EGG-TIME. A “GIP”-TRAP
There is no sweeter time in the woods than just before the nesting
begins in earnest. Is it the rising sap that causes a pleasant odour to
emanate from every green thing? Idling along the hedgerows towards the
woodlands there may perchance be seen small tufts of white rabbit’s fur
in the grass, torn from herself by the doe to form a warm lining to the
hole in which her litter will appear: a “sign” this that often guides a
robber to her nest.
Yonder on the rising ground, towering even in their fall over the low
(lately cut) ash plantation, lie the giant limbs of the mighty oaks,
thrown just as they felt the quickening heat. The bark has been
stripped from the trunk and branches; the sun has turned the exposed
surface to a deep buff colour, which contrasts with the fresh green of
the underwood around and renders them visible afar.
When the oak first puts forth its buds the woods take a ruddy tint.
Gradually the background of green comes to the front, and the
oak-apples swell, streaked with rosy stains, whence their semblance to
the edible fruit of the orchard. All unconscious of the white or red
cross daubed on the rough bark, the tree prepares its glory of leaf,
though doomed the while by that sad mark to the axe.
Cutting away the bushes with his billhook, the woodman next swings the
cumbrous grub-axe, whose wide edge clears the earth from the larger
roots. Then he puts his pipe in his pocket, and settles to the serious
work of the “great axe,” as he calls it. I never could use this
ungainly tool aright: a top-heavy, clumsy, awkward thing, it rules you
instead of you ruling it. The handle, too, is flat—almost with an edge
itself sometimes—and is quite beyond the grasp of any but hands of
iron. Now the American axe feels balanced like a sword; this is because
of the peculiar curve of the handle. To strike you stand with the left
foot slightly forward, and the left hand uppermost: the “S” curve (it
is of course not nearly so crooked as the letter) of the American axe
adjusts itself to the anatomy of the attitude, so to speak.
The straight English handle does not; it is stiff, and strains the
muscles; but the common “great axe” has the advantage that it is also
used for splitting logs and gnarled “butts.” An American axe is too
beautiful a tool for that rude work. The American was designed to
strike at the trunk of the tree several feet from the ground, the
English axe is always directed to the great roots at the base.
A dexterous woodman can swing his tool alternately left hand or right
hand uppermost. The difference looks trifling; but try it, and you will
be astonished at the difficulty. The blows echo and the chips fly, till
the base of the tree, that naturally is much larger, is reduced to the
size of the trunk or less. Now a pause, while one swarms up to “line”
it—_i.e._ to attach a rope as high as possible to guide the “stick” in
its fall.
It is commonly said that in climbing it is best to look up—a maxim that
has been used for moral illustrations; but it is a mistake. In
ascending a tree you should never look higher than the brim of your
hat, unless when quite still and resting on a branch; temporary
blindness would be the penalty in this case. Particles of decayed bark,
the borings of insects in dead wood, dust, and fragments of twigs, rush
down in little streams and fill the eyes. The quantity of woody powder
that adheres to a tree is surprising; every motion dislodges it from a
thousand minute crevices. As for firs, in climbing a fir one cannot
look up at all—dead sticks, needles, and dust pour down, and the
branches are so thick together that the head has to be forced through
them. The line fixed, the saw is applied, and by slow degrees the butt
cut nearly through. Unless much overbalanced on one side by the limbs,
an oak will stand on a still day when almost off.
Some now seize the rope, and alternately pull and slacken, which gives
the tree a tottering movement. One more daring than the rest drives a
wedge into the saw-cut as it opens when the tree sways. It sways—it
staggers; a loud crack as the fibres part, then with a slow heave over
it goes, and, descending, twists upon the base. The vast limbs plough
into the sward; the twigs are crushed; the boughs, after striking the
earth, rebound and swish upwards. See that you stand clear, for the
least branch will thresh you down. The flat surface of the exposed butt
is blue with stains from the steel of the saw.
Light taps with a small sharp axe, that cut the rind but no deeper,
ring the trunk at intervals. Then the barking irons are inserted; they
are rods of iron forged at the top something like a narrow shallow
spoon. The bark from the trunk comes off in huge semi-cylinders almost
large enough for a canoe. But that from the branches is best. You may
mark how at the base the bark is two inches thick, lessening to a few
lines on the topmost boughs. If it sticks a little, hammer it with the
iron: it peels with a peculiar sound, and the juicy sap glistens white
between. It is this that, drying in the sun, gives the barked tree its
colour: in time the wood bleaches paler, and after a winter becomes
grey. Inside, the bark is white streaked with brown; presently it will
be all brown. While some strip it, others collect the pieces, and with
them build toy-like sheds of bark, which is the manner of stacking it.
From the peeled tree there rises a sweet odour of sap: the green mead,
the green underwood and hawthorn around, are all lit up with the genial
sunbeams. The beautiful wind-anemones are gone, too tender and lovely
for so rude an earth; but the wild hyacinths droop their blue bells
under the wood, and the cowslips rise in the grass. The nightingale
sings without ceasing; the soft “coo-coo” of the dove sounds hard by;
the merry cuckoo calls as he flies from elm to elm; the wood-pigeons
rise and smite their wings together over the firs. In the mere below
the coots are at play; they chase each other along the surface of the
water and indulge in wild evolutions. Everything is happy. As the
plough-boys stroll along they pluck the young succulent hawthorn leaves
and nibble them.
It is the sweetest time of all for wandering in the wood. The brambles
have not yet grown so bushy as to check the passage; the thistles that
in autumn will be as tall as the shoulder and thick as a walking-stick
are as yet no bar; burrs do not attach themselves at every step, though
the broad burdock leaves are spreading wide. In its full development
the burdock is almost a shrub rather than a plant, with a woody stem an
inch or more in diameter.
Up in the fir trees the nests of the pigeons are sometimes so big that
it appears as if they must use the same year after year, adding fresh
twigs, else they could hardly attain such bulk. Those in the ash-poles
are not nearly so large. In the open drives blue cartridge-cases lie
among the grass, the brass part tarnished by the rain, thrown hurriedly
aside from the smoking breech last autumn. But the guns are silent in
the racks, though the keeper still carries his gun to shoot the vermin,
which are extremely busy at this season. Vermin, however, do not quite
agree among themselves: weasels and stoats are deadly enemies of mice
and rats. Where rats are plentiful there they are sure to come; they
will follow a rat into a dwelling-house.
Here the green drive shows traces of the poaching it received from the
thick-planted hoofs of the hunt when the leaves were off and the blast
of the horn sounded fitfully as the gale carried the sound away. The
vixen is now at peace, though perhaps it would scarcely be safe to
wander too near the close-shaven mead where the keeper is occupied more
and more every day with his pheasant-hatching. And far down on the
lonely outlying farms, where even in fox-hunting England the music of
the hounds is hardly heard in three years (because no great coverts
cause the run to take that way), foul murder is sometimes done on
Reynard or his family. A hedge-cutter marks the sleeping-place in the
withies where the fox curls up by day; and with his rusty gun, that
sometimes slaughters a roaming pheasant, sends the shot through the red
side of the slumbering animal. Then, thrust ignobly into a sack, he
shoulders the fox and marches round from door to door, tumbling the
limp body rudely down on the pitching stones to prove that the fowls
will now be safe, and to be rewarded with beer and small coin. A dead
fox is profit to him for a fortnight. These evil deeds of course are
cloaked as far as possible.
Leaving now the wood for the lane that wanders through the meadows, a
mower comes sidling up, and, looking mysteriously around with his hand
behind under his coat, “You med have un for sixpence,” he says, and
produces a partridge into whose body the point of the scythe ran as she
sat on her nest in the grass, and whose struggles were ended by a blow
from the rubber or whetstone flung at her head. He has got the eggs
somewhere hidden under a swathe.
The men that are so expert at finding partridges’ eggs to sell to the
keepers know well beforehand whereabouts the birds are likely to lay.
If a stranger who had made no previous observations went into the
fields to find these eggs, with full permission to do so, he would
probably wander in vain. The grass is long, and the nest has little to
distinguish it from the ground; the old bird will sit so close that one
may pass almost over her. Without a right of search in open daylight
the difficulty is of course much greater. A man cannot quarter the
fields when the crop is high and leave no trail.
Farmers object to the trampling and damage of their property; and a
keeper does not like to see a labourer loafing about, because he is not
certain that the eggs when found will be conscientiously delivered to
him. They may be taken elsewhere, or they may even be broken out of
spite if the finder thinks he has a grudge to repay. Now that every
field is enclosed, and for the most part well cultivated and looked
after, the business of the egg-stealer is considerably diminished. He
cannot roam over the country at his fancy; his egg-finding is nearly
restricted to the locality of which he possesses minute knowledge.
Thus workmen engaged in the towns, but sleeping several miles out in
the villages, can keep a register of the slight indications they
observe morning after morning as they cross the fields by the footpath
to their labour. Early in the spring they notice that the partridges
have paired: as time advances they see the pair day after day in the
same meadow, and mark the spot. Those who work in the fields, again,
have still better opportunities: the bird-keeping lads too have little
else to do at that season than watch for nests. In the meadows the
labourer as he walks to and fro with the “bush” passes over every inch
of the ground. The “bush” is a mass of thorn bushes fixed in a frame
and drawn by a horse; it acts like a light harrow, and leaves the
meadow in strips like the pile of green velvet, stroked in narrow
bands, one this way, one that, laying the grass blades in the
directions it travels. Solitary work of this kind—for it requires but
one man—is very favourable to observation. When the proper time arrives
the searcher knows within a little where the nest must be, and has but
a small space to beat.
The pheasant being so large a bird, its motions are easy to watch; and
the nest is speedily found, because, being in the hedge or under
bushes, there is a definite place in which to look, instead of the
broad surface of the field. Pheasants will get out of the preserves in
the breeding season and wander into the mounds, so that the space the
keeper has to range is then enlarged threefold. Both pheasants and
partridges are frequently killed on their nests; when the eggs are hard
the birds remain to the last moment, and are often knocked over.
Besides poachers, the eggs have to run the chance of being destroyed by
carrion crows, and occasionally by rooks. Rooks, though generally
cleanly feeders, will at times eat almost anything, from a mussel to a
fledgeling bird. Magpies and jays are accused of being equally
dangerous enemies of eggs and young birds, and so too are snakes.
Weasels, stoats, and rats spare neither egg, parents, nor offspring.
Some of the dogs that run wild will devour eggs; and hawks pounce on
the brood if they see an opportunity. Owls are said to do the same. The
fitchew, the badger, and the hedgehog have a similarly evil reputation;
but the first is rare, the second almost exterminated in many
districts; the third—the poor hedgehog—is common, and some keepers have
a bitter dislike to them. Swine are credited, with the same mischief as
the worst of vermin at this particular season; but nowadays swine are
not allowed to run wild in cultivated districts, except in the autumn
when the acorns are falling.
As the nests are on the ground they are peculiarly accessible, and the
eggs, being large, are tempting. Perhaps the mowing machine is as
destructive as anything; and after all these there is the risk of a wet
season and of disease. Let the care exercised be never so great, a
certain amount of mortality must occur.
While the young partridges gradually become strong and swift, the nuts
are increasing in size, and ripening upon the bough. The very hazel has
a pleasant sound—not a nut-tree hedge existed in the neighbourhood that
we did not know and visit. We noted the progress of the bushes from the
earliest spring, and the catkins to the perfect nut.
There are threads of brilliant scarlet upon the hazel in February,
though the gloom of winter lingers and the “Shuck—a—sheck!” of the
fieldfare fleeing before the snow sounds overhead. On the slender
branches grow green ovals, from whose tips tiny scarlet plumes rise and
curl over.
It often happens that while the tall rods with speckled bark grow
vigorously the stole is hollow and decaying when the hardy fern
flourishes around it. Before the summer ricks are all carted the nuts
are full of sweet milky matter, and the shell begins to harden. A hazel
bough with a good crook is then sought by the men that are thinking of
the wheat harvest: they trim it for a “vagging” stick, with which to
pull the straw towards them. True reaping is now never seen: “vagging”
makes the short stubble that forces the partridges into the turnips.
Maple boughs, whose bark is so strongly ribbed, are also good for
“vagging” sticks.
Nut-tree is used for bonds to tie up faggots, and split for the
shepherds’ hurdles. In winter sometimes a store of nuts and acorns may
be seen fallen in a stream down the side of a bank, scratched out from
a mouse’s hole, as they say, by Reynard, who devours the little
provident creature without regard for its wisdom. So that man and wild
animals derive pleasure or use from the hazel in many ways. When the
nuts are ripe the carters’ lads do not care to ride sideways on the
broad backs of the horses as they jog homewards along the lane, but are
ever in the hedges.
There were plenty in the double-mounds to which we had access; but the
shepherd, who had learned his craft on the Downs, said that the nuts
grew there in such immense quantities as determined us to see them.
Sitting on the felled ash under the shade of the hawthorn hedge, where
the butcher-birds every year used to stick the humble-bees on the
thorns, he described the route—a mere waggon track—and the situation of
the largest copses.
The waggon track we found crossed the elevated plains close under and
between the Downs, following at the foot, as it seemed, for an endless
distance the curve of a range. The slope bounded the track on one side:
on the other it was enclosed by a low bank covered with dead thorn
thickly entangled, which enclosed the cornfields. The space between the
hedge and the hill was as far as we could throw one of the bleached
flints lying on the sward. It was dotted with hawthorn trees and furze,
and full of dry brown grass. A few scattered firs, the remnants of
extinct plantations, grew on the slope, and green “fairy rings” marked
it here and there.
These fairy rings have a somewhat different appearance from the dark
green semicircles found in the meadows and called by the same name: the
latter are often only segments of circles, are found near hedges, and
almost always either under a tree or where a tree has been. There were
more mushrooms on the side of the hill than we cared to carry. Some eat
mushrooms raw—fresh as taken from the ground, with a little salt: to me
the taste is then too strong. Of the many ways of cooking them the
simplest is the best; that is, on a gridiron over wood embers on the
hearth.
Every few minutes a hare started out of the dry grass: he always
scampered up the Down and stopped to look at us from the ridge. The
hare runs faster up hill than down. By the cornfields there were wire
nettings to stop them; but nothing is easier than for any passer-by who
feels an interest in hares and rabbits, and does not like to see them
jealously excluded, to open a gap. Hares were very numerous—temptingly
so. Not far from where the track crossed a lonely road was a gipsy
encampment; that swarthy people are ever about when anything is going
on, and the reapers were busy in the corn. The dead dry thorns of the
hedge answered very well to boil their pot with. Their tents, formed by
thrusting the ends of long bent rods like half-hoops into the turf,
looked dark like the canvas of a barge.
These “gips”—country folk do not say gipsy—were unknown to us; but we
were on terms with some members of a tribe who called at our house
several times in the course of the year to buy willow. The men wore
golden earrings, and bought “Black Sally,” a withy that has a dark
bark, for pegs, and “bolts” of osier for basket-making. A bolt is a
bundle of forty inches in circumference. Though the women tell
fortunes, and mix the “dark man” and the “light man,” the “journey” and
the “letter” to perfection, till the ladies half believe, I doubt if
they know much of true palmistry. The magic of the past always had a
charm for me. I had learned to know the lines, from that which winds
along at the base of the thumb-ball and if clear means health and long
life, to that which crosses close to the fingers and indicates the
course of love, and had traced them on many a delicate palm. So that
the “gips” could tell me nothing new.
The women are the hardiest in the country; they simply ignore the
weather. Even the hedgers and ditchers and the sturdiest labourers
choose the lee side of the hedge when they pause to eat their
luncheons; but the “gips” do not trouble to seek such shelter. Passing
over the hills one winter’s day, when the Downs looked all alike, being
covered with snow, I came across a “gip” family sitting on the ground
in a lane, old and young exposed to the blast. In that there was
nothing remarkable, but I recollect it because the young mother,
handsome in the style of her race, had her neck and brown bust quite
bare, and the white snowflakes drove thickly aslant upon her. Their
complexion looks more dusky in winter, so that the contrast of the
colours made me wish for an artist to paint it. And he might have put
the grey embers of a fire gone out, and the twisted stem of a hawthorn
bush with red haws above.
A mile beyond the gipsy tents we entered among the copses: scattered
ash plantations, and hazel thickets with narrow green tracks between.
Further in, the nut-tree bushes were more numerous, and we became
separated though within call. Presently a low whistle like the peewit’s
(our signal) called me to Orion. On the border of a thicket, near an
open field of swedes, he had found a hare in a wire. It was a
beauty—the soft fur smooth to stroke, not so much as a shot-hole in the
black-marked ears. Wired or netted hares and rabbits are much preferred
by the dealers to those that have been shot—and so, too, netted
partridges—because they look so clean and tempt the purchaser. The
blacksmith Ikey, who bought our rabbits, used to sew up the shot wounds
when they were much knocked about, and trimmed up the shattered ones in
the cleverest way.
To pull up the plug and take wire and hare too was the first impulse;
yet we hesitated. Why did the man who set the snare let his game lie
till that hour of the day? He should have visited it long before: it
had a suspicious look altogether. It would also have been nearly
impossible to carry the hare so many miles by daylight and past
villages: even with the largest pockets it would have been doubtful,
for the hare had stiffened as he lay stretched out. So, carefully
replacing him just as we found him, we left the spot and re-entered the
copse.
The shepherd certainly was right; the quantity of nuts was immense: the
best and largest bunches grew at the edge of the thickets, perhaps
because they received more air and light than the bushes within that
were surrounded by boughs. It thus happened that we were in the green
pathway when some one suddenly spoke from behind, and, turning, there
was a man in a velveteen jacket who had just stepped out of the bushes.
The keeper was pleasant enough and readily allowed us to handle his
gun—a very good weapon, though a little thin at the muzzle—for a man
likes to see his gun admired. He said there were finer nuts in a valley
he pointed out, and then carefully instructed us how to get back into
the waggon track without returning by the same path. An old barn was
the landmark; and, with a request from him not to break the bushes, he
left us.
Down in the wooded vale we paused. The whole thing was now clear: the
hare in the wire was a trap laid for the “gips” whose camp was below.
The keeper had been waiting about doubtless where he could command the
various tracks up the hill, had seen us come that way, and did not wish
us to return in the same direction; because if the “gip” saw any one at
all he would not approach his snare. Whether the hare had actually been
caught by the wire, or had been put in by the keeper, it was not easy
to tell.
We wandered on in the valley wood, going from bush to bush, little
heeding whither we went. There are no woods so silent as the nut-tree;
there is scarce a sound in them at that time except the occasional
rustle of a rabbit, and the “thump, thump” they sometimes make
underground in their buries after a sudden fright. So that the keen
plaintive whistle of a kingfisher was almost startling. But we soon
found the stream in the hollow. Broader than a brook and yet not quite
a river, it flowed swift and clear, so that every flint at the bottom
was visible. The nut-tree bushes came down to the edge: the ground was
too firm for much rush or sedge; the streams that come out of the chalk
are not so thickly fringed with vegetation as others.
Some little way along there was a rounded sarsen boulder not far from
shore, whose brown top was so nearly on a level with the surface that
at one moment the water just covered it, and the next left it exposed.
By it we spied a trout; but the hill above gave “Velvet” the command of
the hollow; and it was too risky even to think of. After that the nuts
were tame; there was nothing left but to turn homewards. As for
trout-fishing, there is nothing so easy. Take the top joint off the
rod, and put the wire on the second, which is stronger, fill the
basket, and replace the fly. There were fellows who used to paddle in
canoes up a certain river (not this little stream), pick out the
largest trout, and shoot them with pistols, under pretence of
practising at water-rats.