[Will our correspondent favour us by communicating the Aston Legend of
the Holt Family to which he refers?]
_Langley, Kent, Prophetic Spring at._--The following "note" upon a
passage in _Warkworth's Chronicle_ (pp. 23, 24.) may perhaps possess
sufficient interest to warrant its insertion in your valuable little
publication. The passage is curious, not only as showing the
superstitious dread with which a simple natural phenomenon was regarded
by educated and intelligent men four centuries ago, but also as
affording evidence of the accurate observation of a writer, whose
labours have shed considerable light upon "one of the darkest periods in
our annals." The chronicler is recording the occurrence, in the
thirteenth year of Edward the Fourth, of a "gret hote somere," which
caused much mortality, and "unyversalle fevers, axes, and the blody flyx
in dyverse places of Englonde," and also occasioned great dearth and
famine "in the southe partyes of the worlde."
He then remarks that "dyverse tokenes have be schewede in Englonde this
year for amendynge of mannys lyvynge," and proceeds to enumerate several
springs or waters in various places, which only ran at intervals, and by
their running always portended "derthe, pestylence, or grete batayle."
After mentioning several of these, he adds--
"Also ther is a pytte in Kent in Langley Parke: ayens any
batayle he wille be drye, and it rayne neveyre so myche; and if
ther be no batayle toward, he wille be fulle of watere, be it
neveyre so drye a wethyre; and this yere he is drye."
Langley Park, situated in a parish of the same {245} name, about four
miles to the south-east of Maidstone, and once the residence of the
Leybournes and other families, well-known in Kentish history, has long
existed only in name, having been disparked prior to 1570; but the
"pytte," or stream, whose wondrous qualities are so quaintly described
by Warkworth, still flows at intervals. It is scarcely necessary to add,
that it belongs to the class known as _intermitting springs_, the
phenomena displayed by which are easily explained by the syphon-like
construction of the natural reservoirs whence they are supplied.
I have never heard that any remnant of this curious superstition can now
be traced in the neighbourhood, but persons long acquainted with the
spot have told me that the state of the stream was formerly looked upon
as a good index of the probable future price of corn. The same causes,
which regulated the supply or deficiency of water, would doubtless also
affect the fertility of the soil.