THE
RAMBLES OFA00MIN
THE RAMBLES OF A DOMINIE
THE RAMBLES
OF A DOMINIE
BY
FRANCIS A. KNIGHT
i
AUTHOR OF
'BY LEAFY WAYS," "IDYLLS OF THE FIELD." &r.
lUitb 3Uu0tration0 In: . c. Compton
LONDON
WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO.
2 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.G.
AND 44 VICTORIA STREET, S.W.
1 391.
TO THE
OLT> <BO rs
WHO HAVE SHARED AND BRIGHTENED
THESE
<B L B S
AMONG THE MENDIPS, ON DARTMOOR,
AND IN BAVARIA,
THIS BOOK
50 .affrrttonatr hj Drtitratrtt
BY THEIR OLD
" to me ye never will grow old^
But live for ever young in my remembrance,
Clever grof o/J t nor change^ nor pass
Tour youthful voices will Jlovt on for ever ;
When Life grows bare and tarnished with decay ^
As through a leajiess landscape flows a river."
316
These papers are % with alterations and additions^
reprinted from the DAILY NEWS, by kind permission
of the Editor.
CONTENTS
PAGE
AN OLD STORY I
JACK SPARROW 8
THE KINGFISHER'S HAUNTS 16
IN BLACK AND WHITE 24
FAIR MAIDS OF FEBRUARY 32
SLEEPY HOLLOW 40
IN NORBURY HOLLOW 51
A BABE HILLSIDE 63
THE CRUISE OF THE THEKLA. I. ULTIMA THULE . 70
,, II. A QUIET HAVEN . 80
III. CALM AND STORM . 89
IN NORTH WALES. I. THE FOOT OF SIABOD . . 97
II. IN THE MOUNTAINS . . .103
A CHAMOIS IO9
ON DARTMOOR A STUDY IN GREY 117
THREE MEN IN A TUB 124
PAGE
IN AN APPLE COUNTRY 131
CORN IN EGYPT 140
A HERONRY IN THE HOME COUNTIE8 . . . -155
AN OLD RIVER PORT . . . . * . . . .165
AN OLD HILL FORTRESS 173
NASEBY FIELD. I. THE PLACE OF BATTLE . . . l8o
II. FIGHTING FOR THE CROWN 186
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
MOEL SIABOD, PROM THE CAPEL CURIG BOAD
Frontispiece
A HAUNT OP THE KINGFISHER MAX MILLS, IN THE
MENDIPS 22
SNOWDROPS 32
" SLEEPY HOLLOW " HALE WELL, IN THE MENDIPS . 42
SWALLOWS 55
BEE ORCHIS 63
THE STONES OP STENNESS, ORKNEY .... 70
A QUIET HAVEN LOCH LAXPORD 88
THE MORNING AFTER LOCH HOURN .... 95
THE CYPING PALLS to face 103
A CHAMOIS 109
TAILPIECE Il6
THE BEETLE AND WEDGE; ON THE THAMES to face 124
THE HERONRY AT LEYTONSTONE, ESSEX . . . .162
THE BORE ON THE PARRET i;i
RELICS OF NASEBY l8o
This Large Taper Edition, with Troof
Illustrations, is limited to One Hundred
Copies, of which this is
RAMBLES OF A DOMINIE
STORT
" Holding the cunning-warded keys
To all the woodcraft mysteries ;
Himself to Nature's heart so near
That all her voices in his ear
Of bird or beast had meanings clear."
WHITTIEE.
THE expression " Eyes and No Eyes " has passed into a
proverb. It is a phrase used probably by thousands
who never read the original story perhaps never even
saw the "Evenings at Home," a book that made its
mark a century ago, a book with which at least our
fathers were familiar ; though there are many who have
at least a general idea of it, and not a few who well
remember how the two schoolboys spent their holiday.
How they set off together, but as one of them " lagged
behind in the lane," the other went on without him;
then how the first came in complaining of the dulness of
his walk and the tediousness of his companion ; regretted
the absence of people, and had "rather by half have
gone along the turnpike road ; " and then how the other
A
2 <I(4{MBLES OF A VOMINIS
boy, the one who had loitered by the way, came back,
having gone over just the same ground, brimful of
enthusiasm over the birds, the flowers, the insects he
had met with in his ramble, and finally produced his
" handkerchief full of curiosities." The other admitted
that he too " saw some of these things, but did not take
particular notice of them." He "did not care about
them."
It is a good story. But it is more than a story. And
it is as true to-day as when, a hundred years ago, it
was first given to the world. It is just what has been
happening since on every day in the year. It is precisely
what would happen now if a man town-born and bred
were to set out for a stroll in the country with a com-
panion whose eyes and ears had, by long and patient
study in the open air, grown not only familiar, but, as it
were, unconsciously conscious of every sight and sound
in all the landscape round him.
But the naturalist, like the poet, is born, not made.
Much may undoubtedly be done by training, but the
keen observer is, first of all, a lover of Nature for her
own sake. He may not have any very deep acquaintance
with scientific text-books. He might betray, and very
likely would, an ignorance of geographical distribution,
of types, of scientific nomenclature in which a South
Kensington student could put him to the blush in five
minutes. But his mastery of woodcraft, his knowledge
of the haunts of nature, has been gained by days and
nights of waiting in the fields and lanes, by solitary vigil
in the twilight of the woods, by good-fellowship with all
OLT> STORT 3
the creatures of the wild. The arm-chair critic, ever
anxious, after the manner of his kind, to classify and
label, complacently sets down each naturalist as the
follower of a school. Yes, but it is the great school in
which their lives are spent : a school not of men or
printed books ; a school in which " Nature, the dear old
nurse," spreads wide before the eyes of loving learners
pages of " the manuscript of God."
It is no doubt hard for an outsider a man whose
opportunities or tastes have never made him free of
Nature's vast and wandering realm to realise how full
of life are woods and fields and country lanes. The
picture of a woodland walk seems to him too full of
figures, exaggerated, unreal.
A man who never from a bivouac among the moun-
tains saw the splendour of an Alpine dawn, who never
from his lonely hut has watched the sun go down behind
the mountain wall and leave the mighty ramparts glow-
ing with the fire of heaven, sees an Alpine landscape
painted as the artist saw it, and coolly writes that the
tints are overdone, the colouring impossible.
So is it in descriptions of Nature. " A realist might
find something suspicious," says another critic on the
hearth, " in the crowd of figures with which the writer
peoples all his woods and fields," and cannot read
between the lines that the pictures were painted on the
spot, and that every figure was copied from the life.
Another man reads a sketch of a ramble in the woods.
His soul is stirred by the description of what are spoken
of as familiar sights and sounds. He recognises the
4 <I(AMBLES OF A VOtMINIS
spot the background of the picture. Why, these things
are at his very door, and he has not seen them. He gets
his hat and stick, he whistles to his dog, and, with the
paper in his hand, he hurries up the well-known path
among the trees. A hundred times already has he
passed that way, but now he will see things with quite
different eyes. How strange that he never saw a
squirrel or a weasel, a gold-crest or a woodpecker.
Full of hope and expectation he clatters up the stony
track, startling a voluble blackbird from the bush hard
by, and sending him headlong through the wood re-
peating his loud signal of alarm. And now he is at the
top of the path, having stopped once or twice to call up
the dog, who, in the full enjoyment of the chase, is
scattering in confusion all the inhabitants of the under-
wood. " Yes, this is the spot ; there is the old tree with
the bark torn away by the woodpecker;" and elated
with his success in having really got upon the track, he
cuts away with his stick a spray or two of briar with a
crack that might be heard a hundred yards. A squirrel
sitting quiet at his dinner on the level fir-bough over-
head drops his half -gnawed cone and crouches behind the
shelter of the branch. A woodpecker who was digging
for larvae in an old stump farther on retreats behind his
tree and watches motionless. A troop of tits and gold-
crests scatter from the neighbouring tree-tops, and a
complacent smack on the newspaper is answered by a
watchful wren, whose shrill rattle sets every feathered
neighbour on the alert.
Yes, this is the place ; but where are the birds ? He
OLV STORT 5
can see no squirrel racing over the branches. Wood-
peckers ? Why, there's not a bird in the whole place.
Snakes ? That writer was a humbug. Impatiently he
kicked away a loose stone lying- in the path, crumpled
up the offending newspaper, and clattered homeward
down the path again. And he said well, never
mind what he said ; but he came back wrathful, with
the fixed conviction that the whole thing was a fraud,
evolved from the depths of some writer's consciousness
by the aid of a too fertile imagination.
And yet, had he but known it, that sketch was written
on that very path by a man who, through those very
woods, stole softly and alone j whose feet were hushed on
green and mossy ways \ who left at home the bright-eyed
terrier who begged so hard to be allowed to follow
knowing well the happy hunting grounds her master
loved to haunt. No sound of footsteps then upon the
rocky path disturbed the squirrel at his feast. He
paused, indeed, a moment, to peer with bright black eyes
down through the leafy arches, but he made no sign of
flight. The gold-crests frolicked in the swaying boughs
unconscious of the passing steps beneath. A rabbit
cantering lightly down the slight path among the bushes
came face to face with a strange figure; stopped, and
looked up with big dark eyes ; was doubtful, and jogged
back a yard or two ; then came on again, and seeing no
movement, passed contentedly, without a thought of
danger.
As for snakes, the oldest and most cautious hand
knows well how hard it is to get a good sight of the.
6 <I(A!MBLES OF A
long brown figure basking on the bank, and that often
the first sign of its presence is its rustle in the bushes
as it glides away.
It is marvellous, too, how slowly grow upon the sense
of hearing, not merely the faint cries of bat and shrew,
but the call of the curlew, the drone of the nightjar,
even the chatter of a magpie ; while to the naturalist,
the notes of birds betray them as certainly as their
shape, their attitude, or the colour of their plumage.
Nor is it alone the city man who finds the country
dull and barren. There is many a dweller among green
fields of whom it could not even truthfully be said that
" A primrose by a river's brim
1 A yellow primrose was to him,"
he does not even see the primrose.
How many a time has he crossed the wooden bridge
that spans the loitering river. He may, indeed, have
paused to watch the leap of a trout or the dip of a
swallow. But did he catch the white flicker of the
sandpiper that took wing far up the stream ? Did he
see the brown water-rat that watched him from the
shore, holding up in dainty paws the blade of sedge he
was nibbling for his supper ? The dragon-fly went past
without a glance from him : he had no eyes for the tiny
beetles that in mazy dances spun upon the glassy sur-
face. A wedge of wild duck overhead went by unseen.
The slow wings of the heron drifting up the stream
passed over him unnoticed. A troop of curlews flying
to the moorland called softly to each other in their
OL<D
sweet wild way, but their voices fell upon unheeding
ears. Like " No Eyes " in the story, he may have seen
some of these things, but " did not take particular notice
of them." He "did not care about them." There is
many a man who knows his parish well, whose days are
passed among sweet country sights and sounds, to whom,
lacking the training of the eye and ear, the voice of
Nature still remains an alien tongue.
SORROW
" You call them thieves and pillagers ; but know
They are the winged wardens of your farms,
Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe,
And from your harvests keep a hundred harms."
LONGFELLOW.
ON the threshold of the winter, when the sands of the
old year are sinking, and days are darkening in the
drear December, we miss more than ever the presence
of the birds. But although the open country is all
silent, and lane and copse have long been emptied of
their music, in 'the heart of the great city there is less of
change. Toilers of Babylon, in crowded court and dingy
attic, to whom a green field is a half -forgotten memory,
and the cuckoo's cry a sound unknown, are no sharers
in the free life of the country, know nothing of its ebb
and flow.
One bird only braves with them the fog, the smoke,
the squalor of the city. No pinch of poverty drives his
hardy clan to forage in the fields. The sparrow lingers
by the flesh-pots all the winter through.
STARROW 9
He is a bird familiar indeed to all. But his familiarity
has nothing in common with the fearless confidence of
the robin, who helps the gardener at his work, and who
in hard days of winter joins the household at their
meals. Nor is it that of the swallow, who, timid as she
is, will almost brush you with her purple wings as you
stand to watch her floating to her nest among the
rafters.
The daring of the sparrow is the evidence of an in-
tellect sharpened by bitter persecution ; his is a boldness
born of long familiarity with danger. Always on guard
against the prowling cat, constantly on the look-out for
flying missiles, mistrustful even of the crumbs that kind
hands scatter on the grass, ever he holds himself warily
aloof. Gladly we minister to the wants of the suppliant
robin. We love to watch the titmouse swinging on a
bone. But to the sparrow scant welcome is accorded ;
good words for him are rarely spoken. His impudent
air, the doubtful character of his language especially
in the heat of argument or the dust of conflict his un-
deniable acts of pillage weigh heavier in the popular
regard than all his faithful service in the field.
He has no lack of handsome kinsmen. The goldfinch,
for all his smart red cap and the dainty fan of yellow in
his wing, is a connection not remote. The chaffinch is
his near ally ; the bullfinch, too, is numbered with his
clan. But of these the sparrow is the poor relation.
There is no gay colour in his coat, no note of music on
his tongue.
A wide difference there is, however, between the
io MBLES OF A VOMINIS
sparrow of the country and the sparrow of the town ;
between the dingy bird that nestles in the niches of St.
Paul's and the smart cousin roosting in the fragrant
cleanness of the hayrick. The city sparrow, clad in a
dull garb suggestive of his smoky haunts, is a bold-
hearted bird, in his element amid the turmoil of the
street, cool and collected among the roar of traffic,
lingering under the very feet of the horses. He makes
under smoky eaves a grimy nest, and finds among
blackened roofs a field with which his colour harmonises
well. His notes are sharp and scurrilous, savouring of
profanity and the city arab.
A very different figure is the country cousin, who,
with plumage all untarnished, swings on the laburnum
bough, or, perched on the brown thatch of the barn,
gossips drowsily with his neighbours in the summer
twilight. Plain to see is the patch of black upon his
throat ; unsullied the white bar across his wing. Un-
dimmed with dust is the grey tinge of his crown ; un-
soiled with soot the chestnut of his glossy feathers.
But, whether of the town or country, the sparrow is a
sparrow still. Perhaps there is no bird with a character
so strongly marked. No bird more resolutely holds its
own. Perhaps there is none who works with more un-
tiring zeal; no bird certainly gets less credit for his
pains. His good deeds are prompted, it is true, less by
love than by necessity. In the struggle for existence
he gets his dinner where he can, and it is all the same
to him if his food is found among the insects that
attack the crop, or among the ripening grain itself; if
SPARROW ii
the first course should be wire-worm and the second
wheat.
The occasional addition of a second name is a distinc-
tion which the sparrow shares with many birds. The
redbreast is always Robin. We are so accustomed to Tom
tit, Mag pie, Jack daw, that we forget that these birds
were differently christened. We associate with Eobin
the name of Jenny wren. The countryman is familiar
with Peggy whitethroat ; and, perhaps in tribute to its
graceful air and the tasteful arrangement of its colour-
ing, the redstart is Jenny, Fanny, Bessie, or Katie,
according to the fancy of the particular district. Several
plain-coloured birds are called Isaac a curious epithet,
explained by a passage in Chaucer, where the hedge-
sparrow is called heysugge. Sally picker is a name
given in Ireland to several small warblers. Here Sally
is clearly a corruption of sallow, a willow-tree.
The sparrow's ancient title of Philip has long been
dropped. The estimation in which he is commonly held
precludes altogether the use of any real pet word for
him. There are few allusions to him in the poets. No
pleasant legend clings about his name. In his busy life
there would have been no room for the kind offices
performed by pitying robins for the Babes in the Wood.
It is to be feared that his bold unhesitating answer to
the question, "Who killed Cock Robin?" is more in
keeping with his character.
The nests of birds are for the most part occupied only
in the spring time. The structure on which such care
and skill were lavished is tenanted for a few short
12 <I(4fMBLES OF A VOMINIS
weeks ; then, at the end of a summer, it is abandoned,
and in a brief space all the material of moss and hair and
feathers, gleaned with patient toil and arranged with
matchless art, is scattered to the winds. But the home
of the sparrow is more to him than a nursery or a
temporary resting-place. In many cases it serves as a
shelter all the year, and the thick layers of feathers
which form its defence against the winter's cold are as
marked a feature in its plan as the palisade of thorns
with which the magpie guards his own against attack.
It would be hard to find a spot where the bold spar-
row would not dare to make his nest. From a hole in
the beam of a colliery engine beating twenty strokes
a minute, to the mouth of the lion on the vanished
Northumberland House ; from a crease in the canvas of
a coasting smack to the muzzle of an abandoned gun,
all sorts of places in their time have served his turn.
But best of all perhaps he loves the snug shelter of
the eaves, hiding his nest under the tiling, in a rain-
water pipe, or in the tunnel which he or his ancestors
have hollowed in the ancient thatch. He has a special
weakness for seizing on his neighbour's house, and many
a pair of swallows and of martins has he driven from
their homestead. He in his turn is by no means un-
familiar with the bitterness of eviction when swift or
starling has taken a fancy to his nest. Several times
the daring bird has been known to take up its quarters
among the material of an occupied magpie's nest, and
there is a case on record of its building among the sticks
of the very eyrie of an eagle.
STARRQW 13
The sparrow is, more even than the robin, a follower
of man. But unlike the nettle, which, although growing
only where man has been, continues to flourish long
after the dwelling has fallen into ruin, and the garden
has gone back into the wilderness, the sparrow deserts
at once the spot from w T hich man's presence is withdrawn.
In Siberia, where its appearance is comparatively recent,
it has accompanied the Russian advance along the
military roads, but even then is said to favour those
lands alone where crops of corn are raised.
The question of the work and wages of this indus-
trious bird has been ably argued from both sides. Again
and again has its account of service and ill deeds been
made out and balanced ; and although the damage done
by it, to some crops at least, is very great, there can be
no doubt that the sparrow is one of the farmer's most
valuable retainers, an ally altogether indispensable to
the safety of his harvest. The foes which lie in wait for
all young birds amply suffice to keep their numbers
down, without resorting to the miserable machinery of
the sparrow club.
The hen sparrow lays five or six eggs. Two broods
there generally are, often three, sometimes even four.
Did eighteen young birds each year survive the com-
plaints of childhood, escape the cat and crow, and reach
the age of maturity without mishap, and should they
and their descendants all be living at the end of ten
years, the family of a single pair would number exactly
two thousand millions a community which would,
if they had the chance, exhaust the entire wheat
i 4 AMBLES OF A VOfMINIS
harvest of the British Islands in rather less than twelve
months.
But, as a matter of fact, no such increase is possible.
The vast majority of nestlings die from cold and wet
and the attacks of bird and beast before the end even of
their first season, and the bird population of any district
hardly varies in amount from year to year.
It has been well urged in defence of the sparrow that
the time during which the grain is open to attack is but
brief, while the work of ridding the land of noxious
insects is continued all the year. Careful calculations
have been made as to the work done by this indefatigable
bird in the destruction of grubs and wire-worms and
other foes of the farmer. During the breeding season a
pair of sparrows will carry to their young as many as
forty thousand caterpillars, besides an untold quantity
of other forms of insect life.
In the United States, where the vast flocks of sparrows
were long regarded with disfavour, the farmer is be-
ginning now to welcome them as stout allies ; to see in
their appearing the safety of his crops. Those who
grudge to their feathered labourers their dole of corn,
and wish to do without them, may remember how the
men of Killingworth in conclave met,
" shook their heads, and doomed with dreadful words
To swift destruction the whole race of birds."
They bought their experience dear :
" The summer came, and all the birds were dead,
The days were like hot coals ; the very ground
SPARROW 15
Was burned to ashes ; in the orchards fed
Myriads of caterpillars, and around
The cultivated fields and garden beds
Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and found
No foe to check their march, till they had made
The land a desert without leaf or shade."
THE KJNGFISHE^S
PERHAPS it is the fatal gift of beauty which prevents the
kingfisher from being common anywhere. Certainly no
bird is more ruthlessly slaughtered by any man who has a
chance of shooting him, either as a proof of skill in marks-
manship, or for the sake of the dried, distorted, and ex-
pressionless skin generally spoken of as " a stuffed bird"
But there is many a quiet reach on the broad river,
many a secluded nook along the stream, where still he
holds his own. How often, in the stillness of a summer
morning, when the mist was lying on the water, has the
light beat of oar blades broken suddenly the silence
of some sanctuary among the willows 1 And then, as the
startled wild-duck struggled noisily up out of the reeds,
as the gaunt heron spread his great wings for flight,
the kingfisher, with straight and rapid course, flashed
along the shore, the luminous blue of his bright plum-
age showing on the water like a flame. How often, too,
the fisherman has started at the passing vision of those
swift and splendid wings !
THS KINGFISHER'S HJU^JTS 17
It is no marvel that a bird so beautiful should have
been, in all ages, theme for myth and folk-lore. Who
does not remember how Halcyone, the sea-god's daughter,
saw her husband's lifeless figure laid upon the shore, and
threw herself despairing in the waves ? And how the
gods, in pity, changed her mate and her to birds of rare
plume, whose dress of green and red and azure has out-
lasted even " the immortals " ?
Hardly less strange is Pliny's stoiy, that, in the dead
of winter, the halcyon built her nest upon the sea, and
that by her father's gift the waves were quiet while she
brooded on her eggs.
The kingfisher was clearly not common even in Pliny's
time. " This very bird so notable," he says, according
to that version by Holland, whose quaint diction is just
in keeping with the old-world story, " is little bigger
than a sparrow ; for the more part of her pennage blew,
intermingled yet among with white and purple feathers,
having a thin, small neck and long withal. It is a very
great chance to see one of these halcycons. They haunt
rivers, and sing among the flags and reeds."
Giraldus, the learned Welshman who wrote the " Topo-
graphy of Ireland," records the legend current in his
time, that a dead kingfisher, if kept from damp, would
not decay, and if hung up by the beak would renew its
feathers year by year.
Aldrovandus, however, who took for gospel all that
was told him in the course of his travels, has a story sur-
passing even this. He tells us that a kingfisher's skin
suspended in the air will point without fail to the quarter
i8 <I(4{MBLES OF A <DOtMINIS
whence the wind was blowing. This is what is meant in
" Lear," when the outspoken Earl of Kent talks of the
smiling rogues who
" turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale and vary of their masters."
Marlowe, too, in " The Jew of Malta," asks, " Into what
corner peers my halcyon's bill ? " In a book on birds,
published in this century, the writer speaks of having
seen in this country a dead kingfisher, which its owner
declared never failed to turn its beak to the right point
of the compass.
No less full of marvels are the accounts of the halcyon's
nest given by the old writers. And although no modern
writer has been found to copy without question, as
Montaigne did, the fables of Pliny and Plutarch, some
uncertainty has, until quite recent times, obscured the
life history of this well-known bird. In Goldsmith we
read that the nest is made of willow-down. Aldrovandus
describes it as lined with flowers of water plants.
The Halcyon Days of the old legend were in the
winter- time ; but it is well on in the summer generally
when the modern kingfisher lays her eggs. She digs
with her beak a hole three or four inches in diameter,
and varying in length from two to four feet, in the
bank of a stream near her haunt, or among the willow
roots that the river has laid bare. Sometimes, however,
she chooses a spot a long way from the water.
There still seems some difference of opinion as to the
nest itself. One high authority describes it as made of
KINGFISHER'S H^U^JTS 19
fish-bones " apparently worked by the bird's movements
as she sits, into the shape of a cup ; and .... they
generally cohere so as to become a very pretty nest, more
than an inch deep and quite smooth within." This is
the account in Yarrell ; and Montagu, writing early in
the century, uses much the same terms.
But there is a nest in the British Museum, taken
from a deep hole in a bank on the Thames, which con-
sists of a loose layer of fish-bones half an inch thick,
strewn on the earth of the burrow without any sign of
definite arrangement.
Just such a nest as this was found last summer close
to the sea, in a bank of hard sand not more than fifteen
feet above the shingle that runs all along the tide-mark.
The nearest fresh water is a rhine as the country
people call it three hundred yards away, with banks
too low for the most part to afford a safe retreat.
It is a quiet spot the halcyons have chosen one of
those rare places haunted still even by the peregrine
and the raven. On a rocky brow near by, among
the mantling ivy, the falcons reared their brood only
last year. Under the overhanging steep a little farther
on a raven was shot upon her eggs. It was a cruel
fate; but the lives of the young turkeys at yonder
farm under the hill would have been worth but few
weeks' purchase had the bold bandits reared their brood
in safety. The widower raven soon found another mate ;
but if they have built another nest, it has so far happily
escaped discovery.
The crannies of the cliff over the kingfisher's nest
20 <I(AfMBLES OF A <DO!MINie
are in the early summer clamorous with troops of daws.
Here the grey rock-dove breeds. Here, too, each year,
more than one brood of fierce young kestrels dare that
plunge over the rocky threshold which makes them free
of the empire of the air.
Sheldrakes, handsomest of sea-fowl, breed by scores in
the rabbit burrows among the bushes just over the verge
of the cliff, and, coming out at nightfall, forage far and wide
along the shore. The duck makes no nest ; but when she
has laid her dozen or more of great cream-coloured eggs
on the bare sand of her burrow she covers them with
down, which, like the eider, she has taken from her breast.
Such are the fellow-tenants of the halcyon's haunt.
In her hunting-ground among the moorland ditches
where you may chance at times to see her hovering like
a hawk over the water she has for neighbours the
sedge-warbler and the reed-sparrow ; she knows well by
sight her brother anglers, the handsome oyster-catcher
and the tall, grey heron.
But her home is not by the water. It is here in this
steep wall of sand that she has her dwelling. In the
barren soil about her threshold, the bugloss and the
yellow poppy bloom. Near by the henbane hangs its
pallid bells. White tufts of campion, purple seapink,
golden samphire, light the dark ledges of the cliffs. In
sheltered hollows of the down the evening primrose
spreads its yellow flowers ; and on rocky slopes and ridges
linger still a few fragile blossoms of the rare white cistus,
that in the spring-time was scattered all along the hill-
side like a touch of snow.
THS KINGFISHER'S HJU^JTS 21
The hole which the birds have cut, in sand that has
hardened almost into rock, is in this case not more than
eighteen inches deep, and measures barely four inches in
diameter. It slopes slightly upward, as if to keep out
the rain, and expands at the end into a sort of chamber
perhaps six inches across. The whole floor is strewn
with dry shells of shrimps, and bones of tiny fishes.
There is nothing in the least suggestive of a nest. The
remains are no thicker in one place than another, but
are scattered in a thin layer from end to end. On the
loose fragments lay, when first the nest was found, five
exquisite eggs.
The kingfisher itself loses much of its beauty with its
life. After death its marvellous colouring begins rapidly
to fade. In the hands of the average bird-stufier the
soft roundness of the feathering, on the head especially, is
crushed and marred. But the egg, which, when it is
fresh, glows like a very opal, is robbed of all its charm
when the yolk which showed its rich colour through the
smooth white shell is once withdrawn.
But this sea-beaten shore is not by any means an ideal
halcyon's haunt. Let us rather follow the path that leads
through the meadows past the mill a path now hardly
seen among the long grass, still unmown and, under
grey old willows, wander with the wandering brook.
A creek that drains into the little river, crossed by a
single unhewn log, is filled to the very brim with sedges
and burr-reed and tall water plantain. Red flowers of
willow-herb look, over plumes of mare's tail, down into
quiet pools which the current has worn under the banks.
22 jjf&tflES OF A
In the brown depths the trout are lying, and over the
smooth surface the burnished dragon-fly, in his hot
youth the tyrant of the water and now for a space the
terror of the air, skims lightly,
"And tilts against the field,
And down the listed sunbeam rides resplendent
With steel-blue mail and shield."
THE KINGFISHER'S HAUNT.
Little islands that just show above the stream, and
the brown fringe of sand that skirts the shore, bear the
marks of many a water-loving bird and beast.
This is a lazy stream.
"Never schoolboy in his quest
After hazel-nut or nest,
Through the forest in and out
Wandered loitering thus about."
THS KINGFISHER'S HJU^JTS 23
The sandpiper that starts up with sudden cry has vanished
round the bend of the river almost before the white
flicker of its tail-coverts caught the eye.
Farther on, where, under grey-headed pollards whose
slender branches meet from either bank, a ridge of brown
pebbles breaks the silence of the stream, are the ruins of
a weir. The faint sound of footsteps in the grass is
silenced altogether by the music of the ripples, and your
coming is unnoticed by the kingfisher that stands on the
old stonework, with mind intent upon the stream. So
near he is that you may easily discern his long sharp
bill, the streak of orange past his eye, the warm red of
his breast, the green spangles on his crown, the mar-
vellous sheen of the blue over his tail. Suddenly from
round the curve sails a bright gleam of green and azure.
The new-comer is aware of danger. At her loud warning
cry her mate flies down ; and side by side above their
image in the smooth brown water the two birds swiftly
skim the stream and vanish round the grey veil of the
trees.
WHITS
AUTUMN has come and gone with
" - the light of his majestic look,
The wonder of the falling tongues of flame,
The illumined pages of his Domesday Book."
Following swiftly on the sudden putting off of summer,
and the brief and splendid pageantry of red and gold,
a few stormy days have scattered to the winds the
fiery splendour. There is colour still upon a beech-tree
here and there ; the yellow leaves still flutter on the
elm ; the few last sprays of creeper shine like fire upon
the cold grey walls. But the branches for the most
part are bare and shelterless.
No leafy screen hides now the secrets of the wood.
He who will may watch the jays as they wrangle in the
tree-tops; can follow the woodpecker's flight as he
sweeps from tree to tree ; can mark more plainly now
than ever the black and white plumage of the pie.
The magpie is a bird who never seems desirous to
cultivate a close acquaintance. Your mere appearance
WHITS 25
in the field will drive him to take wing. The more
quiet and cautious are your movements, the more will
you awaken his suspicion. Caution and quietness are
associated in his crafty mind with deeds of mischief;
with r aids upon the hen-roost, with the slaughter of the
innocents. Well does he know that when he ventures
near man's dwelling he takes his life in his hand ; the
traditions of his race remind him that none of all his
clan will meet with shorter shrift.
The magpie is one of those birds which always have
been marked for popular disfavour. When a price is
offered for the heads of rooks, or when a village club
takes arms to exterminate Jack sparrow, the birds have
nowadays no lack of champions. Some, indeed, are
like Waterton, who defended the starling for the truly
British reason that there was nobody else to stand up
for him ; but there are many in these more enlightened
days who discourage the killing of the birds, because
they are no longer blinded by ignorance and prejudice.
But where the sparrow and the rook are spared, w^hile
there is law for the innocent kestrel and protection for
the harmless, necessary owl, on the crow is a mark like
that of Cain. He is a bird of ill omen. His dress and
manners brand him as a thief and outlaw.
But it is doubtful if even the crow has a reputation
more blown upon than the pie. Not even the crow, with
all his villany, can rank in craft and cunning with the
suspicious, unscrupulous, Ishmaelite magpie.
And yet, to give even the magpie his due, he is, in
the main, a friend to man. His services may be un-
26 <I(4fMBLES OF A <DOfMINIS
willingly rendered. It is very likely true that he would
not trouble himself to hunt for snails or dig for chafer-
grubs if there were hen-roosts to be harried, chickens to
be lifted from the farm-yard, or young rabbits to be
poached in the warren. But even if his good works are
done against his will, his labours in destroying vast
quantities of vermin, snails and grubs, rats and mice,
ought to count for something in his favour. But among
the ghastly rows that rot upon the keeper's gallows,
there will probably be found more magpies than all
other birds together. And although, like all his race,
he is for the greater part of his time more friend than
foe to the unbelieving farmer, it is altogether against
the will of his unthankful suzerain. The farmer would
none of him. The only dealings that he holds with his
unscrupulous retainer are of the nature of those billets
which the superstition of the soldier attaches to all
bullets. His character is in a manner written over the
gateway of his fortress. No bird defends his own with
such elaborate precautions. No bandit chief ever drew
about his stronghold a stouter barricade.
Watch an old magpie in the small hours of a late
spring morning, flying noiselessly from tree to tree until
he has reached the precincts of the homestead. In a
great walnut-tree in the orchard he waits, motionless
and silent, until a careful scrutiny has satisfied him that
no danger lurks among the out-buildings. There is a
brood of chickens scattered along the hedgerow, into
which two or three of the nufiy brown balls have
wandered. One scrambles through the hedge into the
WHITS 27
orchard, right under the walnut-tree. In a moment the
magpie is down ; his merciless beak has gripped the
hapless youngster. There is a faint cry of agony, but
before the infuriated hen can struggle through the
hedge, the bandit is already bearing his ill-gotten booty
to his stronghold.
Day by day, if no avenging volley should cut short
his murderous career, the visit will be repeated, until of
all the busy crew that, but a week ago, followed their
proud mother to the field, there is only a miserable
remnant left.
Just as there is no more certain sound than the
chatter of a magpie, so there is no woodland figure
whose dress is more easily distinguished ; and not only is
his plumage bold and striking, but it is by no means so
plain as a distant glimpse might suggest. His broad
tones of black and white make the magpie ever a bird
of mark, but it needs a nearer view than he is willing to
allow to show him off to best advantage. Not only is
the white so very pure and spotless, the black so very
deep and glossy, but there is upon his wings and tail a
changing light of green and purple that may rank in
beauty with the splendid colour in the wing of the teal
or the shining velvet on the head of the mallard.
Perhaps no prejudice holds its ground more firmly, or
has a wider sway, than that which views a single magpie
as an augury of ill. To this very day the men of Devon
are said to spit thrice over the right shoulder and
mutter a scrap of rhyme when the ill-omened bird is
seen. Still the Somersetshire yeoman bows to it gravely
28 <I(4fMBLES OF A VOtMINIS
to avert the ill-luck foretold by its appearance. There
are families even now who maintain that a magpie
always appears at the window where one of the line lies
dying. Swedish folk-lore sees in it a disguised magician.
The peasant of Switzerland regards with terror its
appearance on his roof. So close is it in league with
powers of evil that the Oldenburg farmer scares it from
its tree by cutting a cross upon the bark.
But though in Tyrol you may craze the brain of your
enemy by making him drink the water in which the
flesh of a magpie has been boiled, the self-same potion
in the hands of a parish priest of Saxony has been used
as a remedy for the falling sickness ! The story goes
that when, after the Crucifixion, all other birds prepared
to show their grief, the pie would only put on half
mourning. His punishment has been to wear it ever
since, and that his name shall be associated far and wide
with ideas of evil.
Widely as the magpie is distributed, there are places
where, like the sparrow, it has gained a footing only in
modern times. In Ireland, for example, it is not a
native, and was imported out of pure malice, as some
writers say, by the Sassenach invader. According to one
account he went over with the Orangemen. And some
there are, no doubt, who might be heard to hint that his
manners are symbolic of his origin
" That in spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He remains an Englishman ! "
<BL.JCK J3^D WHITS 29
The sister island has no lack of magpies in our days.
In the North of Ireland a troop of twenty is by no
means rare, and once at least more than two hundred
magpies were observed in noisy conclave, debating in
no measured tones some urgent business of the State.
The magpie is spoken of by one high authority as a
bird that has become rare in England. This is very
likely true of the highly cultivated enclosures and
jealously guarded game coverts of the Home and the
Eastern counties; but in grazing districts, especially
in a hilly country, where copse-land and clumps of trees
have not been cleared to make way for the plough, it is
at least in the farmer's eyes all too common still.
The magpie's nest is pointed to by many legends as
the triumph of the builder's art. One tale relates how
all the birds assembled in a crowd to take lessons of the
chief constructor; how they watched him at his work,
with a running commentary of " I thought that was the
way to begin ; " " Certainly, I knew that must come
next ; " " Anybody could tell how to do that ; " until the
exasperated pie broke off abruptly, saying it was clear
they could need no help from him. Since then, the
legend adds, no bird but he can build a perfect nest. It
is the stronghold of a freebooter. It is roofed and
barricaded with such a strong defence of thorns, and all
the branches near are so interlaced with sticks and
briers, that it is often no easy matter to effect an
entrance. And if ever he is driven to make his home
low down, as in the stunted trees of Dartmoor one of
those solitary thorns, perhaps, that the moormen shun
3 o <I(AfMBLES OF A
as the trysting-place of fairies he makes up for the
weakness of the site by the added strength of his out-
works.
The tall, straggling hawthorn hedges of the West
country are the very place for him ; but even in the
tree tops his nest is still a fortress.
Who is there that can look back on birds'- nesting days
at all who does not remember the storming of some
magpie's nest, that in the school-boy world was of more
moment than the taking of the Great Redan ?
In the tallest of the tall fir-trees in the copse was
dimly seen among the topmost branches the outline of
the nest. Only by good honest swarming up a straight
and slippery stem, without a bough to help the climber,
could the eggs be taken. From the shoulders of two
companions the oldest hand sprang to the attack. The
old bird, secure in the height of her tree and the
strength of her defences, sat on unmoved. But at
length, alarmed by the shaking of the stem and the
shouts and laughter of the little group below, she left
her nest, and, settling in a tree near by, chattered loud
her indignation. And then her mate appeared, and
with eager clamour the two birds flew restlessly from tree
to tree, watching the varying fortunes of the stormer.
It was a hard pull ; but, at last, panting and struggling,
the climber was safely anchored in the branches. A
moment's pause to examine the contents of the nest, a
triumphant shout to the expectant group beneath, and
then, holding in his teeth the cap that bore the precious
spoil, he descended, as slowly as he might, to earth again.
WHITS 31
Small heed was paid in those days to scratched face
and bleeding hands ; still less to tattered trousers. The
only question was whether the eggs were " sat " or not.
Nor was much notice taken of the indignant owners
of the nest, who, scolding, chattering, swearing, kept up
their angry protest till their foes were out of sight.
The magpie's note is an index of his character. A
troop of pies, holding as they sometimes will a council
in the tree-tops on the edge of the wood with their
clear scraps of speech, their short, sharp questions and
replies, the signals of scouts, and the grave comments of
the elders have an air of respectability in spite of some
degree of curtness. But take an old magpie unaware,
or scare him from some deed of blood or plunder, and
his language then will give you more insight into his
nature. An unquiet, noisy spirit the first to raise the
hue and cry at the approach of danger j the last to settle
down when the intruder has retreated.
In one of those accounts of the origin of birds which
are foreign altogether to the views of modern science,
Ovid throws some light on the ancestry of the race, as
well as on the speech of magpies. The daughters of
Pierios, he tells us, carried away by their vanity,
challenged the Muses to a joust of song. Defeated, but
not shamed, the jeers of the unsuccessful singers were
cut short by their swift translation to a set of magpies.
Driven to the woods, goes on the story, they still keep
up their unmusical clamour :
" The same their eloquence, as maids or birds ;
Now only noise, and nothing then but words. "
OF
HE month of March that
came in with wind and rain,
and went out with blue sky,
bright sun, and gentle air,
was entirely in accord with
the spirit of the old proverb.
t|jNr Quite in keeping with his
character was the contrast
between the calm sunshine
of his closing days and the
stormy temper of his youth.
Nothing in his life, indeed, became him like the
leaving of it. And the opening days of April have been
days of splendour still, in spite of the pitiless winds. The
trees everywhere are breaking into leaf, their fresh green
untarnished by the cruel winds that so often at this
FMR MMT>S OF FSBT^UART 33
season beat down and blight the opening foliage. The
moon of daffodils is on the wane. The blaze of yellow
that shone among the bare March thickets earlier on
is fading in a mist of green.
We make much of flowers that blossom in these early
days. The bright eyes of the speedwell never seem
again so blue, nor flowers of celandine so richly wrought
in gold. All the more, perhaps, we prize them because
of the ever-felt misgiving, the fear that waits and will
not be denied, that they have come before their time ;
that snow may hide and bitter wind cut down these
first-fruits of the spring. When we watch the white
clouds sail the tranquil sky, when we gather the first
sweet violet in the hedge-row, while we hear the songs of
birds, the bleat of lambs, we are tempted all too soon
to cry :
"Winter is past: lo ! sunshine and spring weather 1
We will forget the things that once have been."
Yes, that is just it. We forget that to-morrow may
bring back the frost and snow ; we are unconscious, till
we face it, how keen is still the air.
Some flowers of early spring are but survivors from
the previous summer waifs that in warm nooks have
lingered, unharmed by touch of frost. Such is the
lychnis, torch of wintry woodlands ; such the Herb
Robert, amongst whose crimson stems the blossoms of
last year are showing still. Some again, such as the
daisy, have but begun a season that will last the livelong
year. Others, like the snowdrop, live out their brief
lives in still half -wintry days, and, dying on the very
34 ^^MBLES OF A
threshold of the year, never see the sun of April or
the flowery prime of May.
There are no allusions in old writers to the snowdrop
as an English wild flower. Its escape may indeed date
much earlier back ; but Gerard, so late as the close of
the sixteenth century, mentions it as a plant which had
recently established itself beyond the bounds of culti-
vation. There is little likelihood that it is really native
here. Even in its most secluded haunts it is doubtless an
estray from some long dismantled garden, of which, except
such outcasts as were strong enough to hold their own
among the rightful tenants of the wild, all trace has
disappeared.
There are many plants of field and hedge-row which
are naturalised foreigners. Even the elm came over with
the Romans, and the ivy-leaved toadflax the Mother of
Millions of the cottage wall is said to have been brought
originally from the Mediterranean. But the snowdrop,
native here or not, has at least established well its rights
of citizenship. It has wandered far, and made itself
thoroughly at home ; and of all the flowers whose pre-
sence brightens the morning of the year, no warmer
welcome is accorded than to these Fair Maids of February.
The snowdrop is one flower of many once held sacred
to the Virgin, and it is linked with her, so monkish
legends say, because it blossoms in the winter in memory
of her first visit to the Temple with the infant
Christ.
Many flowers bear traces in their common, or, at least,
provincial names, of this old association. The great con-
FMR MMVS OF FSB^ART 35
volvulus that hangs its white bells on the summer hedge-
row is Our Lady's Nightcap. The green tangle of the
wild clematis is Our Lady's Bower. The alchemilla of
the upland pasture is Our Lady's Mantle ; and the most
striking British orchis, now, alas, almost rooted out by
the greed of inconsiderate collectors, is Our Lady's
Slipper. Another orchis, the tiny, graceful plant that in
the early days of autumn hides so well its spike of sweet,
pale green among the long grass on the hill, is Our
Lady's Tresses. With Our Lady's Bedstraw the manger
of the Holy Child was filled, while the couch of the
Virgin herself was strewn with thyme and sweet leaves
of the woodruff, a flower sacred to her still.
The marigold received its name because Mary wore it
in her bosom : though other legends link it with a dif-
ferent Mary her of Egypt, on whose grave the plant
sprang up and blossomed in a single night.
The marigold is, to the Mexican, a flower of doom,
marking the spots where Aztec warriors were butchered
by the men of Cortez. So, on Virginian meadows, clover
was thought to blossom on the Red Man's grave. Thus
the dwarf elder is said to grow only where the blood
of Danes was spilt. From the crimsoned snow of Towton
sprang roses white and red. The forget-me-nots of the
plains of Waterloo bear traces still of the taint of that
fierce conflict. And by the stream of Landen, where
William of Orange held at bay so long the chivalry of
France, millions of scarlet poppies sprang up in the
summer following the fight, tinging anew, as with the
rain of battle, all the fatal field.
36 TUMBLES OF A VOtMINIC
But the snowdrops are all faded now ; even the but-
terflies are rousing from their winter sleep, and, coming
out from faggot piles and roofs and hollow trees, and all
the hiding places where, as autumn days grew chill,
they closed their worn and stiffening wings, lend their
notes of colour to the very sunshine. The great purple
eyes of the peacock are dimmed, and the butterfly that
suns itself now on a warm stone, opening and shutting
its torn wings, has little of the beauty of the splendid
new-born insect that with swift and powerful flight
sailed over the autumn fields. The Painted Lady of
the spring-time is but the phantom of the magnificent
beauty of the summer. But the Brimstone shows upon
his yellow wings less sign of fading and rough usage,
and, as he flits lightly here and there along the hedge-row
and across the fields, he looks as bright and beautiful as
when in warm days of last September he made his first
appearance.
The starling on the housetop has long been prophesying
spring. Nowhere, perhaps, are the signs of its approach
more plain to read than in his heightened colour and
his borrowed song. The armies of starlings that mus-
tered in the autumn and kept together through the
winter months are beginning to disband. The town
starling, however, never leaves for long his native heath
among the chimney-tops. All the year his voice is
heard. In the gloomiest days he keeps alive for us the
memory of spring and spring-tide singers. When the
ground is white with snow we hear upon the housetop
the twitter of the swallow. We recognise among the
FJIR MMVS OF FSB^^RT 37
busy sounds that stir the frosty air the familiar nourish
of the yellow-hammer. And now the dawn of spring
seems to remind him of songsters long unheard. You
may hear his faultless rendering of the wryneck's cry
before the bird itself has alighted on our shores.
Many birds are busy now with the great work of the
year. The heronry is all alive with the clamour of
insatiable nestlings. Already the raven meditates turn-
ing her sturdy brood adrift.
An old poacher, whose vocation has in bygone days
given him better opportunities than most men of study-
ing the manners of this chief of outlaws, maintains that
the raven sets to the human race an excellent example
in the method of bringing up a family. No plunder is
brought home for them after they are strong enough to
help themselves. There is no idea at all of allowing
them to lead a life of idleness hanging about with
their hands in their pockets, so to speak, while their
parents forage for them far and near. " No," said the
old man, " she do take up one young bird at a time in
her claws, and do carry him into the wood so far s'ever
she can, and there she'll lef him, so that he med fend
for himself. There do be a sight of idle young fellows
about, who did ought to be served just the same way."
The heron and the raven always begin housekeeping
early in the year but by this time, doubtless, there are
many young birds crying to be fed.
There is a lull at present in the rookery. The nests
are finished and the eggs are laid. Now and then above
the ordinary clamour is heard that strange choking
38 TUMBLES OF A VOMINIS
sound which tells of an old rook being fed by her mate
as she sits upon her nest.
How many a bird's-nester has been tempted, in his
younger days at any rate, by the sight of those great
piles of sticks, to risk his neck among the slender
branches, or, what perhaps is worse, to dare the wrath
of the farmer, whose eyes and ears keep jealous watch
over his rookery.
The best climber in the company has been having a
good time of it among the tree-tops, while the indignant
citizens wheeling overhead proclaimed their wrongs to
all the country side.
Suddenly a burly figure is seen, coming at swift pace
across the field. His round red face, his brandished
cudgel, the ominous threats that travel far before him,
scatter in hasty flight those of the party who were
watching from below. The climber alone is in the tree,
and mindful of the plunder in his pockets he cautiously
descends the trunk of the great elm, landing on the turf
before the very eyes of the farmer. Under a heavy fire
of abuse and promises of chastisement, pockets are
emptied and the spoil reluctantly surrendered. The
baffled bird's-nester beats an undignified retreat, followed
off the field by threats of vengeance summons, county
gaol ; threats that will attend him perhaps in sleep, and
break his rest by dreams of magistrates and men in
blue.
Time softens even memories such as these. And who
shall say that, in the sight of the young collector, the
couple of great eggs broadly splashed with green and
FJIR MJIVS OF FeB<RJJARr 39
grey, that escaped by some means from the general
confiscation, will rank the lower among the treasures of
his cabinet for that little affair in the rookery ?
The return of the birds of passage is after all the
plainest sign of spring. When she sends back the
swallow we feel that Nature has touched a firmer,
stronger note. The impatient fancy of the naturalist
paints in every flying figure on the April sky the first
returning swallow.
A few birds of passage have already reached their
summer quarters. The closing days of March brought
the first chiffchafFs. Now, the woods are full of them.
Everywhere among the tree-tops sounds the chiffchafFs
cheery call. He is but a tiny bird ; only next in size to
the diminutive goldcrest and his rarer fire-crowned
cousin. But he has a far-reaching voice, that now is
plain to hear above the mingled chorus of the woodland.
The whinchat and the wheatear are back in their old
haunts on the hill. The song of the willow-warbler
floats softly from his rest among the elm-tops, and in
the copses sounds already the tuneful whistle of the
blackcap.
SLSSTT HOLLOW
ON the edge of a broad valley in the green heart of Men-
dip lies a little hollow in the hills ; an eddy on the un-
eventful stream of quiet country life, into whose still
depths are drawn the timid poets of the air, and in the
sanctuary of whose far retreat the tenants of the copse
and hedge-row love to linger.
An ancient stile, a rude unchiselled slab of stone, seems
to mark the limit of the busy world. Behind it lie
the broad pastures and brown sweeps of ploughed land
of this pleasantest o*f Mendip valleys ; before it ai a the
sunny fields and peaceful orchards of the slopes of Sleepy
Hollow. Along the broad white highway near, passes
the stir of wheels, the tramp of feet ; and through the
wires by its side there throb unheard the restless pulses of
the busy world. But never ripple of unrest can enter here.
From the deserted homestead the tide of human life
has long since ebbed away. Above grey orchard boughs
floats the blue smoke of one rude dwelling left stranded
as it were beside the path. But ruin has fallen on the
SLSSPT HOLLOW 41
buildings of the farm, whose busy stir once filled the
hollow with pleasant sounds of toil. No careful hand
prunes now among the wilderness of barren boughs.
Few footsteps linger by the well. No track of wheel is
seen upon the grassy way save when, in the evening of
the year, some waggon rumbles down with the red
harvest of these wilding trees, or bears to some distant
stackyard the thin sheaves from sterile upland fields.
But among the lichen-coated branches, in the hollows
of old elms and ruined walls, the pulses beat of that
remoter world that he alone may tread who, with hushed
voice and noiseless footfall, will in green lane and orchard
watch and wait. For him who will are played among
these quiet scenes the endless dramas of a gentle life.
A wandering footpath across pleasant fields leads to
this true West-country stile, on the brink that overlooks
the hollow. The path beyond, passing the precincts of
the deserted farm, and bordered by a straggling orchard,
winds downward to the well is shaded then by the
hedge-rows of a narrow lane, skirts the brown hill-side
touched with blossomed furze, and loses itself at last in
a wilderness of lichen-covered trees, whose old gate joins
the Roman roadway under the steep brow of Mendip.
Easy it is to wander here unseeing. Easy to find,
in dull lane and orchard tenantless, a single summer
hour too long. A careless footstep ever breaks the
spell. The clumsy clatter of a gate will frighten in
a moment all the tenants of the glen ; a noisy laugh
drive off in hasty flight whole troops of timid
actors. But for him who has watched above the hills
SLSSPT HOLLOW 43
the dawning grow, who through hot noons has lingered
in the orchard shade, seen twilight shadows deepen in
the valley, who knows in spring-time where the violets
bloom and robins build, who has reaped the harvest of
its summer days, and knows where vipers bask and
nightjars haunt, who has found on its brown slopes the
quiet autumn flowers, has traced upon the snow the
footprints of its populace, the memories of thirty years
have left a record on each sunny bank, a tradition in the
very brambles of the hedge-row, a legend in the caverns
of each ancient elm. For him there is no path but leads
his fancy down the vanished years, there is no lane
without its phantoms, no tree without its ghost,
" No quiet nook but treasures up
Some memory fond and true."
A touch of north is in the wind that tosses the dark
foliage of the old Scotch firs with a sound as of the
sea ; but the hawthorn hedge is broad and strong, and,
on the warm slope below, the air is hardly stirring. A
dreamy haze broods over the cliffs along the hill, deepening
the shadows of their cavernous clefts and softening the
stern outlines of their nigged steeps. Against the farther
ranges hangs a soft grey vapour, on which the tender
green of young elm leafage is drawn in clear, cool tones.
The cattle on the opposite side of the valley are drowsing
in the heat, and at times rush madly down the slope to
seek solace at the well below. A party of finches
splashing in the brook that wanders from the spring pay
little heed to the sounds of galloping feet upon the turf,
44 1(AfMBLES OF A VOSVLINIS
knowing that no disturbing footsteps follow that head-
long rush.
Here in the shade of lichen-covered boughs, glowing with
the flush of crimson apple bloom, you may watch at will
the tenants of these " orchard lawns and bowery hollows."
Here, in the very morning of the year, the missel
thrush came to build her great nest. There was not a
leaf to hide it, but so well did the builder match with
the scraps of lichen that she wove into the fabric the
grey and shaggy bark of the old tree itself, that it may
have escaped altogether the keen eyes of the village
bird's-nester. Later in the season a whole tribe of little
architects found quarters in cosy crannies in the trees.
Here the nuthatch barricaded her doorway with a wall
of mud, and there the blue tit cut the wood away to
make himself an easier entrance. Here in the bright
May morning rang the woodpecker's light-hearted
laughter. Here all day the chaffinch sang, while his
sober-tinted mate sat brooding on her eggs in that
exquisite lichen-coated nest of hers, at the end of a
drooping bough. But the flycatcher is the genius of the
spot. , She is a singularly silent bird, of quiet, incon-
spicuous plumage. But there is a charm about her
graceful ways and dexterous movements that wins for
her a warm corner in the naturalist's regard.
At daybreak, when shadows were long upon the dewy
grass, all the valley was astir with life and music. Now
there is a lull. Now when the sun of noon looks down
into the hollow, there is more of silence in the trees and
hedge-rows.
SLSSPT HOLLOW 45
Not all are quiet. A pipit, resting on the topmost
bough of an old walnut-tree, suddenly rises in the air
above his perch; and then, pausing a moment, spreads
wide his wings and tail, and, singing all the while, floats
downward like a falling leaf till he gains once more his
station on the tree. His nest is on the ground perhaps
in the hoof mark some horse has stamped into the turf
and his mate, brooding patiently over her dark-brown
eggs, is listening at this moment, no doubt, to the song
with which he seeks to relieve the tedium of her vigil.
Along the green hawthorn hedge a pair of restless
whitethroats are flitting. Now they chatter softly to
each other in the cool depths of their covert. Now one
of them, balanced on a bramble spray, swells with song
that slender little throat of his with a rapid burst of
melody, until it shows as clear a patch of white against
the hedge as the blossoms of the wayfaring tree farther
on. The song grows faster and faster, until it seems a
marvel how'such rapid utterance is possible at all. Now
the little minstrel soars a few feet into the air, warbling
all the while, and then dives back into his covert,
singing still. Now his voice softens and sinks lower,
lower yet, till it is hardly heard, as if he were whispering
soft strains of love in the ear of his more silent mate,
after proving as he has to all the world his right of
fellowship with singers of renown. Then he breaks off
suddenly with a harsh "churr, churr" of anger or
suspicion. The nest of the little couple is not ready
yet. It is a frail structure enough ; a little dry grass
with a lining of hair, built among the brambles or
46 <I(4fMBLES OF A T>OfMINlS
hidden in the tall growth under the hedge-row whence
the whitethroat's common country name of "nettle-
creeper."
High up among the elms that cluster round the stile
a blackbird sings at times ; and now and then, as if
carried quite away by the glory of this fair May
morning, he soars from tree to tree, singing as he flies.
Another bird across the valley answers him, and, for a
minute or two, their staves of mellow music float, like
echo and its answer, to and fro across the hollow.
A little troop of swallows are flying round the old
farm buildings, floating now and then through the
doorway of a cowshed where soon they will begin to
build their homes among the rafters. If you stand
within the doorway and keep well in shadow, the
swallows will pass almost within reach of your arm, with
snatches of sweet song that seem to ripple on the
sunny air.
Perched on a leafless ash-tree that leans over the gate
sits a redstart, one of the very brightest of the rovers
who have come back from their winter in the south.
We are tempted to call them summer visitors, but this
surely is their native heath, where they were born and
bred, and where now they are busy in their turn with
household cares. The redstart might be sitting for his
portrait, though he is almost too far off to study well.
Even at this distance, however, can be seen the red on
his breast and the bold touch of white over his bill, and,
as he flies down suddenly from his perch, you see the
flicker of red feathers in his tail, which has earned for
sieepr HOLLOW 47
him his name, in which start is the A.S. steort a tail.
He has left the tree to join his mate a much plainer
bird than himself, who is busy on the ground. For a
minute or two they fly round and round, uttering soft
and tender notes as they circle about each other in the
air. Then the more practical hen, on nest-building
intent, gathering up the grass she had dropped at the
approach of her lord and master, flies off to the ruin,
followed a moment later by her handsome mate. In
some snug crevice of the wall will be laid the bright
blue eggs, to be hatched in course of time into a family
of spotted nestlings, as unlike their parents as it is well
possible for birds to be.
In a chink in one of the outbuildings a coal-tit built
for many seasons her snugly hidden nest. Just above,
the flycatcher loves to frame her cradle in the twining
ivy-stems, and in the green canopy still higher the black-
bird fancies her retreat unseen. Five-and-twenty years
at least a wren has built her nest in this crevice in the
old barn wall, matching with patient care the dry leaves
of the fabric with the colours of the ancient masonry.
As surely, too, some curious naturalist or careless school-
boy has touched the structure with incautious hand, and
every year the little architect has sought safety other-
where.
But all the while, above the notes of all the other
birds, breaking the half-silence when the rest are still,
sounds without pause the cuckoo's cry. And now the
sound comes nearer, drifting through the green mist of
trees far up the valley, though the bird is still unseen.
48 ^MBLES OF A VOMINIS
Now he comes in view, flying fast across the orchard.
Now he sails overhead, not noticing the figure in the
doorway. As he floats over to the great elm close by,
his voice rises to a perfect shout. Then he settles in the
old walnut-tree and calls and calls in loud clear tones,
bowing each time, drooping his wings and tail, and
varying now and then his more familiar speech by a
muttered scrap from some outlandish tongue. There is
already in his voice a suspicion of the " altered tune,"
which all too quickly will be followed by the silence that
so completely removes him from the common ken.
Long since the old walnut-tree has passed its prime.
Each winter breaks away the dead wood from its
withered limbs. Sad-coloured fungi gather round its
base. Whole tribes of creatures have their burrows in
its rotten wood ; troops of beetles hide under its loosened
bark.
To the rude stonework round the spring there cling
in scores the shells of tiny limpets. How did their
ancestors find their way to this secluded well ? How was
it peopled with even the smallest forms of life the shells
that creep among the stones, the active little shrimps
that career across the sandy bottom ? Some wandering
bird, perhaps, after splashing in a distant brook, brought
here upon its feet the tiny spawn.
It is an ancient spring. The hands that fitted these
broad flag-stones round its brink were folded for their
last sleep long years ago. For centuries the sons of toil
have cooled their sunburned faces in a well that never
in the memory of man has failed or faltered in its flow.
HOLLOW 49
The hottest summer never checked its bounteous
stream ; the keenest winter never laid a curb upon its
freedom.
But in the old house hard by, whose children dipped
their pitchers from the brink, is silence now and ruin.
The very sparrow, missing here man's presence, comes
no more to rest beneath the eaves.
Shyer birds than he haunt now in summer time these
ruined gables. Wagtail and robin hide their nests in
hollows in the walls. The flycatcher flutters through the
ever open door. Even the grass snake basks upon the
spacious hearth, and in the cavernous chimney, blackened
by the logs of many winters, the bats in silence wait the
twilight hour.
When the old tower rising on the far-hill slope, is
through grey mists of sunset hardly seen, will float
across the valley the soft sound of evening bells.
Perchance in the shadow of that ancient yew lie the
spent ashes of the old man desolate, who, with sad
eyes, at midnight watched upon this hearth the dying
embers of its last wood fire. Does never ghost return
to wander in the ruins of his home, no shadowy
figure steal at nightfall through the silent rooms ?
Who shall recall the story of the wasted hearth, its
memories of grief and joy, of childhood and old
age, of
4 ' youthful dreamers
Building castles fair with stately stairways
Asking blindly
Of the Future what it cannot give them ; "
50 %j4MBLB$ OF A
or of old men warming thin hands before the dying
glow,
" Seeing ruined cities in the ashes,
Asking sadly
Of the Past what it can ne'er restore them ?"
IN JRKURT HOLLOW
THE familiar saying, found in many tongues, that one
swallow does not make a summer, is some evidence of
the eagerness with which the coming of this welcome
bird is waited for. To this very day Greek boys keep
festival to honour her return. The Russian peasant,
weary of the gloom of his ungentle winter, sees in the
swallows messengers from Paradise, bringing summer on
their wings, while poets in all lands have sung with
rapture of their reappearing.
We have grown so familiar with the sneers of cynics
about the fickleness of an English spring, and so much
less in some ways does the season mean to us than it
meant to our grandfathers, that we are apt, it may
be, to forget what a difference there is between the
April of our time and the April of a century ago.
Steam, which some sanguine electricians say is almost
in its dotage now, was certainly in its infancy then.
In those days no swift packets crossed the sea; no
rapid train connected Paris with the south, that the
52 <I(AMBLES OF A VOtMINIS
flowers of the Mediterranean might be brought to us
unfaded to fill the gap that winter had made in our
dull garden borders. There were no fragrant lilies then
in every florist's window no bright anemones to lend
their freshness to the dingy streets. Now, when every
tropical forest is searched for rare and curious blooms,
and Dives pays cheerfully a hundred pounds for an
orchid of which the fellow is unknown in Europe, even
the sad eyes of Lazarus are cheered by the colour that
the flower-girls scatter in the streets.
Without this spoil of distant lands brought near us
by our modern aids, how long would seem the pause
between the last rose of summer and the first shy flowers
of April !
The greatest boon, no doubt, that spring brings with
it is in the lengthening of the days. Without gas or
paraffme, with dull oil lamps and the feeble glimmering
of candles, the dark of winter nights must have been
one of the greatest hardships of living in the country.
Our nights are dark no longer. The plunder of dis-
tant meadows cheers the dull days of winter with their
fragrant beauty. But we hear no earlier than our
fathers did the cuckoo's cry. The years have made no
change in the home-coming of the swallows. It is in
April that they come back to us. There is, indeed, no
month in all the year in which they have not been seen.
It has been suggested that those which have been
observed in January and February might have wintered
in the island, though not, as our forefathers supposed,
asleep in hollow trees or under water. Boswell records
IN WOR'BURr HOLLOW 53
a remark of Johnson's, which is a fair sample of what
we should expect from a man who preferred Fleet-street
to the country. " Swallows," said the great philosopher,
" certainly sleep all the winter. A number of them con-
globulate together by flying round and round, and then
all of a heap throw themselves under water, and lye in
the bed of a river."
The "early swallow" of newspaper paragraphs is
often, no doubt, the sandmartin, always the first of the
clan to find her way across the sea. Except by the river
bank or about her special haunts she is much less common
than the swallow, from whom her plain brown plumage
distinguishes her well.
Perhaps the house-martin is the best known of all the
race. She it is who builds beneath our eaves, and
brings, so legend says, good fortune where she rests.
She is not so completely a follower of man as the
swallow, and will make her nest against a cliff sometimes,
even when there are houses near. Like many birds, the
martin is fond of building in colonies. On one house
wall in a Bavarian village, eighty-two nests were
counted in a line ; and it is said that in Lapland, where the
natives fix boards against their houses to encourage the
little builders, collections of nests have been seen
numbering far more than that.
Less is seen of the housekeeping of the swallow, for
she does not, like the martin, build under the eaves. If
Plutarch's story that swallows made their nests on the
stern of Cleopatra's galley be correct, it was in all
respects an unusual place to choose. The nest is almost
54 $jlMBl&$ OF A <DOMINIS
always out of sight among the rafters of an outhouse,
in a chimney, sometimes even in the shaft of a well. In
the hall of a village inn in the Tyrol a pair of swallows
build each year under a bracket on the wall, and nutter
in and out and feed their nestful of youngsters, and
seem, like them, to care nothing for the noises of con-
tinual traffic.
The swallow wears at his return his very brightest
plumage. He went from us in the evening of the year
with feathers frayed and faded, with colours dimmed by
sun and rain. He comes back to us with wings unworn,
with new lustre on his purple plumes, new chestnut on
his throat, new gloss upon his crown.
"Why should he return at all ? Why should he prefer
our changeable climate to the brightness of his winter
haunt, why not settle with content among the vines and
fig-trees of the south ?
Swallows spend the summer much farther northward
even than our islands. They nest a long way within the
Arctic circle. They are met with in Siberia and Ceylon,
in China and Australia, and are indeed among the most
widely distributed of birds.
Many myths and legends have gathered round the
history of the swallow, and while the folk-lore of not a
few birds is linked with trouble and disaster, that of the
swallow is associated chiefly with good fortune. There
are, it is true, some Celtic races who regard the bird
with disfavour. A swallow fluttering down a chimney
is held by some to be augury of death ; and in Norfolk,
when the departing swallows settle on the church-roof
"HE COMES BACK WITH WINGS UNWOpN.'
56 <I(AfMBLES OF A <DOtMINIS
the people say " they are settling who is to die before
they come again."
A number of bird myths are associated with the
legends of the Cross. From the folk-lore of more than
one nation comes the story that when the sparrow
mocked at the sufferings of our Lord, a swallow, perched
upon the fatal rood, -sang tender notes of love and
consolation. The crossbill wears for ever in the strange
shape of his beak, and the red stain of his plumage,
tokens of his efforts to draw out the agonizing nails.
The robin, too, by breaking a thorn from the crown,
received on her breast a drop of sacred blood, which
tinges still her ruddy feathers. The swallow carried the
whole crown away, and the red upon her throat still
shows how she was wounded in the effort.
Many old writers allude to
" that wondrous stone which the swallow
Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of
its fledglings."
It is said that these stones are still met with among the
peasants of Britany. They have even been examined by
a naturalist, who describes them as resembling the
operculum of some tropical sea-shell. No less great,
according to the legend, is their power over the eyes of
human beings, and he who wears one is considered safe
against the falling sickness.
The swallow is not the only bird acquainted with such
stones of magic. The raven is said to restore its young
to life by the help of a stone that it finds upon the shore.
The Tyrolese peasant finds in the nest of the jay a stone
IN WiORKURT HOLLOW 57
which renders its wearer invisible, and its presence
is said to be the cause why the nest is so seldom dis-
covered.
In the absence of the stone the swallow can restore
sight to her young by means of the celandine, though
the charm perhaps hardly lingers in the more prosaic
plant of this incredulous age. More potent still is the
" springwort," whatever that may be, with which the
woodpecker can clear away obstructions from her nest.
Upon the wearer this herb of power confers resistless
strength, unlocks for him the strongest door, keeps in his
purse an inexhaustible supply. No wonder such a plant
is keenly sought for ! Nor is, perhaps, the wonder less
that the woodpeckers, watching from their covert in the
leaves the unskilfulness of the searchers, should deride
their useless toil with peals of mocking laughter.
It is a pleasant myth that sees in the presence of the
swallow an omen of good fortune to the homestead.
Even in this sober age there are perhaps but few who
would copy the old pew-opener of a little church upon
the Severn, who, after lamenting that " they dirty birds
have been a-building again in the porch," added com-
placently, " but I've been working at them with a broom,
and I've daunted them ! "
Nor do the swallows alone return. By long silent
ditches, whose slow-moving waters drain the moorland,
the sedge warbler sings again. Among the dry reeds
that rustle round him new points of green are springing,
and tiny flowers of ranunculus look like flakes of snow
upon the water. The wryneck pipes among the orchard
58 ^^MBLES OF A VOMINIS
boughs. Wood and copse and moorland have each their
welcome guests.
May is the most musical of all months, with many
birds at least, but he who would hear the singers at their
best must listen for them at sunrise or in the evening
twilight. The blackcap still sings early and late ; and
the three small dwellers in the tree tops who yet build
their nests upon the ground the woodwarbler, the chiff-
chaff, and the willow- wren, sing at all hours, all the live-
long day. The missel-thrush gave up long ago his wild
melodies, though he is prompt to lend his harsh alarm
note to the general clamour whenever a suspicious black-
bird contrives to set the woodland in an uproar. His
brood is fledged and flown, and it is quite upon the cards
that you may chance on one of the speckled-breasted
crew gazing from the hedgerow with wide dark eyes on
the wonders of the newly-discovered world. So intent
he is, and so wholly unaware of danger, that you may
nearly touch him with your hand before he flutters from
his perch to seek the company of his fellows, who are
scattered now over the country.
The tide of green that every year fills this hollow
to the brim is nearly at the full. The smoke of distant
chimneys is black on the bark of its old beech trees, and
the feathery leafage of its birches is shaken by the wind
of passing trains. But there is no stain yet on the green
fans of its stately chestnuts; the noble foliage of its
sycamores is unpolluted still. In the warm May rain
and sunshine its trees have grown unchecked, unblighted,
and are wearing now those soft, pure tints that will
IN ^OR'SURr HOL'LOIT 59
vanish in the fuller majesty of June. June will throw
a deeper shadow under these old elms, but their delicate
drapery will never be again so fresh and fair. The oak
and ash still lag behind, though the oak at least is swiftly
coming into leaf, and there will be, by the end of the
month, cover enough for the figure of a man among the
leaves alone, though Prince Charles's hiding place was
on the broad top of a pollard a much more effectual
screen from the eyes of Roundhead scouts than the foliage
of the greenest oak that ever grew.
Much faster than the foliage of the grey ash saplings
grow the dark leaves of the bryony that coils about their
stems. Young sprays of woodbine, too, find their way
far up among the branches, and like the bryony follow
the sun from east to west as they wind about the trees.
Soft and tender now at starting, those lithe young stems
will cut deep into the boughs that help them upward.
The wind that stirs among the thickets brings with it
all the perfumes of the woodland ; the sweet odour of
unfolding leaves, breath of sweetbriar and of woodruff,
and the fragrance of the graceful larch boughs whose
blossoms are hardening into smooth brown cones.
Everywhere in the clearings, and even in the green
heart of the underwood, summer flowers are glowing.
Stray handfuls of bluebells here and there lend little to
the landscape, for all their grace and heavy perfume.
But when in broad masses they fill the hollows in the
wood, cluster on the slopes, and spread far out across
the open spaces, they seem like a dark blue mist floating
on a sea of green. The flowers of the wild arum the
60 ^fMBLES OF A VOMINIS
lords and ladies of the village children have passed
their prime. The tall, green sheath has done its work
and is required no longer. The arum would bear no seed
were it not for the insects which carry pollen from one
flower to another. From its peculiar structure it is
necessary that some at least of the flies that enter it
probably attracted by its coloured central spike should
spend some time in the green tube. Thus there is pro-
vided a fringe of hairs round the inner stem which allow
the little visitors to pass into the interior, but effectually
bar their exit until the pollen, which it is intended they
shall carry away with them, is ready to be scattered
over their bodies. Then the hairs wither and the flies
escape. Two arum flowers recently examined contained
respectively no fewer than 253 and 310 small insects
thus held captive. The majority were dead, but some
were still vigorous, supported, perhaps, by the honey
secreted at the bottom of their prison. That a good
many flies do escape and carry pollen to other plants, we
learn in the autumn from the lustrous berries that shine
like clusters of red coral under every hedgerow.
Beyond the narrow limits of the glen, the coarse grass
of undulating upland pastures stretches away to the out-
lying ranges of the Peak. In the solitude of those bare
brown hills, in the manor bestowed by Richard II. on a
Legh, who had borne the Royal Standard on the field of
Cressy, there lingered until recent years a few of the
famous wild white cattle. Tall and stately beasts they
were, larger than any others of their race. But these
children of the primeval forest, guarded so long with
IN RVURT HOLLOW 61
jealous care, have now entirely died out. They were
fierce and powerful animals, and their fickle temper
was dreaded even by their keepers, one of whom
carried lately to his grave terrible scars from their
huge horns.
Not far off, at Somerford in Cheshire, a few wild
cattle still survive, of the same stock no doubt as the
vanished beasts of Lyme. Others are preserved at
Chartley, in Staffordshire, and there is a herd of more
than fifty among the hills of Lanark. Perhaps at least
as numerous is the better known breed of Chillingham,
in Northumberland.
Tradition regards these wild white cattle as a real
aboriginal race. It is held by high authorities that
they are descended from the old denizens of the British
forests, whose effigies have been handed down to us on
the coinage of Cunobelin.
A puff of steam that rises at regular intervals from
among the trees half-way towards the hills marks the
presence of a coalpit, and whenever the wind happens to
set this way the throb of the engine is even at this dis-
tance plainly heard. The engine house is' hidden by the
clustering elms, and here, for once, an added touch of
beauty in the landscape is due to so unpromising a source
as the working of a colliery. The water from the shaft,
collecting in a deep hollow in the undulating ground,
has formed a broad pool, which Nature already begins to
claim for her own. Round the margin of the lake
marsh-marigolds have drawn a fringe of gold. Sedge-
warblers have found their way already to its thickets.
62 l(AfMBLES OF A VOMINIS
Nor from this sylvan sanctuary has the rattle of the
railway or the smoke of the great city scared away the
timid children of the wild. The kingfisher still haunts
the brook that loiters round the roots of these old trees,
and water-rats come out in the gloaming along those
green banks by the stream. It is a gracious spot, amid
whose quiet beauty " the tired brickmakers of this clay
earth might steal a little frolic ; " whose charm will
linger
" Even in the city's throng,"
that they may in fancy still
" feel the freshness of the streams
That, crossed by shades and sunny gleams,
Water the green land of dreams,
The holy land of song."
HILLS me
HE thin grass of this wide, upland
yields but scanty pasture for the
beasts that graze along its slopes.
Its barren acres, never broken by the
plough, are strewn with heaps of stones
that in the ages have been gathered
from the sterile fields. The ground is
scarred with the workings of old miners,
who dug here long ago for calamine
and ochre.
*fVJ >: Across the hayfields in the valley
: ^ move slowly the lines of mowers, the sun-
shine flashing on their sweeping scythes.
But here upon the hill no sign of life is stirring. A
troop of cattle have crept away out of the heat into the
cool shelter of a hollow overarched with whitebeam and
64 <I(A{MBLES OF A VOMINIS
hazel, and their red coats show now and then through
the thick growth of green.
The birds are silent. Only the corncrake's cry comes
up at intervals from distant fields, and there is a yellow-
hammer on the hedge that sings at times a sleepy tune.
The only creatures stirring are the insects. Myriads
of flies, that seem to revel in the heat, mock the poor
shelter of the stunted trees, and care nothing for the
sweep of brandished fern-leaves. Butterflies in brown
and blue, in white and yellow, float from flower to
flower, and burnet moths flit leisurely along, sunning
for the first time, some of them, the black and crimson
of their silken wings. Among the larches on the hill
crest higher up, the wind at times is sounding like the
sea, and when it dies away, is heard that strange,
persistent hum so characteristic of a summer noon the
noise of innumerable wings, the hum of clouds of flies
that poise above the resinous branches.
Poor as is the pasture of this dry hill-side, its slopes
are glowing like an eastern carpet. Hawkweed and
cistus flame like gold among the grass. The ground is
strewn with oxeye daisies, crimson clover, and brown
seeds of burnet. White flowers of mountain meadow-
sweet, tipped with the crimson of unopened buds, toss
in the wind their little clouds of foam. Tall spikes of
mignonette show here and there like pallid flames. Grace
and beauty they possess but not the fragrance of their
sweet sisters of the garden. The fairy flax, whose slen-
der stems are waving everywhere along the slope, bears
easily the rude handling of the wind, but as if shrinking
J <BJl(e HILLSIVS 65
from the touch of man, its delicate blue -veined petals
fall away when once the flower is gathered.
In all the blaze of colour, among centaury and St.
John's wort, clover and hawkweed, the sober tone of the
bee-orchis at first is hardly noticed. It has flowers of
singular beauty, of shape and marking so suggestive of
the name it bears, that they might easily be taken for
bees clinging to the stem. For wings there are the soft
rose-tinted sepals. For body, there is the lip of the
corolla with its rich brown velvet and bright yellow
lines. Among the two hundred and twelve species of
our native bees, perhaps there is none of which the
flower is a perfect imitation, but there is more than one
to which it bears a strong resemblance.
The reason for this curious mimicry is yet to seek.
Many flowers are fertilised by insects, which, visiting
them in search of honey, carry involuntarily from one
plant to another the pollen which is needed to produce
fertile seeds. But the bee-orchis has a special arrange-
ment for fertilising itself, and Darwin states that he
never saw an insect visit this flower. It is not long,
however, since the writer saw a specimen gathered while
a real bee was clinging to one of its unconscious copies.
A summer noon is with the birds a time of rest and
silence. The few that make their presence felt are
youngsters for the most part, dull of dress and of un-
polished speech. Such are the young jays and magpies
whose voices now and then are heard among the
larches, as they roam from tree to tree. Yonder is a
little troop of stonechats five young birds and their
66 <I(j4fMBLES OF A VOtMINIS
parents on the branches of a hawthorn. The head of
the house is a smart little fellow, with his jet black cap,
his ruddy breast, his neat white collar. But his wife's
attire -is of a plainer tone, and the younger generation
are rather a clumsy set, with loose and speckled plumage,
and with no smartness at all. But they are a lively
crew, and the clear " chat, chat " of the old birds, is one
of the few sounds of life upon the hill.
It was this note, perhaps, that disturbed a pair of
partridges from their rest among the flax. They leap a
little way into the air, but instead of flying off they
settle down again, and crane their necks above the grass.
Presently one of them slinks off, runs down the slope,
and disappears ; but the other, the hen no doubt, holds
her ground. She calls loudly twice. Then, at a still
louder, deeper note, a dozen little brown birds, much
like wrens in shape and colour, and looking hardly larger
as they fly, rise from the grass all round her, sail away
down the wind, and over the hedge into the next field.
The mother, too, has vanished. Her work is done.
Crouching down among the flowery jungle, she follows
her little family unseen.
A still more characteristic tenant of the spot is one
that very possibly may escape notice altogether. All
day long she lies quiet and makes no sign. But the
nooks and corners of this straggling wilderness are the
very places for a nightjar's haunt. Somewhere among
the bracken, or behind a safer barricade of furze, or in a
hollow in one of the many stone- heaps dotted over the
slope, she is brooding on her eggs. She makes no nest
HILLSIVS 67
at all. Year by year, in the late spring-time, she comes
back from her winter home under a tropic sun to the
well-remembered spot, and lays on the bare ground two
eggs of marvellous beauty. So well does her plumage
harmonise with the spot she rests on that there is small
chance of seeing her by daylight unless the near approach
of footsteps should drive her to take wing. Some-
times when disturbed, the nightjar will not rise from
the ground at all, but will scuttle off like a rabbit
to the shelter of some neighbouring thicket. Or it may
be that, having risen, she will pause in her flight to
feign lameness or a broken wing, in the hope of luring
you away. Should she settle in a tree, you may notice
that she usually perches, not across the bough, but along
it, keeping withal so still that it is not easy to dis-
tinguish her dull plumage from the branch itself.
You will know the nightjar better when at the hour
of twilight she wakens from her sleep. Against a
narrow belt of saffron sky, over which the curtain of the
night is still undrawn, rise the dim outlines of far hills,
dark forms of giant elms, figures of tall poplars towering
over the landscape. On the near slopes grey vapours
gather, and flood the meadows like a phantom sea.
The sounds of day have ceased. Robin and thrush, and
even restless blackbird, all are still. Only a troop of
swifts, careering overhead, scream for the coming storm.
The voices of the home-returning rooks sound faint and
ghostlike as they float by unseen. The night is dark
and warm, with a suspicion of rain. White moths flit
to and fro across the shadows, and x now and then
68 ^{MBLES OF A VOtMINIG
goes past the musical hum of some night-roving
beetle.
Suddenly among the trees starts a strange sound, a
low, clear rattle, like the trill of a tree-frog. Four or
five seconds it keeps on one note, then drops a little for
a moment, then rises again, and so continues for some
minutes at a stretch. It is the cry of the nightjar, the
sound indeed that has earned for it its name.
Creeping cautiously along under the trees you are
ware that the bird is on the summit of a weather-beaten
fir, whose boughs are dark against the sky. The sound
continues, monotonous and unvaried, save for that
regular rise and fall. It stops short. The bird sails
silently down from its perch with a sort of swaying
motion like a paper kite, pausing a moment in mid-air,
with its wings up, like a pigeon swooping down upon
the dovecote. It is only visible against the sky, and
when it reaches the outline of the dark hill behind it
vanishes like a ghost.
Earlier in the evening, while yet the light was clear,
you might have seen it wheeling round the trees like
a great swallow, now with its enormous mouth set
wide, perchance in chase of moth or beetle, now, uttering
as it flew, its monotonous and far-reaching cry.
Seen only in the twilight, and never a familiar figure,
it is still a bird of many names. Some, like nightjar, eve-
churr, wheel bird, are suggestive of its voice. Others,
like dor-hawk and fern-owl, of its habits or its haunts.
Its title of goatsucker a name of long standing, though
altogether undeserved arose perhaps from its habit of
HILLSITte 69
chasing the insects which in the twilight are attracted
by the cattle feeding in the meadows. Other epithets,
less common, are linked with darker legends. Its old
English name of lick-fowl shows that its appearance
was regarded with no common dread. In Danish myth
it is Helrakke, the death-hound. Other old world tra-
ditions saw in its innocent form "the soul of an
unbaptised infant, doomed to wander for ever in the
air."
OF
i. ULTIMO THUL6
sailor who has fought his way north-
ward across the stormy waters of the
Pentland Firth, finds in this land-
locked harbour a place of rest and
calm. Plain to hear is the roar of
the tide that rushes through the
Sound of Hoy, but its swell never
breaks the quiet of this peaceful
haven. Gazing on this unfamiliar
shore, it is hard to realise how brief
a space it is since the blue hills of
Lothian faded in the misty sky, while
stray shafts of sunlight glittered on
tower and roof and monument among
the smoke that brooded like a fate
ULTIMA THUL8 71
above the buildings of the noble city ; how short a time it
is since the Thekla left her moorings on the Forth, and
drifted northward with the veering breeze.
Then as the wind grew stronger and the spinnaker
was set, like a broad white wing, how swiftly passed the
long, low hills of Fife, the bright green fields, the red, well-
ordered villages, the strips of yellow sand ! How well
the good ship rode the great green rollers ! How lightly,
too, the sea birds rose and fell upon the heaving waves.
The craft itself and the mere working of it are endless
sources of delight. But there has been many a time
when the wind was fair and the ship well under way,
when the sailor's eye, grown weary of the monotonous
expanse, has lingered gladly on the figure even of a
solitary gull, on the wet plumage of a diver that showed
himself a moment on the surface, or on the crowds of
sea-fowl whose white forms lined the reefs and ledges of
some iron coast.
At times a troop of puffins will cross the ship's course,
the old birds in black and white, and with quaint and
brightly coloured beaks the sea-parrots of the fisher-
man. Each pair is followed by their one dusky fledgling,
as unlike its smart parents as it is possible for bird*to
be. Then, as they are right under the bow, and the
yacht is just upon them, swift as thought they vanish,
diving underneath the waves. The razor-bills cruise
more in couples, the mother leading the way, her single
nestling paddling in her wake. The old bird looks
anxiously round, and calls "Arragh, arragk;" and pre-
sently, if the little argonaut is slow in coming uj
72 <I(4fMBLES OF A TtOfMINIS
finding it hard to fight its way through the rough
water she calls again, lengthening out her cry into a
loud and imperative "Ar-r-r-ragh ! " answered by a feeble
and piteous plaint from the belated youngster. Then,
with a positive wink of white plumage, they dive, re-
appearing presently far astern.
Compared with the white figures of the gulls, or even
the spotless breasts of razor-bill and puffin, the plumage
of the gannets seems like snow against the dark water or
the murky sky. Even a party of them flying near the
shore, so far off as to appear but part of the vast flocks
of sea-gulls faintly seen like clouds of dust scattered in
the air, when they fall presently into line, are painted
in a row of bold white dots upon the bare black cliff
behind them.
Now and then a cormorant swims by, perhaps with
his body under water, showing only his long neck and
a dark head that turns anxiously to left and right for a
brief space before he sinks down beneath the surface.
Most beautiful, perhaps, of all, are the terns, sailing
past on graceful wings, wheeling, poising, swooping
down like troops of light-hearted swallows.
The sun was low as we sailed by Bervie town, and at
length above Dunottar he sank in a wild and stormy
sky. Up one great peak a trailing cloud was resting,
and upon it the light of sunset was like the glare of fire
on the smoke of blazing fields. The dark sails of fishing
boats were darker still against the lurid west, and even
the white wings of the gannets seemed black upon the
crimson sky. All night long the beacons on the shore
ULTIMA THULS 73
watched us with their sleepless eyes, until daylight broke
at last among the tumbling surges of the Moray Firth.
Stronger blew the wind, and heavier rolled the sea,
until, when the wall of Duncansby was past, with its
dark face pointing northward like the ram of a battle-
ship, we were in the rush of the tide that streams in
from the Atlantic, past the " Merry Men of Mey " into
the wild North Sea. All the sea was in a tumult.
Smooth and oily looking swirls of water divided sweeps
of seething waves. Suddenly, above the surge, appeared
a school of porpoises that, as if they gloried in the war
of waters, leaped high in air, right above the wave
crests of the angry sea.
We have cleared the Skerries. ? Under the cliff of
Ronaldshay we can hear the thunder of the surge, and
the roar of the sea against the Lother Reef, whose dark
arm stretches out, as if to meet us, from the iron shore.
The skipper is standing in the bow, puffing hard at his
pipe, and balancing first on one foot then on the other
signs unmistakable of difficulty or danger. Yes, it is
a tug of war, but the end is clear. We are sailing seven
knots, but the tide is running eight. Slowly but surely
is the distance lessening between us and that evil-looking
reef. The skipper crams his pipe in his pocket and runs
aft to take the helm. " She can't do it ; get the spin-
naker off her, John ! " We take in the broad and
flapping sail as best we may; all hands haul on the
main-sheet. Now she goes about, with a list that sends
every unprotected book and pipe and field-glass into the
scuppers, to wait for better times. The yacht's bow
74 ^^MBLES OF A VOMINIS
plunges deep into the sea, the jib is in the water halfway
up, the spray flies along the deck and glistens on oilskin
and sou'wester. But the brief moment of danger is past ;
we leave the Skerries far behind. We fly along the
south shore of Ronaldshay, sail steadily through a lesser
rush of tide, up among the sheltering islands, across this
quiet, land-locked sea, until in the gathering darkness
the chain goes rattling down, and there is rest for us
at last.*
It was only last night that we came to anchor in the
*"'WE' AT SEA."
" The infusion of personalism in British Journalism, in a con-
siderable measure the growth of pernicious influence burrowing
in Northumberland Street, crops up in an unexpected quarter.
The Daily News has a leading article giving a detailed and graphic
account of how a yacht cleared the Skerries, and safely anchored
in Pentland Firth. At the critical moment, when ' we can hear
the thunder of the surge, and the roar of the sea against Lother
Beef,' the following passage occurs : " The skipper crams his
pipe into his pocket, and runs aft to take the helm. * She can't
do it ; get the spinnaker off her, JOHN 1 * We take in the broad
and flapping sail as best we may." Of course it is no secret that
the Editor of the Daily News, a brother Journalist of whom we
are all proud, received at the baptismal font the name of JOHN.
That the skipper, having crammed his pipe in his pocket, should
snap out the name, is reasonable enough. But that the incident
should, in its colloquial form, be reported in the leading columns
of a staid journal, is to say the least, unusual. Since, however,
it has been done, we confess to a feeling of regret that the Daily
News is not yet an illustrated paper. We should like to see a
good sketch of J. K. R. adjusting his spectacles before tackling
the spinnaker, and proceeding to wrestle with the broad and
flapping sail, surrounded by an admiring circle, including ' the
heron and the curlew, the seals that bask upon the shore, and
the cormorants that dive in mid-channel.' "Punch.
ULTIMA rnuie 75
bay, in a blinding storm of wind and rain; and now,
under the warm August sun the sea is smooth, the
wind is still. The long swell that sways at intervals the
tall masts of the yacht, and ripples softly on her sides,
rocks us gently as we lounge idly on the deck and con-
trast the tumult of last night with the dream-like quiet
of the morning.
It is a quaint little township that clusters along the
edge of the water, with all its gable-ends towards the
sea, as if the houses were standing shoulder to shoulder
to keep out the wind and the waves. Up and down the
harbour dark-sailed fishing boats are drifting, steered
by fair-haired children, or by bearded Vikings such as
on this very sea manned the keels of Haco or the
war galleys of Hardrada. And although the islanders
no longer, when harvesting is done, lay down the
reaping-hook for the war-axe and the oar, the old ad-
venturous spirit stirs them still, and drives them out
from home across far off perilous seas. In the narrow,
crooked street of the little town there is hardly a hearth
without its vacant chair, its tearful memories of storm
and shipwreck.
But pleasant as is the quiet of this little harbour, he
who would know the shyer tenants of the islands must
find a mooring out of sight even of this simple township.
And such a spot we found, in the shelter of a long, low,
heath-covered islet whose farther verge was a very
paradise for beast and bird.
Putting off in the dingy, and rounding the rocky
headland, we drifted gently into the pale green shallows,
76 <I(A?MBLES OF A <DOfMINI8
over forests of dark weed swaying dreamily in the
current. There was no sound along the shore, but the
low swish of the tide as it lifted the long streamers of
the sea- wrack fringing all the rocks. An oyster-catcher
fluttered up from the shore, and with clear, musical cry,
sailed away seaward. Then, wheeling in, he settled
down once more to his meal among the weed. Suddenly,
from the water near, a seal lifted his sleek brown head
for a moment, and then vanished. Now another rose
and then sank again. They were not satisfied, appa-
rently; for next time their strange, half -human faces
rose, they were much farther out, and then were seen
no more.
We grounded the boat among the weed, and strolled
along the shore. The grey stones in the low cliff
were golden with patches of lichen; dark fronds of
spleenwort fringed all the little hollows of the rocks ;
blue scabious and yellow hawk-weed brightened every
crevice. From beyond the little headland came suddenly
into sight a party of cormorants leisurely paddling, all
in line, towards some distant fishing-ground ; and as we
clambered cautiously round the point we were aware of
another company close by, grouped among the rocks,
standing as if they had not quite made up their minds
for their morning plunge. At last one dropped into
the water, and another. Then an anxious movement
and the turning of many heads betokened that the rest
had caught sight of us. Then they took wing, and,
with slow and heavy pace, they flew far down the
channel towards the open sea.
ULTIMA THULS 77
As we watch their dwindling figures, something in
their dusky hue reminds us of those darker wings that,
on the flag of Sigurd, flapped along these very seas.
These isles are haunted by memories of the Norsemen.
From every height and headland looking down, the
grave-mounds of old sea-kings recall
" that earlier time,
The bygone rule of force and crime :
The good old days when might was law,
And sword and chains held men in awe."
The How of Hoxay, the grassy barrow that has guarded
for a thousand years the dust of Horfinn, still looks
seaward from the cliff of Ronaldshay. Still may the
traveller read among the runes on the walls of the
chamber of Maes-howe the epitaph of the sons of
Lodbrock. Scattered over the fields of Summerdale the
barrows of the nameless slain commemorate still that
triumph of the Orcadian arms, five centuries later, when
by the shore of Harray the invaders perished to a man.
But these are works of yesterday compared with the
Ring of Brogar, whose grey stones stand and wait
beside the loch of Stenness. Who shall say by how
many centuries they are older than the barrows of the
Vikings ? To their long-forgotten past no clue remains.
Their origin, their plan, their use are all a mystery. A
pleasant place under the warm sun of noon is the trench
that girds them round, where broad sheets of ling and
belts of yellow bedstraw sweeten the soft air of summer
that stirs the nodding grass. A few rough cattle wander
by the lake ; no other sign is near of man's dominion
78 <$j4{MBLES OF A VOtMINIB
save these grave-mounds of old heroes, those lichened
stones that stand upon the heath, mute witnesses of
long forgotten rites. Along the shining strand the
wind has heaped a fringe of foam. Far into the dark
water stretches out a tongue of land dense with a jungle
of tall reeds and dwindling to a point of wave-worn
stones. A party of gulls is sailing idly down the shore.
A troop of widgeon, flying in long line up and down the
water, alight at last among the pebbles, disturbing for
the moment a little group of plovers that rise into the
air with plaintive notes. They settle down again at
length and are lost to view among the stones. Now a
cormorant, spreading his great wings to dry, startled by
some fancied danger, leaves his rock and splashes far
along the dark blue water before rising on the wing.
And at the sound there rise as if by magic from the
green jungle on the shore a score of tall grey necks, and
you are ware of a troop of herons standing motionless in
the reeds, watching the dwindling figure of the toiler of
the sea. A moment more and they are satisfied. It
was a false alarm. As sudden as they rose, the crested
heads sink down and vanish in the reeds. But again
some restless curlew sounds a warning call. In a
moment the great herons rise all together from their
covert, and gradually falling into line they drift away
over the moor. Ducks and plovers, gulls and curlews,
are scattered down the shore. Their figures fade, their
cries grow fainter in the distance. There is no sound
but stir of restless sea- wind in the heath ; no movement
but of waves and flying foam. Sea birds drifting over,
ULTlfMA THULS 79
strings of wild-duck flying to the reeds never shun those
tall, grey figures. Through them, without thought of
harm.
" With his wings aslant,
Sails the fierce cormorant,
Seeking some rocky haunt
With his prey laden."
But as the dusk of evening gathers, and the light of
sunset silvers all the waters of the loch, when dark
against the glow rise the blue hills of Hoy, when the
home-returning herons that pass on slow wings overhead
are hardly seen, then to the rambler wandering by the
shore the old stones seem in the uncertain light to waken
into life, and like a procession of priests to pass with
bent heads and slow and stately pace along the margin
of the sea.
OF
ii. A Quier
MORE than once did we weigh anchor and attempt to
clear from Stromness and the Orkneys. And when at
last we got away it was the very feeblest breeze that
bore us through the narrow sound.
Slowly the dark outline of the Kame of Hoy died
away on the horizon. Slowly the light wind bore us
westward down the grim, forbidding coast. All day
long we drifted over a rolling sea until, in the haze of
sunset, the far cliffs of Cape Wrath were faint and
shadowy still. And when at length the dark came down
upon the heaving waves it was a night of turmoil and
unrest, a night disturbed by the creak of timbers, the
rattle of a restless block, the uneasy swinging of the
booms. And then, the long hours of darkness ended,
the dawn was clear on the great green waves that lash
the splintered pinnacles of the Cape. The wind was
freshening fast, but it was blowing in our teeth ; it cost
us many a weary tack, on a tremendous sea, before we
lost sight of the lonely lighthouse that clings to the bare
brown slope of the headland.
Jt QUIST HAVSWi 81
So late was it when at last we gained the entrance
of our haven that the steep sides of the Stack were
purple in the failing light, and the level sun was glisten-
ing on the wet plumage of the cormorants that clustered
on the sea-worn rocks of Laxford as we entered the
narrow channel. As we made our slow way in and out
among the islands, whose bleak sides bore no sign of
house, or field, or tillage, there was a sudden rustle
among the bracken that clothed a steep brow overhead,
and a goat scrambled to a commanding buttress high
above us, a bearded patriarch, with flowing hair and
wrinkled horns. His bold eyes watched us calmly as we
passed his little kingdom, as if he knew that there were
none so bold as dare dispute his reign. His shaggy
followers, close behind him, peered cautiously through
the covert of the ferns ; one snow-white kid stood out
against the green side of the hill. Then at a signal from
their chief, they all leaped lightly down and disappeared.
By the shore a quaint-looking craft was lying, making
ready for departure. Her mainsail was up, her men
were at work upon the anchor. Two dogs, the last of the
ship's company, were swimming off from land. A couple
of boats were moored at her side, and touches of colour
in them a bright new shawl, a vivid kerchief, and a
scarlet cap were plain tokens of her business there. She
was a floating shop ; on whose timely visits the dwellers
by these lonely inlets depend for the necessaries of
their hard existence. From her they buy their plaids
and bonnets, their plates and dishes, their tea, and their
tobacco.
p
82 <I(4{MBLES OF A VOZMINIS
Kindly folk they are that inhabit the rude cottages
which, among slender patches of oats and scanty sowings
of potatoes, nestle in the sheltered hollows among the
hills that bound the loch. Crossing a strip of corn-land
bright with abundant marigolds, we made our way to
one of the houses. A pleasant-faced woman the master
was away at sea called off with a few words of Gaelic
the great, gaunt dogs that disputed the right of way, and
greeted with hesitating speech the strangers, slowly
shaping her thoughts in the unfamiliar tongue. Her
room was bare and cheerless ; there was little in it but
the dresser with its quaintly-patterned plates, a crazy
stool or two, and the huge chest that held the winter
stock of meal. But the peat fire glowing on the spacious
hearth, the freely offered milk and oatcakes had an air
of gracious hospitality. The dogs preserved a sort of
armed neutrality, not understanding the dialect of the
Sassenach, but, won over at last by bribery and caresses,
they parted from us without further signs of hostility.
Past the houses, higher up the stream that wanders
to the sea is more than one fresh-water loch among the
hollows of the hills, fringed with pale lobelias, and with
white water-lilies floating among patches of soft and
shining green, haunts of heron and wild duck, and
havens for storm-driven seafowl when the wind blows
hard to the land. The air was keen along the shelterless
shore beneath us ; but here under a brow of granite we
lie among the scented heather, watching the gulls drift
seaward from the hills, the straight flight of the mallard
down the lake, the hover of the kestrel on the windy heath.
One of the party took his fly-rod and strolled leisurely
round to the farther side. Idly we watched the flash of
his line, and the ripple of his flies, and now and then
the splash and glitter as he drew a fish ashore. Then, as
he got too far for us to watch his movements, silence
settled down upon the lake a pleasant, dreamlike quiet,
for to us, after all our fighting with the wind and
wave
" Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. "
A strange figure moving now and then among the
bracken might be one of those very figures seen by the
weary mariner "between the green brink and the running
foam." But no, it is only the bent form of an old woman
toiling along with a basket at her back, and matching so
exactly the tone of the sad-coloured mountains that the
eye can scarcely follow her as she creeps along among
the peat stacks.
She meets the angler, now on his return from a none
too-successful foray. We can see her gesticulating, we
can even hear across the water the murmur of her voice.
She was addressing him, as we afterwards found, in most
voluble Gaelic, but the only word he felt quite sure of
was her parting " Blessing."
There was no Gaelic scholar in our company. With
great difficulty we had mastered the equivalents for
Good Morning, and It's a wet day ; fine weather being
so scarce that we did not think it worth while to load
our memories with any reference to that.
The two ambitions of our skipper, as he once confided
84 l^fMBLES OF A <DO MINIS
to us, were to speak Gaelic, and to play " the pipes."
" We had a steward once," he said, " who could do them
beautifully. He would come and play on deck in the
evenings ; and, man ! it was like heaven."
Fishing in the tarns was poor work, but there was
always plenty of sport in the loch below, especially by
spinning an artificial sand-eel from the boat. The usual
plan was to pay out a couple of lines over the stern of
the dingy, and pull slowly along about an oar's length
from the shore.
Here under the cliff the air is quiet ; there seems no
sound or movement but the regular dip of the oar-blades.
A troop of curlews catch sight of us as we pass the
entrance of their creek, rise all together, and fly farther
in behind the shelter of the island.
There is a tug at one of the lines. We haul it hastily
in a rock codling, a two-pounder, a capital fish. Five
minutes later we land another a lythe this time, not
quite so large. And then there is a mighty pull; but
the fish, whatever it was, was not fairly hooked, and he
is off. There is hardly time to lament his loss when
there is a lythe on the other line, a monster indeed, half
disposed to show fight. But the tackle holds, and he is
soon within reach of the boat. " Ready there with the
gaff ? " That's it ; now we have him, a good ten-pounder
at least.
We had enough for our needs, -and we had watched
the skipper haul up a couple of fine cod-fish on the
yacht. The lines were got in. We turned the boat
into a little harbour that the waves had carved out of
Jt QUIST
the cliff. A hooded crow was busy on the shore, so
fearless or so tame that he waited until the keel grated
011 the shingle before he fluttered up the rocks and flew
to some fresh hunting-ground. We had hardly crossed
the little beach, with its piles of weed and drift-wood
sea-worn plank and broken oar when all at once we
came on a very sanctuary of birds. Lying at our feet
were the smooth levels of a bay, whose narrow entrance
farther down screened it altogether from the ocean
swell. A score of herons, standing motionless in the
water, woke suddenly into life as their solitude was
broken, and spread their great wings towards the hills.
Curlews and oyster-catchers started up to left and right,
with plaintive notes, and hurried down the windings of
the shore. Farther off a flock of terns were flying, their
white wings doubled in the water as they stooped to
touch the smooth brown surface, and sea-gulls soaring
far above mingled with the strange cries of the terns
their half -articulate speech.
But now the clouds that alt day long had been
gathering round the Stack began to sweep downward
from the hills ; before long a squall was driving down
the lake. We were well defended however with coats
and oilskins, knowing well the moods of West Highland
weather, and we cared little for the rain. All thought
of shelter too was forgotten when a diver came up
within a few yards of the boat. He looked round at
us a moment and then vanished. There was little hope
of any nearer view. Chasing a diver is an almost
hopeless task. Pull as we might he foiled us still
86 1(4fMBLES OF A <DOMINie
swimming under water now this way, now that, coming
up now far ahead, now fifty yards astern.
The tide was almost at its lowest, and through
masses of floating weed that barred the way we
could hardly get the boat along. We were lying on
our oars a minute in the more open water where the
river runs into the loch, watching the brief gleams of
sunlight glisten on the wet faces of the mountains as on
sheets of ice. Somewhere high up among the hills
sounded the deep croak of a wandering raven. Sud-
denly, just in front of the boat, there was a flash of
silver on the water. It was a salmon leaping, and then
another, and another. All round us rose the noble
fish, until a score of them at least displayed to our
wistful gaze their silvery sides. Fine fellows they were.
Indeed, on this little stream that winds down from the
hills is the best salmon fishing in the county. We
drifted easily down the lake, the light wind following
astern ; but rowing back was another affair altogether.
For the last hour or two the wind had been rising, and
now it was in the teeth of a sou'-wester that we fought
our slow way home. When we got back to the yacht
we found the skipper looking dubiously at the sky. It
was of no avail to tell him that the glass was rising.
" They glesses," he said, contemptuously, " is no better
than turnips. The best gless is the sun."
A multitude of sea birds too were gathering by the
shore ; the rocks were almost hidden by their snowy
plumage. The meaning of their coming was plainer
when we lay awake half the night to listen to the
d QUIST HAVS^ 87
shrieking of the wind in the rigging, and hear the dull
roar of the surf as it broke on distant reefs. And when
the morning dawned cold and wet and stormy, a whole
fleet of fishing boats, beaten back from the Lewis, put in
for shelter to our quiet haven. As they passed us one
by one we saw how their great lug-sails were drenched
with spray; and the stalwart sea-kings, whose faces
were as dark as the flapping canvas they were furling,
glistened in their streaming oilskins. As the day went
on, and still harder blew the gale, as still louder rose that
hungry roar among the islands, there was small hope for
them of making Stornoway. The weather was alto-
gether too wild for fishing now, and on so rough a sea
there was little pleasure in toiling at the oar.
But it was a jovial company that gathered round the
table in the cabin. Many days like these must there
be, unrecorded perhaps in his log-book, in the experience
of every yachtsman when every book has been read ;
when time-worn jokes are hailed with shouts of laughter;
when the poorest puns pass current, and the very oldest
stories are greeted with applause ; days when the only
occupations are eating, sleeping, and the rubber ; the
only exercise to tramp the sloppy deck in blinding rain ;
the only excitement to speculate on what there will be
for dinner. Our food was running short too. The
Stornoway boats had missed their catch of herrings.
Bread had given place to biscuit. We contemplated
with horror a still further descent to Stromness jam
and the oatcakes of the country. " If this wind holds,"
observed the skipper gloomily, " we'll just have to die."
88 <I(4fMBLES OF A VOtMINIS
And when the gale did grow lighter, and one by one the
herring boats spread broad, brown wings to get away,
we looked doubtfully at the surf outside. There was
still a bag of biscuits in the locker. The wind was dead
against us still. We would wait awhile. Memories of
beating round Cape Wrath were not forgotten.
" We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Rolled to starboard, rolled to- larboard, when the surge
was seething free."
":;;>:j---
OF TH
in. CALM ^O^J> STO < I(M
WE left our moorings in Loch Laxford as the gale died
fitfully away. We made our slow way southward down
the rock-bound coast until the bold headland of Khu
Stoer stood clear cut on the horizon, and the bird-
haunted cliffs of Handa lay, like a faint grey shadow,
far astern. The hours dragged slowly by. Now the
light breeze, ruffling the water with its fitful breath,
filled for a space the swelling sails ; and now the droop-
ing ensign clung idly round the mast. Slowly with
the ebbing tide we drifted along, down miles of barren
coast line low grey cliffs and heath-clad slopes, broken
by rifts and gorges, with now and then the silver of
some headlong fall ; past the mouths of inlets with
fringes of pale sand, clusters of brown huts like the
kraals of Kaffir villages, and, far in, the outlines of
wild hills.
And now the twilight glow was fading from the crags
90 ^^MBLES OF A TtOtMINIS
of Assynt ; Canisp and Suilven were darkening on the
sky. At length the shore grew dim and shadowy,
hardly seen; then darkness settled down on sea and
land.
Not a man of all the company had been into Loch
Inver, and it was with anxious eyes that we watched
for light or beacon that might guide our way. In
vain we sought to pierce the blackness of the night.
There was nothing but the faint outline of the shore,
the low sound of the surf along the strand, the nicker of
luminous waves round the feet of unseen islets. But
at last the faint glimmer of a distant light was seen
for a moment from the cross-trees ; then another and
another shone like welcome signals from the shore.
And: then in silence and in darkness we drifted to our
moorings.
The morning broke wild and wet. Clouds hung dark
above the mountains of Loch Inver.
" There droops along the dreary hills a mournful fringe
of rain."
It was a day of cold, and wet, and misery. There
was a leak in the skylight, there was a cataract down
the steps of the companion. But there was " a wind
that followed fast." The Summer Islands, wrapped in
cloud, were passed unseen. Through cold and clinging
mists we crossed the waters of Loch Broom.
The clouds were breaking as we reached the shore
at Gairloch. Sunlight smiled on the soft setting of
green woodlands, on their crown of bare grey crags,
CALM JtWJD ST01(M 91
on the barrier wall of Ben Slioch, rising far behind
them.
And then before a stronger breeze, with the storm-jib
up, with two reefs in the mainsail, and with the sea
rushing along the scuppers, we left the point of Rona
and the rugged lines of Skye, we rounded the headland
of Rhu Ruagh, and, as night came down, dropped anchor
in the upper reaches of Loch Torridon, under the shadow
of the mountains.
It is a gloomy spot. The great, bare hills seem
to darken half the sky, and among the few houses
on its shore, there seems no mean between the stately
hunting-lodge and the rude hovels of the miserable
crofters.
We spent the evening on the shore, landing on a
little beach among the drifted sea-wrack, where the
waves had strewn soft-tinted scallop-shells, and bright
echinus whose rich purple colouring seemed to glow
among the olive weed. All along high-water mark some
brilliant leaves had drawn a crimson line. The sand-
stone rocks lifted worn and weathered heads through a
forest of bracken that the autumn sun had already
touched with gold ; while the fringe of birches standing
round showed silvery stems through thin veils of dying
leaves. We made our camp on the floor of a cavern
which the waves had carved in the low cliff. No sound
disturbed the solitude, save when at times the lazy sea
lifted the long weed upon the threshold, or when a
gnarled and stunted aspen rooted in a crevice overhead
shivered in the evening air. Every chink in the dark
92 <I(AfMBLES OF A VOtMINIS
hollow was hung with tiny ferns. Slabs of rock that
had fallen from the roof were scored with ripple-marks
footprints on the sands of time that wind or wave,
long ages since, left by the margin of some ancient sea.
The blue smoke from our fire of driftwood crept slowly
up the hill as if to join, round the far summit, the
floating canopy of cloud. Regretfully we lingered on the
shore, as the light of sunset, scattering for a space the
dark mass of vapour, shone like a glory round the heads
of giant mountains, and died. in lines of crimson on the
water. The great cliff wall across the loch seemed to
draw near and menace us with sullen frown. A string
of wild-fowl flying over startled us with the rush of
shadowy wings. Then, like a signal of welcome, shone
out against the sombre steep the sudden glimmer of the
anchor-light.
It is pleasant to linger on white-letter days ; on
days when skies were blue and winds were fair ; days
of clear cold dawning crowned by sunset splendour;
days of swift sailing down the Sound of Sleat,
through the narrow reaches of Kyle Ehea, under sunlit
steeps of Skye, with their warm flushes of heather,
their sweeps of bright green fern, their tiny glens
where, among feathery birches, flash down the rushing
streams.
But no less fondly will the memory linger over the
" Days of danger, nights of waking." He who in
tranquil weather has anchored in Loch Hourn, who
has watched the drifting cloud-shadows loiter along
the calm brows of the mountains, has seen the green
CALM J3^D ST01(M 93
hills mirrored in the placid water, may well have
wondered what cynic christened it the Lake of Hell.
But when sudden tempests, rushing madly down the
steep side of Ben Serial, lash all the angry water into
foam, and
" lift it in their grasp
And hold it up and shake it like a fleece,"
clearer then is the ominous meaning of its Gaelic
name.
Along the beach, close above the golden weed that
marks the tide line, stand the rude houses of the village ;
their dark, discoloured walls almost in unbroken line ;
their blackened thatch hardly varied by the masonry of
a single chimney. Behind them rise their strips of corn
land that seem to fight their way by inches up the
sterile hills. The bare brown mountain is veined with
milk-white torrents, vanishing at last in the caverns
they have worn deep into the rock. One mist-like sheet
of foam leaps in three mighty plunges into a great dark
hollow ; and, at times, the wind, rushing up the glen,
catches the water as it falls, and hurls it backward up
the hill in a white veil of spray.
Such was the scene, as late one August evening the
Thekla sailed into the bay. Knowing the loose nature
of the bottom and the consequent badness of the anchor-
age, we brought up a good hundred yards clear of any
other craft, though a fleet of herring boats, that had
brought in their takes of fish to smacks and steamers
anchored in the bay, lay all around us. Clouds of
sea-gulls hovered round the ships, or floated far up on
94 RAMBLES OF A VOfMINIS
the grey sky, their white wings wide against the rolling
clouds.
Towards evening other boats put in for shelter, until
the loch was crowded with craft.
By nightfall the wind was blowing a whole gale. The
air was full of driving rain. Sudden squalls struck the
yacht with a distinct and solid shock that threatened to
tear away her very masts. There were ominous signs, too,
that the anchor was beginning to drag ; when we went
below at midnight the riding light of a yacht that lay
astern seemed as we caught glimpses of it through the
rain and spray, to be distinctly nearer than it was an
hour ago.
Sleep in such a tumult and under such condition was
not to be thought of. Three hours later, completely
roused by shouts and clatter overhead, and a sudden
crash against the stern, we hurried on deck.
The lights that glimmered through the blinding rain
revealed clearly enough the cause of the disturbance.
The schooner that last night lay a hundred yards behind
us was grinding slowly along our starboard quarter.
Her bowsprit had knocked away the crutch of our main
boom, and now was threatening the stern of the gig.
The davits were hastily swung in, and we got the boat
on deck, guarding as best we could the sides of the yacht
with fenders and boathooks.
High above us towered the schooner's masts, swaying
wildly over our deck. One of her crew was clinging to
the shrouds, bare headed, dressed just as he scrambled
from his berth, careless of the rain. As a great roller
STO1(M
95
lifted him high above us his cheery shout rang through
the fury of the storm, " This is grand ! " Then as in
the trough of the wave the schooner sank down below
the level of our decks, a flying sea swept over his drip-
ping figure. Next moment there he was again, laughter
in his eyes and a jest upon his lips.
Meanwhile two men were at work in the bow paying
out more cable ; rapidly we drifted clear of our dan-
THB MORNING AFTER.
gerous neighbour ; we let go a second anchor, and then
we could breathe more freely. " Well," exclaimed the
skipper, as he dashed away the water from his streaming
face, " if this is Loch Hourn I don't want any more
of it!"
But when the storm has died away, and over all the
sea is rest and calm, when the light of sunrise stealing
softly down the valley smiles on the stern faces of the
96 RAMBLES OF A <DO MINIS
mountains, turns the stubble-fields to sheets of gold,
gleams on the level lake where half a hundred craft are
floating on a silver sea, glances on the bright scales of
fish that glitter in the nets, touches the white foam of
leaping torrents, one might dream that wave and wind
should never vex them more. The bright unclouded
mountain looking down
" sees the ocean to its bosom clasp
The rocks and sea-sand with the kiss of peace."
me FOOT OF SI<A<BOT>
DOWN a great hollow in the hills, under banks that are
hung with ferns and lingering foxgloves, with golden-
rod and harebells, and all the flowers of the late summer,
rushes a swift mountain stream. Here it chafes among
boulders that were shaped and rounded and, it may be,
strewn here by the glaciers that have left their mark
along the wall ; now it loiters through a silver lake set
round with reeds and lilies, the haunt of the wild duck
and the heron ; and now it plunges headlong over a
rocky steep beneath a white mist of foam. Its troubled
waters bear no barges to the sea ; no mill-wheel flashes
in its w r hirling stream a turbulent, untamed, head-
strong river.
In the brief harvest weather, when the hay was down
on the meadow by its shore, the dwindling torrent sank
into its channel until the broken threads of silver seemed
to creep along among the boulders as if fearing to be
seen. Bars of grey shingle checked its feeble flow.
The trout were crowded in its clear, still pools.
98 <f(AMBLES OF A VOZMINIS
Then one night there came a lurid sunset, an angry
sky, long plumes of ominous cloud. The morning dawned
in stainless splendour, a sunrise of promise all too fair.
Clouds began to settle on the crest of Siabod. Masses
of grey vapour rolling down broke in great sheets of rain
that stalked like phantoms through the valley. All day
the tempest grew.
Each rivulet along the mountain side swells into an
angry torrent, and from the cliff that overhangs the
hollow once more " the wild cataract leaps in glory."
And now, exulting in the added strength of all its
hundred turbulent vassals, the river rises in its might.
The old stepping-stones are knee-deep under a rushing
flood. Over giant boulders, seething and struggling,
roars the furious stream. And when at last the stormy
night comes down the river has risen to its very brim.
Still falls the rain. All night long there rises louder
still the cry of the river, and when morning breaks, the
floods are out on all th 3 level shore. High above unseen
boulders the white horses are rushing to the sea. The great
fall below the bridge is one huge mass of roaring, boiling,
plunging water. The sun is bright on all the landscape,
on the vivid green of new-mown fields, on snowy heaps
of drifting foam. But the hay that was lying in the
meadows is whirling with the merciless stream or trailing
sadly in the broken reeds,
111 fares it now with all the children of the river.
Along the shore the sandpiper flits with mournful note,
and looks in vain for her haunt among the shingle. The
martins in the river bank peer anxiously out at the
TH8 FOOT OF SId<BOD 99
flood that foams so perilously near their sandy thresholds.
Up and down the stream the restless dipper sails on
swift dark wings ; and the kingfisher, with flight more,
rapid still, flashes through the rainbow floating in the
spray below the fall as if to challenge with his own rare
beauty the very hues of heaven.
On the hills above few birds are seen at any time.
Wheat ears there are upon the rocky slopes low down,
smart stonechats flit from point to point among the
furze uttering the clear incisive call-notes that have
given them their name. But the tenants of the moun-
tain solitudes are, for the most part, bandits born. Far
over the waste wanders the carrion crow, his harsh voice
and sombre plumage harmonising well. A rarer sound
is the hoarse croak of the raven, but the grouse know
well the ominous sound, and as his shadow passes crouch
closer in the honey-scented ling whose softer tone
follows the rich Tyrian of the now fading heather.
Round the crags of Siabod drifts the soaring buzzard,
now wheeling in wide circles, and now swooping with
closed wings a hundred feet sheer down, opening his
great pinions for a moment to steady himself before the
final plunge. Less often a merlin crosses the windy
moor. His is a dainty figure, and his smooth soaring
flight suggests rather a swallow than a falcon.
But this wide arena, with its cliffs and woods, its
meadows and its river, is the haunt of many shy children
of the air. Among the crags that crown the broad oak
woodland rising from the river, along whose dizzy ledges
clamber lightly the sure-footed mountain goats, the rock-
ioo \AMBLES OF A <DOfMINI8
dove comes back to roost at nightfall. Among the an-
cient trees below, stockdove and ringdove croon softly in
the gloaming. Here in the green depths the clamorous
woodpeckers shout to each other through long summer
days prophesying of the coming rain. There are no
starlings here to dispossess them. The hole in yonder
tree is an ancestral homestead, with threshold worn and
polished as by the use of many generations. The birds
themselves have vanished at the stir of footsteps on the
leaves, but on the dead branches of this dying oak are
signs of their late presence scars cut deep into the old
tree, loose sheets of bark their beaks have torn away.
But of all birds that love this quiet spot the dipper is
the genius of the stream. Each bend is his familiar
haunt. There at all hours you will meet him. Some-
times, coming unaware upon the angler, he hails with
startled cry the invader of his realm. Sometimes he
waits to watch with bright bold eyes movements that
suggest no thought of danger. The fisherman who has
right knowledge of his craft regards the dipper as a
friend and brother. Conscious that the active little
diver has no stain of guilt upon his soul, he loves its
graceful ways, the music of its cry, its very presence on
the river.
On a rock in the mid -stream the dipper stands. As
he looks away up the river his form alone is seen against
the rock, hung as it is with dripping moss and dark with
the plash of the water. A moment only he stands quiet ;
then diving into the very swiftest rush of the current,
he comes up a few seconds later on another resting-place
THS FOOT OF SIAKOD 101
with something in his beak some caddis or shellfish
that he has found among the stones. How he contrives
to make his way so easily beneath the surface is still a
matter of dispute. It is considered by some naturalists
as proved that the dipper actually walks along, clutching
with his feet the stones upon the bottom. But some
anglers who have watched him well maintain that he
only swims under the water like a dab-chick or a rail.
The dipper leaves his perch again, swimming like a tiny
copy of a moorhen across a belt of smoother water.
Diving again and again, sometimes resting on a stone
below the surface, half his body still submerged, some-
times taking refuge on a boulder high and dry above
the stream, at length he settles on another rock, crouch-
ing down as if for quiet meditation. But now from
under- the bank flies out a comrade in pursuit. The
drowsing figure on the stone wakens instantly to life.
Before the new-comer can reach him he is off, and a
second later has gone under with a splash. When he
comes up, a few yards away, the two birds roll over and
over and splash and frolic like a pair of sparrows on the
dusty highway.
Tired at length, one player flies swiftly up the stream.
The other swims across to a quiet backwater under the
shore, where, upon a stone in the dark shadow of the
alder bushes, he stands long motionless, his white breast
mirrored in a quivering band of light like the image of a
sinking moon lengthened on a rippling sea.
And when at length the dipper is asleep in his hollow
in the bank; when laughing woodpeckers are silent,
102 ?(4fMBLES OF A <DOfMINlS
and the jays no longer wrangle in the willows ; when
the monarch of mountains is dark upon the twilight sky,
wrapped in the rich purple of his royal mantle ; when the
martins, descending from their hover in the air, have
gone to rest beneath the eaves, then the curlews flying
over, mere dots of black upon the pallid blue, call softly
as they pass. And when the mountains are all black
against the face of night, when mists like gliding phan-
toms are swaying in the meadows, and the cry of the
river is sounding in the silent air, are heard the solemn
voices of the owls. Far off among the trees a solitary
bird is calling to his fellows, and now, as from some
lonely elf out of the dark, comes back the answer, a faint
soft musical halloo.
[ ;
CD !=>
BELOW the falls, where the vexed water, quiet for a
space, sweeps down with calmer flow, a mountain torrent
joins the brimming river. It is a headlong stream, no
gentle " nurse of rushes and of reeds." Through a green
glen, worn deep into the mountain side, it laughs and
dances, and leaps lightly down, a free, unfettered spirit
of the hills.
A slight pathway through the wood, a track trodden
only by the loitering angler or by the bkck cattle
descending from the uplands, wanders in and out among
the thickets, climbing the steep slope along the stream.
The bed of the torrent is piled with great boulders, their
smooth sides overgrown with lichen, and, where the
water laps their cool shadows, thick with moss and fern.
In the wreck of leaves and branches that winter spates
have strewn among the crannies, a hundred plants have
found a footing, brightening with their mingled tints
the cold grey of the stones. Pale blue scabious and
purple centaury, yellow hawkweed and white meadow-
sweet, slender harebell and tall angelica, spread their
104 1(JfMBLES OF A <DO!MINI8
roots among the mossy draperies. The golden petals of
the globe-flowers have long since fallen away, but there
is a very forest of their leaves among the mountain-fern
that fringes all the shore.
Grey and wrinkled, as by time and tempest, are the
oaks that bear up the green roof of the glade. The
rowan-trees, with roots like talons clutching the battered
rocks, are not yet plundered of their coral clusters, for
birds do not greatly love the shadows of this solitary
glen. The white stems of the birches, whose trembling
leafage mingles with the green mist overhead, seem to
stand among their bolder brothers like the dryads of the
valley. So steep is the ravine that the torrent here is
little but a chain of pools and cataracts ; now a hollow
worn into the living rock, where the sturdy trout just
hold their own in the rush of the current, now a fall that
gleams among the trees like the white form, "the
substance of a happy dream " that feasted the glad eyes
of Khcecus in that haunted vale of Thessaly.
So deep is the still hollow that the voice of the great
river rushing through the valley, near and yet unseen,
seems faint and distant, and like the t murmur of the
summer sea. But when
" a sudden rush of air
Flutters the lazy leaves o'erhead,
And gleams of sunshine toss and flare
Like torches down the path I tread "
the swelling sound is borne upward like the roar of the
tide upon an ocean beach, or the stir of storm-wind in
the pines.
105
A fringe of birches bars the way upward from the
valley. In the wet earth about their roots, the plants
of the moorland, the outposts of the higher regions
mingle with the children of the woo$. Yellow spikes of
asphodel shine in the rank grass. Sprays of dainty marsh
plants hang pale blue bells over the stream. In corners
of black bogland, the grass of Parnassus gleams star-like
in its peerless beauty. And here the sundew folds in its
deadly leaves the insects that sip its fatal sweetness.
Higher up there is no canopy of foliage above the
brook, but among its alder thickets the meadow-sweet
grows tall and strong, and all along the shore the bog-
myrtle, crushed under careless footsteps, answers meekly
with the fragrance of its leaves.
The channel which the stream has carved itself, deep
in the black earth of the moor, is marked by wander-
ing lines of rushes with here and there a few white
plumes of cotton grass, all the way up to its birthplace
in the mountains, a quiet lake that lies unseen behind a
shoulder of the hill.
It is a bare, unsheltered tarn. No trees lean over it;
there is no fringe of alder even round its still dark
water. But over the wide hollow is a dense growth of
bracken, whose fronds already under the warm touch of
autumn "are turning yellow, or kindling into red."
There is a warm flush of ling upon its rocky islets, to
whose sovereign purple the gorse adds the crowning
touch of gold. Two herons fishing by the shore, rise
long before their still forms were seen against the grey
rocks, and drift silently away. In the shallows there
106 SVLBLES OF A <DOfMINI8
are lines of tall rushes, whose thin veil hardly hides a
string of teal, keeping close together, quiet and motion-
less as if hoping to escape unseen. Reluctantly they
rise at length, making sweet music with their wings.
They fly up the tarn to the far end, thence once back,
and then away into the hills to join, in some remoter
solitude, their sober-clad companions.
Even in this desolate spot there are signs of man's
dominion. Across the swampy ground are the lines of
ancient fields. A few broad stones not yet swallowed up
in the oozy soil, are the relics of a causeway over the
morass to a rocky brow under the hill where stand the
ruins of a homestead.
His was a dire extremity who sought to claim this
hopeless wilderness. Long years have passed since the
effort was abandoned. The walls, piled rudely of huge
blocks of stone, are standing in their simple strength ;
but the broken rafters are scattered on the floor, and
under the fallen tiles the lizard and the field-mouse creep
for shelter. Rushes and nettles, bramble and foxglove,
hide with their green tapestries the " chinks that time
has made." Some bird has built its nest in the old
chimney, and on the hearth, whose generous glow has
mocked it may be many a time the blasts that shook the
walls, moulder the rusty bars.
That a wren has built within the doorway, proves how
completely man's presence is forgotten ; but a robin
singing blithely on the broken sill seems like a link with
forgotten tenants. Where hung the garden gate grows
a great elder tree, betraying by the wrinkles in its bark
THS ^MOU^TAI^S 107
how long it is since yonder fruit trees, heavy with their
sour, green load, have felt the gardener's steel. Grass
has covered every sign of tillage, the heather returning
from the mountain blooms unchecked in every clearing.
Some signs there are that speak more plainly of the
past. In the brook that runs beside the doorway still
lies a broken pitcher ; and in the bark of an old sycamore,
whose clusters of red keys light up its sober summer
green, is carved with " the touch of a vanished hand "
one letter of a name.
Across the moorland, by the margin of the stream, a
party of anglers are making their camp. Picturesque
figures are gathering armf uls of half -burnt heather, and
a stalwart fisherman is arranging with stones a draught
for the little hearth a touch of wood-craft suggestive of
more real camp life and the sober earnest of " the bush."
Two girls are rummaging in bags and baskets for the
materials of the meal. And now the fire is lit, the
kettle hung. The blue smoke rising slowly trails far
along the hills.
It is a jovial party that gathers to the feast. The
solitude is startled by staves of song and shouts of
laughter, and the pleasant voices of girls.
Is it an inborn yearning for the far-off days of savage
life, or is it the mere relief at freedom from the fret of
civilisation that lends so real a charm to a bivouac like
this, and throws a glamour even over its discomforts ?
Perhaps it is rather the long day in the open, the scram-
bling over slippery boulders that makes a man content
to drink his tea out of the kettle lid, to share the single
io8 1(A{MBLES OF A VOfMINIS
knife that is handed round among the company, to
regard even a failure in the supply of butter as only
a fresh material for a jest.
The eye wanders away from the little scene of life and
movement, from the warm touches of colour and the
drifting smoke of the camp fire, across the sullen bog
land, to the sterile hills. Over the rim of the vast hollow
rise range after range of dim outlines, shrouded in grey
mist. At times the veil is lifted for a moment, far
gleams of sunlight strike on steep mountain sides, and
glitter on the still faces of tarns that sleep in hollows of
the hills. There is silence everywhere, save for the fitful
breath of wind that lightly stirs the rushes of the tufted
grass upon the long, low walls.
Far up on the grey sky a troop of gulls are wheeling,
their wide wings hardly trembling as they soar in vast
circles overhead. There is a sound of the sea in their
wild voices, a sound that, like the faint call-note of some
wandering plover, seems but to deepen the sense of soli-
tude and gloom. But now through a rift in the grey
curtain shows the great mass of Snowdon, dark on the
glowing sky. A gleam of sunlight silvers the long lakes
lying at his feet ; soft hues of purple trace the outlines
of each mighty peak, linger on the great pyramid of Crib
Goch, the stupendous precipice of Llwydd, on Y Wyddfa's
sovereign head.
" The fascination and allure
Of the sweet landscape chains the will,
The traveller lingers on the hill,
His parted lips are breathing still
The last sigh of the Moor."
HIGH up
in the Bavarian
Highlands, by
the shore of a lake that
lies just within the
forest, stands a small
and simple hostelry.
In the pages of its visitors'
book autographs of Eng-
lishmen are few and far between. It is still beyond the
postal delivery, and letters, which are brought whenever
no 1(A!MBLES OF A VOZMINIS
an opportunity may chance to present itself, are often
five days on the way from England.
But to the man who is not too closely wedded to the
ways of civilised life the settlement and its surroundings
offer attractions of no mean order. Primitive as are the
customs of this little hostel, though rough its appoint-
ments and simple its cuisine, the traveller will find that
he is waited on by the jovial landlord, one or other of
his laughing daughters, and the handsome gipsy girl who
helps them with an attention that would reflect credit on
the first hotel in Europe.
And in the forest that stretches round the lake and
far across the Austrian border he may stalk the roebuck
by its favourite pool, or the tall red deer that comes
down in the dusk from its fastness in the mountains.
Here, too, the chamois is on his native heath, and of all
the trophies of the hunter none is dearer to his soul
than the black and wrinkled horns of that fleetfooted
mountain antelope.
It is a pleasant path that crosses the broad green plain
a path that in the summer time is bright with flowers,
cheered with the stir of birds and the hum of myriad
insects. No butterflies now loiter in the scented grass.
No locusts rise on crimson wings as we cross the sunny
meadows. No more in quiet corners sounds the piping
of the quaiL The chill rains of October are bringing
down the painted leaves. There is snow along the ledges
of the mountains. Their crests have long been whitened
with a touch of winter.
We linger on the bridge of pine-logs over the green
in
waves of a torrent rushing down to meet the Isar, and
look back across broad level lands that stretch away to
the feet of distant mountains. Plain to see through the
dwindling foliage of the limes that rain and sun have
robbed of their summer glory are the broad-eaved
gables of houses that cluster round white towers of
village churches.
Far beyond, half way up the mountain side, pausing
as if for rest, shows among sheltering trees a straggling
white-walled monastery of Benedictine friars. In dark
recesses of the glen behind it linger the spirits banished
by the founders of the settlement. Still, on wild nights
in winter the shuddering peasant, hurrying homeward
in the darkness, hears their voices in the pauses of the
storm.
But soon the winding of the path shuts out all sign of
human presence. Tall pines, the outposts of the forest,
are marshalled by the way, and in their shadow piles of
rock, overgrown with wandering clematis, green with
fern and grey with lichen, are strewn on either hand.
The mountain wall, rising in front like a vast barrier, is
drawn in bold outlines on the glowing sky. One more
turning brings in sight the little Highland inn.
The inn is a picture in itself, with its broad eaves and
its balconies, its shingle roof weighted with huge stones,
the rich brown of its unpainted woodwork, and the forest
pines behind it like a splendid setting. No one is
visible at door or window, but from within rise sounds
of revelry, shouts and the stamp of feet ; and clearly
heard above the din, the plaintive twanging of a zither.
H2 ?(.A{MBLES OF A VOMINIS
i
We pause a moment in the doorway to watch through
the smoke that fills the room the wild figures of the
revellers and the uncouth movements of the dance.
They are men, all of them, each one dancing alone,
stamping now and then and shouting, and clapping
broad and horny hands. Seated at a table in the corner,
a strolling player with olive cheeks and dark moustache
bends lovingly above his instrument. Beside him stands
a bright-eyed girl, whose coloured kerchief, snowy
sleeves and silver ornaments give finishing touches to
the picture. A plaintive song she sings, a song of
home, a note that ever finds an answering echo in the
heart of the wandering Bavarian. The rugged moun-
taineers, whose senses now are perhaps a little clouded
by the potent spirit of the Highlands, lend their deep
voices to the chorus.
Suddenly a swarthy reveller, catching sight of strangers
in the doorway, comes forward with eager gestures of
welcome. His speech is thick, and the dialect is strange
to us, but there is no doubt at all about the meaning.
It is
" Will you come and join the dance ?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you
join the dance?"
As the zither player pauses to look up, a tall figure at
his side sets down on the table his unfinished tankard,
takes his rifle from the wall, his hat from the deer's
antler overhead, and comes out to greet us with a smile
of recognition on his weather-beaten face. Time has
turned to snow the sable of his long moustache ; but the
113
forester's hand is as steady now, his #ye as keen to-day
as when in the last charge at Koniggratz a Prussian
sabre left that mark across his cheek.
As we left the house and strolled down to the lake,
he told us we had come at the best of moments. Yes,
it was late in the season, but no one else had a permit,
and he knew where a fine Gamsbock, as he called it,
came down at dawn to feed below the larches. We
would start at once. The sun was hardly down. We
could reach the hut in the mountains before midnight,
and begin the chase at daybreak.
A strange-looking craft awaited us by the shore, with
square ends and straight sides, and no vestige of a curve
anywhere in its blackened timbers. We felt as we put
off that our dress was not in keeping with the old canoe.
We should have been brave with wampum and with
warpaint, with feathers of the great war-eagle. The
picturesque equipment of the forester presented a better
harmony his braided jacket, his green hat with its silver
tassels and its blackcock's plume, and the carving on
the stock of the rifle resting near him as he rowed.
Swiftly we glided along the lake, over cloud and forest
and mountain copied in the tranquil depths. A strip of
vivid green ran all along above the rocky shore. Over
it rose dark ranks of pines, sombre and cold, in endless,
motionless array. By the farther shore two girls were
rowing homeward with grass from a clearing in the
forest. Keeping time with the swift strokes of their
paddles floated across the water the faint sounds of a
song.
H
ii4 RAMBLES OF A VOfMINIS
The notes grew fainter, and were lost. There was
no sound along the shore. No nutcrackers wrangling
in the tree-tops, no tits swinging on the long brown
cones, no buzzard on the solitary sky.
At last the boat grated on the shingle, and we filed
into the shadows of the forest.
Few tenants are there of these gloomy depths.
Roebuck rarely venture so far down. Stags seldom
leave their higher haunts unless to harry the green
crops of some solitary homestead. It is long since the
last bear was killed on this side the frontier. Under
the broad eaves of one of the houses in the village below
hangs still the trophy of the chase. Seventy years
the bare and grinning skull has mouldered on the
wall.
We followed through the forest the footsteps of our
silent leader, crossed belts of straggling pines, stumbling
over unseen boulders, scrambling up slippery steeps of
rock. So dark was it when we reached the hut that we
had to feel for the door.
It was a cosy nook. Behind it towered a sheltering
wall of rock ; on either side stood groups of pines, ghost-
like in the gloom. In the dim valley, three thousand
feet below us, a light was twinkling in some distant
village : a far-off belfry sounded the midnight hour.
Round the red pine logs on the open hearth we slept
that night the hunter's sleep, and when the forester
roused us from our lair among the hay, the sky was
brightening to the dawn.
We made a hasty meal. No fire was kindled now,
115
lest we should warn the chamois of our coming. We
took our weapons from the wall, and silently we left the
hut.
The scent of pines is sweet in the cool morning air ;
the dew lies heavy on alpenrose and holly-fern. We
make for a clump of larches that have gathered round
the crest of a steep crag, and have barely reached their
shelter when suddenly we hear a sound that quickens
every pulse and tightens each man's grip upon his rifle.
It is the whistle of the chamois. The forester signs to
us to wait while he creeps forward to reconnoitre.
How plainly in the breathless stillness sounds the
roar of the torrent, how clear among the pines below
the cry of a solitary woodpecker, how loud the cowbell
on some distant alp !
The forester lifts his hand. One after one we reach
his side, and there, two hundred yards away, the chamois
is standing on the slope. He is looking hard this way.
His black horns are clear against the rock behind him.
The light of sunrise is warm upon his rich brown coat.
Defiantly his head is lifted, as he utters now and then
his impatient cry of anger and suspicion. Slowly he
walks across the rocky slope. He pauses for a longer,
keener look a fatal pause for him. For then there is
the sharp crack of a rifle. The bullet has found its
billet and the buck is lying lifeless on the scree.
The sun that at that very moment rose in cloudless
splendour above the purple mountains came too late for
him. Those bold, black eyes will look no more upon
the face of dawn. The east was lighted with a soft and
n6 <I(AfMBLES OF A
tender glow. Far down the valley of the Inn the distant
ranges showed like banks of cloud. At our feet
" Grey mists were rolling, rising, vanishing ;
The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns ;
Far off the mellow bells began to ring
For matins in the half -a wakened towns."
sruvr
UNLIKE the birds, who for the most part retire to rest at
nightfall, some of them even before the sun goes down,
the beasts that figure on our scanty list are mostly
lovers of the dark. We may indeed find, at any hour, a
squirrel in the tree-tops ; and the shrews, although they
love the twilight, are heard all day in the wood and
hedgerow. But the stoat and weasel hide under cover
of the night their deeds of darkness. It is only in the
gloaming that the otter is out by the river. It is when
all is still that the fox levies blackmail upon the poultry-
yard, sometimes slaughtering, as if from mere lust of
murder, ten times as much as he can carry off. Even
the tall red deer comes out of the forest at the dead of
night to plunder the garden of the cottager, or to make
havoc of the springing corn.
These are figures familiar more or less to many
dwellers in the country. But there is another night-
rover who, though more plentiful than the otter, and
n8 <I(AfMBLES OF A VOfMINIS
ready to make a home in any spot where a fox could find
safe cover, is less generally known than either. Unlike
them, the badger plays a part no more in any phase of
sport. He is less often seen by daylight even than the
fox. His habits hide him altogether from the general
view. With his powerful claws he digs himself a dwelling
in the ground, in some quiet and secluded spot, in the
depths of a wood or in some rocky hollow in the moor.
Cave-hunters find his long foot-prints in the black earth
on cavern floors, though not all have been so fortunate
as Boyd Dawkins, who watched by the glimmer of his
candles the shy beasts running off to hide in still darker
corners of the cave.
But, though comparatively seldom seen, the badger is
by no means rare. It is known to inhabit suitable spots
in more than half the counties of England, and is widely
scattered through the sister kingdoms. So old an
inhabitant is he that his ancestors must have been
familiar even with the mammoth. His name, in its
still-used provincial form of Brock, has left its mark on
many an English country side. Such names as Brock-
ley, Brockhampton, Brockendale are found throughout
the country. '
With the keeper and the farmer, the badger has
received it were not fair to him to say that he has
earned a reputation little better than that of fox or
polecat. It is not to be expected that he would go out
of his way to avoid a nestful of eggs, a sitting pheasant,
or a brood of young partridges that he may chance to
stumble on in his nightly wanderings. That he does at
<DA<HTMOOR 119.
times commit himself in this way there is proof enough.
He has a weakness for young rabbits, which he will dig
for in the warren.
But he is satisfied in the main with humbler fare.
The fruits of the earth acorns, roots, beech-mast serve
his turn, with worms and mice and beetles. He is
partial to wasp-grubs, and it is said that no wasps' nest
will long remain unharried in a place which badgers
haunt. A captive badger will kill and eat a snake, and
has been known to exhibit an amount of skill in handling
a viper that suggested previous practice, though as the
badger comes out only in the dusk, and daylight never
finds him willingly outside his holt, he can hardly be
very familiar with such lovers of the sun as the grass
snake or the adder.
On the upper reaches of the Dart, among the woods
that clothe the sides of the broad glen which that
rushing river has carved among the hills, are haunts
after the badger's heart.
Who crosses by the road alone the wide expanse of
Dartmoor has yet much to learn of its beauty. There is
indeed a charm in the very wildness of its open land-
scapes ; in the bare brown slopes that rise and fall for
miles on every hand, here relieved by the bright green
of swampy hollows, there broken by the rugged outlines
of the tors that lift at far intervals their granite crowns.
There is a splendour that passes the painting of mere
words in the glory of its autumn colouring, the purple of
its miles of heather, the gold of its broad sheets of gorse.
But, full of beauty as is undeniably the open moorland,
120 <fAMBLES OF A <DOfMlNlS
the wide hollow where the Dart goes whirling down,
ranks high among the fairest spots of Devon, and it is
no idle boast to say that there is little finer river scenery
in England.
Dartmoor weather has a reputation somewhat doubt-
ful. The very name is held suggestive of the realm of
rain and mist. Even Devon folk have an ill word
for it :
" West wind always brings wet weather j
East wind wet and cool together.
South wind surely brings the rain,
North wind blows it back again."
But there is no corner on the Dart like those God-for-
saken wastes on Exmoor where the year is made of
nine months' winter and three months' rain ; where the
hay is dried by steam power, and where three 'fine days
in a fortnight make an epoch to be talked of all the
season. But even when the east blows keen across the
moor the sun is warm along the river. The wooded
winding shores are peopled by a different race from the
moorland wilderness above.
In a clearing among the bushes, a sort of no-man's
land, at a corner of a covert, stood the keeper and his
men. The ground before them was broken up with the
mounds and burrows of a colony of badgers, and the im-
plements carried by the men a pickaxe and a spade, a
portentous pair of tongs, and a sack suggested that an
assault was contemplated on the holt.
The keeper was not in a mood to listen to any argu-
ments as to the harmlessness of badgers. He was
121
respectful, but he shook his head. All he knew was
that a hen pheasant had been killed upon her nest, and
all the eggs eaten, and that the prints of badgers' feet
were plain on the soft earth all round the spot, and turn
them out he would.
One man there was in the little company who used no
spade, and carried nothing but two crooked sticks with
whose help he limped along. But if he brought no
hunting gear he contributed his unrivalled skill of wood
craft. No chase within cry of the river from Ashburton
to Hexworthy could prosper without him. No man
(jan fairly say he knows the river who has not fished it
with that veteran angler. The best of dogs would be of
little use if Bill Mann were not near upon his shaggy
steed to show the favourite covert of the " black' ock."
And now, with his short black clay between his lips, he
sat down to take command.
Two small terriers, put into one of the many holes,
were hardly underground when a fox dashed out from
one of the entrances and vanished in the thickets. Such
companionship seems not uncommon. Several instances
have been recorded in which fox and badger were con-
tent to occupy apartments in the same earth.
The barking of the dogs, faintly heard from underfoot,
gave evidence of other game. The men put their ears
on the ground and listened. The keeper said he could
hear a badger. Bill declared he could smell it. For
some time the men could not tell where to dig. Now
the barking and scuffling was to this side, now to that.
When at last it settled down in one spot, pick and
122 l(4tMLES OF A
spade made short work of digging down into the
burrow. And when at length, through the roof thus
broken in, the grey coat of the badger stood revealed,
came the old man's turn. Catching up the tongs, he
gripped the struggling beast and hauled him out. The
keeper seized him ignominiously by the tail, dropped him
head first into the sack, tied him up, and laid him on
one side.
The dogs were rather indignant at being thus cheated
of their prey, and were with difficulty dissuaded from
trying to worry it through the sack. When they pre-
sently entered the holt from another side fresh sounds
of conflict soon announced that it was not empty yet.
Next moment out rushed another badger, all brown from
earth he had been digging to get away from his pursuers.
Dismayed perhaps by the circle of his foes and by the
shouts that greeted his appearance, he paused a moment,
then pulled himself together, and ran for his life.
There is a strange idea still current that the legs of a
badger are longer on one side of the body than on the
other, " so that he may run better along the side of a
hill." It has been stated too that he is not fleet of foot.
This one at any rate ran like a wild cat.
The dogs were out of the hole and away in full cry.
The posse of hunters, bringing spade and pickaxe, and
not forgetting the captive in the sack, followed in hot
pursuit. Right across the woodland crashed the shout-
ing chase, careless of ivy trails that lay in wait for luck-
less feet, brambles ready to hold a man helpless by the
waist, tall saplings that slapped him cruelly in the face.
123
But nobody cared if he did leave part of his coat or even
a scrap of his skin hanging on a casual thorn. The
stalwart keeper following hard after the dogs, discovered
speedily where the fugitive had gone to holt. It was a
more awkward place to get at than before from the
presence of a tough tree root in the bank, and the old
man had limped leisurely up to the spot before the beast
was caught. Caught it was at last, however, and badger
number two shared the fate and the sack of badger
number one. Slowly the little procession moved away ;
the bag with the badgers in it slung on a pole between
two keepers, like the grapes that came from Eshcol.
THREE
MANY a man whose brief holiday is marred by summer
rain is tempted to bestow a hearty malediction on the
idle promise of St. S within. But for the oarsman who
for weeks has been looking forward to his few days
of hard-earned leisure on the river, there is nothing
in the dictionary to paint in proper language his disgust
at the unspeakable season. None feels more keenly
than he the misery of long days of rain. There is no
man who knows better the full value of those rare
gleams of glorious weather that, when they come, make
life well worth the living.
At least, that is your opinion when all the signs are
fair, when the glass is going up, and the sky is full of
promise. The cumbrous costume of the City is cheerfully
discarded. In an easy dress of flannel, untrammelled
by cuffs or collar, or the crowning abomination of a tall,
silk hat, you are standing by the river. The skiff is all
ready, taut and trim. With a fine show of indifference
you take your seat upon the thwart, but you cannot for
o
n
s
5
Q d
5
^
--, CO
THREE ME&L 13^ Ji TUB 125
the life of you resist a thrill of pleasure as once more
your fingers tighten on the sculls.
You are alone. You will pick up your less fortunate
comrades farther on. They cannot get away so soon.
And as in the late afternoon you pull easily down the
noble stream^ all thoughts of the steady-going, money-
making, work-a-day world seem to vanish into air. At
every turn you are reminded of some happy memory.
You begin to breathe again the free life of the river.
You smile as you recall its bygone hours of song and
mirth and laughter. How pleasant over the tall fringe
of reeds are the glimpses of old-world villages seen
across their level fields their roofs of brown thatch,
their quaint church towers, the smoke of their evening
fires blue against their noble trees ! How fair the low
green meadows, newly mown, with a suspicion of hay
still lingering on the hedges where the great waggons
have rumbled down the lane !
From the tall elms along the shore float the soft
voices of the doves ; and, as you drift down with noiseless
oar, your presence hardly startles the little troops of
moorhens paddling leisurely across the stream. You
see the brown leaves of weed under the clear cool water
sway softly as you pass. You watch the sand-martins
dip by hundreds in the tranquil river. You see the
wild-duck drifting over, dark against the glowing sky ;
you hear the night-jar churring among the beeches on
the hill. It is a perfect evening. No breath of wind is
stirring in the reeds. Quiet sky, warm air, peaceful
river.
126 \AWLBLES OF A VOtMINIS
Then, as the sweet breath of the lime-trees grows
stronger in the twilight, you pass the house-boats at
their moorings, near the well-remembered village, and
put in where the long bridge crosses the wide river, and
where the old hostel invites the oarsmen to its pleasant
shelter. As you make fast your skiff among the crowd
of boats that spread out like a fan into the stream, your
name is shouted from the shore. Yes, your fellow-
voyagers of the morrow are among the group of idlers
round the doorway.
How easily the " river man " flings off the trammels
of his ordinary garb ! But yesterday he was in the
City, in coat of faultless cut, with unimpeachable hat,
and the very correctest of ties. Behold him now a
stalwart oarsman, disguised in flannels and a 'varsity
cap, a short pipe in his mouth, and no hint about him
anywhere to tell that only last night he threw down the
pen or shut up the ledger. But it is hard to leave the
world altogether unremembered. Perhaps even now he
is wandering away in fancy from the river, and the
boats, and the pleasant scene before him, to reflect on the
state of the market, to think with a touch of uneasi-
ness of that venture in tea, or to meditate on fluctuations
in diamonds. That figure, now, in the very oldest of
coats and most untidy of caps may even be a school-
master, who has left those few sheep in the wilderness,
and has managed somehow to snatch this brief respite
from his toil.
The group breaks up. One by one the idlers quit the
doorway and find their billets in the cosy inn. Silence
THREE ME 13 * TUB
long delayed settles down at length upon the sleepers
whose hard-won rest is unbroken by the rush of the
weir, the song of the sedge-bird in the reeds across the
river, or the cries of wild fowl abroad under cover of the
darkness.
The morning is bright and promising too bright, the
ancient mariner says, who throws the painter into the
bow and pushes you off. But you make light of his
warnings. You still have faith in St. Swithin. You
mean to have a good time of it.
It is a very crowd of butterflies that the sun has
tempted out. 'Varsity men in fearful and wonderful
get up though not always quite successful in the hand-
ling of their sculls are assisted by admiring crews of
" their sisters and their cousins and their " well, no, on
reflection, perhaps they draw the line at "aunts" in
all the splendour of the rainbow.
But, alas ! the clouds gather darkly from the south-
ward. It is not long before the croak of the ancient
mariner seems likely to prove well-founded. A few
large drops patter ominously among the willows by the
shore. The drops become a shower, the shower becomes
a pelt. Well now for those who have loitered among
the lilies, have stopped to explore the backwaters, have
no lock to wait for, and are back before the rain has
settled to its work in earnest.
It is some compensation for the unwelcome interruption
of the storm to watch from the safe shelter of the inn
the half-drowned boatloads pulling for the shore. Some
are far up the river. The willows, whose grey leaves
128 1(A{MBLES OF A <DO{MINie
serve well enough to screen a crew of two from the
inquisitive gaze of the world, or even as a shelter in a
moderate shower, are of no service now. Alas, now,
for the gay plumage of the morning ! This is a deluge
against which no wrap or mackintosh is proof, and it is
in but sorry plight that the fair argonauts are helped
ashore. Some of them contemplate ruefully the havoc
that the rain has wrought upon their finery. The sun-
shine has faded from their lips, the laughter from their
eyes ; but they take their ill-fortune bravely for the
most part, making as light of their drenched garments
as the oarsmen who are handing them ashore. The
crowd of draggled pleasure-seekers vanishes hastily into
the recesses of the inn, to reappear later in strange habi-
liments borrowed from the landlord or his daughters.
The resources of a riverside hostel, in the rain, are
apt to be limited. Even the consolation of a pipe is
denied. The very smoking-room is needed for the
entertainment of unexpected guests who to-day have
been washed into the inn, and you and your comrades
are driven finally to make a bolt into the summer-house.
Even here a dejected couple of campers out, who have
abandoned in despair their shelterless tent, are preparing
to make a night of it, and there is nothing for it but
another bolt for bed.
In the morning the world wears quite another face.
From the look of things you would say there had been
no rain for weeks. The sedge-warbler in the reeds
under the bridge is singing as if no rain had ever come
to hush his tireless pine. The boat, indeed, shows signs
THRSS MS&C IWi Jt TUB 129
enough of what has been. The ancient mariner gets
her ready, not with a baling-tin, but with a bucket.
However, all is dry and ship-shape at last, the lock is
cleared, the sail is up, the wind is fair, the boat goes
gaily down the stream. On all the gracious landscape
there is no sign of the ill-weather, save perhaps an
added touch of beauty. Even the draggled plumes of
yesterday are fluttering in the sun, in what, to the
gross eye of man, seems undiminished splendour. That
tall young lady pulling stroke at least is none the worse
for her drenching. Her time is as good, hep feathering
as clean as that of the stalwart oarsman in the bow.
But doubtless it was yesterday's damp that has affected
that bearded Hercules lolling in the stern of his boat,
while two fair damsels at the sculls are dutifully rowing
his lordship up the river.
The sun is warm on the long fringe of reeds. It
brightens the rich spikes of loose-strife, the pale blue
geraniums, the clouds of meadow-sweet. It shines on
green blades of arrow-head, brown spears of bulrush.
So glides the boat along with snowy sail, under wooded
heights whose beeches wear already the first touch of
the autumn ; past the old mill whose blackened timbers
are lighted with moss and many-coloured lichen; by
noble manor house and peaceful farm ; by rushing weir
and reedy pool ; now startling the brown water-rail from
her noonday meditation, now taking unaware a little
family of moorhens making their first essay with broad
green oars.
Alas ! it is all too fair a breeze. Mile after mile of
i
i 3 o ^IMBLES OF A <DOMINie
the noble river glides all too rapidly away. All too
soon the towers and chimneys come in sight that warn
you that your cruise has reached its close. With many
interchanges of regret your gear and you are put ashore.
You wave a last salute as your comrades drift away
un der the bridge. They are gone.
You find when you reach the station that you are too
soon for the express, and you lounge uncomfortably
along the platform, eyed by every idler, and conscious
that your costume is, after all, only fitted for the river.
You wish that your flannels had at least escaped that
touch of tar, and that the lock at Mapledurham had
not left its mark upon your sleeve.
Then, as the swift train hurries you along, you look
eagerly for brief glimpses of the river you have left.
You catch sight of the long reach where, but an hour
ago, you were drifting with the stream. You recognise
, the white houseboats, with their flags and flowers. The
very skiffs, too, seem familiar. Yes, there is the very
boat you saw this morning, with strength at the helm
and beauty at the oar. The two girls are at it still;
still the lord of creation is lolling idly in the stern.
ATTLS
THOUGH September is apt to leave us in a stormy mood,
it is a month full of gracious days, that to our impatient
souls seem doubly welcome after the fickle temper of the
summer j days of bright skies and balmy air \ days whose
quiet ending wraps the low hills in soft grey vapour,
blending with a dreamy haze the border line of sea
and sky. The trees seem still to wear the dress of
summer; but when we look again there is a tinge of
brown among the greenness. The scent of dying leaves'
is already in the air. The whole landscape seems to
wait for that touch of magic that shall transmute to
gold its fading green.
The flowers of the late summer linger still. The
Canterbury bell still hangs its purple blossoms from the
hedgerows, and the sweet breath of woodbine still scents
the twilight air. Some flowers there are which belong
only to this season. It is only at the approach of
autumn that the low-lying meadows glow with purple
crocus. It is only as the summer passes that there open
132 1(A{MBLES OF A DOfMINIB
on the hill-side the dark clusters of that small campanula
that, as the legend tells, blooms only where the blood
of Danes was spilt. We are on the threshold of the
autumn, when the sweet lady's tresses lifts its pale spike
of delicate green among the grass of upland pastures.
And although upon the trees the touch of autumn is yet
but faltering and uncertain, though flowers die slowly
in the sharpening air, there is no lack of colour, at least
along the hedge-row.
Perhaps there is nothing more characteristic of a
Somersetshire village unless it be the square grey tower
of its ancient church than its setting of green orchard-
lands and the groups of apple-trees mingling with its
white farms and homesteads. And now that harvesting
is over, and the apple-crop is being gathered in, heaps of
russet and red and gold are growing mellow in the warm
October air. It is, often, but a scanty gathering. In
many a west country orchard there is never more than
a mere sprinkling of fruit,
'* Like the prophet's ' two or three berries
In the top of the uppermost bough.' "
In the hands of the average farmer the apple yields but
a precarious crop. Indeed, the promise of the autumn
depends almost entirely on the temper of the spring.
No blossom, not even of the peach or apricot, feels more
keenly the least touch of frost ; and the winds that in
the spring-time shake so roughly the unsheltered bran-
ches are apt to be hardly less fatal to the grower's hopes.
The apple is with us an original inhabitant. The
133
descendants of the crabtree that still lingers in the
country hedgerow number now two thousand separate
varieties. It was not, like the peach, the cherry, and the
apricot, imported from the East. The fruit, indeed, is
not a native of the East. Canon Tristram considers
that the tl apples " of the Song of Solomon were apricots ;
and although the fruit of the Forbidden Tree is often
called an apple, it is not so named in the sacred narrative.
Even in Roman times apples were cultivated in
Britain, and Somersetshire was evidently in King
Arthur's days an apple country. The " orchard-lawns "
that gave the name to " the island valley of Avilion "
are not alluded to in the Survey ; though the vineyards
in Terra See. Marie Glastingberiensis, and in "other
islands" near it are mentioned, clearly as a source of
revenue.
Uncertain as must ever be the nature of the apple
harvest, its chances are doubtless very much diminished
by the manner in which too frequently the trees are
treated. When the unpruned, neglected state of the
trees in an ordinary West Country orchard is considered,
the wonder is that there should be any yield at all.
Much of the Somersetshire apple crop is of value only
to make cider ; and the scent of the crushed apples and
the rumble of the cider-mill are there as characteristic
of the season of autumn as the thud of the flail upon
the old barn floor or the yellow ricks in the well-ordered
stackyard.
Cider apples are often remarkable for their beauty
but it is a beauty that is only skin deep. Mingled with
134 ^IMBLES OF A
their vivid stains of crimson there is often a strange
purplish bloom, a venomous look, that goes hand in
hand with the flavour of ink or verdigris. But all is
grist that comes to the cider-mill. It is no matter if
the fruit be rotten ; it is of little moment if the taste of
the fresh apples should be rough and disagreeable. Good
and bad are crushed together in the mill.
But with all this there is no denying that the juice
fresh drawn, the sweet unfermented cider, is a pleasant
beverage enough. It is in the after processes that cider
making becomes a fine art. Extreme care is needed
during fermentation ; and so comparatively seldom is
this care bestowed that the average rustic vintage is,
when considered finished and matured, simply a detest-
able drink. The man who says he likes it is to be
regarded with suspicion, and he who calls for another
jug of it is a man who would drink anything.
The story of an apple orchard is full of life and colour.
There are few country sights more full of beauty than
the bloom which in the month of May gathers so thickly
on the leafless branches, that gleam of snow-white
blossom tinged with softest crimson, which is the crown-
ing glory of a Somersetshire spring.
The best tended trees will give, no doubt, the finest
show of flowers ; but it is not among the precise and
orderly lines of a well-kept orchard that the worshipper
of nature loves to linger. His haunt is rather among
the old weather-beaten trees on the warm slopes of some
secluded valley in the hills ; trees whose branches never
felt the gardener's steel, and whose ancient trunks are
COU^TRT 135
grey with tufts of lichen. Here the brown squirrel
frolics undisturbed, and even the shy jay finds here
unbroken sanctuary.
The hedgerows, like the trees, are shaggy and un-
kempt; tangled wildernesses of sloe and bramble, of
dogwood and hazel. The butterflies of autumn, Admiral
and Painted Lady, sail from bush to bush, lightly touch-
ing, as they pass, the rich ripe blackberry clusters. Here,
too, the Comma floats along on brown, velvety wings, or
settling for a moment shows upon its dark underside the
bold white " comma " that has given it its name.
We are perhaps accustomed to regard insects as
especially the children of the summer, but there are
many whose prime is at the summer's close. The cricket
is pre-eminently a musician of the autumn ; and there
are some even of our most brilliant butterflies whose
brief life begins only when summer days are nearly past.
Round heavy-scented ivy flowers floats the royal Admiral,
the soft light brightening further still the white and
blue, the black and scarlet of his splendid wings. It
was but yesterday that the perfect insect broke the
brown husk of his chrysalis and spread his broadening
beauty in the sunshine. A few weeks more, only, and
he will creep away into some crevice in a tree or wall to
sleep out the barren hours of winter, motionless and cold.
In the spring-time he will waken with the rest for a few
more weeks of sunshine, the showers of April and the
smiles of May, though he is less often met with then,
than other species which survive the winter.
Wasps are already beginning to grow drowsy, but for
136 <I(4fMBLES OF A DOIMINIS
most of them it is the drowsiness forerunning death, not
sleep. The frosty nights of October do us great service
in destroying these troublesome insects, just as their
colonies have reached their most nourishing condition.
The wasp, it may be observed is, if she is let alone, on
the whole a well-behaved, as she is certainly always
an industrious, member of society. She rarely stings
unprovoked, being thus unlike the bee, who takes
such marked and unaccountable dislikes to unoffending
lingerers near the hive. Is it another indication of the
high plane of civilisation reached by bees and wasps
that the females only have weapons of defence? The
unprotected males are entirely unarmed.
The population of a single wasps' nest may amount by
the end of the season to as many as thirty thousand,
without counting the grubs not then matured. But of
all the thousands who during the summer have been
born and bred within the bounds of the republic, not a
handful will survive the winter. A few females will
remain torpid in the nest, or hide in hollow trees or
among heaps of stones, until warm days of spring revive
them to start single-handed the founding of a new
settlement.
As for the rest, the undeveloped grubs, for whom no
food is ever stored, are at the approach of winter dragged
from their cells and slaughtered; and the full-grown
wasps, whose stings have saved the rising generation
from the pangs of hunger, perish at the touch of
frost.
The nest is a very triumph of engineering skill. A
COU^TRT 137
small hole in the ground leads along a gallery, sometimes
dug by the little architects, sometimes the old working
of a mouse or a mole, to a chamber often twelve to
eighteen inches in diameter. This cavity is lined with
layers of soft grey paper, made by the wasps out of
wood-fibres which they have scraped with their strong
jaws. In this space the combs, which have cells only on
the lower side, are placed in horizontal layers. The
cells, which are of wood like the lining on the walls, are
used simply for the eggs and young, for the common
wasp stores no honey. The combs are supported by
diminutive pillars, of which there are sometimes fifty
between the wider combs in the middle of the nest.
The whole may in a large colony contain as many as
15,000 cells, and there are usually three broods in a
season. Well is it indeed for us that winter comes to
stop the increase of these swarms of brigands.
Of the unnumbered hosts of insects whose busy life,
or beauty, whose inarticulate voices, or mere presence
even, brightened the long hours of summer sunshine,
myriads will perish at the approach of winter; not so
much perhaps at the touch of frost, as having reached
the fulness of their days. No less vast are the hosts
that lie concealed as egg or grub or chrysalis till
awakened by the coming of the spring.
Of insects that have reached the perfect state but few
live through the winter. A few gnats remain, hiding in
dark holes and corners, from which bright days will
tempt them even at the season of Christmas. Many
beetles, too, survive; some burrowing deep into .the
138 HjftMBLES OF A VOMINIS
ground beyond the reach of frost, others sleeping in the
mud at the bottom of ponds and ditches. The few
species of butterflies that live into a second season, the
wasps that survive the general destruction, the few
moths and flies that stand the winter, hide in old trees,
or roofs, or walls, or even in loose heaps of stone.
Insects which thus hibernate appear dead. Their
animal functions are probably suspended. Their stiffened
limbs display no sign of life. Some, again, seem entirely
unaffected by the cold ; and in the bitterest season will
even frolic on the snow.
It is often said that a hard frost must do great
service to the farmer by destroying grubs and hiberna-
ting insects ; but it may be considered more than doubt-
ful whether the frost does not tell rather the other way,
and by hindering rooks and starlings from digging in the
ground, prove to lower forms of lif e a defence instead of
a destruction. For on insects, in any stage before the
perfect form is reached, cold seems to have but slight
effect. Some of those which pass the winter in the
chrysalis condition do indeed defend themselves with
thick wrappings of silk ; but others are not so protected,
and it has been shown that as a rule immature insects
at least are unharmed by very low temperatures indeed.
Eggs of the silkworm moth have survived a prolonged
exposure to a cold of 38 deg. below zero Fahrenheit.
" Caterpillars, so frozen that when dropped into a glass
they chinked like stones, nevertheless revived." Chrys-
alids, converted by a cold of zero Fahrenheit into lumps
of ice, have still produced butterflies. The larva of the
139
crane fly a most destructive pest, the grub of grubs
has been frozen hard without impairing its vitality. It
has been observed, too, that after a winter of unusual
severity, in which the temperature fell to zero, the
insects that appeared in the following spring were as
numerous as ever.
ONCE more in the misty air of autumn the woods put on
their royal splendours. The wind has scattered the
bright colour of the chestnut ; the rain has robbed the
lime tree of its gilded leaves. The sullen foliage of the
ash, that never gains from autumn skies an answering
touch of fire, lies dark upon the woodland paths. But
the green boughs of the oak are brightening with rich
gleams of colour ; branches of wild cherry seem wrapped
in crimson flame ; noble elm trees wear undimmed their
crowns of gold. Sheets of bracken, brown with sun and
rain, tinge with the hue of heather all the barren hills.
Along the hedgerows, and in green lane and coppice, the
maples ripen to their prime. Some are lightly touched
with colour here and there ; one is kindling in a ruddy
glow; here among the wrinkled branches, as by the
wand of a magician, every leaf is turned to gold. Bright,
too, is the 'tattered foliage of the bramble, clouded with
soft shades of brown and crimson, veined with tender
79\C GGrPT 141
green and reddened at the tips like points of flame.
And all along the bank, through the sad colour of the
drooping grasses, shine the hart's-tongue leaves, hiding
with broad green fronds the vivid berries of the arum.
There is scanty gleaning left of the rich harvest of the
hedgerow. The hips hang still on swaying sprays of
briar, and the dark red of abundant haws tinges the
sombre leafage of the thorn. But no black and crimson
berries shine among dark leaves of cornel. Long since
plundered are wayfaring tree and rowan. But on the
green stems of the spindle the fiery seeds are shining
through their crimson shells. Among tangled sprays of
bitter-sweet droop still the ruby clusters. On long
festoons of bryony, stripped of their dark purple leaves,
shine like fire the chains of brilliant berries.
Among the rain of leaves that patters day and night
upon the shivering branches none are brighter than
the red spoils of the beech. Its scattered foliage lights the
forest slope, and as with the light of sunset the tall trees
tinge the very air. As the brown squirrel leaps from
tree to tree across the wood a floating track of colour
marks his way. Hardly seen at first as he rested on a
bough, he watched with fearless mien your coming. He
has not stirred at the rustle of your footsteps on the
leaves. He is hardly a dozen feet away. His bright
eyes show no sign of fear ; his, bushy tail droops idly from
the bough. Calmly he watches the invasion of his
realm. Now a sudden impulse seizes him, and he runs
a little way along the swaying branch. But he has no
thought of flight, for with a quick dexterous leap he
i 4 2 <I(AfMBLES OF A VOfMINIS
faces about and scampers back. And now this way and
now that, as if carried away by the gladness of his
simple soul, he runs along the bough. Then with a
quick change he scrambles up the tree, his sharp claws
rattling on the polished bark. Again he leaps lightly
down, catching in his fall a slender arm that swings him
back to his first starting point. Then up and up he goes
till he gains the far summit ; then along his airy high-
way he springs from tree to tree, and is lost in the green
tangle overhead.
A mournful stillness there is among the brightness of
autumn trees. Silence reigns in all the woodland, save
for the song of the untiring robin, the chatter of a
passing troop of tits, or the larum of a restless wren.
Not even a belated chiffchaff lifts his cheery voice in a
warm corner of the wood. Stray swallow or martin, on
the wing for the far south, may still visit us in passing,
but all the birds of spring-time have gone with the
summer to lands beyond the Line.
Silently the northern rovers fall into the vacant places.
The woodcock whose voice is never heard save for a
brief space in spring finds his way back to the familiar
cover. Huge flights of scaup and widgeon descend upon
the waters of the bay. Unnumbered hosts of dunlins
are gathering on the shore. In well-known haunts in
field and upland the fieldfare finds refuge from the
terrors of the winter. The fisherman afloat upon the
wild North Sea hears in the dark above him the cries of
passing birds ; pauses from his toil to listen to phantom
SGTPT 143
voices overhead clang of goose and plaint of redwing,
and all
" The sounds sent down at night
By birds of passage in their flight."
A few of the birds that visit us in winter are well
known, at least by name ; but perhaps the larger number
are familiar only to the naturalist and the sportsman.
There are about 450 birds which inhabit these islands,
and of which specimens have been at various times
reported. Of these, however, there are some seventy
which are regarded with doubt ; and, although doctors
disagree as to whether every bird whose appearance has
been once recorded should be reckoned on our list or not,
there are many naturalists who would still further reduce
the total by discarding the stray fugitives from the very
ends of the earth some of them, whose accidental visits
have generally been considered sufficient to give them
claim to citizenship.
About fifty birds regularly come to us in spring to
spend the summer here, building their nests in English
woodlands and green lanes ; and then, when leaves are
falling, they turn south again to pass the winter under
an African sun.
Thirty more, chiefly water-loving birds, ducks, and
geese, plovers and sandpipers, come southward at the
approach of winter from their haunts on northern
islands, or from Siberian marshes by the Polar Sea.
One hundred and sixty-five are " occasional visitors."
Some of these have been seen but once. Others, like the
144 1{j4{MBLES OF A DOfMINIS
wild swan and the crane, were in old times native here ;
but by degrees, as their haunts were broken up and
their sanctuaries invaded, they left us for some more
secluded region.
There remain, then, only 128 which we may regard as
permanent residents birds which stay in England all
the year, and which, in their haunts, may be found at
any season. Some of them, larks and starlings, buntings
and finches, collect in flocks in winter, and wander in
search of food. And there are, after all, comparatively
few birds whose numbers are not augmented in the
autumn by arrivals from abroad, or who in times of
scarcity do not pass beyond the sea.
The birds of the air are beset by many dangers. The
story of their little lives is darkened by ills that wait for
them in many forms. The jay plunders their unguarded
eggs; the crow makes havoc of their callow young,
while they by men and beast are slain on every hand.
But never tooth or talon, no treacherous snare, or even
murderous gun, is half so fatal to the race as is the grip
of a "real old-fashioned winter." Frost to them is
famine. The teal and mallard turn from rivers cased in
ice to forage on the wintry sea. On cold nights of
winter, the dunlins by the falling tide can gather still
some jetsam ere the white surf hardens on the sand.
But for the general throng, when their feet are power-
less on the frozen land, or when snow lies deep over
their hunting grounds, there is no choice but exile or
starvation. Thus, at the setting in of winter, myriads
of wild fowl journey south to seek more hospitable
SGTPT 145
quarters. Thus the fieldfare and the redwing, the
woodcock and a score of others leave a land of frost
and famine to spend the season under milder skies.
With much of this kind of movement, this exodus in
search of food, we are abundantly familiar, as, for in-
stance, the flocks of larks that in winter gather on the
Sussex downs or among the fields of Bedfordshire. In
such vast hosts do they assemble that as many as fifteen
thousand have been netted in a single night round the
lighthouse tower and in the fields of Heligoland. It is
said that half a million are sold each year in the London
markets. No fewer than five millions have been brought
into Leipsic in the course of twelve months; while a
single month's supply for that city has been known to
equal the entire yearly sale in London.
Many protests have been raised against this unholy
slaughter, but from the farmer's point of view it is
some set off, at least, against the damage done by flocks
of skylarks to the springing corn. Some, on the other
hand, would plead that by his service of sweet song the
skylark's wage is fairly earned. Others again, and it
is not impossible that there may even be naturalists
among them, regard as no mean addition to the table
those "little larks in paper baskets" that made the
schoolmaster of Canaan City " feel a Lord all over."
But there are other birds who, unprompted by ex-
perience or the traditions of their clan, know nothing
of any land of promise in the south, and who are thrown
at once upon the parish. Regarded merely as an in-
vestment, looked at solely as a matter of business and of
146 T(AMBLE$ OF A VOfMINIS
common prudence, we shall do well to stretch out help-
ing hands, to keep alive our bold retainers through the
days of famine. Now, in the time of their extremity,
let us remember their good deeds. It is no mere ques-
tion of sentiment.
"They are the winged wardens of your farms
Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe,
And from your harvests keep a hundred harms."
If the sparrow does wantonly at least, so far as we
can see cut down a few crocuses in the spring-time ; if
he does in summer string a few currants from your
favourite bushes, consider how well, how long, how un-
tiringly he guarded them from grub and wireworm.
Did not the starlings keep watch and ward over the
land, it would be overrun with very plagues of Egypt.
Were it not for the industrious tits that forage among
your fruit trees, the grubs would certainly have all the
best of the harvesting. All the year they have done us
yeoman's service. What if they have at times taken
toll of seed or fruit ? Let us not grudge such retainers
" i a scant handful more or less of wheat,
Or rye, or barley, or some other grain,
Scratched up at random by industrious feet,
Searching for worm or weevil after rain."
But looking at the question in quite another way
no one who has not tried it can realise how much
pleasure is to be derived from watching the birds that
flock to the scattered bounty. Laying aside for the
time being much of that shyness which we are apt to
SGTPr 147
call natural, but which is most surely born of long
contact with cruelty and ways of darkness, they soon
learn the place and hour of almsgiving; and in hard
weather will collect in still increasing crowds that with
their varied beauty and the endless charm of their
graceful movements will repay a hundredfold the kind-
ness of their almoner.
Of course, there is none of all the crowd who is quite
so charming as the robin. His confident air, his bright
red breast, the twinkle of his bold black eye, his smart
bearing, and his courtly bow rank him easily the first
favourite. When food is set out upon a board placed
close to the window, the robin is the first to find it out,
the first to venture near; and then, watching all the
while the watchers in the room, he takes his meal with a
grace no other guest can rival for a moment. But the
robin needs no introduction, requires no plea on his
behalf. There are many almoners for him. His mere
presence is a charm. His clear, cool singing, very
sunshine of dark winter days, is full return for every
favour.
But if his ways especially endear him to the fancy,
the little family of tits, when once they have become
familiar, will run him very close in the popular regard.
If you will hang up a bone or a piece of fat near the
window, the tits will soon discover it, and when they
are satisfied that all is safe, they will come to it from
morning to night. There are three who are pretty sure
to become regular visitors, and perhaps a rarer fourth
may sometimes show himself. First comes the blue tit
148 1(A{MBLES OF A <DOfMINIS
the tomtit of immemorial usage, a picture in himself,
not only for his bright blue cap and yellow breast, his
white cheeks and the neat black line about his neck, but
by reason of the marvellous grace and endless variety of
his attitudes. It is generally some time before a new
comer feels properly at home. He may settle near the
bone or even on it, but waits and watches, and looks
this way and that, up, down, round on all sides the
very picture of indecision, and perhaps flies off a dozen
times before he musters courage to settle to his dinner.
But when his fit of shyness is over, and when he has
made up his mind that there is no danger to be appre-
hended, there is a charm in his way of going to work
that must be seen to be appreciated. Now standing
upright on the bone, now and this seems to be his
favourite attitude hanging head downwards under it,
now with one tiny claw upon the cord and the other on
his dinner, he is never for a moment still. Now stop-
ping short, with his comical little head on one side, he
regards you with a half doubtful, half patronising,
wholly impertinent air, and then sets to again, tearing
away the tiniest morsels with his tiny beak.
The great tit or ox-eye is dressed in bolder tints.
His slightly larger size, his black head, his white cheeks
(much whiter than those of his smaller kinsman), and
his handsome black-cravat, distinguish him easily from
the others. There is a soberer tone about the coal-tit,
whose dull grey breast cannot match the yellow of his
smart relations. But the glossy black upon his head,
with a touch of white behind it, makes him a smart
little fellow enough. Not greatly different is the less
SGTPT 149
common marsh-tit; but he lacks the white behind the
head.
But of all that gather into flocks in winter no birds
are better known or are seen in vaster flights than star-
lings. And while other wandering bands are shy and
keep aloof, the rigour of the season brings the starling
nearer to man's dwelling, and when times are hard he
will not hesitate to throw himself on the hospitality of
his suzerain.
When the ground is hard as iron and the rime is on
the grass no bird accepts more readily the dole of food
that kind hands scatter on the lawn. No sooner has
the news gone out along the housetops that there is corn
in Egypt than the flying forms of hurrying starlings are
seen on every side. Bearing up in their swift course
they hover a moment in the air, and swoop at once upon
the feast. Other birds may make a feint of settling
down, stealing in and out among the laurels, hanging
round the spot like a lugger standing off and on upon a
coast well guarded by preventive men.
A troop of sparrows collected in a neighbouring thorn
eye doubtfully the proffered food, discussing in loud tones
the chance of snares concealed among the crumbs, or of
cats in ambush in the bushes. Perhaps, too, even their
tough consciences are uneasy at the thought of all that
mischief in the crocus bed, knowing that it is their
wanton bills that have strewn the golden petals in ruin
on the ground.
But the bold starling, feeling no weight of guilt upon
his soul, settles to his work as if he meant it and had no
mind to waste his opportunities.
150 (RJifMBLES OF A VOMINIS
A restless crew it is that gathers on the grass, never
for an instant still, all their energies intent upon the
business of the moment. They are mostly silent, save
perhaps for a faint chatter as they settle down, or short
alarm note when the troop is scattered by a passing step.
The harmony is only broken when some old campaigner
is seen to hurry off with a rather larger crumb than
usual. There is food enough for all ; but on the instant
he is chased by communistic comrades, who, talking all
at once, seek volubly to prove their rights, and if it is
not too late enforce their arguments by a high-handed
redistribution which shall bring the guilty plunderer
down to the level of his brothers.
The starlings are rather a quarrelsome set. Indeed,
with all the birds that come it is a case of " Each man
for himself ; and no man for his neighbour." It is quite
a common thing for one starling to lay claim to two
bones, lying some little way apart, and to keep off any
starving comrade that may dare to venture near. Some-
times two rival claimants, after doing battle on the ground
with beak and claw, will rise into the air screaming,
fluttering, and fighting, until the weaker bird gives in.
The robin, too, is apt to regard the window sill and all
upon it as his own exclusive property, as many a bold tit
and easy-going greenfinch has discovered to his cost.
Larger birds will seldom venture near. A passing magpie
may perhaps turn back and circle over, as if half inclined
to join the company ; but they are too near the house
for a bird with such a character as his. He sheers off
again and makes for the safer cover of the woods. A
79\C SGTPT 151
little troop of jackdaws will alight upon the grass, their
grey heads giving them a grave and reverend air alto-
gether foreign to their real temper. There is, in truth,
but little gravity about them. They are a jovial crew,
whose voices have a sort of reckless, dare-devil sound, as
if conscious of a reputation much blown upon, and of
unpleasant stories about a cardinal's ring. They are fine
fellows, but their genius for plunder shows itself directly.
Making a hasty scramble for the most attractive pieces,
they carry them off to neighbouring housetops to devour
their loot at leisure.
The rook is not so easily induced to take a hand. Mis-
trustful of man and all his works, he flies past again and
again, fluttering in the air, his legs hanging down as if
he had made up his mind to take the plunge at last.
Time after time he gives it up and settles in a tree hard
by, whose branches bend under his clumsy figure. When
at length he does alight, it is but for a moment. He
stalks solemnly up and down, then seizing in his beak
the largest piece of all, hops forward a little, spreads
his great wings, and is gone.
Among the birds that visit us in winter, few perhaps
are more familiar, at least by name, than the woodcock.
It was formerly considered to be almost exclusively a
winter visitor, going northward again in the spring. " It
cannot indeed be denied," wrote Gilbert White in 1770,
" but that now and then we hear of a woodcock's nest,
or young bird, discovered in some part or other of these
islands ; but then they are always mentioned as rarities
and somewhat out of the common course of things."
152 <%j4fMBLES OF A
Of late years, however, owing largely perhaps to the
growing interest in natural history, and partly no doubt
to a real increase in the number of stay-at-home birds,
woodcocks' eggs have been reported from nearly every
county in England. In one part of Sussex alone an
average of 150 to 200 nests a year has been recorded.
One of the most remarkable points in connection with
this bird is the manner in which, when disturbed, it has
been known to carry its young to a place of safety. It
was even stated by Scopoli, 120 years ago, that it held
them in its beak. Gilbert White, after speaking of
" Scopoli's new work (which I have just procured),"
says : " He also advances some (I was going to say)
improbable facts ; as when he says of the woodcock
* puttos rostro portatjfugiens ab hoste? But," he continues,
with a modesty perhaps not always quite sufficiently
remembered by writers on natural history, " candour
forbids me to say absolutely that any fact is false because
I have never been witness to such a fact. I have only
to remark that the long unwieldy bill of the woodcock is
perhaps the worst adapted of any among the winged
creation for such a feat of natural affection."
That the bird does carry its young has been proved by
the observations of many writers, though certainly not
in its bill, and probably not in its claws. It appears to
grasp them between its thighs, perhaps even holding
them closer by pressing them against its body with its
beak.
The goldcrest, is known to the North Sea fishermen as
the " woodcock-pilot ; " for they say that when the gold-
SGTPT 153
crest comes the woodcock is not far behind it. Not only
is the goldcrest the least of English birds, but there are
many humming-birds which reach a larger size. It
takes just half-a-dozen full-grown goldcrests to weigh an
ounce. It is indeed marvellous that so frail a creature
should ever pass in safety the eight hundred miles of sea
that part us from the Norway coast.
In spite of the fact that enormous multitudes of this
" Tot-o'er-seas," as it is called on the Northumbrian
coast, visit us in the winter, it is here a permanent
resident. There are many parts of the country where,
in almost any clump of firs or larches, it may be found
throughout the year. But its diminutive size, its low
sweet song, its feeble call notes, are all somewhat insig-
nificant, and its tiny figure might easily be overlooked.
It is even no uncommon visitor to the garden, not only
in the open country, but on the skirts at least of the
town ; and if quietly approached will swing at its ease
within a yard or so of the observer, displaying every now
and then that splendid streak of yellow on its crown,
reddening into rich orange down the centre, which has
earned it so appropriate a name. A dainty bird ; and
its nest a cradle of green moss, dotted over with grey
points of lichen, slung like a hammock underneath some
drooping bough is a work of art hardly less beautiful
than the masterpiece even of the humming-bird itself.
The woodcock is a shy, night-feeding bird, that in the
daytime seldom stirs beyond the limits of the covert.
The presence of the goldcrest lends but little to the
landscape. But among these wandering strangers there
154 WjifMBLES OF A
are some which are very marked features in the winter
scenery. Such are the two migratory thrushes, the
redwing and the fieldfare, whose names, in spite of
considerable difference in their dress and habits, we so
often link together. The dull December shore would be
desolate indeed without its smart oyster-catchers, its
musical, quiet-tinted plovers, its clouds of sandpipers,
now flying fast along the sea, now wheeling with the
silver gleam of a myriad upturned wings, and now with
plaintive cries scattering on the yellow sand. Welcome
even are the fleets of ducks that ride in thousands on the
long grey waves, the bold clear colouring of their hand-
some plumage rising and falling on the heaving sea.
A HeRO^RY /5\C
HO MS
DEEP over the dreary landscape grows the silence of
December days. A wintry wind is stirring in the lanes,
and in the brief hours of daylight voiceless birds wander
disconsolate over whitened fields. Even when the sun is
sinking low, and far hills darken on the fiery sky ; when
the brown flood of the great river changes in the charm
of sunset to soft tones of green and crimson, there is still
no answer from the tenants of the coppice. No longer
sounds the blackbird's vesper hymn. By his clamorous
call-notes he is heard alone ere he settles to his rest among
the ivy The thrushes too are silent, save a bold-hearted
minstrel here and there, who, undaunted by the cold, is
singing still.
' And when the colour has faded from the west, when
the moon is bright along a silver sea, and the dark sky
trembles with the glitter of the stars, hardly less striking
is the silence of the night. There is no sound but of the
night wind as it stirs the withered reeds, the shiver of
156 <I(4!MBLES OF A VOMINIS
dead leaves among dismantled boughs, or the ring of
footsteps on the frozen road. Hushed are the noises of
the summer night, unheard its ceaseless sounds of stirring
life.
For nightfall then, though ever closing tired eyes in
sleep, still roused slaves of Nature from their rest, and in
the hours of darkness there was stillness but not silence.
Then even before the sun was down were heard shrill
voices, faint but still audible, of bats that fluttered out
upon their noiseless wings. Then in the dusk the beetle
droned along the highway. On the edge of every coppice
rang loud the chirp of crickets. Along the bank of the
river rose the hum of innumerable gnats. Now, in the
dark of cave and tower and tree, the bats hang motion-
less. The wings of the beetle are folded in his winter
sleep; long since silent is the chorus of the crickets.
Vanished is the vast array of gnats whose unseen armies
raised over the woods that mighty hum that filled the
summer air.
Nor are bats and insects the only figures that have
vanished from the shadowy scene. No more at night-
fall does the hedgehog stir abroad, emerging from his
snug retreat to forage in the farmyard or the cover.
Now, rolled in a very ball of prickles, he lies asleep in
his cosy nest among the roots of some old tree. The
hedgehog, though he does good service in destroying
snails and beetles, has a reputation not wholly free from
stain, and his weakness for misappropriating eggs and
chickens has frequently got him into difficulties in un-
suspected rat-traps. Though not recognised as a popular
// HO MB COURTIS S' HSRO^RT 157
article of diet, the hedgehog is on the gipsy's game list,
and in country lanes his prickly skin is a sight almost as
familiar as the ashes of the camp fire. Having been dug
out and killed he is enveloped without further ceremony
in a ball of well-kneaded clay, which is placed in the red-
hot embers. The cracking of the clay marks the end of
the operation. The skin comes off with its earthen shell,
disclosing a dainty morsel of white meat within.
The bark of the fox is not a very familiar sound, but
he is as wide awake as ever these cold nights, and levies
his blackmail still, often slaughtering in his reckless way
far more than he can carry off.
The badger is of a more indolent turn, and when the
weather is severe is content to lie quiet among the warm
bedding of his holt ; and when once the snow lies deep
about his threshold, it is seldom sullied by his shambling
feet.
For the owl as for the fox, there is no respite, however
chill the night, and as he sails from tree to tree he hoots
in plaintive tone, as if lamenting the hard fate that
drove him forth in such uncomfortable weather. How-
ever, he is particularly well protected by his feathered
Coat, and probably he feels the cold but little. A terrible
foe to the tiny fur-clad dwellers in the field is the bold
brown owl. No sound betrays his movements. Silent
and unseen, his great wings sweep along. No note of
warning reaches the unconscious ears of mouse or vole
before the cruel talons sink into its tender sides.
One would think there was little sport for him these
hard nights. But in the warm shelter of the woodland
158 1(AfMBLES OF A VOtMINIS
there is movement still. And when among the boughs
the shadows deepen, and grey mists gather on the wooded
slope; when there sounds no more the twitter of the
robins, and restless blackbirds are quieted at last, still on
the dead leaves patter everywhere the light feet of mice
and shrews.
Most woodland birds retire at nightfall to the covert
of the ivy, to holes in walls and trees, or to boughs of
sheltering fir. Others, content with the open hedgerow,
rely on their own coats to keep them warm. Some
huddle together for the sake of warmth, and at such
times it has been observed that there is keen competition
for an inside place, and that when a row of tits, for
instance, has settled down to sleep upon a branch, the
anxiety to avoid an end seat in the line keeps the whole
company in continual movement.
Many birds again that seldom or never perch on trees
spend the night upon the ground the skylark and his
clan, the partridge, and many of the waders. Rooks, too,
have been seen apparently collected for the night among
the furrows of an open field. The pheasant roosts in
winter in a tree, and thus on moonlight nights he falls
an easy prey to the black art of the poacher. Some of
the wading birds the dunlins and the plovers, whose
plaintive notes are heard all night along the shore
probably sleep during part of the day upon the water.
Gannets have been found at night thus rocked to sleep
upon the sea, overtaken perhaps by the darkness while
far from their island haunts.
But, over the low lands by the river, birds keep vigil
Jt HOfMS COU^JTieS' HSRO^RT 159
all the night. The ditches are not wholly cased in ice,
nor is the moorland yet so hard as to drive them to the
sea. Wild duck settle down in the darkness in the reeds
along the river. From the sky above sounds now and
then the muttered croak of a heron flying leisurely
down from his home among the hills.
A dreary watch is his, as he waits all night among the
sedge that lines the stream. Round his broad feet
planted on the sand the icy waves are flowing. Silent he
stands, and motionless, watching in the moonlight for
faintest stir of eel or minnow. The frogs to whom his
sport is death are lying all unconscious of the nearness
of their foe, in the mud at the bottom of the river. The
heron's dress seems at first sight ill adapted to withstand
the bitter weather ; but his wings are thick and strong
and the flowing plumes upon his breast no doubt defend
him well.
A shy and solitary bird is the. grey-coated fisher, a
lover of wild haunts remote from man, a lingerer by
lonely mere and solitary stream. Have immemorial
years of training the stillness and the silence of long
vigil on calm moonlit nights given him his air of
gravity and gloom, or do traditions of his race recall old
memories of vanished greatness ?
Once he was a bird of mark, honoured by the chase of
kings. Stern penalties protected his sequestered haunts;
fines and imprisonment defended him from harm. Under
the Plantagenets he was the prince of wild fowl. In
Tudor times it was still criminal to compass his destruction
save by the falcon or the longbow. The fowler of our
160 <I(4{MBLES OF A <DOfMINie
time lets him pass unheeded ; his grey coat no longer is
a mark for bolt or bird.
In the heron's days of fame the tall crane was perhaps
as plentiful as he. Now, while the one is scattered still
through every corner of the kingdom, the other is but a
straggler from foreign shores, a casual caller who visits
us, in passing merely, on the wing for distant lands. But
the crane built his house, so to speak, upon the sand.
His nest was on the ground, among the reed-beds of the
fens. Centuries have passed since spade and plough
broke up his haunts among the marshes. The heron,
on the other hand, builds among the boughs of trees,
in the shelter of guarded game-covers, or in solitary
spots seldom harried by the spoiler, and thus, within
English bounds alone, more than a hundred heronries
remain.
Seen far off at his solitary watch by the river, or on
wide levels of the marshland, the heron is not an
unfamiliar figure ; well we know his stately flight when,
drifting to his home among the hills, his wings are dark
upon the sunset sky.
But on the margin of the forest, where a belt of wood-
land screens a sheet of quiet water, lies a little islet, over-
grown with oaks and birches, safe sanctuary for teal
and wild duck, the very " haunt of coot and hern." The
wintry sunshine brightens the long strip of green that
lines the shore, lingers on the red bark of graceful fir-
trees, lifting slender shafts above the underwood, and lies
in lines of silver on the quiet pool. Softly, with silent
oars, we glide along the creek, in whose still depths are
ji Howe cou^Ties' HSRO^RT 161
mirrored stalwart oak and silvery birch tree. A belt of
sedge stirs slightly as we pass, its brown^ leaves sounding
still
" a low lament
Of unrest and discontent,
As the story is retold
Of the nymph, so coy and cold,
Who, with frightened feet, outran
The pursuing steps of Pan."
Over it lean down the alder boughs, tasselled thick with
young brown cones. There is silence everywhere, save
for the sighing of the sedge, the rush of the Roding
under its pollard willows hurrying past, and at times the
sonorous call of some heron unseen among the shadows
of the island. The rooks, whose still vacant dwellings
crowd the grey arms of yonder ash -tree, hold their own
on the very threshold of their powerful neighbours, and
in the fatal conflicts between black and grey, renewed
each season on the island, the vantage is by no means
always with the tenants of the heronry.
Now on a creek that runs in among the bushes, a
wild-duck floats lazily along, a gleam of sunshine lighting
up the velvet of his glossy head. Another moment, and
he is ware of danger ; he quickens his pace, he vanishes
in the shadows by the shore.
Far in among the trees, where the water is darkened
by grey willows hanging over, stands a heron silent
and motionless. Beyond him is another, and far on
another still. Next moment they are lost again, as we
pass their narrow entrance.
Suddenly, from the shelter of the sedge, starts out a
i62 <I(4fMBLES OF A VOMINIS
kingfisher, that like a gleam of light sails down the
winding shore.
Now, at length, right before us, in a great chestnut
that towers above the lesser crowd of trees, is an outpost
of the heronry a
huge nest of sticks,
a platform perhaps
six feet across, and on it stands erect a great bird whose
long legs seem out of keeping altogether with the branches
of a tree.
Now more nests, four and five together in a single
Jt HOWS COU^TieS' HSRO^RT 163
tree, broad and massive structures some of them, the
accumulated piles of generations. We are very near
them now, and on one is a tall sentry very plain to see
as he stands dreaming on his nest. An old heron in his
nuptial plumage is a gallant bird. But there is barely
time to mark the exquisite tone of grey in his great wings,
the waving feathers on his breast, and the long plume
floating from his head. For now there passes near a fleet
of wild ducks paddling fast along. The old mallard in
front catches sight of the boat; with loud note of
warning he rises on the wing, followed fast by all his
train.
The drowsy heron high up among the branches lifts
his plumed head with a start, looks round a moment,
then with muttered croak stretches his long snake-like
neck, flaps hastily his mighty wings, dangles his long
legs awkwardly below. But as he gets under way, the
neck is drawn in, the legs trail easily astern, the broad
wings settle down to a slow and steady flight a very
triumph of the wing.
A slender burden is it after all that those great wings
bear along. Though standing three feet high, and with
wings five feet in span, the whole bird weighs but three
pounds and a half. An old Scotch legend makes him
vary in condition with the phases of the moon, and no
doubt he does fare better on moonlit nights than when
the darkness shelters from his deadly spear the hapless
trout.
But now the whole place is in a tumult. At the first
sound of wings a wild duck rose among the reeds near
164 l^AtMBLES OF A VOtMINIS
by, then another, and another then all the sedge along
the shore that but now seemed empty, voiceless, is astir
with splashing and the sounds of flight. More ducks
get up on every hand and join the startled troop, whose
wings are whistling overhead. Herons, before unseen,
rise slowly from their nests and soar with stately flight
far up above our heads. Bound and round over the
trees drifts the long wedge of wild duck, the dark heads
of the drakes clear cut against the pale blue sky. Then
as we row slowly back and gain once more the open
water, as the brushwood hides from sight the flash of
oars, the birds wheel down again upon their sheltered
pool.
OLT> <BJVER WSJ
THE rough weather of autumn gives the high October
tides an added strength and fury. On a bold and rock-
bound coast, where their rage can bring no terror to
the land, the waves are welcome for their stormy
grandeur. But when wind and tide are high together
their coming is viewed with less indifference by the
natives of low-lying shores. To them the " spring "-tide
that comes in before a gale may mean mischief; may
leave behind it flooded lands, drowned sheep, and floating
hayricks.
On the south shore of the Bristol Channel, in the
marshes that stretch from Clevedon to the Quantocks, the
autumn tides are well remembered for the havoc they
have wrought. Not once nor twice have the rugged
hills of sand that have drifted high along the old sea-
wall given way before " the flood tide of St. Matthew,"
leaving miles of moorland to be covered by the waves.
Well is it for the hamlets that are scattered on these
166 l(AfMBLES OF A VOMINIS
wide alluvial plains that tides are seldom at their
highest
" When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox."
But there could be no better time than such a
coincidence of wind and wave for watching on some
slow-moving river that strange incoming of the tide
that is known as The Bore. Buckland has described
how, on the Severn, the first wave of the rising tide
comes in with a rush that, when the stream is at its
lowest ebb, broadens the great river from a narrow span
of fifty yards to a breadth of nearly a mile in a few
minutes.
Such a wave as this fore-ran that fatal flood upon the
coast of Lincolnshire when
" So f arre, so fast the eygre drave,
The heart had hardly time to beat,
Before a shallow, seething wave
Sobbed in the grasses at oure feet :
The feet had hardly time to flee
Before it brake against the knee
And all the world was in the sea."
Such waves come up the Mersey and the H umber;
and no doubt Scott describes what he had often seen
when he makes Lochinvar say, " Love swells like the
Solway, but ebbs like its tide." On the Seine and the
Rhone there are tidal waves which fill those rivers in
just this sudden way.
But it is on the Amazon that the phenomenon attains
its greatest magnitude. Indeed, the very name of the
OLV lfER TOIS 167
river is derived from an Indian word meaning boat
destroyer, in allusion to the fury of its sudden tides.
During a few days in every month the sea, " instead of
taking its usual time to come up the river, swells to its
full height in less than a couple of minutes," with a roar
that may be heard at a distance of five miles. The tidal
wave that enters the wide estuary of the Amazon,
becoming cramped for room as it advances by the
narrowing channel of the stream, is piled into a wall of
water twelve or fifteen feet high, that rushing with
tremendous swiftness up the river sometimes tears huge
trees from the banks and even sweeps away whole tracts
of land.
The Bore that floods the channel of the Parret has
little of the grandeur of a wave like this. But with the
narrow, dingy river that makes its slow way seaward
among the mud flats of the channel are linked interests
unknown to many a mightier stream.
Long after the Saxon conquest the Parret formed the
boundary between the Kelts and the invaders. It was
by the Parret that Alfred found shelter in the Isle of
Athelney island indeed no longer. From the quays of
its little port generations of sea rovers have watched the
rush of the tide into the narrow river. The soft
northern speech of the fair-haired Vikings who warp
their craft into the docks recalls the days when the
war-galleys of their fathers came to anchor off the town.
When Cabot set sail from Bristol on his great voyage to
the westward, half his crew were men of Bridgwater
famous even then for its sons of enterprise and daring.
168 AMBLES OF A VOtMINIS
They are but clumsy craft, for the most part, that
are moored along the grimy quays. The scar on the
battered bulwarks of the Happy go Lucky does, indeed,
seem in harmony with her name. But the Adventure
and the Active are a pair of heavy, sullen-looking
coasters, whose souls were never raised above the wish
to carry coals. But in the Armada days, when, in the
summer midnight, the beacons flared along the hills,
" And as the stirring signal flew,
To north, to south, the muster grew
Round many a Men dip farm,"
on board the William no better craft perhaps than
these did forty bold companions put out to fight the
fleet of Spain.
Even in Norman days Bridgwater was a place of
mark. The Domesday record places it in the domains
of Walter de Douai. " Walscinus," says the old survey,
" holds Brugie," perhaps " the bridge," for in later
documents the name appears as Bridge Walter, to dis-
tinguish it no doubt from another passage higher up the
stream Borough Bridge, near Athelney. It was there,
among the very earthworks that King Alfred raised,
that Goring had an outpost before the siege of Bridg-
water.
That siege was perhaps the most prominent scene in
the last great struggle in the West, and the fall of the
town in the summer of 1645 was but one of many
disasters that, in that fatal year, befell the Royal arms.
The year after its surrender, the old fortress that for
four centuries had stood on the brink of the river was
OL<D <I(IVER TO^T 169
dismantled by an order of Parliament, and in our time
no trace of it remains but the massive masonry of the
water-gate, faint outlines of portions of the moat, and
some subterranean chambers by the river.
The town was roughly handled in that siege, and
suffered dire extremities at the hands of friend and foe.
In the register in the church of St. Mary are memorials
of some of the garrison who were buried under fire.
The records are but brief. It is now miles bombarda
occisus a soldier killed by a musket-ball; and now
again we gather that dua milites incogniti nominis two
soldiers of unknown name were laid together in a
common grave. But a far heavier penalty was exacted
from Bridgwater forty years later for the sympathy and
service it had rendered to the cause of Monmouth.
The old market cross, where the Duke was hailed as
King amid the acclamations of the populace, has been
gone nearly a century; but the church tower from
which, on the eve of Sedgemoor, he looked across the
moorland to the tents of Feversham, still keeps watch
over the town.
Inside the building there hangs over the altar a
singularly striking picture, a " Descent from the Cross,"
whose noble treatment and soft and beautiful colouring
prove it to be the work of no mean hand, though the
name of the master is unknown. There is a tradition
that this painting was part of the plunder taken from a
Spanish privateer, and that it was presented to the
Corporation of Bridgwater early in last century. So
great a favourite was it of Sir Joshua Reynolds that it
170 <I(4fMBLES OF A VOtMINIS
is said that he was in the habit of visiting the town on
his journeys to and from Plymouth, and of spending
hours in the church in contemplation of the picture.
The path on the bank of the river, passing the old
house where Blake was born, and which is still much as
he last saw it in the heyday of his great renown, crosses
the main street of the little port, leads past the now un-
seen Watergate of the castle, along the narrow coal-
blackened quays, past the smoking brick-kilns to the
fields beyond the town. If the fame of this quiet little
port is not widely known beyond the limits of the island,
its work is familiar probably to half the civilised
world.
Bath bricks, first invented by a Mr. Bath, of Bridg-
water, are still made from the mud of the Parret, and
are at least the most noted produce of the town. The
retiring tide deposits a stratum of mud, which, if undis-
turbed, reaches in the course of a year a thickness of as
much as twelve feet. This is dug from the banks at
intervals of three months, made into bricks, and baked
in the furnaces whose great red cones are so conspicuous
along the shore. There is only quite a limited distance
above and below the town, where the salt and fresh
water mingling in certain proportions leave a deposit of
just the right consistency for making bricks.
An hour before high water the slow moving river
seems to loiter in its flow, as if pausing undecided in its
course. The floating rubbish is now swept slowly down,
and now as slowly drifted back by a sudden flaw of wind.
They have seen the Bore a hundred times, but groups
a
H
172 1(/fMBLES OF A VOfMINIS
of sailors, with bronzed, sea-beaten faces, are lounging
on the bank, waiting for the first rush of the tide.
Along the low horizon, a pale saffron line is broadening
to the dawn. The mist of an autumn morning hangs
heavily on far-off trees, whence the dark figures of rooks
begin to scatter over the meadows.
All at once there is heard, through the still morning
air, a long, low roar. Far down the stream a cry is
raised, taken up by the idlers on the bank and echoed by
brickyard men who have stopped their work to watch
the Bore " Here she comes."
Bound the far bend appears a line of white, drawing
rapidly nearer. Right across the river runs the wave
a roaring wall of water, four feet high, breaking on the
unruffled surface of the motionless stream. It rushes
high along the bank on either hand, rocking the tall
ships like toys, and on and on among the shipping
moored along the quays. A pilot boat coming up on the
swift current is whirled along like a bit of flotsam, though
steadied deftly with well-handled sculls.
In such a rush, Cromwell and Fairfax, reconnoitring
the defences of the castle from a boat on the river, were
taken unawares and their craft was within an ace of
being overset.
In a quarter of an hour the water has risen eight feet ;
and still it streams on, bringing up long trails of sea-
weed from the shore, tufts of sedge torn off from distant
banks, corks from some fisher's net, pieces even of bam-
boo, that on far-reaching currents have been drifted
half-way round the world.
OLT> HILL
FIFTY years ago, in the old coaching days, when the
only Flying Dutchman that Kad yet been heard of was,
the phantom ship of Yanderdecken, the traveller from
Bristol city found his way westward by a road that ran
through the very heart of Mendip. And as his steeds
toiled slowly up the pass that leads into the hills, he had
leisure to note upon the northern limit of the range,
crowning a hill that rises steeply from the Vale of
Wrington, the ramparts of an ancient camp.
There are no coaches now upon that well-kept road.
Silence has settled on its wayside inns. The Flying
Dutchman of our time passes the hills so far to westward
that from its flying cars the camp is hardly seen.
The Mendips are rich in such memorials of the past.
The whole county, indeed, abounds in points of interest
to the historian and the antiquary. The dykes of
Sedgemoor played a part in " the last battle worthy of
the name fought on English ground." From the keep
of Taunton Blake replied to Goring that he would eat
174 1(4MBLES OF A <DOfMINI8
his boots before he gave up his hold upon the castle. In
Somerton King John of France spent a part of his
captivity. The marshes of Athelney gave Alfred breath-
ing space before that day of reckoning when his fierce
antagonist was humbled on the hills of Ethandune.
The noble fragments of ruin in the Isle of Avalon recall
the fame of the proudest of English abbeys, ruled by
Dunstan, and dowered by King Ina. And from still
farther back, through the dim haze of old tradition,
loom the grand figures of Arthur and his knights,
" magnified by the purple mist, the dusk of centuries
and of song."
The Mendips formed in early ages a well-marked
border line. They were the frontier that parted the
western Gael and the Belgic invader ; and when in later
days the Saxon conqueror Ceawlin pushed his way
westward over the Wansdyke, the barrier wall of
Mendip formed the farthest limit of his conquests.
Massive leaden ingots, too, have been found among the
hills, whose imperial stamps show plainly how early in
their occupation the Romans laid hands upon the mines
of Somerset.
Thus is it that on each commanding hill are the
ramparts of some stronghold of British, Roman, Saxon,
or even Danish handiwork; and on all Mendip, with
the exception possibly of Weston Hill, no fort was better
guarded than this camp of Dolbury. Its site was
singularly strong, and the elaborate nature of its
defences shows the importance attached to it by its
builders. The ancient way, winding gently upward from
OLD HILL FO^RSSS 175
the valley, and entering the fortress at its western end,
is commanded by a triple row of mounds and ditches.
There is a double line of earthworks along three sides of
the hill-top. On the south the camp is bounded by a
ravine so steep that the defences in that direction con-
sist merely of a single rampart with a broad terrace like
a road carried outside it along the brink of the descent.
The eastern end, which from the level nature of the
ground beyond is especially open to assault, is further
supported by an outwork, and is, like the northern
front, guarded by defences of great height and strength.
The northern rampart is still nearly twenty-five feet
high, and, in addition to the mingled stones and earth
of its main portion, was strengthened by a rude un-
mortared wall, which, although now a heap of ruin,
shows clear traces of its original construction. The
ramparts are little short of a mile in circuit, and enclose
an area of more than twenty acres.
Standing on the highest ground within the walls, near
the massive ruins of a keeper's cottage, it is easy to see
how well the camp is placed for purposes of outlook and
defence. The eastern view is bounded at no great dis-
tance by the higher elevation of Black Down, beyond
whose bare brown slopes extends, to the far end of the
hills, an upland broken only by Cheddar gorge and the
rocky glen of Ebbor. On the northward lies the Vale
of Wrington, with its rich meadows, white-walled
villages, and stately elms. At the foot of the far slope
is the hamlet of Wrington, where Locke was born, and
whose churchyard holds the dust of Hannah More.
176 <I(4fMBLES OF A VOfMINIS
Among the churches of Somerset are found master-
pieces of the Perpendicular style. Wrington is the
noblest of them all, and from that grey shaft, hardly
seen against the hill, were taken the proportions of the
Victoria Tower at Westminster.
To the west the wide plain stretches along the bases
of the hills to the far sea, above whose brown flood
rise the faint outlines of the hills of Wales. On that
side, too, lies the great Mendip valley, with its scattered
hamlets, a glimpse of sea again, and the blue heights of
Exmoor. No more commanding point could have been
chosen. The forts of Brean and Uphill, Bleadon, Worle-
bury, and Banwell are all in view. The movements of
a hostile force could be seen at any point, even to the
putting in of a war-galley at the harbour of the
Axe.
Record and tradition throw but little light on the
builders or the history of this great encampment. From
beneath its smooth and springy turf have been recovered
few traces of its old inhabitants.
Its irregular outline and elaborate defences point to a
period far remote, though it is likely enough that Briton
and Roman, Dane and Saxon may each have held it in
his turn.
From local tradition there is little to be gleaned. In
the neighbouring villages the hill is called " The Roman
Camp." One patriarch of the hamlet lying nestled in
the gorge below the entrance remembers to have heard
his father speak of a story handed down about " The
Redshanks" who lived upon the hill. It has been
OLD HILL FOT^TRSSS 177
conjectured that these were Danes, whose primitive
costume may have earned them such a title.
In Leland's "Itinerary," compiled about 1540, occurs
the following passage : " There is upon the Tope of one
of Mendipe Hills a Place encampyd caulyd Dolbyri,
famous to the People, thus saynge :
" 'If Dolbyri dyggyd ware
Of Golde should be the share.'"
This may refer to legendary money-hoards concealed
upon the hill, or may point to quite another page of its
history. The lead mines of Charterhouse lay four miles
to the eastward. The road by which the metal was
carried to the sea passed, it is true, a mile to the south
of Dolbury, but it is not impossible that the fortress
may have been a place of store for the leaden ingots.
Roman coins are said to have been found here, but
these are met with far and wide among the hills, and
are, after all, no definite proof of Roman occupation.
The discovery of Saxon coins and weapons is alluded
to by earlier writers, but these, if not entirely lost, are
scattered now in unknown hands.
The ancient Britons have left but scanty traces any-
where from which we may judge of their manners and
their way of life. In their burial mounds we find little
more than implements and weapons, pottery and bar-
baric ornaments. There are none of those minute and
graphic records which enable us to read so well the
story of the Roman conquest of our island.
The Roman, indeed, wrote his history as he marched
178 TUMBLES OF A <DOfMINie
along, and carved, in letters that have outlived the
ravages of time, stories of triumph, the numbers of
legions, and the titles of commanders. He has left on
record such details even as the building of a dyke along
the Severn, and the slaughter of a boar that had long
been the terror of the neighbourhood.
No ancient British inscription of a date prior to the
Roman conquest has survived. Even the coinage bore
no lettering before the time of Caesar. Some tribal
kings later on, known to us through Latin writers,
added to the rude devices on their coins a few letters of
their names. After the conquest under Claudius, the
native coinage appears to have ceased, and until the
time of Carausius, A.D. 288, all money for circulation in
the island was struck in Italy or Gaul.
The currency of the Britons was copied in the first
place from the coins of Macedon, rendered familiar
possibly by Greek or Phoenician traders. But in native
hands the horses on the didrachma lost by degrees their
original form, and degenerated finally into a mere cross.
A fine British coin found at Churchill, a little to the
west of the encampment, is clearly copied from a Mace-
donian stater. It is of gold, rather less in diameter
than a sovereign, but of greater thickness.
Such treasures, alas ! are rare. More numerous are
the relics associated. with the burial of the dead. Many
barrows have been opened on various points of Mendip.
Some of those examined by Skinner early in the century
contained nothing more than a few handfuls of bones
and charcoal. In others were discovered weapons and
OLD HILL FOllTReSS 179
pottery, beads of glass and amber. Under a large in-
verted urn in a burial mound at Priddy the explorer
relates that he found an arrowhead of bronze, still
" sharp enough to mend a pen."
Little is known of discoveries within the camp itself.
Rabbits sometimes bring to light pieces of dark grey
pottery, and not long since, on digging at various points
within the ramparts, the writer turned up many frag-
ments of rudely decorated urns, some quartz pebbles,
intended possibly for slinging, and a few flint arrow-
heads of primitive design.
FILT>
.rne TL^CE OF
HE field of Naseby,high up among the
hills of Northampton, lies in the very
heart of England, as befits the spot
where a Monarch fought a last bat-
tle for his crown. For nearly two cen-
turies after the fight the ground was
still in greater part unfenced, untilled.
Seventy years ago no hedgerows crossed
its grassy slopes. Within the memory
of men still living the scene of conflict
remained much in the same condition
as when .Roundhead and Cavalier met
upon that moorland battle-ground.
But the plough has done its work
upon the field since then. Gone are
the thickets of gorse and the treacherous rabbit-holes
that hampered on that memorable day the movements
THB TLJCE OF WATTLS 181
of the cavalry. The labourer's spade has drained
and filled the " pits off water and other peeces off
ditches" that checked the Roundhead charge. A
group of farm buildings stands, perhaps on the very
spot, where, when all was lost, the last regiment of
Royalist infantry faced " like a wall of brasse " the
torrent of victorious Ironsides. " Prince Rupert's
Lodge " looks down the slope where he led his gallant
Cavaliers. The only part of the field which is said to
have escaped the plough is the rank pasture of The
Doctor's Meadow, where, when the fight was over, the
bodies of the slain were heaped into unhonoured graves.
Here the ground has sunk in long, deep hollows, where
in winter, water still collects in pools, though all have in
modern times been partially filled up.
It is hardly likely that the ancient hawthorns standing
in the meadow, are really old enough to have been under
fire on the day of Naseby fight ; and it is probable that
the only feature of the battle-ground which remains un-
changed is the " double hedge " that parts the adjacent
manors of Sulby and Naseby. So huge are the black-
thorn stems of its broad thickets, that it needs no
effort of imagination to believe that it was from the
cover of these very boughs that Okey's dismounted
troopers took toll with their carbines as Prince Rupert
passed.
Carlyle, describing Naseby as he saw it half a hundred
years back, calls it a " peaceable old hamlet of some eight
hundred souls ; clay cottages for the labourers, but neatly
thatched and swept." The mud cabins of those days, in
1 82 RAMBLES OF A <DO MINIS
some of which the sleeping room was entered by a ladder
from without, have given place to cottages of trim red
brick. On the tower of the church, in whose shadow lies
the dust of Roundhead captains who perished in the fight,
there stood in Carlyle's time, too, " a strange old ball ; a
hollow copper ball," which in 1544 was brought to
England among the plunder of Boulogne. But the old
tower has been rebuilt, and the trophy shines no longer
on its summit.
On the eve of Naseby fight, at the time when their
cause was on the very brink of ruin, the hopes of the
Cavaliers were high. Never, as is well remarked by
Gardiner, had the triumph of the King seemed nearer
than at the hour when he was marching to his doom.
The great Montrose was in the full career of victory.
He had sent word from Scotland that having shortly, as
he hoped, reduced that country to obedience, he would
come to the assistance of his Royal Master " with a brave
army which, backed by the justice of your Majesty's
cause, will make the rebels in England as well as in
Scotland feel the just rewards of rebellion." He saw in
fancy Scotland at his feet. He had indeed scattered the
Covenanters at Tippermuir, and routed Burleigh by the
walls of Aberdeen. With his handful of Highlanders he
had broken at Inverlochy the power of the Clan Campbell.
Since then he had conducted from Dundee a retreat that
in the eyes of foreign captains was an achievement more
brilliant even than his victories, and now came news of
another splendid triumph at Auldearne. Charles himself,
after a three days' siege, had taken Leicester by a mid-
THS TLJCE OF <B47TL6 183
night assault. The army of Fairfax was held idle by the
resolute defence of Oxford.
Fortune indeed seemed smiling on the Koyal cause.
But it was no more than seeming. The knowledge that
the Bang was treating for the help of foreign mercenaries
had roused against him a still more bitter feeling through
the country. Gerard was in Wales, unable to come to
his support. Goring, whose help the King was calling
for in vain, still loitered idly in the west. The repulse
of Fairfax and the raising of the siege of Oxford proved
a hollow triumph, for the main army of the New Model
was thus set free for more aggressive action. Fairfax
resolved to attack the King without delay. All avail-
able forces were summoned to his standard. Cromwell,
to the delight of the army, was made lieutenant-general,
with command of the cavalry.
Charles for his part was wholly unaware of the move-
ments of his opponents ; but he and his commanders
regarded the "New Noddle" with supreme contempt.
So ill-informed or careless were the Royal officers that
the Parliamentary army was within eight miles of the
camp at Daventry before word was brought of their
advance. By the next evening the Royalist troops had
marched to Harborough, while the King himself had
quarters in the old hall at Lubenham, a couple of miles
to the westward.
He was roused from his rest that night by the news
that Fairfax was at hand, and that Ireton had galloped
in the twilight into Naseby village and had captured
nearly the whole of the Royal outpost stationed there
184 'RJitMBLES OF A VOMINIS
while the careless Cavaliers were playing quoits or
drinking in the little hostelry. The hostelry itself has
been rebuilt; but "Cromwell's table" a ponderous
board of black oak, said to be the very one round which
Prince Rupert's lifeguards were carousing is among the
few remaining relics of the time, though it is no longer
in the village. Before the morning broke the King was
back in Harborough, in council with his captains. The
decision was, as Clarendon expresses it, " to fight, to
which there was always an immoderate appetite."
The march began. By five o'clock Astley had ranged
the line of battle in a strong position on a hill two miles
from Harborough. There the Royalist army waited
long, while Fairfax, who had left his camp at three, had
ample leisure to choose his fighting ground near Naseby
village.
"About eight of the clock it began to be doubted
whether the intelligence they had received of the enemy
was true." Rupert himself rode on to reconnoitre, and
catching sight of the despised New Model in full retreat,
as he thought, the fiery captain sent back word to come
on with all speed.
"Hereupon the advantage ground was quitted, and
the excellent order they were in," and the Royalist
forces pushed in pursuit as they supposed of a retiring
enemy, with such haste that the battle had begun before
all the artillery was on the field.
Fairfax meanwhile had no intention of retreating.
He was but improving an already excellent position. A
mile to the south of Naseby the long ridge of Mill Hill
THS TLJCE OF VATTLS 185
runs east and west along the edge of the battlefield.
Here, on the slope, Skippon arranged the Parliamentary
forces, withdrawing them " about a hundred paces"
further up the hill, on the advice of Fairfax, in order to
give them more advantage in the charge, and, by retir-
ing them behind the ridge, to screen their numbers and
position from the eyes of the Royalists.
The army of the King was drawn up finally on Dust
Hill, facing the Parliamentary line at the distance of
rather more than a mile. The slopes of the two hills
and the hollow of Broad Moor, lying between, formed
the narrow limits of the battlefield. The blackthorn
hedge, behind whose cover lay concealed a thousand
dismounted Parliamentary dragoons, was on the extreme
of the Royalist right, connecting the two positions ; so
that, as they followed Rupert in the charge, the
Cavaliers must pass the entire length of its galling fire.
It has not been always fully recognised that the
Royalist force at Naseby was far outnumbered. It is
only since the evidence has been so carefully weighed by
Colonel Ross and Dr. Gardiner that the disparity has
been clearly understood. The statements of Parliament-
ary writers naturally anxious to make the most of
their victory that the numbers were evenly balanced,
have long been accepted without question. But modern
research has made it clear that, while 14,000 men of the
New Model followed Fairfax to the field, the Cavaliers
went into action not 8000 strong " a body not suffi-
cient," as Clarendon observes, " to fight a battle for a
FISLV
ii. FIGHTING FO^THS
THE armies who faced each other across Naseby Field
were eager for the battle, though they little guessed
how much was hanging on the issue of the fight. " Both
sides with mighty shouts expressed a hearty desire of
fighting," says a Roundhead writer, " having for our
parts recommended our cause to God's protection, and
received the word, which was ' God our Strength ' ;
theirs, ' Queen Mary.' " Not a man there was in a mood
to draw back. The Cavaliers were eager to make short
work of the New Model ; as to which indeed we have
the testimony of the time, that " never hardly did any
army go forth to war who had less of the confidence
of their own friends, or were more the objects of con-
tempt of their enemies."
Cromwell, on the other hand, has left on record
that he felt confident of victory. The Cavaliers were
already moving forward, when the artillery of Fairfax
opened fire on their advancing line. The first shock of
FIGHTING FO^THS CROtTS^ 187
battle was on the Royal right. Ireton's troopers, on the
Parliamentary left, came on with a front less well-
ordered than their opponents, and a flank movement in
aid of Skippon's infantry, hard-pressed already by the
Royalist foot, had begun further to disorder their forma-
tion, when Rupert's trumpets sounded for the charge.
Seizing the happy moment for his favourite stroke, the
Cavalier captain launched his whole wing against the
Roundhead left. Down the hill they went the flower
of the royal army, high-born Cavaliers, who had followed
their bold chief through many a desperate fray across
the swampy hollow, up the hill-slope in front, at Ireton's
wavering line. The Roundhead troopers were scattered
like chaff by the whirlwind of the Royal cavalry. Ireton
himself was down, wounded, and a prisoner. "Six
pieces of the Rebels best cannon " were in the hands of
the Cavaliers. On swept the eager horsemen, driving
the Parliamentary cavalry almost to the skirts of
Naseby village. But the baggage-guard in Ireton's rear
met Rupert's summons to surrender with defiance and
a volley.
With his well appointed squadrons, flushed with
victory, the prince might doubtless have easily enforced
his challenge. But a glance at the battle now raging in
the hollow warned him it was time he should return.
Langdale's cavalry on the left had advanced meanwhile,
with hardly less valour than the followers of Rupert.
But the slope was against them, and the nature of the
ground. They were outnumbered by the enemy. That
enemy was led by no less skilled an officer of cavalry
i88 <I(j4{MBLES OF A <DOfMINIS
than Cromwell himself. The Ironsides came on at the
charge. Langdale's men made a desperate fight of it.
Victory did not come easily even to Cromwell. At first,
indeed, the Royalists had the best of the struggle. " The
divisions off the left hand off the right (Parliamentary)
wing were overborne, having much disadvantage by
reason off pits off water and other peeces off ditches,
that they expected not, which hindered them in their
order to charge." But Cromwell, taking Langdale's men
in front and flank, forced them down the hill : and in
the end the whole of the Royal left was driven back a
quarter of a mile beyond the infantry, which was thus
left unsupported. " Pressed hard," says Clarendon,
" before they could get to the top of the hill, they gave
back, and fled farther and faster than became them. Four
of the enemies bodies, close, and in good order, followed
them that they might not rally which they never
thought of doing." Thus holding Langdale back with
a strong force of cavalry, Cromwell hastened, with the
rest of his command, to the aid of the infantry in the
centre. Here the fight was going well for the king.
The Royalist foot had not only held their ground against
a force twice as numerous as their own, but were having
all the best of the battle. We have the witness of a
Parliamentary writer, who was on the field, that although
the Roundhead infantry 011 the right, " stood, being
not much pressed," yet that " almost all the main
battel, being over-pressed, gave ground and went off in
some disorder."
The pikemen of Skippon and Fairfax already out-
FIGHTING FOT^ THG CROlf^ 189
numbered the royal infantry by two to one. The
appearance of Cromwell on the scene threw a still greater
weight into the scale. Many of Ireton's men would
by this time have rallied. Okey's dragoons were
no longer wanted on the far side of Sulby hedge. The
only wonder is that the Royal infantry should have held
their ground so long. But the end, though delayed,
could not be distant. The odds began to tell. It was
long, indeed, before resistance ceased. We have Crom-
well's own words in his despatch, "We, after three hours'
fight, very doubtful, at last routed his Army." The
doomed battalions, outnumbered, hard beset in front,
and flank, and rear, fought on with desperate valour,
until, disheartened by an unexpected charge, most of
them gave up the hopeless contest, threw down their
arms and asked for quarter. One regiment alone,
refusing every summons to surrender, stood " like a wall
of brasse " against the swarm of cavalry. " Has this
regiment been charged ? " asked Fairfax of his colonel of
the guard. " Twice," was the reply, " but they moved
not an inch." Ordering his officer to attack the stubborn
foe in front, Fairfax himself, who had lost his helmet in
the fight led the charge against their rear. Valour
could achieve no more. The ranks were broken, the last
stand was over.
The King, meanwhile, had seen their dire extremity.
His reserve of guards " very resolute troops, and the
best horse in the army " still remained intact. A con-
siderable force of cavalry had rallied to his standard.
He called on them to follow to the support of his heroic
190 RAMBLES OF A VOfMINIS
pikemen. " One charge more, gentlemen, and we recover
the day." But an officer riding at his side laid hand on
the Royal bridle rein. " Sire," said he," will you go upon
your death ? " As he turned the king's charger aside,
the movement was mistaken by the troops for a signal
to retire. Panic seized the men. They " turned and
rode upon the spur as if they were every man to shift
for himself. It is very true that upon the more soul-
dierly word stand, which was sent after them, many of
them returned to the king, though the former unlucky
word carried more from him." The fighting ceased with
the rout of the last regiment of foot.
Rupert returned from his victorious pursuit too late
to be of service to his master. No efforts now could
restore order to the scattered troops. The day was lost.
The wreck of the royal army galloped from the field.
Down the long slope from Naseby swept the Roundheads
in pursuit. A party of fugitives, caught in a cul de sac
near the village church of Marston, were cut to pieces to
a man. Through the streets of Market Harborough
thundered the shouting chase. Far across the open
country, almost to the walls of Leicester, followed the
victorious Ironsides. Of the Royal cavalry, perhaps two
thousand got away. Of the bold infantry that before
the dawn had marched up from Harborough along the
green Northamptonshire lanes, hardly a hundred escaped.
A Roundhead colonel of dragoons declared, that only
two footmen reached the gates of Leicester. Five
thousand prisoners, all the guns, the royal standard, and
a hundred colours were among the fruits of victory.
FIGHTING FO^ THS CROWS^ 191
Never indeed was triumph more complete. But a blow,
far greater even than the destruction of his army, was
the capture of the king's cabinet, and the subsequent
publication of the letters it contained. With bitter
wrath men learned how the Duke of Lorraine had
promised to lend the king a thousand mercenaries ; how
the Papists were to be bribed to take arms against the
Parliament. " I give thee power," so ran one of the
letters to the queen, " in my name, that I will take away
all the Penal Laws against the Roman Catholics in
England .... so as by their Means .... I may
have so powerful Assistance as may deserve so great a
Favour."
The first despatch was dated from the field : " Our
horse are still in pursuit, and have taken many officers ;
their standard is ours, the King's Waggon and many
ladyes. God Almighty give us thankful hearts for this
great victory, the most absolute yet obtayned. The
General, Lieut. Gen. Cromwell, and Major Gen. Skippon
did, beyond expression, gallantly \ so did all the other
commanders and soldiers ; we have lost but two captains.
Naezby, where this fight was, this Saturday, 14 Junii,
1645." Cromwell's despatch to Lenthall was sent from
Harborough, Fairfax adding an ominous postscript :
" Some Irish are among the prisoners .... I desire
they may be proceeded against according to ordinance of
Parliament." What that ordinance was we learn from
the records. No quarter was to be given to any Irish
who might be taken with arms in their hands. The
Speaker received the news the same night, and two days
192 1(A{MBLES OF A
later it was resolved by Parliament that " the messenger
that brought the good news from Sir Thomas Fairfax,
shall have forty pounds bestowed upon him." And
further, that there should be at once provided " a jewel
of five hundred pounds value to be sent from this house
to Sir Thomas Fairfax, as a testimony of their affections
to him and of the esteem they have of his services."
It is hardly half a century since the scene of the battle
was identified. So little, indeed, was known, that
Carlyle and Arnold fixed on a spot a mile the other side
of Naseby village, where the obelisk to commemorate the
fight had been set up some years before. But excava-
tions, afterwards undertaken in the Doctor's Meadow
at Carlyle's request, showed beyond doubt, that there
the bodies of the slain were buried. Among the black
earth of the hollows once mounds where the dead were
heaped by hundreds, and hardly hidden with a scanty
covering of soil were found fragments of many skeletons,
with here and there a rusted weapon, a sword hilt or a
broken rapier. Few relics of the fight are left. In the
cornlands, that cross now the place of battle, musket and
pistol balls, white with the rust of centuries, still clash
at times upon the plough. In a water-course on Broad-
moor was found, not long ago, a heavy drinking flask of
metal, which doubtless had lain there undisturbed since
some trooper, for the last time perhaps, slaked his battle-
thirst beside the stream. Ten years ago, or rather more,
was found a ring set with a single sapphire. More
recently another ring was picked up, by a boy while
ploughing, on the spot where the Cavaliers of Langdale
FIGHTING FO^ -THB CROW3^ 193
gave way before the onset of the Ironsides. Within its
plain, broad band of gold was engraved the legend
BE . PAITHFVL . VNTO . DEATH,
words, doubtless, that some high-born lady had whispered
in her lover's ear, to be the lode-star of his life whose
echo, it may be, was still, on that fatal morning, sounding
in his ears, above the roar of Roundhead guns with call
more clear than rallying trumpet. A thousand cavaliers
that day proved with their blood that they were " faith-
ful unto death," and somewhere in the Doctor's Meadow
his bones have long since mouldered in a common grave.
"What matter? Were he any better lapped in lead
under a marble monument, side by side with his knightly
ancestors in the old church at home, than lying here
under the wide changing sky, to rot, a nameless skeleton,
on Naseby Field ? "
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