[Illustration: A DEVON CROSS.]
There are two orders of ancient human monuments on Dartmoor--the
prehistoric evidences of man's earliest occupation and the mediaeval
remains that date from Tudor times, or earlier. The Neolith has left his
cairns and pounds and hut circles, where once his lodges clustered upon
the hills. The other memorials are of a different character and chiefly
mark the time of the stannators, when alluvial tin abounded and the Moor
supported a larger population than it does to-day. Ruins of the smelting
houses and the piled debris of old tin-streaming works may be seen on
every hand, and the moulds into which molten tin was poured still lie in
hollows and ruins half hidden by the herbage. Here also, scattered
irregularly, the Christian symbol occurs, on wild heaths and lonely
hillsides, to mark some sacred place, indicate an ancient path, or guide
the wayfaring monk and friar of old on their journey by the Abbot's Way.
Of these the most notable is that venerable fragment known as Siward's
Cross--a place of pilgrimage these many years.
Now, on this day of March, snow-clouds swept the desert intermittently
with their grey veils and often blotted every landmark. At such times
one sought the little hillocks thrown up by vanished men and hid in some
hollow of the tin-streamers' digging to escape the pelt of the snow and
avoid the buffet of the squall that brought it. Then the sun broke up
the welter of hurrying grey and for a time the wind lulled and the brief
white shroud of the snow melted, save where it had banked against some
obstacle.
The lonely hillock where stands Siward's Cross, or "Nun's Cross," as
Moormen call it, lies at a point a little above the western end of Fox
Tor Mire. The land slopes gently to it and from it; the great hills roll
round about. To the east a far distance opens very blue after the last
snow has fallen; to the south tower the featureless ridges of Cator's
Beam with the twin turrets of Fox Tor on their proper mount beneath
them. The beginnings of the famous mire are at hand--a region of
shattered peat-hags and morasses--where, torn to pieces, the earth gapes
in ruins and a thousand watercourses riddle it. All is dark and sere at
this season, for the dead grasses make the peat blacker by contrast. It
is a chaos of rent and riven earth ploughed and tunnelled by bogs and
waterways; while beyond this savage wilderness the planes of the hills
wind round in a semicircle and hem the cradle of the great marshes below
with firm ground and good "strolls" for cattle, when spring shall send
them in their thousands to the grazing lands of the Moor again.
The sky shone blue by the time I reached the old cross and weak sunlight
brightened its familiar face. The relic stands seven feet high, and now
it held a vanishing patch of snow on each stumpy arm. Its weathered
front had made a home for flat and clinging lichens, grey as the granite
for the most part, yet warming to a pale gold sometimes. Once the cross
was broken and thrown in two pieces on the heath; but the wall-builders
spared it, for the monument had long been famous. Antiquarian interest
existed for the old relic, and it was mended with clamps of iron, and
lifted upon a boulder to occupy again its ancient site.
For many a year experts puzzled to learn the meaning of the inscriptions
upon its face, and various conjectures concerning them had their day;
but it was left for our first Dartmoor authority, William Crossing, who
has said the last word on these remains, to decipher the worn
inscription and indicate its significance. He finds the word "Siward,"
or "Syward," on the eastern side, and the word "Boc-lond," for
"Buckland," on the other, set in two lines under the incised cross that
distinguishes the western face of the monument.
"Siward's Cross" is mentioned in the Perambulation of 1240. "It is
named," says Mr. Crossing, "in a deed of Amicia, Countess of Devon,
confirming the grant of certain lands for building and supporting the
Abbey of Buckland, among which were the manors of Buckland, Bickleigh
and Walkhampton. The latter manor abuts on Dartmoor Forest, and the
boundary line, which Siward's Cross marks at one of the points, is drawn
from Mistor to the Plym. The cross, therefore, in addition to being
considered a forest boundary mark, also became one to the lands of
Buckland Abbey, and I am convinced that the letters on it which have
been so variously interpreted simply represent the word 'Bocland.' The
name, as already stated, is engraved on the western face of the
cross--the side on which the monks' possessions lay."
Elsewhere he observes that Siward's Cross, "standing as it does on the
line of the Abbot's Way, would seem not improbably to have been set up
by the monks of Tavistock as a mark to point out the direction of the
track across the Moor; and were it not for the fact that it has been
supposed to have obtained its name from Siward, Earl of Northumberland,
who, it is said, held property near this part of the Moor in the
Confessor's reign, I should have no hesitation in believing such to be
the case."
No matter who first lifted it, still it stands--the largest cross on
Dartmoor--like a sentinel to guard the path that extended between the
religious houses of Plympton, Buckland and Tavistock. And other crosses
there are beyond the Mire, where an old road descended over Ter Hill.
But the Abbot's Way is tramped no more, and the princes of the Church,
with their men-at-arms and their mules and pack-horses, have passed into
forgotten time. Few now but the antiquary and holiday-maker wander to
Siward's Cross; or the fox-hunter gallops past it; or the folk, when
they tramp to the heights for purple harvest of "hurts" in summer-time.
The stone that won the blessings of pious men, only comforts a heifer
to-day; she rubs her side against it and leaves a strand of her red hair
caught in the lichens.
The snow began to fall more heavily and the wind increased. Therefore I
turned north and left that local sanctity from olden time, well pleased
to have seen it once again in the stern theatre of winter. It soon
shrank to a grey smudge on the waste; then snow-wreaths whirled their
arms about it and the emblem vanished.