THE HAMLET--COTTAGE ASTROLOGY--GHOST LORE--HERBS--THE WAGGON AND ITS
CREW--STILES--THE TRYSTING-PLACE--THE THATCHER--SMUGGLERS--AGUE.
In most large rural parishes there is at least one small hamlet a mile
or two distant from the main village. A few houses and cottages stand
loosely scattered about the fields, no two of them together; so
separated, indeed, by hedges, meadows, and copses as hardly to be called
even a hamlet. The communication with the village is maintained by a
long, winding narrow lane; but foot-passengers follow a shorter path
across the fields, which in winter is sure to be ankle-deep in mud, by
the gateways and stiles. The lane, at the same time, is crossed by a
torrent, which may spread out to thirty yards wide in the hollow,
shallow at the edges, but swift and deep in the middle.
If you wait a couple of hours it will subside, as the farmers lower down
the brook pull up the hatches to let the flood pass. If you are in a
hurry, you must climb up into the double mound beside the lane, and
force your way along it between thorns and stoles, till you reach the
channel through which the current is rushing. Across that an old tree
trunk will probably lie, and by grasping a bough as a handrail it is
possible to get over. But either way, by lane or footpath, you are sure
to get what the country folk call `watchet' i.e. wet. So that in winter
the hamlet is practically isolated; for even in moderately good weather
the lane is an inch or two deep in finely puddled adhesive mud. It is
so shaded by elms and thick hedges that the dirt requires a length of
time to dry, while the passage of hundreds of sheep tread and puddle it
as only sheep can.
In summer the place is lovely; but then the inhabitants are one and all
busy in the fields, and have little time for social intercourse or for
travel into the next parish. It is ten to one if you knock at a cottage
door you will find it locked, if indeed, you get so fax as that, a
padlock being often on the garden gate. Being so isolated and apart
from the current of modern life and manners, the hamlet folk retain
something of the old-fashioned way of thinking. They do not believe
their own superstitions with the implicit credence of yore, but they
have not yet forgotten them. I have known women, for instance, who
seriously asserted that such-and-such an aged person possessed a magic
book which contained spells, and enabled her to foresee some kinds of
coming events. The influence of the moon, so firm an article of faith
among their forefathers, is not altogether overlooked; and they watch
for the new moon carefully. If the crescent slopes, it will be wet
weather. But if the horns of the crescent touch, or nearly, a vertical
line, if it stands upright, then it will be fine. Something, too, must
be allowed for the degree of sharpness of definition of the crescent,
which reveals the state of the atmosphere. And the cottage astrologer
has a whole table of the quarters, aspects, and so on, and lays much
stress upon the day and hour of the change: indeed, it is a very
complicated business to understand the moon.
The belief in the power of certain persons to `rule the planets' is
profound; so profound that neither ridicule, argument, nor authority
will shake it in the minds of the hamlet girls, and it abides with them
even when they are placed amidst the disenchanting realities of town
life. When `in service,' they buy dream-books, and consult
fortune-tellers. The gipsies, in passing through the country, choose
the by-ways and lanes; they thus avoid the tolls, have a chance of
poaching, and find waste places to camp in, though possibly something of
the true nomadic instinct may urge them to leave the beaten tracks and
wander over lonely regions. They camp near the hamlet as they travel to
and from the great sheep fairs which are held upon the hills, and
perhaps stay a few days; and by them, to some extent, the belief in
astrology and palmistry is strengthened.
The carters, who have to spend some considerable time every day with
their horses in the stable, still retain a large repertory of legendary
ghost lore. They know the exact spot in the lane where, at a certain
hour of the night, the white spectre of a headless horse, rushing past
with incredible swiftness and without the sound of a hoof, brushes the
very coat of the traveller, and immediately disappears in the darkness.
Another lane is haunted by a white woman, whose spectre crosses it in
front of the spectator and then appears behind him. If he turns his
head or looks on one side in order to escape the sight of the
apparition, it instantly crosses to that side. Indeed, no matter in
which direction he glances, the flickering figure floats before him,
till, making a run for it, he passes beyond the limits of the haunted
ground.
Near by the hollow, where the stream crosses the lane, is another
spirit, but of an indefinite kind, that does not seem to take shape, but
causes those who go past at the time when it has power to feel a mortal
horror. A black dog may be seen in at least two different places: the
wayfarer is suddenly surprised to find a gigantic animal of the deepest
jet trotting by his side, or he sees a dark shadow detach itself from
the bushes and take the form of a dog. The black dog has perhaps more
vitality, and survives in more localities, than all the apparitions that
in the olden times were sworn to by persons of the highest veracity.
They may still be heard of in many a nook and corner. I have known
people of the present day who were positive that there really was
`something' weird in the places where the dog was said to appear.
It is supposed that horses are peculiarly liable to take fright and run
away, to shy, or stumble, and break their knees, at a certain spot in
the road. They go very well till just on passing the fatal spot a
sudden fear seizes them as if they could see something invisible to men;
sometimes they bolt headlong, sometimes stand stock still and shiver; or
throw the rider by a rapid side movement. In the daytime--for this
supernatural effect is felt in broad day as well as at night--the horse
more frequently falls or stumbles, as if checked by an invisible force
in the midst of his career. This, too, is a living superstition, and
some persons will recount a whole string of accidents that have happened
within a few yards; till at last, such is the force of iteration, the
most incredulous admit it to be a series of remarkable coincidences.
These last two, the black dog and the dangerous place in the road, are
believed in by people of a much higher grade than carters. Altogether,
the vitality of superstition in the country is very much greater than is
commonly suspected. It is now confined, as it were, to the inner life
of the people: no one talks of such things openly, but only to their
friends, and thus a stranger might remark on the total extinction of the
belief in the supernatural. But much really remains.
The carters have a story about horses which had spent the night in a
meadow being found the next morning in a state of exhaustion, as if they
had been ridden furiously during the hours of darkness. They were
totally unfit for work next day. Instances are even given where men
have hidden in a tree with a gun, and when the horses began to gallop
fired at something indistinct sitting on their haunches, which something
at once disappeared, and the excitement ceased. But these things are
said to have happened a long time ago.
So, also, there is a memory of a man digging stone in a quarry and
distinctly hearing the strokes of a pick beneath him. When he wheeled
his barrow the subterranean quarryman wheeled his, and shortly after he
had shot the stones out there came a rumbling from below as if the other
barrow had been emptied. The very quarry is pointed out where this
extraordinary phenomenon took place. It is curious how a story of this
kind, something like which is, I think, told of the Hartz Mountains,
should have got localised in a limestone quarry so far apart in distance
and character. How well I remember the ancient labourer who told me
this legend as a boy! It is easy to philosophise on it now, and
speculate upon the genesis of the tale, which may have originated in a
cavernous hollow resounding to the tools; but then it was a reality, and
I recollect always giving a wide berth to that quarry at night. As the
old man told it, it was indeed hardly a legend; for he could disclose
every detail, and what has here occupied a few sentences took him the
best part of an hour to relate.
Now and then the western clouds after the sunset assume a shape
resembling that of a vast extended wing, as of a gigantic bird in full
flight--the extreme tip nearly reaching the zenith, the body of the bird
just below the horizon. The resemblance is sometimes so perfect that
the layers of feathers are traceable by an imaginative eye. This, the
old folk say, is the wing of the Archangel Michael, and it bodes no good
to the evil ones among the nations, for he is on his way to execute a
dread command.
Herbs are still believed in implicitly by some. Not long since I met a
labourer, one of the better class too, whom I had known previously, and
now found deeply depressed because of the death of a son. The poor
fellow had had every attention; the clergyman had exerted himself, and
wine and nourishing luxuries had not been spared, nor the best of
medical advice. That he admitted, but still regretted one thing. There
was a herb, which grew beside rivers, and was known to but a few, that
was a certain cure for the kind of wasting disease which had baffled
educated skill. There was an old man living somewhere by a river fifty
miles away, who possessed the secret of this herb, and by it had
accomplished marvellous cures. He had heard of him, but could not by
any inquiry ascertain his exact whereabouts; and so his child died.
Everything possible had been done, but still he regretted that this herb
had not been applied.
Nothing is done right now, according to the old men of the hamlet; even
the hayricks are built badly and `scamped.' The `rickmaker' used to be
an important person, generally a veteran, who had to be conciliated with
an extra drop of good liquor before he could be got to set to work in
earnest. Then he spread the hay here, and worked it in there, and had
it trodden down at the edge, and then in the middle, and, like the
centurion, sent men hither and thither. His rick, when complete, did
not rise perpendicularly, but each face or square side sloped a little
outwards--including the ends--a method that certainly does give the rick
a very shapely look.
But now the new-fangled `elevator' carries up the hay by machinery from
the waggon to the top, and two ricks are run up while they would
formerly have just been carefully laying the foundation for one of
faggots to keep off the damp. The poles put up to support the
rick-cloth interfere with the mathematically correct outward slope at
the ends, upon which the old fellow prided himself; so they are carried
up straight like the end wall of a cottage, and are a constant source of
contempt to the ancient invalid. However, he consoles himself with the
reflection that most of the men employed with the `elevator' will
ultimately go to a very unpleasant place, since they are continuously
swearing at the horse that works it, to make him go round the faster.
After an old cart or waggon has done its work and is broken up, the
wooden axletree, which is very solid, is frequently used for the top bar
of a stile. It answers very well, and, being of seasoned wood that has
received a good many coats of red paint, will last a long time. The
life of a waggon is not unlike that of a ship. On the cradle it is the
pride of the craftsman who builds it, and who is careful to reproduce
the exact `lines' which he learned from his master as an apprentice, and
which have been handed down these hundred years and more. The builders
of the Chinese junks are said never to saw a piece of timber into the
shape required, nor to bend it by softening the fibres by hot steam, but
always use a beam that has grown crooked naturally. This plan gives
great strength, but it must take years to accumulate the necessary
curved trees. The waggon-builder, in like manner, has a whole yard full
of timber selected for much the same reason--because it naturally curves
in the way he desires, or is specially fitted for his purpose.
For, like a ship, the true old-fashioned waggon is full of curves, and
there is scarcely a straight piece of wood about it. Nothing is angular
or square; and each piece of timber, too, is carved in some degree,
bevelled at the edges, the sharp outline relieved in one way or another,
and the whole structure like a ship, seeming buoyant, and floating as it
were, easily on the wheels. Then the painting takes several weeks, and
after that the lettering of the name; and when at last completed it is
placed outside by the road, that every farmer and labourer who goes by
may pause and admire. In about twelve months, if the builder be
expeditious (for him), the new vessel may reach her port under the open
shed at the farm, and then her life of voyages begins.
Her cargoes are hay and wheat and huge mountainous loads of straw, and
occasionally hurdles for the shepherd. Nor are her voyages confined to
the narrow seas of the fields adjoining home; now and then she goes on
adventurous expeditions to distant market towns, carrying mayhap a cargo
of oak-bark, stripped from fallen trees, to the tan-yard. Then she is
well victualled for the voyage, and her course mapped out on the chart
in order to avoid the Scylla of steep hills and stony ways and the
Charybdis of tollgates, besides being duly cautioned against the sirens
that chant so sweetly from the taps of the roadside inns. Or she sails
down to the far-away railway station after coal--possibly two or more
vessels in the same convoy--if the steam plough be at work and requires
the constant services of these tenders.
She has her own special crew--her captain the carter--and for forecastle
men a lad or two, and often a couple of able-bodied seamen in the shape
of labourers, to help to load up. When on the more distant voyages to
unknown shores, she takes a supercargo--the farmer's son--to check the
bills of lading; for on those strange coasts who knows what treachery
there may be brewing? There are arms aboard, in the form of forks or
prongs; and commonly one or more passengers go out in her--women with
vast bundles and children--not to mention the merchandise of sugars and
of teas from Cathay, which are shipped for delivery at half the cottages
and farmsteads _en route_ homewards. Wherefore, you see, the captain
had needs be a sober and godly man, having all these and manifold other
responsibilities upon his mind.
Besides which he has to make a report upon the state of the crops on
every farm he passes, and what everybody is doing, and if they have
begun reaping; also to hail every vessel he passes outward or homeward
bound, and enter her answers in his log, and to keep his weather-eye
open and a sharp watch to windward, lest storms should arise and awake
the deep, and if the gale increases to batten down his hatches and make
all snug with the tarpaulin. He must bear in mind the longitude of
those ports where there are docks, lest his team should cast a shoe or
any of the running rigging want splicing, or the hull spring a leak--for
the blacksmith's forges are often leagues apart, and he may lose his
certificate if he strands his ship or founders on the open ocean of the
downs. Sometimes, if the currents run unexpectedly strong, and he is
deeply laden, he has to borrow or hire a tug from the nearest farm,
getting an extra horse to pull up the hill.
When he reaches harbour, and has leave ashore, a jollier seaman never
cracked a whip. Perhaps the happiest time with the ploughboys is when
they are out with the waggon, having a little change, no harder work
than walking, sips at the `pots' handed to the captain by his mates, and
nothing to think about. Nor was there ever a more popular song in the
country than--
We'll jump into the waggon,
And we'll all take a ride!
Though in winter, when the horses' shoes have to be roughed for the
frost, or, worse, when the wheels sink deep into the spongy turf, and
rain and sleet and snow make the decks slippery, it is not quite so
jolly. Yet even then, so strong is the love of motion, a run with the
waggon is preferred to stationary work.
The captain, when bound on a voyage, generally slips his cable or weighs
anchor with the rising sun. His crew are first-rate helmsmen; and to
see them sweep into the rickyard through the narrow gateway, with a
heavy deck cargo piled to the skies, all sail set, a stiff breeze, and
the timbers creaking, is a glorious sight! Not a scrape against the
jetty, though `touch and go' is the sign of a good pilot. His greatest
trouble is when his cargo shifts out of sight of land: sometimes the
vessel turns on her beam-ends with a too ponderous and ill-built load of
straw, and then the wreck lies right in the fairway of all the ships
coming up the channel. To load a waggon successfully is indeed a work
of art: on the hills where the waggons have to run `sidelong' to pick up
the crops, one side higher than the other, no one but an experienced
hand can make the stuff stay on. Then there is often a tremendous
bumping and scraping of the keel on the rocks of the newly-mended roads,
and the nasty chopping seas of the deep ruts, besides the long regular
Atlantic swells of the furrows and `lands.' So that the cargo had need
to be firmly placed in the hold.
Every now and then she goes into dock and gets a new streak of paint and
a thorough overhauling. The running rigging of the harness has to be
polished and kept in good condition, and the crew are rarely idle if the
captain knows his business. You should never let your `fo'castle' hands
loll about; the proverb about the devil and the idle hands is
notoriously true aboard ship, and in the stables.
How many a man's life has centred about the waggon! As a child he rides
in it as a treat to the hay-field with his father; as a lad he walks
beside the leader, and gets his first ideas of the great world when they
visit the market town. As a man he takes command and pilots the ship
for many a long, long year. When he marries, the waggon, lent for his
own use, brings home his furniture. After a while his own children go
for a ride in it, and play in it when stationary in the shed. In the
painful ending the waggon carries the weak-kneed old man in pity to and
from the old town for his weekly store of goods, or mayhap for his
weekly dole of that staff of life his aged teeth can hardly grind. And
many a plain coffin has the old waggon carried to the distant churchyard
on the side of the hill. It is a cold spot--as life, too, was cold and
hard; yet in the spring the daisies will come, and the thrushes will
sing on the bough.
Built at first of seasoned wood, kept out of the weather under cover,
repainted, and taken care of, the waggon lasts a lifetime. Many times
repaired, the old ship outlasts its owner--his name on it is painted
out. But that step is not taken for years: there seems to be a
superstitious dislike to obliterating the old name, as if the dead would
resent it, and there it often remains till it becomes illegible.
Sometimes the second owner, too, goes, and the name fresh painted is
that of the third. When at last it becomes too shaky for farm use, it
is perhaps bought by some poor working haulier, who has a hole cut in
the bottom with moveable cover, and uses it to bring down flints from
the hills to mend the roads. But if any of the old folk live, they will
not sell the ancient vessel: it stands behind the rickyard under the
elms till the rain rots the upper work, and it is then broken up, and
the axletree becomes the top bar of a stile.
Each field has its characteristic stile--or rather two, one each side
(at the entrance and exit of the footpath), and these are never alike.
Walking across the fields for a couple of miles or more, of all the
stiles that must of necessity be surmounted no two are similar. Here is
one well put together--not too high, the rail not too large, and
apparently an ideal piece of workmanship; but on approaching, the ground
on the opposite side drops suddenly three or four feet--at the bottom is
a marshy spot crossed by a narrow bridge of a single stone, on which you
have to be careful to alight, or else plunge ankle-deep in water. If
clever enough to drop on the stone, it immediately tilts up slightly,
for, like the rocking-stones of Wales, it is balanced somewhere, and has
a see-saw motion well calculated to land the timid in the ditch.
The next is approached by a line of stepping-stones--to avoid the mud
and water--whose surfaces are so irregular as barely to afford a
footing. The stile itself is nothing--very low and easy to pass: but
just beyond it a stiff, stout pole has been placed across to prevent
horses straying, and below that a couple of hurdles are pitched to
confine the sheep. This is almost too much; however, by patience and
exertion, it is managed.
Then comes a double mound with two stiles--one for each ditch--made very
high and intended for steps; but the steps are worn away, and it is
something like climbing a perpendicular ladder. Another has a toprail
of a whole tree, so broad and thick no one can possibly straddle it, so
some friend of humanity has broken the second rail, and you creep under.
Finally comes a steep bank, six or seven feet high, with rude steps
formed of the roots of trees worn bare by iron-tipped boots, and of mere
holes in which to put the toe. At the top the stile leans forward over
the precipice, so that you have to suspend yourself in mid-air.
Fortunately, almost every other one has a gap worn at the side just
large enough to squeeze through after coaxing the briars to yield a
trifle. For it is intensely characteristic of human nature to make gaps
and short cuts.
All the lads of the hamlet have a trysting-place at the cross-roads, or
rather cross-lanes, where there is often an open waste space and a small
clump of trees. If there is any mischief in the wind, there the council
of war is sure to be held. There is a great rickyard not far distant,
where in one of the open sheds is the thatcher's workshop.
He is a very pronounced character in his way, with his leathern pads for
the knees that he may be able to bear lengthened contact against the
wooden rungs of the ladder, his little club to drive in the stakes, his
shears to snip off the edges of the straw round the eaves, his iron
needle of gigantic size with which to pass the tar-cord through when
thatching a shed, and his small sharp billhook to split out his
thatching stakes. These are of willow, cut from the pollard trees by
the brook, and he sits on a stool in the shed and splits them into three
or four with the greatest dexterity, giving his billhook a twist this
way and then that, and so guiding the split in the direction required.
Then holding it across his knee, he cuts the point with a couple of
blows and casts the finished stake aside upon the heap.
A man of no little consequence is the thatcher the most important
perhaps of the hamlet craftsmen. He ornaments the wheat ricks with
curious twisted tufts of straw, standing up not unlike the fantastic
ways in which savages are represented doing their hair. But he does not
put the thatch on the wheat half so substantially as formerly because
now only a few remain the winter--the thatch is often hardly on before
it is off again for the threshing machine--for the `sheening,' as they
call it. On the hayricks, which stand longer, he puts better work,
especially on the southern and western sides or angles, binding it down
with a crosswork of bonds to prevent the gales which blow from those
quarters unroofing the rick.
It is said to be an ill wind that blows nobody any good: now the wind
never blew that was strong enough to please the thatcher. If the
hurricane roughs up the straw on all the ricks, in the parish, unroofs
half-a-dozen sheds, and does not spare the gables of the
dwelling-houses, why he has work for the next two months. He is
attended by a man to carry up the `yelms,' and two or three women are
busy `yelming'--i.e., separating the straw, selecting the longest and
laying it level and parallel, damping it with water, and preparing it
for the yokes. These yokes must be cut from boughs that have grown
naturally in the shape wanted, else they are not tough enough. A tough
old chap, too, is the thatcher, a man of infinite gossip, well
acquainted with the genealogy of every farmer, and, indeed, of everybody
from Dan to Beersheba, of the parish.
The memory of the smugglers is not yet quite extinct. The old men will
point out the route they used to follow, and some of the places where
they are said to have stored their contraband goods. Smuggling suggests
the sea, but the goods landed on the beach had afterwards to be conveyed
inland for sale, so that the hamlet, though far distant from the shore,
has its traditions of illicit trade. The route followed was a wild and
unfrequented one, and the smugglers appear to have kept to the downs as
much as possible. More than one family--well-to-do for the hamlet or
village where a small capital goes a long way--are said to have
originally derived their prosperity from assisting the storage or
disposal of smuggled goods; and the sympathies of the hamlet would be
with the smugglers still.
The old folk, too, talk of having the ague, and say that it was quite
common in their early days; but it is rare to hear of a case now.
Possibly the better drainage of the fields and the better food and
lodging enjoyed by the labourers have something to do with this. There
are, of course, no scientific or precise data for exact comparison; but,
judging from the traditions transmitted down, the hamlet is much more
healthy at the present day than it was in the olden times.