AUTUMN.
I.
It is in the autumn that life in an old manor house on the Cotswolds has
its greatest charm; for one of the chief characteristics of a house in
the depths of the country surrounded by a broad manor is the game. The
whole atmosphere of such a place savours of rabbits and hares and
partridges. There may be no pheasant-rearing and comparatively little
game of any kind, yet the place is, nevertheless, associated with sport
with the gun. Ten to one there are guns, old and new, hanging up in the
hall or the smoking-room, and perhaps fishing-rods too. There is a bond
between the house and the fields around, and the connecting link is the
game. Time was when the squire in these English villages lived on the
produce of the estate: game, fish, and fowl, and the stock at the farm
supplied his simple wants throughout the year. Huge game larders are yet
to be seen in the lower regions of the manor house; you must pass
through them to reach the still more ample wine cellars. Nearer London
there is not much connection nowadays between the house and the
land--you must walk on the roads; but away in the country it is over the
broad fields that you roam. Even on a small manor of two thousand acres
you may walk a dozen miles in an afternoon and not pass the
boundary fence.
It is very surprising that there is not more demand for country houses
in England when one considers that an extensive demesne may be rented at
a price which is paid for a small flat in unfashionable Kensington. The
local term in Gloucestershire for renting a manor is "holding the
liberty"--the old Saxon word. The term is singularly expressive of the
freedom possessed by the man who exchanges the life of the town or the
villa for a manor in one of the remote counties. He who enjoys the
sporting rights, with license (as the leases run) to hunt, fish, course,
hawk, or sport without the labour and loss of farming the land,
possesses all the pleasures of the squire's existence with few of its
drawbacks and responsibilities. Yet many a fine old house in the country
remains unlet because the life is considered a dull one by those who
have not been brought up to it. With nature's book spread so amply
before our eyes, the country is never dull. At no time of life is it too
late to commence the study of this book of nature. The faculty of
observation is one that is easily acquired. It is not a case of
_nascitur non fit_. With tolerably good eyesight and a determination to
learn, a man soon
"Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
And the habit of observing once acquired, we can never lose it till we
die.
Of course those who rent a place in preference to purchasing it miss one
of the greatest and most useful privileges the country can confer--that
of following in the footsteps of him who
"Strove for sixty widow'd years to help his homelier brother
man,
Served the poor and built the cottage, rais'd the school
and drained the fen."
These are the true delights of a country existence; and it is, I think,
incumbent on the really rich men of England, if they have the welfare of
the nation at heart, to hold a stake, however small, in the land, even
at a sacrifice of income. I refer to men with incomes ranging from ten
to a hundred thousand pounds per annum, who would not feel the loss of
interest that would possibly accrue on an exchange of investment from
"the elegant simplicity of the three per cents." to an agricultural
estate in the country. They may be giving gold for silver in the
transaction, but will be amply repaid in a thousand different ways. How
infinitely preferable the existence of the poor countryman, even though
times be hard, to that of the misguided being of whom it may be said:
"Through life's dark road his sordid way he wends--
An incarnation of fat dividends "!
C. SPRAGUE.
It is probable that the bicycle will cause a larger demand for remote
country houses. To the writer, who, previous to this summer, had never
experienced the poetry of motion which a bicycle coasting downhill, with
a smooth road and a favourable wind, undoubtedly constitutes, the
invention seems of the greatest utility. It brings places sixty miles
apart within our immediate neighbourhood. Let the south wind blow, and
we can be at quaint old Tewkesbury, thirty miles away, in less than
three hours. A northerly gale will land us at the "Blowing-stone" and
the old White House of Berkshire with less labour than it takes to walk
a mile. Yet in the old days these twenty miles were a great gulf fixed
between the Gloucestershire natives and the "chaw-bacons" over the
boundary. Their very language is as different as possible. To this day
the villagers who went to the last "scouring of the horse" and saw the
old-fashioned backsword play, talk of the expedition with as much pride
as if they had made a pilgrimage to the Antipodes.
As September draws nigh and the days rapidly shorten, the merry hum of
the thrashing machine is heard all day long. The sound comes from the
homestead across the road, and buzzes in my ears as I sit and write by
the open window. How wonderful the evolution of the thrashing machine!
How rough-and-ready the primitive methods of our forefathers! First of
all there was the Eastern method of spreading the sheaves on a floor of
clay, and allowing horses and oxen to trample on the wheat and tread out
the corn. Not less ancient was the use of the old-fashioned flail--an
instrument only discarded within the memory of living man. Yet what a
wonderful difference there is between the work accomplished in a day
with the flails and the daily output of the modern thrashing machine!
In the porch of the manor house, amid an accumulation of old traps and
other curious odds and ends there hangs an ancient and much-worn flail.
Two stout sticks, the handstaff and the swingle, attached to each other
by a strong band of gut, constitute its simple mechanism. The wheat
having been strewn on the barn floor, the labourer held the handstaff in
both hands, swung it over his head, and brought the swingle down
horizontally on to the heads of ripe corn. Contrast this fearfully
laborious process with the bustling, hurrying machine of to-day. And yet
with all this improvement the corn can scarcely be thrashed out at a
profit. So out of joint are the times and seasons that the foreigner is
allowed to cut out the home producer. Half the life of the country-side
has gone, and no man dare whisper "Protection."
Even in these bad times the man with a head on his shoulders above the
average of his neighbours comes forth to show what can be done with
energy and pluck. Twenty years ago a labouring man, who "by crook or by
hook" had saved a hundred pounds, bought a thrashing machine (probably
second-hand) He took it round to the various farms, and did the
thrashing at so much per day. By and by he had saved enough money to
take a farm. A few years later he had two thrashing machines travelling
the country, and in this poor district is now esteemed a wealthy man. I
always found him an excellent game-preserver and a most straightforward
fellow. Another farming neighbour of mine, however, was always talking
about his ignorance and lack of caste. All classes, from the peer to the
peasant, seem to resent a man's pushing his way from what they are
pleased to consider a lower station into their own.
In the autumn gipsies are to be seen travelling the roads, or sitting
round the camp fire, on their way to the various "feasts" or harvest
festivals. "Have you got the old gipsy blood in your veins?" I asked the
other day of a gang I met on their way to Quenington feast "Always
gipsies, ever since we can remember," was the reply. Fathers,
grandfathers were just the same,--always living in the open air, winter
and summer, and always moving about with the vans. In the winter hawking
is their occupation. "Oh no! they never felt the cold in winter; they
could light the fire in the van if they wanted it."
Although many of the farmers here have given up treating their men to a
spread after the harvest is gathered in, there is still a certain amount
of rejoicing. The villagers have a little money over from extra pay
during the harvest, so that the gipsies do not do badly by going the
round of the villages at this time. The village churches are decorated
in a very delightful manner for these feasts: such huge apples, carrots,
and turnips in the windows and strewn about in odd places; lots of
golden barley all round the pulpit and the font; and perhaps there will
be bunches of grapes, such as grow wild on the cottage walls, hung round
the pulpit. Then what could look prettier against the white carved stone
than the russet and gold leaves of the Virginia creeper? and these they
freely use in the decorations. If one wants to see good taste displayed
in these days, one must go to simple country places to find it. At
Christmas the old Gothic fane is hung with festoons of ivy and of yew in
the old fashion of our forefathers.
I paid a visit to my old friend John Brown the other day, as I thought
he would be able to tell me something about the harvest feasts of bygone
days. He is a dear old man of some seventy-eight summers, though
somewhat of the _laudator temporis acti_ school; but what good-nature
and sense of humour there is in the good, honest face!
"Fifty year ago 'twere all mirth and jollity," he replied to our enquiry
as to the old times. "There was four feasts in the year for us folk.
First of all there was the sower's feast,--that would be about the end
of April; then came the sheep-shearer's feast,--there'd be about fifteen
of us as would sit down after sheep-shearing, and we'd be singing best
part of the night, and plenty to eat and drink; next came the feast for
the reapers, when the corn was cut about August; and, last of all, the
harvest home in September. Ah! those were good times fifty years ago. My
father and I have rented this cottage eighty-six years come Michaelmas;
and my father's grandfather lived in that 'ere housen, up that 'tuer'
there, nigh on a hundred years afore that. I planted them ash trees in
the grove, and I mind when those firs was put in, near seventy years
ago. Ah! there _was_ some foxes about in those days; trout, too, in the
'bruk'--it were full of them. You'll have very few 'lets' for hunting
this season; 'twill be a mild time again. Last night were Hollandtide
eve, and where the wind is at Hollandtide there it will stick best part
of the winter. I've minded it every year, and never was wrong yet The
wind is south-west to-day, and you'll have no 'lets' for hunting
this time."
"Lets" appear to be hindrances to hunting in the shape of frosts. It is
an Anglo-Saxon word, seldom used nowadays, though it is found in the
dictionary; and our English Prayer Book has the words "we are sore let
and hindered in running the race," etc. Shakespeare too employs it to
signify a "check" with the hounds.
As I left, and thanked John Brown for his information, he handed me a
little bit of paper, whereon was written: "to John Brown 1 day minding
the edge at the picked cloos 2s three days doto," etc. I found that this
was his little account for mending the hedge at the "picket close."
A fine stamp of humanity is the Cotswold labourer; and may his shadow
never grow less.
"Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied."
Fresh and health-giving is the breeze on the wolds in autumn, like the
driest and oldest iced champagne. In the rough grass fields tough, wiry
bents, thistles with purple flowers, and the remnants of oxeye daisies
on brittle stalks rise almost to the height of your knees. Lovely blue
bell-flowers grow in patches; golden ragwort, two sorts of field
scabious, yellow toad-flax, and occasionally some white campion remain
almost into winter. Where the grass is shorter masses of shrivelled wild
thyme may be seen. The charlock brightens the landscape with its mass of
colour among the turnips until the end of November, if the season be
fairly mild. But the hedges and trees are the glory of "the happy autumn
fields." The traveller's joy gleams in the September sunlight as the
feathery awns lengthen on its seed vessels. What could be more
beautiful! Later on it becomes the "old man's beard," and the hedges
will be white with the snowy down right up to Christmas, until the
winter frosts have once more scattered the seeds along the hedgerow. Of
a rich russet tint are the maple leaves in every copse and fence. On the
blackthorn hang the purple sloeberries, like small damsons, luscious and
covered with bloom. Tart are they to the taste, like the crab-apples
which abound in the hedges. These fruits are picked by the poor people
and made into wine. Crab-apples may be seen on the trees as late as
January. Blackberries are found in extraordinary numbers on this
limestone soil, and the hedges are full of elder-berries, as well as the
little black fruit of the privet. Add to these the red berries of the
hawthorn or the may, the hips and haws, the brown nuts and the succulent
berries of the yew, and we have an extraordinary variety of fruits and
bird food. Woodbine or wild honeysuckle may often be picked during
October as well as in the spring. By the river the trout grow darker and
more lanky day by day as the nights lengthen. The water is very, very
clear. "You might as well throw your 'at in as try to catch them," says
Tom Peregrine. The willows are gold as well as silver now, for some of
the leaves have turned; while others still show white downy backs when
the breeze ruffles them. In the garden by the brook-side the tall
willow-herbs are seeding; the pods are bursting, and the gossamer-like,
grey down--the "silver mist" of Tennyson--is conspicuous all along the
brook. The water-mint and scorpion-grasses remain far into November, and
the former scents more sweetly as the season wanes. But
"Heavily hangs the broad sunflower,
Over its grave in the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock;
Heavily hangs the tiger lily."
An old wild duck that left the garden last spring to rear her progeny in
a more secluded spot half a mile up stream has returned to us. Every
morning her ten young ones pitch down into the water in front of the
house, and remain until they are disturbed; then, with loud quacks and
tumultuous flappings, they rise in a long string and fly right away for
several miles, often returning at nightfall. Such wild birds are far
more interesting as occasional visitors to your garden than the fancy
fowl of strange shape and colouring often to be seen on ornamental
water. A teal came during the autumn of 1897 to the sanctuary in front
of the house, attracted by the decoys; she stayed six weeks with us,
taking daily exercise in the skies at an immense height, and circling
round and round. Unfortunately, when the weeds were cut, she left us,
never to return.
By the end of October almost all our summer birds have left us. First of
all, in August, went the cuckoo, seeking a winter resort in the north of
Africa. The swifts were the next to go. After a brief stay of scarce
three months they disappeared as suddenly in August as they came in May.
The long-tailed swallows and the white-throated martins were with us for
six months, but about the middle of October they were no more seen. All
have gone southwards towards the Afric shore, seeking warmth and days of
endless sunshine. Gone, too, the blackcap, the redstart, and the little
fly-catcher; vanishing in the dark night, they gathered in legions and
sped across the seas. One night towards the end of September, whilst
walking in the road, I heard such a loud, rushing sound in front, beyond
a turning of the lane, that I imagined a thrashing machine was coming
round the corner among the big elm trees. But on approaching the spot, I
found the noise was nothing more nor less than the chattering and
clattering of an immense concourse of starlings. The roar of their wings
when they were disturbed in the trees could be heard half a mile away.
Although a few starlings remain round the eaves of the houses throughout
the winter, vast flocks of them assemble at this time in the fields, and
some doubtless travel southwards and westwards in search of warmer
quarters. The other evening a large flock of lapwings, or common plover,
gave a very fine display--a sort of serpentine dance to the tune of the
setting sun, all for my edification. They could not quite make up their
minds to settle on a brown ploughed field. No sooner had they touched
the ground than they would rise again with shrill cries, flash here and
flash there, faster and faster, but all in perfect time and all in
perfect order--now flying in long drawn out lines, now in battalions;
bowing here, bowing there; now they would "right about turn" and curtsey
to the sun. A thousand trained ballet dancer; could not have been in
better time. It was as if all joined hands, dressed in green and white;
for at every turn a thousand white breasts gleamed in the purple sunset.
The restless call of the birds added a peculiar charm to the scene in
the darkening twilight.
Of our winter visitants that come to take the place of the summer
migrants the fieldfare is the commonest and most familiar. Ere the leaf
is off the ash and the beeches are tinged with russet and gold, flocks
of these handsome birds leave their homes in the ice-bound north, and
fly southwards to England and the sunny shores of France. Such a
_rara avis_ as the grey phalarope--a wading bird like the
sandpiper--occasionally finds its way to the Cotswolds. Wild geese,
curlews, and wimbrels with sharp, snipe-like beaks, are shot
occasionally by the farmers. A few woodcocks, snipe, and wildfowl also
visit us. In the winter the short-eared owls come; they are rarer than
their long-eared relatives, who stay with us all the year. The common
barn owl, of a white, creamy colour, is the screech owl that we hear on
summer nights. Brown owls are the ones that hoot; they do not screech.
Curiously enough I missed the corncrake's well-known call in the meadows
by the river in the springtime of 1897; and not one was bagged in
September by the partridge-shooters. This is the first year they have
been absent. I always looked for their pleasing croak in May by the
trout stream, and invariably shot several while partridge-shooting in
former years.
The earthquake of 1895 was very severely felt in the Cotswolds. Next to
an earthquake a bad thunderstorm is the most awe inspiring of all things
to mortals. During last autumn the Cotswold district was visited by a
thunderstorm of short duration, but great severity. A gale was blowing
from the south; thunder and lightning came up from the same direction,
and, travelling at an immense speed, passed rapidly over our house about
ten p.m. The shocks became louder and louder; and whilst five or six of
us were watching the lightning from a large window in the hall, there
was a deafening report as of a dozen canons exploding simultaneously at
close quarters. At the same time a flame of blue fire of intense
brilliancy seemed to fall like a meteor a few yards in front of our
eyes. At first we were sure the house had been struck, so that the first
impulse was to rush out of doors; but the succeeding report being much
less severe, confidence was restored. The general conclusion was that a
thunderbolt had fallen, and, missing the house by a few yards, had
disappeared in the earth. A search next morning on the lawn did not
throw any light on the matter. Probably, if there was a thunderbolt, it
fell into the river; for it is well known that water is a great
conductor of the electric fluid, and thunderstorms often seem to follow
the course of a stream. The summer lightning, which kept the sky in a
blaze of light for two hours after the storm had passed away, was the
finest I remember.
It is a pity mankind is so little addicted to being out of doors after
sunset. Some of the most beautiful drives and walks I have ever enjoyed
have been those taken at night. Driving out one evening from
Cirencester, the road on either side was illuminated with the fairy
lights of countless glow-worms. It is the female insect that is usually
responsible for this wonderful green signal taper; the males seldom use
it. Whereas the former is merely an apterous creeping grub, the latter
is an insect provided with wings. Flying about at night, he is guided to
his mate by the light she puts forth; and it is a peculiar
characteristic of the male glow-worm, that his eyes are so placed that
he is unable to view any object that is not immediately beneath him.
It is early in summer that these wonderful lights are to be seen; June
is the best month for observing them. During July and August glow-worms
seem to migrate to warmer quarters in sheltered banks and holes, nor is
their light visible to the eye after June is out, save on very warm
evenings, and then only in a lesser degree.
The glow-worms on this particular night were so numerous as to remind
one of the fireflies in the tropics. At no place are these lovely
insects more numerous and resplendent than at Kandy in Ceylon. Myriads
of them flit about in the cool evening atmosphere, giving the appearance
of countless meteors darting in different directions across the sky.
In the clear Cotswold atmosphere very brilliant meteors are observable
at certain seasons of the year. Never shall I forget the strange variety
of phenomena witnessed whilst driving homewards one evening in autumn
from the railway station seven miles away. There had been a time of
stormy, unsettled weather for some weeks previously, and the
meteorological conditions were in a very disturbed state. But as I
started homewards the stars were shining brightly, whilst far away in
the western sky, beyond the rolling downs and bleak plains of the
Cotswold Hills, shone forth the strange, mysterious, zodiacal light,
towering upwards into a point among the stars, and shaped in the form of
a cone. It was the first occasion this curious, unexplained phenomenon
had ever come under my notice, and it was awe inspiring enough in
itself. But before I had gone more than two miles of my solitary
journey, great black clouds came up behind me from the south, and I knew
I was racing with the storm. Then, as "the great organ of eternity
began to play" and the ominous murmurs of distant thunder broke the
silence of the night, a stiff breeze from the south seemed to come from
behind and pass me, as if travelling quicker than my fast-trotting nag.
Like a whisper from the grave it rustled in the brown, lifeless leaves
that still lingered on the trees, making me wish I was nearer the old
house that I knew was ready to welcome me five miles on in the little
valley, nestling under the sheltering hill. And soon more clouds seemed
to spring up suddenly, north, south, east, and west, where ten minutes
before the sky had been clear and starry. And the sheet lightning began
to play over them with a continuous flow of silvery radiance, north
answering south, and east giving back to west the reflected glory of the
mighty electric fluid. But the centre of the heavens was still clear and
free from cloud, so that there yet remained a large open space in
front of me, wherein the stars shone brighter than ever. And as I
gazed forward and upward, and urged the willing horse into a
twelve-mile-an-hour trot, the open space in the heavens revealed the
glories of the finest display of fireworks I have ever seen. First of
all two or three smaller stars shot across the hemisphere and
disappeared into eternal space. But suddenly a brilliant light, like an
enormous rocket, appeared in the western sky, far above the clouds.
First it moved in a steady flight, hovering like a kestrel above us;
then, with a flash which startled me out of my wits and brought my horse
to a standstill, it rushed apparently towards us, and finally
disappeared behind the clouds. It was some time before either horse or
driver regained the nerve which had for a time forsaken them; and even
then I was inclined to attribute this wonderful meteoric shower to a
display of fireworks in a neighbouring village, so close to us had this
last rocket-like shooting star appeared to be. A meteor which is
sufficiently brilliant to frighten a horse and make him stop dead is of
rare occurrence. I was thankful when I reached home in safety that I had
not only won my race against the storm, but that I had seen no more
atmospheric phenomena of so startling a nature.
In addition to the wonders of the heaven there are many other
interesting features connected with a drive or walk by the light of the
stars or the moon. A Cotswold village seen by moonlight is even more
picturesque than it is by day. The old, gabled manor houses are a
delightful picture on a cold, frosty night in winter; if most of the
rooms are lit up, they give one the idea of endless hospitality and
cheerfulness when viewed from without. To walk by a stream such as the
Coln on such a night is for the time like being in fairyland. Every eddy
and ripple is transformed into a crystal stream, sparkling with a
thousand diamonds. The sound of the waters as they gurgle and bubble
over the stones on the shallows seems for all the world like children's
voices plaintively repeating over and over again the old strain:
"I chatter, chatter as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever."
Now is the time to discover the haunts of wild duck and other shy birds
like the teal and the heron. In frosty weather many of these visitors
come and go without our being any the wiser, unless we are out at night.
Before sunrise they will be far, far away, and will probably never
return any more. Time after time we have been startled by a flight of
duck rising abruptly from the stream, in places where by day one would
never dream of looking for them. Foxes, too, may be seen within a
stone's throw of the house on a moonlight evening. They love to prowl
around on the chance of a dainty morsel, such as a fat duck or a
semi-domestic moorhen. Nor will they take any notice of you at such
a time.
I made a midnight expedition once last hunting season to see that the
"earths" were properly stopped in some small coverts situated on a bleak
and lonely spot on the Cotswold Hills. On the way I had to pass close to
a large barrow. Weird indeed looked the old time-worn stone that has
stood for thousands of years at the end of this old burial mound. A
small wood close by rejoices in the name of "Deadman's Acre." The moon
was casting a ghastly light over the great moss-grown stone and the
deserted wolds. The words of Ossian rose to my lips as I wondered what
manner of men lay buried here. "We shall pass away like a dream. Our
tombs will be lost on the heath. The hunter shall not know the place of
our rest. Give us the song of other years. Let the night pass away on
the sound, and morning return with joy." Then, as the rustling wind
spoke in the lifeless leaves of the beeches, the plain seemed to be
peopled with strange phantasies--the ghosts of the heroes of old. And a
voice came back to me on the whispering breeze:
"Thou, too, must share our fate; for human life is short.
Soon will thy tomb be hid, and the grass grow rank on thy grave."
MACPHERSON'S _Ossian_.
And sometimes when I have been up on the hills by night, and, looking
away over the broad vale stretched out below, have seen in the distance
the gliding lights of some Great Western express--a trusty
weight-carrier bearing through the darkness its precious burden of
humanity--I thought of the time when the old seas ran here. And then
there seemed to come from the direction of the old White Horse and
Wayland Smith's cave the faint murmuring sound of the "Blowing-stone"
("King Alfred's bugle-horn")--that summoner of men to arms a thousand
years ago, like the beacons of later days that "shone on Beachy Head";
and I felt like a man standing at the prow of a mighty liner, "homeward
bound," on some fine though dark and starless evening, when no sound
breaks upon his ear but the monotonous beating of the screw and the
ceaseless flow of unfathomed waters, save that ever and anon in the far
distance the moaning foghorn sounds its note of warning; whilst as he
stands "forward" and inhales the pure health-giving salt distilled from
balmy vapours that rise everlastingly from the surface of the deep,
nothing is visible to the eye--straining westward for a glimpse of
white chalk cliffs, or eastward, perhaps, for the first peep of
dawn--save the intermittent flash from the lighthouse tower, and the
signals glowing weird and fiery that reveal in the misty darkness those
softly gliding phantasies, the ships that pass in the night.
II.
In nine years out of ten autumn lingers on until the death of the old
year; then, with the advent of the new, our English winter begins
in earnest.
It is Christmas Day, and so lovely is the weather that I am sitting on
the terrace watching the warm, grateful sun gradually disappearing
through the grey ash trunks in the hanging wood beyond the river. The
birds are singing with all the promise of an early spring. There is
scarcely a breath of wind stirring, and one might almost imagine it to
be April. Tom Peregrine, clad in his best Sunday homespun, passes along
his well-worn track through the rough grass beyond the water, intent on
visiting his vermin traps, or bent on some form of destruction,--for he
is never happy unless he is killing. My old friend, the one-legged cock
pheasant, who for the third year in succession has contrived to escape
our annual battue, comes up to my feet to take the bread I offer. When
he was flushed by the beaten there was no need to call "Spare him," for
with all the cunning of a veteran he towered straight into the skies
and passed over the guns out of shot. Two fantail pigeons of purest
white, sitting in a dark yew tree that overhangs the stream a hundred
yards away, make the prettiest picture in the world against the
dusky foliage.
Splash!--a great brown trout rolls in the shallow water like a porpoise
in the sea. A two-pounder in this little stream makes as much fuss as a
twenty-pound salmon in the mighty Tweed.
Hark! was that a lamb bleating down in old Mr. Peregrine's meadow? It
was: the first lamb, herald of the spring that is to be. May its little
life be as peaceful as this its first birthday: less stormy than the
life of that Lamb whose birth all people celebrate to-day.
The rooks are cawing, and a faint cry of plover comes from the hill.
Soft and grey is the winter sky, but behold! round the sun in the west
there arises a perfect solar halo, very similar to an ordinary rainbow,
but smaller in its arc and fainter in its hues of yellow and rose--a
very beautiful phenomenon, and one seldom to be seen in England. Halos
of this nature are supposed to arise from the double refraction of the
rays from the sun as the light passes through thin clouds, or from the
transmission of light through particles of ice. It lingers a full
quarter of an hour, and then dies away. Does this bode rough weather?
Surely the cruel Boreas and the frost will not come suddenly on us after
this lovely, mild Christmas! Listen to the Christmas bells ringing two
miles away at Barnsley village I we can never tire of the sound here,
for it is only on very still days that it reaches us across the wolds.
"Hark! In the air, around, above,
The Angelic Music soars and swells,
And, in the Garden that I love
I hear the sound of Christmas Bells.
"From hamlet, hollow, village, height,
The silvery Message seems to start,
And far away its notes to-night
Are surging through the city's heart.
"Assurance clear to those who fret
O'er vanished Faith and feelings fled,
That not in English homes is yet
Tradition dumb, or Reverence dead.
"Now onward floats the sacred tale,
Past leafless woodlands, freezing rills;
It wakes from sleep the silent vale,
It skims the mere, it scales the hills;
"And rippling on up rings of space,
Sounds faint and fainter as more high,
Till mortal ear no more may trace
The music homeward to the sky.
"To courtly roof and rustic cot
Old comrades wend from far and wide;
Now is the ancient feud forgot,
The growing grudge is laid aside.
"Peace and goodwill 'twixt rich and poor!
Goodwill and peace 'twixt class and class!
Let old with new, let Prince with boor
Send round the bowl, and drain the glass!"
ALFRED AUSTIN.
I have culled these lines from the poet laureate's charming "Christmas
Carol," as they are both singularly beautiful and singularly appropriate
to our Cotswold village.
I take the liberty of saying that in our little hamlet there _is_ peace
and goodwill 'twixt rich and poor at Christmas-time.
"Now is the ancient feud forgot,
The growing grudge is laid aside."
Our humble rejoicings during this last Christmas were very similar to
those of a hundred years ago. They included a grand smoking concert at
the club, during which the mummers gave an admirable performance of
their old play, of which more anon; then a big feed for every man,
woman, and child of the hamlet (about a hundred souls) was held in the
manor house; added to which we received visits from carol singers and
musicians of all kinds to the number of seventy-two, reckoning up the
total aggregate of the different bands, all of whom were welcomed, for
Christmas comes but once a year, after all, and "the more the merrier"
should be our motto at this time. So from villages three and four miles
away came bands of children to sing the old, old songs. The brass band,
including old grey-haired men who fifty years ago with strings and
wood-wind led the psalmody at Chedworth Church, come too, and play
inside the hall. We do not brew at home nowadays. Even such
old-fashioned Conservatives as old Mr. Peregrine, senior, have at length
given up the custom, so we cannot, like Sir Roger, allow a greater
quantity of malt to our small beer at Christmas; but we take good care
to order in some four or five eighteen-gallon casks at this time. Let it
be added that we never saw any man the worse for drink in consequence
of this apparent indiscretion. But then, we have a butler of the
old school.
When we held our Yuletide revels in the manor house, and the old walls
rang with the laughter and merriment of the whole hamlet (for farmers as
well as labourers honoured us), it occurred to me that the bigotphones,
which had been lying by in a cupboard for about a twelvemonth, might
amuse the company. Bigotphones, I must explain to those readers who are
uninitiated, are delightfully simple contrivances fitted with reed
mouthpieces--exact representations in mockery of the various instruments
that make up a brass band--but composed of strong cardboard, and
dependent solely on the judicious application of the human lips and the
skilful modulation of the human voice for their effect. These being
produced, an impromptu band was formed: young Peregrine seized the
bassoon, the carter took the clarionet, the shepherd the French horn,
the cowman the trombone, and, seated at the piano, I myself conducted
the orchestra. Never before have I been so astonished as I was by the
unexpected musical ability displayed. No matter what tune I struck up,
that heterogeneous orchestra played it as if they had been doing nothing
else all their lives. "The British Grenadiers," "The Eton Boating Song,"
"Two Lovely Black Eyes" (solo, young Peregrine on the bassoon), "A Fine
Hunting Day,"--all and sundry were performed in perfect time and without
a false note. Singularly enough, it is very difficult for the voice to
"go flat" on the bigotphone. Then, not content with these popular songs
we inaugurated a dance. Now could be seen the beautiful and
accomplished Miss Peregrine doing the light fantastic round the stone
floor of the hall to the tune of "See me dance the polka"; then, too,
the stately Mrs. Peregrine insisted on our playing "Sir Roger de
Coverley," and it was danced with that pomp and ceremony which such
occasions alone are wont to show. None of your "kitchen lancers" for us
hamlet folk; we leave that kind of thing to the swells and nobs. Tom
Peregrine alone was baffled. Whilst his family in general were bowing
there, curtseying here, clapping hands and "passing under to the right"
in the usual "Sir Roger" style, he stood in grey homespun of the best
material (I never yet saw a Cotswold man in a vulgar chessboard suit),
and as he stood he marvelled greatly, exclaiming now and then, "Well, I
never; this is something new to be sure!" "I never saw such things in
all my life, never!" He would not dance; but, seizing one of the
bigotphones, he blew into it until I was in some anxiety lest he should
have an apoplectic fit I need scarcely say he failed to produce a
single note.
Thus our Yuletide festivities passed away, all enjoying themselves
immensely, and thus was sealed the bond of fellowship and of goodwill
'twixt class and class for the coming year.
Whilst the younger folks danced, the fathers of the hamlet walked on
tiptoe with fearful tread around the house, looking at the faded family
portraits. I was pleased to find that what they liked best was the
ancient armour; for said they, "Doubtless squire wore that in the old
battles hereabouts, when Oliver Cromwell was round these parts." On my
pointing out the picture of the man who built the house three hundred
years ago, they surrounded it, and gazed at the features for a great
length of time; indeed, I feared that they would never come away, so
fascinated were they by this relic of antiquity, illustrating the
ancient though simple annals of their village.
I persuaded the head of our mummer troop to write out their play as it
was handed down to him by his predecessors. This he did in a fine bold
hand on four sides of foolscap. Unfortunately the literary quality of
the lines is so poor that they are hardly worth reproducing, except as a
specimen of the poetry of very early times handed down by oral
tradition. Suffice it to say that the _dramatis personae_ are five in
number--viz., Father Christmas, Saint George, a Turkish Knight, the
Doctor, and an Old Woman. All are dressed in paper flimsies of various
shapes and colours. First of all enters Father Christmas.
"In comes I old Father Christmas,
Welcome in or welcome not,
Sometimes cold and sometimes hot.
I hope Father Christmas will never be forgot," etc.
Then Saint George comes in, and after a great deal of bragging he fights
the "most dreadful battle that ever was known," his adversary being the
knight "just come from Turkey-land," with the inevitable result that the
Turkish knight falls. This brings in the Doctor, who suggests the
following remedies:--
"Give him a bucket of dry hot ashes to eat,
Groom him down with a bezom stick,
And give him a yard and a half of pump water to drink."
For these offices he mentions that his fee is fifty guineas, but he
will take ten pounds, adding:
"I can cure the itchy pitchy,
Palsy, and the gout;
Pains within or pains without;
A broken leg or a broken arm,
Or a broken limb of any sort.
I cured old Mother Roundabout," etc.
He declares that he is not one of those "quack doctors who go about from
house to house telling you more lies in one half-hour than what you can
find true in seven years."
So the knight just come from Turkey-land is resuscitated and sent back
to his own country.
Last of all the old woman speaks:
"In comes I old Betsy Bub;
On my shoulder I carry my tub,
And in my hand a dripping-pan.
Don't you think I'm a jolly old man?
Now last Christmas my father killed a fat hog,
And my mother made black-puddings enough to choke a dog,
And they hung them up with a pudden string
Till the fat dropped out and the maggots crawled in," etc.
The mummers' play, of which the above is a very brief _résumé_, lasts
about half an hour, and includes many songs of a topical nature.
Yes, Christmas is Christmas still in the heart of old England. We are
apt to talk of the good old days that are no more, lamenting the customs
and country sports that have passed away; but let us not forget that two
hundred years hence, when we who are living now will have long passed
"that bourne from which no traveller returns," our descendants, as they
sit round their hearths at Yuletide, may in the same way regret the
grand old times when good Victoria--the greatest monarch of all
ages--was Queen of England; those times when during the London season
fair ladies and gallant men might be seen on Drawing-room days driving
down St James's Street in grand carriages, drawn by magnificent horses,
with servants in cocked hats and wigs and gold lace; when the rural
villages of merrie England were cheered throughout the dreary winter
months by the sound of horse and hound, and by the sight of beautiful
ladies and red-coated sportsmen, mounted on blood horses, careering over
the country, clearing hedges and ditches of fabulous height and width;
when every man, woman, and child in the village turned out to see the
"meet," and the peer and the peasant were for the day on an equal
footing, bound together by an extraordinary devotion to the chase of
"that little red rover" which men called the fox--now, alas! extinct, as
the mammoth or the bear, owing to barbed wire and the abolition of the
horse; when to such an extent were games and sports a part of our
national life that half London flocked to see two elevens of cricketers
(including a champion "nine" feet high called Grace) fighting their
mimic battle arrayed in white flannels and curiously coloured caps, at a
place called Lords, the exact site of which is now, alas I lost in the
sea of houses; when as an absolute fact the first news men turned to on
opening their daily papers in the morning was the column devoted to
cricket, football, or horse-racing; when in the good old days, before
electricity and the motor-car caused the finest specimen of the brute
creation to become virtually extinct (although a few may still be seen
at the Zoological Gardens), horse-racing for a cup and a small fortune
in gold was only second to cricket and football in the estimation of all
merrie Englanders--the only races now indulged in being those of flying
machines to Mars and back twice a day. Two hundred years hence, I say,
the Victorian era--time of blessed peace and unexampled prosperity--will
be pronounced by all unprejudiced judges as the true days of merrie
England. Let us, then, though not unmindful of the past, pin our faith
firmly on the present and the future. _Carpe diem_ should be our motto
in these fleeting times, and, above all, progress, not retrogression.
Let us, as the old, old sound of the village bells comes to us over the
rolling downs this New Year's eve, recall to mind
".... the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be."
Let our hearts warm to the battle cry of advancing civilisation and the
attainment of the ideal humanity, soaring upwards step by step,
re-echoing the prayer contained in those lilting stanzas with which
Tennyson greets the New Year:
"Ring out the old, ring in the new;
Ring happy bells across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
"Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
"Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right;
Ring in the common love of good.
"Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
"Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land.
Ring in the Christ that is to be."
[Illustration: Coln S' Aldwyns 429.png]