THE VILLAGE--THE WASHPOOL--VILLAGE INDUSTRIES--THE BELFRY--JACKDAWS--
VILLAGE CHRONICLES.
A short distance below the cottagers' `dipping-place' just mentioned,
the same stream, leaving the deep groove or gully, widens suddenly into
a large clear pool, shaded by two tall fir trees and an equally tall
poplar. The tops of these trees are nearly level with the plain above
the verdant valley in which the stream flows, and, being side by side,
the difference in the manner of their growth is strongly contrasted.
The branches of the fir gracefully depend, as if weighted downwards by
the burden of the heavy deep green fringe they carry--a fringe tipped
with bullion in the spring, for the young shoots are of so light a green
as to shade into a pale yellow. The branches of the poplar, on the
contrary, point upwards--growing nearly vertically; so that the outline
of the tree resembles the tip of an immensely exaggerated artist's
brush. This formation is ill adapted for nest-building, as it affords
little or no surface to build on, and so the poplar is but seldom used
by birds.
The pool beneath is approached by a broad track--it cannot be called
road--trampled into innumerable small holes by the feet of flocks of
sheep, driven down here from the hills for the periodical washing. At
that time the roads are full of sheep day after day, all tending in the
same direction; and the little wayside inns, and those of the village
which closely adjoins the washpool, find a sudden increase of custom
from the shepherds. There is no written law regulating the washing, but
custom has fixed it as firmly as an Act of Parliament: each shepherd
knows his day, and takes his turn, and no one attempts to interfere with
the monopoly of the men who throw the sheep in. The right of wash here
is upheld as sternly as if it were a bulwark of the Constitution.
Sometimes a landowner or a farmer, anxious to make improvements, tries
to enclose the approach or to utilise the water in fertilising meadows,
or in one way or another to introduce an innovation. He thinks perhaps
that education, the spread of modern ideas, and the fact that labourers
travel nowadays, have weakened the influence of tradition. He finds
himself entirely mistaken: the men assemble and throw down the fence, or
fill up the new channel that has been dug; and, the general sympathy of
the parish being with them and the interest of the sheep-farmers behind
them to back them up, they always carry the day, and old custom rules
supreme.
The sheep greatly dislike water. The difficulty is to get them in;
after the dip they get out fast enough. Only if driven by a strange
dog, and unable to escape on account of a wall or enclosure, will they
ever rush into a pond. If a sheep gets into a brook and cannot get
out--his narrow feet sink deep into the mud--should he not be speedily
relieved he will die, even though his head be above water, from chill
and fright. Cattle, on the other hand, love to stand in water on a warm
day.
In rubbing together and struggling with the shepherds and their
assistants a good deal of wool is torn from the sheep and floats down
the current. This is caught by a net stretched across below, and
finally comes into the possession of one or two old women of the
village, who seem to have a prescriptive right to it on payment of a
small toll for beer-money. These women are also on the look-out during
the year for such stray scraps of wool as they can pick up from the
bushes beside the roads and lanes much travelled by sheep--also from the
tall thistles and briars, where they have got through a gap. This wool
is more or less stained by the weather and by particles of dust but it
answers the purpose, which is the manufacture of mops.
The old-fashioned wool mop is still a necessary adjunct of the
farmhouse, and especially the dairy, which has to be constantly
`swilled' out and mopped clean. With the ancient spinning-wheel they
work up the wool thus gathered; and so, even at this late day, in odd
nooks and corners, the wheel may now and then be found. The peculiar
broad-headed nail which fastens the mop to the stout ashen `steale,' or
handle, is also made in the village. I spell `steale' by conjecture,
and according to pronunciation. It is used also of a rake: instead of a
rake-handle they say rake-steale. Having made the mops, the women go
round with them to the farmhouses of the district, knowing their regular
customers--who prefer to buy of them, not only as a little help to the
poor, but because the mops are really very strongly made.
In the meadows of the vale the waters of the same stream irrigate
numerous scattered withy-beds, pollard willow trees, and tall willow
poles growing thickly in the hedges by the brook. The most suitable of
these poles are purchased from the farmers by the willow handicraftsmen
of the village up here, to be split into thin flexible strips and
plaited or woven into various articles. These strips are made into
ladies' workbaskets and endless knick-knacks. The flexibility of the
willow is surprising when reduced to these narrow pieces, scarcely
thicker than stout paper. This industry used to keep many hands
employed. There were willow-looms in the village, and to show their
dexterity the weavers sometimes made a shirt of willow--of course only
as a curiosity. The development of straw weaving greatly interfered
with this business; and now it is followed by a few only, who are
chiefly engaged in preparing the raw material to go elsewhere.
From the ash woods on the slopes, and the copses, of the fields, large
ash-poles are brought, which one or two old men in the place spend their
time splitting up for `flakes'--a `flake' being a frame of light wood,
used after the manner of a hurdle to stop a gap, or pitched in a row to
part a field into two. Hurdle-making is another industry; but of late
years hurdles have been made on a large scale by master carpenters in
the market towns, who employ several men, and undersell the village
maker.
The wheelwright is perhaps the busiest man in the place; he not only
makes and mends waggon and cart wheels, and the body of those vehicles,
but does almost every other kind of carpentering. Sometimes he combines
the trade of a builder with it--if he has a little capital--and puts up
cottages, barns, sheds, etc, and his yard is strewn with timber. There
is generally a mason, who goes about from farm to farm mending walls and
pigsties, and all such odd jobs, working for his own hand.
The blacksmith of course is there--sometimes more than one--usually with
plenty to do; for modern agriculture uses three times as much machinery
and ironwork as was formerly the case. At first the blacksmiths did not
understand how to mend many of these new-fangled machines, but they have
learned a good deal, though some of the pieces still have to be replaced
from the implement factories if broken. Horses come trooping in to have
new shoes put on. Sometimes a village blacksmith acquires a fame for
shoeing horses which extends far beyond his forge, and gentlemen
residing in the market towns send out their horses to him to be shod.
He still uses a ground-ash sapling to hold the short chisel with which
he cuts off the glowing iron on the anvil. He keeps bundles of the
young, pliant ground-ash sticks, which twist easily and are peculiarly
tough; and, taking one of these, with a few turns of his wrist winds it
round the chisel so as to have a long handle. One advantage of the wood
is that it `gives' a little and does not jar when struck.
The tinker, notwithstanding his vagrant habits, is sometimes a man of
substance, owning two or more small cottages, built out of his savings
by the village mason--the materials perhaps carted for him free by a
friendly fanner. When sober and steady, he has a capital trade: his
hands are never idle. Milk-tins, pots, pans, etc, constantly need
mending; he travels from door to door, and may be seen sitting on a
stool in the cart-house in the farmyard, tinkering on his small portable
anvil, with two or three cottagers' children--sturdy, yellow-haired
youngsters--intently watching the mystery of the craft.
In despite of machine-sewn boots and their cheapness, the village
cobbler is still an institution, and has a considerable number of
patrons. The labourers working in the fields need a boot that will keep
out the damp, and for that purpose it must be hand-sewn: the cobbler,
having lived among them all his life, understands what is wanted better
than the artisan of the cities, and knows how to stud the soles with
nails and cover toe and heel with plates till the huge boot is literally
iron-clad. Even the children wear boots which for their size are
equally heavy: many of the working farmers also send theirs to be
repaired. The only thing to be remembered in dealing with a village
cobbler is, if you want a pair of boots, to order them six months
beforehand, or you will be disappointed. The business occupies him
about as long as it takes a shipwright to build a ship.
Under the trees of the lane that connects one part of the village with
another stands a wooden post once stout now decaying; and opposite it at
some distance the remnants of a second. This was a rope-walk, but has
long since fallen into disuse; the tendency of the age having for a long
time been to centralise industry of all kinds. It is true that of late
years many manufacturers have found it profitable to remove their
workshops from cities into the country, the rent of premises being so
much less, water to be got by sinking a well, less rates, and wages a
little cheaper. They retain a shop and office in the cities, but have
the work done miles away. But even this is distinctly associated with
centralisation. The workmen are merely paid human machines; they do not
labour for their own hands in their own little shops at home, or as the
rope-maker slowly walked backwards here, twisting the hemp under the
elms of the lane, afterwards, doubtless, to take the manufactured
article himself to market and offer his wares for sale from a stand in
the street.
The millwright used to be a busy man here and there in the villages, but
the railways take the wheat to the steam mills of cities, and where the
water-mills yet run, ironwork has supplanted wood. In some few places
still the women and girls are employed making gloves of a coarse kind,
doing the work at home in their cottages; but the occupation is now
chiefly carried on nearer to the great business centres than this.
Another extinct trade is that of the bell foundry. One village situate
in the hills hard by was formerly celebrated for the church bells cast
there, many of which may be found in far distant towers ringing to this
day.
Near the edge of the hill, just above the washpool, stands the village
church. Old and grey as it is, yet the usage of the pool by the
shepherds dates from still earlier days. Like some of the farmhouses
further up among the hills, the tower is built of flints set in cement,
which in the passage of time has become almost as hard as the flint
itself. The art of chipping flint to a face for the purpose of making
lines or patterns in walls used to be carried to great perfection, and
even old garden walls may be seen so ornamented.
The tower is large and tall, and the church a great one; or so it
appears in comparison with the small population of the place. But it
may be that when it was built there were more inhabitants; for some
signs remain that here--as in many other such villages--the people have
decreased in numbers: the population has shifted elsewhere. An adjacent
parish lying just under the downs has now not more than fifty
inhabitants; yet in the olden time a church stood there--long since
dismantled: the ancient churchyard is an orchard, no one being permitted
to dig or plough the ground.
Entering the tower by the narrow nail-studded door, it is not so easy to
ascend the winding geometrical stone staircase, in the confined space
and the darkness, for the arrow-slits are choked with cobwebs and the
dust of years. A faint fluttering sound comes from above, as of wings
beating the air in a confined space--it is the jackdaws in the belfry;
just as the starlings and swallows in the huge old-fashioned chimneys
make a similar murmuring noise before they settle. Passing a slit or
two--the only means of marking the height which has been reached--and
the dull tick of the old clock becomes audible: slow and accompanied
with a peculiar grating vibration, as if the frame of the antique works
had grown tremulous with age. The dial-plate outside is square, placed
at an angle to the perpendicular lines of the tower: the gilding of the
hour-marks has long since tarnished and worn away before the storms, and
they are now barely distinguishable; and it is difficult to tell the
precise time by the solitary pointer, there being no minute hand.
Past another slit, and the narrow stone steps--you must take care to
keep close to the outer wall where they are widest, for they narrow to
the central pillar--are scooped out by the passage of feet during the
centuries; some, too, are broken, and others are slippery with something
that rolls and gives under the foot. It is a number of little sticks
and twigs which have fallen down from the jackdaws' nests above: higher
up the steps are literally covered with them, so that you have to kick
them aside before you can conveniently ascend. These sticks are nearly
all of the same size, brown and black from age and the loss of the sap,
the bark remaining on. It is surprising how the birds contrive to find
so many suitable to their purpose, searching about under the trees; for
they do not break them off, but take those that have fallen.
The best place for finding these sticks--and those the rooks use--is
where a tree has been felled or a thick hedge cut some months before.
In cutting up the smaller branches into faggots the men necessarily
frequently step on them, and so break off innumerable twigs too short to
be tied up in the bundle. After they have finished faggoting, the women
rake up the fragments for their cottage fires; and later on, as the
spring advances, the birds come for the remaining twigs, of which great
quantities are left. These they pick up from among the grass; and it is
noticeable that they like twigs that are dead but not decayed: they do
not care for them when green, and reject them when rotten. Have they
discovered that green wood shrinks in drying, and that rotten wood is
untrustworthy? Rooks, jackdaws, and pigeons find their building
materials in this way, where trees or hedges have been cut; yet even
then it must require some patience. They use also a great deal of
material rearranged from the nests of last year--that is, rooks and
jackdaws.
Stepping out at last into the belfry, be careful how you tread; for the
flooring is worm-eaten, and here and there planks are loose: keep your
foot, if possible, on the beams, which at least are fixed. It is a
giddy height to fall from down to the stone pavement below, where the
ringers stand. Their ropes are bound round with list or cloth, or some
such thing, for a better grasp for the hand. High as it is to this the
first floor, if you should attempt to ring one of these bells, and
forget to let the rope slip quickly, it will jerk you almost to the
ceiling: thus many a man has broken his bones close to the font where he
was christened as a child.
Against the wall up here are iron clamps to strengthen the ancient
fabric, settling somewhat in its latter days; and, opening the
worm-eaten door of the clock-case--the key stands in it--you may study
the works of the old clock for a full hour, if so it please you; for the
clerk is away labouring in the field, and his aged wife, who produced
the key of the church and pointed the nearest way across the meadow, has
gone to the spring. The ancient building, standing lonely on the hill,
is utterly deserted; the creak of the boards under foot or the grate of
the rusty hinge sounds hollow and gloomy. But a streak of sunlight
enters from the arrow-slit, a bee comes in through the larger open
windows with a low inquiring buzz; there is a chattering of
sparrows, the peculiar shrill screech of the swifts, and a
`jack-jack-daw-jack-daw'-ing outside. The sweet scent of clover and of
mown grass comes upon the light breeze--mayhap the laughter of haymakers
passing through the churchyard underneath to their work, and idling by
the way as haymakers can idle.
The name of the maker on the clock shows that it was constructed in a
little market town a few miles distant a century ago, before industries
were centralised and local life began to lose its individuality. There
are sparrows' nests on the wooden case over it, and it is stopped now
and then by feathers getting into the works: it matters nothing here;
_Festina lente_ is the village motto, and time is little regarded. So,
if you wish, take a rubbing, with heelball borrowed from the cobbler, of
the inscriptions round the rims of the great bells; but be careful even
then, for the ringers have left one carelessly tilted, and if the rope
should slip, nineteen hundredweight of brazen metal may jam you against
the framework.
The ringers are an independent body, rustics though they be--
monopolists, not to be lightly ordered about, as many a vicar has found
to his cost, having a silent belfry for his pains, and not a man to be
got, either, from adjacent villages. It is about as easy to knock this
solid tower over with a walking-stick as to change village customs. But
if towards Christmas you should chance to say to the ringers that such
and such a chime seemed rung pleasantly, be certain that you will hear
it night after night coming with a throbbing joyfulness through the
starlit air--every note of the peal rising clear and distinct at the
exact moment of time, as if struck by machinery, yet with a quivering
undertone that dwells on the ear after the wave of sound has gone. Then
go out and walk in the garden or field, for it is a noble music;
remember, too, that it is a music that has echoed from the hills
hundreds and hundreds of years. Rude men as they are, these bellringers
gratefully respond to the least appreciation of their art.
A few more turns about the spiral staircase, and then step out on the
roof. The footstep is deadened by the dull coloured lead, oxidised from
exposure. The tarnished weathercock above revolves so stiffly as to be
heedless of the light air,--only facing a strong breeze. The irreverent
jackdaws, now wheeling round at a safe distance, build in every coign of
vantage, no matter how incongruous their intrusion may be--on the wings
of an angel, behind the flowing robe of Saint Peter, or yonder in the
niche, grey and lichen-grown, where stood the Virgin Mary before
iconoclastic hands dashed her image to the ground. If a gargoyle be
broken or choked so that no water comes through it, they will use it,
but not otherwise. And they have nests, too, just on the ledge in the
thickness of the wall, outside those belfry windows which are partially
boarded up. Anywhere, in short, high up and well sheltered, suits the
jackdaw.
When nesting time is over, jackdaws seem to leave the church and roost
with the rooks; they use the tower much as the rooks do their hereditary
group of trees at a distance from the wood they sleep in at other
seasons. How came the jackdaw to make its nest on church towers in the
first place? The bird has become so associated with churches that it is
difficult to separate the two; yet it is certain that the bird preceded
the building. Archaeologists tell us that stone buildings of any
elevation, whether for religious purposes or defence, were not erected
till a comparatively late date in this island. Now, the low huts of
primeval peoples would hardly attract the jackdaw. It is the argument
of those who believe in immutable and infallible instinct that the
habits of birds, etc, are unchangeable: the bee building a cell to-day
exactly as it built one centuries before our era. Have we not here,
however, a modification of habit?
The jackdaw could not have originally built in tall stone buildings.
Localising the question to this country, may we not almost fix the date
when the jackdaw began to use the church, or the battlements of the
tower, by marking the time of their first erection? The jackdaw was
clever enough, and had reason sufficient to enable him to see how these
high, isolated positions suited his peculiar habits; and I am bold
enough to think that if the bee could be shown a better mode of building
her comb, she would in time come to use it.
In the churchyard, not far from the foot of the tower where the jackdaws
are so busy, stands a great square tomb, built of four slabs of stone on
edge and a broader one laid on the top. The inscription is barely
legible, worn away by the ironshod heels of generations of ploughboys
kicking against it in their rude play, and where they have not chipped
it, filled with lichen. The sexton says that this tomb in the olden
days was used as the pay-table upon which the poor received their weekly
dole. His father told him that he had himself stood there hungry, with
the rest--not broken-down cripples and widows, but strong, hale men,
waiting till the loaves were placed upon the broad slab, so that the
living were fed literally over the grave of the dead.
The farmers met every now and then in the vestry and arranged how many
men each would find work for--or rather partial work--so that the amount
of relief might be apportioned. Men coming from a distance, or even
from the next parish, were jealously excluded from settling, lest there
should be more mouths to feed; if a family, on the other hand, could by
any possibility be got rid of, it was exiled. There were more hands
than work; now the case is precisely opposite. A grim witness, this old
tomb, to a traditionary fragment in that history of the people which is
now placed above a mere list of monarchs.
The oldest person in the village was a woman--as is often the case--
reputed to be over a hundred: a tidy cottager, well tended, feeble in
body, but brisk of tongue. She reckoned her own age by the thatch of
the roof. It had been completely new thatched five times since she
could recollect. The first time she was a great girl, grown up: her
father had it thatched twice afterwards; her husband had it done the
fourth time, and the fifth was three years ago. That made about a
hundred years altogether.
The straw had lasted better lately, because there were now no great elm
trees to drip, drip on it in wet weather. Cottagers are frequently
really squatters, building on the waste land beside the highway close to
the hedgerow, and consequently under the trees. This dripping on the
roof is very bad for thatch. Straw is remarkably durable, even when
exposed to the weather, if good in the first place and well laid on. It
may be reckoned to last twenty years on an average, perhaps more. Five
thatchings, then, made eighty years; add three years since the last
thatching; and the old lady supposed she was seventeen or eighteen at
the first--i.e. just a century since. But in all likelihood her
recollections of the first thatching were confused and uncertain: she
was perhaps eight or ten at that time, which would reduce her real age
to a little over ninety. A great part of the village had twice been
destroyed by fire since she could remember. These fires are or were
singularly destructive in villages--the flames running from thatch to
thatch, and, as they express it, `wrastling' across the intervening
spaces. A pain is said to `wrastle,' or shoot and burn. Such fires are
often caused by wood ashes from the hearth thrown on the dustheap while
yet some embers contain sufficient heat to fire straw or rubbish.
The old woman's memories were wholly of gossipy family history; I have
often found that the very aged have not half so much to tell as those of
about sixty to seventy years. The next oldest was a man about eighty;
all he knew of history was that once on a time some traitor withdrew the
flints from the muskets of the English troops, substituting pieces of
wood, which, of course, would not ignite the powder, and thus they were
beaten. Of date, place, or persons he had no knowledge. He `minded' a
great snowfall when he was a boy, and helping to drag the coaches out
and making a firm road for them with hurdles. Once while grubbing a
hedge near the road he found five shillings' worth of pennies--the great
old `coppers'--doubtless hidden by a thief. He could not buy so much
with one of the new sort of coppers: liked them as King George made
best.
An old lady of about seventy, living at the village inn, a very brisk
body, seemed quite unable to understand what was meant by history, but
could tell me a story if I liked. The story was a rambling narrative of
an amour in some foreign country. The lady, to conceal a meeting with
her paramour, which took place in the presence of her son, who was an
imbecile (or, in her own words, had `no more sense than God gave him,' a
common country expression for a fool), went upstairs and rained raisins
on him from the window. The son told the husband what had happened;
but, asked to specify the time, could only fix it by, `When it rained
raisins.' This was supposed to be merely a fresh proof of his
imbecility, and the lady escaped.
In this imperfect narrative is there not a distorted version of a
chapter in the `Pentameron'? But how did it get into the mind of an
illiterate old woman in an out-of-the-way village? Nothing yet of
Waterloo, Culloden, Sedgmoor, or the civil war; but in the end an old
man declared that King Charles had once slept in an old house just about
to be pulled down. But then `King Charles' slept according to local
tradition, in most of the old houses in the country. However, I
resolved to visit the place.
Tall yew hedges, reaching high overhead, thick and impervious, such as
could only be produced in a hundred years of growth and countless
clippings, enclosing a green pleasaunce, the grass uncut for many a
year, weeds overrunning the smooth surface on which the bowls once
rolled true to their bias. In the shelter of these hedges, upon the
sunny side, you might walk in early spring when the east wind is
harshest, without a breath penetrating to chill the blood, warm as
within a cloak of sables, enjoying that peculiar genial feeling which is
induced by sunshine at that period only, and which is somewhat akin to
the sense of convalescence after a weary illness. Thus, sauntering to
and fro, your footstep, returning on itself, passed the thrush sitting
on her nest calm and confident.
No modern exotic evergreens ever attract our English birds like the true
old English trees and shrubs. In the box and yew they love to build;
spindly laurels and rhododendrons, with vacant draughty spaces
underneath, they detest, avoiding them as much as possible. The common
hawthorn hedge round a country garden shall contain three times as many
nests, and be visited by five times as many birds, as the foreign
evergreens, so costly to rear and so sure to be killed by the first
old-fashioned frost.
The thrushes are singularly fond of the yew berry; it is of a sticky
substance, sweet and not unpleasant. Holly berries, too, are eaten; and
holly hedges, despite their prickly leaves, are favourites with garden
birds. It would be possible, I think, to so plan out a garden as to
attract almost every feathered creature.
A fine old filbert walk extends far away towards the orchard: the
branches meet overhead. In autumn the fruit hangs thick; and what is
more exquisite, when gathered from the bough and eaten, as all fruit
should be, on the spot? I cannot understand why filbert walks are not
planted by our modern capitalists, who make nothing of spending a
thousand pounds in forcing-houses. I cannot help thinking that true
taste consists in the selection of what is thoroughly characteristic of
soil and climate. Those magnificent yew hedges, the filbert walk--all,
in fact are to be levelled to make way for a garish stucco-fronted
hunting-box, with staring red stables and every modern convenience. The
sun-dial shaft is already heaved up and broken.
The old mansion was used as a grammar school for a great many years, but
has been deserted for the last quarter of a century; and melancholy
indeed are the silent hollow halls and dormitories. The whitewashed
walls are yellow and green from damp, and covered in patches with
saltpetre efflorescence; but they still bear the hasty inscriptions
scrawled on them by boyish hands--some far back in the eighteenth
century. The history of this little kingdom, with its dynasties of
tutors and masters, its succeeding generations of joyous youth, might be
gathered from these writings on the walls: sketches in burned stick or
charcoal of extinct monarchs of the desk; rude doggerel verses; curious
jingles of Latin and English words of which every great school has its
specimens; dates of day and month when doubtless some daring expedition
was carried out; and here and there (originally hidden behind furniture,
we may suppose) bitter words of hatred against the injustice of ruling
authorities--arbitrary ushers and cruel masters.
The casements, broken and blown in, have permitted all the winds of
heaven to wreak their will; and the storms sweeping over from the
adjacent downs beat as they choose upon the floor. Within an upper
window--now obviously enough a wind-door--two swallows' nests have been
built against the wall close to the ceiling, and their pleasant twitter
greets you as you enter; and so does the whistling of the starlings on
the roof. But without there, below, the ring of the bricklayer's trowel
as he chips a brick has already given them notice to quit.