grasses, and settled on the shallow cup of a tall flower,
John-go-to-bed-at-noon. The bright flowers were closing, for the sun
was high. It paused for an instant only, and then fluttered over the
hedge and was gone. Came a common white butterfly--a weed of the air,
hated by the countrymen: yet part of summer’s heart as it flickered
like a strayed snowflake in the sunshine, passing the whorled spires of
red-green sorrel and glazed petals of buttercup, living its brief hour
among the scents and colours of summer. Vibrating their sun-crisped
wings with shrill hum, the hover-flies shot past: the wild humble bees
sang to themselves as in a frenzy of labour for their ideal they took
the pollen from the roses in the hedge; the cuckoos sent call after
call of melody from the distant hazel coppice. The sound of summer
was everywhere, the earth filled with swelling ecstasy--everything
so green and alive, the waving grasses and the hawthorns; the green
kingdom charged and surcharged with energy, from the wild strawberry
to the mighty, sap-surfeited bole of the oak. Although so still, the
vast earth was humming and vibrating, the crescendo of passion reached
gradually while the sun swept nearer, day by day, the zenith of its
curve.
In one corner of the meadow was a small pond, half hidden by rushes,
bearing a golden blazon of flower--in autumn the countrypeople would
grind the roasted seeds of the iris to make their “poor man’s coffee.”
With them grew the bog asphodel, crowned by a tapering spike of
starlike flowers, also yellow, the colour of happiness: in old time
this plant was supposed to soften the bones of cattle, hence the Latin
name, _ossifragum_. Hidden securely among the rushes, the moor-hen
had her nest of dried water-weed, a platform on which at night rested
her children, little black balls of fluff with a red beak. A faint
chirruping came from the flags, a splash, and silence: the mother
had heard my slow approach and called to her young to remain still.
Something with a thin, stick-like body, enamelled blue and fanned by
a whirling crystal of light, alighted on the open white petals of a
crowsfoot--the water-buttercup; the dragonfly folded its gauzy wings
and contemplated the still deeps from which, a few hours before, it
had crept--a summer thing that would fulfil its destiny so quickly,
and die. Like the civilised bees that leave the security of skep and
stored caves of honey to the new race, so all the wild things live but
to secure the future of their species. Everything strives for the
beautiful, the ideal, without conscious effort, maybe, but the ideal is
there--all for the species. The nightingale that silvers the dusk with
song has finer notes than his ancestor of olden time; he has learnt so
much during the centuries; through generations of faithful loyalty to
an ideal his tiny soul-flame has become brighter, and his voice speaks
with sweeter poetry. On the may trees in the hedge, already shaking
their blossoms into the wind, the wild roses were open to the sky; it
was now their brief hour of sunshine. Simple petals stained with roseal
hue, they waited for the wild bee to bring the pollen that would change
the beauty into life.
High sang the larks over the meadow, striving with fluttering wings to
reach the blue vision of heaven. Their voices trailed to the earth and
filled the heart with hope and joy. Afar, the noisy rooks fed their
young in the colony in the elm-tops; at hand, on the ground, golden
buttercup and white moon-daisy, lemon-coloured hawk-weed and obstinate
charlock, beloved of the visiting bee for its great dowry of honey. The
sunbeams had flooded the cold earth during the springtide of the year,
and now the earth had sent its flowers and its grasses with their faces
turned above, whence came the light that was life, the light that was
truth to the birds and the bees, the flowers and the grasses. For years
I pondered the higher meaning of life, studying in a city, amid the
smoke and clattering hum of traffic; the wild ones have never needed to
seek--they have been happy by the brook with its lanced sunpoints and
swallowy song of summer over the pebbles and the mossy boulders; they
have had no illusions. Nor have they needed philosophies or discarnate
paradises.
Everything loved the mowing meadow. By the stream the blackbirds sought
for food, the finches came to sip, the hover-flies fanned above
the kingcups. Scarlet soldier flies and little plain moths clung to
bennet-bloom and spray-like awn, the wind sighed in the grasses as it
shook the dust-pollen from the heads. The meadow grasses were timorous
of the breeze, and trembled at its coming, like the heart of a maiden
reluctant yet yearning: whispering to the wind to bear the seeds, for
the mowers would come shortly. Over the water-meadow the lapwings
wheeled and spun--the lapwing holds the secret of the swamps and
boglands, and you hear it in his wild voice as his wings sough above.
In the early spring he makes over the dull furrows his plaintive music,
climbing high and diving to the ground as though it were sweet ecstasy
to fall, wing-crumpled and broken-hearted, before his mate. Something
in the call of the peewit fills me with sadness, like the memory of
those passed springs that were in boyhood so glamorous. The peewit’s
song is wild, he knows that all things pass, that the leaves and the
flowers will die and nothing remain.
Now, as he saw me, his voice was harsher, more husky; somewhere among
the tufts of spiked grass his young were crouching, depending on their
plumage in harmony with the ground to remain unseen. _See-oo-sweet,
see-oo-sweet, woo_, cried the mother: her curled crest was visible
against the sky as she turned on broad pinions.
_ii_
One morning, when the cuckoo was silent and the young partridges were
following their parents through the culms of the meadow-forest, two
labourers arrived with the mowing machine, drawn by a pair of chestnut
horses. The overture to the midsummer hum was beginning to be heard in
the fields: wild and tame bees ceased not from their labours; the wolf
spiders were everywhere in the long grass, searching for fly or insect
in their blood lust. Another kind of spider had erected a net-like web
between the stalks, with a round silky tunnel in the middle, in which
he crouched among the skins of beetles, glowing a dull bronzy green in
the sun; the torn wings of a red admiral butterfly never again to pass
with colour-dusty sails above the blue scabious flowers; all the tragic
remainder of his catch scattered like jetsam at the sea’s marge. The
larks still sang into the sunshine. It was the time of year, just past
the fullness of young summer, when the song of visitant birds was over
and the insect hum had begun its shimmering undertone.
The mowing machine, drawn by the glossy-coated horses, moved down one
side of the field. One of the mowers sat on the iron seat and drove
the pair; his mate walked alongside and scooped the cut grasses from
the knives with a rake. The horses tossed their manes and swished
their tails, drawing along with magnificent power the light machine,
and leaving behind a swathe of broken grasses and coloured flowers
whose fragrance and hue availed no longer--in an instant the life was
gone--whither? Rhythmically they moved in straight line, the clattering
of the machine mingling with the cries of the driver: like a sea-green
wave overcurled and spent in foam the flowery grasses lay in the sun.
Cat’s-tail grass, foxtail grass, meadow soft grass, pale red in tint
and sometimes called Yorkshire fog; couch grass--the _agropyron_ of
ancient Greece--the wild kin of the wheat; the sweet-smelling Vernal
grass without whose presence one of the fleeting scents of summer were
denied us. Steadily the mowing machine was drawn round the field,
fresh wallow lay where but a moment before the meadow-forest bowed and
returned to the wind, and the dandelion wrought its goldened disk in
the image of the sun. With the lilac flower of the scabious lay the
incarnadine head of the poppy--tokening sleep that now had claimed
its own. Meadow crane’s-bill, which had overtopped the grasses with
the wine-dark sorrel and prickly thistle, the vetch, and the blue
speedwell--from the highest to the lowest--all brought low by the
skirring knives.
Years ago in an old village the mowers went down into the meadow with
their curved scythes, and throughout the long summer day they swung
their ancient implements. Every now and then they paused to whet the
sap-blurred blades with a stone carried in their belts. _Tu-whet,
tu-whaat_--holding the symbol of olden times near the point: it was
the extreme edge of the curve that required such constant sharpening.
Their hats were bleached by the showers and the sunshine--I do not
recollect seeing a new one--but it may have been a faulty impression of
childhood. It was thirsty work wielding the scythe on its long handle,
and required much skill to prevent the point from digging into the
ground. Great wooden “bottles,” or firkins, of ale were brought out in
the early morning and hidden in the nettle ditch, well down in the cool
and shade; and often a gallon of small ale was drunken by each labourer
before the Goatsbeard closed its flowers at noon.
The sun bronzed their arms and dried the wallows; colour soon faded.
The scarlet poppy shrivelled to a purple brown, the gold of the
dandelion became dulled, the grasses wilted as they fell. It was great
fun to follow the workers, to gather whole armfuls of flowers, and
to pull their petals apart. They were but flowers to me then, pretty
things, their colours delighting the eye, so many of them: the boy
was natural and thought little, knowing nothing of life. I have not
been there for years, but even now, when so many stacks have grown
and dwindled near the barn, I am wandering in those fields. No other
meadows can be the same, the flowers there were fairer, the sunlight
brighter as it followed the clouds. With so many summers burnt out
in autumnal fires there is a dearer thought for every flower of blue
chicory: and each germander speedwell, so common in the hedgerow, has
in its little petals something of the mystery of the sky. The breath of
all the springtimes, the light and shade of summery months, the colour
and song of the fields stored, layer upon layer, in the boy’s mind,
return a hundredfold, and with them a desire, never ceasing, for others
to share in this secret of happiness--the thoughts given by nature.
In the evening the village girls came into the field to turn the
hay when the grass was fully dried by the sun, and nothing remained
of luscious clover or disk of corn feverfew. The young larks or
corncrakes, caught perchance by the rasping sweep of scythe, had been
dead many days. They raked the harvest of the meadow into mound-like
wakes, while the master haymaker, ever watching the clouds and the
wind, urged them to greater endeavour, for rain meant instant loss. We
tossed wisps of hay at one another, and formed ourselves into rival
parties, each with its castle, and defied our enemies with shrill
cries. The lumbering wain came back from the stack, a host of flies
pestering the horse, who stamped and kicked in vain when a gadfly
fastened to his side and drew his blood. If the weather were fine, and
no danger of rain impending, the carter would, as a great treat, let
us ride on the broad back of the horse, who appreciated the fan of
wych-elm twigs that was whisked about his ears and eyes.
They were happy days--gone now with the wielders of the scythes in
their faded hats and their wooden ale-bottles. Now the knives of the
mowing machine shear the field in half a day; the happy girls no
longer turn the swathes in the evening. The old spirit of the country
is dying, and the factory and town calls to its children--there is more
life there, and more money to be made. The “big house” is sold, and a
new squire has arrived, once a merchant and now a rich man; the sons
of the old squire lie somewhere in the deep sea near Jutland, so why
retain the estate, heavily taxed and scarce self-supporting, when it
will eventually pass away into other hands?
I have come to know other meadows now, but they can never be quite the
same. I lie in the flowery fields, seeing the quaking-grass against the
sky, and a wild bee swinging on a blue columbine, while a lark rains
joy from on high. These return, these are eternal; and with them a
voice that is silent, a colour that is faded.
TIGER’S TEETH
(_To J. S. of Croyde_)
The story of the Tiger’s great climb is still told in the village,
although it happened a dozen or more years ago.
The headland runs out into the Atlantic for nearly two miles, and is
a mile wide across its base. They grow oats there, for the ground is
starved. Some of it, indeed, is so poor that the plough never furrows
it, and only sheep stray upon the sward. Gorse grows plentifully,
hiding many rabbits’ holes, and in summer near the cliff-edge at the
Point the curled cast feathers of the gulls tremble in the wind.
At the Point the cliff drops almost sheer to the rocks three hundred
and ten feet below, forming an indentation in the headland known as the
Hole. Gulls dwell in colonies upon the ledges and in the crannies, and
like drifting snowflakes a swirl of birds floats on the air, uprising
from the sea and uttering gabbling cries of alarm when an intruder
passes near the lip of the Hole.
The village historian told me the story one rainy night in the
Nightcrow Inn. He was a great friend of mine, and universally known as
“Muggy”; he had been in most places on the earth, returning eventually
to his remembered village, happy in the open air with his simple
livelihood. The returned wanderer did all kinds of jobs in the hamlets
round about, gathered and sold watercress and mushrooms in their
seasons, arranged for the purchase of patent manures by the farmers,
representing many firms, and was also--“I be nothing if I be not up to
date, zur, do ee see?”--an agent for fire insurance in the big town
eight miles away. For generations his family had lived in the village;
his grandfather had bought the wreckage of _H.M.S. Weasel_, that went
on the rocks of the Hole over a century ago, all but one man being
drowned. He had the newspaper cuttings of the wreck, and sure enough,
his ancestor was mentioned. He cherished that cutting.
One night we had finished our game of whist with the frayed cards, and
were talking. The Inn has a low ceiling of black oak beams, roughly
shaped, and is lit by a paraffin lamp having a permanent black fringe
to its orange flame. In a momentary silence we heard the sharp patter
of rain flung against the window by a rapidly rising wind.
“It would be dangerous at the Point to-night,” I murmured, shivering.
Amid a chorus of assent my friend Muggy remembered the epic story of
the climb of Raven Rock. Had I heard tell of it? No, I hadn’t, and I
settled my elbows more comfortably on the oak table, and prepared for
the yarn. More beer first, of course. Muggy would not have any; he
drank but a pint every night, he said.
The pots were brought back, foaming with home-brew, the landlord
adjusted the milled screw of the lamp so that less dark soot-shadows
slipped against the whitewashed guard above, and we listened in silence
while the wind drove hard against the western face of the house,
bringing the rain-clouds straight from over the wild wastes of the
Atlantic.
* * * * *
They had tried to get the robbers in many ways, but rarely were they
seen. Evidence of their visitations was much against them. Dead lambs
had been found in their pens--little gray bundles lying still while
their mothers bleated above them. One morning Voley, the shepherd, came
to the yeaning field and found that a ewe itself had been attacked, and
had lost an eye. After that he carried the great ten-bore flighting gun
that was usually brought out in the frosty winter when wildfowl haunted
the great lonely wastes by the estuary formed of the confluence of
two rivers. The robbers were too cunning, however, perceived him from
invisibility, and never came near.
Muggy had a job at the time trapping rabbits for the bailiff of a
gentleman’s farm. He was paid by results, being given so much a head
for perfect rabbits; and rabbits did not pass as perfect to the dealer
at the market town when half their heads had been battered as though
by the blows of some mighty instrument. The curious thing was that he
did not know for a long while what caused the damage. He thought of a
fox, but a fox would not have mauled rabbits like that; he would have
carried them away. The idea of a badger being the aggressor came to
him, but he could find no spoor of a badger’s pad, which, once seen,
is never forgotten. And still the mysterious depredations went on.
Farmer Smith of Crowberry, later on in the year, lost seven chicks one
morning, with no sign of how they had gone. He thought of hawks, and
waited all that afternoon with a gun, but nothing came. He knew that
had it been a kestrel the bird would have returned for more. Another
morning he lost seventeen. Nine of them had been left--mutilated lumps
of stained feathers. They looked as though a spike had been driven
through their bodies. He knew that it was no ordinary thing that caused
the destruction.
Mortality among the lambs continued. And then, one night in the
Nightcrow Inn, light came to them. They slapped their thighs, and
rattled their pint mugs; of course, it could only be “thay” ravens!
Till closing time that night it was the only subject talked about.
The Tiger was there and his brother Aaron--two men who belonged to a
family that has been famous for cliff scaling in the district for many
generations. They had immense arms, being blacksmiths.
The following day a boat pulled round the headland, and the stronghold
of the robbers was detected, though no sign of them could be seen.
Aaron was in the boat, and he fixed the place by a peculiar formation
of the edge of the cliff. This done, he grunted, and a long pull back
to the sands began.
The waning moon of dawn had floated above the Exmoor hills when the
next morning three men left the village and set off along the road to
the base of the headland. They carried ropes, hauling blocks, a great
crowbar, and a sledge-hammer. John Smith of Crowberry was one, and his
companions were the blacksmith brothers.
They were going to rob the robbers.
Now ravens are rare birds, having been persecuted during the centuries
almost to extinction. The reasons for that persecution are easily
understandable. There was no compensation for the dead lambs, no money
paid out for the slaughtered chicks, and many farmers, especially
in the remote districts, found it hard enough to live, without being
preyed upon by ravens. Still, the ravens were now heavily protected by
law; in the village it was reckoned that any one who took their eggs
or shot the parent birds would be imprisoned for at least a month.
By reason of their rarity, a certain visiting bird-fancier from the
town had mentioned that he would give ten shillings a bird for any
fledgelings brought to him. It was a grand price, they agreed at the
Nightcrow Inn; not knowing, of course, that the dealer would make a
huge and assured profit by sending them to London.
Along one of the sheep-wrought paths, among the springing brakeferns
and blackthorns, sea-bleached holly-bushes and gorse clusters, just
beginning to respond to the sunbeams, the three men went that spring
morning. Already the larks were singing high in an azure sky, the
kestrels hanging in the light wind, the buzzard wheeling in lone
circles far above them. They did not pause to watch, however, for there
was a dangerous job on hand, and it was three miles to the Point.
The three hunters kept a sharp look-out for the ravens, but saw
nothing, even when they neared the lip of the Hole.
Aaron dropped his bar, the tackle was flung on the sward, and coats
were stripped off. Work began in earnest. The first few powerful twangs
of the sledge-hammer on the bar woke echoes in the Hole, and a thousand
gulls spread pearly wings tipped with jet and slipped into the air.
An uproar of hoarse voices came upwards, and, mounting high, a great
seabird, spanning near six feet, dived at them with a soughing of vast
wings and passed a bare two feet over their heads. But the men took no
notice. Time was precious, and they feared that the policeman might
discover them; the terrifying thought of prison was ever behind the
thought of golden sovereigns in their pockets. Deep into the sward
Aaron drove the bar, until it remained rigid, leaning backwards from
the line of the cliff-face. Under his arms Tiger passed the hempen rope
and the thinner guide-rope, while John Smith of Crowberry adjusted the
hauling blocks.
“Thaat be aa-right, reckons.”
“Aiy aiy!”
Aaron and John Smith of Crowberry took a strain on the rope and began
to pay out hand over hand. The Tiger leaned outwards over the Hole and
slowly disappeared over the edge.
Two tugs on the guide-rope, and the men remained still. Next came three
tugs, and Aaron whispered to Farmer John that Tiger was near the ledge.
They held on tight.
Meanwhile Tiger was spinning slowly on the rope. He started to swing,
backwards and forwards, aiming for the ledge whereon was the mass of
twigs and sticks comprising the ravens’ nest. He was about two hundred
feet above the rocks, and looking down he noticed how the waves slid
smoothly over them, churning and boiling white with foam afterwards.
Sometimes a gull passed near him, showing its yellow beak with the
reddish blotch at the end. Now he was swinging nearer the ledge--in and
out, in and out. Once or twice he looked upwards and wondered what he
should do if the old ravens came for him. He had no stick, and their
beaks could easily pierce a lamb’s skull. But not so much as a croak
was to be heard. He decided--as he heaved to and fro--that with his
share of the money he would buy a purse-net for shore-fishing. Nearer
and nearer he swung to the nest, and at last he could touch it with his
foot. But the time was not yet, so he pushed hard away with his feet,
and a loose fragment of stone, dislodged from above, hissed past him,
and grew smaller as it dropped towards the sea. Once more he pushed
away from the ledge, which was about two feet wide, swung towards it,
grasped a projecting stone, clung hard with his left hand, and gave
one tug on the guide-rope. Up above they lowered him one foot, and he
clambered to the ledge, panting.
In the centre of the cradle of sticks, a yard across, gaped three
fledgeling ravens. At sight of Tiger they opened their big black beaks
in fear and croaked dolefully. He put his hand over and one pecked at
it; he struck it a sharp blow and it croaked the more, deep, rasping,
and hoarse.
Tiger knew he would have to hurry. He seized one of the three birds
by the leg and dragged it from the fouled nest, to which it clung
gawkily. But at last it was free, its legs tied with the twine already
looped to his belt, and thrust into his basket. Quickly he seized the
other two and tied them, noticing while he did so that pieces of dead
gulls, rabbits, chickens, lamb’s wool, fish, frogs, and broken ducks’
eggs lay about on the twigs. At last he had secured them, and left the
ledge. The old birds, if they were near, made no sign. For a while
Tiger swung idly, satisfied, looking lazily at the tide below. A few
stones hurtled down, and one hit his wrist, numbing it; the fledgelings
kicked and struggled, squawking. Three minutes, and his swinging was
much lessened; he gave five tugs for the hauling signal.
There was no response, for just before John Smith and Aaron had
realised with fear that the crowbar had worked loose in the sward.
Unthinkingly they had relaxed the strain, and the loose stratum had
yielded.
The Tiger tugged away, but there was no answering lift. Five times he
tugged, slowly. He hung still over the rocks, whence the tide was now
ebbing, leaving them gaunt and gray.