which
had a virgate each, or two half-virgates in any two of his three estates
with half a virgate each. And the equation does not work out, as he has
a quarter of a virgate more in Domesday than in the Inquest of the
Geld.
There were two Wreys on the river Wrey, just as there are two Boveys on
the river Bovey not far off. They are distinguished as North Bovey and
South Bovey or Bovey Tracey, and the Wreys were distinguished as
Wreyford and Wreycombe. In the old title-deeds this place is Wrey or
Wreyford as far as 1529 and Wrey or Wreyland in 1544 and onwards; but I
do not know the reason for the change. There are several families called
Wreyford or Wreford or Wrayford, and I presume their ancestors all came
from here. But, so far as I know, there is not any family called
Wreyland; and this tempts me to say that families had ceased (by 1544)
to take their surnames from the places whence they came. There is,
however, a family called Rellend; and sometimes Wreyland is pronounced
like that.
Writers on Devon show a curious reticence about its good old
name--Damnonium. There are writers like Moore and Lysons who give it
correctly in Greek letters when they are quoting Ptolemy, and yet
transpose the _m_ and _n_ on putting it into English, as if they could
not face the Damn. Think of the lines in Carrington’s
_Dartmoor_--“Erstwhile here the fierce Danmonii dwelt.” The softening
takes off half its strength.
In his poem _Of the courtier’s life_, probably written in 1541, Sir
Thomas Wyatt contrasts his country life with life at court, and says “In
lusty leas at liberty I walk.” He was not at Lustleigh--he says “but I
am here in Kent and Christendom”--but his verse gives the true meaning
of the name. The ‘leas’ are fields and meadows, and ‘lusty’ is pleasant,
the old English ‘lusty’ answering to the modern German ‘lustig.’
Lustleigh Cleave is Lustleigh Cliff, as ‘cleave’ and ‘cliff’ are really
the same word. Other steep hillsides have the name--Caseleigh Cleave,
Wrey Cleave, Neadon Cleave, and so on. And sometimes it is spelt the
other way, as in a note of my grandfather’s, 31 May 1863, that he is
laying in a stock of firewood--“all the oak wood on Casely Cliff at
eight shillings per hundred faggots.”
Newton is the new town. There are many places of that name in England;
and the new town nine miles from here was known as Newton on
Teign--“Nyweton juxta Teng” in Quo Warranto in 1281. The town is not in
Domesday in 1086, and is clearly of later origin than the civil and
ecclesiastical districts here, as it stands in two hundreds and two
parishes, the boundary being the Loman, which runs through the middle of
the town into the Teign. The abbot of Torre abbey acquired the part in
Wolborough parish and Haytor hundred; and this is Newton Abbot. Robert
Bussell acquired the part in Highweek parish and Teignbridge hundred;
and that is Newton Bushel. The two parts were nearly equal in extent
until the railway came to Newton Abbot, and since then this part has
grown. Most people call the whole place Newton Abbot now, and will tell
you they are going to Newton Abbot when they really are going to Newton
Bushel. The older people never called it anything but Newton.
The railway company called the station Newton Abbot to avoid confusion
with the other Newtons on other companies’ lines. When they made this
branch to Moreton, they called it Moretonhampstead to avoid confusion
with the other Moretons. But there are other Hampsteads also. I saw a
package on the platform there, sent down from London by mistake, and
just endorsed--“Try Hemel Hempsted”--another 250 miles by train.
Moreton is the moor town, and the moor is Dartmoor; but the old spelling
is retained in Moreton, though in Dartmoor it is obsolete--nobody writes
Dartmore now. Such a name as Moretonhampstead is absurd, for _tun_ and
_ham_ and _stede_ are Anglo-Saxon words, all meaning the same thing. It
came into use somewhere about 1600, I do not know exactly when, nor why.
Dartmoor is a word that has two meanings. Usually it means the whole
great tract of granite moorland in the middle of Devon. Technically it
only means so much of this as lies in Lydford parish, the remainder
being the commons of the surrounding parishes. On the Ordnance map
Lydford parish contains 50,801 acres, or nearly eighty square miles.
That gives the area of Dartmoor in the strict sense of the term. In the
wider sense, with the surrounding commons thrown in, Dartmoor is said to
have an area of 200 miles.
The difference between the moor and commons is greater than it looks.
The moor belongs to the Duchy of Cornwall; and the Duchy can enclose the
land there, but cannot enclose the land upon the commons.
This caused a sharp dispute in 1870 and 1871. A man at Bristol got the
Duchy to grant him 280 acres for enclosure, and he began enclosing.
People said that this enclosure was on Chagford common. But the Duchy
officials said that the Ordnance map was wrong, and the Tithe map was
wrong, and all the old inhabitants were wrong, although they had beaten
the bounds, since they were young, just where their elders used to beat
them. It seemed that nobody outside the Duchy office knew where the
boundaries were. Inquiry was made if these officials had received a
revelation from above; and then they came to earth with a Perambulation
made on 24 July 1240. But that was a well-known document, printed in
several books on Devon, and certainly did not prove their case.
Henry the Third granted Dartmoor to his brother the Earl of Cornwall on
10 October 1239, and the Earl had this Perambulation made next year. It
is clear that Furnum Regis is King’s Oven at the end of Hurston Ridge,
and there is no difficulty about the words next after that, “et inde
linealiter usque ad Wallebrokeshede et sic in longum Wallebroke usque
cadit in Dertam,” but there certainly is something wrong about the words
that go before, “et sic in longum Wallebroke et inde linealiter usque ad
Furnum Regis.” How could the boundary run along the Wallabrook before
reaching King’s Oven, and afterwards run along the Wallabrook for the
whole length of its course from its head to its confluence with the
Dart? The officials said there were two Wallabrooks here, and the
unknown Wallabrook was the same as Hurston Water. This was really the
only basis for their claim. But the Perambulation says ‘Wester
Wallebroke’ in speaking of another Wallabrook on the other side of the
moor, and would presumably say ‘Norther Wallebroke’ here, or else say
‘Wallebroke’ and then ‘aliam Wallebroke’ just as it says ‘Dertam’ and
then ‘aliam Dertam’ on coming to the other Dart. Moreover, the sentence
is imperfect as it stands. In all other cases the Perambulation takes
the boundary to some fixed point and thence, etc. Either ‘usque ad ...’
has dropped out between ‘Wallebroke’ and ‘et inde,’ or else ‘et sic in
longum Wallebroke’ has been put in by mistake. Possibly the scrivener
saw the words in the next sentence, and repeated them in the wrong
place.
My father joined in the dispute, as the enclosure was threatening our
rights of common at Hurston. He looked up the evidence, and wrote a
memorandum on it, ending (in red ink) with this--“The farmers will of
course pull down the fences, and put the Duchy to the proof of its
claims in a court of law.” And of course they pulled them down, and the
Duchy dropped its claims. I did not see the demolition done, but have
always heard it was an animated scene. Some twenty men went out to do
it, and they took a cask of cider with them, to strengthen their
conviction in the justice of their cause.
Enclosure is a mania that recurs at intervals; and deluded people think
that, if they cut the moor up into fields, they will reap as much as in
the valleys 1000 or 1500 feet below. It is noted in Moore’s _History of
Devonshire_, vol. 1, page 486--“The speculators in these undertakings
were in general but little versed in agriculture; and having inspected
the country in a very cursory manner, were altogether mistaken with
respect to the soil of Dartmoor, the produce for which it is adapted,
and the methods to be pursued for its improvement: scarcely anyone in
the neighbourhood had anything to do with these plans.” That was in
1829, and history repeats itself.