that, keeping a sharp look-out for passing fly or beetle. See how
suddenly she darts from her watch tower, how she hovers for a
moment in the air, with faint click of her sharp bill, flying
lightly back, perhaps beating her prey against the bough a time or
two before she swallows it. There is a saying here that fortune
hangs on giving shelter to the flycatcher:
"If you scare the flycatcher away,
No good luck will with you stay."
[Illustration: A MENDIP VILLAGE: WINSCOMBE.]
But there is no thought of fortune, good or ill, mingled with the
kindly care that has made for so many years a sanctuary of this
quiet spot. The very cat seems to have learnt that--under the eyes
of the family at least--there is close time here, all the year
round, for every bird that flies.
When Jock is lying at the door, stretched out at length in the
sunshine, you may see a thrush alight within a yard of him, the
picture of righteous indignation, feathers ruffled, wings adroop,
and storm and scold and flutter and gesticulate; while he, his
conscience pricked perhaps--who knows?--by the remembrance of an
early breakfast some fine morning among the lilac bushes, when
that brood of young thrushes disappeared so strangely, blinks with
affected sleepiness at his fierce little accuser. She has even
been seen to perch upon his back, when he, as if remembering some
previous engagement, stretched himself, and yawned, and meekly
walked away.
At the far end of the lawn, in a nook between the meeting lines of
hedge-row, stand four sheltering elms, joining their heads in a
green canopy, cool and restful. From the seat beneath them you
look out over a broad meadow to the misty hills. The long grass
is bright with myriad flowers, with lotus and hawkweed, and with
yellow crowns of dandelion, whose silvery parachutes now and then
sail over, sinking slowly down the summer air. Somewhere in the
grass, that in a few short weeks will fill the house with the
sweet incense of the hay, a corncrake is calling. It is a strange
note, harsh and unmusical always; heard at night, sometimes
irritating beyond words to paint; yet here, and now, a pleasant
country sound.
You may watch the shrike yonder, perched motionless on his
favourite hawthorn, in whose shadow his mate is doubtless already
brooding on her eggs. You may listen to the goldfinch singing in
the green mist of meeting branches overhead; see the grey cuckoo
alight on the topmost crest of the great elm that towers above the
meadow; watch the busy starlings as they pass and repass with
hurried flight. And, as through the great masses of lilac, now
beginning to abate their rare perfume, you catch glimpses of hills
and meadows, of the white houses of the village, with its orchards
and its elms, and, crowning these, the grey tower of the church,
looking down like a watchful sentinel on the hamlet lying at its
feet, you feel it was to no fairer spot than this that the poet
called his friend, when he sang:
"Or if thou tarry, come with the summer.
That welcome comer
Welcome as he.
When noontide sunshine beats on the meadow
A seat in shadow,
We'll keep for thee."
[Illustration: THE MOWERS.]
WINSCOMBE: A MIDSUMMER MEADOW.
The whirr of the iron mower has ceased at length. Hour after hour
the clashing blades swept in still narrowing circles round and
round the spacious meadow. Now the last swath has fallen. Now in
the centre of the field the machine stands silent; the tired
horses taking toll of the sweet grass that is strewn about their
feet.
The men lie motionless, their sunburned faces buried in the
fragrant coolness. A few short hours ago this broad field was a
sea of nodding grasses, whose tasselled points lent soft and
changing tints of purple to the long waves that betrayed the light
movements of the air. Sheets of great moon-daisies whitened it.
Here it was golden with dyer's weed and lingering buttercups; and
there it was crimson with fiery touches of red sorrel. Under the
hot noonday sun each waft of air that stirred across it was
fragrant with mingled perfumes, of the scent of hawkweed and lotus
and sweet clover blooms. Its cool depths were stirred by
honey-hunting bees. Wandering butterflies floated over it. Burnet
moths in black and crimson sailed across it on their silken wings.
Now the close shaven sward is strewn with drying grass and fading
flowers. Bee nor butterfly will visit it more. To-morrow night not
a touch of colour will remain of all its mingled beauty, ruined
now past all hope; not a petal of its oxeye daisies, not a
hawkweed unwithered, not a lingering clover bloom.
The hour is late. Along the low hills that bound the valley hangs
the haze of sunset. There is a faint flush of rose colour on the
soft clouds that drift slowly overhead. The air is still filled
with fragrance. Instead of the sweet incense of the clover, there
is the scent of new-mown hay.
For the breath of the lost flowers of the meadow there are all the
perfumes of the one garden that gives upon the field--of roses all
in bloom on arch and trellis, of clumps of tall sweet peas, white
and red and rich imperial purple, of the delicate wild pinks,
rooted at will in the old garden wall. And, although the last
blossom has faded from the hawthorns round the meadow, slowly, and
as with reluctance, delicate dog-roses are scattered broadcast all
along the hedge-rows, and the woodbine sprays are rich already
with pale sweet clusters.
This is a flowery haytime. Surely there was never more lavish
wealth of roses on the hedges, nor can one even fancy broader
sheets of oxeye daisies in the mowing grass.
Along the hedges the machine has left a fringe of tall grasses
still unmown. And this green jungle, and the broad thickets behind
it, are all astir with birds, some of them gaining now their first
experiences of the great green world--a world of warmth and
beauty, such as rarely, even in the noon of summer, greets the
young children of the air. Linnets and finches, thrushes and
blackbirds, and a host of other wingèd toilers of the field, are
busy among the fallen swaths--not plundering the seeds, but
seeking treasure-trove of slugs and wire-worms, and all the myriad
creatures whose haunts the fall of the grass forest has laid bare.
Here forages a troop of starlings; the old birds in dark and
glossy plumage, the young brood in sober, unpretending brown. Now
a little cloud of martins wheel over the meadow, fluttering down
to hover above the grass with soft, sweet notes. Now a singing
swallow floats along. And now on dark wings a troop of swifts sail
swarming down the field--labourers in man's service one and all.
On the end of a dead ivy branch that stands out of the garden
hedge sits a solitary flycatcher; a small grey figure that, in her
shape and attitude, is like no other bird that haunts the
precincts. She is silent for the most part, only uttering now and
then a weak, half querulous note, that is answered by notes weaker
and more querulous from the heart of the thick laurel near. Again
and again she takes short flights into the air across the garden,
and even a dozen yards or more out over the grass, fluttering in
the air a moment, and then lightly flitting back to her perch on
the dead ivy stem, or to the rail that parts the garden from the
meadow.
In a plum tree on the cottage wall, half hidden among clustering
roses, is the empty nest from which the grey youngsters hiding now
among the bushes have but just spread wings to fly. For once they
tried their powers too soon. They ventured over the edge of their
small nursery on wings not yet strong enough for flight, and they
were found one morning on the ground among the stocks and poppies
and sweet-williams underneath the nest, while the anxious parents,
with plaintive cries, fluttered over them with vain attempts at
rescue.
The fall had been fatal to one of the little aeronauts, but three
were rescued, and, in a small basket filled with hay, were slung
close up under the deserted nest. They made no effort to get back
to their old quarters, but sat content on the edge of the basket,
three little odd owl-like figures; while the old birds, their
minds at rest again, foraged for them all day, from dawn till
dark, chasing moths and flies along the garden paths, in vain
attempts to satisfy their insatiable needs.
Under the eaves above the flycatcher's tree there is a martin's
nest. At least, martins built it, but there was a dispute this
year about the tenancy. It is not a new nest. It is in fact a
tenement of many years' standing. And while two rival couples of
martins were still discussing the question of proprietorship, a
pair of prowling house sparrows stepped in and took possession.
Perhaps they were the arbitrators--who knows?
And now these house sparrows, bent on fitting a warmer lining to
their stolen habitation, cast covetous glances on the young
flycatchers' basket, and when the parent birds were
away--sometimes even under their very eyes--the unscrupulous
brigands carried off the hay by handsful.
Fine fellows, these country sparrows: so very different from their
grimy, scurrilous, soot-stained cousins of the city streets, with
even a note of music on their ready tongues, and with plumage of
such pure white and velvety black, of such rich warm tones of
chestnut, that you would say they were among the handsomest of
birds, might perhaps even go the length of wondering what strange
species they might be.
And now the men, rising reluctantly from their lair among the
grass, unship the long blades of the machine. It goes slowly
jingling up the field, and through the gate at the far end, ready
for more mowing on the morrow.
The sun low down in the west, showing for a brief space through
the trees his face of fiery gold barred with the dark branches,
throws far across the grass the shadows of a group of tall elms
out in the meadow, whose green heads tower a hundred feet into the
clear, pale blue. Motionless they stand, or seem to stand. The
light wafts of scented air may flutter the leaves upon their lofty
crests, but have no power to sway their giant branches. From far
up among their green crown of foliage floats a goldfinch's song--a
pleasant sound, a note of summer and green fields and open
country. Pleasant, too, is the slow clink of a whetted scythe,
sounding faintly from a distant meadow, where some tired haymaker,
perhaps for the last time in the long summer day, is putting a
better edge upon his worn old blade.
Along the hedge yonder a man is finishing off the ragged edges
the machine has left, and the swish, swish of the grass that falls
before his sweeping strokes has almost as sweet a sound to-night
as the vesper of the song-thrush over there, high up among the
branches of a hedgerow elm.
The gentle nurse of the foundling flycatchers is moving slowly
across the meadow, the light of sunset on her white dress, sweet
face, and graceful figure. She is carrying a great handful of
oxeye daisies, gleaned from the new-mown hay--adding now a tall
spray of quaking grass, now a leaf of bright red sorrel, and
looking now and then with wistful eyes at the flowers for whose
brief life she thus provides a little longer span. The sun is
down. The long day's work is ended. In the combe yonder, the
little sleepy hollow that dies away among the quiet hills, the
purple shadows deepen, and the last faint lingering glow fades
slowly from the cliffs along its southern verge.
No clink of scythe-blade now, no sound of toil. The last note of
labour and of daylight is the shouting from some distant farm,
where the last load is being cheered into the stack-yard. A
restless corncrake cries among the long grass of the next meadow
that stands waiting for the scythe. Far off among the elms beyond
the church an owl hoots. It is the hour of rest; the hour when,
over the blue vault above,
"... The brooding twilight
Unfolds her starry wings,
And warm hearts bless with tenderness
The peace that evetide brings:"
--the peace of God, for this broad hollow in the hills. Slowly on
the quiet landscape falls the restful stillness of the summer
night.
[Illustration: A WEST COUNTRY REAPER.]
WINSCOMBE: HARVEST HOME.
It is strange to sit, this bright September morning, under the
shadow of a noble row of limes, and listen to the whirr of the
iron mower as it rattles round and round the wide meadow yonder.
It is late for haymaking. Among the branches overhead are the red
and gold of autumn, and the grass at the feet of the old trees is
strewn with withered leaves. These fly-catchers that flit across
the lawn and sail back to their stations along the fence will soon
be leaving us. It cannot be long before the chiff-chaffs, now
calling so blithely in the limes, are silent. The clear, sweet
singing of the robins is far more in keeping with the spirit of
autumn, than the sound of the machine. But the rain and the sun
between them have brought a noble aftermath to gladden the hearts
of the farmers, whose case will, after all, not be quite so evil
as they feared.
It is a strange experience to hear, in the pauses of the iron
reaper, the mellow sound of bells that are ringing for the Harvest
Home. Strange to cheer the last load into the stack-yard, and to
assemble for a Harvest Festival, while fresh-cut hay is still
lying in the fields. Towards the grand old tower on the hill-slope
yonder, that for so many ages has kept watch and ward over the
parish, the village folk, in all their holiday attire, are
trooping across this pleasantest of Mendip valleys. As we make our
way with them along the green country lanes, we can see how the
hedge-rows are beginning already to wear the hues of autumn. The
Old Man's Beard is all grey with its feathery seeds. Dogwood and
Guelder Rose are bright with wayside fruit. The banks are gay with
St. John's wort and Golden Rod and tall Canterbury Bells.
Pausing a minute under the old churchyard yew, that for unknown
centuries has spread its dark arms over the dust of the
forefathers of the hamlet, the little knots of villagers file into
the church. The porch is hung with oat sheaves and red apples; and
over the door are hung boughs of wild hedge-row plums, bullace,
not sloes, so thickly clustered and with so rare a bloom that they
might pass easily for grapes.
There are but few farmers in the congregation. The hay is "down"
in the meadows; that is one reason. Some farmers, too, have no
mind for thanksgiving--forgetful that half a loaf is, at any rate,
better than no bread at all. But some at least of the villagers
have agreed to carry out the injunction expressed in the wheaten
letters that lie on a green fringe of ferns all along under the
south wall--"Honour the Lord with thy first "fruits"--for the
windows are heaped with fruit and vegetables, with apples and
'taters, and huge marrows--the best of each man's field or garden.
The pulpit is draped with heather and brown bracken, hung with
grapes and apples, and long trails of bryony; while the font, with
which generations of parishioners have made early and perhaps not
altogether agreeable acquaintance, is lost in a great pile of
ferns and flowers. The chancel is a very bower of green. Lectern
and reading-desk are wreathed with creepers and corn sheaves and
trophies of the harvest.
The hour of service is drawing near. The chimes, that just now
were swinging softly overhead, break off into the homing-bell. The
rest of the congregation troop slowly in. Young village beauties,
conscious of admiring glances, are scattered here and
there--bright reliefs of light and colour among the darker
costumes of the men. The choir-boys, conscious too, but more
sheepish as they run the gauntlet of less sympathetic eyes, muster
under the tower, where presently the tall curate joins them, and
the curtain is drawn across like a sort of gigantic conjuring-box.
Young folks they are, for the most part, that fill up the benches.
Yet there is a good sprinkling of the older generation. That is a
fine sample of a West Country farmer yonder, that burly red-faced
figure, glancing idly at the tablets on the wall in "memory" of
long-forgotten yeomen, "late of this parish," or the stony
figures weeping silently into colossal urns--that doubtless are as
great a wonder to him now as when he was a boy.
The bell stops. The whispers cease. A solemn hush falls on the
gathered worshippers. And now the Vicar, from his station under
the tower, calls on his flock to join in the thanksgiving hymn--
"Come, ye thankful people, come;
Raise the song of Harvest Home."
Two and two the choir-boys pass, singing, up the aisle, their
clear tones mingling with the deeper voices of their elders. The
old men, no longer strong enough to swing a scythe or turn a
furrow, sit silent. The lines on their reverent faces seem like
records of hard times and bitter weather. Their working days are
done. In the words the choir are singing, they are waiting to
"... be gathered in,
Free from sorrow, free from sin:
All upon the Golden Floor,
Praising Thee for evermore"
The sweet notes of the anthem, "I will lift up mine eyes to the
hills," roll among the dark rafters overhead. The preacher
exhorts us to thankfulness, even for what we may look on as
adversity. Should we be so ungracious, he asks, as to return no
thanks at all because a gift turned out to be smaller than we
expected? Farmers as a rule certainly have, rightly or wrongly, a
reputation for, let us say, not always being so thankful as they
might be. It was a yeoman of this very parish who, when
congratulated once upon the extraordinary crops, all good alike,
replied--"That's where 'tis; 'tis all so good we shan't have
nothing to give to the _poor_ stock!" A good discourse,
straightforward and hard-hitting, true and telling.
We file out under the ancient doorway, and pass in procession
under the flags and streamers and mottoes that the villagers have
hung at intervals across the green lanes, to the place where, in
less serious fashion, the people of the hamlet, of all sorts and
conditions, are to meet on equal terms--Vicar and Lady Bountiful
and dames of high degree on the one side, and farmers and
labourers on the other--for a frolic in the spacious meadow. It is
an ideal day for it; the air is warm, the grass is dry. Tea in the
tent is the first business; a tent brave with festoons and flags
and decorations. There is a hint in one of the mottoes at the
shortcomings of the season--
"May the year '93
Be the worst we shall see."
Follows then a game of rounders, in which the Vicar, after much
persuasion, agrees to play, if another somewhat elderly pillar of
the Church will take a hand too. It were long to tell the varying
fortunes of the game; how the portly figure of the wheelwright was
hampered by the unwonted dignity--as to workadays, that is--of a
long frock coat; how the village butcher, glorious in a white
waistcoat, forgets it in the heat of battle; how a tall young lady
in grey makes the most brilliant of catches; and how the pillar of
the Church was thrown out by the long curate. And if the Vicar
plays no very conspicuous part in the game, his boys are the life
of it; and it is his daughter too, who, in a far corner of the
field, leads a dance of village children, to the old-world ditty,
"As we go gathering nuts in May, nuts in May, nuts in May," their
sweet young voices sounding clear above the shouts of the players.
But the game is ended. The next move is to the tent, hung now
with clusters of lamps, and with everything cleared ready for a
dance. The band on a daïs in the centre, an uncommonly good band
too, strikes up a lively air. There is a little shyness at first
starting--not more than fifty couples, perhaps, to begin with; a
little awkwardness, and a few collisions; but the company is
pervaded with such imperturbable good humour that no one cares for
any mishap. As the evening wears on the gaps on the seats against
the canvas walls grow wider. And when the first square dance is
about to begin there is a good deal of active searching for
partners. "Have you got a 'vizzyvizze'?" says a young farmer to a
village belle. The Vicar pleads that his dancing days are over;
but it is clear that no one takes more delight than he in the
innocent merry-making of his flock. A hundred pairs of dancers are
footing merrily on the short, dry turf. "Warm, b'aint it?" says
one sturdy young farmer to another, who stands mopping his brow at
the end of the set.
But as the summer night wears on, and the revellers settle to
their work in earnest, it is a warmer business still. Hats are
tilted further and further back; waistcoats are loosened; and at
length, in the closing reel, hats are tossed aside and coats even
are discarded. It is an orderly company, quiet and well-behaved to
the very last, breaking off their revels on the stroke of
midnight, trooping out of the tent that, with its multitudinous
lamps, is bright against the moonless sky, its festoons of flags
and creepers showing clearly through the canvas walls. They go
their several ways across the wide parish, along the dim,
unlighted lanes, to meet no more, under such conditions at any
rate, until next year brings round another Harvest Home.
[Illustration: COUNTRY LIFE.]
WINTERHEAD: AFTERMATH.
There are many symbols on the dial of Nature to mark the changing
of the year. Such signs are the brightening colours of the
meadows, and the growing hosts of insect life. Such a sign is the
strange, noonday silence of the woodland; and such, too, is the
change in the cuckoo's cry--faltering, even before the longest
day. Such signs are the gathering of the swallows, the purple mist
on the plumed reeds by the river, the blackberry clusters ripening
fast along the hedge-row, the butterflies that flutter in through
the open windows, seeking already some dark nook in which to hide
themselves in good time before the setting in of winter.
But plainer even than these, for most of us at any rate, is the
altered tone of the hedge-rows--ever ready to answer to the
influence of the sunshine. It is under the hedge-row that spring
leaves her fairest traces--violets white and blue, and primroses,
with their soft, delicate perfume. May crowns the thickets with
the foamy fragrance of the hawthorn. June studs the long briar
sprays with sweet wild roses, fairest of all flowers of summer.
And now, again, these hot summer days are lending new beauty to
the country lanes; not of flowers or of fresh young foliage, but
of mellow leaves and gleaming berries.
There is a special charm about these old West Country lanes, worn,
sometimes, by the clumsy wheels and toiling feet of many
centuries, deep down below the fields on either hand; lanes that
lead perhaps to nowhere, or that lose themselves in the meadows;
lanes that in our fathers' time were, it may be, King's highways,
and that now grass-grown and neglected, with deep ruts and
broadening hollows, where water lies in winter, are known only to
the birds'-nester, or to village children in quest of nuts or
blackberries. For most of us these quests are but memories of
childhood. Most of us can but echo the lament of the poet:
"And blackberries, so mawkish now,
Were finely flavoured then;
And nuts, such reddening clusters ripe,
I ne'er shall pull again."
And yet, perhaps, though the feast of to-day is for the eye rather
than the palate, we welcome as keenly as we ever did, nutting
time, or days of blackberry harvest. We think less of the rich,
ripe clusters, no doubt, but we are more alive to the beauty of
the leaves, of the red stems that show so well among the green
shadows, of the withering foliage, torn and ragged, yet touched in
the autumn with gold and russet and fiery crimson.