[Illustration: The Lone Wolf
(_See page 61_)]
_Days Before History_
_UNIFORM WITH THIS BOOK_
In Nature’s School
_By_ LILIAN GASK
_With Sixteen exquisite Full-page Illustrations and a Title-page Design_
_By_ DOROTHY HARDY
THIS STORY details the experiences of a sensitive boy who, in a moment
of revolt, flees from the oppression of some cruel schoolfellows into
the woods, where he meets Nature, who takes him round the world and
shows to him her kingdom of fur and feather. The child is introduced to
all manner of beasts and birds, and learns valuable lessons of kindness
and toleration, while at the same time the facts of natural history
are not distorted to serve the purpose of a story. Everything is true
to facts, so far as they are known from observation and from the best
authorities.
The Illustrations are of quite unusual merit, and will establish the
claims of this talented artist to a place amongst the best English
interpreters of animal life.
DAYS BEFORE
HISTORY
BY
H·R·HALL
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
A·M·RANDALL
[Illustration]
George·G·Harrap·&·Co
15 York Street·Covent Garden
London
_FIRST EDITION
November 1906, 5000; December 1907, 5000._
_SECOND EDITION
Revised, Enlarged, and Newly Illustrated, September 1908, 3000._
_Letchworth; At the Arden Press_
_Preface to the New Edition_
IN a book of this kind nothing more will be expected than an outline
sketch of some phases of the life lived by the prehistoric dwellers in
our land. The known facts are few; yet there must have been, even in
those far-away times, well-defined differences of habit and custom due
to local circumstances; so that details more or less true of one tribe
or group would possibly be quite untrue of others.
But, for all that, there are various conclusions upon which the learned
may be considered to be in agreement; and, working from these and
from the descriptions of primitive life in our own times, there is
brought within our reach the possibility of constructing a picture of
man in early Britain which, without leaving the lines of reasonable
conjecture, need be neither meagre nor misleading.
An attempt has been made here to introduce only descriptions which
can in some degree be vouched for; and as much of such authenticated
detail as possible has been included. Some licence has been taken in
bringing together events which in nature were, no doubt, separated by
long intervals of time and space; in suggesting, for instance, that a
man of the newer stone age might have heard some vague tradition of
the makers of the old stone weapons, and yet, in his lifetime, have
witnessed the incoming of the first weapons of bronze: yet, for the
sake of picturesqueness, such licence may be considered to be not only
permissible but, in a book with the purpose of this, actually desirable.
When first it was suggested to the writer that he should undertake
this task, there was only one detail of the necessary equipment which
he could feel to be his own--a childhood’s interest in the subject,
never forgotten. There was the recollection of a chapter in an old
lesson-book, much pored over, with its two or three simple woodcuts
showing the skin-clad “ancient Briton” hollowing out his log canoe,
or shooting at the deer in the forest. There was the memory of a
reputed “British village,” with its pits and mounds, situated on a
distant hill in the neighbourhood of his old home, often talked about,
but too remote to be visited. There were recollections of a village
philosopher, an amateur bird-stuffer and collector of fossils and
antiquities, who carried in his purse and would show a treasure beyond
gold, a barbed flint arrow-head. One he was who did not resent the
companionship of an inquisitive little boy, but took him fishing and
taught him something of the old country lore.
The road into fairyland lay open before that boy in his childhood. With
home-made bow and arrows he stalked the deer on the open hill-side,
or, armed with the deadly besom-stake for spear, tracked the wild boar
to his lair among the whins. A running stream bounding the distant
fields was for him a river to be forded with caution; the woodland
pool was a forest lake, deep and mysterious; the grove of oaks on the
hill-side was a woodland, and the more distant woods a forest vast and
impenetrable.
And the skin-clad hunters of the bygone time peopled those hills and
woods. The rabbits became red-deer, the hovering kestrel a flapping
eagle, a chance fox galloping over the hill a ravening wolf, and
the shy badger (only that one could never get more than the hearsay
of him) a fierce old wild-boar. Then there were huts to be built,
fires kindled, and weapons fashioned, marksmanship to be practised,
hunting expeditions to be carried out, and ruthless warfare waged with
unfriendly tribes.
Thus when the writer began the welcome task of setting down something
about the life of a time so remote that only the indestructible
fragments of its framework are now to be recovered, he had for his
guidance these memories of childish games and wonderings; games that
were never played out, and wonderings that have never been satisfied.
And it was his hope that others, whether or not situated as fortunately
as he once was, might perhaps catch a hint of the joy of playing the
old games and following the old ways of life out-of-doors, as our
forefathers followed them in the days before history. We have not all
forgotten them yet.
A glance at the Contents will show that the chapters fall into two
groups; those headed _The Story of Tig_, which are meant to be a story
and nothing more; and those headed _Dick and his Friends_, which aim at
explaining parts of the story and giving further details and comments
from the standpoint of a later time. For anyone who finds these
chapters dull, nothing is easier than to skip them.
A longish list might be made of the various books which have been
read or consulted in the preparation of these chapters. They are
all well-known standard books, such as would be readily found by
anyone who might wish to follow the subject further. This edition
includes six chapters that are new--numbers six, nine, and fifteen to
eighteen--besides various paragraphs and oddments scattered throughout
the book; the chapter-headings have been altered in most instances, and
the illustrations are nearly all new.
The author wishes to offer his sincere thanks to Professor W. Boyd
Dawkins, F.R.S., who generously consented to look over the proofs of
the original book; and to Professor J. J. Findlay and Miss Maria E.
Findlay for their invaluable help and kindly encouragement.
_The Contents of Chapters_
Preface _page_ v
I How Dick and his Friends heard a
Story 1
II _The Story of Tig_: Tig’s Birthday & his
Home 11
III _The Story of Tig_: Tig’s Mother and the
Lessons that she taught him 18
IV _Dick & his Friends_: The Hut that the
Boys built 26
V _The Story of Tig_: How Garff provided
Food for his Family 34
VI _The Story of Tig_: How Gofa sold some
Meal to a Hungry Man 42
VII _The Story of Tig_: The Harvest of the
Fields and of the Woods 48
VIII _The Story of Tig_: How Crubach became
a Sower of Corn 54
IX _The Story of Tig_: The Story of the
Wolf that hunted alone 57
X _Dick & his Friends_: A Talk about
Food Supplies 64
XI _The Story of Tig_: How Tig got his
first Bow and Arrows 72
XII _The Story of Tig_: How Tig visited
Goba the Spearmaker 76
XIII _The Story of Tig_: Arsan’s Story about
Grim the Hunter 86
XIV _Dick & his Friends_: A Talk about
Stone Weapons 93
XV _The Story of Tig_: How the Pond of
the Village went dry 99
XVI _The Story of Tig_: What Arsan said
about the Old Pond 103
XVII _The Story of Tig_: How they made
the Pond anew 108
XVIII _Dick & his Friends_: A Talk about
Dew-Ponds 114
XIX _The Story of Tig_: How Gofa made
Pottery 122
XX _The Story of Tig_: How Tig went
hunting the Deer 129
XXI _The Story of Tig_: How Tig became
a Man 137
XXII _Dick & his Friends_: Dick’s Pottery
and how he made it 140
XXIII _The Story of Tig_: How Tig made
Friends with the Lake People 146
XXIV _The Story of Tig_: How Tig saw the
Lake People’s Village 153
XXV _Dick & his Friends_: A Talk about
ancient Lake Dwellings 162
XXVI _The Story of Tig_: How the Old Chief
died and was buried 168
XXVII _The Story of Tig_: How Tig chose a
Wife from the Lake People 174
XXVIII _Dick & his Friends_: The Boys’ Bows
and Arrows 180
XXIX _The Story of Tig_: How the Lake
People brought Tidings of War 185
XXX _The Story of Tig_: How they fought
the Battle in the Wood 192
XXXI _Dick & his Friends_: How they dug
out the Barrow 201
[Illustration]
_List of Illustrations_
Tig Shoots a Stag _Cover_
The Lone Wolf _Frontispiece_
Dressing a Skin page _page_ 18
The Stags 34
Gofa Alarmed 42
Going to the Fields 48
The Wild Boar 52
The Wolf at the Beaver’s Hut 60
The Spear-maker 80
The Bear 88
Making Pottery 124
The Wild Ducks 130
Making a Canoe 154
Weaving at the Loom 160
The Beacon 190
The Warrior Chief 196
DAYS BEFORE HISTORY
_Chapter the First_
_How Dick and his Friends heard a Story_
I KNOW a boy called Dick. He is nine, and he lives near London. Last
spring Dick’s father and mother moved house. All their furniture and
things were taken in the vans, and Dick and his father and mother went
in a cab.
When they got to the house, Dick ran in at once to explore. It was
not really a new house, because people had lived in it before; but
Dick was disappointed to find it very much the same as the house they
had just left. There was the drawing-room on one side of the hall and
the dining-room on the other, and all the rooms upstairs, and the
bath-room, and the box-room, just the same as in their other house;
and there was a garden with walls round the three sides, very like
their last one. And Dick was sorry that there was nothing new to see.
So he said to his father that he did not like the new house because it
was just like the old one. But his father said: “You must not grumble
at that. Lots of houses are very much alike, of course. There are so
many people in these days who want the same sort of house built for
them.”
That summer Dick went to pay a visit to his uncle, a long way off in
the country. Dick’s uncle lived in a very old house; part of it was
more than four hundred years old, and Dick had never been in such an
old house in his life. His uncle took him all round it, and showed him
many strange things. The oldest part of the house was a square tower
with very thick walls and long, very narrow windows. Dick’s uncle
told him that the windows were made like slits so that the men inside
the tower could shoot their arrows out at their enemies; while the
enemies would find it very hard to shoot their arrows in and hit the
men inside. And he said, also, that in the old days before people could
make glass for windows, it was better to have little windows than big
ones in very cold weather.
And Dick’s uncle took him to the top of the tower and showed him the
remains of an open fireplace, in which the men of the tower used to
light a beacon fire to give the alarm to people in the villages and
towns when enemies were coming.
And outside the tower he showed him part of a deep ditch, and told him
that once this ditch went right round the house and was called a moat,
only that now it was nearly all filled up with earth and stones. But at
one time it was always full of water, so that no one could get at the
tower without crossing the moat. And the people in the tower used to
let down a bridge, called the drawbridge, because it was drawn up and
down by means of chains. So that when they or their friends wanted to
go out or come in, the drawbridge used to be let down for them, and
pulled up afterwards.
And Dick’s uncle told him that all these things used to be done to
make houses safe to live in, because once upon a time long ago there
were a great many thieves and robbers in the land, and there were no
policemen to keep them in order; also that the people used to fight
among themselves a great deal; and his uncle showed him some old pieces
of armour, and a helmet and a battle-axe and some swords, such as the
knights and men-at-arms used in battle long ago.
Dick’s uncle’s name was Uncle John. He was very much pleased to see
that Dick liked his old house and his old swords and armour; but he
said: “I know where there are the remains of some houses a very great
deal older than mine. If you would like to see them, we will go for a
walk to-morrow and try to find them.”
The next day they set out for their walk--Dick and his uncle John and
a collie and two terriers--and Uncle John said: “We will call for Joe
first.”
“Is Joe a dog?” Dick asked.
“No,” said his uncle; “Joe is a boy. He is nine, like you, and he lives
in the house with the green gate.”
But Joe said he was afraid he could not come for a walk, because his
cousin David had come to spend the holidays with him, and they had made
a plan to go fishing. So Uncle John invited David, too, and they all
set off together.
After they had gone about a mile along the lane, they came to a heath.
It was a large open heath on the top of a hill, looking down a slope
into a valley. The slope of the hill was covered with bushes, and there
were trees in little groups here and there. The hills beyond were
mostly covered with woods, and there was a stream in the valley down
below. Uncle John led the way until they came to a flattish place on
the hill-side. Then he said:
“Now close to us here is a place where people lived long ago, before
ever they could build towers or houses at all. Who can find where these
old-time people lived?”
And the boys all searched round among the bushes and the rocks; and
after a while Joe called out: “Was it here?”
Uncle John went to look, and he laughed at Joe. For what he had found
was a little rough shed that the rabbit-catchers had put up.
Then Dick called out. He had gone further down the hill, and had come
upon an old limekiln with a little opening, like a doorway, at the
bottom of it.
But Uncle John said: “No, I don’t think that the limekiln is even half
as old as my house. What we are looking for is something not built with
stones and without walls of any sort.”
Then David ran away, and he shouted out; and when they went to where he
was, they found him standing in a sort of pit dug in the ground, about
the depth that David could stand in up to his shoulders, and about
twice as wide across as Uncle John’s walking-stick could measure.
And Uncle John said: “Yes, that is one place; but, if you look about,
you will find several more.”
So the boys hunted about, and they found nine or ten more of the pits;
and then they came back to where Uncle John was sitting and asked him
to tell them about these old dwellings. But he said they must wait a
little while, because he had something else for them to see first.
As they walked homeward over the heath, they came to a place where the
cart-tracks went down to the sand-pits, and the way was bare and rough.
And Uncle John said: “Now which of you boys has got eyes in his head?
Within a dozen yards of where we are standing I have dropped something
which once belonged to one of the men of the pit-dwellings. Sixpence
for the boy who finds it!”
Then they all began to hunt round, but no one could find anything. So
Uncle John said: “It is something made of flint-stone. The man to whom
it belonged used to shoot with it.” And he kept on saying, while they
were looking about: “Dick is hot” or “Joe is warm,” just as if they
were playing at Hide the Thimble.
At last Joe called out, “I’ve got it!” and he came running up with an
arrow-head chipped out of grey flint; and the others crowded round
to look at it. And Uncle John showed them how carefully it had been
chipped, and how sharp the point and edges were, although it was
hundreds and hundreds of years old.
And he cut a strong little shoot off a hazel tree, and shortened it,
and split it at the end, and showed them how he supposed the man who
made the arrow all that long time ago had fixed it to its shaft.
Then he took out sixpence, and said to Joe, “If you might choose,
which would you rather have? The sixpence or the arrow-head?”
And Joe said, “The arrow-head, ever so much rather!”
But Uncle John said, “You mayn’t choose now, so take your sixpence. But
I’ll tell you what: if you three boys would like to know more about the
pit-dwelling people, and about their houses, and how they hunted and
all that, I have a book at home in which there is a lot about these
things; and I think it would be a good way of filling up some of your
spare time these holidays if we were to have some reading out of the
book now and then. You might try your hands at building a hut, to see
if you could do it as well as the pit-dwelling people did. And you
might make some bows and arrows, and even have a try at chipping out
flint arrow-heads. We might have a shooting match with the bows and
arrows, with another sixpence for the prize. Or, better still, we might
have for a prize this flint arrow-head of mine that Joe is so fond of;
and give it to the boy who knows most about what we have been reading,
when we come to the end of the holidays.”
They all agreed that that would be rather a good way of amusing
themselves, if the book were interesting. But by the time they got home
it was too late to begin; so the reading had to be put off until the
next day.
On the next day Joe and David went up to Uncle John’s house. As it was
a wet afternoon they sat indoors. On the table there was a large brown
book; and as soon as they had settled themselves, Uncle John took up
the book and began to read.
[Illustration]
_Chapter the Second_
_THE STORY OF TIG: Tig’s Birthday and his Home_
ONCE upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a boy called Tig.
When the story begins, Tig was only a baby; he was four, or nearly
four. To tell the truth, he did not quite know when his birthday was.
He did not have a proper birthday every year. Nobody kept birthdays
when Tig was little, because people had not any names for the months,
as we have now.
They talked about the hot-time and the cold-time, two times instead
of four seasons; and if you could have spoken their language, and had
asked Gofa, Tig’s mother, when Tig’s birthday was, she would have
said, “One day in the cold-time.”
When Tig was born, he lived first of all in a little house which had
only one room in it. It was rather like a cellar, because it was dug
out of the ground.
There were no windows in the house. There was only one doorway, and it
was a hole, like the mouth of a burrow; and Tig’s father and mother,
and any of their friends who came to visit them, had to crawl in and
out on all-fours. At night, when the family were all inside, Tig’s
father used to set up a big stone against the entrance-hole. He used
to say in fun that this was to keep out the wolves and the bears. But
neither bears nor wolves had much chance to get in, because there was a
high paling of posts that surrounded all the huts. The big door-stone
was always kept inside the hut, so that it was handy if ever they
wanted to block the doorway against anybody during the daytime.
The fireplace was in the middle of the floor, and there was a hole in
the roof to let the smoke out. In the daytime the hole in the roof made
a kind of window. The roof was made of branches of trees. These were
supported on the ground by a foundation of thick flat stones and pieces
of turf, and were overlaid with smaller branches and turves and a rough
thatch of reeds.
Here Tig’s father, who was called Garff, and Gofa, Tig’s mother, lived
nice and snug in the cold-time. They had no bedsteads nor tables nor
chairs nor chests of drawers. But they had plenty of skins of wild
horses and cows and deer, and wolf-skins and bear-skins, instead of
beds and chairs; and Tig’s own sleeping-cot was a skin of a little bear
that Garff had killed on purpose for him. Their other belongings were
of a useful sort, not large and heavy like furniture, but such things
as cooking pots, the mealing-stone for crushing corn, and the big
wooden mortar in which grain or acorns could be pounded into flour.
In summer-time they used to find the dug-out hut too hot to live in,
and besides, they had to take their cattle out to fresh pastures. So
they, and their friends who lived in the other huts close by, used to
pack up their skin rugs and all their other belongings, and travel to
another part of the hill country. Some of the men used to march on in
front, with their spears and bows and arrows ready, in case they were
to meet any wild beasts. Then came the rest of the men and the boys
with the dogs, driving the cattle along; and after them the old men
and the women and children, with more armed men to bring up the rear.
The women carried the skins and the cooking pots and the food; and
almost every one had a baby bound on to her back. The food was carried
in baskets, and the bigger children helped to carry the baskets.
The smaller children had no loads to carry, except their dolls and
playthings which they hugged in their arms as they walked along beside
their mothers.
The people left the huts and marched down the hill. Then they crossed
the river, wading into the water at a shallow place. But the little
children had to be carried over; and Tig was carried over by his mother
every time until after he was seven.
The tribe used to take a whole day in travelling to the camping-place;
and when they got there at last, they used to make a new fire, and
light bonfires in the open, and cook their supper, and sleep in tents
and booths about the fires.
Up on the hill-side, at the edge of the forest, where the ground had
been partly cleared, was the place of the first summer camp. The summer
huts were built above ground, of branches of trees, wattled with
withies and twigs, and daubed with clay. Sometimes a man had only to
repair the hut that he had lived in the summer before. But even if he
had to build a new one, it was not such hard work as to build a winter
hut. Before a man began to build his summer hut, he picked out a tree
with a straight trunk to act as the main support of his hut. He used
the tree as a centre pillar to hold up his roof-beams. If he built his
summer hut in the open, away from the trees, he set up a pole for a
roof-tree. We still talk of living under our own roof-tree, just as
those people did long ago.
The fireplaces were made out-of-doors. If they had been indoors, the
huts would often have been burned down. Probably they often were burned
down even then. So whatever cooking Tig’s mother wanted to do in the
summer camps she did at a big fire outside the huts.
The winter village of dug-out huts was high up on the hillside at the
upper end of a sheltered valley, and the summer camps were set up at
different places upon the hills, as the people moved about with their
cattle; and wherever they were, they always put up a stockade of posts
around the huts, to keep themselves and their cattle safe from wolves
and bears.
But besides their dwelling-places, the people had a fort, which was
meant to be used only in time of war for the tribe to retire to, if
their enemies should attack them. It was built at the top of a high
hill, in the form of a ring, with a mound of earth and stones, and a
stockade all round, and a deep ditch outside. The fort was big enough
to take in all the people and their cattle in case of necessity; but
when Tig was a baby, it had not been used for a long time and nobody
lived in it.
[Illustration]
_Chapter the Third_
_Tig’s Mother, and the Lessons that she taught him_
TIG’S mother was called Gofa. She was the mistress of the house and the
housekeeper. She did not keep any servants, but did the work herself;
she minded Tig and his little brothers and sisters, and cooked their
meals and made clothes for Garff and all the family. Their clothes
were mostly made of skins, and Gofa always prepared the skins for the
clothes with her own hands. To make a suit out of a deerskin was a long
business. The hide had to be dried in the open air, and then scraped
all over with flint scrapers until all the hair was taken off. Then
it was smeared with the animal’s brains and fat, and allowed to dry
again; and then thoroughly washed in wooden tubs and tanned with the
bark of oak-trees. When at last it was cured and dried, it was cut into
pieces and the pieces sewn together with sinews. Gofa’s needles were
made of bone, and they were not very sharp: she used to pierce holes in
the leather with a little bodkin made of flint stone before she could
put in the stitches. But once the stitches were made, they held firmer
than any that are sewn with thread.
Whenever a deer was brought home or a cow killed, Gofa always kept the
big sinews from the legs and dried them in the sun or under the roof of
the hut indoors.
Then she took a flint knife and scraped the sinew and shredded it into
threads, and drew the threads separately through her fingers, and put
them away in a pouch made of deer-skin. This was her store of thread.
[Illustration: Dressing a Skin]
The suit that most people wore was a sark; it was a sort of shirt
which came down to the knees, and was girded with a belt at the waist.
This was generally made of dressed hide; but almost every one had
besides a thicker dress for cold weather, with the hair left on; and
the richer people had these trimmed with different sorts of fur. Some
wore cloaks besides, and caps made of skin with the hair on.
When the men went hunting they wore shoes made of hide, and leather
bands wrapped round their legs for leggings. The people let their hair
grow long; and they often used to spend much time combing and dressing
it.
Most people, unless they were very poor, had also finer garments of
cloth, which the women span and wove. But cloth was much scarcer than
skins, besides being more easily worn out; and so the clothes for
everyday wear were always of dressed hides. Men who spent a great part
of their time hunting and creeping about in the thickets of the forest,
wanted a suit which would turn the wet and not tear easily among the
thorns and briars.
Tig had his first little sark and belt when he was seven years old--it
was made of deer-skin; but he had neither cap nor leggings; for, like
all the other children, he used to run about barefoot and bareheaded.
Gofa taught her children many things, but she did not teach them to
read or to write: she could neither read nor write herself, nor could
any of her neighbours.
People had no books and no writing in those times. Tig did not learn to
do sums or to say the Multiplication Table; but he did learn to count,
by saying the numbers on his fingers. However, as it is such a long
time since he lived, and as no one ever wrote down exactly how people
counted in those days, Tig’s names for the figures are not known for
certain. But it is very likely that they were something like this. On
the fingers of one hand, instead of One, Two, Three, Four, Five, he
said what sounded like
_Ahn_, _Da_, _Tree_, _Kethra_, _Kweeg_:
and then on the fingers of the other hand,
_Say_, _Sect_, _Oct_, _Noi_, _Dec_,
for Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten; and that was as far as he got in the
way of counting at first.
But there were many things that Tig learned from his mother
out-of-doors; for Gofa used to do a great deal of work with the other
women, preparing the ground for corn and reaping the crops at harvest
time; and Tig used to go with his mother to the fields, or to the river
when she went to cut osiers for making baskets, or into the woods to
gather firewood. He learned to be always on the look-out; always to
listen for every sound--even so little a noise as the snapping of a
twig; and always to bear in mind what he was going to do in case of
sudden danger, and where he should run to for safety if he had to
flee from a wild beast. Tig did not know many things that most boys
and girls know in these times; but he could do one thing that hardly
any boy or girl can do nowadays--he could move his ears backward and
forward just as he wished, when he was listening very carefully to any
slight sound in the woods.
Tig liked the summer-time best. It was much better fun playing in the
forest near the huts and lying basking in the hot sun than crawling
about in the dark, smoky winter pit-hut. He used to climb about in the
trees, even when he was quite little. While his mother was busy with
her work out-of-doors, she used to put him up into a tree and let him
play about among the branches by himself; and sometimes she even made a
sort of little crib for him with bands of hide, and left him to sleep
safe and sound in a big oak tree. This was to keep him out of danger
from wild animals. For in those days it was dangerous for children to
be out in the open or in the woods away from the huts, because there
were often wolves or other savage beasts prowling about.
But round Tig’s home there was less danger, because the wild beasts
had learned to fear men and their weapons and their fires. But still,
wolves and bears were seen sometimes close to the village; so the
children were safer playing up in the trees than on the ground; and
they all learned to be very good climbers.
From the boys with whom he played, when he grew older, Tig learned
many other useful things. He learned to swing himself down from one
branch of a tree to a lower branch, and catch hold with his feet;
to dive without splashing, and swim under water right across to the
opposite bank of the river; to save his breath when running, so as to
last out on a long race. He and the other boys practised shooting with
bows and arrows, which their fathers helped them to make. And they had
stone-throwing matches, too; and no one was considered to be any good
unless he could throw hard and straight with both hands. Tig and his
friends all longed to become hunters, and their favourite game was to
play at hunting; and as they grew older, they used to go out in parties
into the woods to hunt and fish. But they did not often bring home any
game.
[Illustration: FLINT SCRAPERS]
_Chapter the Fourth_
_DICK AND HIS FRIENDS: The Hut that the Boys built_
AS soon as Uncle John had finished reading, he asked the boys if any of
them could guess why Tig’s father’s winter hut was partly dug out of
the ground.
Dick thought because of wild beasts; and Joe said: “Because it would be
warmer underground.”
Uncle John said that those were very good reasons, but he thought the
chief reason was that in those early times people could not build
walls. They had no tools such as masons and carpenters have nowadays.
They had no iron to make pickaxes and saws and planes with; they had
only stone axes that were not much use for splitting or shaping beams.
And so they had to live in houses not much better than foxes’ dens or
rabbit-burrows.
They went to the heath next day, and looked at the pits again. Dick and
Joe were talking about the pit-dwellings. Dick said they must have been
very damp places to live in; but Joe said no--rabbits and foxes and
badgers live in burrows underground, and their fur is always dry. They
asked Uncle John’s opinion. He said that he thought in very wet weather
the huts would be damp, because the rain would soak in through the
roof. But as the village was on the top of the hill, no water would lie
about the ground; and, anyway, the men probably dug trenches to carry
off the water down the hill.
David said he thought the huts must have been very small; he wondered
how the people managed to live in them.
“Yes,” said Uncle John, “they must have been small. But you see,
the people who lived in them had no furniture, and they did not
mind crowding. It is very likely, too, that they did not lie down
full-length when they went to sleep. There was no room for that in
the winter huts. They slept sitting, with their hands clasped over
their feet and their chins on their knees. We should not find this a
comfortable position to sleep in; but it was the way they were used to.
And besides, if a man had tried lying at full length in one of these
huts, he would soon have found his toes in the fire.
“Before the people learned how to build huts they lived in caves. Why
was it better to live in huts than in caves?”
None of the boys could think of the answer, so Uncle John said:--“If a
man could find a cave that was roomy and dry, it would be a pleasanter
place to live in than a dug-out hut with a leaky roof. But if he wanted
to live in a cave, he would have to go where the cave was; though if
he could build a hut, he might live wherever he pleased. In the whole
of a countryside there might not be more than two or three caves fit
to live in, so that relations and friends could not live near to each
other. But once men had learned to build huts, whole families could
live together, and, what is more, they could build a wall or a stockade
round the huts, as we have read. There is safety in numbers too, and in
many ways it was much more comfortable for them than living scattered
over the country in caves.”
The boys wished very much to build a hut. But as it was summer-time,
they thought they had better try to build a summer hut. Besides, it
would have been too big a piece of work to dig down four or five feet
into the ground. They were a long time before they could find a place
for their hut, because, as they said, they must pretend that it was not
one hut that they were going to build, but a whole village of huts.
They talked over with Uncle John the things that the people had in mind
when choosing a site for a village. They decided that, no doubt, it
must be on high ground, with a clear view of the country round about
on every side, so that the dwellers in the village could see if their
enemies were coming to attack them. Then they would be better able to
defend themselves if they stood above their enemies, than if their
enemies stood above them.
There was another reason for having the village up on the hill rather
than down in the valley, and it was this. The valleys were thick with
forests, in which were bears and wolves, so they were dangerous for men
and cattle. But on the open hill-sides the cattle could be driven out
to feed every day in safety; and if wolves came out of the forest, the
men could see them in the open and keep them in check.
Joe said they must have water for the village, so they must be sure of
being close to a stream or a spring.
Uncle John said that water was very necessary, of course; but that if
you went to live on the top of a hill for safety you could not expect
to have water in abundance, for there are no streams about the tops of
hills, and not often springs. However, he said, the people managed to
overcome this difficulty, as the book would tell.
David wanted to know about firewood; wouldn’t they need to be near the
forest for that?
They certainly would want firewood, Uncle John said, and they must
always depend on having to make many journeys to the forest to get
wood. But the ground must be cleared and kept open round about the
village, so that there might be pasture for the cattle and ground for
growing corn and other crops.
At last the boys found a very good place. It was high up, beyond a
grove of oak trees, and there was a little spring close by: they called
the grove of oak trees the forest. They had not very good tools to
work with. David had a big clasp-knife with a spring at the back, to
prevent it shutting up on his hand, and Joe had a little hatchet that
was not very sharp. But Dick wrote to his mother in London, and his
father sent him a little axe like an Indian’s tomahawk.
It took them three days to build the hut. Although the trees were Uncle
John’s, he could not let them cut down branches. But he let the woodman
bring them some cut boughs from the wood-yard.
This was how they built the hut. They chose a young tree with a
straight trunk. Around this they fixed the longest and straightest of
their boughs upright in the ground. Then they cut smaller pieces of
willow and birch and hazel, and laced them in and out of the uprights,
until they had got a wattled wall all round, except between two of
the uprights, where they left a space for the door-way. The roof they
made by tying sticks across from the uprights to the centre tree,
and lacing these with twigs and brushwood. Then they plastered the
outside with clay and earth. They made a door, with two light poles for
the sides and two shorter ones for the ends, tied cross-wise at the
corners, and the whole interlaced, like the walls, with hazel shoots
and willows.
When the hut was finished, they brought Uncle John to see it. The boys
could all get inside quite comfortably by squeezing a little; but there
was not room for Uncle John. So, as it was a very hot afternoon, they
all sat outside under an oak tree, and read the next chapter from the
brown book.
[Illustration]
_Chapter the Fifth_
_THE STORY OF TIG: The Food Supplies_
TIG’S father, Garff, was one of the chief men of the village. He was
very strong and a clever hunter, and the people used to look to him to
take the lead in the big hunting expeditions. He was a rich man, too;
but that does not mean that he had much money, because he had no money
at all. Nobody had money in those times: they had cattle instead, and
if a man had to pay a great deal to another man, he gave a cow or a
bullock; but if he had to pay only a little, he gave a joint of meat,
perhaps, or a skin or part of a skin, or a basket of nuts, or a jar of
corn, or a piece of honeycomb.
Garff had a herd of about twenty small shaggy cows like Welsh cattle.
They used to be driven out to feed on the pasture grounds on the hills
in the daytime with other people’s cows, and some of the old men and
boys with the dogs used to look after them. But at sunset the cowherds
drove the cattle inside the stockade of the village for the night, to
keep them safe from wild beasts; and then the women used to come out to
milk the cows.
Garff used to spend most of his time hunting in the forest. Sometimes
he went alone, and sometimes two or three of his neighbours went with
him. They were not often away from home for more than a day or two. But
now and then it happened that they had to follow the game far afield,
and then they were absent for a longer time. They hunted the deer
mostly; but sometimes they killed the great wild cattle and wild horses
and boars. They shot birds, too, of all kinds, and caught fish in the
lakes and streams. They used to bring home anything they could catch
that would serve for food. Sometimes it happened that all the hunters
were unlucky for many days, and meat became scarce. Then the killing
of a bison or a wild horse was a great event. Everybody in the village
came for a share of the meat, and either carried it home or made a
fire and cooked it on the spot. The meat was eaten up to the very last
morsel, and the people used even to smash the bones with pieces of
stone to get the marrow.
[Illustration: The Stags]
When Tig was a boy, the flesh of wild game was the favourite food of
most people, and it was generally the commonest and the most plentiful.
But it is easy for us to understand that, as the people multiplied and
spread about over the country, all kinds of wild game became scarcer.
The more the animals were hunted, the more difficult it became to get
them. So it was well that there were other things for food. In the
autumn the people used to gather all the wild fruits they could get,
and store them up for use in the winter--nuts and acorns and wild
apples. There were other things, too, that could not be stored, such as
pignuts and blackberries and other sorts of berries.
But the best food of all was corn, of which two kinds, wheat and
barley, were grown. Corn was nicer and more wholesome than acorns, and
much more useful, because, with care and good management, the stock
could be increased; but of the wild fruits and nuts men could gather
only what natural supply there might be.
Of their corn, the people made porridge and flat cakes of bread, first
pouring the grain upon a flat stone and rubbing and grinding it with
a long bar-shaped piece of stone, to make it mealy. Also they pounded
their corn and acorns and nuts in mortars of wood or stone. This was
the women’s work: and it might be said that the women were the millers
and bakers, and even the butchers to the households in those days; for
whenever the men brought home a deer or any other game, the women
always came out to skin it and cut it up and to dress the meat for
cooking.
The people used not always to have regular times for meals, as we
have nowadays. They generally had a morning and an evening meal, but
otherwise, while there was food, they ate when they were hungry,
and only at the feast times did they eat together in company. Gofa
generally used to make a bowl of porridge for breakfast, and for supper
she cooked whatever game Garff had brought home with him; for Garff, as
we have said, was a clever hunter, and could generally provide better
food than roots and acorns for his family.
There were times, of course, when everybody had to go short. In some
years, when the crops had been scanty, food became very scarce before
the end of winter, and then the people used to suffer greatly from
hunger. At such times, men used to hunt longer and more keenly than
during the summer and autumn months; and if a boy could snare a hare
or catch a hedgehog, or creep up along the bank of a pool where the
wild ducks rested, and fling a couple of stones hard among them as they
rose, he would be warmly welcomed at home when he took in his game.
Of course, when food became very scarce indeed, men killed their own
cattle. But they did not do this so long as there was wild game to
be got. Some men were not such skilful hunters as others; and so it
sometimes happened that a man would have to kill all his cows, one
after another, for food during the cold time, and a long winter would
make many men poor. The women and children suffered terribly, and
everybody got very thin. We sometimes say nowadays that the spring is
a trying time to live through; but it was very much harder when there
were no shops where food could be bought, all the year round alike.
The dogs had a bad time, too: and they used to scratch up buried bones
and gnaw them over again, till they had gnawed away all the softer
parts. Everybody longed for the summer and the time of plenty again;
and there were always great rejoicings when the crops were ripe, and
the time came to get in the harvest.
Before he was seven years old, Tig had learned in many ways to be
useful to his mother. He used to go with her to the field and pull
weeds out of the corn, or to the woods and help her to gather dry
sticks and fir cones for fuel; and when she went to milk the cows, Tig
went too and carried one of the milk jars; so he always earned his
supper.
There was one thing Tig never tasted: he never had any kind of sweets.
Of course he used to have honey at home, and he used to pick and
eat all kinds of wild fruit, wild strawberries and raspberries and
blackberries, but he never had sweets. There were not such things in
those days. Nobody had sugar because it was not made then. Even salt,
which is so common with us that you can buy as much as you can carry
for sixpence, was very scarce among Tig’s people. The Medicine Men of
the tribe always had some which they got from some other Medicine Men,
who got it from some other Medicine Men who lived by the sea-shore.
But they were not willing to part with it except in little pieces; and
for a handful of salt a man would have to give something valuable in
exchange.
[Illustration]
_Chapter the Sixth_
_How Gofa sold some Meal to a Hungry Man_
ONE night, after the cold-time was over, Gofa and Tig and his little
brother Ban and his little sister Fearna and Sona the baby were in
the hut waiting for Garff to come home from hunting. Gofa was making
porridge for supper, and Tig and Fearna and Ban were waiting to have
theirs, for they were hungry. By this time Gofa’s store of corn was
low, and she used to put a handful or two of pounded-up acorns with the
corn-meal when she made porridge or bread.
Gofa was stirring the porridge when she heard a noise outside the hut.
She jumped up and snatched a club and stood ready to strike if there
should be an enemy at the door. Then she called out:
“Who is there?”
[Illustration: Gofa Alarmed]
“It is I, Tosgy,” said a voice outside. So Gofa laid down the club
and pushed aside the stone at the doorway, and then Tosgy crept into
the hut. Tosgy was not a strong man like Garff. He had had his feet
frost-bitten in the cold-time, and he could not run and so he could not
hunt. The people called him Tosgy because he had big teeth.
“See,” he said, “I have brought you a beautiful fox-skin--a fine one,
a rare, fine one; and I beg you give me some meal for it, a little
meal for my children. It is now five days, nay, six days since we have
eaten bread. We have had naught to eat but the green buds and leaves
that we have plucked from the trees and boiled--and oh, but they are
poor stuff! There is no goodness in such food, and my little ones are
ailing. I beg you take the skin and give me meal.”
Gofa took the skin and looked at it; and she said:
“My man brings me many skins as good as this one; but you shall have
the meal for the little ones--mixed meal, look you, such as we have to
eat ourselves. We have no better.”
Then she went to a jar that was standing beside the fire and took out a
handful of baked corn and gave it to Tosgy and said:
“Munch that, while I put up the meal--it is hard fare, but thy teeth be
good.”
“Ay, ay,” said Tosgy, “my teeth be good! would that my feet were as
sound!” So he munched the parched corn.
Then Gofa threw some more meal into the porridge pot, and told Tig to
go on stirring the porridge. And she took Tosgy’s jar which he had
brought and filled it up to the brim with meal; and then she took a
smaller pot and filled it up with porridge from the pot beside the
fire; and gave it to Tosgy to take home to his children. And Tosgy
thanked her many times and made haste to go home with the provender. As
he crept out at the doorway, Gofa shouted after him:
“Mind how thou goest! Spill none, and see that my bowls are brought
safe back when they are empty--which they soon will be methinks with
all those hungry mouths to fill!”
Very soon after this visitor had gone, Garff came home. Gofa did not
pick up a club to brain him with. She knew who was coming before he got
to the hut, for she heard his whistle; and Flann his dog came to the
door and whined and scratched outside. Then Garff crept in and threw
down on the floor the game that he had brought home--a squirrel and two
water-rats.
“Poof!” he said, “I am tired! Up hill and down dale all day long and
never a sight of game. As for the deer, there is no getting near them,
and what we shall do if this goes on I cannot tell. But the wolves!
why, they be as bold now as ever they were in the cold-time. There
were five at least prowling about a bowshot from the gate.”
“Ah!” said Gofa, “and thou all alone!”
“Nay, I was not alone,” said Garff. “Darach was with me and he let fly
at one and shot it through the body--a rare long shot--and the rest, as
their way is, fell upon it and pulled it down and tore it to pieces.
We went round to see that the cattle be all safe within walls. I never
knew the wolves so fierce save when there was snow on the ground. But
the cattle be safe; that’s one good thing; the cattle be safe. Give me
some of that porridge, I am hungry.”
So Gofa brought him some porridge and a bowl of milk, and he sat by the
fire and ate his supper, and afterwards ate some parched corn, munching
a few grains at a time, while Gofa set to work to strip the fur from
the squirrel and the water-rats to make them ready for cooking the next
day.
By this time Tig and the other children had gone to lie down to sleep
in the part of the hut where they slept. Then Gofa told Garff about
Tosgy and how he came to ask for meal.
“I fear there will be many hungry mouths among our folk,” said Garff,
“before the fruits are ripe and the harvest fit to be gathered in; and
with game getting so hard to kill too! I am glad thou couldst spare
some meal.”
“But I shall give him back his fox-skin,” said Gofa, “for they are very
poor. See now, I will tell his wife to send one of the children for it
next time she is making a coat!”
[Illustration]
_Chapter the Seventh_
_The Harvest of the Fields and of the Woods_
ALTHOUGH the people had learned how to grow corn, they could not raise
large crops. They tilled the ground only in patches, and they had no
ploughs or harrows, nor had they any horses to work the land with. All
the work was done by hand, and mostly by the women, although sometimes
the old men and the boys helped them. They cleared the ground beyond
the edge of the forest, and turned up the soil with their hoes.
When a woman wanted to make a hoe, she chose a bough of a tree that
had a bend in it. Then she cut and trimmed this to the shape of the
letter L, and, last of all, bound a flint, which had been chipped to a
broad point, to the shorter limb of the bough with strips of hide; and
so she had a useful tool for tilling her plot of ground.
[Illustration: Going to the Fields]