sandy and covered with heath, fern, and fir trees, there never seemed to
be any rooks. These birds, so very characteristic of the country,
appeared to be almost absent over several miles. They went by sometimes,
sailing down into the vale, but never stopped on the hill, not even to
walk the furrows behind the plough. This would seem to indicate a
remarkable absence of the food they like, for it is very rare indeed for
a piece of ground to be fresh ploughed without rooks coming to it. There
were rookeries beneath in the plains where the elms and beeches grew
tall, but the birds never came up to forage. Crows could be found, and
stopped on the hill all the year. Wood-pigeons, like the rooks, went
over, but did not stay. Starlings were not at all plentiful; blackbirds
and thrushes were there, but not nearly so numerous as is usually the
case; fieldfares and redwings drifted by in the winter, but never
stopped. Slow-worms lived in the sand under the heath, and lizards, but
no snakes and only a few adders. Inquiring of an old man if there were
many snakes about, he said no; the soil was too poor for them; but in
some places down in the vale he had dug up a gallon of snakes' eggs in
the 'maxen.' The word was noticeable as a survival of the old English
'mixen' for manure heap. Swallows, martins, and swifts abounded; and as
for insects, they were countless--honey-bees, wild bees, humble-bees,
varieties of wasps, butterflies--an endless list. So common a plant as
the arum did not seem to exist; on the other hand, ferns literally made
up the hedges, growing in such quantities as to take the place of the
grasses. There was, too, a great variety of moss and fungi. The soil
looked black and fertile, and new-comers thought they were going to have
good crops, but when these failed they found, upon examining the earth,
that it was little more than black sand, and the particles of silica
glittered if a handful were held in the sun. Such a sand would give the
impression of dryness, instead of which it was extremely damp--damp all
the year round.
For contrast, a place on the coast just opposite, as it were, and almost
within view, at the same time of year seemed to have no bees. A great
field of clover in flower was silent; there was no hum, nor glistening of
wings. Butterflies rarely came along. Swallows were not common. In the
rich loam it was curious to note mussel-shells, quite recent, in good
preservation, and a geologist might wonder at the layers of them in such
an earth; the farmer would smile, and say the mussels were carted there
for manure. Another place, again, in the same county is full of rooks,
and the arum is green on the banks. These items in a small area show how
different places are, and if you move from locality to locality
everything you have read about is by degrees seen in reality. In an old
book, the History of Northampton, which I chanced to look at, among other
curiosities, the author a hundred years ago mentioned a substance called
star shot, which appeared in the meadows overnight, and seemed to have
dropped from the sky. This I had not then seen, but many years afterwards
came suddenly, by a copse, on a quantity of jelly-like substance with a
most unpleasant aspect, but which did not in any other way offend the
senses. It had shot up in the night, and was gone next day. It is a
fungus unnoticed till it suddenly swells; I suppose this was the old
chronicler's star shot. Nor do I think it too small a thing that the
common snail makes a straight track over everything; if he comes to the
wall of a house he goes straight up without the smallest hesitation, and
explores a good height before he comes down again; if he finds a loaf of
bread in the cellar he never thinks of going round it, but travels in a
Roman road up and over. So do the armies of ants in warmer climates, and
this proceeding in an invariable line irrespective of obstacles seems to
be peculiar to many creatures, and is the reason why such 'plagues' were
and are so dreaded. Nothing could divert the straight march of the
locusts; nothing could divert the course of the millions of butterflies
that sometimes cross the Channel and arrive here from the Continent.
The tenacity of insects in anything they have once begun is shown in many
ways; you cannot drive away a fly or a gnat, and if a colony of ants take
up their home in the garden they will hardly move till all are destroyed.
Aristotle mentions the diseases of swine, so it will not be amiss to
record that in the country swine are supposed to suffer from water-brash,
and to relieve themselves by eating dry earth, for which purpose those
that run loose are continually tearing up the ground. Human beings so
affected show a similar tendency for dry food, as oatmeal. Sometimes the
liver of calves and bullocks is small and dry, of very little use for
food; this is found to be due to the neglect of providing them with dry
standing-ground when fattening. To ensure their fattening properly they
should stand on dry and high ground, and they should be plentifully
supplied with dry litter. This fact may be of value to some suffering
person; it points to the necessity of dry warm feet, dry subsoil, and
drainage if the liver is to be in good order. Popular suspicion, if not
science, attaches many other diseases besides those that actually consume
that organ to the abnormal action of the liver, possibly lung disease.
Such trifling circumstances are not so trifling as they appear. A case
came under my notice quite recently when a person had been helpless from
paralysis for several years. Chance compelled removal to another house,
and very soon the paralysis began to disappear. The first house may have
been damp, or there may have been some minute conditions besides. It
certainly is a marked fact that in the country, at all events, one house
is noted for its healthiness and another close by for its unhealthiness,
and the cause is not traceable to the usual and obvious reason of
drainage or water. Any one who has noticed the remarkable influence of
locality in the more evident vegetation--such, for instance, as
lichens--will be able to suppose the possibility of minute
organisms--microbe, bacteria, whatever you like to call them--being more
persistent in one spot than in another. I have often thought of the
half-magical art of the Chinese, Feng-shui, by which they discover if a
place be fortunate and fit for a house. It seems to suggest something of
this kind, and I think there is a great deal yet to be discovered by the
diligent observation of localities. The experience of the rudest country
rustic is not to be despised; an observation is an observation, whoever
makes it; there has been an air of too much science in the affected
derision of our forefathers' wisdom.
COUNTRY PLACES.
I.
High up and facing every one who enters a village there still remains an
old notice-board with the following inscription:--'All persons found
wandering abroad, lying, lodging, or being in any barn, outhouse, or in
the open air, and not giving a good account of themselves, will be
apprehended as rogues and vagabonds, and be either publicly whipt or sent
to the house of correction, and afterwards disposed of according to law,
by order of the magistrates. Any person who shall apprehend any rogue or
vagabond will be entitled to a reward of ten shillings.' It very often
happens that we cannot see the times in which we actually live. A thing
must be gone by before you can see it, just as it must be printed before
it is read. This little bit of weather-stained board may serve, perhaps,
to throw up the present into a picture so that it may be visible. For
this inhuman law still holds good, and is not obsolete or a mere relic of
barbarism. The whipping, indeed, is abrogated for very shame's sake; so
is the reward to the informer; but the magistrate and the imprisonment
and the offence remain. You must not sleep in the open, either in a barn
or a cart-house or in a shed, in the country, or on a door-step in a
town, or in a boat on the beach; and if you have no coin in your pocket
you are still more diabolically wicked--you are a vagrom man, and the
cold cell is your proper place. This is the Jubilee year, too, of the
mildest and best reign of the Christian era. Something in this
weather-beaten board to be very proud of, is it not? Something human and
comforting and assuring to the mind that we have made so much progress.
The pagan Roman Empire reached from the wall of Severus in the north of
England to Athens of the philosophers; it included our islands, France,
Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria, Greece, Turkey in Europe and Asia,
Egypt--the whole world of those days. No one could escape from it,
because it enclosed all; you could not take refuge in Spain on account of
the absence of an extradition treaty; no forger, no thief, no political
offender could get out of it. A crushing power this, quite unknown in our
modern world, with all our engines, steamers, and telegraphs. A man may
hide himself somewhere now, but from the power of old Rome there was no
running away. And all this, too, was under the thumb of one irresponsible
will, in an age when human life was of no value, and there was no State
institution preaching gentleness in every village. Yet even then there
was no such law as this, and in this respect we are more brutal than was
the case nineteen centuries ago. This weather-beaten board may also serve
to remind us that in this Jubilee year the hateful workhouse still
endures; that people are imprisoned for debt under the mockery of
contempt of court; that a man's household goods, down to the bed on which
he sleeps, and the tools warm from his hand, may be sold. In the West End
of London a poor woman, an ironer, being in debt, her six children's
clothes were seized. What a triumph for the Jubilee year! Instead of
building a Church House to add another thousand tons to the enormous
weight of ecclesiastical bricks and mortar that cumbers the land, would
it not be more human to signalise the time by the abolition of these
cruel laws, and by the introduction of some system to gradually
emancipate the poor from the workhouse, which is now their master?
In the gathering dusk of the afternoon I saw a mouse rush to a wall--a
thick stone wall,--run up it a few inches, and disappear in a chink under
some grey lichen. The poor little biter, as the gipsies call the mouse,
had a stronghold wherein to shelter himself, and close by there was a
corn-rick from which he drew free supplies of food. A few minutes
afterwards I was interested in the movements of a pair of wrens that were
playing round the great trunk of an elm, flying from one to another of
the little twigs standing out from the rough bark. First one said
something in wren language, and then the other answered; they were
husband and wife, and after a long consultation they flew to the
corn-rick and crept into a warm hole under the thatch. So both these, the
least of animals and the least of birds, have a resource, and man is the
only creature that punishes his fellow for daring to lie down and sleep.
Up in the plain there were some mounds, or _tumuli_, about which nothing
seemed to be known, though they had evidently been cut into and explored.
At last, however, a farmer--Mr. Nestor Hay, who knew everything--told me
something about them. He cut them open. He had an old county history and
several other volumes which had somehow accumulated in the Manor-house
Farm, and, like many country people, he was extremely fond of studying
the past. He fancied there might have been a battle in that locality, and
hence these mounds, but could find no reference to them anywhere, so he
dug through one or two of them himself, without success; the soil did not
seem to have ever been disturbed, consequently they might have been
natural. 'Perhaps I should have found out something though,' he said,
with a smile,'if it had not been for that there old dog as we used to
keep in the tub at the back of the house. Such a lot of folk used to come
to our back door all day long after victuals, some out of the village,
and some from the next parish, and some as went round regular, and gipsy
chaps, and chaps as pretended to come from London--you never saw such a
crowd,--just because the old man and the missus was rather good to 'em.
So there they was a-clacking at that door all day long. But this 'ere dog
in the tub used to sarve 'em out sometimes if they didn't mind.
(Chuckle.) She never barked, or nothing of that sort, never let 'em know
as there was a dog there at all; there she'd lie as quiet till they was
just gone by a little--then out she'd slip without a word behind them,
and solp 'em by the leg. Lord, how they did jump and holler! (Chuckle.)
See, they had the pinch afore they knowed as she was there. Lord, what a
lot she did bite to be sure! (thoughtfully); I can't tell 'e how many,
her did it so neat. That kept folk away a little, else I suppose we
shouldn't have had anything to eat ourselves. None of 'em never went
wrong, you know, never went mad or anything of that sort--never had to
send nobody to Paris in them days to be dog-vaccinated. Curious, wasn't
it? Must have been something different about folk then. However, this
here dog was desperate clever at it. As I was telling you, I dug through
them mounds; couldn't find no coins or anything; so I heard of a big
archaeologist chap that was writing a new book about the antiquities of
the country, and I wrote to him about it, and he said he would come and
see them. The day he come was rather roughish and cold: he seemed sort of
bad when he come into the house, and had to have some brandy. By-and-by
he got better, and out we started; but just as we was going through the
yard this old dog nips him by the hand--took him right through his
hand--made him look main straight. However, washed his hand and bound it
up, and started out again. (Chuckle.) Hadn't gone very far, and was
getting through a hedge, and dalled if he didn't fall into the pond,
flop! (Chuckle.) I suppose he didn't like it, for he never said nothing
about the mounds in his book when it come out--left'em out altogether.'
This pond still exists, and Mr. Nestor Hay had noted a curious thing
about it. Across the middle of the pond a tree had fallen; it was just on
a level with the surface of the water. A pair of water-rats always ate
their food on this tree. They would go out into the grass of the meadow,
bite off the vegetation that suited their taste, and carry it back in
their mouths to the tree, and there eat it in safety, with water, as it
were, all round them like a moat. This they did a hundred times--in fact,
every day. 'But,' said Mr. Hay, 'you can't watch nothing now a minute
without some great lout coming along with a stale baccy pipe in his
mouth, making the air stink; they spoils everything, these here
half-towny fellows; everybody got a neasty stale pipe in their mouths,
and they gets over the hedges anywhere, and disturbs everything.' It is
common on the banks of a stream or a pond to see half a dozen of these
little beaver-like water-voles out feeding in the grass, and they eat it
when they find it. At this particular pond the two rats diverged from the
custom of their race, and always took their food to a place of safety
first. If he is alarmed the water-rat instantly dives, and his idea of
security is a spot where he can drop like a stone under the surface
without a moment's reflection. Mr. Hay could not understand why the
water-rats were so timid at this pond till he recollected that the
preceding summer two schoolboys used to get up in an oak that overhung
the water, each with a catapult, and, firing bullets from these
india-rubber weapons on the water-rats underneath, slew nearly every one
of them. The few left had evidently learnt extreme caution from the
misfortune of their friends, and no longer trusted themselves away from
the water, into which they could slip at the movement of a shadow.
Mr. Hay disliked to see the slouching fellows making tracks across his
fields, every one of which he looked on with as much jealousy as if it
had been a garden--a wild garden they were too, strewn sometimes with the
white cotton of the plane tree, hung about with roses and sweet with
mowing grass. Those who love fields and every briar in the hedge dislike
to see them entered irreverently. I have just the same feeling myself
even of fields and woods in which I have no personal interest; it jars
upon me to see nature profaned. These fellows were a 'Black George' lot,
in hamlet language. Nestor Hay knew everybody in the village round about,
their fathers and grandfathers, their politics and religious opinions,
and whether they were new folk or ancient inhabitants--an encyclopaedic
knowledge not written, an Homeric memory. For I imagine in ancient days
when books were scarce that was how men handed down the history of the
chiefs of Troy. An Homeric memory for everything--superstitions,
traditions, anecdotes; the only difficulty was that you could not command
it. You could not turn to letter A or B and demand information direct
about this or that; you must wait till it came up incidentally in
conversation. In one of the villages there was a young men's club, and,
among other advantages, when they were married they could have a cradle
for nothing. A cottager had a child troubled with a slight infirmity; the
doctor ordered the mother to prepare a stew of mice and give him the
gravy. There happened to be some threshing going on, and one of the men
caught her nine mice, which she skinned and cooked. She did not much like
the task, but she did it, and the child never knew but that it was beef
gravy. It cured him completely. This is the second time I have come
across this curious use of mice. I had heard of it as a traditional
resource among the country people, but in this case it seemed to have
been ordered by a medical practitioner. Perhaps, after all, there may be
something in the strange remedies and strange mixtures of remedies so
often described in old books, and what we now deride may not have been
without its value. If an empirical remedy will cure you, it is of more
use than a scientific composition which ought to cure you but does not.
How much depends on custom! The woman felt a repugnance to skinning the
mice, yet they are the cleanest creatures, living on grain; she would
have skinned a hare or rabbit without hesitation, and have cooked and
eaten bacon, though the pig is not a cleanly feeder. It is a country
remark that the pig's foot--often seen on the table--has as many bones as
there are letters of the alphabet. The grapnel kept at every village
draw-well is called the grabhook; the plant called honesty (because both
sides of the flower are alike) is old woman's penny. If you lived in the
country you might be alarmed late in the evening by hearing the tramp of
feet round your house. But it is not burglars; it is young fellows with a
large net and a lantern after the sparrows in the ivy. They have a
prescriptive right to enter every garden in the village. They cry
'sparrow catchers' at the gate, and people sit still, knowing it is all
right. In the jealous suburb of a city the dwellers in the villas would
shrink from this winter custom, the constable would soon have orders to
stop it; in the country people are not so rigidly exclusive. Now it is
curious that the sparrows and blackbirds, yellowhammers and greenfinches,
that roost in the bushes, fly into the net and are easily captured, but
the starlings--thanks to their different ways in daylight--always fly out
at the top of the bush, and so escape.
II.
A black cannon ball lies in a garden, an ornament like a shell or a
fossil, among blue lobelia and green ferns. It is about as big as a
cricket ball--a mere trifle to look at. What a contrast with the immense
projectiles thrown by modern guns! Yet it is very heavy--quite out of
proportion to its size. Imagine iron cricket balls bounding along the
grass and glancing at unexpected angles, smashing human beings instead of
wickets. This cannon ball is not a memorial of the Civil War. It was shot
at a carter with his waggon. Our grandfathers had no idea of taking care
of other people's lives. Every man had to look out for himself; if you
got in the way, that was your fault. A battery was practising, and they
did not trouble themselves about the highway road which skirted the
range; and as the carter was coming home with his waggon one of the balls
ricocheted and rolled along in front of his horses. He picked it up and
brought it home, and there it has lain many a long year, a silent
witness, like the bricks Jack Cade put in the chimney, to the
extraordinary change of ideas which has taken place. We are all expected
nowadays to think not only of ourselves but of others, and if a man fires
a gun without due precautions, and injures or even might have injured
another, he is liable. All our legislation and all the drift of public
opinion goes in this direction. Men were the same then as now; the change
in this respect shows the immense value of ideas. They were then quite
strangers to the very idea of taking any thought for those who might
chance to be in the way. That has been inculcated of recent years. Those
were the days when there was an irresponsible tyrant in every village,
who could not indeed hang men at his castle gate by feudal right of
gallows, but who could as effectually silence them by setting in motion
laws made by the rich for the rich. It is on record how a poor carrier,
whose only fortune was a decrepit horse, dared presumptuously, against
the will of the lord of the manor, to water his horse at a roadside pond.
For this offence he was taken before the justices and fined, his goods
seized,--
And the knackers had his silly old horse,
And so John Harris was bowled out!
Then there was a still more terrible offence--a hungry man picked up a
rabbit. 'How dared John Bartlett for to venture for to go for to grab
it?' But they put him in gaol and cured him of 'that there villanous
habit,' which rhymes, and the tale thereof may be found by the student of
old times in the 'Punch' of the day--a good true honest manly Punch, who
brought his staff down heavily on the head of abuses and injustice. We do
things every day in the present age equally unjust and cruel, only we
cannot see them; as some one observed, one cannot see the eye because it
is so close to the sight. In the almost sacred name of education
tyrannies are being enacted surpassing anything recorded in the most
outlying village in the most outlying time. One constantly sees cases of
poor people sent to prison because they happen to have children. No other
reason can be detected.