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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
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 Over the Hills to Broadway 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. JAMES S. STONE, D.D. 
 
 ' Who can live in heart so glad 
 As the merry country lad ? " 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 PORTER & COATES, 
 
 1893.
 
 Copyright, iSgj, by Porter & Coates.
 
 S87o 
 
 iHote. 
 
 'T^HEY who have read the "Heart of Merrie England" will scarcely 
 need to be told in what part of England to look for the places named 
 in the following pages. The villages lie near the borderland of Glouces- 
 tershire and Worcestershire, and if the reader will take his map and find 
 Stratford-upon-Avon, he will see Shipston-on-Stour lying south ten miles, 
 a little to the east, and Evesham more to the west of the same point of 
 the compass. South of a line drawn between the last two towns are the 
 places hereinafter referred to. My gossip will be better enjoyed if the 
 country travelled over be thus ascertained. 
 
 The August spoken of was that of 1892, and most of this account 
 was written at or very near the time — all of it within the region traversed. 
 I have made little revision of my original sketches. They were written 
 ill pencil, and mostly as they were written they went to the printer. Pos- 
 sibly, as a result of this, my readers will find little to appreciate except 
 the freshness of the work. I have taken for granted that whoever took 
 the trouble to run over this booklet would be my friend, with whom I 
 might sit in my study or, if I had a garden, under my own ivy, and at my 
 will either laugh or talk seriously. Such an one would have kindly feel- 
 ing enough not to misunderstand me. 
 
 The illustrations, made expressly for this article, are taken from 
 photographs secured by me while at Broadway. 
 
 I have to thank the proprietors of The Americati Church Stoiday- 
 School Magazine for their kind permission to reprint from their journal 
 these pages. Should this reprint prove acceptable further articles of a 
 similar nature will find their way into the magazine and further reprints 
 will be made. 
 
 Philadelphia, September 30, 1893. 
 
 (3) 
 
 1109802
 
 T FLATTERED all the beauteous country round, 
 
 As poets use, the skies, the clouds, the fields, 
 The happy violets hiding from the roads 
 The primroses run down to, carrying gold ; 
 The tangled hedge-rows, where the cows push out 
 Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths 
 'Twixt dripping ash-boughs, — hedge-rows all alive 
 With birds and gnats and large white butterflies. 
 Which look as if the May-flower had caught life 
 And palpitated forth upon the wind ; 
 Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist, 
 Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills ; 
 And cattle grazing in the watered vales. 
 And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods, 
 And cottage-gardens smiling everj'where, 
 Confused with smell of orchards. 
 
 — Elizabeth Barrett Browniiig. 
 
 (4)
 
 ©bet tljc Ileitis to IStoaHtoajj. 
 
 'IpO one who has been long in city pent, 
 -'- 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair 
 
 And open face of heaven, — to breathe a prayer 
 Full in the smile of the blue firmament. 
 Who is more happj', when, with heart's content. 
 
 Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair 
 
 Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair 
 And gentle tale of love and lauguishment? 
 Returning home at evening, with an ear 
 
 Catching the notes of Philomel, — an eye 
 Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career. 
 
 He mourns that day so soon has glided by, 
 E'en like the passage of an angel's tear 
 
 That falls through the clear ether silently. 
 
 In the small hours of a lovely August morning, before the red sun- 
 glow had touched the chimneys or the flowers had shaken off the dew- 
 drops, we made ourselves ready for a day's drive across countrj- to Broad- 
 way and back. The townsfolk were scarcely ready for their breakfast 
 when our wagonette, drawn by a good, sound horse from the "Bell," 
 rattled over the pebbles of New Street. As we drove along, a woman with 
 a sunbonnet on her head opened her front door to see who at .so early an 
 hour had presumed to disturb the peace. In her hand she had a long 
 fork, the prongs of which pierced a bloater : evidently she had come from 
 the fire where she had been toasting the same. The policeman leaning 
 against a lamp-post in front of the "George" bade us good morrow in 
 tones so civil — -that is to say, civil for first thing in the morning — that 
 we shall think more kindly after this of Sir Robert Peel's institution. And 
 yet, somehow or other, better than this neatly-dressed and well-trained 
 constable, a Dogberry would correspond with the ancient appearance and 
 the quiet life of Shipston. 
 
 (5)
 
 6 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 We were soon clear of Sheep Street and out in the country. As it 
 happened we could not have had a more lovely day. Sunshine and cloud 
 were well distributed, the temperature was delightfully pleasant and the 
 roads were free from either mud or dust. There were four of us — one, 
 besides myself, who knew every bit of the way and something of the habits 
 of the people, and the traditions of the neighborhood. Our spirits bright- 
 ened as we drove gently between the hedgerows, now fresh with green 
 thoni and with blackberry bloom. Briskly ran our grey trotter up the 
 hillocks, and sturdily did he pull up the steeper eminences. The flies at 
 first were troublesome, but a light wind sprang up and carried them off. 
 In the ditches and the sward by the roadside were brilliant poppies and large 
 purple thistles, while ever and anon an oak or an ash, perchance a beech, 
 cast its refreshing shade over the way. Englishmen ought to recognize 
 the loyalty of the ash, for it is said that in the year of Charles the First's 
 execution no ash trees in England bore any keys, and there is a saying in 
 this region which aflSrms that ' ' if there are no keys or seeds in the ash 
 trees, there will be no king within the twelvemonth." Everybody knows 
 it is a sacred plant ; so, too, is yond elder, the thick-clustered berries of 
 which are fast ripening for the wine-vat — the lightning never strikes the 
 tree of which the Cross was made. Sometimes we pass through almost 
 perfect avenues, the giant oaks or elms making gothic arches over the 
 road. The fields displayed the plentifulness of the harvest. Here were 
 green pastures in which were grazing herds or flocks ; there were wide 
 expanses of ripening grain, red-brown or golden-yellow, the tall ears heavy 
 with the increase. Many fields were being reaped — the laborers were al- 
 ready at work ; soon the bearded barley and the nodding oats will be 
 gathered in. How I wish I could describe the exhilaration which came 
 to us as we beheld scenes so calm and beautiful and varied ! Nature is ever 
 skilful and ever kind. Even the drops on the thistle thorns sparkled with 
 diamond-like loveliness. The dandelions, rich and homely, lay in the 
 rank gra.ss beside the white-edged and golden-hearted daisies, brave 
 enough, as it were, to try to laugh away the scorn with which man regards 
 them. And the small fowl, as Dan Chaucer, who so dearly loved the 
 sweet and merry countr)', called them — the linnets, the yellowhammers and 
 the chafianches, flit across the road with hearts light as the sunbeams them- 
 selves. One's soul gladdens as one looks upon the earth which God has 
 made : " And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was 
 very good." See the tiny wren on the hedge-spray ! One moment, and it 
 di.sappears among the green leaves. Once the birds tried to know which
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 7 
 
 of them could soar into the blue sky the highest ; and the wren, so light 
 and soft, got upon the eagle's back, and when the strong, swift eagle had 
 gone as far as he could towards the sun, far beyond the wild goose and 
 the skylark, then the wren opened her little wings and soared higher still. 
 She won the crown — still abides upon the fragile .songster the golden 
 crest ; but for her craftiness it was decreed that ever after, instead of being 
 able to fly over the hedges and bushes, she should be compelled to go 
 through them. Once in a while a covey of partridges whirs over the 
 turnpike. The ist of September is nigh at hand and the young birds are 
 already strong of wing and firm of flesh. There are from sixteen to 
 eighteen of them in a covey or brood. Not a few of them break their 
 necks or their wings by flying against the telegraph wires. Like hares, 
 they cannot see straight before them ; and, also like hares, they are very 
 timid. 
 
 After crossing the Fossway by Porto Bello — where is a dog much 
 feared by strangers and tramps — we quickly came in sight of the farm 
 called Compton Scorpion, but instead of going up Goose Hill, which leads 
 to it, we took the road towards the left and went in the direction of Ebring- 
 ton. Here we overtook a travelling tinker and his family. He was 
 wheeling a truck on which were the grindstone, soldering irons, stove and 
 other tools and materials needed for his business ; his wife had a child 
 strapped to her back, and, with a bundle of umbrellas under her left arm, 
 by her right hand was leading a boy not much higher than her elbow. A 
 dog, shaggy-haired, with ears and tail reduced to mere stumps, trotted 
 in front of them — a roguish-looking, intelligent individual, grave and 
 silent as a philosopher, that would, no doubt, steal, fight, bite or beg with- 
 out hesitation, save such as comes from wisdom and experience. As we 
 drive by, the man touches his cap — all these pedestrian tradesmen are 
 neither rude nor wicked. Some of them are thrifty and industrious, living 
 in the towns in the winter, and in the summertime, much to the convenience 
 of the villagers, perambulating the countryside and turning over many 
 an honest penny by mending kettles and sharpening knives. If, when on 
 their travels, they do not go to church, that is mostly because the people 
 who frequent God's house do not desire to see beside them a seedy and 
 perhaps an uncleanly-looking stranger ; happily, while man looketh on 
 the outward appearance, the Lord looketh on the heart. The other even- 
 ing, when driving along the Foss from Moreton, we passed a gipsy com- 
 pany encamped for the night on the roadside ; they had a roofed-in 
 wagon — a cottage on wheels — and behind it was erected a small tent.
 
 8 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 Close b}' blazed a fire over which was suspended a pot, and around which 
 were four or five men, some women, two or three dogs, and a number of 
 children. The horses were grazing not far away, and in a cage hanging 
 on the door of the wagon was a magpie. These people looked for all the 
 world like Christians, as much so as did the lords and ladies we saw some 
 months since driving in Hyde Park. They were not ill-clad, nor, as they 
 waited for their supper, did they seem to be other than happy. Some 
 were whittling sticks, some were smoking, some talking, and others busy- 
 ing themselves in various ways. One woman was mending a coat while 
 deep in gossip with an elderly crony by her side peeling turnips. Another 
 woman was tying together the wildflowers which the children had gath- 
 ered, and on her face lighted through a gap in the hedge a bit of sun- 
 shine, making her look even pretty and cheerful. A man was trying to 
 rivet afresh the ribs of a parasol which looked as though it had once 
 shaded the brow of a countess. Up to us ran four or five boys and girls 
 begging for some gift ; their swarthy complexions and their persistence 
 remind us of Italy. They take the pence we give them, bow, curtsey and 
 go back to the fireside. Are these people expected to go to heaven when 
 they die ? I am told that these men and women are nearly always married 
 by the Church, and that they bring their children to Baptism ; but I never 
 saw such as they at Divine service — except, possibly, in the countries of 
 southern Europe, — and I almost faucj' that society has reached the con- 
 clusion that where lavender water and white collars are not, the soul does 
 not abide. 
 
 In the fields are feeding flocks of geese and crowds of rooks — white 
 and black together ; one set eating the grass and the other set picking the 
 worms. The bright day bids us hasten from the moral. Though late in 
 the season, a cuckoo starts out of a tree near by us and passes infield. 
 And there, to our right, lies Ebringtou, a pleasantly .situated village — 
 though the Gotham of the neighborhood — about five miles from Shipston. 
 It is a little out of our way, but it is one of those places that must not be 
 passed by. 
 
 As with most of the villages we shall see to-day, three words describe 
 it sufficiently : quiet, old and tiny. The church, which contains some 
 Norman work, and which was built by the brethren of Pershore Abbey, 
 has a plain tower, and is chiefly remarkable for some comfortable and 
 well-carved oak pews, put up in the fifteenth century, and for a few 
 monuments. It once had a Jacobean three-decker and a gallery, but these 
 have been removed. The effigy in stone, on the north side of the altar, is
 
 OVER THE niLI,S TO BROADWAY. $ 
 
 tliat of Sir John Fortescue, Lord Chancellor of England in the time of 
 Henry VI. He bought the manor in 1450, and, having obtained some 
 fame as an expert lawyer, a loyal Lancastrian, and the author of several 
 books of a legal character — in the literary style of which books he shows 
 himself iinder the influence of the early renaissance — he died there about 
 the age of ninety. Among other opinions, he held that the safeguard 
 against rebellion is the well-being of the commons, and that " ther may 
 no realme prospere, or be worshipful and noble, under a poer kyng." 
 Besides this monument, are others to the memory of members of the 
 family of Key tes, once of some importance hereabouts, and, as one of them 
 left the milk of ten milch cows to the poor of the parish forever, we may 
 suppose, of considerable generosity. 
 
 Among the epitaphs in the churchyard, two are not unfrequently 
 copied into the local newspapers. The first is on the stone of the man 
 who made the church clock : 
 
 This world's a city full of crooked streets ; 
 Death is ye market place where all men meet ; 
 If life was merchandise that men could buy. 
 Only the rich would live, the poor must die. 
 
 The other comes from the grave of a man who died in i860, aged 
 eighty-four years, and contains a grammatical error common enough in 
 
 this district : 
 
 From our hard afflictions 
 
 Unto a place of rest, the Lord has set us free ; 
 lie hath crowned us with a crown of joy, 
 A happy change for we. 
 
 In the year 1676 there was published in London a quarto of twenty- 
 three pages, containing a story which made no small stir in the day 
 when the events it narrates were enacted, and which even now is not for- 
 gotten in this neighborhood. As this is almost the only bit of history of 
 which this place can boast, I wish I could sit by one of the cottage doors, 
 in the shade of the trellised honeysuckle, and peruse the quaintly worded 
 and .startling lines, even though it were in the copy given in the Har- 
 leian Miscellany. Thus it runs : On Thursday, the sixteenth day of the 
 August of 1660, Mr. William Harrison, a gentleman of seventy years, of 
 much gravity, and of strong Puritanical proclivities, steward to the 
 Viscountess of Campden, started from Campden to collect rents at Char- 
 ingworth, the other side of Ebrington, from the tenants of his lady. As
 
 lo OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 be did not return in good time, his wife sent her servant, a John Perrj', to 
 meet him ; but nothing further that night was heard of either master 
 or man. The next day Harrison's son came irom Campden to Ebrington, 
 and, having found Perry — who, it seems, because of the darkness of the 
 night and a great mist, had not been able to pursue his search imtil morn- 
 ing — obtained some information of places where the steward had been 
 the day before. Nothing, however, was seen of him ; but soon they heard 
 of a poor woman leesing in the field, who had picked up on the highway 
 near a great furze bush, a hat, a neckband and a comb. These were at 
 once recognized as Mr. Harrison's, and, as the3' were more or less hacked 
 and blood-stained, it was concluded that the steward had been murdered. 
 Great excitement prevailed, and the country was ransacked far and near, 
 but the body could nowhere be found. John Perry was arrested on sus- 
 picion, and after having declared, first, that a tinker had killed his 
 master, and then that a gentleman's servant of the neighborhood had 
 robbed and murdered him, he confessed that the crime had been com- 
 mitted by his own mother and brother. He gave a strikingly circumstan- 
 tial account of the affair. His mother and brother, he said, had urged 
 him repeatedly to rob Mr. Harrison. They were poor, and when on this 
 occasion they heard of the steward going to collect the rents, they deter- 
 mined to waylay him. John consented to the robbery, but not to the mur- 
 der. In the dusky evening, when the unfortunate gentleman had come 
 within a bow-shot of Campden Church, Richard Perry, and Joan, the 
 mother, fell upon him. The steward cried out, "Ah, rogues, will you kill 
 me?" John, who had just come up, begged of his brother to save his 
 master's life. In vain ; the old man was strangled and his bodj' was, bj' 
 Richard Perry and his mother, thrown either into a mill-sink or into the 
 fish-ponds ; John knew not which. John went into the hen-roost for a 
 while, and afterwards he took his master's hat, band and comb, and put 
 them where they were found by the gleaner. The mill-sink was searched 
 and the fish-ponds were dragged, but without success. 
 
 Richard Perry and Joan were at once taken before the justice. They 
 protested their innocence, but John swore that he had told nothing but 
 the truth ; and on the way from the magistrate's house a ball of inkle — 
 coarse tape — fell out of Richard's pocket. It was found to have a slip- 
 knot at the end. On seeing it, John declared it was the string wherewith 
 Richard had strangled the steward. Moreover, the day after this inquiry, 
 being Sunday, the pri-soners were taken to church in Campden, the minister 
 having a de.sire to urge them to repentance and confession, and on their
 
 OVER THE IIIIJvS TO BROADWAY. " 
 
 return, as they passed Richard's house, two of his children met him, but 
 scarcely had they touched him, " when," according to the narrative, "on 
 a sudden, both their noses fell a bleeding, which was looked upon as 
 ominous." 
 
 So at the assizes the mother and her two sons were sentenced to be 
 hanged, and a few days after they were brought to the gallows erected on 
 Broadway hill in sight of Campden. We shall pass the spot by-and-by. 
 The mother, being reputed a witcli, and having, as was supposed, so 
 bewitched her sons that they could confess nothing more while she lived, 
 was first hanged. Richard died declaring his innocence and begging of 
 his brother to tell the truth. John, with "a dogged and surly carriage," 
 .said he was not obliged to confess anything ; but before the noose was 
 placed aromid his neck, he said he knew nothing either of the death or 
 of the whereabouts of his master. In the face of his former confession 
 no heed .seems to have been taken of this statement. 
 
 Thus was avenged the blood of this aged and staid steward, and 
 throughout these parts ev'erybody was pleased that justice had been done. 
 When the winds came down the hillside the bodies hanging by the high- 
 way swung to and fro, the chains, grown rusty with the rains and dews, 
 creaked, and the big kites and buzzards found it hard to hold on to their 
 prey. And the wayfarer looked up at the woman and her two sons — a 
 ghastly sight, now that their clothes were torn and their flesh well-nigh 
 off their bones — and he thanked God that judgment was meted out to 
 evil doers and resolved never to do aught that wotild bring him to so dire 
 an end. Now comes the curious part of this melancholy historJ^ Two 
 years after the execution of the Perrys the steward quietly walks into his 
 own house at Campden and to the surprise and consternation of everyone 
 tells an extraordinary tale. As I think of it I recall that scene in the 
 fifth act of Mrs. Centlivre's "The Man's Bewitched," where Sir Jeffrey 
 Constant, by some supposed to have been dead, appeared to his farmer 
 Roger and to his steward Trusty : look it tip, kind reader, and enjoy more 
 than the smell of brimstone. Mr. Harrison declared that instead of en- 
 countering the Perrys on the night of his supposed murder, he had been 
 seized by some strangers as he came through the narrow passage amongst 
 Ebrington furzes, who bound and blindfolded him and, carrj'ing him to 
 Deal, put him on board a ship going to Smyrna. Here he became slave 
 to a physician of eighty-seven years of age, who had been in England 
 and who now put him to keep his still-house and to pick cotton-wool ; but 
 the venerable Mahometan dying, Mr. Harrison contrived to escape and 
 after many strange adventures at last reached home.
 
 12 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 The mystery has never been cleared up. In the tract which gives 
 the story, notwithstanding his own plain and graphic description of his 
 capture, exile and return, doubts are expressed whether the steward was 
 ever out of England ; and this partly upon the ground that an old and an 
 infirm man was scarcely worth spiriting away, and that the price fetched 
 for him — seven pounds according to his account — would not have paid for 
 the trouble and charge of conveying him to the seaside. As the son 
 succeeded in the stewardship it was supposed by some that he may have 
 had part in the abduction, and yet it is hard to think that he should have 
 consented to his father's transportation or to the death of three innocent 
 persons. Others found it difficult to believe that Mr. Harrison purposely 
 absented himself from his employment and forsook his family, for he had 
 lived plentifully and happily in his servdce for over fiftj^ years ; he had the 
 reputation of being a just and a faithful servant, and in his house he left 
 behind him a considerable sum of his ladj-^'s money. But what about 
 Perr>''s confession ? He secured the hanging of himself, his mother and 
 his brother. This seems incredible, and the more we think of the whole 
 matter the darker it becomes. Now it can never be explained until the 
 judgment comes. 
 
 So profound a mystery seems out of place in a village where cats 
 walk on the tops of garden walls, catching flies and arching their backs 
 at caterpillars, and there appear no boys to molest them ; but human life 
 is at bottom much the same everywhere, as said an old plaj^-character : 
 "I have known poor Hob, in the country, that has worn hob-nails on's 
 shoes, have as much villany in's head as he that wears gold buttons in's 
 cap." Move aside the fresh- fallen leaves or the straw which the wind has 
 blown on the way, and you will discover the trail of the serpent — even 
 where the elm-shadows soften the glare and the hen chuckles as .she finds 
 grubs for her hungry brood. Every village has had its traged}' ; yet the 
 ivy creeps over the church-walls, the bumble-bee makes her nest in the 
 mud-wall like as the martin bores the sand-bank and the field-mouse 
 nestles among the roots of the hawthorn, and in the garden blooms the 
 great-faced sunflower and the sweet-.scented carnation. Nature goes on 
 the same as ever, and still the delver is in the ditch, and the fo.x hears the 
 tally-ho. It is well, and I shall not break my heart because in j'onder cot- 
 tage, where the swallows .sit on the chimney, which scarcely ri.ses above 
 the green and brown thatch, and the vine tendrils grow about the hinges 
 of the little diamond-paned windows, and indoors doubtless are coffers 
 where the moth sleeps and lays her eggs among.st bunches of lavender and
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 13 
 
 winter flannels, and the crockery is either warm yellow or willow blue, 
 and the cider flows through a wooden tap, — I say, I shall not break my 
 heart because once something was done in that house at which men's blood 
 ran cold. If I hear of such, I shall get out into the sunshine. I shall 
 thank God that for me the birds still sing, and the blue sky is the floor of 
 heaven. I shall still believe that life is "a rose with all its sweetest leaves 
 yet folded." 
 
 Therefore I am ready enough to believe that it was not through its fault 
 that Ebriugton became one of the haunts of the Night Coach. Probably the 
 gentleman who drives that equipage loves good roads and pleasant scenery, 
 and finding such in this neighborhood, he simply seeks here his own satis- 
 faction. It has never been ascertained who this individual is, but he has 
 been seen many times in different parts of the country. Years ago, a cobbler 
 at Acton, in Suffolk, on passing in the evening a park-gate, heard a rush- 
 ing and grinding of stones, with a cracking like a body of men walking 
 over dry sticks, for which, considering that not a breath of wind was stir- 
 ring, he could not account. So frightened did he become, that he stood 
 stock still. The sound came nearer. Then, suddenly the gates swung 
 open, and out came first two grooms on horses, and then a carriage drawn 
 by four large hor.ses, while two men rode behind. But, much to the hor- 
 ror of the poor cobbler, he discovered that none of the horsemen had a 
 head. As the coach passed him, he saw inside of it a gentleman and a 
 ladj% sitting side by side, but, like their attendants, without heads. The 
 whips cracked, and the strange procession rapidly passed out of .sight and 
 hearing. The shoemaker hastened home, and were it not that others 
 remembered that the old folks had spoken of having known people who 
 had seen the same phenomenon, it might be supposed that it had been a 
 dream. I am half-inclined to dislike a legend which represents gentle- 
 folks and their servants without heads ; but then these people lived in 
 olden time, and Bishop Latimer, in one of his sermons, says : ' ' There be 
 some gentlemen in England which think themselves born to nothing else 
 but to have good cheer in this world, to go a hawking and hunting." 
 Now the times have changed, and gentlemen not only have heads, but 
 they also use them for better things than shooting pigeons or worrying 
 foxes. The legend, however, is no idle tale. It is well known that, one 
 mi.sty morning in the year of grace 1780, a farmer, walking across the open 
 country near Ebrington, saw an old-fashioned coach drawn by six horses. 
 This did not .strike him as singular, until he saw the coach pass rapidly 
 through the furze bushes to the brink of the steepest part of the hill, on
 
 14 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 the other side of which there could be for it nothing but iustant destruc- 
 tion. The farmer hastened to the edge, but he could discover nothing — 
 not a fragment of either carriage or horse, and, what was as strange, not a 
 trace in the ground of a wheel or a hoof He knew that his eyes were 
 good, for darnel did not grow among his wheat, and darnel, as everybody 
 since the time of Plautus and Ovid knows, is bad for the sight. Then he 
 realized that he had seen the Night Coach. It is a pity that he had not 
 thought of this a little earlier, for it would have been a satisfaction to have 
 known whether this carriage had four wheels like most earthly coaches, 
 or only three as had that in which, driven by a long-no.sed driver, certain 
 monks were seen to cross the Rhine at Spires. No one seems, for many 
 years, to have caught a sight of this coach, though commonly enough 
 settle down upon this country-side thick fogs in which trees, ricks, cot- 
 tages and cattle are to the spectator distorted into shapes fantastical and 
 weird enough to inspire the simplest rustic imagination. I do not remem- 
 ber how many steeds there are to Thor's chariot, but I know that when 
 in this region the clouds lower and the flashings of the horses' hoofs are 
 seen, the rattle and the rumble of the wheels make one think that the day 
 of doom has come. 
 
 The villagers are superstitious ; when have meu hoed among cabbages 
 and drunk decoctions of dandelion roots, and not been so ? Said Terence, 
 .some two thousand years ago: "What unlucky prodigies have befallen 
 us ! A strange black dog came into the hou.se ! A snake fell from the tiles 
 through the skylight ! A hen crowed ! ' ' Wherever in a cottage you see 
 hanging a rope of onions, there you may be sure are to be found omens and 
 wonders ; the good man will take lieed over which shoulder he first sees the 
 new moon, and which boot he first draws on ; the housewife will watch the 
 coals in the fire, and look to it that she .spill not the salt, nor stand in the 
 cupboard the basins brim up. Not so long since, a man saw a great bird, 
 probably a hawk, hovering over a house not far from Ebrington ; he told 
 me somebody would die in that hou.se within three days. The day after, 
 the mistress thereof breathed her last. A generation since, mothers here- 
 abouts passed their children through a gap in a hawthorn hedge to cure 
 them of the whooping-cough, sick people swallowed quantities of .shot to 
 keep down the lungs, and old men carried in their pocket a potato to 
 prevent rheiunatism, while but a little earlier, folks would lay two straws 
 across to see if the ancient woman coming along would prove her witchery 
 by avoiding them. King James the First knew that witches could ride to 
 the East Indies in egg-shells, and change themselves into cats and hares ;
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. IS 
 
 and Sir Roger de Coverley told ' ' Spectator ' ' that Moll White— who got into 
 the dairymaid's churn, and who had a tabby-cat of bad repute — had been 
 often brought before him for making children spit pins and giving maids 
 the nightmare. 
 
 We will take a tumbler of hard cider — cooling and refreshing on a 
 day like this. Ebrington has some things that tend to the comfort of the 
 creature, and the good woman hands over the gate glasses of that beverage 
 which, as it comes from the finest and tartest of apples, is, on a summer 
 morning, sufficient to make a king happy. " Yabberton isn't such a bad 
 place after all, "she says, "is it? " " 'Tisgood sleeping in a whole skin," 
 quoth Dick Coomes, and we were afraid to say much, for Ebrington 
 people, knowing that the folk of the villages adjacent think lightly of their 
 wisdom, are very touchy. It is dangerous, for instance, to ask a native 
 the way to Ebrington, or the price of wheelbarrows. I am reminded of a 
 little colloquy I heard at Jersey City between two newsboys. They had 
 been having a few words, partly in fun and partly in earnest, and one 
 called out to the other : " Do you know what the rain said to the dust one 
 day ? " " No. " " If I come down upon you, I shall turn you into mud. ' ' 
 It is impossible to say what might happen to the man who should stir up 
 the ire of an inhabiter of this place. 
 
 The merry and naughty Poggio, who more than four hundred and 
 fifty years ago served as a secretarj^ in the Papal Court, and who ought 
 therefore to have laughed less and to have been more circumspect, gave 
 the world some curious tales, over which they who know the Latin in 
 which he had the consideration to write them, are apt to become hilarious. 
 Among these facetiae was one of a peasant, who, having worked in his 
 field till noon, unyoked his oxen, tied his plough upon his ass, which he 
 bestrode, and started for home. After a while the rustic perceived that 
 the load was too great for the poor donkey ; so he alighted, placed the 
 plough on his own shoulder, and mounted again his donkey, saying : 
 "Thou canst get on now ; for it is no longer thou, it is I who carry the 
 plough." The same author tells of the man who, to please others, first, on 
 a donkey which he was taking unladen to market to sell, set his son ; then 
 put off the youth and mounted himself; then had the boy get up beside him ; 
 and at last, both getting off, tied the donkey's feet, hung the beast on a 
 staff, one end of which he put on his son's shoulder and the other on his 
 own, and thus proceeded on his way. Irritated by the further banter of 
 the spectators, he pitched the ass, with his legs tied, over a bridge into 
 the river and went home. He pleased nobody and lost his donkey into 
 the bargain.
 
 i6 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 The story runs that a mau once walked from Ebrington to Campden 
 with a wheelbarrow on his back. This he did to please himself, and as 
 the daj^ was very warm his pleasure was not unalloyed with pain. Next 
 to tumbling over a barrow in the dark comes carrying one ; try either, 
 and experience will not only teach, but also satisfy. At the end of his 
 journey, putting his burden down and wiping the .sweat from his face, 
 when he was asked why he had not wheeled the barrow along the ground 
 he replied : "I'd nur a thawt o' that." This gave rise to the following 
 precious rhyme, which I carefully took down at the dictation of one of our 
 company — first observing that in some versions the first line, instead of 
 the word "fool," has the word " maulm," which is a local expression for 
 a stupid person : 
 
 A Yubberton fool to Campden went : 
 
 To buy a wheelbarrow was his intent ; 
 
 And the barrow he carried from town to town, 
 
 For fear the wheel should bruise the ground. 
 
 Ebrington had its noodles as well as Gotham in Nottinghamshire, and 
 Belmont in Switzerland. Odd drolleries are told of the place where they 
 soaped — some say boiled— the donkey to get his liarness off, but they are 
 not peculiar to this village. How these stories came to be attached here 
 I do not know. But, utterly unaware that the same legends have been 
 told elsewhere and from time immemorial, the neighbors declare that it was 
 Ebrington people who devised the plan of hurdling or pinning in the 
 cuckoo so as to secure perpetual summer, and that it was an Ebrington 
 man who, to get a cheese, proceeded to rake out of the pond the reflection 
 of the moon. It is not here known that another man, who likewise mis- 
 took the figure of the moon for a green cheese, fetched his friends to help 
 him to draw it out. They raked until a passing cloud sank the cheese, 
 and then went home sad and disappointed. In another instance, as we 
 are reminded by the author of the "Book of Noodles," certain towns- 
 people impri.soned an ass for drinking up the moon, whose reflection, ap- 
 pearing in the water, was covered with a cloud while the ass was drink- 
 ing. The next day the burghers met together to consider the matter, and 
 to prescribe punishment for the beast according to his deserts. Then it 
 was declared that as it was not fit the town .should lose its moon, the ass 
 .should be cut open and the moon he had swallowed taken out of him, 
 which was done accordingly. This story has not reached Ebrington ; the 
 thistles there are still fresh. 
 
 On one occasion, desirous of imitating the illuminations which .some-
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. li 
 
 times are made at Shipston, the libringtonians secured four boltings of 
 straw to the pinnacles of the church tower, and set them on fire. A bolt- 
 ing is as much as can be bound or bolted by a band of straw. The blaze 
 did more than amuse the village. Soon the lead on the roof began to 
 melt, and the old women ran out with their buckets to catch the soft water. 
 It is said that traces of this escapade were discovered at the restoration of 
 the church. At another time the people spread manure around the church 
 tower, that it might be forced to grow as high as the one at Campden. A 
 heavy rain fell in the night, the manure sank, and the next morning every- 
 body was satisfied that the scheme had been entirely successful. This last 
 experiment has been tried elsewhere. 
 
 We must hasten away from Ebrington, or we shall never this day get 
 over the ground laid out for us. The cows beneath the trees have a busy 
 time with the flies. From the highway by Puddlicote Hill we behold the 
 church tower of Chipping Campden, rising nobly from amongst the 
 trees and giving earnest that in that sacred fane, and in the town to 
 which it belongs, there is much which will delight the artist, the anti- 
 quary and the historian, and stir with pride the inmost soul both of 
 the Churchman and of the lover of village peace and beauty. The hopes 
 excited are not disappointed. Chipping Campden, as it is one of the 
 oldest, .so is it also one of the most interesting towns in this region. 
 
 Splendid are the trees by the roadside. Like arches, their thick, leafy 
 l>rauches spread over the way and break the force of the sunbeams. The 
 churchyard is high above the road, and around the steps by the gate at 
 the northwest corner is a group of children and women. Further along 
 the western front, at the principal entrance to the churchyard, stands a 
 carriage ; near it are more women and children, chattering and laughing 
 after the manner of simple country folk. An aged man, in gaiters and 
 smock frock, has one eye on us and the other on the jackdaws perched so 
 gravely on the great tower. We get out of our wagonette and discover 
 that the cause of the excitement is a wedding ; whereupon we hasten into 
 the church, for we are not free from the curiosity occasioned by such an 
 event. This is the third we have chanced to see this summer. On Christ- 
 mas Day, 1665, Mr. Samuel Pepys had a similar pleasure, and he wrote : 
 ' ' The young people so merry- one with another ! and strangle to see what 
 delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our 
 condition, every man and woman gazing and smiling at them." Samuel 
 had some experience at match-making, as all readers of his diary know 
 well ; he was cynical on the subject. As we pass by the tombstones into
 
 18 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 the church, snatches come into our mind of Sir John Suckling's ballad 
 upon a wedding ; we think of Whitsun-ales and mice-like feet, and Kath- 
 erine pears and — rapid association — of Pretty Bessie, the Blind Beggar's 
 daughter of Bednal- Green. 
 
 The young couple, accompanied by a youth and a maiden of the same 
 age and by the parish clerk, stand at the entrance of the choir. A 
 few people are .scattered about the church. The priest is reading the 
 Preface to the Marriage OfiSce — a plain, straightforward homily in which 
 considerable information is given in a few minutes. It is not seemly to 
 have Rachel married before L,eah, and I hope, therefore, if the bride has 
 an elder sister, that she has been warned already to be " not afraid with 
 any amazement, ' ' or, to use the old saying, that she has visited the church- 
 porch, otherwise the elder maiden might unhappily wonder at the number 
 and species of apes which will be allotted her, and, perhaps, in carrying 
 out ancient custom, be tempted to make a maulm of herself by dancing 
 barefooted at the wedding-feast, and earlier by soiling her green stockings 
 at a jig in the hog-trough. No doubt the bees have been told of this 
 wedding, aud their hives have been decorated with a ribbon or a marygold. 
 The sun shines bright enough to make any bride happy ; and as, so we 
 may presume, she was not present when the bans were published, and 
 this is not a Sunday, and no grave is open in the churchyard, she has 
 much to encourage her in the hope that her life will be long and joyful. 
 Her groom, however, is not a little shy. This is a new experience for 
 him, and his coat is tight across the shoulders and rather short- waisted. 
 He speaks diflSdently, as though the august rite had overpowered him — 
 for the clergyman speaks solemnly and sympathetically. These country 
 parsons are in touch with their parishioners, knowing their joys and sor- 
 rows, their weaknesses and, better than all else, their virtues ; and they 
 impart to their ministrations an impressive awe and a becoming dignity. 
 It is not often, indeed, that people married according to the Anglican 
 ritual — that is to say, when the ceremony is performed by a priest before 
 the altar, and the sacramental and holy nature of wedlock is recognized, — 
 venture to seek for a divorce ; among these peasants, never. Most of the 
 petitions which come before the secular courts — which alone take cogniz- 
 ance of .such matters — are for the di.sannulling of civil or separatist mar- 
 riages. This man responds with a .seriousness and resolution which 
 become one who stands in the presence of Almighty God. By-and-by the 
 parson holds out the book for the ring. The groom is taken unawares. 
 For the moment he has evidently forgotten that part of the ceremony,
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 19 
 
 though as likely as not he made a journey to Stratford especially to buy 
 the circlet of gold that shall both adorn the heart-veined finger of the 
 bride and express the endlessness and reality of his own affection. Puri- 
 tanism was as bitter against wedding rkigs as against mincepies ; but no 
 English girl would think of being married without this token and pledge. 
 With difficulty the blushing youth got the ring out of his waistcoat 
 pocket, and when he had done so, it was so tightly bound in and out with 
 tissue paper that it took some time to get it ready to put on the bride's 
 finger. In the meanwhile the girl's neck and cheeks reddened and the 
 clergyman's patience weakened. The parish clerk tried to help the hap- 
 less groom, so did the bridesmaid ; but more haste, less speed. At la.st, 
 much to the relief of all concerned, it reached its destined place, there to 
 remain, if evil was to be averted, for at least a year and a day. 
 
 Did we laugh at the incident ? Now, my good reader, you must not 
 suppose either that we would do such a thing in church, even behind a 
 pillar, or that it may be said of us " The priest forgets that e'er he was a 
 clerk." Some years ago, when in Toronto, the writer officiated at a wed- 
 ding in a church packed with people. When the time came for the giving 
 of the ring, the groom hesitated, then searched his pockets once and again, 
 and then got the best man to see if he had not the ring about him. The 
 excitement in the congregation increased. Some one ofiered to lend a 
 ring for the occasion, but the bride would have no substitute. At last the 
 groom remembered that he had put the ring into a waistcoat pocket which 
 he had changed when dressing for church. Nothing was to be done but 
 for the best man to take a carriage and drive to the groom's house. Then 
 followed fifteen of the most painful minutes man could ever experience. 
 The situation was ludicrous ; but witnesses are not wanting to testify that 
 not the faintest ripple stirred the stubble through which the end of the 
 pen has been thrust more than once during the writing of this paragraph. 
 The fun took place in an arm chair a little later. 
 
 The church is very neat, light and clean. It occupies the site of one 
 built much earlier, for Campdeu was a town of considerable condition in 
 the first Norman reign, and there is evidence which tends to show its 
 existence at least four centuries before the writing of Domesday. A more 
 instructive piece of Perpendicular Gothic could not be desired. Happily 
 it is in good condition and gives evidence of being held by trustworthy 
 hands. There are some monuments to the lords of Campdeu in the chapel 
 at the east end of the south aisle : one an altar tomb under a canopy sup- 
 ported by twelve marble pillars, and on the pediments and tablets adorned
 
 20 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 with the arms of the good couple buried therein, and inscriptions to their 
 memories. Some have thought that this monument was by Nicholas 
 Stone ; but there is little evidence for this assxunption, unless it be 
 claimed that at that time the great sculptor was the only one in England 
 who could do a really fine and artistic piece of work. Against the wall at 
 the foot of this tomb is a curious monument representing a cabinet with 
 open folding doors, within which are statues of a lord and lady. In the 
 chancel is the largest and seventh oldest brass in the county of Gloucester, 
 commemorating William Grevil, who therein is described as the "flower 
 of the wool merchants of all England," and who, having built this church, 
 died in 1401. The bandage around a lady's finger in one of the busts, and 
 which was probably a purse thus carried in the early part of the seven- 
 teenth century, gave rise to a tradition like to one concerning another like 
 it in Westminster Abbey : that she died from the prick of a needle. There 
 are a few busts, mural tablets and brasses, as well as monuments other 
 than these, which I had not time to note. 
 
 Many interesting bits of information of the church and town may be 
 seen in a book, entitled " Rambles among the Cotswolds," just reprinted 
 from the Eveshatn Jorirnal by its author, Mr. Ernest Belcher, Assistant 
 Master of the Grammar School in this town, and one of the most indus- 
 trious and worthy antiquaries of the neighborhood, even though his years 
 be comparatively few. The articles came under my notice as they appeared 
 in the columns of the newspaper just mentioned, and I am glad to be in- 
 debted to him for some facts and suggestions concerning two or three of 
 the places mentioned in this chapter. From him I get an inscription, long 
 since uncipherable, in which a worthy Thomas Smyth, lord of the manor 
 about the middle of the fifteenth century, commemorated his offspring. 
 He, his wife and children are buried in a canopied tomb in the chancel, 
 and on it are effigies of the whole family ; and once were these lines : 
 
 Little pretty Betty, Dorothy and Anue, 
 Mary and Moselyn, and little Gizzey Ganime, 
 Richard and Robert, Geoffrey and John, 
 Edward, William, and little pretty Tom ; 
 These are all Mr. Smith's children, every one. 
 Besides two still-born infants, 
 A daughter and a sou. 
 
 After walking around the churcli and through the graveyard, we 
 again got into our wagonette and proceeded on our way. The village
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 21 
 
 consists mainly of one long street, but, as we drove through, we perceived 
 that it is of no ordinary kind. The houses are, for the most part, substan- 
 tially built of stone. Many of them are good specimens of Elizabethan 
 and Jacobean style. The market-hou.se, .standing in tlie middle of the 
 street, is deserving of close study, and scarcely less interesting are the 
 almost worn-out dairy-rests. Among the inns, ancient and quaint enough 
 to satisfy such as know in the good oldsen.se how to take their ease therein, 
 are the " Old Eight Bells," — the number of bells in the church tower, — 
 "The Live and Let Live," and "The Rose and Crown." In bygone days 
 " Ye antient towne of Chippyng Campedene" was a leading mart for Cots- 
 wold .sheep and wool, as is shown by the fact that one wool merchant be- 
 came Lord of Campden and built the church, and other merchants lie 
 buried within the consecrated walls. Here in the autumn of 1651, after 
 the battle of Worcester, the fugitive Prince Charles, one fair day, had a 
 quarrel with a farmer and narrowly escaped detection. The Puritans and 
 the Royalists .sought either to gain or retain possession of the town, and, 
 in a letter written in 1644 by a royalist officer, among other things is the 
 curious line : " We are taking great paines with spades, shovels and mat- 
 tocks, planting the Gospel." Good soul, it would take more than his and 
 his comrades' pains to plant the Gospel among a class of people who argued 
 that because St. Paul wrote for a cloak, bishops intho.se early days wore no 
 lawn .sleeves ! Now a beautiful and mellow old age has fallen upon the 
 place, with all its gentle loveliness, and it rests in a happy and an enviable 
 peace. 
 
 There is contentment hereabouts, I do not question. The meek .shall 
 inherit the earth — and old Tyndale gave some advice on this .subject, which 
 in these villages was followed somewhat in his day, and for aught I know 
 the like practice is not now unknown. "If the gentlemen," he says, 
 ' ' that dwell about thee be tyrants, be ready to help to fetch home their 
 wood, to plough their land, to bring in their harvest, and .so forth ; and 
 let thy wife visit my lady now and then with a couple of fat hens, or a fat 
 capon, and such like, and then thoushalt possess all the remnant in rest." 
 And, as though this counsel was of prime importance, he repeats it in 
 slightly different form : "Give the bailiff or like officer now a capon, now 
 a pig, now a goose, and so to thy landlord likewise ; or, if thou have a great 
 farm, now a lamb, now a calf ; and let thy wife visit thy landlady three 
 or four times in the year with spiced cakes, and apples, pears, cherries, and 
 such like. And be thou ready with thine oxen or horses, three or four, or 
 half a dozen days in the year, to fetch home their wood, or to plough their
 
 22 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 land : j'ea, and if thou have a good horse, let them have him good cheap, 
 or take a worse for him ; and they shall be thy shield and defend thee." 
 And the astute reformer adds : ' ' Thereto thou mayest with wisdom get of 
 them that which shall recompense all that thou doest to them." I am not 
 sure that any modern scholar, writing an exposition of the Go.spels, would 
 incorporate in his notes such an admonition as this ; but he might go 
 farther away from human nature and do worse. Were I ever to write a 
 commentary on the Sacred Scriptures — and God forbid that I should add 
 to the blocks of books which now perplex the little-minded — I believe I 
 should quote this passage from Tyndale's Exposition of St. Matthew, so 
 that I might, if possible, vex the soul of the democrat and leveller. My 
 forefathers gave ducks to the lords of whom they rented their lands — with 
 profit, I assure you ; and Parson Ball, hundreds of years since, as you may 
 find out, if you choose to read the pleasant story of the Life and Death 
 of Jack Straw, used to sing : 
 
 But merrily with the world it went, 
 When men ate berries of the hawthorn-tree. 
 
 But Tyndale was done to death ; bj' whom it matters nothing now. There 
 are lots of people in the world to-day, who would burn up any man who 
 should teach such lessons as the above, and who would destroy without 
 compunction the quiet life of this village and the kindly relations which 
 exist therein between the parson and his flock, and between the folk of the 
 great house and the people of the cottage. Before long the smock-frocks 
 of the old men and the scarlet cloaks of the old women will be seen no 
 more, and, unless better times come in, instead of the tenant giving his 
 landlord a capon or a fat hen, he will steal from his landlord the bread 
 which the landlord should have for himself and family. Nevertheless, let 
 us say that in this quiet, old-fashioned town there is contentment. 
 
 In the course of the next four miles after leaving Campden, as we 
 ascend the high lands, the hedges disappear and stone walls take their 
 place. The higher we go, the more extensive and picturesque the land- 
 scape in our rear. Far away, Brailes Hill bounds in the verdant, varied 
 and lovely country. But when we reach the highest point of the Cots- 
 wolds hereabouts — Broadway Beacon — a thousand and fifty feet above the 
 sea, we behold stretched out before us a panorama such as nowhere else 
 has greeted us, and .such as England, rich as that country is in beautiful 
 scenery, nowhere else excels. In 1798 was built on this elevated point, 
 a tower from whose battlemented heights the view is considerably en-
 
 5M 
 « 
 
 m 
 o 
 
 at
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 23 
 
 hanced. Though the tower itself is modern, it is a fair imitation of an 
 ancient castellated keep — hectagonal, with three turrets. It is guarded by 
 an aged dame, whose bright-faced little granddaughter accompanies visit- 
 ors up the spiral staircase and points out to them, in the valley below, vil- 
 lages and other places of interest. And enough there is to show on clear 
 days such as this, when only the faintest haze rests upon even the far-away 
 mountains of Wales. There, in the wide plain, are to be seen the three 
 spires of Coventry and the chimneys of Warwick ; still farther off is the 
 Shropshire Wrekin. Nearer at hand lies Bredon Hill, lovely foreground 
 to the even lovelier Malverns. And there, at our feet, lies the fertile vale 
 of Evesham — a ver}^ garden of the Lord, that no Italian plain, no, nor 
 for that matter, no land bounded by the Euphrates and the Tigris, by 
 Hiddekel or Pison, can be more beautiful, more rich in field and wood- 
 land, in verdant knoll and leaf-embowered streamlet, in peaceful village, 
 noble mansion and tree-nestled farm. To those who love Nature, God, 
 once in a while, vouchsafes a picture of supremest power and grace. He 
 has done so to us at this time. A perfect day, and a mingling of richest, 
 softest colors, romance, vision, joy — satisfying and heart-stirring. 
 
 The girl just referred to had an eye for the unsurpassed loveliness 
 around. She enthusiastically indicated its brightest spots ; but she added, 
 knowingly and pathetically, "The tower is awfully cold and lonely in the 
 winter-time." We can well imagine the days when the wind sweeps along 
 the bare hillside and the rain beats against the lattice. Then comes Mel- 
 ancholy ; and in the dismal gloom, far from sight and sound of cheerful 
 company, one feels that life has some depths one cares not even to look 
 into. 
 
 When we had exhausted the time at our disposal, reluctantly enough 
 we descended the stairs, wished our little guide good-bye, and proceeded 
 in our carriage to the highway. On the hill-top we passed the ancient and 
 .solitary inn called the "Fish," and began the steep and dangerous de- 
 scent towards Broadway. By the way, unless the keeper of the " Fish " 
 paints his sign, before long nobody will be able to tell whether he intends 
 to display a tunny or an elephant. At present the figure looks very like a 
 pilchard smitten with erysipelas. Two men, .standing by the door as we 
 drove on, appeared sadly in need of a box of Pear's .soap and a case of 
 Redditch needles. 
 
 In a few minutes we entered Broadway. I had never been here be- 
 fore, and high as were my expectations, yet as we drove down that quaint 
 and venerable street — the broad way — my heart fluttered with joy. It is
 
 24 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 hard to describe that which seizes the imagination and enlivens and quick- 
 ens thoughts. The houses are mostly of stone, some of them being over 
 two hundred, and a few over three hundred years old. There are high- 
 pitched gables, curious finials, mullioned windows, leaded casements with 
 tiny panes, mighty chimney-stacks, and strangely-fashioned doorways. 
 In front of the brown-hued dwellings are gardens in which appear yew 
 trees shaped in odd devices, and over the low stone walls the hollyhock 
 displays its gaudy colors, or the woodbine .spreads its fragrant bloom. 
 Between these walls and the roadway is a broad and an irregular stretch 
 of gra.ss, making a pleasing foreground. On this grass, here and there, a 
 few children were playing and two or three artists were making sketches. 
 Under a wall, beyond which a mighty rosebush was in flower, a cow was 
 quietly chewing the cud. We move leisurely along lest we should disturb 
 the peace, or by any chance break a cobweb which some spider should 
 have cast across the road. 
 
 Now there is in the village of Broadway an hostelry of some four 
 hundred years' standing, where, over a mug of nut-brown and with a 
 church-warden pipe — if you choose to smoke — one can easily transplant 
 one's self from the prosaic and comfortable present into the stirring com- 
 monwealth times, or even into the brilliant days when bluff Harry reigned ; 
 nay, for the matter of that, with scarcely greater effort, into earlier ages 
 still. The very look of the place is to the lover of history an inspiration ; 
 a peep through the doorway is sufficient to make one forget the warm sun- 
 shine and such commonplace things as grand hotels and railways, and to 
 see at once red-faced yeomen, verderers and archers, merry maidens and 
 sighing swains, trooping along the low-ceiled passageway in the picturesque 
 costumes of the days that shall never come again, and creating a babble of 
 noise that mine host, jolly and rotund, finds it impossible to quell. In 
 the days when Edward the Sixth was king, the hou.se was known as the 
 White Hart Inn — pleasant suggestion of the times when in the woodlands 
 and parks not so far away, the huntsman sped the arrow after the fleeting 
 buck or doe ; within the present century the property fell into new 
 hands, and the name was changed to the " L,ygon Arms," for which bit of 
 sacrilege all good Christians should pray that repentance may be vouch- 
 safed the perpetrators. Here, one Saturday in the March of 1645, came 
 Charles I ; and here, one night just before the battle of Worcester, in the 
 September of 165 1, slept Oliver Cromwell. The room occupied by the 
 latter worthy is still indicated — a delightful old chamber with some bits of 
 former ornamentation and tokens of pre.sent comfort. No doubt other
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 25 
 
 celebrities have honored these walls with their presence, and, beyond per- 
 adventure, no matter what his rank or station in life may be, he who can- 
 not eat his beef and drink his ale with all felicity within these dear old 
 rooms and under these timbered ceilings, ought forthwith to be consigned 
 to the limbo of vegetarians and total abstainers — greater misery than which 
 it would be hard to find for mortal man. And here in the one main 
 thoroughfare of Broadway stands, as I repeat it has stood for the last four 
 or five hundred years, the quaint old inn. I look at the dripstones over 
 its windows, at the gables with the little diamond-paued casements, at the 
 ivy creeping over the grey stone walls, at the chimney-stacks, at the sign 
 post, where swing the arms of the people who loved themselves better 
 than they honored the past, at the front door over which projects a lamp, 
 and I know that here the heart will be touched by associations of which 
 a king might be glad. This impression is deepened as we enter the cool 
 and pleasant hallway. The shade and flag flooring are refreshing after 
 this warm drive. Some one asked Khoja, " What musical instrument do 
 you like best?" And he made answer, " I am very fond of the music of 
 plates and saucepans. ' ' At my behest the courteous and gentle hostess 
 promised to have dinner ready in a little while ; a good, plain dinner of 
 roast mutton, green peas and new potatoes, served up in a style that old 
 John Travers, who lived here in the reign of Philip and Mary, would have 
 delighted in — barring the wooden trenchers, the leathern ale-jacks, and a 
 few other trifles of like kind. 
 
 The horse takes to his oats and we start off for a stroll through the 
 village, intending to be back at the Lygon Arms for our dinner, as the old 
 saying hath it, in pudding time— an allusion, as my intelligent reader 
 quickly apprehends, to the ancient and economical custom at dinner of 
 having pudding first ; and therefore meaning that we shall have our legs 
 under the mahogany when the heat from the dishes is fiercest and most 
 savory. We turn in the direction of the Church of St. Eadburga, which 
 church, with a commendable desire for the health of the people of Broad- 
 way, the Abbots of Pershore, some six hundred years since, built a little 
 over a mile from the town. In those days the people on their way to 
 Divine service had opportunity to see the beauties of nature and to hear 
 the small birds sing, and some good soul, laden with the blessings of this 
 life, had a chance to further his joy in the next world and to help his 
 neighbors in this, by laying a convenient and pleasant footpath from the 
 village to the sanctuary. The footpath once made would be kept in re- 
 pair, for the clergy then held it to be a religious duty and an act of mercy
 
 26 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 for the people to mend their ways. This church is now disused, and about 
 half a century since a new edifice was opened on a spot more accessible to 
 the inhabitants, as the guidebooks put it ; a wise thing, perhaps, for people 
 do not care in these days to expend much effort in serving God, and dis- 
 senting tabernacles are painfully convenient. The street of Broadway is 
 about three-quarters of a mile long, and in an old manuscript it is spoken 
 of as ' ' the broad and high way from the shepherd cottes on the mounted 
 wolds down to the most fruitful vale of Evesham." The manor is as old 
 as the days of the Mercian kings, and from the tenth century to the six- 
 teenth century it belonged to the good fathers of Per.shore. In those days 
 of clerkly ownership Broadway flourished. Indeed, till the railway came 
 into the land, the place was a "bustling thoroughfare." The horn of the 
 post-boy awakened the echoes, and the coach filled with passengers from 
 far-off "Lunnon," and drawn by four sturdy and well-rubbed horses, 
 rumbled and rattled twice a week along the road. Then sprightly Molly, 
 first chambermaid at the White Hart, and, for sweet, laughing eyes and 
 pouting lips and slender waist, by far the prettiest of all the village girls, 
 got from Roger, the coachman, a picture of good Queen Charlotte and 
 another of a sailor, with one arm around a fat woman and the other waving 
 a cocked hat, and out of his mouth a bit of tape, on which were the words 
 he was supposed to be uttering : " Britannia and Betsy forever." These 
 pictures Roger brought all the way down in his great-coat pocket, and he 
 gave them to Molly behind the pantry door, with just the nicest squeeze 
 and kiss that ever stalwart youth offered to blushing maiden. Perhaps he 
 loved Molly best of all the girls he knew along the road ; and she, simple- 
 hearted — for she had never in all her life seen the other side of the hill — 
 thought how nice he looked in his high boots, and wondered if she should 
 ever have her hair done up in a tower of glory like the Queen's. Those 
 were merry times ; but now Roger and Molly are both dead, and the .stage- 
 coach is gone, and the post-boy's horn is no more heard, and the place is 
 a deserted village. Perhaps in the present quiet, sleepy life, many would 
 not see anything to be thankful for ; but I for one love to think that earth 
 has yet a few spots where the apple-blossoms are free from the soot of 
 factory chimneys and the children can look for elves under the dock- 
 leaves. Certainly in this warm noontide the street is still enough. A 
 wheelbarrow stands by the wayside, but the man to whom it belongs is sit- 
 ting in the doorway of the inn near the green, leisurely quaffing a mug of 
 — well, small beer, perhaps. We turn aside to see the grange in which 
 once the abbots of Pershore and other members of their fraternity u.sed
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 27 
 
 to pass part of tlie sixraiuer months. Broadway was even then a health- 
 restoring place. This house is supposed, and fairly enough, to have been 
 built early in the thirteenth century, and as it is in fair preser\'ation it 
 affords an example of the country home of a well-to-do ecclesiastic of the 
 period. Since the monks went out the building has been so arranged as 
 to serve for cottages, but pleasant memories freely flow when we enter the 
 cellar, and later on the hall and the oratory. There are now neither wine 
 butts in the chamber on the one side of the hall nor prayer-stalls in the 
 chamber on the other ; the folk who have lived there of late have nothing 
 to do with malmsey or with beads. But what glorious times when my 
 lord abbot held his court there ! I do not believe that the rich and the 
 poor, the great and the small, ever loved one another as they did then. 
 Of course they quarrelled — even brothers do that ; and sometimes fight, 
 too, but the relationship remains. There were disputes to settle between 
 the steward and the tenants : this man failed in the number of days he was 
 bound to plough the abbot's land, and this man came short of the geese 
 he should have furnished against last Michaelmas ; and therefore their 
 holdings are in danger. But my lord is merciful — as sons of the earth, 
 commonly called temporal lords, are not — and he forgives the debt, at the 
 same time reminding those standing bj' of a certain parable bearing on the 
 subject. And he gathers together his friends and his neighbors, his ser- 
 vants and his villains, and a right merry afternoon and evening they have 
 beneath this old timbered roof. I would give much could I but go back 
 in time and behold the merry souls : all dead and gone now, but none 
 the worse, I trow, for what they did in the ancient hall. Perhaps the 
 men then knew as well as do men now, how to cut large thongs out of 
 other folks' leather ; but we .should forget the ill and remember only the 
 good, and such I shall do as I picture to myself the portly churchman and 
 the worthy yeoman of the Kite's Nest knocking their blackjacks together 
 and roaring merrily over some exploit of grave Father Ambrose, the ab- 
 bot's chaplain, — a man, by the waj', who, while he never laughed himself, 
 tickled most mercilessly the cockles of his neighbor's heart. But we must 
 get back to Chapel Street. 
 
 The walk along the road to the old church was not simply pleasant, 
 it was charming. I wish I could have such a saunter every Sunday 
 morning ; certainly I should afterwards .sing Venite and Benedicite more 
 heartily. The hedges were thick and .shady, and towards the end of our 
 journey the trees were more frequent. There is a fine avenue near the 
 churchyard gate. Three or four steps to the top of the wall and then
 
 28 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 down into God's acre. The wind from the valley lightly swayed the tree 
 boughs ; the sunbeams played hide and seek in the tall grass and among 
 the gravestones. A dragon-fly, splendid of wing, darted across our path 
 and once a toad hopped from under the chancel wall ; but there was noth- 
 ing else of life — not even a sheep. We were alone with the dead. We 
 wander hither and thither, striving to decipher the inscriptions on some of 
 the time-darkened and displaced monuments. I did not see such a legend 
 as Nicholas Breton proposed for his ' ' Merry Honest Fellow ' ' : 
 
 Here lies a man, like hives that have no honey — 
 An honest creature, but he had uo money. 
 
 But from a stone erected to the memory of a matron who died June 
 24, 1784, at the age of eighty, I read the following lines: 
 
 Reader, here lies a Woman of such are left too few 
 The Poor One's friend and not the richest' s foe 
 The virtuous wife and tender mother too 
 Whose deeds were ever faithful good & true 
 Beneath this stone lies slumbering in the dust 
 Go live like her that when Death .... 
 Your work may 
 
 The lower part of the stone was too far under ground for me to make 
 out the rest ; but my reader suffers no serious loss. I give this because it 
 is the best bit of obituary poetry I could find in the churchyard, and there- 
 fore furnishes a proof that the Broadway people are more given to practical 
 things^to sheep and apples, and to good, fat farmlands, for which I 
 heartily love them. 
 
 I know not whether the Saint after whom the church is named was 
 she who is remembered as second of the abbesses of St. Peter's, Gloucester, 
 and who died in A. D. 735, or some other of the several Eadburgas of an- 
 cient fame ; but the church, cruciform, is a fair specimen of the thirteenth 
 century work. It is strongly built and looks as though it would last for 
 many a long year yet. The chancel appears to be as long, though not 
 quite as high, as the nave. The square, plain tower, very well propor- 
 tioned, rises from the middle of the building, and the nave has on either 
 side a small ai.sle, which aisles with the tower alone are battlemented, the 
 other roofs being highly pitched. We looked through one of the windows 
 into the building — bare and dusty ; but it is to be hoped that some day 
 evensong at least may again be heard therein. 
 
 One always feels more or less inclined to moralize in an old church-
 
 a 
 
 & 
 
 (5 
 O 
 
 £1 
 
 
 
 !H
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 29 
 
 yard. The temptation, as we rest for a few minutes under the trees, comes 
 upon me, even though I keep steadily in mind that book of Hcrvey which 
 once deliglitcd and enlivened so many ancient ladies of my acquaintance — 
 " Meditations among the Tombs." I used to read it myself and take a 
 pleasure in its doleful lines, and its suggestions of musty, damp charnel- 
 houses. Drelincourt was another precious tome that pleased the old folks ; 
 but somehow or other, as I get nearer the time when over me some one 
 will say the " Forasmuch," as I have said it over many and many a silent 
 brother or sister, I do not care to read such things. Perhaps I do not 
 think of them as often as I did when passing through the .sentimental years 
 of youth ; certainly I do not preach such tender and tearful sermons as I 
 did when but a young priest. Is it that then I did not hesitate so much 
 as I do now to touch the heart's red sores ? Experience in the pastoral 
 office has not made me more bold in the face of great grief There was a 
 time when I could speak to one afflicted ; now I have to keep silent. And 
 these Christian people who lie around me once came down the road to 
 church. I see them as they wander along in twos and threes— some gay 
 as the blossom on the hedge or the blackbird in the orchard, and others 
 sober and thoughtful. Homely they may have been, but sorrow was to 
 them as deep as it is to tho.se of higher culture ; even the dandelion bleeds 
 when you break its stalk, and a tree that has all its days grown among.st 
 other trees soon dies when its fellows are cut down and it is left to itself 
 Each man had his own life, little, perhaps, to the world, but to him very 
 great ; and in that life there was much mingling of good and bad, of joy 
 and sorrow, of hope and doubt, and of all the elements that go to make 
 humanity either happy or sad. It is so now. And Sunday after Sunday 
 the bells rang the villagers to the .sanctuary, and Sundaj' after Sunday 
 they turned their .steps hitherward. The day came to each one when he 
 went not back again. 
 
 There is a delight past description in turning over the leaves of an old 
 parish register and in deciphering the entries therein. This pleasure will 
 not be mine at this time. But long ago I picked up a cop}' of Mr. John 
 Noake's "Rambler in Worcestershire" — a scarce, but most delightful 
 book, brimful of interest, written forty years since — and in the pages of that 
 worthy antiquary are given some extracts, curious enough to the curiously 
 inclined. Thus we discover that in the Broadway register, which begins 
 with the year 1539, .some scribe perpetuated his dislike for Henrj' VIII by 
 making such entries as the following : " These vacancies were occasioned 
 by the small and insignificant maintenance and vicarage afforded, great part
 
 30 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 of the parish being abbey lands, which, together with the tithes, were 
 disposed of blindly, without regard to the credit and support of religion, 
 
 b}' that lustful beast, King Henrj' VIII, who quarrelling with • y' 
 
 Pope, that he was not by that man of sin allowed in his sinfull change of 
 wives, destroyed the religious houses, gave way y'' lands to such creatures 
 as flattered him in his robberies, lewdness, and murders : et nunc inferno 
 docet excviplo niiscrabili qnam imp — sit sacro Dei vocrarc." After much 
 similar abuse, the writer, bent on making history, proceeds: "The 
 improved rents of abbeys amounted to ^1,500,000 per annum, yet no pro- 
 vision was made for preaching or praying in most of the parishes in the 
 kingdom. Just was God's judgment against Cromwell, y° promoter of y° 
 suppression of religious houses— that he was sacrificed to y" caprice of a 
 la.scivious woman — y' Lady Howard. This notable reformer, who under 
 that pretence, had .seized y' revenues of y' church, when he came to die, 
 ownd he had been seduced, and died a zealous Papist. He was attainted 
 of treason and heresie without being heard in his defence — a proceeding 
 y' he himself had too much encouraged. Righteous art thou, O Lord, in 
 all thy ways, and just are thy judgments." 
 
 Possibly the parson who penned these plain and vigorous lines and 
 thereby gave vent to his indignation lies buried somewhere in this church- 
 yard. He wrote much more in a like strain, but this will do for an illus- 
 tration, though I cannot help thinking how red in the face and short- 
 breathed he became as he depicted the fate of poor Hal. People felt 
 strongly in the olden time, but now even Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth 
 lie side by side in Westminster Abbey. The big folios in which the 
 dismal stories and ponderous arguments were written rest in the libraries 
 covered with dust ; once they were read, and the diligent housewife put the 
 newly-starched bands between the leaves. And yet there was a humour 
 in those ancient men both refreshing and helpful. Tyndale caught his 
 opponents on the hip when he declared tliat the truths of Protestantism 
 needed no miracles to support them. You understand that better when 
 you think of Loretto. You will understand, too, more of the disposition 
 of the English villagers two centuries .since, when you are told that the 
 churchwarden of a small town, not so many miles herefrom, Dinton by 
 name, proclaimed in the church register that he was the best boxer in the 
 parish, with the exception of the rector's son. 
 
 We nuist get Ijack to the Ly.gon Arms. Yonder pigeons remind me 
 that in the Middle Ages dovecotes were provided in the parish churches of 
 England. On Whitsunday the rattling of the wings was heard from over-
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 31 
 
 head in the clerestory and among the arches. This did not teach docility 
 and gentleness, for in the afternoon of that day, besides dancing, bowling 
 and .shooting at the butts, the men indulged in cudgel-play and wrestling, 
 and thus, not unfrequently, provided work for the leech and cause of tears 
 for the women. Rough and merry were the folk of those days, and I am 
 not sure that even the fresh rushes and gra.ss strewn on the church floor 
 were long left unmatted with blood. And there was barley-break, of 
 which Lauion sings in Sir Philip vSidney's Arcadia ; perhaps also nine 
 men's morris and prisoners' base, with a bear-baiting once in a while. The 
 girls, too, had their Whitsun-games— no, not to catch the pigeons ! I 
 fancy the birds were rarelj' molested. But at this time, in .some parishes, 
 the maids of the village, having their thumbs tied behind them, ran after, 
 and endeavoured to catch with their mouths, a live fat lamb. She who suc- 
 ceeded was styled the Lady of the Lamb, and when afterwards the roast 
 was ready and the people, boisterous and hungry, sat down to eat it, she 
 presided over the feast. Sometimes instead of a lamb, the object of the 
 chase was a pig, or, to use the Mahometan euphemism for the latter 
 animal, a black deer. Rather a gay way of spending one of the highest 
 of Church-days, you will say ; but after all not worse than the modem 
 custom of reading newspapers and novels on a Sunday. By this time our 
 mutton must be well-nigh done. 
 
 Bishops and coachmen still wear breeches and gaiters ; but of the daj's 
 when all men appeared in that becoming costume— and it is interesting to 
 observe how since Queen Elizabeth's time the nether garments have 
 gradually worked down the leg till they now touch the heel — I never think 
 without recalling a habit of Archbishop Whately. When that dignitary 
 found a hole in his archiepiscopal stocking he used to stick a bit of black 
 plaister on his leg where the hole would appear. I notice, pegged on a 
 clothes' line, a pair of these things. Men used to wear them in country 
 places when I was a boy ; but I had supposed that in these degen- 
 erate days none used them save those who handle clergymen and horses. 
 This, perhaps, is well, for, given a priest or a horse with bad habits, such 
 as obstinacy or viciousne.ss, exceptional gifts are needed for tho.se who 
 have to deal with such ; and exceptional men should be distinguished. 
 Thirty years la,st February an unpopular vicar left Broadway. What he 
 had done does not matter much ; but when he departed there was a tre- 
 mendous explosion of public feeling. It is hard to think of excitement in 
 a village where a pair of shorts may be seen airing on a clothes' line in the 
 front garden, but strange things do happen ; and one who .saw the anger
 
 32 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 of the villagers that day, and heard their cries of derision and their shouts 
 of delight as the carriage bearing the obnoxious parson drove away, said 
 he could only liken the scene to Macaulay's description of the scorn exhib- 
 ited upon the appearance of Sextus Tarquinius : 
 
 ' ' A yell that rent the firmament 
 
 From all the town arose ; — 
 From the housetops was no woman 
 
 But spat towards him and hissed. 
 No child but screamed out curses 
 
 And shook its little fist." 
 
 Rather a rude farewell ! But since men have taken to trousers they 
 have been ever so much gentler. I remember a parish — perhaps it was 
 in Canada — where for twelve j'ears the people had been trying to get rid 
 of a clergyman they did not like. They spoke alternately in hints and in 
 plain words, but the parson went not. At last an appointment elsewhere 
 was offered him, and his parishioners eagerly arranged to bid him God- 
 speed. So pleased were they that they determined to give him an address 
 and a present ; and for this purpose a large meeting was held. The peo- 
 ple were very kind and very polite. They .shook hands with him more 
 warmly than they had done for years. There were no such ebullitions of 
 feeling as these Broadway folk displayed. But when the churchwarden 
 arose to read the address, he expressed himself so sorry that their beloved 
 rector was about to leave them, and from the address recited passages in 
 which were set forth the profoundest gratitude for all that he had done for 
 them and the most unqualified assurance that the poor sheep in the wilder- 
 ness would find none .so good as he to care for them ; and everybody 
 realized how gentle a thing religion is, and what an influence trou-sers have 
 had on men. Many of the people wept as the churchwarden spoke. The 
 best of preachers and of pastors was about to leave them. It was a touch- 
 ing sight — pocket handkerchiefs and red eyes. But how nuich better than 
 the Broadway plan ! Only to be sure, when the clergyman saw the sorrow 
 his departure was causing, and thought of the ruin that his withdrawal 
 would bring upon these people, he forgot the long years of opposition, and 
 with tremulous voice said: " Brethren, I didn't know you loved me like 
 this ! I'll never leave you ! No ; I'll never leave you ! " And he stayed. 
 
 The dinner is excellent ; so are our appetites. England produces 
 wonderful mutton, and quite as wonderful waiters. We have a man in 
 black and a maid largely in white, to serve the table. They are as sober
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 3J 
 
 and as silent as though they were ministering to the dead. Not a smile : 
 not even a question. They know what we want before we are sure of it 
 ourselves. We eat and for a while say nothing. Said M. Merrygreek to 
 a comrade — who he was Nicholas Udall knows better than I — " Ten men 
 can scarce match you with a .spoon in a pie." We feel that we are like- 
 wise matchless just now. But time mends most things and by and by come 
 nuts and port. The bottle is fresh from dust and cobwebs and brings up 
 the lines beginning : 
 
 Troll the bowl and drink to me, and troll the bowl again. 
 
 And the cloth is drawn and the servitors are gone. Were they not dumb 
 waiters ? We can spend half an hour more : then home. 
 
 Happily we have the room to ourselves. When an Englishman is ill- 
 bred he has not his equal in Christendom, and I have been at country inns, 
 and at city inns too, where I have been made to feel the offensiveness of 
 such. At Oxford, not so many days since, a stout, vulgar and well-dressed 
 clown came into the dining-room where I and my friends were peacefully 
 interested in our beef and potatoes, and, sitting down at a table close by, 
 began to stare us out of countenance. Another of the same fellowship 
 joined him and the two found much merriment in watching us. Of course 
 our dinner was spoiled. To-day we have every felicity. The lines have 
 fallen upon us in pleasant places : whereof we are glad and feel well-dis- 
 posed to everybody. There is nothing|.like the comfort and the goodwill 
 one has after dinner. I do not wonder that l,ord Mayors, members of 
 parliament and all folks who crack filberts and sip sherry, are such kind- 
 hearted beings. The cellar and the larder do much for charity ; and I 
 have .sometimes thought that cooks, even more than clergymen, are 
 responsible for the falling off in benevolent subscriptions which sometimes 
 happens. At any rate there is .something in a man who can eat heartily. 
 I have a friend, a bishop, who.se appetite is fairly good. On his first visita- 
 tion to a rural part of his diocese he was entertained at dinner by a church- 
 warden who was a fai'mer, plain and plump. Among the dishes was one 
 of boiled fowl, and they who know what American housewives can do with 
 chickens need not be reminded of the savouriness of such a course. The 
 bishop was hungry. He ate fowl once and twice. Nor did he refuse a 
 third serving. The farmer was delighted. His eyes sparkled and at last 
 he exclaimed : " O Bishop, we have much to be thankful for ! Now we 
 have a bishop who can eat. Our last bishop would never take anything 
 but a cup of tea and a little dry toast — a good man, but he couldn't eat ;
 
 34 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 and all the women's preparations were lost." My friend has turned out 
 well — if I may venture to pass an opinion on a prelate. No man is any 
 the worse for being able to enjoy a good dinner. 
 
 The landlady takes us over the house. We see the great hall where 
 once in a while banquets and balls occur ; also the comfortable drawing-room, 
 and the chamber which once received royalty. The view from the stage 
 on the roof is lovely, and the way up winding stairs and by old disused 
 nooks, some under the rafters, has about it much interest. Then in the 
 little waiting-room, at the request of our genial hostess, we make an entfy 
 in the Visitors' Book, in which we express ourselves as having greatly 
 enjoyed our entertainment at Broadway, and at the Lygon Arms in 
 particular. 
 
 Before we leave the place we go to a shop on the opposite side of the 
 street, where are .sold odds and ends, old and curious. It is worth while 
 looking at the furniture and household articles which people of past gen- 
 erations used. Candlesticks and snuffers, cups and jugs, blackjacks and 
 bootjacks, clocks, chairs, vases and umbrellas ; and above all, a flint, steel 
 and tinder-box; These were common in my boyhood days and many a 
 time I have made a light in this way. Pleasant it must have been on a 
 wet wintr}' morning to find the fire out and the tinder damp. The prudent 
 woman, however, put the box under her pillow. Now we have matches, 
 and never think of thanking God for them. 
 
 Our journey back was by another and perhaps a prettier way than that 
 by which we came. We passed through villages which seem never to have 
 known of the world beyond the Cotswolds, and never to have heard either 
 the march of time or the voice of change. Here and there the road was 
 lined with trees and over the hedges we saw now a field j^ellow and thick 
 with corn, now a meadow where side by side, busy getting their living, 
 were sheep, crows, geese and horses, and now a copse from beside which 
 peeped church spire or cottage roof In some of the villages hereabouts 
 still remain the stone crosses by the wayside whereat in days long since 
 gone by the traveller said his prayers and the preacher gathered the 
 peasants for a .sermon. The Puritan does not appear to have been so fierce 
 in this obscure region as he was in other parts of England ; hence survive, 
 not only the.se crosses — a fine specimen of which we passed on our left — 
 l)Ut also in the churches other things against which the destroyers of 
 England's peace sternly .set their faces. Had I to choose a spot of earth 
 where I might speedily gather upon myself the moss of restfulness and 
 ol)livion, I should hesitate between quiet and pretty Willersey and the
 
 o 
 
 •a 
 o 
 
 c. 
 P5
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 35 
 
 equally reposeful and antique-looking Weston-sub-Edge. The latter vil- 
 lage is so called to distinguish it from Aston-sub-Edge, which lies a little 
 beyond on the other side of the hill. This Aston is in the Hundred Rolls 
 called Eston, and the two villages, one lying on the west side and the other 
 on the east side of the liill, under the edge or brow, no doubt obtained 
 their names from their respective topographical position. They are 
 probably of Saxon origin. The hill lying between them is that of Dover's, 
 so called after that attorney by whose efforts in the reign of King James 
 the First the once famous Cotswold and Olympic games were in.stituted or 
 restored. From this rather abrupt and jutting break in the Cotswold, may 
 be had a glorious view, extensive and varied, and some say the finest in all 
 Gloucestershire. I do not like it so much as the one from Broadway 
 Tower ; but landscapes, like pictures, depend for their appreciation much 
 upon associations and tastes. 
 
 The games, which were held on the Thursday and Friday ofWhitsun- 
 week, consisted of "cudgel-playing, wrestling, the quintain, leaping, 
 pitching the bar and hammer, handling the pike, playing at balloon or 
 handball, leaping over each other, walking on the hands, a country dance 
 of virgins, men hunting the hare (which, by Dover's orders, was not to be 
 killed), and horse-racing on a course .some miles long." They were very 
 popular, being frequented not only by the people of the neighborhood, but 
 by visitors from distances of sixty miles. Prizes were given and hundreds 
 of gentlemen for a year after each contest wore " Dover's yellow favours " 
 — perhaps, not only because the games developed and recognized athletic 
 prowess, but also because they were a protest against the rising Puritanical 
 prejudices. The inventor and director of the games — who is spoken of by 
 his contemporaries as a kindly good-natured man, and whose appearance on 
 a white horse and clad in hat, feathers and ruff and a suit of the king's 
 clothes, given him by a gentleman of the bed-chamber as a mark of appre- 
 ciation, made him the delight of the country side, — himself once wrote 
 " A',Congratulator>' Poem " to his friends, in which he defends his " inno- 
 cent pastime ' ' against the Puritan charge of being ' ' a wicked, horrid 
 sin." Ben Jonson has some verses laudator)' of his "jovial good friend 
 Mr. Robert Dover on his great instauration of his hunting and dancing at 
 Cotswold ; ' ' and in the ' ' Merry Wives ' ' appears a reference — first in the 
 folio of 1623— to coursing on Cotswold. Good Master Slender inquires of 
 Master Page, "How does your fallow greyhound, sir ? I heard saj- he 
 was outrun on Cotsall." The word is still pronounced " Cotsold " ; the 
 sheep cotes, once numerous here, giving their name to the wold. These
 
 36 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 hills were famous for their flocks, and so in the first of all English 
 comedies, "Ralph Roister Doister," written by Nicholas Udall in 1550, 
 it is said of a timid individual who was to be urged to fight, "Then will 
 he look as fierce as a Cotsold lion ' ' ; and everyone knows that before ' ' a 
 sheep's look full grim" the boldest heart may be forced to yield. The 
 games came to an end about 1644, and though attempts have been made 
 to revive them, yet no attempt has been successful. 
 
 Weston-sub-Edge has a large Early English Church and in the church- 
 yard are to be found inscriptions which some may think worthy of remem- 
 brance. The following dates from 1781 and is on the grave of a girl 
 of twenty-one years : 
 
 With patience I liave run my race, 
 
 Kind death hath set me free, 
 Now I am in another place, 
 
 This world is not for me. 
 Prepared be to follow me, 
 
 When death doth for you call. 
 For in that day j'ou must obey. 
 
 And give account for all. 
 
 This one belonging to the early part of the last century has now perished : 
 
 To the memorj' of Peter, butler to 
 Sir Wm. Keyte, Bart. 
 Though he had gone to kingdom come. 
 He had left the keys of the cellar behind him. 
 
 Here is another funny one : 
 
 I've lost the comfort of my life. 
 Death came and took away my wife, 
 And now I don't know what to do. 
 Lest death should come and take me too. 
 
 An incident happened not long since in this neighbourhood which 
 illustrates both the sharpness of some natives and the simplicity of some 
 constables. A man of the name of Smith acquired a taste for stripping 
 clothes' lines and in several villages hereabouts much distress en.sued, 
 though for long no one .suspected the real culprit. He had once lodged 
 at Aston-sub-Edge with an old couple named Knight, in who.se hou.se also 
 lived his sweetheart and her cousin, a daughter of the Knights. One 
 January evening Friend Smith came to call at the cottage, but whether to 
 see his sweetheart, or his aged landlady, or the " old chap," is uncertain. 
 On the line in the back premises, however, had been placed to dry table-
 
 OVER THK HILLS TO BROADWAY. 37 
 
 cloths, blankets, shirts, handkerchiefs, towels and other like articles — this 
 being Tuesdaj' night ; a proof that these good people did their washing, 
 after the custom of honest folk, earlj- in the week. The tempting array 
 was too much for Smith, and both he and the clothes disappeared. Two 
 days later the clothes were found in a bundle under Smith's bed at his 
 lodging-house in Bretforton, and that night, .soon after Smith's arrival 
 home, utterly unaware of the fate in store for him, two policemen .started 
 off with him for Campden. On the way they pa.s.sed through A.ston. 
 There by dint of an ingenious plea as to his innocence and an amount of 
 entreaty, he was permitted to see the old lady he had treated so badly, and 
 the sweetheart he laid claim to who lived with her. It was late, and it 
 was dark, and the inmates of the cottage had gone to bed. The sweetheart, 
 apparently the lightest .sleeper of them all, says my old friend, the 
 Evesham Journal, was prevailed upon to open the door, and the old man 
 Knight also appeared on the scene. This was not sufficient for Mr. Smith. 
 Not content with .seeing the young woman he had kept company with for 
 nearly two years and in who.se .smiles he had basked while lodging here 
 from the end of August to Christmas Eve, the prisoner pleaded to be 
 allowed " to .speak to granny." Said the sergeant, " I don't think, Smith, 
 you have any cause to go up there to disturb that poor old woman ; yon 
 can see her another time. You come quietly up to Campden, and then you 
 can see her tomorrow." Smith, however, did not wait for formal permis- 
 sion, but proceeded in rather hasty fashion upstairs, and breaking in upon 
 the old lady said, "Well, granny, how is it to be ; do you mean to press 
 the case? " " Idon'tknow, William," said the poor old woman ; " why did 
 you do it ? " She had not thought it lay in him to perform such a mean 
 action. While this conversation was going on, one constable was on the 
 stairs asking for a light and the other constable was down in the kitchen. 
 Then was heard a ".scrabble" and after that the breaking of glass, and the 
 l)risoner was gone through the window. As the police had locked the 
 cottage door as soon as they were inside, they could not so readily follow 
 the fugitive. After midnight a woman saw Smith going through the osier- 
 beds; but the constables went to Campden empty-handed. 
 
 This event created great excitement throughout the district and peo- 
 ple began to think of Smith as a hero. Such things do not happen every 
 day. There is always enough lawlessness in most men to make them feel 
 comfortable at heart when the police are outwitted, especially when the 
 wrong done against society is not in itself either great or cruel. The 
 jump through the window was spoken of as a wonderful achievement. But
 
 38 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 mine host of the Seagrave Arms expressed his opinion that the room was 
 never left at all. His theory was that Smith with a stick broke the win- 
 dow and thus put the gentlemen in blue off the track. While they were 
 in pursuit he quickly walked downstairs and out of the front door. Be 
 this as it may, a few days later the prisoner was arrested at Chipping Nor- 
 ton and brought up for punishment. He pleaded guilty and was fined ; 
 and for many a long day this episode will be remembered — even when Mr. 
 Gladstone and his Home Rule Bill are forgotten. 
 
 After a while we reach Mickleton, which may have been at one time, 
 comparatively speaking, " a great town," though now it has little to boast 
 of either in size or in noise. There is an old church with a fine .spire, and 
 here were born or lived several persons of celebrity. William Shenstone, 
 the poet, used here to visit his friend, the Reverend Richard Graves, the 
 son of a local antiquary and the author of that amusing and severe novel 
 entitled " The Spiritual Quixote, or the Summer's Rambles of Mr. Geof- 
 fry Wildgoose, a Comic Romance." Perhaps some Wesleyan scholar can 
 point out where the fun came in. This Richard Graves was an eccentric 
 little man, a zealous churchman, sprightly in conver.sation, and maintain- 
 ing to the verge of ninety remarkable health and vigour. In one of his 
 letters Shenstone .speaks of eating mutton at Mickleton with the .squire, 
 and of drinking tea at the vicarage with the Curate's daughter. The 
 latter feat seems to have overpowered the poet's mind, for on leaving the 
 vicarage he wandered about on the hills for several hours. Both he and 
 Richard Graves admired this young lady, but Utrecia Smith — such was 
 her name— died from an attack of smallpox at the age of thirty, and 
 unmarried. Then to the memory of the " simple, pure and elegant girl," 
 the one lover put up a sculptured urn and the other wrote some lines. 
 Another native of Mickleton was Giles Widdowes, who when rector of St. 
 Martin's, Oxford, in the reign of Charles I, wrote a defence of Bowing to 
 the Altar, which called forth an answer from Prynne entitled "Lame 
 Giles, his baitings." But "the lawless, kneeless, .schismatical Puritan," 
 as Widdowes styled his kind, would have had an answer from an Oxford 
 divine had not Archbishop Abbot interposed. The peace-loving prelate 
 held that enough had been said concerning a matter "wherein Mr. Wid- 
 dowes foolishly, aiid Mr. Prynne .scurrilously, have already, to the scandal 
 of the Church, exercised their pens." A nephew of Widdowes was 
 rector of Woodstock in the time of the Civil Wars, and wrote that account 
 of the " Just Devil " upon which Sir Walter Scott partly founded the plot 
 of one of his romances. Besides these persons Mickleton can claim
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 39 
 
 another poet in Frances Elizabeth Steel-Graves, bom here on the last day 
 of the year 1845, and whose promise of talent was destroyed by an 
 untimely death. At the age of seventeen she wrote " My Queen" ; and 
 truly the .song has about it a right exquisite flavour. I read it for the first 
 time by the way.side in the warm afternoon sun, and here it is: 
 
 Where and how shall I earliest meet her ? 
 
 What are the words she first will say ? 
 By which name shall I learn to greet her ? 
 
 I know not now — it will come some day ! 
 With the self-same sunlight shining upon her — 
 
 Shining down on her ringlets' sheen ; 
 She is standing somewhere — she that I honour — 
 
 She that I wait for — my Queen — my Queen ! 
 
 Whether her hair be golden or raven, 
 
 Whether her eyes be hazel or bine ; 
 I know not now, but 't will be engraven 
 
 Some sweet day as my loveliest hue ; 
 Many a girl I have loved for a minute — 
 
 Worshipped many a face I have seen ; 
 Ever and aye ; there was something in it, 
 
 Something that could not be hers — my Queen ! 
 
 I will not dream of her tall and stately ; 
 
 She that I love may be fairly light; 
 I will not say she must speak sedately, 
 
 Whatever she does it will then be right. 
 She may be humble or proud, my lady — 
 
 Or that sweet calm that is just between — 
 And whenever she comes she will find me ready 
 
 To do her homage — my Queen — my Queen ! 
 
 But she must be courteous, she must be holy ; 
 
 Pure in her spirit, this maiden I love. 
 Whether her birth be noble or lowly, 
 
 I care no more than the Spirit above. 
 I will give my heart to my lady's keeping 
 
 And ever her strength on mine shall lean ; 
 And the stars may fall, and the saints be weeping ; 
 
 Ere I cease to love her — my Queen — my Queen ! 
 
 Nor does this exhaust the worthies of Mickleton. Among the owners 
 of the manor was an Edward Fisher, who in his own day enjoyed some 
 reputation as a historian, linguist and controversalist. He was a strong
 
 40 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 opponent of the Puritans, and as he lived through the reign of Charles I 
 he had plenty of opportunity for the display of his prowess. He wrote 
 four or five books, some to justify the observation of Christmas and Good 
 Friday, and others to show that the L,ord's Day was not to be considered 
 as the Sabbath. His loyalty to Church and King may have helped him 
 into trouble ; certainly he was obliged to flee the country on account of 
 debt and he died poor. In their outspoken zeal men of those times forgot 
 kindly manners: "Soft fire maketh sweet malt," as Tibet Talkapace 
 saith. 
 
 In the Parish Registers there are copies of dispensations granted by 
 the vicar about the year 1662 to a Mr. Wm. Widdowes — relative, no doubt, 
 of " Lame Giles " — giving him permission, owing to his many and frequent 
 diseases which "are notoriously known to y" inhabitants of Mickleton," 
 to eat flesh in Lent. A John Walford is in like manner relieved from a 
 fish-diet. These dispensations were given according to "the statute in 
 that case provided " ; but in these days when a man finds that he requires 
 beef at times when the church forbids its use, he takes the law into his 
 own hands. In other words he obeys authority when and as he pleases. 
 Not so did these men of old. They got certificates of their infinnities 
 from their physician, and then to their "just desires" the parson "con- 
 descended," as he puts it, to grant them licen.se to continue their " usual 
 and customary meats, dietts and drinkes." 
 
 As my reader has probably never seen such a license I here transcribe 
 one for his edification : 
 
 " ffeb 27, i Whereas Mr. John Walford of Micklelou in the County of Gloucr. 
 1663 ) is of so weake and iufirme habit an<l constitution of body, that (in 
 y^ iudgment of his learned and skilfuU physitian) he may not 
 refraind eating of flesh the whole time of the Lent wtout a grand 
 debilitation of strength and impayring of his health, for wch. 
 case he craned license under miue hand (according to y^ statute 
 in that behalfe p'iuded) for the eating of flesh, to whose iust and 
 necessary request I did accord, and granted him license on the 
 day & yeare above written. Hen : Hurst, Vic : of Mickleton." 
 
 There is a ghost-story anent some woods on the comb or hillside 
 beyond Mickleton. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth a grant was made of 
 the manor of Mickleton — which had liitherto belonged to the Abbey of 
 Kyn.sham, and therefore was church land, — to a court favourite, who sold 
 it to a descendant of that Grevil who built the chin-ch at Chipping Camp- 
 den. The new owner, Sir William Grevillc, had an only .son, whom it is
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 4t 
 
 said he one night shot dead in Mickleton hollow. Ever since that woeful 
 night the murdered boy's ghost has haunted the place. He is rarely seen, 
 but passers-by were made aware of his presence by strange and unearthly 
 moanings and screechings. Hence the name was given to him of the 
 " Hooter." Though it is .said that years have gone by since anyone heard 
 the.se melancholy sounds, yet as we drive by the neighbourhood we are told 
 of a Shipston man who, not more than three or four years since, riding on 
 horseback by the copse a little after midnight, distinctly heard, and, 
 what is more di.stinctly saw, the " Mickleton Hooter." He de.scribed him 
 as moiuited on a black hunter and gliding down the hillside, his long fair 
 hair blown out by the wind, his right hand pointing to some object far 
 away, and his eyes bright as glowing coals of fire. He made no noise 
 other than the wild owl-like cry by which he was known. His steed 
 glided over ditches and hedges, and when he reached the highway he .swiftly 
 passed by the Shipston man, whose nerves, as may easily be imagined, 
 were well-nigh unstrung. This is proof enough that the work of laying 
 the Hooter said to have been done about the close of the last century by 
 Staunton of Hidcote, was poorly done. There is no doubt that if the 
 Shipston man had not been so bewildered he would have seen with the 
 Hooter the pack of hounds which are said to accompany him on his mid- 
 night expeditions. Beyond a day in bed no ill consequences seem to have 
 come to this belated wayfarer ; but the evidence is enough to convince the 
 world that if the monks of Eynsham had not been deprived of their lands, 
 Sir William Greville would not have bought it or have killed his .son upon 
 it, and there would have been no such visitant from the Underworld for 
 three centuries to terrify the folk who in spite of ale-muddled brains try 
 to find their way to their homes in peace. 
 
 It is curious that this legend should have found credence .so long. I 
 remember hearing of it almost thirty years since, and this afternoon I am 
 told of it again as a real and trustworthy fact. I wonder if, after all, it is 
 a variant of the Wild Hunter of Westphalia and Lower Saxony told of by 
 Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology. There Hackelblock, as in those 
 countries he is called, was doomed to continue to hunt either because he 
 used to go to the chase even on a Sunday, or because on his deathbed he 
 prayed God that for his share of heaven he might be let hunt till the 
 judgment day. So from the woods he comes, his dogs barking and he 
 hooting. Not a few villagers have heard the cry of his hounds and the 
 bla.st of his horn, and some have even seen him a.stride his black headless 
 horse rushing furiously after the wolf or the boar. Grimm gives several
 
 42 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 pages to the elucidation of this legend. Of course it varies in many par- 
 ticulars, but it is at least noteworthy that here in Gloucestershire we should 
 have a Hooter and one that in some respects answers to the Hooters found 
 on the continent. I do not know whether the people hereabouts avoid 
 building the front door of their cottages in a line with the back door lest 
 the Hooter should pass through the house, as he is apt to do in Germany ; 
 indeed, I do not think he is ever heard or seen except on the hillside and 
 along the highway. Some incredulous folk will perhaps declare that this 
 is no more than the crying, howling wind, which at times moans like a 
 body in distress and at others hoots like the soft-feathered and silent- winged 
 night-bird. But, then, if we are to listen to this sort of stuff we shall soon 
 conclude there are no ghosts at all ; and then what would become of the posi- 
 tive assertion and the clear-cut testimony of the Shipston man, backed up 
 as it is by the belief of three hundred years ? 
 
 The bright afternoon does not seem quite the time to talk about such 
 things, but, gentle reader, we were merryhearted and we do not know that 
 we ever wronged anybody in our life. Because you and I have never seen 
 the wonders that sometimes appear to the people of these regions is no 
 proof that such wonders are not to be seen. Rousseau says in ' ' Eloisa ' ' 
 that " Men of little genius conclude that things which are uncommon have 
 no existence " ; and I do not suppose that either you or I, uotwith.standing 
 our neighbour's opinion of us, care to think of ourselves as of " little 
 genius." At all events there are in these cottages and villages which we 
 pass many men and women whom no amount or kind of argument would 
 convince that in the matter of apparitions their faith and the faith of their 
 forefathers was wrong. Did not Richard Jago, a priest and a poet of the 
 la.st century-, vicar of Snitterfield and the man who .sought to immortalize 
 Ebrington in verse, preach a sermon upon " a conversation which was said 
 to have passed between one of the inhabitants and an apparition in the 
 churchyard of Harbury " ? Chastleton is not far from here, and we are 
 told by the author of " Rambles among the Cotswolds" that the present 
 rector of that place was .sent for one day by a woman and asked to lay the 
 spirit of her husband. vShe had a box ready, and requested the parson to 
 put the spirit in the box and take both to a pond, and there lay him. It 
 is also .said that at Evenlode three clergymen joined in putting to rest in a 
 brook the .spirit of one of the old villagers. This was a facetious individ- 
 ual: he would keep quiet as long as the brook was full and if one of his 
 two sons had a shilling for every .sixpence the other had ; but he suc- 
 cumbed to the clergy. Nobody knows the power of a clergyman in .such
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 43 
 
 affairs. Diiriii}; my curacy at Port Hope in Canada I was .seriously asked 
 to do the .same thing. A man drove in from the country to get me to go 
 and quiet a ghost which tried him beyond bearing. I listened to his story 
 and excused myself, let us say, on the ground that I was only in deacon's 
 orders, and therefore unable to deal with a ghost. To have argued against 
 his belief would have been the fulness of folly. 
 
 About five o'clock we reach the tiny and ancient village of Ilmington, 
 nestling among the hills on the edge of the valley in which lies vShipston. 
 In all probability its straggling lanes mark the thoroughfares which before 
 Norman kings reigned at Westminster, were trodden by Saxon hinds. 
 The quaint stone houses with gabled roofs and latticed windows are of 
 cour.se later, but even they give evidence of considerable antiquity, and 
 also, it may be added, of homely comfort and peasant-like independence. 
 Several famous families have been connected with this place — for instance 
 the Montfords, the Cannings, the Sheldons and the Palmers. In the 
 time 'of the Wars of the Roses, a youth of the Somersetshire family of 
 Brents found refuge in this village long enough, under the disguised name 
 of John Buston, to fall in love with and to steal away the daughter of the 
 Lord of Adminton and Stoke. In due time the adventurer received 
 through his wife the estates of his father-in-law, and for four centuries the 
 manor of Adminton and Stoke belonged to his descendants. There is a 
 brass, dated 1487, in the north tran.sept of the church, which adds further 
 interest to this suggestion for a romance. The church, however, though 
 prominent, as in most villages, and partly of Early English style, has little 
 el.se of worth than this and similar monuments. A mural tablet on the 
 west wall of the church, dated 1763, is to the memory of a strong-minded 
 lady of the name of Palmer, who was entitled to quarter the arms of 
 Plantagenet. She seems to have been neither law-abiding nor devout. 
 When called to account for her neglect of public worship and threatened 
 with prosecution, she one Sunday morning took a dung cart and jolted 
 across a ploughed field to Ilmington ; there, entering the church during 
 .service, she vigorously and in simple English anathematized church, par- 
 son and congregation. She then retired to her dung cart and returned 
 home. This is one of the best remembered incidents in the history of this 
 quiet town. 
 
 For Ilmington is quiet — even quieter than the other places we have 
 seen to-day. Once it had a chalybeate spring which had .some repute for 
 its medicinal qualities, and by which it might have been a second Bath or 
 I,eamington ; but destiny ordained otherwise, and this healthful and beau-
 
 44 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 tifuUy situated village fell into the sweetest and most undisturbed rest. 
 As we drive down the street, the dogs prick vip their ears and the three or 
 four women working in the gardens peep over the hedges, as though 
 strangers did not appear every day. On the footpath stands a " wratch,'' 
 as they here call a feeble old man, wearing a smock frock and leaning on 
 a stout ash stick. The cottages are thatched, and in front of them are 
 rose-bushes and damson trees and beehives. Making chains of dandelion 
 stalks, picking cheeses and wearing print pinafores and shoes well-nailed 
 and tipped, the children play in the grass by the wayside, while the bees 
 buzz by them heedless of their merry prattle. The world has been kind 
 to Ilmington ; the martins make their mud nests under the eaves, and the 
 people are Protestant enough to burn on the Fifth of November the effigy 
 not only of the Pope, but also of any par.son whose coat and vest are 
 fashioned after the M. B. Guy Fawkes was no better than he should have 
 been, but in the bonfires and the bell-ringing which I am told here glad- 
 den the dull autumn day, the Ilmington folk are doing their best to give 
 him immortality ; and it has been said, though I .scarcely think it true, 
 that as the church is orientated and thereby encourages superstition, either 
 it will have to come down, or the parish will as a whole secede from the 
 Church of England. The damage that this latter alternative suggests is 
 too awful to contemplate, and I turn with relief to watch the ducks wad- 
 dling across the road. Epicures, and not poets, care most for these happy- 
 eyed and broad-billed birds, but others besides those who think most of 
 them when trussed and smoking could appreciate these which now are 
 tumbling over a broken peel lying in their way. The first one tripped in 
 his attempt to hop over the peel, and the others try the same experiment, 
 and as a result send the echoes of their quackery to the top boughs of the 
 elms. 
 
 The peel, which is the long-handled, flat shovel used by the bakers 
 to put their loaves into the oven, reminds me of a besom, and that again 
 of the witches who used to travel on broomsticks. There was a time when 
 a sight of these uncanny and anointed folk here abounded ; and by the 
 word "anointed" my reader will not understand other than that they were 
 sent forth by the Wicked One, who, as everybody vensed in witchcraft 
 knows, has never hesitated to use for his purpose wrinkled and decrepit old 
 dames. He gives to these favoured friends of his both a familiar spirit 
 which enables them to do all .sorts of things, and the power to assume the 
 shape of some animal so that they can go to all sorts of places. One of 
 the Ilmington witches took the form of a hare — at least some years ago a
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 45 
 
 farmer at Black well shot a hare and broke her foreleg, and at the same 
 time the Ilinington woman had a broken arm for which she could give no 
 satisfactory account. Nothing could be more certain. Another of the.se 
 individuals used to bewitch people coming home from Stratford market. 
 She would keep them for hours out in the cold night before she would let 
 them pass. After some time she was caught and hanged, and in a grave 
 made at the cross-roads where she had played most of her pranks a stake 
 was driven through her body and she was pinned safely to the earth. 
 Since then the farmers and tradesmen have occasionally been bewitched 
 and kept out on market days long after sunfall, but there is every reason to 
 believe it has been by the rosy cheeks and laughing eyes of maidens whose 
 'vows to renounce the wiles of the Wicked One are as fresh as the cowslips 
 they pin in their bodice. 
 
 But we stay for an hour in Ilmington in order to visit an ancient na- 
 tive of the place, who, having in days gone by ventured to do some jingling 
 with rhymes, somewhat to his own profit and much to his neighbor's de- 
 lectation, has acquired the title of " Poet." There is something in the air of 
 the place conduciveto this sort of pastime. Thirty years since the parish 
 priest of Ilmington ventured at Torquay to read " Hamlet" in public for the 
 benefit of a local charity. For this he incurred the displeasure both of the 
 Bishop of Exeter and of his own ordinary, the former desiring the incum- 
 bents of the several parishes in Torquay' not to invite or permit him to offi- 
 ciate in any of the churches. There have been Scotchmen, so Dr. Boyd 
 of St. Andrews tells us, who could not understand how any person could 
 love God and read Shakespeare. But the people of Ilmington, from the 
 respect they show to their own son of the muses, are of a happier frame of 
 mind. To them he is the Poet. Indeed, though his name is only William 
 Handy, yet he styles himself " William Poet Handy," speaks of himself 
 as the Poet, and in the gate leading up to his neat thatched cottage has 
 had cut out the letters W. P. H. In this cottage he has lived as tenant 
 and owner for over fifty years, his own age having now risen to the allot- 
 ted three score and ten. In front of the house is a flower garden where 
 pink-tipped daisies and clusters of sweet-betsy grov beside the weedle.ss 
 paths, while at the back extends a large enclosure in which abound fruit 
 trees and berry bushes. Close beside the back door, partly concealing the 
 humbler premises, is a fine box hedge, and there are some box or yew 
 trees cut into curious devices, one a peacock. In the garden is a good- 
 sized arbor made of a huge tree — box, if I remember aright ; and in the 
 arbor stands a rustic chair made by the good man to commemorate the
 
 N 
 
 46 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 jubilee of her most gracious Majesty. The poet is, by the way, an Eng- 
 lishman from the middle of the heart out : and a thorough- going Church- 
 man and tory as well. He could drink with zest the toast: " Here's for 
 a porcupine saddle and cobweb breeches for the enemies of Old England." 
 More than that, we found him to be a quiet, genial and happy .soul ; full 
 of anecdote, kindly disposed to his neighbours, imbued with a .sense of 
 religion, and grateful for the mercies which have followed him all the days 
 of his life. Three times had he been married, but, added he, as he told 
 us of his matrimonial experiences, the third venture was a mistake : 
 whether he reckoned it among the mercies he did not say. Of the blunder 
 we presently had .some proof. 
 
 When we called at his door the poet had not returned from Shipston, 
 and we were afraid we should have to leave without seeing him ; but on 
 driving through the narrow lane from his house, we met him and his cart. 
 He is a market-gardener and this was market-day. We stopped him and 
 told him who we were, and never was stranger welcomed more kindly 
 than were we. He insisted on our going back to the house and picking 
 .some fruit in the garden: " 'Tis still pretty middling," he added. We 
 found the gooseberries excellent. In the meanwhile we contrived to get 
 the conversation round to poetry — gently, for Master Handy is mode.st 
 and reticent, and has to be drawn out of his intellectual solitude as wisely 
 and delicately as a timid fish out of the water. " You have written .some 
 lines, Mr. Handy," I remarked. "So people have been plea.sed to call 
 them ; but they flatter me." " Still," I went on to say after a pause in 
 whicli I continued my attack upon a heavy-laden and spiny raspberry- 
 cane ; ".still, people are .seldom mistaken in their judgment of their fel- 
 lows." " Do you think so ? " he asked wi.stfuUy. I did not think .so. I 
 do not suppose I .shall ever appreciate either the form or the matter of Walt 
 Whitman's work — and some say that he was a poet, even as others think 
 highly of Martin Farquhar Tupper: therefore my own taste being faulty, 
 po.ssibly the taste of others may be likewise errant and untrustworthy. 
 However, I told my disciple of the Mu.ses that I should much like to read 
 some of his vense, and after a little persuasion he went into the house to 
 get a bundle of poems. Professor Dowden or Mr. Saintsbury would com- 
 plain of my calling them "poems"; so would Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
 but no matter. Even the judgment of those eminent critics may some- 
 times go astray, and after all what are they again.st the unanitnous voice 
 of Ilmington ? There are people here who never saw a line of Shakes- 
 peare and never heard of Lord Tennyson, but I am pretty sure that not
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 47 
 
 one of the three gentlemen just named, nor for that matter even Mr. 
 Andrew Lang, ha.s ever read the pathetic verses on the " Murder of G. 
 Kalabergo." And in that they are behind the good folk of this village. 
 
 Many great men have liad a Xantippe for a wife, so in that trial and 
 affliction Poet Handy dilTers not from his kind. It was both pleasant and 
 painful to hear the quiet way in which he sought to still the sharp words 
 of his "Other Half," as he stumbled about in searching for his papers. 
 Their voices came through the open windows under the eaves. He has a 
 .short, stout figure, slightly stooping, with a round face, bright eyes and 
 whitening hair ; she is younger than he by perhaps ten or fifteen years, 
 with thin lips, sharp nose and chin, .shrill voice and rude manners. No 
 one knows when she laughed last ; and judging from what we heard she 
 led the poet anything but a merry life. After a keen, sharp hail-like 
 .storm she came out of the house, and without bestowing the least look 
 upon us proceeded to stir up the fire in a temporary hearth made in the 
 garden and to fill the kettle for tea. Marrying a poet does not make 
 amiable a surly woman : the cat though turned into a fair maid would 
 still catch mice. 
 
 Ma.ster Handy soon followed with a big bundle of manuscripts and 
 printed papers. We stood around him in the .shadow of the pear trees 
 while he picked out two or three of the broadsheets and read them off. 
 Those that he thus entertained us with were written over forty years ago, 
 and as they are fair specimens of a kind of literature that once circulated 
 largely in the country, I shall put them into an appendix where my reader 
 can indulge his curiosity. Had he seen this dear old man in the evening 
 sunlight, partly reading and partly reciting these lines, he would perhaps 
 discern in them a worth which, without such an association, I fear they 
 will not be suspected to have. Prythee, sweet lector, turn over to the 
 appendix and peruse these verses, or some of them, at once, and then re- 
 member, first, that this was the style of literature that once gladdened 
 the firesides, and the hearts too, of the fathers of the hamlet ; next, that 
 the writer thereof was a plain, untaught villager, who, like Diocletian, 
 grew cabbages, and after the fashion of a certain Bishop of Ely, cultivated 
 strawberries, only, unlike them, he did this for a livelihood ; and lastly, 
 that the clergy and gentry of the neighbourhood encouraged the author by 
 buying his .sheets at from three pence to half a crown apiece, while the 
 poorer folk sang them in the village taproom after supper, or recited them 
 to their children on a Sunday afternoon as suitable helps to an upright 
 and a religious life. Newspapers were scarce in those days, and people 
 could not be always reading the " Whole Duty of Man."
 
 48 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 This doue the Poet entertained us with a number of anecdotes and 
 some recitations from his unwritten poems. I took down a few of these 
 at his dictation, but I shall not venture to put them in print. They 
 simply illustrate a type of character which was once common, and which 
 I am thankful to say has not entirely died out of the old country life. 
 
 In his poorer days — for Master Handy was once less well off in this 
 world's goods than he is now — he had occasion to lodge at a certain inn 
 in Brailes. Forty or fifty years ago wages were " thin," and it became a 
 tiller of the soil who would provide against the rainy day to look keenly 
 after the ha'pennies and the farthings. The inn keeper charged our 
 friend for his three weeks' entertainment at the rate of sixpence a day — 
 not an extravagant price to those who know anything of London hotels, 
 and especially of such as have an embankment view. But the Poet 
 thought it too much, and when upon remonstrance with the hostess he 
 found it could not be reduced, he united his poetical muse and his arith- 
 metical skill in these lines : 
 
 Sixpence a day is three and six a week ; 
 A man who asks for that must have a cheek : 
 Three and six a week is uiue pound two a year — 
 The lodging's very good : the price too dear. 
 
 ' ' In those times, ' ' he went on to tell us, ' ' many was the day when I 
 stood between the earth and the sky, and owned nothing but nij^ own poor 
 bodjr and the clotlies on nij' back. Once I started off to see my sister, at 
 a time when work was .slack, with but three ha'pence in my pocket. It's 
 over forty years agone now, and times have changed ; but it was a dull 
 morning about the beginning of December, and I had some miles to walk 
 over a road that was not as well kept as roads are nowadays. The air was 
 ju.st keen and damp enough to make an hungry and a lonely man feel cold 
 and sad. But I kept on, and after a while I got to mj^ sister's cottage : 
 she was now husbandless and childless. As I went by the window I 
 peeped in. There was the poor woman sitting in front of a tiny bit of a 
 fire with her face in her hands and her elbows on her knees, crying, I was 
 pretty sure. I waited a few minutes and then I tapped at the door. She 
 opened it, and when she saw me her face brightened up — .she had a happy 
 heart and a sweet face ; and now she's with God and her loved ones. So 
 I went in and .she warmed me a mug of beer and put a little spice in it, 
 and it was helpful after my dreary tramp. After a bit I said to her, 
 'Jane, why were thee crying just now? ' ' O William, I wasn't crying.' 
 'But I saw thee, sister, as I came by the window; what was it for?'
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 49 
 
 Then she told me that she hadn't a farthing in the house, and that she did 
 not know which way to turn to get a morsel of bread or a faggot of wood. 
 And I told her that I had three ha'pence and she should have two of 
 them. She smiled ; and then I went on to say that I would stay a day or 
 two with her, and perhaps something would turn up. Well, loaves don't 
 roll into cottages and logs do not tumble down the chimney, and I knew that 
 unless we wished to starve I should have to stir myself. So after another mug 
 of warm beer — it was small stuff left over from last harvesting — I went out 
 into the chill air. My heart was bumping against the soles of my boots, as 
 the saying is ; but, then, I thought that even sparrows chirped as they 
 .searched for crumbs, and I must keep up. In my pocket I had some copies 
 of my verses on the great hailstorm. Perhaps I might sell some. As I 
 went along the road who sliould I see crossing a field, but the parson ! 
 You know him, sir, one of the kindest of men and one of the best musicians 
 in England. Now's my chance, said I to myself; and up to him I went, and 
 touching my cap asked him if he could help me by buying my poem on the 
 great Hailstorm. 'Are you Poet Handy?' said he. 'I am, sir,' said 
 I. 'Then,' said he, 'give me two copies, and here is half-a-crown for 
 them ; and if you go to the rectory and tell the butler I sent you, he will 
 give you something to eat, and perhaps the servantsmay buy some of your 
 verses.' I could scarcely find the words to thank him. He went on his 
 way and I went to the parsonage, and sure enough the butler took me in, 
 supplied me with a lot of bread and beef and a pot of ale that was fit for 
 a Christian to drink, and then the ser\'ants bought up my little stock of 
 poetry. They liked to hear about the Hailstorm ; and when I left the 
 house to go back to my sister with six or seven shillings in my pocket I 
 felt as light as a cork. Before that was spent the bad weather turned and 
 work came on, and I began to pull up hill." 
 
 "The clergyman you spoke of," said I, " is still living. He was an 
 accomplished musician and used to play the organ at his own services." 
 
 ' ' If j^ou ever see him, sir, will you tell him that the man whom he 
 helped that wintry day has not forgotten him ? " 
 
 "I will do so. Master Handy ; and with your permission I shall jot 
 down your little storj-. But I was told that the other day in the stable at 
 the ' Bell ' at Shipston, j^ou recited some lines you made about the 
 'Harrow.' I mean the old public house at Shipston of that name. 
 Wouldn't you give them to us?" 
 
 He complied and looked over my shoulder as I wrote them down, 
 telling me where to put the stops and explaining that the ' ' narrowness ' '
 
 50 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 spoken of in the first verse refers to the space in a hungry man which 
 stretches — well, ab icmbil. ad spin. — a most valuable figure. 
 
 Wlieu the Poet to Shipston market comes, 
 He generally to the Butcher's runs 
 
 If he finds himself too narrow ; 
 He buys some beef to have a treat, 
 
 And cooks it at the ' Harrow.' 
 
 A piece of beef affords relief 
 
 When hunger's giving pain ; 
 And a glass of beer my heart doth cheer ; 
 
 Then I'm refreshed again. 
 
 Swell'd with delight I has my pipe, 
 
 And smokes for half an hour ; 
 Then takes my flight, and bids good-night 
 
 To all upon the Stour. 
 
 I suggested the propriety of correcting the grammar and making a few 
 alterations, but he observed that poets had a freedom in these matters 
 which did not belong to prose. I did not like to dispute the point, being 
 modest in the presence of genius and remembering that as a tree that is 
 heavy laden with fruit breaks her own boughs, so when a poet falls into 
 mistakes is it out of the exuberance of his imagination. But we must 
 needs bid our entertainer good-bye. He is one of the kind who write the 
 quaint lines that appear on tombstones, much to the amusement often- 
 times of the stranger. Such men are worthy of acquaintance. They live 
 their quiet life in these still villages unknown to the world, and when they 
 die their name speedily passes from the memory of even their friends and 
 neighbours. Nobody knows the author of that popular and delightful 
 stanza which appears on thousands of tombstones in Christendom, and in 
 the obituary column of the Philadelphia Public Ledger occurs more 
 frequently than any other ode of like nature, the first line of which is 
 
 Afflictions sore long time he bore. 
 
 It is a sad loss, but there is now no help for it. Our Poet has jingled 
 syllables and bj' his thrift, industry and patience he has made for hiui.self 
 a home and secured the respect of those around him. Were it not for the 
 virago scraping potatoes yonder he would be the happiest man alive, and 
 as it is he does not look as though he allowed .so trifling and commonplace 
 a circuni-stance as that to interfere .seriously with his peace of mind. The knee 
 breeches and the sleeved waistcoat show that he does not care for changing
 
 OVER THK IIIIvLS TO BROADWAY. SI 
 
 fashions aud new ideas. On a Sunday afternoon, before the bells ring for 
 evensong, he retires to his arbor with his Bitjle, pipe and pot of beer, and 
 also pencil and paper, and there while the butterflies flit in the warm sun- 
 beams and the wasps test the sweetness of the plums, he smokes, and reads 
 aud meditates. If the in,spiration come upon him, he at once takes down the 
 thought and makes the rhyme ; and when there is no inspiration, then he 
 cons over the words of the Holy Book and suffers his imagination to take 
 him beyond the summer clouds, even to the land that is very far off. 
 
 Almost every village has a cricket club. Ilmington is not an excep- 
 tion to the rule. We .saw a game going on in a field not far from the last 
 house. There was not much excitement. The men walked after the .slow- 
 flying ball ; one youth in particular was as deliberate as though he were 
 on his way to school. He dragged himself at a snail's pace over the 
 ground; the other players meanwhile adjusting themselves to his time. 
 The bat.sman did not hurry more in his runs, so that no undue advantage 
 was taken. So quietly did the game go on that we were startled at hear, 
 ing some one cry out to the gentle youth : ' ' Move faster ; take off your 
 shoes and stockings .so that the grass may tickle your feet !" Did the 
 speaker ever have a mosquito bite him on the sole of his foot? 
 
 The sitn had almost dropped behind the hills as we drove out of 
 Ilmington, and already the twilight shades were creeping over the deeper 
 parts of the valley. Few people passed us on the way : these are quiet 
 roads, and one might walk for miles and not see a human being. There 
 were, however, two or three immense flocks of starlings that fled over the 
 fields and hedgerows in very clouds, and in one meadow we saw about a 
 hundred and fifty sheep standing head to tail in two long unbroken lines 
 with almost military precision. The first sheep had their heads towards a 
 gate and, without heeding passers-by, the rest stood ready to go through 
 as soon as the gate should be opened. In the gathering gloom they were 
 an odd sight. 
 
 We soon reached Dascot, and in a few minutes more, Shipston — our 
 journey ended but our day not over. It was our fate after supper to have 
 an interview with a worthy who has done to many Shipston folk what Oliver 
 le Dain did frequently to Louis the Eleventh. He has dabbled in both eccle- 
 siastical and secular politics, but being a high Churchman and a conser\-ative 
 he is always found on the right side. The times, however, are against 
 that same right side, which is not a refreshing thought ; and the burden 
 of my friend's conversation ran upon the condition of Shipston and the 
 state of rural England, both being thought by him to be in the last stages
 
 52 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 
 
 of degeneration. "We shall never," cried he, "produce another Lord 
 Nel.son or another L,ord Beaconsfield, and at Shipston we shall never have 
 another Parson Evans. Everything has gone to the dogs." Lucky for 
 the dogs, thought I. In his opinion the evil which has befallen the 
 country springs from the extension of the franchise to the irresponsible 
 and uneducated classes. Why, he asked, should a man who has neither 
 stick nor stake in the country, pays no taxes for its support and does not 
 understand the first principles of social or political economy, have a voice 
 in the destinies of the land and nation as great as he has whose whole 
 being is inextricably woven into the very texture of both? In other 
 words, should a servant have a vote equal to that of his master ? These 
 questions I did not venture to discuss ; I never should, under the most 
 favorable circumstances, anymore than I .should try to set to music the 
 snip-snip of a barber's shop or to read the heart of a newspaper correspon- 
 dent. There are some things to me past finding out, and I never could 
 understand whj^ a tradesman's son, if God gave him genius and made 
 him a gentleman, should not be treated at least as courteou.sly as is the 
 man who is a lord only by the accident of birth. I suppose birth does go 
 a long way, as, for instance, with horses and dogs ; but I do not make out 
 why, given the same intellectual, moral, physical and spiritual qualities, 
 one man should not be esteemed as highly as another and allowed equally 
 the free course of life. My friend could have told me, but I did not wish 
 him to think I had even the smell of heresy upon me. He remembers 
 the time, as well as I do, when the alms' women used to wear long, scarlet 
 cloaks, which cloaks were given them about St. Thomas's Day, and not 
 only proved to them a means of comfort and pride, but also showed that 
 when Charity tried her hand on old paupers ' ' not even Solomon in all his 
 glory was arrayed like one of these." And verily a scarlet cloak 
 against the white snow looks almost as picturesque as a scarlet hood on 
 the priest's surplice ; and as Doctors of Divinity wear the hood because 
 their studies, so it was said of old time, have brought them near to the 
 blood of Christ, so, I suppose, the wearers of the cloak may be looked 
 upon as very near to God. I am sure they are, but I do not like to see 
 poverty thus arrayed. It is very nice for the people who buy the cloaks ; 
 it is, perhaps, — well, say just a little, less nice for the people who wear the 
 cloaks. My friend laments that the latter are less kindly disposed to 
 the former than are the former to the latter. This is not surpri.sing ; 
 but, then, as he says, England is bent on self-destruction. Did Jeremiah 
 ever act as village correspondent ? 
 
 My down-hearted and broken-spirited acquaintance sells seeds as well
 
 OVER THE HILLS TO BROADWAY. 53 
 
 as handles scissors. He has been a benefactor to most of the canary birds 
 and onion beds in the parish ; and if my neighbours only thought half as 
 kindly of me as his neighbours do of him, I .should be a happy man. They 
 know his worth at handling either a bri.stly beard or a bristly question. 
 His great weakness, paradoxically .speaking, is his .strength of feeling. 
 He rumbles and blazes when confronted with a matter contrary to his taste, 
 like a Vesuvius in eruption. He would treat his opponent with the ashes 
 and cinders of his anger and contempt as the lava-streams and fire-.showers 
 treated Herculaneum. In other words he is excitable, and then some- 
 times sarcastic. You should have heard him .speak upon the perversity of 
 the church authorities in .spoiling good .schoolmasters to make inefficient 
 parish priests and bishops. On this he waxed as eloquent as Archdeacon 
 Farrar is apt to do at St. Margaret's when he is demolishing .some huge 
 puppet that he has industriously and deftly built up. I confess my cheeks 
 tingled and my toes got fidgety as my friend poured forth his torrents of 
 invective. The blacker his words became, the bluer grew his countenance. 
 Oh, 'twas a fearful moment ! 
 
 It .seems that the new Bi.shop of officiated last Spring at a con- 
 firmation, and his manner is said to have been sufficiently unaffable to give 
 offence to both clergy and people. The Bi.shop is a low Churchman ; one 
 of the kind, I believe, who has sunk so deep in the mire of Protestantism 
 that he cannot get his legs out without losing both gaiters and shoes. He 
 also wears those robes which ever since, and probablj^ from before, Thomas 
 Killigrew wrote that facetious comedy called " The Parson's Wedding," 
 have been known as the " Magpie Suit." The Puritans had a deal to .say 
 about " pied prophets," but when the Puritans have had a chance they 
 have taken very kindlj' to lawn and satin. So has this bishop, and his 
 dignity hangs heavily upon him. Among other things he ordered the 
 verger not to allow the clergy to go into the vestry while he was present : 
 he remembered that the inferior clergy are often obstrusive. They had, 
 therefore, to vest wherever they could, but not in his presence ; nor were 
 they to see his shirt-sleeves. " The next time his Lordship comes," said 
 the parish clerk, "he will bring with him his lady's maid." The late 
 bi.shop was genial and easy of access, and the difference was felt keenlj'. 
 "Another schoolma.ster," wound up my friend sententiously. 
 
 I acknowledge that I saw nothing so very awful in this, but it must 
 have been bad to have drawn out so much feeling on the part of him who 
 spoke to me. We parted : he relieved and I tired. For the day has been 
 long, and not without deep thankfulness do I drop the extinguisher on the 
 candle by my bedside, and say 
 
 Good night and joy be wi' you a'.
 
 Uppcnuii. 
 
 ' I ^HE reader will here find copies of three of the broadsheets pub- 
 lished by our Ilmington poet. Forty years since, as I have said, 
 these verses had a popularity among the people of the neighborhood, 
 which it is safe to say nothing that the reader with a more cultured taste 
 will style poetry, has ever had. They were recited and sung everywhere, 
 preserved among the letters hid away in the big family Bible, and the 
 poet's health was toasted by folk who never heard of John Milton or Mat 
 Prior. If my reprint serve no other purpose than to illustrate the class 
 and style of literature which was once popular and common in the villages 
 of England, I shall have done that which will please the lover of human 
 nature and of ancient ways. And though this sort of thing is now out of 
 date, and the critic will find fault with more perhaps than I could point 
 out were I censoriously inclined, yet I am sure none will miss seeing in 
 these lines a spirit of reverence, a pathos, and a considerable power of 
 description. Discerning these gifts, most likely some who take the trouble 
 to read them will be glad to think that the old village life produced men 
 such as William Handy, able to help their neighbors, a little way, at least, 
 towards the development of mind and heart. 
 
 (54)
 
 VERSES, 
 
 COMPOSED ON THE DESTRUCTIVE 
 
 T/ial occurred at Shipstonoji-Siour, and the neighbourhood, on the 2jst of June, /Sj/, 
 which destroyed a great quantity of Glass in the Windows and Greenhouses, 
 and nearly destroyed all the Corn in the fields wherever it passed over. 
 
 ALSO, 
 
 An account of the destructive stonn, that visited (on the same evening) the districts 
 of Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire. 
 
 BY W. HANDY, ILMINGTON. 
 
 Come listen, people far and near, 
 
 While I to you unfold, 
 The tidings of a thunderstorm 
 
 Which late I did behold. 
 
 A person kindly called me in, 
 To shelter from the storm, 
 
 And grieved much I was to hear, 
 A female laugh and scorn. 
 
 In Eighteen Hundred aud Fifty-one, 
 
 The twenty-first of June, 
 On Saturday morning I set out, 
 
 To cross the fields of bloom. 
 
 The mother being sorely grieved, 
 
 Said, " do not be so vain, 
 " It is the Lord that sends the storm, 
 
 " I hear you scoff with pain." 
 
 At Todenham town I soon arrived, 
 
 The morn was very fair, 
 Between the hours of twelve and one 
 
 There seem'd a change of air. 
 
 She then call'd on the name of Christ, 
 And said in earnest pra\er, 
 
 " The Lord have mercy on thy soul, 
 " And all the village spare." 
 
 I had scarcely pass'd the village through. 
 When the sky began to lower, 
 
 The sun for some time ceas'd to shine, 
 And then came on a shower. 
 
 Now every womau, child or man. 
 When this great storm was o'er. 
 
 They thought that ne'er on all the earth 
 Was such a storm before. 
 
 When this was o'er I travell'd on, 
 
 My verses for to sell, 
 But quick came ou a thunder-clap. 
 
 And then the hailstones fell. 
 
 Not since the days when Egypt's king 
 Did heaven's own will assail, 
 
 And God sent down for punishment 
 A storm of fire and hail. 
 
 (55)
 
 56 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Like broken ice the hailstones fell, 
 And smote both tree and field, 
 
 Which for the use of every one 
 Their kindly fruit they yield. 
 
 Next I went on to Wolford town. 
 
 Across the fields of grain, 
 There I beheld much smitten corn. 
 
 Which cannot rise again. 
 
 By all the road I pass'd along 
 
 Much damage there I saw. 
 The wheat struck down, the beans were cut, 
 
 The blossom from the straw. 
 
 At Shipston-on-Stour, Worcestershire, 
 And in the villages around, 
 
 The damage is supposed to be 
 Quite twenty thousand pounds. 
 
 That afternoon the mighty storm 
 
 To Lancashire it went. 
 There men may see for many a day 
 
 Where it its fury spent. 
 
 At Chedderton the large park trees 
 Up by the roots were tore, 
 
 Houses and walls the rushing flood 
 From their foundations bore. 
 
 The farmers are with sorrow struck. 
 When they behold their corn. 
 
 And some say, " We shall ruiu'd be, 
 " By this most awful storm. 
 
 " For all our crops are nearly spoil'd, 
 " Which we with pleasure viewed, 
 
 " But now in sorrow we behold 
 " Our fields with ruin strew'd." 
 
 The gardens are much injured, too, 
 
 I saw as I did pass. 
 The nurserymen have losses great 
 
 In fruit and broken glass. 
 
 Some people, perhaps, will not believe 
 The words that here are spoke, 
 
 But Shipston and the neighbourhood 
 Have half their windows broke. 
 
 For miles aromid it was severe 
 In the neigh1)ouritig counties. 
 
 And much destruction has occurred 
 To heaven's growing bounties. 
 
 At Radcliffe bridge a horse was killed 
 
 By lightning on the spot, 
 .\nd an infant in its mother's arms 
 
 Which shared that fatal lot. 
 
 What can the parent's feelings be, 
 The thought will make one shudder, 
 
 And she herself was injured much. 
 But likely to recover. 
 
 The mother's heart is nearly broke, 
 
 Her mind can take no rest, 
 For thinking of the little child. 
 
 That died upon her breast. 
 
 In storms the Lord doth show His might. 
 
 And every wind that blows, 
 Whate'er may be our worldly loss. 
 
 It still His mercy shows. 
 
 In losses think of patient Job, 
 
 For patience brings reward. 
 He lost his children and his wealth, 
 
 But still he prais'd the Lord.
 
 VERSES, 
 
 COMPOSED ON THE I,AMENTABI<E DEATH OF 
 
 (A Native of Mickleton,) 
 AND A STRANGER, KNOWN BY THE NAME OF NIX, 
 
 WHICH OCCURRED, BY ACCIDENT, 
 
 Wilhiii a few days of each other, in and near the Cutting at the west-end of the 
 Mickleton Tunnel, on the Oxford and Wolverhampton Railway ; 
 
 The first on the 25th Sept., the other on the 13th Oct., 1851. 
 
 BY W. HANDY, ILMINGTON. 
 
 ONCE more, my friends, I am come round, 
 
 Sad news for to declare, 
 And to remind you of that day 
 
 For which we must prepare ! 
 
 Another warning speaks aloud. 
 
 And speaks to you and me. 
 The bell has tolled — in wh ich we've heard — 
 
 The death of Young FARLEY ! 
 
 September on the twenty-fifth, 
 
 He left his mother's cot, 
 And went to work upon the line. 
 
 Which proved his dj-ing spot. 
 
 This 3'oung man used to drive the tip. 
 
 When first the line began ; 
 But for tlie space of his last week 
 
 He with the full trains ran. 
 
 The smith had now his coffee boil'd, 
 
 And got his breakfast ready, 
 Which he often did, and caution'd him. 
 When working, to be steady. 
 
 For Farley seem'd so venturesome 
 
 When he was working there. 
 Which caused the blacksmith for to say, 
 
 "Remember ! — you take care." 
 
 Now breakfast time it was gone b}-, 
 
 And Farley he went out ; 
 The other train was coming down. 
 
 He thought he heard them shout. 
 
 For part of this was left behind. 
 
 Which had run off the road. 
 The other part had broken loose. 
 
 And coming with its load 
 
 And when he took his last train out. 
 It then was breakfast time. 
 
 He went into the blacksmith's shop. 
 Which stands just by the line. 
 
 The wheels were now going round so fast. 
 The spokes you could not see. 
 
 And Farlej- ran to throw the sprag. 
 Which caus'd his death to be. 
 
 (57)
 
 58 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 But now he could not sprag the wheel, 
 
 To stop the whirling train, 
 He thought at last of taking hold, 
 
 But instantly was slain. 
 
 By taking hold, he thought to ruu, 
 
 But that was all in vain, 
 The cross-piece caught him on the back, 
 
 And turn'd him to the train. 
 
 All this was in an instant done, 
 
 Before a word was spoke. 
 And every bone within his frame 
 
 Beneath the wheels were broke. 
 
 So suddenly he was struck down, 
 No groan or moan was heard, 
 
 Nor yet a struggle on his frame — 
 He died without a word. 
 
 Four men then bore him to the inn. 
 Their feelings were niucli hurt, 
 
 And every man lay down his tools, 
 And went from off the work. 
 
 Like thousands more — when troubles 
 come, 
 
 And danger seemeth nigh. 
 They then begin to feel afraid, 
 
 And for a moment cry. 
 
 But cries alone will not avail. 
 
 To take our souls to heaven, 
 But we must pray to Jesus Christ, 
 
 To have our sins forgiven. 
 
 The news was now soon spread around. 
 And reach'd his Mother's ears, 
 
 Which only multiplied the grief 
 She'd borne for many years. 
 
 O how she wept, and griev'd at heart. 
 When this sad news did come ; 
 
 At length she cried, " I am bereaved 
 Of my beloved son." 
 
 So let us now more careful be, 
 And take heed of our ways. 
 
 For many here have met their death, 
 And not liv'd half their days. 
 
 James Farley's gone to his long home. 
 
 His weeping mother cries ; 
 God rest his soul, now in his grave 
 
 His mangled body lies. 
 
 A fortnight and three days being gone, 
 
 Another man was killed, 
 By a fall of earth, upon that line 
 
 Where Farley's blood was spilled. 
 
 This man, he being a stranger here. 
 
 Of him I say but little. 
 Another, hurt at the same time 
 
 Was took to the Hospital. 
 
 Let these sad deaths remind us all, 
 
 Our time is drawing nigh, 
 And put the question to ourselves — 
 
 "Are we prepared to die? "
 
 VERSES 
 
 COMrOSKD ON THE MURDER OF 
 
 <xia-. i^jk.LjLBEi^a-o.[> 
 
 Giovanni Marie Ferdinando Kalabergo, was an Italian Jnveller, and had resided 
 at Banbury /or up7uards of forty years ; he was shot on Willscott-hill, on the evening 
 of the joth of fanuary last, by his nephew, Gullielmo Giovanni liazetti Kalabergo, 
 zvho had lately come over from Italy ajid had only resided with his uncle about ten 
 weeks. He was tried and convicted for the offence at the Oxfot d Assises and executed 
 on the 22nd of March, 1852. 
 
 BY WILLIAM HANDY, ILMINGTON. 
 
 Ye natives of this land I pray, 
 That would your feelings show, 
 
 Come purchase now of me to-day. 
 Before I further go. 
 
 In Banbury town he made his home, 
 
 And by industry got 
 A horse and trap there of his own. 
 
 To take things from his shop. 
 
 Unto these lines that here are wrote, 
 Pray for a moment spend, 
 
 And hear the subject on the youth 
 Who shot his kindest friend. 
 
 Two days from home he had been out 
 
 A usual round had been. 
 Which shortly after brought about 
 
 This sad and murderous scene. 
 
 Kalabergo was the man we hear. 
 That met this awful fate, 
 
 By one that was his ki:isman near. 
 Who sought his life to take. 
 
 The business of the day being done. 
 They turned for home again. 
 
 But no thought in his mind had run. 
 That he should soon be slain. 
 
 A jeweller was this man by trade, 
 And ofttimes travelled wide, 
 
 But ne'er had felt the least afraid, 
 When riding side by side. 
 
 Tho' standing on the brink of death. 
 This wicked deed was planned, 
 
 And shortly after yields his breath 
 Unto a murderer's hand. 
 
 By him with -whom he had such care, 
 And brought across the sea. 
 
 In order that he soon might share 
 His trade and property. 
 
 This nephew now was walking by, 
 
 Who had the pistol got, 
 To Willscott-hill they soon drew nigh 
 
 He there his uncle shot. 
 
 (59)
 
 6o 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 This was the friend he thought to trust 
 
 In care of all his wealth, 
 One ou which you might think just 
 
 As worthy as himself. 
 
 This murderous man could take no rest 
 
 But shortlj' ran for home, 
 A fire was kindled in his breast, 
 
 Against his heart of stone. 
 
 But man by nature's so defiled, 
 That came by Adam's fall. 
 
 And enters every mother's child, 
 And brings death on us all. 
 
 The craft he used this to conceal. 
 Struck numbers with surprise. 
 
 For many thought his grief was real, 
 And then he told such lies. 
 
 But none would think a man like this, 
 PoRsessed of such a friend. 
 
 Would sacrifice his hope of bliss. 
 To such a wicked end. 
 
 A month before the time we're told, 
 
 It seems the plot he laid, 
 He bought the pistol and the mould 
 
 And then the bullets made 
 
 Some person distant heard the shot. 
 When travelling on that way, 
 
 Who shortly came unto the spot, 
 And found the body lay. 
 
 With which he meaut to shoot his friend 
 When he a chance could see. 
 
 Which caused his own life for to end 
 Upon that fatal tree. 
 
 And several more not far behind, 
 Came up the corpse to view, 
 
 Which to their sorrow they did find, 
 A man whom they well knew. 
 
 This wicked man was soon found out 
 That did this murderous deed. 
 
 Still lies proceeded from his mouth, 
 The people to deceive. 
 
 The news soon weut to Banbury town 
 And filled each mind with woe. 
 
 Still they hoped he might be found 
 Who laid his body low. 
 
 But after this within the cell. 
 He to the priest confessed, 
 
 And said, " I did my imcle kill, 
 " Which much disturbs my rest. 
 
 I'or none in years advanced So far, 
 Was more beliked than he. 
 
 The way he's gone to heaven's bar. 
 He paved with charity. 
 
 " Great God have mercy on my soul 
 
 Though guilty as I be. 
 Pray, wash me clean, and make me whole 
 
 Through Christ who died for me. 
 
 When first a stranger to this land. 
 His acts of love were shown. 
 
 To the distressed he lent his hand, 
 And soon became well known. 
 
 " My seutence now is to be hung, 
 My friends will long l)ewail 
 
 The loss of me, tlieir wicked son. 
 Now lying in Oxford jail." 
 
 .^sk where you may it is the same, 
 
 By high or low degree. 
 For miles around he bears the name, 
 
 "A man of Charity." 
 
 This little rhyme I now must end, 
 
 Which is alas, too true, 
 God rest the soul of that dear friend, 
 
 Killed by his own nephew.
 
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