LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA
AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
.9-
AN
OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
IN
A HAMPSHIRE VILLAGE
BY
CHARLOTTE M. YONGE
iLontion
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1896
LOAN sTAca;
First Edition 1892
Reprinted 1896
CONTENTS
752
PAGE
January .
I
February .
• 25
March
43
April
60
May
84
June
I II
July
145
August
169
September
195
October .
222
November
245
December
270
380
JANUARY
I MIGHT say, except for brevity's sake, an old
woman's outlook through a keyhole, for all
my life has been spent In one place, and one
which can boast of nothing extraordinary ;
but then it has always been looked at with
loving eyes ; and though I have only a
second-hand smattering of the knowledge
needed to appreciate its interests, it seems to
me that its very absence of peculiarities may
make it serve to assist others to make the
most of their surroundings, so as to find no
country walk devoid of the homely delights
that sustain and lift up the spirit — though it
* B
AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Strikes me that my style is that of Mr.
Bertram in Guy Mannering,
The New Year is coming in ! Here, in
South Hampshire, Christmas does not often
come in conventional form, laden with snow.
'As the day lengthens, the cold strengthens,'
is a very true proverb, but the lengthening is
seldom perceptible till after Twelfth Day ;
and it is well for the poor that the severest
weather should not often set in till there is a
little less darkness. When I first remember,
the families used to go to bed as soon as the
father had come in, so as to save fire and
candle ; but better wages and paraffin have
made a difference, and each cottage shows a
cheerful light over its muslin blind, with the
geraniums that flourish so wonderfully behind
it. These years have done much every way
for the labourers' families. The dark blue
cotton, sprung from ' Nancy Peel's ' parsley
pattern, has given place to the serge, too
JANUARY
often, indeed, shoddy, but warmer and less
liable to catch fire ; and short sleeves no
longer expose brawny arms and blue elbows.
The red-cloaked black-bonneted old woman
still existed in those old days. The scarlet
cloaks were most enduring — one dame (wife
to a man who had sailed under Nelson)
measured her son's age by hers when he was
at least eighteen. But they were scanty,
and would not wrap, though they were far
preferable to the gray duffle which the
children wore, poor things ! over their bare
arms ; and one woman, during their decay,
pronounced to be so me-an. I remember a
well-intentioned paper, where the extravagant
woman is rebuked for buying scarlet instead
of gray by some one who evidently did not
know the true economy. It is dangerous to
preach thrift without full knowledge. After
the cloaks went out, there was a period of
tartan shawls of all sizes, checked black and
AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
white, or black and red. But the jacket or
ulster, though far less picturesque, leaves
much less room for cold-catching and con-
ceals some untidiness.
The thick white cap, with a lofty caul and
crimped frill — very becoming when clean —
went out through a course, first of white,
then of black, net and flowers — the last some-
times so undesirable in dirt that a lady has
been known to object, and be answered,
* Dear me, ma'am, 'tis only a little cap as I've
worn more than a year ! ' Bare heads, if
tidy, are better ; but it is a pity to see women
wearing their boys' caps. Ladies should
bethink themselves of the harm a bad fashion
does to their imitators. The bonnet, which
we once were told was to serve as a hood,
shutting us in with our book at church, has
dwindled to the smallest span. I remember
a good old dame, a survival, giving directions,
in these degenerate days, that in making her
JANUARY
new bonnet ' the moon ' — that is, the crescent
front — should be big enough. But I did not
intend a dissertation on the fashions, but to
remark on the improvement in the welfare of
the poor. This is the worst month, however,
for work, especially for the brickmakers, who
are numerous.
This portion of Hampshire, between the
chalk and the sea, was probably once a great
estuary, and is a capital instance of the
making of land described by Charles Kings-
ley in Madam How and Lady Why. The
water has deposited high ridges of gravel,
with here and there veins of sand, and beds
of the finer particles which have formed clay.
The gravel has become covered — in many
places — with peaty soil, and is full of springs.
The clay has no doubt been worked for many
years — names of fields such as Potters, Pot
Kiln, Kiln Lane, and the like, show where
it has been used and exhausted ; and several
AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
fields still full of ups and downs have been
thus used within this half century. The
long thatched sheds where the yellow bricks,
being dried before the kiln burns them red,
show where the present workings lie, and
here most of the boys are employed on first
leaving school — not much, unfortunately, to
their moral improvement.
Almost all the buildings are of red brick.
An old red -brick house, with a tiled or
thatched roof, is of a very harmonious colour ;
and at one time a fashion prevailed of setting
the bricks within timber frames, arranged in
herring-bone fashion. A few barns and
houses still show this ; but the thin red walls
and the cold blue slate roof of modern cottao^e
builders never do tone down, and are far too
hot in summer and too cold In winter.
The early winter is far more often wet
and misty here than frosty and snowy.
Perhaps it is about one year in seven that is
JANUARY
really severe, with snow enough to be a real
inconvenience. Yet the glorious beauty of
the snow makes one shrink from complaining,
when the expanse lies perfectly smooth and
dazzlingly white on the lawn, sparkling here
and there with crystals, and only marked by
the delicate little claws of the birds, or,
mayhap, with the rosette-like pads of dog or
cat. Or going further afield, with the trailing
track of hare or rabbit, and, as I have seen
round the hen-house, with the steps of the
prowling fox. Each bough is laden ; fir and
yew are meant to bear snow on their narrow
leaves. The boughs of the yew are elastic,
and those of the fir, the true mountaineer, are
formed like the roof of a house, the tapering
form of the tree like a spire, the seeds within
the scaly cones shielded in their two years'
growth from all injury. The holly, too, with
its strong shiny leaves, crumpled up by
their firm spiny border, is ready for resist-
8 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
ance. But the laurel, or that which we call
a laurel, shows that it came from warmer
regions, in Persia and the Caucasus, by the
inability of its broad leaves to endure any
weight of snow, which crushes and kills the
branches. It is by no means the laurel that
crowned the classic victor. That was
probably the Alexandrian laurel (Rusciis
racemosus) — much more convenient for the
purpose. Our laurel was only brought into
Europe by a German Ambassador to Con-
stantinople in 1574, and was a rarity in
England in Evelyn's time. It is really, as
its fruit shows, a cherry, and its proper name
is Cerasus latiro cei'asus. I always pity it
when I see it labouring under a weight of
snow.
To enjoy snow properly when it does
come, especially with wind, behold the drifts,
where they lie along a bank curling over like
waves, in the most exquisite soft rolls, blue
JANUARY
in the shadows, or perhaps rosy in the sun.
Or again, see the icicles along a roof, in all
their beauteous glassy pendant forms. The
most beautiful of these I ever saw was along
the edge of a hatch in the water meadows,
where the stream must have splashed over
and gradually dropped. They hung like
crystal stalactites, many two feet long, and in
all varieties of fantastic shapes, delightful to
remember.
It is remarkable that what is most like
descriptions of heavenly glory should be,
though pure, most evanescent and often
terrible, such as mountain and Arctic snows,
and the iceberg or ice cavern. Ice in these
parts is apt to be more of a pleasure than a
pain. Skaters have now scarcely more than
time to look out their skates ; and the school-
children, who begin at once, with hands in
their pockets, to slide on the pools in the
gravel pit, have the most fun after all.
lo AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
For the most part the frost does no more
than turn the water in the puddles into deli-
cate white tracery over the top, a slanting
bar, backed by white stars of spiculae. I
stand to admire them now, and smile at re-
collecting that destructiveness of childhood
that used to delight in crackling up this
'walking ice,' as we used to call it, with our
feet.
The six-pointed crystal formed by water
is certainly one of the loveliest ot forms,
whether in the elaborate snow star one can
catch on a muff, or in the marvellous tracery
upon the window-pane. Or again, the de-
posit of a fog makes the world unspeakably
lovely, when every leaf, every thorn, has its
soft white border, and the branches of the
trees stand out in crested whiteness some-
times against a blue sky. It is but for a
short time ; the sunshine melts the delicate
efflorescence ; it is crumbling and rustling
JANUARY II
down already, the only sound breaking the
wonderful breathless stillness in which this
scene of beauty has been formed in a perfec-
tion that almost inspires awe.
And the nights of this clear weather give
the stars in the greatest perfection in which
they can be seen in our climate. I am afraid
the starry heavens are hardly studied, or even
looked at enough. I have often known
educated people, when told that there is a
comet to be seen, come in quite contented,
and full of admiration of the planet Jupiter.
They will go out and take pains to look for a
comet, which, with a very few exceptions, is
a pale misty spot, when they never attend to
the ordinary glories of the sky ; just as they
go to some trumpery exhibition, and leave
the British Museum and National Gallery to
country cousins. The Great Bear, who, as
Pope makes Homer say, ' Never dips his
burning muzzle in the main,' is always to be
12 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
had. People know how to value him when
they come back from the Southern Hemi-
sphere, and greet him as an old friend, when
again they see Charles's Wain, i,e, the Carle,
the husbandman's wain, or the plough.
Arthur's Wain is probably from Arcturus,
the Bear's Tail, as the Greeks called the
brilliant star, which is to be found by con-
tinuing with the eye the line of the Bear's
Tail. Bootes is the herdsman, whose name
tempts us wickedly to talk of Arcturus in
Boots. A Canadian lady having, apparently
on the authority of the constellations, ordered
bears' tails as the adornment of her sleigh,
was solemnly informed by her servant, in the
middle of a large company, that * bears has
no tails.' In fact, the names of Ursa Major
and Minor are said to be owing to a mis-
translation by the Greeks of their Arabic title.
Deneb, the double star, in what we may
call the Great Bear's hind leg, can some-
JANUARY 13
times be separated by the naked eye. The
Pole Star, to which the pointers guide us, is
small. In how many of the elder generation
was not interest in it first awakened by
Tommy Merton's being guided by Harry
Sandford by the aid of the Pole Star when
they lost their way ?
And there is the family party, Andromeda,
apparently marked by four great gold nails
to fasten her to her rock, her mother Cassio-
peia, like W sideways, near at hand, and
Perseus climbing up to rescue her, his
noted nebula just perceptible — that wonderful
nebula, the delight of telescopes ! Cepheus,
the father, is hardly discernible. And turn
round ! There is glorious Orion, with his
belt and his sword, and his bright shoulders
and lion skin. So we see him ; but the
Northmen saw Frigga's distaff, and later he
became Our Lady's Rock, the misty look of
the nebula in his sword suiting with the idea
14 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
of flax. Glorious creature ! ever, as the
Greeks believed, pursuing the Pleiades, the
nymphs changed into stars to escape him —
the rainy stars, which with Nimbosus Orion,
sailors dreaded. How much has been said
and sung of those seven tiny stars, and
Alcyone the vanished one, once supposed to
be the central star round which our entire
universe of stars revolves, a notion which we
are sorry to lose after connecting it (rashly)
with the ' sweet influences of the Pleiades ! '
A moderate telescope reveals far more stars
in the cluster ; in fact, there are above
seventy. Then below comes the Bull's Face,
a V lying on its side, with the glorious
'bright star Aldebaran,' shining at the end
of one horn ! And above all other stars in
our firmament glitters Sirius, the Dog Star,
large enough to be a planet, but twinkling so
much that he cannot be mistaken for one.
He is almost flashing, and yet we are told
JANUARY 15
that he is by no means the nearest of the
fixed stars, and the human mind fails to
grasp the idea of his size or his distance. A
Httle girl once defined the stars as ' little
sparks of God's glory,' and so indeed they
are to us, all the more for these mighty
discoveries ! See the Milky Way, arching
pale overhead, wonderful, an object of so
many theories of science, with the Northern
Cross, or Cygnus, in the midst. Our Cross
is a Latin one ; its longer limb makes the
neck of the Swan. But we must not linger
over the ' thousand eyes ' of the frosty night.
Here is the delicate blue brightening towards
morning, with Venus in favoured years
making herself a Star in the East ; and by
and by she fades into the gold round her,
and the sun comes up. If mists hang on the
horizon, he is round, red, and beamless ; but
often he comes with his flood of light,
slanting, and making the hoar frost on
i6 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
the grass retreat with the shadows of the
trees.
Now for the birds. Robins, of course,
come to the windows, and so do clouds of
sparrows — ^poor despised creatures, whom
some one has well named the Irishmen of
birds, with their noise and their squabbles,
their boldness and ubiquity. When farmers
had their own way with the Church rate,
their extermination was paid for out of it. In
an old church account -book, payments for
* sparer heads ' and ' sprow heads ' are often
repeated in all sorts of spelling, together
with 'marten-cats' heads' and 'poul-cat
heads.' These two last were altogether
destroyed, but the sparrows were uncon-
querable. In 1832 the custom was con-
demned by the curate, and given up ; but an
old retired farmer continued to shoot every
sparrow in the place. He succeeded several
times in reducing them to one, but always
JANUARY 17
by the next day that sole survivor had in-
duced a mate to come and dwell with him in
this Castle Perilous of Sparrowdom.
More favoured are the titmice. We hang
up a bit of fat, and these pretty little^
creatures come in four species — the delight-
ful tiny blue-cap with azure crest, the greater
one with the sulphur waistcoat and white
cheeks, the broad black, or rather purple,
line edging them, and running down his
breast — Ox-eye, as we call him here, bold-
spirited fellow; the marsh -tit, like blue-cap
gone into black and gray mourning ; and
cole-tit, with white cheeks under his black
cap. These two last do not seem to have
the same power of hanging on upside down
as the two with yellow breasts, and are some-
what more shy. The charming long-tailed tit
never thus comes — I suspect he hybernates
somehow. Blackbirds and thrushes do not
appreciate crumbs, and puff themselves out
c
i8 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
very disconsolately when neither worms nor
berries can be had. Often a cock chaffinch
comes, a grass -widower or Ccelebs, as his
Latin specific name expresses, for his wife
is gone to a warmer climate. I once met a
whole flight of these delicate ladies on their
way in the autumn ; but it is not always the
case in these southern counties that the
females migrate. I have often seen them
braving the winter, though in the North they
never attempt it.
Kingsley says that wrens roll themselves
together in a ball and sleep for the winter ;
but I have certainly often seen Kitty hopping
about on a bank on warm days in the winter,
perhaps come out to reconnoitre.
How many people fancy that the robin
and wren are really mates, on the authority
of the nursery rhyme ! and how many more
will aver that hen robins have no red breasts,
deceived perhaps by the brown plumage of
JANUARY 19
the newly Hedged ! Golden-crest darts about
in the quick-set hedge. He is permanent
here, and does not go North for his beautiful
nest.
Gunnery, though somewhat checked, is
too rife for curious birds, especially by the
river. Some four miles hence there used to
be a decoy, which I once saw. I do not
know whether the institution survives in the
north of England, but many people only
know the word in its proverbial use. It can
only be used in such frosts as are so uncom-
mon here, that to keep up the skilled estab-
lishment is not worth while ; and this is well,
for it is a treacherous affair. When all other
waters are frozen over, an artificial lake is
cleared of ice to attract the water -fowl.
Round this are arranged screens of reeds
gradually doubled into a path, narrowed till
they become a tunnel ending in a net.
Tame decoy ducks are trained to entice
20 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
their congeners Into this fatal passage, and a
clever little dog shows himself just enough
to prevent a retreat, but not enough to cause
the creatures to take wing. The victims
swim on, led by the treacherous ducks Into
the net. The tame ones are taken out and
petted ; the deluded victims have their necks
wrung for the market.
When we went to see this great trap,
many years ago, we were very cold, and very
cautiously and silently were allowed to peep
between the screens, where the birds were
to be seen swimming, and now and then
alighting on what was to be their Styx — and
It was black enough ! They were not near
enough to be distinguishable, and of course
we might not show ourselves, and could only
be allowed to admire the dead ; the mallard
with his glossy green head, blue marks on
his wings, and the Inimitable fawn colour of
his breast ; the pretty little teal, with the
JANUARY 21
green pocket and green streak over the
eye, and the widgeon, with rust- coloured
head and breast.
There are snipe and woodcock in the
meadows, but my only acquaintance with
them is when sportsmen bring them down.
Nor do the fieldfares visit us much. I fancy
the birds that come from the North for the
winter stop before these southern counties
are reached.
This is the sleeping time of vegetation. If
the season is mild, violets can be gathered in
the gardens, resolutely blossoming on every
tolerably w^arm day, and the leafless jessa-
mine on the houses still shows pale spark-
like yellow flowers. These yield to frost and
rain ; but the buds seem to be indestructible,
and endure anything before they open.
There are some of the ' steadfast Christmas
roses' in gardens, to which their creeping
roots have * taken,' and where they are not
22 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
disturbed in the time of their handsome
green foliage ; and a primrose or two peeps
out. It is possible to gather fourteen or
fifteen garden flowers in some Januaries ;
but these are almost all lingering remains of
last year, not to be reckoned as the promise
of the incoming season.
And 1890-91 was a winter to be remem-
bered, with seven weeks of frost, five of
unbroken snow, falling windlessly, and thus
regularly, not in drifts, while the air, being
still and clear, felt far less cold than it often
does when the thermometer is lower. But
the partial thaw, suddenly arrested, made
the roads slippery beyond measure, and a
walk became a story of casualties. Rooks
came in black clouds to fields where food
was provided for them, and rare birds
appeared — alas ! only to be shot by the
unscrupulous.
It must be more individual character than
JANUARY 23
the species that gives ascendency among
birds. At one window where they were fed,
a water-wagtail acted tyrant, and drove off
the others. At another, a hen blackbird
made no scruple of driving off her own
' ouzel cock so black of hue, with orange
tawny bill.' At another, a thrush ruled as
long as these birds were brought by famine.
And, usually, the little blue-cap showed him-
self more than a match for the much fiercer-
looking ox-eye, whose bravery seems to reside
in his colouring. Robins are often masters
of the field. Is it true that they kill one
another in the autumn ? I used to be told
so in my youth and thought it a romance ;
but like other traditions, rejected in the pride
of one's younger days, I find cause for
believing that ' 'tis true, 'tis pity ; pity 'tis,
'tis true.' A labourer's widow tells us that
her husband has seen them fight to the
death in the woods ; and they certainly never
24 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
seem to increase in numbers, though they
have broods of four or five ; and a bed-
ridden old woman has had a family of four
or six walking about together on her quilt,
but that was before the breasts of the young
ones became red, and they were still at peace.
It is well known that they cannot be kept
in an aviary because they kill the other
birds, and I fear the indictment must be
accepted.
FEBRUARY
English months do not by any means feel
bound to act up to their traditional character,
and at the outset February is often quite as
cold as January; indeed, some of the most
distinguished snows I have ever known
began in February, or else were at their
height on its first days, cutting off com-
munication where there were deep roads
to be choked, and making everything tardy.
And then the inevitable thaw, announced
by avalanches from our roofs, drippings from
our trees, drippings, alas, from all the weak
places in roof or ceiling, floods in the cellar,
and the roads, which had become a mixture
of dust and snow, churned into a horrid
yellow cream.
26 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
At last —
Like an army defeated,
The snow has retreated,
not here, to the bare hill, but under the
shady banks, where it lies in lines till, as
the sage declare, it waits for more to take
it away. And, in fact, the final clearing rain
often does begin with snow.
Come, wheel around,
The dirt we have found
Would be an estate at a farthing a pound,
is a song of Cowper's, often to be remem-
bered in these days ! Gravel-mended roads
are seldom now disturbed except by the
break up of a frost ; but there is a lane,
leading to old brick-fields, which once on
a spring day two of us found a quagmire
of thick clay. It was full on our way home ;
we tried creeping along the hedge sides, but
slipped off, one of us plunging over both
ankles, the other over one ; so that when
we emerged into the public road, in sight
FEBRUARY 27
— or supposed sight — of a carriage full of
acquaintances, it was proposed to stand with
the one best foot foremost !
Mist and fog are prevalent in our valley,
hanging over the water meadows along the
river. The Will-of-the-Wisp is sometimes
seen over the wet meadows. I have once
seen the pale dim light, and the children
from the hamlet at the other end of the
meadow speak as if it were not an uncommon
sight. Far more frequent, however, is the
bar of white, furry-looking vapour hanging
over the grass in the evening, raised by the
warmth of the earth and condensed by the
cold upper air. For days together there
will prevail a gray mist, not rain, not fog,
near at hand, but a veil over everything.
Dull, is it ? Nay, come and walk along the
raised footpath of our lane, and look towards
the wooded hill, behind which the sun will
presently set without being able to produce
28 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
even a ruddy tint. No matter, it would only
disturb that strange, still, ' silvery crape ' that
makes all the scene like a delicate trans-
parency in shades of soft gray. Each hedge
or group of trees is defined in gradually
diminishing distinctness up to the pointed
tops of the little plantation of larches on
the side of the hill, which stand out in soft
outline against the lighter tint of the sky.
Leafless trees are near, but Ruskin has
taught us fairly to enjoy the beauty of the
infinite, intricate ramifications of branch,
bough, and twig, now that the foliage is
gone. Nothing but doing as Ruskin recom-
mends, trying to copy even a fragment of a
tree on paper, makes one realise the beauty
and intricacy of the forms. Of the inner
wonders, the pith, the fibre, the medullary
rays, the threefold bark, where resides so
much of the life of the tree, there is no
pausing to speak ; it is a deep and wondrous
FEBRUARY 29
Study, and the trees are asleep now, though
a little angular russet bud at the end of
each twig of the oak tree gives promise of
awakening.
Nay, here is something awake. Dangling
from the hazel twigs are the catkins, name
formally accepted from the playful term
* pussy's tails,' though they are far more like
what in some countries they are termed,
* lambs' tails.' What a wonderful provision
there is for the protection of blossoms coming
out so early without a leaf to shelter them.
Look at these tails hanging in one, twos,
and threes, so as to cover the hazel bushes
with their own pale yellow tint. Each is a
succession of scales, properly bracts, which
roof in the tiny stamens. Long ago these
were produced, then closed up tightly, now
opening, but so that each scale is a protec-
tion to all below it, and the number in each
catkin is so profuse, no doubt on account of
30 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
the numerous perils of such early blossom-
ing. The dust of the pollen on a sunny-
day comes powdering those who gather
them. But where are the pistils, the future
nuts ? Look below, close on the branches.
See a scaly bud, very small, but surmounted
by a crimson crest of tiny threads. This is
the germ of the nut, the crimson threads
are the stigmas held up to receive the widely
scattered pollen.
Hazel is from the Saxon hasil, a covering
for the head, an allusion to its helmeted
state, as is the generic name CoryluSy from
the Greek karoSy helmet. Ave liana, the
specific name, is the Italian word in use,
and the origin of the surname Evelyn, well
fitted to our first writer on forest trees !
What is that sound of chopping in the
wood above ? There is a clearance going
on ! The underwood is all being levelled
with the ground. Is the wood to be sacri-
FEBRUARY 31
ficed ? Oh no, it is only the periodical
copse cutting. In these southern counties
the copses are regularly cut, some once in
five years, some once in seven, some in
nine. Old labourers can, or used to be able
to, tell the exact time for each copse in
the parish. Men, expert in the work, hire
a copse from its owner, and employ others.
See them at work up there. A sort of hut,
or shanty, is erected with sticks, and roofed
over with chips, which shine out white.
Here the tools are sheltered, the men eat,
and sometimes have a fire close by. The
underwood is cut down, and, as it lies prone,
a rapid selection is made. Some is tied up in
faggots for burning, the slenderer branching
stems are laid aside for pea-sticks. Others
are selected for being woven into the wattled
hurdles here in use for sheepfolds ; but the
more important are cut into even lengths
to be m.ide into hoops. See, a huge sharp
32 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
knife is fastened between two posts set up-
right in the ground. The stick is applied to
it at the butt end, drawn along, and, presto,
is split in two, the white interior contrasting
with the bark. Another dexterous move-
ment bends the cleft piece into a hoop, the
smooth white part within, the round bark
outside. Then, as the hoops are finished,
they are built up, one upon another, into a
kind of tower-shaped pile, quite symmetrical,
and varied outside by the brown hazel stem,
the gray ash, and dark birch, but all white
and smooth within. The chips lie around
in white piles, and altogether these ' hoop-
shaving ' establishments are a very pleasant
feature in the spring, preparing the way,
too, for an outburst of primroses next year
before the brushwood has grown up. The
hoops will travel far and wide to encircle
barrels. In old times they used to go to
the West Indies to surround tht sugar-
FEBRUARY 33
casks ; but now they seem chielly used for
English beer.
It is the chief work of February, unless an
unusually dry time sets in, enabling men and
horses to ' get upon the land ' to plough it.
Under the sunny banks, where the copse
was cut last year, a few stray primroses are
peeping out. Like most of the earliest
flowers, they have a main stem underground,
and only put up a short flower-stalk for the
blossom. So it is with the Fair Maid of
February, the snowdrop, whose bulb is an
underground stem gathering nourishment for
the flower —
In vernal green and virgin white
Her festal robes arrayed.
Up they come, th^ perce-neige, as the French
well call them, the pure, white-pointed calyx
first pushing up, then by and by, hanging in
an exquisite oval drop on its slender footstalk,
and then expanding the three white sepals,
D
34 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
like wings, enclosing the three notched petals,
touched with green, shutting in the six
stamens.
Double snowdrops are a mistake, losing all
the symmetry of the triads of the endogen.
And those who are happy enough to have
good clumps of snowdrops had better leave
them alone as much as possible, they do not
like being transplanted ; but where they find
a really congenial spot they will spread a
white sheet of blossoms on the grass-plat like
a procession of clergy in surplices. Whether
we may call them native or not is doubtful ;
* the river islet ' of the Christian Year is on
the Test, but I have only seen them appar-
ently wild in deserted gardens.
Their comrade, the crocus, also an endogen
with its nourishment in the bulb, is the better
for being taken up, as its new bulbs form
beside the old ones, and thus it gradually
travels out of its situation. Those people
FEBRUARY 35
who write to the paper on any complaint are
always bemoaning the way in which the
sparrows devour their crocuses. Perhaps
they do take a course of saffron ; but a good
deal of destruction may be prevented by
feeding them. It is generally only the
golden crocus that opens in February, the
brightest of flowers, as it holds up its deep
vase to the sun, raising that most curious and
beautiful stigma in the midst, while the first
adventurous bees revel in its gorgeous depths.
The crocus will on cloudy days remain for a
long time waiting, folded up, but when It has
had a few hours of basking in the sunbeam,
it has done its work, and is content to hang
down under the next fall of rain. The purple,
striped, and lovely white are somewhat later.
The Nottinghamshire wild crocuses {C. imdi-
floriis) were the subject of a charming little
poem of Mrs. Gilbert — the Ann Taylor of the
Original Poems and Nursery Rhymes — a
36 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
lament for the fields that were built over,
yielding to the cruel defacement of nature by
mammon. She makes the flowers say —
We came, a simple people, in our little hoods of blue.
And a blush of living purple on earth's green bosom
threw.
Purple, too, are the closely covered twigs of
the Mezereon [Daplme mezereunt), or Maza-
lion, as our village friends call it, entirely
leafless, and with a strong scent, overpower-
ing in a room when the tough bark has been
conquered, and a spray triumphantly brought
home as an announcement of spring. In
spite of the multitudinous flowers, the bushes
will only show one or two red berries among
the green leaves, specimens truly of what has
been called the lavish waste of Nature.
1 89 1 showed in February a delightful
reaction from the snows of January, in days
of April-like geniality. Fog prevailed in the
morning, dense white fog, and in London it
FEBRUARY 37
hung SO thickly all day that traffic was in
difficulties ; but here, in the south, the sun
licked it up by the middle of the day, leaving
a few delicious hours of sunshine, setting the
thrushes and robins to sing, and the ox-eyes
to cry Peter, the rooks and the starlings to
chatter.
But then came the knowledge of losses,
ceanothus and myrtle that had gone on for
years, and reached the top of the house, with
leaves like tea, though their stocks will
probably recover ; while evergreens are shak-
ing off the leaves injured by the continued
frost, which have had time to find out that
they are dead and fall off at once, instead of
waiting to depart slowly as their place is
supplied.
And, oh, there must be mourning among
the chaffinches of the North. No less than a
hundred and thirty-nine frozen hen-chaffinches
were taken out of one h^iyrick in the north of
38 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Hampshire ; but these poor dames must have
been overtaken by the winter on their way,
and their lords will cry chink, and plume
their ruddy breasts, gray polls, and white
pockets in vain.
They are called chinks from their note, in
some places copper-finches, as being bad
imitations of bullfinches, who, handsome
fellows, are to be seen questing about the
buds for insects, and drawing on themselves
unjust suspicion of preying on the buds
instead of the grubs.
Little flies come out on the windows in
the sunshine, and birds come too and tap on
the glass in hopes of a meal, but alarming
superstitious inmates, who think the tap a
warning. Perhaps the story has been told
before of the Devon doctor who was sum-
moned in haste to a farm-house on the moor.
He found an old man in bed, but in perfect
health, and could only ask why he had been
FEBRUARY 39
called in. 'Why, sir,' said the daughter-in-
law, ' there came a little robin about the door.
We knowed it was a call, and we thought it
must be for granfer ; so we put 'im to bed
and sent for you.'
If you find a stray primrose or two, beware
of bringing them home, for the first brood of
chickens will be of the same scanty numbers.
Those early broods of black-eyed balls of
soft yellow down are careful comforts
and matters of anxious pride to the house-
wife. The sensible, motherly hen, all puffed
out, with her bright black eye and red
comb, uttering cheerful chucks to her lively
brood, is a charming sight ; but when
the little speckled wings begin to appear,
is the time of danger and loss in the broods.
My poultry-keeping days have long been
over. They were in the time of my good
old grandmother, who loved to potter after
them in pattens long before the era of India-
40 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
rubber galoches. It was likewise before the
era of fashion in poultry, when the hideous
Shanghae monster was unheard of, and when
the black Poland lady with her nodding top-
knot was not, as yet, too fine a lady to sit or
bring up her children, though, if her admirers
were to be trusted, she laid at least 366 per
annum !
No — our wildest ambition was for the
respectable five-toed Dorking, and we did
not prefer the flame-coloured, flame-tempered
game-cock, whom generations of ' natural
selection ' have taught to dispense with the
tall fleshy comb, so open to attack.
Our kings of the yard — I never see such
true chanticleers now — had broad rose combs,
very like the flower that bears their name.
They had substantial metallic -black green
breasts and splendid tails, and wore long
handsome capes of hackles, each slender
feather white with a black streak down the
FEBRUARY 41
centre, and they moved with a stately pace
and Louis XIV. dike grace and courtesy
to their brown ladies. They were not ami-
able to their sons, especially when these
last began to perpetrate ridiculous hoarse
crows. But it is a happy ordinance of
nature that these elders of the yard always
go to bed quite early, in full daylight, and
may be seen sitting in a row on their perch.
But there is as much difference in character
in poultry as in dogs, or, to go further, in
human creatures. We had one cock who
undertook the care of the half -grown
chickens when their mother cast them off
too soon ; and he used to take them under
his wings in the nest at night. Our old
Louis XIV. was most courteous to his train
of ladies, while others drove them away with
one favoured exception.
One hen, too, will be frivolous, always
deserting her nest for amusement ; another
42 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
will be clumsy, treading on her chicks ; and a
third will be kindly, hovering stray orphans
like her own, while her neighbour resents
proposals of adoption and drives off all inter-
lopers. I have heard of a partlet who must
have been infected by modern notions. Her
first brood had been ducks, and when her
next, of poor little chickens, would not take to
the water, she drove them in and drowned
them. Does character grow by domestica-
tion, or is it only that we perceive it '^ and
is there as much individuality in the wild
herds of animals, only we do not know
them ? Any way, happy are the memories
of the proud discovery of the first Q.^g of the
season, pure and white, with a certain almost
transparent look around its border when held
up to the light. Or still more delightful it
was to detect under the thatch of a low
outhouse, hidden amid dry oak leaves, a
grand ' stolen nest ' of at least a dozen eggs.
MARCH
Leaden skies, dry hard atmosphere, with a
gray haze over the distance, such is the
general character of March. The boys play
at marbles, favoured by the hardness of the
village street ; people's faces get a stern fixed
expression, and their talk is of ' black east
wind.'
But the Easter moon, the moon of moons,
will soon beofin to fill her horns. She often
breaks through the haze at night, as the sun
cannot do by day, the fact being that his
absence makes more equality in heat (or
cold) in the air, and therefore there is less
opaqueness. The sun towards the end of
the month is in Aries, therefore, of course
44 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
that constellation is invisible now ; but in the
winter it was to be distinguished by two
large stars, one with a lesser one beside it,
leading the zodiacal train. Just now, at
night its opposites, Virgo, with her brilliant
Spica, and Libra, are the most distinguished
constellations. Libra, by the help of one
star of its neighbour Scorpio, makes a kind
of star-dotted anchor. It is a wonderful and
grave thought that on that first Good Friday,
the sun who hid his face at noonday, must
have been in Aries, the Ram, named long
ago in some strange uncomprehended fore-
boding of the Sacrifice.
Here, too, preparing for the Holy Week,
are the withies, the silver buttons of their
catkins expanding into the full, fragrant
yellow tuft of stamens protruding from tiny
scales — pussies and goslings, as happy
children call them. They furnish the sub-
stitutes for palms, which our village children
MARCH 45
Still wear on Palm Sunday. It is far
from inappropriate when we remember that
' willows from the brook ' were part of the
prescribed booths, made by the Jews at the
Feast of Tabernacles, though that was in the
autumn. The willows then used were by
their traditions to have smooth-edged leaves,
resembling a smiling, good-tempered mouth,
whereas a rough-edged leaf betokened ill-
temper. In some counties, yew branches
are used instead of willow, and the tree is
called, in consequence, palm.
The yew's dark evergreen branches are all
over covered with little buff, dusty balls, that
is about every alternate tree, for the yew is
dioecious. This is a great country for it. The
deep green bushy trees stand at intervals in the
hedges separating the fields from the chalk
down, flourishing, though their trunks are in
a state of dry decay, crumbling away, and
sometimes with ferns nestling in their breasts.
46 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
A row of them at Brightstone, in the Isle of
Wight, is said to have been planted by
Bishop Ken, and the path beside them is
called ' the Bishop's Walk ' ; but though the
living was held by him, it is doubtful whether
he ever lived or walked there much. Near
at hand in these parts is the great mushroom-
like yew of Twyford Churchyard of unknown
age, and with a seat around its gnarled ruddy
trunk. It might almost date from the enact-
ment of Edward I. for the cherishing of the
trees that were to supply the tough yew
bows that made the English archers well-
ni^h invincible.
The glory of March is, however, in
favoured places, the daffodils. They have
come to be popular favourites now, though
I remember when they were despised for
being yellow and having no scent, whereas
at present they are so much the fashion that
the places where they grow need to be
MARCH 47
guarded from unscrupulous marauders, who
pull up roots with the flowers, and it is even
said that some farmers mow them on their
first appearance to prevent the incursions of
trespassers.
For my own part, they have been the
delight of my life ever since the days of rush-
ing down, in a funny little round frilled white
tippet of checked cambric, to the hazel copse
where they nodded in profusion, nay, still
nod, or, as Dorothy Wordsworth called it,
dance. That copse has pools of water, which
encourage the daffodils to be much larger
than those on a lighter, thinner soil. What
peculiar beauty there is in the six pale petals
and the deeper coloured bell, which old-
fashioned botanists called the nectary. Call
it what we will, the fairy robe, the folding of
the bell, the crimping of the edge, and above
all, the marvellous subdued glitter upon it,
are unequalled, and render it more charming
48 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
than its white, yellow - eyed congeners,
whether called butter-and-eggs, pheasant's
eye, or more elegantly, Poetic narcissus. It
is curious that when cultivated into being
double, it should become so much larger, as
well as lose all its peculiar gracefulness.
The ' pale primrose ' has a longer reign
than the daffodil or than the sweet violet,
purple or white, according to the soil, or
sometimes of a curious undesirable pink.
Like most blue flowers the violet ' sports '
into white and pink, white being perhaps
more frequent than purple, and forming the
staple of those school - children's ' Sunday
nosegays,' so charming in intention and
theory, but in practice so often squeezed so
tightly together as to lose their bright beauty,
and have their own odours stifled in that of
hot pews, whereas a white violet smiling on
a bank in its freshness is a sio^ht for sair e'en !
o
Not that this is a very favoured country
MARCH 49
in the way of Viola odorata. We are not
destitute, but they are few and far between,
and in the clay soil copses where they grow,
many a hope of gathering them is disap-
pointed by the anemone bud. Otherwise
there would be not a word to say against the
beloved Anemone ne^norosa — the wind-flower
— or, as the village children unpoetically call
it, ' smell foxes.' It is a more universal flower
than even the primrose, starring the woods
with delicate pearly blossoms, each standing
simply between two delicately pinnated
winged leaves, on the stem, rising from the
roots which creep in an endless network
underground. Here is a congregation all
wearing a purple stain ; there the whole
party are pearly white. If they are pulled
up from their junction with the creeping
roots, they will last for some time in water.
The garden shows their blue brother, the
Alpine anemone, which is almost identical
£
50 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
In growth ; also the gorgeous Pyrenean
anemone, brilHant scarlet with a black or
purple centre, so dazzling that more truly
than the rose does its ' hue angry and brave,
bid the rash gazer wipe his eye.' Whether
it is the rule, I cannot tell, but here, if a
garden cherishes the blue flower of the Alps,
it seems alien to the scarlet pride of the
Pyrenees, and vice versa. The little Ane-
mone kepatica, blue or pink, which peeps
from the snow in Scandinavia, seems to have
an affinity for cottage gardens — perhaps It
is because it is less liable to be disturbed
by gardeners. The little Banksia roses,
a delightful importation from Australia,
named from Lady Banks, are putting
out their little dainty buds all over the
house, trusting not to be nipped by frost.
In the hedges among their heart-shaped,
sometimes black -spotted leaves, rise the
folded spathes of the arum. These will by
MARCH 51
and by expand into a hood, wherein arises a
column, crimson or white, surrounded at the
base by white headings and Httle threads.
These are really the flowers, one circle male,
the other female, and the hairs between
divide them and carry the pollen to the
bare germs, which by and by will become
scarlet acrid berries. The old nicknames are
Cuckoo-pint and Wake Robin ; but I knew
them as lords and ladies in their coach, the
red ones being lords, the white ladies. This
is, however, a corruption of Our Lord and
Our Lady. Devon makes it a lamb in a
pulpit, and it is the English passion-flower
with pillar, scourges, nails, blood, and a final
arch of glory.
When I first saw the great white arum,
properly a Caladium, I felt as if my beloved
lady were there glorified, and it is in every
way a suitable Easter decoration for churches,
only it ought never to have been called a lily.
52 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
It grows all over marshes at the Cape ; and
it Is curious that, while the berries are acrid
and poisonous (one of the many sorts is used
to poison tigers), the tubers afford starch-
powder. This used to be called Portland
arum-root or arrowroot, from the place where
it was made.
The terrible storm of March 1891 held
back the spring unseasonably. It is to be
feared that the tendency to Inflation, which
calls a moderate-sized shop a mammoth ware-
house, and a selllng-off a tremendous sacrifice,
will soon term every shower a blizzard ; but
this really was one, and its doings on Dart-
moor and the adjacent parts were really
terrific, devastating woods, burying cattle,
blocking up deep Devonshire lanes — so that
supplies of food were cut off for three or four
days, while travellers on the railway were in
a still more piteous condition — weather-bound
for twenty hours at a time with nothing to
eat but, perchance, samples of Cadbury's
MARCH
53
cocoa, or Devonshire cream on the way to a
friend.
Here the storm came in a comparatively
exhausted state, but it was bad enough, and
greatly interfered with March Confirmations.
One clergyman came tandem, bringing as
many of his flock as he could ; but it was
well that the whole system has been altered
in these days of increased activity and
earnestness, so that few parties of candidates
have to go far from their own parish church.
An old man — he would be over a hundred
years old were he alive now — used to relate
that he first saw * his missus ' at a great Con-
firmation at the Cathedral ; but he waited for
her until he had two pigs in his stye : ' And
then, sir, I knew I was a match for any
woman ! '
Triennial Confirmations at central parishes
became the rule, but though the distances
were not long, the expedition could hardly
54 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
fail of being a somewhat excited and noisy
one when lads and lasses had to make their
way unguarded by their clergy ; and such a
thing has been known as a boy pulling out
the tail-board of the cart going up a hill, and
letting the screaming, giggling girls down
into the mud. Indeed, when Bishop Samuel
Wilberforce began to confirm from parish
to parish, an innkeeper possessed of an
assembly-room threatened an action for thus
preventing the ball that used to be given,
when so many young people were assembled.
There is far better hope of a permanent
impression being made where the gatherings
are smaller, and the churches easily reached,
so as to have room for parents and god-
parents. Long did we hold out against
veils, as a greater excitement, and possibly
an encumbrance to unaccustomed heads ; but
when caps became useless afterwards, and
veils came to make a distinction between
MARCH 55
rich and poor, It seemed well to keep a stock
of squares of tulle to lend on the occasion ;
and very fair and gracious is the spectacle of
the bent heads under their white drapery.
I had written snowy — but in 1891 we had
had too much of literal snow to wish to use
the term figuratively. It lingered long in
banks where it drifted, and kept back the
spring. Nevertheless, a flock of no less than
forty water-wagtails suddenly appeared walk-
ing on this little grass-plot one evening just
after sunset on the 25th of March. They
seemed to be too much tired to wag their
tails, though a few made little flights after
insects, and they gradually disappeared Into
the shrubs, where they roosted — and doubt-
less continued their journey early the next
day. The wagtails of Southern England are
stay-at-home birds, but those further north
migrate even to Africa when their food of
flies begins to fail them, and this troop must
56 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
have been on their way home, since they
came back in March. They were pied wag-
tails ; the yellow species, properly called gray
wagtails, is not often seen here. The yellow
wagtail — so named — is more rare, and less
yellow than the 'gray,' a pretty creature, not
uncommon in Devonshire, though the pied
species is far more frequent here. Dish-
washer is the Hampshire name for these
pretty birds of graceful form and lively air ;
Lady Dishwash is their title in Kent. They
are Lavandicre in France, and their Hindoo
name has the same meaning.
The chalk downs which rise to the north-
ward gave a charming place of exercise in
my younger days. There was a mile and a
quarter of turnpike road first, but the down
itself was exquisite enjoyment. There were
two pits, grass-grown, whose sloping sides
were play - places ; but best of all was the
further side facing the river. Subsidence had
MARCH 57
formed the ground into a succession of ter-
races, the highest up being also the steepest
slope. Here some shepherd had cut out a
rude sun-dial in the short turf, and in another
place there was a magnificent giant in the
same style of art as was to be seen on barn
doors before the compulsory schoolmaster
was abroad. There was, moreover, a flight of
what were called steps, but were really holes
for the toes cut out all the way up the height,
affording fine training in climbing. Our
delight was to launch round flints from the
top, and watch down how many of the slopes
they would bound before they stopped on a
terrace. There was also a charming view
over the valley of the river — its rich, green
water meadows and the clusters of trees, the
church tower, and far on beyond, Winchester
Cathedral.
By and by the railway spread its length
as a chalk embankment along beside the
58 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
river, but at first it did not disturb the breezy
solitude of the down, till a little station was
raised with a corrugated iron roof to its stair-
case, exactly like, when seen from above, the
restoration of some hideous pre - Adamite
monster, such as the plesiosaurus. And now
the down is a thoroughfare, and villas and
all other imports of a station have sprung up,
and the free delight is no more — only re-
maining as a memory.
Those stones which we rolled down were,
when round, no doubt fossil echini, or sea-
urchins — shepherd's crowns as our people
call them — the more perfect ones very like
the present heart echinus, and with the
same pentagonal star traced on the under
side.
Besides these, our chalk produces the
Cardium, much like the cockle-shell of the
present sea-shore, and lamp shells [Tere-
bratulcc), whose like is to be seen in
MARCH 59
existence still, bi - valves, with one valve
curved over the hinge, and the other valve
perforated to allow of a silken cable being
put forth, mooring it to the rock. Some of
the species are wonderfully like the classic
lamp. These all are just rare enough to be
treasure trove.
APRIL
In spite of its showery reputation, April is
often quite as beset by Eurus as Is March,
and shares therewith not merely the gray-
ness of 'black east wind,' called by the
mysterious name of 'blight,' but also those
enamelled days of intense brightness, when
every laurel and ivy leaf absolutely glitters
in the sunshine, and the small celandines
open their many-petalled crowns, so as to
be almost too resplendent for the eye.
The cold winter has painted the ivy leaves
in a curious manner. Every variety of red
and purple is to be found on (oh, forgive me !
it has no more reasonable name) the paren-
chyma of the leaves, while the veins remain
APRIL 6i
green, so that there is a beautiful regular
pattern. These are the old leaves, ready to
drop off in a quiet way when the new tender
ones are ready to take up their work ; but
there is no leaf so cheerful in old age as the
ivy. An eccentric creature it is, with that
endless variety of palmate, pointed leaves
while it is climbing, and the entire ones
after it has reached the summit and become
an ' ivy bush,' bearing in autumn its round
heads of pale green blossoms, to be suc-
ceeded by the black fruit to become in spring
the birds' staple fare, just when other berries
are exhausted. The little claws on the stem,
by which it mounts, have no familiar like-
nesses except in the Virginian creepers.
There is the satisfaction in c^atherino^ wreaths
of ivy, that it is a benefit to the tree to dis-
embarrass It of Its clothing.
I have just been to pay my annual respects
to the Green Hellebore [Hc/kdorzcs viridis)
62 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
which is one of the semi-varieties of which we
are proud. 1 1 grows in wide-spreading patches
from its creeping roots in a hazel copse, put-
ting up its green drooping bells — little green
Christmas roses — in fact, before its very
handsome crop of root-leaves. The so-called
flower is really the calyx ; the corolla is only
some tiny scales around the cluster of many
stamens, which by their growth on the re-
ceptacle stamp it as of the poisonous race —
a witch plant, indeed, though not so much
marked as its brother Helleborus fcetidus,
which has purple spots and is more rare.
This Green Hellebore grows in a close
hedgerow, containing a path up which the
Danes are said to have marched — if so, they
must have gone in single file. It turns out
of another historical lane, which is said to
have been the route of the cart of the char-
coal burner Purkiss, when carrying the corpse
of the Red King to Winchester.
APRIL 63
So averred, on the authority of his grand-
mother, an old farmer in the days when
farmers wore long drab coats and leather
gaiters. Not only he, but his house and
farmyard are gone now, though the meadow
still remains, the only one where grows the
Greater bistort i^Polygonum bistorta).
The hedgerow lane is a wonderful place
for flowers ; not merely the primrose and
anemone, but the extraordinary varieties of
violets. The dog violet and the sweet one
have perhaps crossed, for here is an intensely
blue one, not the regular purple colour, but
with more of blue ; here another rather large
and of most delicate texture, with more of
pink ; here a small gray one ( V. calcared) ;
none of them with the little white fringes
that mark the true Viola canina. Six sorts
are actually found in this one walk.^
^ V, odorata (the sweet), V. hirta (the hairy), V. cakarea (the
chalky), V. canina (the dog), V. Kiviniana (the snake), V.
Reichen bach tana.
64 AN OLD WO MAM'S OUTLOOK
Pant, pant ! Cough, cough ! That noise
tells of ploughing. There is an engine at
each end of the adjoining field, and a little
plough travelling up and down between
them In the furrow, apparently of its own
accord. Happily there are some farms still
left which afford the pleasant sight of the
sleek horses plodding before their ploughs,
all the better if there be a dappled gray to
show out on the rich brown earth of a slop-
ing field.
But the measured thump, thump of the
flail on the barn floor, which warmed the
labourer on winter days, and kept up his pay,
that Is a sound which the younger generation
have never heard ; nor have they seen the
curious winnowing machine, with its four fans
of canvas which used to revolve In the barns.
The threshing machine, with its engine
and lengthy apparatus, makes its rounds
among the farms, and its whirr is the familiar
APRIL 65
sound. The hostility to it as the enemy of
the poor man's labour, which greeted it sixty
years since, is an absolute matter of history.
The machine-breaking did not affect these
parts to any great extent, as well as I remem-
ber, but the Reform Bill riots made them-
selves felt. We were from home at the
time, and only heard of bands of men being
stirred up to go from house to house demand-
ing food and arms, though they did not here
do any actual mischief. It was said that
here only two men avoided joining them,
and of these, one went about his work as
usual, the other hid himself in a wood.
There was, however, much rick -burning In
the northern division of the county, and in
the general alarm the nurse of one family
used to keep a quantity of pepper by her
bedside, wherewith to blind any assailant !
There was an assize afterwards, where
there were manv condemnations. Years
F
66 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
after, the brother of one of the victims
spoke with remarkable acquiescence in his
fate : * Never could be quiet, sir. Best
thing to do with such chaps as that to
string 'em up.'
But it all was brought home to us, for our
nurse was sister to two of the condemned.
They were respectable men of some educa-
tion, and their sentence was commuted to
transportation for life — real transportation
to Botany Bay, whence they used to write
at intervals letters in wonderfully minute
penmanship, all across the single quarto
sheet, each word so small that they could
scarcely be read without a magnifier, and
the lines so close together that a black ruled
paper had to be kept under the one in course
of being read. Sometimes anecdotes were
imparted to us, of which I only remember a
story of a little kangaroo which jumped into
a hunter's open shirt, taking it for the
APRIL 67
maternal pouch. Convicts like these two
brothers were sure to thrive. One married,
and probably his descendants are by this
time among the aristocracy of Sydney.
Machines have destroyed much of the
picturesqueness of farming, but in many
respects they have improved the condition
of the labourer, and especially of his wife.
Yet perhaps the intelligence — not in books,
but in common things — of the villager has
not advanced so much as might have been
expected.
Every one used to stay and do home
work. Now the enterprising ones go away,
leaving their less adventurous brother to
follow the plough, so that the shrewd and
thoughtful men who were devoted to the
home agriculture, their master's right hand,
and full of racy sayings, have become few
and far between.
Still, there is more cultivation, and it is
68 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
to be hoped therewith more observation.
The old-fashioned country lad was the most
unknowing creature in the world as to the
things around him. In the early days of
trying to open peasant children's minds, I
have heard of a blank book placed at a
school, where the children were to record
any observation of natural objects. One
adventurous scholar set down —
' Saw the sun drawing water,' John Smith.
Then followed —
' Saw the sun drawing water,' Mary Jones ;
and so on, to the bottom of the page, without
a single deviation in these experiences.
'Have you heard the nightingale yet.-^'
asked the clergyman of a boy here some
forty years ago.
' Please, sir, I don't know how he hollers,'
was the answer.
I have also heard that ' they birds hollered
so that one could not sleep.'
APRIL 69
They — the nightingales — are just come,
the cocks singing to pass the time till the
ladies arrive. Slender creatures they are,
with whitish breasts, and ruddy backs as
they open their wings. One year we had
a nest close to the house, and the nightingale
sang Incessantly, from nine In the morning
till about eight at night, and again from ten
at night till eight in the morning. Then he
used to come out on the lawn for his break-
fast, and a John Bull of a robin as regularly
used to charge the poor foreign minstrel,
and, though smaller, drive him to a bush,
where he sang a few notes, then tried again
to get his worms. Some nightingales have
much better notes than others. Bishop
Samuel Wilberforce, a great bird lover, used
to interpret their song into ' My heart Is
broke, broke, broke ! I'm awfully jolly ! I'm
awfully jolly, jolly ' — but this hardly accounts
for the curious gurgling sound.
70 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
The cuckoo's curious mechanical-sounding
note has likewise begun, and that of the Wry-
neck, or cuckoo's mate, so very hard to see, as
it always keeps on the side of the tree opposite
to the spectator, or rather non-spectator.
And there Is a delicate green veil over
the woods, towards the end of the month —
such a veil of tender greenery as April alone
can show — every bush putting forth tiny,
dainty leaves. The Larch trees show an
Ineffably lovely colour, and bear their future
cones, In tiny crimson, among those pointed
needles, which seem to make them like the
Yew, a link with the great pine tribe. The
Larch {Larix europcBo) Is not an English
native, but was brought from the Alps In
1629. The Horse-chestnuts have cast off the
gummy cases of their buds, and have pushed
out their spikes and the pendant leaves,
which have been so carefully cottoned up
all the winter.
APRIL 71
The pink Almond, the white Apricot,
the rosy Nectarine, and blushing Peach all
unfold their blossoms, happy if the frost does
not nip them, though probably the fruit Is all
the better flavoured for an occasional In-
terval in bearing.
In the hedges the Sloe, or blackthorn
[Prtuucs spinosd), emulates hoar-frost, and re-
lieves our minds as to the blackthorn winter
havlno^ done Its worst. Its thorns are held
to be peculiarly venomous, and to make
wounds difficult to heal.
The small Celandine {^Ficaria vernd) Is
twinkling in the hedges In starry constella-
tions. The numerous petals have a most
brilliant polish, but they close too rapidly out
of the sun to be available for gathering.
And In the woods there are sheets of
bright green Dog's mercury l^Meratrialis
pereiinis), golden rivers of King-cups (Caltha
pabistris) in every boggy place or ditch, and
72 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
on the mossy banks, that exquisite thing the
Wood -sorrel {Oxalis acetosa), red -stemmed,
trefoil -leaved, white -flowered, with dainty
purple veins — a perfect creature. And there
is the first butterfly, all sulphur. Here, too, in
the roads and around manure-heaps begin to
appear creatures unwelcome to most — namely,
snakes. They change their skins about this
time. One may find the disused garment
wound in and out amid the rough bents of
grass by means of which the creatures have
pulled themselves out, though no one has
yet seen the operation. The old skin is per-
fectly transparent, with a network forming
the pattern, and even a skin which has
covered the eyes.
The poor Slow-worm, or blind-worm, so
often killed as a snake, ought to be cher-
ished, for its food is slugs. It is really no
snake at all, but a skink, and perfectly harm-
less. It may be known by having a less
APRIL y2>
developed head and neck, and, when young,
a V upon its head.
The V is often supposed to mark the
viper ; but this is a mistake. The viper's
mark is a chain of dark diamonds down the
back. We call it in the country an adder —
an odd corruption, or rather confusion, of the
' n ' with the article ; just as we have made
an apron out of a napron, from nap (cloth),
so from the universal word natron or nadre
for a serpent, we have developed an adder.
It is not often that the viper does much
harm, though I have known a pony die from
being bitten in the mouth, and suffocated by
the swelling ; and our poor old dog was for
some days in a state of much suffering from
a bite near the ear, but he recovered, though
I suspect the injury was the foundation of
his final illness.
Persons bitten have a good deal to go
through. They should be kept awake, and
74 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
ammonia and sweet oil applied as soon as
possible, and no harm finally ensues.
As to the common snake, it too often
suffers for the venom of the viper, as well as
from the natural unreasoning loathing that
fulfils literally the prediction, * I will put
enmity between thee and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed,' — the out-
ward shrinking from the animal marking
what should be the inward shrinking from
the evil spirit.
But those who have patience to watch
may sometimes see curious sights. I have
seen a snake swim across a small pond, with
Its head just above the water ; I have also
seen one climb the trunk of a young oak tree
— not twisting round, but zig-zagging its
body, as It were.
Once, too, as a snake was crossing the
lawn, it was pursued and driven, whereupon,
in order to be free to move, it opened its
APRIL 75
jaws and emitted a frog, then wriggled away
rapidly. The frog lay pulled out at full
length, a ghastly spectacle, and we were just
about to have it removed when — behold,
it drew in first one leg, then the other, con-
tracted itself into a respectable frog, and
hopped off as if nothing had been amiss !
When I first remember, there was an old
man who professed to eat adders. He used
to send in a message that he had a nice one,
and might he have a bit of bacon to boil
with it ? We suspected the bacon was the
chief part of the viper broth. He lived in
what was then the workhouse, a large, un-
tidy brick house, which gratuitously lodged
the aged and infirm, and indeed, whole feck-
less families, without the slightest supervision,
and the parish likewise paid them enough
for their maintenance. Those were the days
of the old Poor Law. The hero of the viper
broth was dead, luckily for him, before the
76 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
days of Unions and discipline. The feckless
family had departed to Manchester, which
was then crying out for 'hands,' and thence
they wTote letters, where the first person
plural was spelt ' whee.' I should think a
half-witted man born there, still an inmate of
the Union, was the sole survivor.
The water -wagtail, here called dish-
washer, comes tapping upon the windows in
search of the insects within, called out by
the sunshine, a performance very distressing
to superstitious folk, who think the tap-tap
is a call. The same tapping is sometimes
made by the little bird on the church
windows outside, or in. Has any one ob-
served the different manners of birds captive
in church ? Robins will take up their abode
there, no doubt finding plenty of food, and
behave with great propriety, and their song
fits in, as St. Francis would have liked to
hear his Mittle sisters' Old starlings some-
APRIL 77
times learn the way in and out by the roof,
come in and go out again composedly ; but
when their young ones are hatched in the
ivy outside, every arrival of the parents with
food creates a wonderful chattering, hissing,
and commotion. When they fly, and first
blunder into the church, they dart about
in terror, and hammer at every space of clear
glass, but as they are clever birds they will
find their way out, if doors and windows are
left open. Blackbirds and swallows get
hopelessly confused, but happily their visits
are rare.
Starlings are some of our most beautiful
birds when seen close, with their purple
necks and green wings bedropped with gold ;
but, like true English folk, they do not show
their splendours at a distance, and their form
is less elegant than the blackbird's, from
whom they may be easily distinguished, as
besides that we know * the deep black yellow-
78 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
beaked cock, and his brown termagant wife.'
He hops while the starHng runs, when both
are equally busy seeking worms on the shaven
lawn. Stares, to use their old name, have
an infinite variety of conversational notes,
and must greatly enjoy society, as they flock
together in the winter, often in the train of
rooks, and at roosting time sit twittering and
chatting in the trees as if talking over the
day's adventures. In the spring they pair
off for family cares, in holes or under
roofs, but apparently all join again in
autumn.
There is an old French fairy-tale which,
I believe, is one of those illustrated by the
curious sheets of coloured * cuts ' sold at fairs
from time immemorial, where Berniquet the
wicked boy is doomed, for acts of cruelty, to
be devoured by a starling. At every stage
of his history all the birds cry out ' Berni-
quet for the starling!' But he takes no
APRIL 79
warning, and is finally eaten up by an enor-
mous starling — a startling catastrophe !
There was another young gentleman
called Brimborion, no higher than a boot,
who was of a lovely complexion whenever
he did a good action, and orange -coloured
whenever he was wicked. Most of the
stories were tragic, except one of a dear
little Henrv, who scaled a dreadful mountain
to obtain healing herbs for his sick mother.
Does not every one cherish the memory
of a few precious books of their youth, or
even of some not valued then ? I should
like to see once more the square, green
spelling-book, which began with columns of
' B-a-t — Bat,' and ended with a useful poem
on English history, beginning —
William the First, for his valour well known,
By the battle of Hastings ascended the throne ;
His Acts were all made in the Norman tongue,
And at eight every evening the curfew was rung.
8o AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
At which every subject, by royal desire,
Extinguished his candle, and put out his fire.
Messrs. Griffith and Farren have repro-
duced some of these old friends, especially
Marmaduke Multiply, with pictures appro-
priate to the rhymes that clenched the
memory of the multiplication table.
Five times six are thirty.
She's tall as any fir-tree.
V
Tall and stately she walks along, in a
light-green gown, and coal-scuttle, yellow
bonnet.
.t Ten times ten a hundred,
How he got there they wondered — •
the antecedents being left to the pictures.
* He,' in this case, is a donkey looking out
of a sash window ; ' they ' are two children
laup^hino^ at him.
But children are supposed to learn mul-
tiplication rationally by proof on the abacus
frame, or by the 'gifts ' of the Kindergarten,
APRIL 8 1
and mere memory and jingle are despicable.
There is to be no more of the strain of
attention over what one of Miss Edge-
worth's beloved children calls 'a long ladder
of figures' in long division. We are to
work by reason instead of by memory.
There is much good sense in this. Only
how is the important lesson of application
for duty's sake to what is distasteful to be
learnt ?
The first school I remember was taught
by the regular old dame of Shenstone's
verse, in a high-crowned black bonnet, worn
permanently ; a buff, spotted handkerchief
over her shoulders, tucked into a checked
apron. She presided over about a dozen
children in her own cottage, as picturesque
as herself, sitting in the chimney-corner with
her rod. But the teaching was of the very
smallest description.
Then came an attempt at another school
82 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
of a superior kind, in a house built for
the purpose of mud, rough-cast and brick
floored. Reading was taught and needle-
work, for a penny a week, after six years
old, but writing and arithmetic were extras,
not encouraged, for there was a rooted belief
that if maids could write, they would write
love-letters. So, no doubt, they do, but
they write a good deal besides which keeps
up the bonds of family affection. This very
March, on one of the first relenting days,
I came upon an aunt sending a bunch of
violets to her niece in a London service to
be worn on her confirmation day. Who
would have dreamt of such an attention
when that girl's grandmother was one of
the penny scholars 1
The boys went out to work so young that
the wonder is that they learnt anything at all,
and the eldest girl was always kept at home
as nurse, growing tall, uncouth, and dense.
APRIL 83
We have gone through the permission to
learn the three R's up to their becoming a
necessity, and that greatest R of all — Reli-
gion — for the sake of which alone we taught
in old times, has a hard matter to hold its
own.
MAY
Never did Wordsworth sing a truer or a
sweeter note than in his address to May.
True, she often sets in, as people say, with
'her accustomed severity,' and cold rain is
falling, or east wind is blowing, and blighting
frost has turned brown the green shoots of
potatoes and pease, and made limp rags of
the first premature endeavours of the oaks.
Yet still there always are some perfect days
of the poets.
And what if thou, sweet May, hast known
Mishap by worm and bhght,
If expectations newly blown
Have perished in thy sight ;
If loves and joys, while up they sprung,
Were caught as in a snare :
MA V 85
Such is the lot of all the young,
However bright and fair.
*b'
Of all others, be the weather what it will,
May Is the month of singing of birds. The
larks are quivering and shouting high up in
the sky long before sunrise, the thrushes and
blackbirds take up the strain, and though the
nightingale ceases for an hour or two, and
only resumes after his breakfast, the whole
air is full of twitterings, chirpings, and songs.
The turtle-dove groans, the wood -pigeon
invites Taffy, ' Take two cows, Taffy ! Taffy,
take two ! ' the tame pigeon mourns com-
placently on our roofs, and the African dove
coo-roos, bows, and laughs in our cages.
Each has its own voice. The turtle is a
small creature, keeping in pairs, not flocks,
and with the ring round the neck speckled
with darkest green and white, so as to give a
chess-board effect. It builds in low bushes,
the proverbial untidy nest of the dove kind,
86 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
and is much less common than that hand-
some and devouring creature, the cushat or
wood-pigeon, the ring-dove proper, so called
on account of the white collar very conspicu-
ous on its gray throat, as it flies out with a
great rush.
Shenstone wrote —
I have found out a gift for my fair,
I have found where the wood-pigeons breed ;
But let me the plunder forbear,
She will say 'twas a barbarous deed.
And it would have been an unsatisfactory
one likewise, unless his ' fair ' had uncom-
mon powers, for the wood - pigeon is an
untamable creature. I have known one
rescued, with an injured wing, almost In its
infancy, bred up in the same cage with a
number of doves, yet never ceasing to be
terrified at human approach, and tumbling
about in a one-sided way, quite distressing to
behold.
A/A y 87
Wood -pigeons are not plentiful enough
here to be very mischievous, though there
are enoucjh of them for them to be con-
sidered as enemies by the farmer ; but their
residence in the ivy, their voices, the best of
those of all our English pigeons, their beautiful
forms, and delicate subdued colouring, make
them great favourites with the no-farmer.
As to the mourning of a dove, that pro-
verb is only due to its murmuring voice ; and
the constancy of the widowed dove is equally
a poetical fiction. The African dove does
not mourn at all, but bows and goes ' major-
ing ' about to very lively tunes of its own,
and, moreover, indulges in peals of laughter,
whence its specific name of Risoria, the
laughing dove. It is very hardy, and, when
there is sufficient range apart from villages,
will fly about and nest in the trees, though
too often molested by hawks.
The yafifil laughed loud.
88 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Not that here we call our grand green wood-
pecker by that name, when he scuds over
the grass, and shows for a moment his red
head, and the green back that so perfectly
assimilates with the colour of the moss on
decayed stumps, his larder and his domicile.
The gray lichen evidently strikes the note of
colouring of his much rarer cousin ; whose
feathers, black chequered with white, I have
only once come upon, and that was in
Devonshire, where they call him the French
magpie. In Norway and Germany he is the
Gertrude-bird, from a legend that a loaf was
refused to our Blessed Lord by a woman
named Gertrude, who was, therefore, trans-
formed into the black-and-white, red-capped
bird, and condemned to seek food between the
wood and the bark. As Geir-Trude means
spear or war-maid, and was a Valkyr's title, it is
probable that, like the black, scarlet-crowned
thrush (?) of South America, it was once a
MA V 89
war-bird. The robin of the United States is
a red -breasted thrush. So is the pretty
whole-ringed ouzel of Devonshire riversides,
while our proper thrushes — called in western
peasant tongue ' drishes ' — are the big,
speckle - breasted missel, and the equally
speckled song- thrush, which almost rivals
the nightingale in some of its notes, and
builds a nest neatly lined with mud compost,
and lays eggs of indescribably lovely blue-
green. The good old Warden Barter of
Winchester used to tell a story of two valiant
thrushes, whether song or missel I am not
quite sure, who, thinking a peacock in
dangerous proximity to their nest, charged
him both together full on the throat, and
knocked him down. The blackbird Is really
a thrush. The eggs of his rusty-brown wife
are more variable, and less beautiful, gener-
ally spotted all over with brown. For two
or three years this garden was tenanted by a
90 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
blackbird with a white feather on each side
of his tail, indeed we thought the feathers
multiplied after the moulting ; but our obser-
vations were cut short in a melancholy
manner. Poor Mr. Whitetail, as we called
him, was discussing worms on the lawn with
his brown lady, when another ouzel -cock,
entirely black of hue, appeared on the scene.
The faithless dame could have had no taste
for singularity, for together she and the new-
comer chased Mr. Whitetail over the tall
quick-set hedge, and we never saw him
more !
May Day is sometimes all that is lovely
and genial, when the children and their
flowers are all that their ideal should be.
Cold east wind does not matter so much to
them, but showers make their rounds dismal
work. The custom varies a good deal,
according as it has been fostered. Once
boys in Devonshire were licensed to drench
MA Y 91
with water from cows' horns whoever
did not wear a spray of maythorn. I can
just remember a lady coming in, indignant
and dripping. In many towns there is a
Jack-in-the-Green, attended by a rabble rout ;
in many villages, chiefly in the northern
counties, a doll in the centre of an arbour of
flowers is carried round and exhibited in
return for halfpence, probably being a
remnant of honour to an image of the Blessed
Virgin on the opening of the month of Mary.
In the south, however, it has often dwindled
to small children wandering about with an
untidy bunch of king-cups and cuckoo flowers
at the end of a stick, quavering shrilly out —
April's gone,
May's come,
Come and see our girland-,
and halfpence being thrown out till the stock
of them and of patience was exhausted, and
the whole affair discouraged.
92 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
We have found the best way In our parts
to be to sanction the whole school going
together under some efficient guardian with
one general money - box, the proceeds of
which, when divided, have always proved
more satisfactory than those of individual
effort ; or, at one parish, all is spent in a
general tea, which, of course, gives delight.
We also encourage the best garlands with a
special prize, and this promotes the keeping
them beautiful. Last year a child named
Violet had a small garland, a circlet entirely
made of the snake violet from the copse.
After it had made its rounds, it was set upon
her brother's grave.
We also make a May Queen, not the
fairest maiden, as in song, but the youngest
girl in the infant school, who appears in a
white dress kept for the occasion, flower-
wreathed, as well as her hat.
The rathe primrose is on the wane before
AfA V 93
May is over ; but its sister, the cowslip, is in
its prime, to my mind, the most deHciously
scented of all flowers, above all when formed
into a cowslip ball, or tisty-tosty, as in some
places it is called, though in the midland
counties the flowers are paigles. There is a
rich softness in the petal ; and no wonder
they were Titania's guardsmen.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be,
In their gold coats spots you see ;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours.
And such savours !
But our cowslips, beloved though they
be, cannot compete with those of Berkshire
and Oxfordshire in size. They are hardly
ever found in Devon, being dependent on
soil.
The woods are, however, the great glory.
Here is a glade which, if shown in a paint-
ing, would be pronounced incredible, for the
94 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
ground is purple-blue with wild hyacinth, the
canopy overhead of young birch leaves is
tender yellow-green, often lighter in colour,
with the sun through It, and between the
slender trunks are shining silver-white ; the
boughs — what can be seen of them — dark
russet-red. The oaks are of every imagin-
able tint of brownish-yellow and green, no
two alike, the beeches releasing their neatly-
crimped leaves from their brow^n cases, the
larches of unimaginable green beauty, and
here and there comes out the tall white cone
of the beauteous blossom of the wild cherry.
And in the hedgerows, on the heaths,
wherever there is room, stretch the hawthorn
branches, snow-laden, as it were, with their
pure white blossoms, with rounded, pin-like
buds, and within, the dainty stamens, dark
as to the filaments, and with red anthers.
The often gnarled and stunted old trees
come out for the time In bridal splendour.
MAY
95
A flyman, who was used to spend his days
in driving up and down streets, when once
he had to take a lady home through a park
in all its glory of maythorns, could not help,
when setting her down, saying, ' Thank you,
ma'am, for my beautiful drive ! ' A pinkish
tint comes over the blossoms towards their
fall ; but I much prefer them to the pink and
crimson thorns of cultivation.
The glory is not only of the thorns. The
cherry orchards, where they are in favour,
make white sheets. Pear trees, the largest
of all both as to treasure and blossom, make
splendid features, and the apple, with its
deep pink buds and delicately-tinted petals,
has the fairest of all the blossoms.
The gold chains of the laburnum, the rich
clusters of the lilac, join their bright beauties.
The Laburnum {Cytisits labicnmni) came to
us, in Queen Elizabeth's days, from Switzer-
land and Dauphine, where it is sometimes
96 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
called Arc-bois, and sometimes by the appro-
priate name of Beau Trefolle. Though the
branches snap easily, to the discomfiture of
those who strain after the drooping gold, it
was used to make excellent bows ; and
though the outside wood is yellow, the inside
heart wood is so black as to be called false-
ebony. It is in curious accordance with the
blackness of the seeds, and of the delicate
dark pencilling on the standard of the flower.
The Lilac (Syringa vulgaris) came from
Persia, and Henry VIII. had it in his garden
at Nonsuch ; but it has been found growing
wild in Transylvania.
Nor can I go further without a note of
love to the Gueldres rose ( Viburmim opuhis).
In the hedges it is graceful with its vine-
shaped leaves, and corymbs of white flowers,
small in the centre and fruitful, but wreathed
round with large, handsome white barren
blossoms. All honour to Gueldres, which
MA Y 97
first seems to have shown these barren
flowers as snowballs.
Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf,
That the wind severs from the broken wave.
Snowballs are among the delights of
country childhood. To me they always
recall the remembrance of the ecstasy it used
to be to see the Whit-Monday procession of
the village club, when the two tall banners,
one of pink, the other of blue, glazed calico,
were decked at the summit each with a peony
and a snowball, and the Friendly Society
'walked,' as it was technically called. Each
member carried a blue staff tipped with red,
and had a blue ribbon round his tall hat, and
almost all wore the old white round frock.
The big drum was beaten lustily at their head,
a few wind instruments brayed, all the rabble
rout of the village stepped after them, and
it was certainly a picturesque specimen of
genuine village sports, perhaps the more so
H
98 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
because the procession was, at the best,
straggHng and knock-kneed and often un-
steady. Yet it filled the childish mind with
an exultation and delight which is droll to
recollect now, and the enthusiasm of singing
the 133rd Psalm, Old Version —
O what a happy thing it is,
And joyful for to see,
Brethren to dwell together in
Friendship and unitee.
'Tis like the precious ointment that
Was poured on Aaron's head.
Ran down his beard, and o'er his robes
Its costly moisture shed.
And as the lower ground doth drink
The dew of Hermon's hill.
And Sion with his silver drops
The fields with fruit doth fill.
Even so the Lord doth pour on them
His blessings manifold.
Whose hearts and minds sincerely do
This knot fast keep and hold.
And oh ! the odour of the church — a mixture
of beery and tobaccoey human nature to-
MA y 99
gether with that of the fading young greenery
of infant beech and larch boughs with which,
even in those days, Whitsuntide decoration
was kept up. Only very youthful and very
rural nostrils could accept it as part of the
festivity.
Afterwards there were banqueting and
cricket on the village green upon the hill,
and too much of that which was politely
called * breaking out at tide time,' popularly
considered as a Saturnalia, not interfering
with a character for steadiness and sobriety.
So it was a melancholy affair after all.
The investment was anything but a safe one.
The meetings for payment were at the public-
house, and involved cups of beer each time,
and when the elder members began to grow
old and pressed heavily on ' the box,' the
younger ones voted to 'break it up.' Too
often this resulted in drinking it up ; and
men who had saved for thirty or forty
loo AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
years were left destitute of the provision
for age.
Attempts were made to induce the men to
invest in Government securities, but these
were not quite comprehensible enough ; and
besides, the attraction of ' walking ' and the
gala day were lacking. At the present time,
the prudent are divided between the Foresters,
who, as every one knows, keep their great day
with green banners and ribbons, in great
numbers generally at the county town, and
the County Friendly Society, whose carefully
calculated tables they have become better
able to appreciate, and which affords them a
holiday, band, procession, and feast, much
more decorous and civilised than their grand-
fathers would have relished.
The hedgerows and the very grass in the
fields are growing visibly from day to day,
and the earlier sorts are showing their exqui-
site blossoms, the chaffy scales arranged in
MA V loi
tossing plume, aigrette or spike, and hanging
out their thread-like filaments and double-
barbed anthers, too frail to be carried home
in full perfection, though the actual skeleton
will so long endure.
There is the Quiver grass [Briza media)
known by many names — Quakers, Quiver
grass, Timothy grass, and in French as
Langues de fonme. So slender is its stem, as
well as the branches, that it is not easy to
detect it at first, but once stoop down to a
piece and there is a whole fairy forest of the
tremulous heads, each branchlet bearing a
purple-tinted chaffy blossom, with the pale
buff anthers protruding. They grow mixed
v^\^ Chrysanthemum leucanthemumy\ki^ flower
that in my younger days was contempt-
uously called *a great horse daisy,' more
civilly an ox-eye, but is come into fashion as
a moon daisy or even a Marguerite. It has
not the crimson tips nor the blushing air of
I02 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
modesty of the real daisy, about which people
quote poetry, though they exterminate it from
their lawns till it is quite a treat to see it
whitening some neglected plot.
But who would wish for a fairer though all
too fleeting nosegay than can be made of ox-
eye and bright rose campion, deepened with
quiver grass, with here and there a spike of
purple orchis (O. masctcla), or paler meadow
orchis {macMlata), and the little brown-winged
orchis [Morio), always with the striped wings,
but with the lip varying from deep purple to
pink or white. How wonderful the orchis Is
with all its kindred can hardly be told. It is
one of the plants over which its admiring
cultivators become nearly insane, and an
occasional sight of the freakish wonders they
import enlarges one's mind — the swarms of
white and purple butterfly flowers, and above
all, the pure white-dove flowers Imported from
South America.
MA Y 103
The curious arrangement Is nowhere better
seen than In the purple orchis {inascidd),
whose black-spotted leaves are among the
first tokens of spring, and which country-folk
call by the unpleasant name of Dead Men's
Fingers, probably on account of the tubers of
the root. There may be seen the ribbed
germ which looks like a foot-stalk, and whose
stigma Is the expanded lip, while under the
real petals, which form a sort of helmet, Is the
single stamen, two-celled, and with an abortive
one on each side. It Is closed, but contains
a sticky fluid full of pollen, which on provoca-
tion will burst out and communicate, not with
Its own germ, but with another germ in the
spike In which the orchis proper always grows.
We cannot part from woodland haunts
without a word of the bluebell. It may be
correct, but Is uncongenial, to call it a
wild hyacinth, and If the slender hare-
bell [Campayiida rotttndifolia) Is the blue-
I04 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
bell of Scotland, England may be allowed
her own Hyacint/ms nonscriptus — this last odd
name is due to the absence of the two letters
A I for woe, which Apollo is said to have in-
scribed on the root of the plant that sprang
from the relics of his friend Hyacinthus.
Nothing can be further from sorrow than
those rich deep bluebells hanging in such
clusters on their stems. There is a drooping
grace in the bells, and in the whole outline of
the plant, that puts to shame the cultivated
stiff top-heavy hyacinth of Dutchmen and of
gardeners, known by endless names, and
fetching fabulous prices. One stem, bending
so modestly under its weight of delicately
curved bells with their deep purple hearts, is
worth all the prize yellow or green (?) beauties
of a gardener's catalogue.
Mr. Wallace has said that in spite of the
splendours of tropical plants, England is the
country for real sheets and masses of colour,
MA Y 105
while M. Taine declares that the broad extent
of bright hues is to blame for Englishwomen's
gaudy taste in dress. Certainly I have seen
a glade in a wood perfectly dazzling in its
May dress. Above all was the delicate
green gold of young birch leaves glittering
in sunlight on black twigs, below were
slender silver pillars of young trunks, and
the floor was a sheet of deep purple blue-
colouring, such as must be seen to be credited.
This year Whitsuntide falls in June, but
there is another May Day not to be omitted,
namely the 29th, which for some unknown
reason is called in Hampshire and Sussex,
Shik Shak Day, and when those who omit
the wearing of the oak-apple are liable to the
drenching which in Devon belongs to the
I St. I cannot help thinking the custom must
be older than the Restoration Day of 1660.
At any rate, every one in this country of
oaks appears with the spray of young leaves,
io6 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
generally with the tassel of catkins above
and the rosy oak-apple below.
What a curious fact it is that this same
oak-apple should be the effect of some matter
deposited with her eggs within the bud, stem,
or leaf by one of the Bedeguars or Gall-flies,
small four-winged insects. Cynips quercus is
the formal name of her whose produce is the
handsome oak-apple, delicately shaded with
red, of historical association. It is full of
little cells in which reside the larvae of the
gall-fly. There, unless loyalty brings them
to an untimely end, they will live upon the
fleshy part, become pupae, and finally make
their way out as flies. There are other gall-
flies, one of whom prefers the leaves and
produces a much smaller ball upon the
mid-rib ; another pierces the bud, and a
pretty bunch, like unripe currants, is the
result ; and a third prefers the bark, where
there arises a cluster of round wooden balls
MA Y 107
as large as the biggest marbles. These gall-
flies should be the badge of authors and
letter-writers, for their ' apples ' produced in
Asia Minor are or were, together with oxide
of iron, the chief material of ink. People in
the old days, before universal commerce,
used to make their own ink. I remember
one experiment, when a jug full of something
very black was produced, but whether good
to write with, I cannot say. Also I have ,
seen a pond, with iron, no doubt, in the water,
turned black by a fallen oak tree, the like
of which may account for the invention.
Another Bedeguar produces the pretty rosy
mossy tuft on the dog rose, which we call
the Robin's Cushion, but Hans Christian
Andersen names the Rose-King's Beard.
We would not cultivate dull colouring at
the expense of our meadows, white with
ox-eye and cuckoo flowers ; of our woods,
blue with hyacinth, pink with campion ; of
io8 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
our golden gorse, ever renewing the glories
that brought Linnaeus to his knees, nor even
the lively bright-green sheets of dog's-
mercury in the hollows of the woods.
Most of these have creeping roots, and so
has the Convallaria kind. They are Ascen-
sion-Day flowers, ladders to Heaven, the
pure blossoms drooping humbly, yet in steps
ascending. Indeed the Solomon's Seal (Con-
vallaria mtilti/lo7^a) is one of the many plants
known to country folk as Jacob's Ladder.
It is not universally found, but there is plenty
of it here with its arching stem, alternate
handsome leaves, with a graceful white
green-tipped bell hanging from the sprig of
each. Its more admired sister, Convalla^'ia
majalis, the Lily of the Valley, is found here
and there, but is much more rare in the
woods. On one hillside, where it is to be
found, it has each pearly blossom ornamented
at the bottom of the cup with a little red dot.
MA V 109
That wood, where likewise is found the
curious Herb Paris (Pan's quadrifolia), Hes
on the side of a steep down, on whose
summit is a kind of brick tower, called the
Horse Monument, bearing an inscription in
honour of a horse which in a hunt leapt
with its rider unhurt down a very deep chalk
pit, and moreover won the cup at a race a
few weeks later !
The lily of the valley is the prime glory of
any old-fashioned garden where it has room
to spread undisturbed ; but where it grows
wild, rapacious plunderers from towns fall
upon it, and will soon make an end of it
where it is not guarded.
What shall be said of those plunderers ?
It is cruel to blame poverty for its efforts,
and hard to wish the dwellers in towns to
lose their pleasures ; but when the ferns that
adorn the lanes are torn up without care by
men tramping from the town out of work,
no AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
and dropping frail fronds along the road, one
can only wish for some protection for our
beauties. But sweet May must not have
a farewell moan. I take leave of her in the
midst of her
Modest charm of not too much,
Part seen, imagined part.
JUNE
The leafy month of June! Well, it is the
crown of the year, and all the leaves are
fully out, but they have lost the tender
light colour of growth, and the white
petals of the blossoming trees come down
like snow.
Perhaps it is the best augury when
their fall is hastened by showers, for an
over - dry late May and early June are
apt to result in a break - up during the
haying and harvest time. Roaming in
the meadows is pretty well over. They
have been bush -harrowed — namely, a con-
struction of branches of hazel and thorn
has been dragged over them, and then
112 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
the gates are mended and fastened up
with elaborate twists of withes, and woe
to the trespasser tempted by the pink,
white, and yellow heads that rise above the
grass.
The borderlands are, however, very
charming. Here Is the river walk in
full perfection. The way thither Is along
a lane, in the hedge of which towered,
a year or two ago, a gigantic teasel
{Dipsacus sylvestris), the dally delight of
my eyes, till some barbarous boy, only
bent on destruction, smote off Its head,
vainly armed with pointed spears. Who
has realised the beauty of the teasel, or
Its perfect symmetry ? This one was at
least four feet high, and a perfect example
of what Ruskin calls the secret of beauty,
the combination of curve, straight line, and
angle. The parts are all in pairs, and divide
by two, the less common rule In flowers.
JUNE 113
There is a tall, straight, perpendicular stem,
ribbed and garnished with hooks, fair and
white. Thence, at regular intervals, spring
pairs of arms opposite to one another and
curving upwards. At their base are two
long leaves, pointed, following their curve,
and joined together at the base, so as to
form a deep cup around the stem, capable
of holding water. In fine plants, such as
my friend of the lane, the lower branches
each send forth a secondary pair on a
smaller still, preserving the same perfect
order and regularity. Each branch, and
especially the main stem, is crowned with
a marvellous head. First there are four
long, narrow-toothed involucre leaves, from
which springs an egg-shaped head, com-
pounded of circle upon circle of tiny
flowers, every one within a stiff, chaffy
calyx, terminated by a long bristle. Ob-
serve the wonderful design. Each of these
I
114 ^N OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
bristles, before it grew, was so arranged
and so supplied with sap, as to come to
the exact length which would serve to
form the outline of the prickly head, not
one breaking out beyond or falling below
the shapely oval, which is more pointed,
like the smaller end of the ^<g^, in the
central one, the monarch as it were, than
in its attendants. Moreover, the flowers,
all of one petal, four divided, with two
thready stamens and one pistil, are deli-
cate pale purple, and are so arranged as
to bloom in successive circles, so that the
head is wreathed continually with a band
of soft light purple — like a fillet on its
crown of summer glory, moving gradually
downwards.
After this lovely garland fades, and
with it the leaves, the stiff heads, stems,
and scales still remain, as sceptres to be
touched with silver for the winter king,
JUNE 115
till storms, and the growth of their suc-
cessors, push them aside. They vary much
in size. I know an upland field, left
fallow under the depression of farming,
perfectly covered with small teasels little
more than half a yard high, as if inten-
tionally sown, so that one longs to make
them of use ; but the really valuable Fullers'
teasel [Dipsacus fullonuni) has hooks at the
end of its bristles, so that no invention
of mechanism has ever succeeded in so
efficiently raising the nap on cloth. Three
teasel heads are, therefore, the arms of the
Clothworkers' Company.
We have been a long time getting past
the teasel, and here is more temptation
to linger at the wreaths of dog-rose that
stretch out overhead — bearing their deli-
cately rosy buds. Like the tulip and the
hyacinth, the rose loses its grace under
the gardener's hands ; it is allowed no
ii6 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
arching wreaths, clad with sprays where
the buds blush within the slender ex-
quisitely formed calyx of the five brethren,
two bearded, two unbearded, one bearded
on one side only, as in the old Latin
riddle. Here is a bush growing just
enough out of reach over a deep ditch or
water-carriage to escape the eager hands
of children, and to show its soft pink
flowers in lavish beauty. This is the true
Rosa canina ; but there is also much in
the hedges of its trailing brother, Rosa
arvensis, which is quite white, with darker
stamens, and less graceful in growth. I
know also of a bush or two of true sweet-
briar {Rosa rubiginosa) growing wild, be-
traying its neighbourhood by its scent,
and bearing blossoms and buds of the softest
deep pink.
Every ditch and waterway is bordered
with forget-me-not. In sentimental art the
JUNE 117
poor thing is hackneyed to death ; but
who can withstand the charm of the real
blue flower, on that curving footstalk,
which always presents a pair of full-blown
blue flowers, the buds beyond them more
or less pink. If we carry home a sheaf
of it, and put it in a soup-plate or small
bowl, it will live a long time, but the out-
coming flowers will be less and less blue,
more and more pale pink. This one is
Myosotis palustris, the head of the genus,
which numbers many more, generally look-
ing like starved varieties. The name is
Greek — mouse-ear — probably from the curl-
ing corymb ; and the English name by which
no one ever calls it, Scorpion grass, is no
doubt from the very innocent little bristles
that clothe the plant. In common with
all its congeners of the great and beautiful
Boraginacecs, it has these rough stems and
leaves. These plants all have ^\^ stamens
ii8 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
in one five-lobed petal, and their colours
go through the whole scale of blues, purples,
and reds.
Here is another of them, the Syniphytitm
officinalis, or comfrey, a large plant with
handsome leaves and bell-shaped blossoms.
Before our walk is over, we may collect
specimens of every tint, from the darkest
crimson down to white, not blue, but the
scale is made up by the Symphytum aspei^ri-
mum, a prickly comfrey which was brought
from the Caucasus under the impression
that it would serve for fodder. Horses
and cows really like it, but it never has
made its way, perhaps because it is not of
continuous growth, and there is no * cut
and come again.' A plant that we obtained
has remained a shrubbery ornament, with
brilliant blue bells, heading circling pro-
cessions of deep pink buds.
Well, in spite of lingering, we have
JUNE 119
reached the river at last. The walk is by
a canal along a towing path, and there is
the real river meandering about, sometimes
close to the path, sometimes leaving a
space between. Once the said canal was
the means of conveying coal, but since
railway times it is chiefly serviceable as
a means of watering those bright green
meadows, and it is the happy hunting-
ground of fishermen. Between the two
rivers lies a quaking space, sometimes fit
to tread on, sometimes not, but always
alluring, for here grows the big purple
Orchis latifolia, here the hoary Cotton grass,
here the odd red-calyxed Gewn rivale, called
by the village children Granny's nightcaps ;
and there are the three colours of lovely milk-
wort, and best of all the handsome trefoil
leaves of the Bog-bean {^Meiiyanthes trifoliata).
See what an unrivalled flower it is, the buds
tipped with rose, the five curving petals of
I20 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
each open blossom covered with pure snowy
fibres, out of which look the little black
anthers. Once, amid the Red Rattle {Pedi-
cularis palustris), with its rose-coloured labiate
flowers and dark fern-like leaves, we used to
have the charming violet-like purple butter-
wort with its long spur, and rosette of pale
yellowish-green leaves i^Pinguicula vulgaris),
our especial pride, but
Now a Giant, plump and tall.
Called High-farming, stalks o'er all,
and his tread has effaced alike the purple
butter wort from here, and P. Litsitanica, the
pale lilac one from another bog, so that they
cannot be found nearer than the New Forest.
Here is consolation in our charming nose-
gay, further illuminated by the bright divided
petals of well-named Ragged Robin [^Lychnis
floscitacli ).
Probably the fishermen are heartily wish-
ing us further off, as they stand armed, for
JUNE 121
Here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayhng.
The trout are In all their season and
beauty of red-spotted sides, and the grayling
is in his robe of glittering silver scales.
They are feeding to the full on the May-fly,
which was named in the days of Old Style,
and is really a June fly. The air is full of
it ; aye, and towards the evening, the water
too ; Ephemeris, the creature of a day, it has
fulfilled its destiny, drops, and is carried away
by the stream. But it has had a long
previous existence as a six-legged larva in a
hole in the mud bank, and then as a pupa,
whence it emerges as a very handsome fly,
the larger species as large as a Daddy-long-
legs, with a pale yellow body marked with
dark brown, four lace-like wings, also spotted
with brown, and their special ornament, three
long whisks by way of tail. There is a
smaller species, no larger, though much more
122 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
elegant, than the bluebottle fly ; and it is
on these that I have watched the further
changes, to me the most astonishing thing I
have noted among the many insect marvels.
These creatures have a last change which
brings them to an absolute perfection of their
frame, which is so minute and exquisite, yet
for so brief a period. Twice it has chanced
to me to walk to the river with a companion
wearing a crape mantle. It was quickly
covered with hosts of these small white May-
flies i^Ephemera albipe7mis). In a moment
each seemed to have doubled ; then away
flew one of the pair, leaving behind it what
proved to be an empty white skin, covering
wings and all, but left like a glove, while the
late owner came out more finished and more
beautiful than ever, wearing much longer and
more delicate whisks than before. All the
EphemercE do this, the large one becoming
more polished after this last change. And
JUNE 123
all this for one day of dancing ecstasy, with no
food as far as appears ; only this sublimated
glory, to end in a few hours. Is it to give
us a glimpse of how mortal bodies can be
refined ; though like other pure and beauteous
emblems, their perfection is so shortlived ?
Of course the rough stems and leaves of
the sedges are the natural holdfasts of these
May - flies, as they are of their relations
the Dragon-flies (Libellulce). Magnificent
creatures they are, after having emerged
from their very ugly fierce-looking water-
loving pupae. Indeed, they continue fierce,
though not deserving the dread with which
they are regarded by the village people, who
call them horse-stingers, for they have no
sting, and are terrible only to the insect race,
whom they ruthlessly devour. See the
intensely shining blue, long, pointed forms
flitting about ; and in the track of a fisher-
man we may pick up the wings which the
124 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
cruel man has pulled off before using the
brilliant blue body for bait. We must take
refuge in the assurance that an insect is not
constructed to feel pain, and those wings are
worth picking up to examine the wonderful
web of nerves on which the transparent
membrane is stretched, and the round spot
which looks black, but which proves to be
the deepest, darkest of blues. The eyes of
the dragon-fly look large and fierce ; they
have immovable facets, so as to see all ways
at once, and are one of the favourite marvels
of the microscope.
This grand dark blue ^shna varia is the
most frequent here, but there are also green
ones, and orange without the dark spot ; also
the loveliest of all, the demoiselle, rather
smaller, and of the most perfect turquoise-
blue picked out with shining black. It is
really the damoiseau who bears these sky-
blue colours in full splendour ; his lady is
JUNE 125
black, only sparsely banded with his blue.
As we turn and take the upward course of
the river, we must note the sedges, the
friends of the emerging insect, who clings
to their saw-like edges. They border the
stream with their angular stems and saw-
edged harsh leaves ; their roots are creeping
and matted, and they are very useful in
holding together the loose earth of banks.
The species are innumerable on bog, moor,
and mountain, but the ornamental one before
our eyes is Carex stricta, which has three
spikes of blossom, of rich black or very dark
brown scales, from the uppermost of which
protrude in contrast cream-coloured stamens,
from the lower, threads of styles. Mixed
with it is the handsome Sparganium ram-
osum, or bur reed, often with balls of blossom,
the uppermost a round puff of small anthers, the
lower fruit bearing, and for all the world like
that terrible weapon of old, the morning star.
126 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
If ever you heard a bird in a passion, here
he is chatter, chatter, scold, scold, emphatic-
ally. It is Blethering Jock, as the Scottish
shepherd-boys call that little sedge warbler,
who bursts out of the reed bed, doing any-
thing but warble. He is in fear for his nest,
though quite needlessly ; we could not get at
it over the quaking bog, and if we wish to
see the cradle suspended on the reeds that
rock it, we must go to that delightful place,
the South Kensington Museum. We may,
however, see the scarlet- headed moor- hen,
and the ridiculous little dab-chick lead forth
their fleets, and all suddenly dive the very
moment their little black eyes are aware of
our approach ; or the water-rat, or rather
vole, swim across and disappear in a bank,
or even a kingfisher dart across with a gleam
of blue and russet.
However, we must turn from the river
to chalky banks, and a disused chalkpit, in
JUNE 127
whose depths has been found a bee orchis,
the real Ophrys apifera, lilac-winged, velvet-
tailed of brown and yellow marbled together,
just the colouring of a bee, though stingless.
There is no security of finding it a second
year in the same place, for it is very caprici-
ous as to blossoming. It will not bear trans-
plantation, and in a place liable to marauders
the best way to save its life is to gather it !
In the borders of the copse above w^e may
find the butterfly orchis; why butterfly there is
no knowing ; honeysuckle orchis was a much
more sensible name for the long thin-spurred
and long-lipped, deliciously scented spike.
It is not allowed to be an orchis any longer,
but has become a Habenaria bifolia. Indeed,
I once met with an all too scientific novel, in
which the lover presents his lady with a
Habena'Via as a token. Did it by that name
smell as sweet ?
We pass a path overhung with hazels, and
128 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
showing below the httle pearls and sweet-
scented whorls of Woodruff [Asperula odo-
rata), and under the stumps, and in the
hedge banks, the tender and lovely wood-
sorrels, otherwise Oxalis acetosella, with a
coral scaly creeping stem, purple footstalks,
purple backs to the drooping trefoil leaves,
and delicate purple streaks in the slender
graceful bud, and cuplike blossom, the most
dainty and delicate of English flowers. It is
disputed whether these complete trefoils are
not the true shamrock ; but it is not likely,
though everywhere in Europe they are the
Alleluia plant specially dedicated to Trinity
Sunday.
All the Oxalis tribe, which is very numer-
ous, is full of acid juice. Children who care
for their palate more than their eyes bite the
stems, and in some places a preserve is made
of the leaves. I am glad there is not enough
here to tempt any one.
JUNE 129
There is the cuckoo —
In June
He altereth his tune,
and he is stammering with repeated cuck —
Click — cuck — cuck before he can bring out
the final cuckoo. Some people think these
are the imperfect efforts of the young cuckoos
learning to sing ; but they are hardly out of
the nest so early. I suspect the hesitation
to be caused by anger, for I have once seen
a couple of quarrelsome cuckoos defying one
another in broken language, or it may be
from fright, when the bird is mobbed by the
smaller fry, more probably because of its
likeness to a hawk, than because of the
misdeeds of its youth towards their offspring.
It has been proved that it carries in its
mouth the ^^%, which it bestows upon the
hedge-sparrow, or water - wagtail. I have
watched one such awkward nursling alone
in a nest in a heap of large flints, a gowk
K
I30 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
in a dishwasher's nest, as it was announced
to us. We saw the little birds feeding it,
and one evening they were trying to entice
it out by holding a grub a little way off.
The next morning it was gone, so probably
they had succeeded. Another young cuckoo,
which was carried across the road, and placed
in a cage in an open window, was regularly
fed by its faithful foster-parents, who had
traced it thither. How curious it is that
though the American cuckoo has a nest of
her own, and brings up her family like a
respectable housewife, the cow bird acts the
fashionable mother like the English cuckoo.
The Indian cuckoo, we are told, sings, drops
her ^^^ into alien nests, and is hunted like
her English sister.
We emerge from the wood to see fields
with ripples of wind passing over their full-
blossomed grass, making strange lights and
shades between the varied heads of brownish-
JUNE 131
green, while ox-eyes and buttercups crop up
between. To the confusion of the poor corn-
crakes, early fields are beginning already,
and, it is hoped, may avoid the thunder-
storms which are too apt to break up the
weather in the last fortnight of June. When
w^ill it be cut ?
The swish of the scythe in the dewy
morning is seldom to be heard In these days.
It has given place to the squeak and cough
of the engine, and the long rows of women
in sunbonnets to the claws of the monster
haymaker. Haycocks we still have ; but
the pictures of children tumbling in delight
in the hay are, except on lawns on gala days,
a pleasing delusion. Farmers and farming
men consider children as their natural
enemies. A kind rector who used to
give a happy day in the hay to his school-
children, found that though the parish was
full of meadows, the most part had never
132 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
been In a hayfield in their lives. I have
made nests In the hay In my time, and
carried on a warfare from haycock to hay-
cock, but under angry protest from our old
farming man, who considered us to be spoil-
ing his hay — how, I never could understand ;
but I believe that besides upsetting the neat
haycock, we were supposed to tread out the
fragrance.
And the hay-carrying Is always a pleasant
sight, picturesque even now, and delightful
to man and beast, as the big horses enjoy
themselves during the loading ; and though
one Is sorry to lose the cocks that made
such long shadows In the dewy sunrise of
the dear, bright long days, still, anxiety Is
off our minds, and we are thankful.
Everybody goes after some club festival
or other at Whitsuntide, so our Flower
Service, a modern institution, has to be
either on ' St. Barnaby bright,' or on Mid-
JUNE 133
summer Day, when it Is grand to see the
altar steps heaped with nosegays of every
kind, fining ten or eleven boxes for London
hospitals, when tiny little children are led
up to deposit their offerings In the great
brass tray held down to them. The bouquet
that lives most In my memory was entirely of
red campion, seen through a lacework of the
lovely delicate umbelliferous flower of the
pig -nut. This was made by a farmer's
daughters, whose brother had been in a Lon-
don hospital, and tenderly remembered the
flowers there. They used to make up some
of their offerings as 'button-holes,' he having
said that these were specially available.
Another hint Is that bunches of grasses
In blossom are greatly valued for their
long duration, and they are often valued
by nursing Sisterhoods used to decorate
mortuaries.
The ' May Queen ' remembers
134 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
The oat grass and the sword grass, and the bulrush
in the pool,
with all Tennyson's wonderful exactness to
the details of Nature.
The bulrush Is not the grand reed mace
which we are apt to call by that name, and
which is a later production, but the humble
Rush {Jtmais conglo7Jierahts), one long single,
leafless, pointed, bending, tapering spike,
with a tuft of brown, six-stamened blossoms
near the top, a delightful toy of childhood
which makes It Into green baskets and
helmets, and learns plaiting upon it. And,
again. Its soft white pith is by our young
folks twisted Into the semblance of white
roses, and set among ivy leaves.
It had a greater value once in the days of
domestic manufactures, when duly peeled of
Its shinlnpf Cfreen coat, it served for the wicks
of candles. Even at the beginning of the
century. Miss Edgeworth conducts her Frank
JUNE 135
to sec the making of these candles by suc-
cessive dips of the pith-made wick into a
caldron of properly melted and compounded
mutton fat.
And till the days of the lucifer match and
little fat solid nightllght did the rushlight sur-
vive, to beguile the night watches, enshrined
in a tall, circular temple, about a quarter of
a yard high, and pierced with numerous
holes of about the size of a sixpence. There
was a mysterious awe In the sight of the
circle of light on the ceiling, surrounded by
the lesser rounds, which gradually changed
their places, till at last there was a dread
sound of hissing and fizzing, and all was
dark, as the slender rushlight burnt down,
and was extinct In the pan of water ready to
receive It. The little Woodrush, or LttziUa,
makes a dainty foil to the pink campion and
Its relative, the garden white pink, whereof
I rejoice in a thick border that reminds me
136 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
of the seashore, the blue-green foliage being
the waves, the overflowing white flowers the
foam. It is the earliest of the Pink kind —
a delightful race, named from their pinked
or indented edges, and giving their name
to the lovely colour which the good little
tracts of the early years of the century held
as emblematic of vanity as the tulip or the
peacock !
Dianthus caryopkyllus, with two delicately
curved styles, Is the parent of all our garden
pinks and carnations, white, red, and yellow,
including that most deliciously scented of
flowers, the deep crimson clove gillyflower.
It warns me, however, by its very name, that
it belongs to next month ; but June must
not pass over her Midsummer men, properly
known as Orpine, a crimson -flowered plant
with ten stamens, three styles, fleshy leaves,
and stems, ranked with the starry stone-
crops as Sednm telcpJiiiun, though it grows
JUNE 137
not on rocks but on mossy banks. It is a
plant of augury. I have known an old
woman who had duly, on St. John's Eve,
laid out nine pairs of Orpines, naming them
after the couples thought to be courting.
The pairs that kept together betokened a
happy marriage, those that fell apart boded
no 2food to the love affairs !
The jenneting-tree, under which some of
Jane Taylor's little heroines sit, is really the
June-eating apple-tree. Very funny work
did old gardeners make of fine names of
flowers and fruits. The Qttatre saisons rose
might very fairly become the Quarter Ses-
sions rose ; but the great pear known as the
Diichesse d' Angotdeme became on their lips
' Duchess Dangle'em,' and the list of plums
in a catalogue was corrected by an old
Cornish gardener from drap d'or into * trap-
door,' the other being evidently to his mind
a misprint.
138 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
The schoolmaster has destroyed much
diversion in rural bills. We never had the
celebrated
s.
Won Wooden Barrer as woodnt soot 10
Won Wooden Barrer as wood soot to
but ' Jams ' (i.e. James) has sent us in a bill
for a Sally Mander, and likewise for mend-
ing a three-legged Jonathan, which we con-
cluded to be a trivet for hanging on a grate to
hold a kettle.
The name Frederick was quite past our
farming man, who entered it as Frikit ; but
most notable was a shoe bill in the penny
club —
s. d.
I Hideous Gurl boots 7 6
I Hideous Gurl boots 5 6
Whether the adjective was intended to
apply to the boots or to the girls was doubt-
ful ; but it proved that a family was meant
of the name of Hedges. As the cobbler no
JUNE 139
doubt pronounced hideous as 'hidjus,' he
thought this the correct designation, though,
as It happened, the damsels were the very-
reverse of hideous.
Wanderings in the garden are very de-
h'ghtful In the twIHght, only after showers it
Is needful to be cautious not to tread on
snails. We sometimes have said the snails
must be giving a ball, there has been such a
wonderful outbreak of them ; I have counted
eighty on a very small circuit of gravel walk
on a dewy evening. That was when we had
a fine Tritoma, commonly called Red-hot
Poker, elegantly, Flame Lily. Its mass of
long narrow leaves afforded a capital har-
bour, to which we resorted when we wished
for a snail race !
It really is amusing, and certainly not
cruel, to put all the snails one can catch. In a
row on a wall, or along a board, and see
what they will do. One will
I40 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Draw in his head,
And go in his own little chamber to bed ;
Others will set off to find fresh quarters,
sometimes straight, sometimes turning to the
right or left, spying about with their horns
to explore the new country. The round
eyes at the end of the horns are easily seen,
with a nerve going up to them through the
transparent skin.
The liveliest, as well as the prettiest, are
the Helix nemoralis, whose mollusc has a
delicate graceful head, with two slender
feelers, and whose shell varies much from
pale yellow to yellow, with a single coloured
stripe of purple, stripes, and dark brown,
edged round the coils with yellow.
The Common Snail [Helix hortensis) is
quite worth looking at, when its brown and
purple-marked thin shell is fresh. It makes a
startling noise sometimes at night, a kind of
music produced by crawling on glass window-
JUNE Mr
panes. Blackbirds and thrushes devour
them In numbers. They may be seen with
the unlucky mollusc on the beak in search
of a stone to dash the shell against.
In the days when a merry couslnhood
made shops of flowers In the garden, when
lady -grass was our ribbon, beetroot our
purple and pall, fuchsias our jewels, butter-
cups and daisies our coins, a path which had
been the thrushes' larder provided our
crockery — alas, never whole !
The great edible Roman Snail [Ilelix
Pomatia) was out of our reach. He never
strays far from the Roman settlements,
whither he was first imported, and has dwelt
these fifteen hundred years ! Once we had
a basket sent us, and presently, after the
string had been cut, the lid began to move,
and a great horned head or two protruded,
recalling the nursery rhyme of the ten tailors
who went out to kill a snail —
142 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
She put out her horns Hke a Httle Kerry cow,
Run, tailors, run, or she'll kill you all now.
The little snails on the bents of grass on
the downs {^Helix virgatd), white with a
single purple line on the whorls, are some-
times strung by the children into necklaces.
It is to be hoped the inmates are dead ; but
they retire so far into their shells that it is
always difficult to guess ; and I have found
a snail from Italy walking about the room
awaked by the warmth.
A basket of snails is a welcome gift to the
ducks, and one's gardening heart must be
hardened against them when we behold tall
white lilies, bereft of every leaf all the way
up the stem, struggling to bloom with ragged
petals, and their noble buds almost destroyed.
Circles of ashes only protect till the next
shower of rain, and then out come those
worse enemies still, the houseless snails.
Limaxis their Latin name, Slug their English.
JUNE 143
The black one, who Is dignified by the grand
name of Avion ater. Is really, If you look at
him, rather handsome, with a gracefully -
formed body and horns, and I have a kind-
ness for that slug striped like a tabby cat ;
but the gray one Is the most mischievous to
our young plants. There Is a still more un-
pleasant looking one — pale, fat, and with an
orange -coloured edging to his foot {Avion
albns), who lives under old neglected logs of
wood.
It Is very amusing to turn up one of these,
especially if It have bark on It loosened with
damp and decay. Tear off a piece and see
the medley of odd creatures rolling or scamper-
ing off, the branching patterns traced within
the bark by some kind of worm, the white
grubs, the millepedes, centipedes, and the
wood-lice. The centipede, happily not on so
large a scale as his formidable French brother,
has actually often fifty-five pairs of little legs,
144 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
a pair in each of his articulations, and is not
pleasant to encounter when eating a straw-
berry or peach. The Millepede [hdtcs), in
spite of his name, has really only twelve
pairs of legs, and curls into a spiral. He it
is whom we are most likely to find under the
bark. Sure to be there is a comical creature
of an oval shape, all in divisions, which curls
itself up into a perfect ball, exactly like a pill
when meddled with. Armadillo viclmris,
or Pill Wood-louse, is its correct title, but
here we call it a Chiselbob, or sometimes a
Cudworm. One of our cows was ill, and the
old cowman pronounced that she had lost her
cud — namely, the ball of hair licked from
herself that she rolls in her throat while
chewing meditatively. He proposed to re-
store it by administering one of these natural
pills or cudworms. Whether he did so or
not I cannot tell, but at any rate the poor
cow died.
JULY
The glory of the year has left the meadows
and the woods. The meadow grass is all
cut down, and before the end of the month
is reduced to stubble, if it may so be called.
Or if rain have hindered, the fields are a
woful sight, the tanned haycocks a great
deal too much tanned, in the midst of grass
a great deal too green, or else the old burs,
waving brown and uncut, hindering the
second growth. Clover, with its purple or
white heads, is slowly following, and so is
the most brilliant of the kind, sainfoin, with
its striped and shaded blossoms, and the
beauteous Trifoliiim incarnatiun, which
makes such rich patches of deep red. It
146 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
figures in Curtis's Botanical Magazine^ about
a century old, as a plant advisable to be in-
troduced into gardens ; and when it made its
way into agriculture about fifty years ago,
the name was a sore puzzle to the labourers.
* Some calls it Polium and some Napoleon,'
we were told ; and once came the startling
announcement, as it might be from the
Valley of Humiliation, ' If you please, sir,
there's a man a-treading down your Apollyon.'
•
These early haytimes belong to our
Southern counties. In the North the Otter-
burn ballad is most descriptive in its opening —
It fell about the Lammas tide,
When moormen win their hay.
The woods are so overgrown with their
young shoots and trailers, that the by-
paths, not yet trimmed for sportsmen, are
nearly impassable ; and there are few flowers
left in them except the little Lysbnachia
nemoritm, whose English name of Yellow
JULY 147
Pimpernel is confusing. It is one of the
many golden stars with which the ground is
spangled all spring and summer long.
The beech woods alone keep a curious
peculiar vegetation of their own, and allow
nothing to grow upon their russet pavement
except the lovely lily-like orchid Epipactis
grandiflo7'a, and the queer brown Listeria
nidus avis, or Bird's-nest Orchis ; not that it
is much like a bird's nest, except that it Is
brown and withered-looking, the colour of
the beech leaves among which it grows — a
parasite, like the only other plants the tyrant
beech tree endures beneath its lordly shade ;
the two very strange-looking plants, Mono-
tropa hypopithys, Yellow Bird's-nest, and
LathrcBa squamaria, or Tooth wort. In spite
of this likeness to a 'bloated tyrant,' it is
impossible not to delight in the beech tree,
with its smooth silvery bole and widespread
canopy. Some single trees are perfectly
148 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
magnificent in bulk and shade, especially
some favoured ones in the New Forest; and
an extensive beech wood, with long arcades,
is a place to dream of. Mr. Keble used to
call the Ampfield beeches Hursley Cathedral;
and verily they are like * the long-drawn aisle
and fretted vault.' However, in the walk I
am thinking of, there is only one big beech
to be passed before crossing the road and
going through a slip rail into a farm road
across a wide space of heathery moorland.
I believe, from the appearance of the ground,
that William the Conqueror had little to ride
through save this kind of land after the
downs were once passed between him and
Winchester ; for from their edge to the coast
all is of the same sort of soil, with gravelly
slopes here and there, but for the most part
peaty ground, a good deal like the side of a
mountain, minus the part of the mountain
itself
JULY 149
Plantation and cultivation have clone a
good deal, but there is much of primitive
ground, and the walk I propose shows some
old scenes, such as Alfred may have looked
upon, not greatly altered by semi-cultiva-
tion. This road leads between low hedges
of gorse, as much out of blossom now as
gorse ever can be ; indeed, its perpetuity Is
beginning to be kept up by its dwarf brother,
Ulex names. Stand still a moment and you
will hear an odd popping like fairy artillery.
It is the bursting open of the pods of the
gorse, which is firing off its little black seeds.
We never call it gorse here, nor even furze ;
the villagers would not know what was meant
unless we said ' fuzz.'
In the silence we may detect a movement
in the deep ruts which border our path. It
may prove to be a delicate little brown-striped
lizard, a creature which our poor people
call an evvet (corrupted from eft, its hand-
I50 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
some water brother), and regard with horror.
'I saw an evvet once,' the children will say
with bated breath, as if they had seen a tiger.
' She brought home a bundle of grass from
the wood,' said the mother of a girl who had
a gathering in her hand, *and I think an
evvet may have bitten her.' Poor little
harmless striped creature !
The margin of our path between the ruts
and the furze is full of heath of all the three
sorts, though only here and there a spike of
the rich crimsoned purple of the Erica
vulgaris has begun to ring its bells, and the
choice blushing clusters of the bell-heather
(E. tetralix) are coming out amid soft cushions
of bent grass ; stars of four-petalled Tor-
mentilla, loosely stemmed spangles of lesser
stitchwort ; while small ringlet butterflies, just
emerged, sit drying themselves on the stalks,
all gray, and yellow rings on the outer wing
when closed, but sky-blue when opened.
JULY 151
The dark shining green wings, with a red
spot on them, belong to the Burnet moth.
When he opens them, they are bright red,
edged with green. Or here may be seen,
hawking and darting about, the very large
dragon-fly, banded with green, yellow, and
blue, divided by black lines, and with large
shining eyes. Sometimes his wife appears,
very unlike him, and much more resembling
an overgrown hornet.
A little further on, and we look over the
gorse into green spaces full of bracken
[Pleris aqiiilegid), undulating like the waves
of the sea. We slice a stem in two, and
dispute whether the dark marking is most
like or most unlike a spread eagle, or King
Charles in the oak.
Here is a splendid bush close to the path
of wild honeysuckle i^Lonicera periclyvienuni).
It climbs up the holly bushes, the stem get-
ting incorporated with the bark, and finally
152 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
killing the holly ; but never mind, holly there
is enough and to spare, and who would
grudge the support to those fragrant
streamers of crimson buds and creamy
blossoms of that peculiar trumpet shape, the
petal four cleft above, with one long lip
below ? There is another sort of honey-
suckle, plentiful enough here but called rare
by the books, with less red in the blossom,
and with leaves, not like this one, distinct
and in opposite pairs, but grown together
and forming a cup round the stem. This is
the Lonicera cap7Hfolumi, goats being sup-
posed to devour it, so that in French it is
chevrefeuille.
Lonicera is so well sounding a name, that
it is surprising to find that it is only after
Lonica, a German botanist.
Lonicera was the infant's name in a poem
of Crabbe's, and she was better off than one
I have been told of who was christened
JULY 153
' Sarsaparllla,' because the parents had seen
it in a book !
Further on we come out on really open
heath, where it is not always easy to find a
path, or to steer clear of prickles of gorse.
The little Stellaria minor and the Tormentilla
give a spangling of white and yellow, and
what is this strange brown spike — like a large
bird's-nest orchis ? No, only in colouring and
absence of branches. This has not the queer
orchid structure, but is a regular labiate plant
with two long and two short stamens within
its brownish-yellow or yellowish-brown petal.
It is likewise a parasite, but on the roots of
the gorse. Go down to the bottom and you
will find an odd scaly thing a good deal like
a lily bulb, only all brown. It is the greater
Broom rape (Orobanche 7najo7'), and it has a
lesser brother [Orodanc/ie inijior) with a little
attempt at pale purple in its flowers, for which
you must look in clover fields, where it is
154 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
welcome to nobody save the botanist. For
parasites are too tempting to Mrs. Malaprop,
being too often 'parricides.' Farmers are
always taking the Englishman's resource of
writing to the newspaper against that other
clover parasite, the Greater Dodder [Cuscitta
europa^a), which spreads a fatal network of
red threads over the young clover plants.
Though called greater, its heads of blossom
are much smaller and not ha^lf so pretty as
those of the other species {Cttscuta epithynmiui)
which you may see here, not doing any harm,
but straggling about like a tangle of crimson
threads, with white balls at intervals, upon
the gorse and heather, balls composed of tiny
star-like blossoms and their blushing buds.
Then comes a dip in the ground, with a
little stream that has to be crossed on very
variable stepping-stones, or else by striding
across between the bushy banks a little lower
down. Then turn to the right into a wood
JULY 155
of scanty small oaks. But beneath them be-
hold a mass of purple spires, a glorious forest
of foxgloves, small and great, each lifting its
mace of bells, purple outside, white within,
but there ornamented with dark rings close
together, and with four stamens, two long and
two short, curiously bent, and their anthers
with dark spots. Foxgloves may be of any
size, from the splendid plant as tall as a man,
whose lowermost flowers hang in rows of six,
down to the poor half- starved stem with
scarcely a dozen blossoms. Poppies they
are sometimes called, because the flower
when Inflated can be made to pop between
the hands. I confess to a sense of indignation
when I see this senseless sport used towards
one of the most beautiful ornaments of the
year, in wanton disregard of its loveliness.
They are biennial, so that where they are in
large numbers one year, they will probably
not show their flowers, but only their gray
156 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
downy leaves the next. There is Httle doubt
that they are properly folks' gloves, the gloves
of the 'good people,' to answer to the * Irish
lusmore,' or fairy cup. On the mountains of
Ireland and Scotland they are finer and more
luxuriant. By Loch Katrine, in the Lady of
the Lake, grew —
Nightshade and foxglove, side by side,
Emblems of punishment and pride.
When one of Mrs. Hemans's sons asked
Sir Walter what this meant, he made the
characteristic answer that poets were apt
to write a good many things which had no
particular meaning (or something to that
effect). The pure white ones are more
common in Scotland than here. I had five
in my garden last year, in each one of which
the marks within the throat were different.
The trees grow more scantily, and there
is a stretch of regular moorland, chiefly of
bent grass, with nothing remarkable about the
JULY 157
plants, as it is too late for the cream-coloured
Violet ( Viola lactea), which ought to be called
the milk-and-water violet, and gives some-
thing of that effect as it grows in large
quantities along the ditches by the roadsides
in the New Forest. It has long narrow
leaves, unlike those of other violets.
Here the ground sinks, and there is a
region of bog below with a sluggish stream
in the middle of it. Once there was an
attempt to form a lake in the park above, but
the water declined to stay in it and rushed
away, forming this stream and marsh, dearer
to the botanist than to the passenger. Long
ago, standing on this high ground, we saw
far away a white sheet which excited our
curiosity ; but we had walked a good way,
there was no particular path, and time and
courage failed us for the investigation. So
we remained content in the belief that it
was really a mass of the White Crowfoot
158 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
[Ranunculus aquatilis or R. hederaceus)
covering the pool after the example of many
more.
We never did contrive to reach the spot
till the dry summer of the Jubilee enabled us
to walk up the quaking bank of the streamlet ;
and then we found no water, no crowfoot,
only a piteous sight — in the hollow where the
last water had been, a whole mass of dead
eels, and, as I think, carp, whose grandparents
had probably been intended to stock the
lake!
The bog is a famous study, when it is
possible to walk about from one of its tufts of
rushes to another. There may be found the
delicate Bog Pimpernel [Anagallis tenella),
white with pink streaks, the lovely blue Skull-
cap {Scutellaria major\ the two less rare
kinds of Drosera, or sundew, that queer car-
nivorous plant, which only opens its white
blossoms at sunrise and soon closes them,
JULY 159
while it waits with viscid drops on the red
hairs of its battledore-shaped leaves to en-
trap the runaway insects which yield it
nourishment.
I have found in these parts meads of
yellow asphodel. If the blest dwelt in them
they must have had a taste for bogs ; but the
plant is a delightful one with its stiff orange-
coloured stem, its six-pointed star blossoms,
and six hairy stamens with red anthers. I
am afraid that draining has banished it from
hence as well as its companions, marsh
pennywort, butterwort, and the beauteous
little ivy -leaved Bell-flower (Ca77ipaimla
hederacea). They all may be found in the
New Forest, but the high farming of the
prosperous days of agriculture has made
havoc of many a rare plant.
We have explored the bog, and crossed it
by a quaking path, after which we get into a
great plantation of firs, old enough now to
i6o AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
whisper as we stand still among them. It is
almost the only sound, though broken now
and then by the harsh squeak of that bird of
beautiful plumage, but unrefined form and
nature, the jay. Now and then, too, a
graceful little squirrel races across, but these
are as much persecuted as are the jays by
the keepers, on the plea that they injure the
young trees by biting off the bark ; and I am
afraid this is a true indictment.
The shade here is very delightful, and
I will not tease you to look at any more
flowers, except the grand pillars of Viper's
Bugloss [EcJiium vtdgare), kings of their
family, with their deep blue flowers backed
by red buds, both like the tints of a mediaeval
illumination. One straight stalk they shoot
up, with their curving axils of flowers, one
on each all the way up, always open and
blue, above the bristly stems.
Our walk has been so lonof that there is
JULY i6i
hardly time to look at the garden, in all the
glory of roses, old and new, the old, despised
of gardeners, by far the sweetest, and the
prettiest in growth. The buds of the moss-
rose are really unequalled. Tea-roses are
exquisite in form, but there is nothing to be
said for their scent, and to keep pace with
the new kinds is quite beyond me. La
Marque and Gloire de Dijon seem recent to
me, though the younger race think them as
ancient as the Rose de Meaux, the fairy-
like creature of my childhood.
The big white lilies are looking magnifi-
cent in every cottage garden, and the little
thorny Scotch roses, the red china ones, and
many another are creeping over the cottages,
though alas! the flame -coloured Austrian
briar, which used to be the glory of the
village, is dead. A tramp was overheard
saying to his mate, * Now what is a rose
like?' He must have enlarged his experi-
M
1 62 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
ence before he had passed through the
place !
Long ago, in that still pretty, well-gardened
cottage, which stands sideways to the road
and looks up the hill, we had an enthusiastic
gardener, an amateur in that as in other
things, but so good, so remarkably good —
poor dear man ! — that I must tell his history,
since there is no one left who can be
pained by it. He was a baker by profession,
and made excellent bread, besides certain
fair-complexioned plain buns, which swelled
to a huge size in a cup of tea, and had a
fame of their own in the neio^hbourinp: town
where in later times I have seen spurious
articles sold by their names. All he pro-
duced had that delicate nicety which belongs
to the work of a conscientious man, who does
everything with his own hands and on a
small scale, a perfection never attained b)^
machinery, which may prevent the very bad.
JULY 163
but never attains to the very good. His
was genuine ' home-made ' bread, made with
real yeast of beer. Ordinary baker's bread
had, he said, a ' vinosity taste.'
His deHght was, however, in his plants.
He had ingeniously contrived to glaze over
the great excrescence made by his oven at
the back of his cottage, and put shelves over
it, and in this primitive greenhouse he nursed
geraniums and myrtle, and occasionally sold
an extra one. He was also a real old-
fashioned herbalist, and had one or two
curious old books which I wish I could see
with eyes better able to judge than I had in
his time. He compounded drugs and gave
his attendance and his medicines freely
out of pure charity. It was really valuable
doctoring in many simple cases. Union
doctors were not. Parishes were supposed
to be attended by busy surgeons, but this
came to nothing. The lady in each parish
i64 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
had .to be doctor, and make the best of the
remarkable complaints she heard of. I re-
member a great white jug, where ' Jesuits'
bark' was soaked before quinine in powder
was cheaply attainable for the ague, which
was then common in the parish. But the
cure my mother thought the greatest was of
a man of whom it was reported that the
doctor said his liver was no bigger than a
pigeon's ^^^, and he might take what he
pleased, so would she send an * imposing
draught ' ? My father really knew a good
deal about medicine, and sent a dose of calo-
mel, and the man recovered. For ague one
prescription in the next village was, among
many others, to have a bandage round the
wrists, lined with gunpowder and set on fire.
Or to be led to the top of a mound, and
violently pushed down ! As a remedy for
fits, to wear a ring of beaten sixpences given
by six young women who had married with-
JULY 165
out chanoflncT their surname ; or to wear
suspended from the neck ' a hair from the
cross on the back of a he -donkey.' More-
over, a gentleman's butler, feeling a lump or
rising in his throat, swallowed shot to * keep
down his lights'; and ' chaney ' — crushed
porcelain — was a favourite remedy.
But our little baker's was real herbalist
treatment with simples, and, as far as we
knew, not empiric. By and by, during the
illness of the Qrood man who united the offices
of clerk and schoolmaster, he fulfilled them
con ainore, and was appointed. ' My Lords '
had not risen on the horizon ; he could read,
write, and cypher better than most men in
the parish ; and he was deeply in earnest. I
believe there was no complaint of his dis-
cipline, though it was peculiar, and a row
of naughty boys were set down to kneel
at a bench with books before them, and
hands tied behind. His copies too were
1 66 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
remarkable. One was, *A blind man's
wife needs no paint.' ' Proverbs, sir, Pro-
verbs,' he answered, when asked where it
came from.
He kept a pair of felt shoes for the church,
and it was a sight to see him, only wanting a
frock to look a perfect lay brother, gliding
about with a soft brush to the woodwork,
which has never been so well kept since his
time ; and still more wonderful it was to see
him when a dramatic passage of Scripture was
being read, unconsciously acting it. To this
hour, the Gospel for the Sunday in Lent
recalls him, raising his chin as in the Syro-
Phenician woman's entreaty, stretching out
his hand to repel her — finally looking satis-
fied, all unconsciously, in intense attention ;
but resolution not to look at him was needful.
Alas ! it was an excitable brain, and over-
tasked. He had two sisters who lived with
him, both partially insane though harmless ;
JULY 167
but he was often up half the night with one
or other of them. Each, too, had a son (per-
haps one was a stepson), and one of these
was to assist in the business, but was pro-
nounced ' Never to get beyond the ABC
book of baking.' The other was a cobbler,
but both preyed upon him ; his affairs became
entangled, and things grew worse and worse.
The village shopkeeper, the maker of the
* vinosity ' bread, actually came in private to
beg the clergyman to convey secretly from
him means for the household, saying he had
often known bad debtors, whom he himself
had refused, go and get their bread from the
good man's unfailing charity.
While the authorities were considering
what could be done for the dear little man,
came the first note of school inspection, very
mild and entirely religious, by Archdeacon
Allen. But the very idea was fatal. The
good man told the curate that he could not
i68 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Stand it ; and knowing the distress he was in,
he was assured that his school should not
be examined ; but the very notion, coming on
all the rest, developed the latent insanity.
He was missed, and finally found in the river,
to the lasting grief of those who had always
loved and honoured him, through all his
quaintness.
AUGUST
August Is apt to come in with thunder-
storms. Indeed, the weather is apt to begin
to be thundery at the solstice in June, and
St. Swithin's promise is by no means in-
falHble, whether for wet or fair weather. In
some counties, such as Gloucestershire, they
prefer a shower on his day, and call it christ-
ening the apples ; but Hampshire surely has
the best right to the augury, and we hold that —
If Swithun's day be fair and clear,
It betides a happy year ;
If Swithun's day be dark with rain,
Then will be dear all sorts of grain.
Only twice have I known the forty days to
pass off without rain !
I70 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Thunderstorms are seldom severe here.
We say they go up the river, but whether
this is only one of the many foolish utter-
ances that a tempest evokes, I do not know.
I only do know that when they are seen,
large purple and lurid in the south-west, they
generally come towards us, and that within
the last few years they have often come from
the south-east. As to their coming against
the wind, as they are said to do, that only
means that the small cyclone that brings
them is blowing one way with us, while the
other side of the circle is bringing them. I
do not love them, though there is a terrible
beauty in the grand clouds in far distance
in magnificent mountainous curves, of dazzling
glistening whiteness, relieved against the
deep azure of the sky. I respect those that
can exult in the brilliant flash and mighty
voice, but individually there is something to
me distressing in the uncertainty when or
AUGUST 171
what may come next, and what awful effect
it may have, and it is a great relief when
the intervals between flash and clap grow
measurably longer each time, the birds begin
to sing again, the sun comes out, and all the
drops become diamonds on the leaves, while
the cloud goes off in deep soft purples on the
horizon.
Only about three times have I known the
huore hailstones fall such as we read of.
Once, long ago, a breakfast-cup full of them
was collected. The perfect ones were like
nitre balls, about as big as marbles, trans-
parent outside and white at the centre, such
pretty things, that it was a pity they melted
almost instantly. Those that fell on roofs
ran together into jagged masses, and broke
windows, as well as doing other mischief,
quite showing how the providential hailstones
on the flying foe fought for Joshua and
Barak. Another night, storm did much harm
172 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
in this way ; but the last, on the 8th June
1889, was the worst.
It occurred in the course of numerous
such storms, which visited the whole country.
The lawn was whitened, the great balls came
rushing down the chimneys, and breaking
their way through glass. When the gleam
came afterwards, we found the people mourn-
ing over their allotments, where the potato
haulm was broken, and the poor beans, just
putting out their fragrant black and white
blossoms, were absolutely ruined. The turn-
pike road was torn up to its very bones of
flint, and did not recover itself till after the
winter's vicissitudes had worked in the in-
sufficient repairs.
One cottage was struck by lightning, but
not much harm was done. Some years ago
an oak upon the hill was struck, a long
ribbon of bark being peeled off all the way
down. I know another tree where the top-
AUGUST 173
most bough was scathed in Hke manner ;
but the most remarkable effect I have seen
was in Somersetshire, where a tree (ash, if
I remember rightly) had had such a strip
torn off some way down, when the lightning
seemed to have leapt off to the poor sheep,
and finally had torn a hole in the ground.
Large holly bushes, also a limb of a yew-
tree, have been seen to wither up and die,
without apparent cause, and I have been told
this is the effect of lightning from the earth ;
but I do not know if there is any reason in
this. Mr. Keble once told me of having
seen lightning run along the ground as he
was coming home from a distant part of
his parish, and there is no doubt of its often
doing so in mountainous countries. Thus it
may destroy the roots of these trees.
After one of these thunderstorms, when
walking home late in the evening, in passing
just where a stream crossed the road, begin-
174 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
ning in a pond, and proceeding to a marsh —
the same, by the bye, where we afterwards
found the dead eels, — there were all over the
road an untold multitude of tiny frogs about
an inch long, Charley frogs as the people
call them. The road was quite darkened
with them. I suppose they had just emerged
from their comical tadpole state and were
on their way to disperse themselves over the
country.
A pond full of the black tadpoles or
polliwigs, with their round heads and trans-
parent tails wriggling, is a very amusing
sight. One year a whole party of young
cousins each set up a bowl of tadpoles in the
hope of seeing them become frogs, but they
always died when they grew their first pair
of legs, or the others killed them.
The eldest of us secluded one of hers
from the rest when it had two legs, and two
more appeared, and the tail became thin,
AUGUST 175
but then It died, I believe for want of mud
and reeds in which to hide.
Frogs are very entertaining with their
sudden leaps and droll faces. I have known
and loved them in my younger days, and have
even taken Interest in the solemn, slow-paced
toad. He is still a horror to the ignorant.
A whole circle of maids was once found
standing round the dairy, afraid to enter
because a toad was ensconced there, till a
little girl, under six years old, walked In and
carried it out in her hands.
There was a toad who lived for many
years under an apple tree, close to a wicket-
gate, in honour and seclusion, until an un-
lucky day when, the gate being left open, it
got between the gate and the post, and thus
died, honoured and regretted.
Except from unusually violent storms
beating out the corn, or from prolonged
soaking rain, the harvest is by August toler-
176 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
ablv secure. To be beaten down earlier in
the year, when there is time for bindweed to
grow over the stems, is much more fatal.
The noble full -eared wheat is, some
whitening, some reddening into a beautiful
amber tint ; the beards of the barley unite in
silver waves in the sunlight as the wind goes
over them ; the graceful oats shake their
tresses, and in a few places the humble
rye looks like a poor imitation of wheat.
The school begins to thin, and holidays are
talked of.
Harvest is not quite the parish feast it
used to be, when I have known a little maid
who had spent some time prosperously in
service, begin to weep so pitifully and inces-
santly at the thought of the delights she was
losing, that she had to be restored to her
home !
The whole families used to turn out to-
gether, to reap and bind, and it was con-
AUGUST 177
sidered Mucky' If the child, just promoted to
reaping, cut herself with the sickle. Even If
the top of a finger was cut off, it was speedily-
joined on with a quid of tobacco, after the
remarkable practice of surgery which pre-
vailed before the days of Union doctors.
Those were trifles. On worked and
feasted the family In Its own portions till the
last sheaf — beautiful thing — was loaded, and
the gladsome shout proclaimed it. Then,
still more delightful, the women and children
turned out to lease (as they call gleaning),
and might be seen plodding home loaded with
thin little sheaves artistically tied up with
plaited straws, and great bags of ears that
had fallen without their stems. Piles of corn
were heaped before the houses, but, alas ! few
housewives either glean or bake now. They
depend entirely on the baker's cart.
The joy of harvest has not passed away,
and there is less wlldness, less temptation
N
178 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
therewith, but much picturesqueness is gone.
The reaping machine has taken the place of
the family, and leaves rows to be gathered
and bound up into sheaves, and built up
in the rain- repelling arrangements, which
happily have never been improved upon.
The flowers appropriated to harvest as-
sociations are the tiny Cornflower {Centatirea
cyanus), with its centre of perfect purple
florets, surrounded by the ornamental, im-
perfect, brilliant, blue ones, all enclosed in a
tight, imbricated calyx. It is a favourite for
many reasons, chief of all, for the sake of the
well-known story of Queen Louisa of Prussia
flying before the French with her little child-
ren, and on some delay, keeping them happy
and good with showing them the blue flowers
in the fields ; whence this was the favourite
flower of her son, the Emperor William I.
It is said to be common, but it is a rarity
here. I only know of two fields where it
AUGUST \7C)
has been, though its fellow, the common
Knapweed {Centattrca nigra), goes on show-
ing its purple head to the last of autumn ;
and I have passed in succession a number
of plants, each with a * dumbledore,' appar-
ently half asleep, in the central blossom.
It is the great time for compound flowers.
The yellow corn Marigold (^Chrysanthemum
segctum), though properly a summer flower,
spreads its brilliant gold over the fields till
the frost destroys it ; for, unlike its white
brother, the ox-eye, it is an annual. Farmers
hate it, but it has acquired a popularity since
the Oueen noticed it, and recorded it in her
Scottish Journal. The flowers last so long
that it is very useful for decorations.
Those beautiful plants, the thistles,
spring up wherever they have a chance.
The Dwarfs (Cnicus acaulis), brown and
purple, on the chalk downs, C. arvensis in
fields, C. palustris in marshes, their scaled
i8o AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
calyces bearing a sharp barb on every scale,
their leaves daintily folded in and out, but
with a thorn at every point, their stems all
a-bristle, all expressing the Scottish national
motto, Nemo 7ne impune lacessit. The Milk-
thistle {Cardtms inarianus) has leaves varied
with white ; the Scottish Thistle (Cnictts
lanceolahis) (as I believe) Is the handsomest
and thorniest of all.
There is the Cotton Thistle, a Cnictis also,
less formidable; and the pretty, delicate Saw-
wort [Serratula), not quite a thistle. They all
have the exquisite wings or plumes intended
to scatter their seeds. A patch of thistles on a
downside emits a perfect snow-storm of down,
caught up by the goldfinches of flashing wing.
Of all these plumed seeds the most
beautiful Is that of the Tragopogon major, or
Goat's-beard, better known as the Go-to-bed-
at-noon ; for its yellow blossoms, within their
very long narrow sepals, never remain ex-
AUGUST i8i
paneled after twelve o'clock, but are in time
replaced by most perfect and exquisite stars,
perfect pentagons of cobweb texture, but
stiffer than those of the dandelion.
The matrimonial auguries of the dande-
lion clock —
Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Sailor,
Clergyman, Gentleman,
Apothecary, Thief!
are well known to all.
The mop-like globe of the dandelion are
of these pentagonal stars — the whole of the
compound flowers Syngenesia, as Linnaeus
named the class, being formed on the rule of
five, and the anthers being united together
round the pretty forked style. Some are all
perfect flowers like the thistle ; some are
perfect in the centre, with rays of imperfect
flowers like the daisy ; some, like knap-weed,
have large but empty florets as the border.
Dandelion is really Dent de Lion, Lion's-
1 82 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
tooth, exactly translating the Latin Leontodon.
It is one of the worthiest of the large class,
its serrated leaves being good for salads, and
its root (hard to dig up) being as good as
chicory to mix with coffee. The golden
blossoms, which Jefferies says are of a more
brilliant colour in spring than in autumn, are
among the most glorious of the many earth
stars, and dandelion chains, made by linking
loops formed by inserting the small end of
the hollow stem in the larger one, so that
they can be carried to any length. The only
drawback is the brown stain that the milky
juice leaves on the hands, drawing down the
wrath of elders who care for the dainty
appearance of little girls' pinky paws. The
lion's teeth are to be looked for in the form
of the soft leaves.
Whether Hawk weed [Hieracitcm) was so
called as being good for hawks, I cannot tell.
At any rate, Mouse -ear Hawk weed [Hier-
AUGUST 183
acium pilose /la) is really good for whooping-
cough. It is a very pretty little plant, with
sulphur blossoms of about the size of a six-
pence, on short stems, the buds tipped with
red, the whole plant covered with down, and
with a creeping root. It is one of the gayest
stitches in the embroidery of the down in
company with the delicate white eyebright,
the dwarf red-rattle, and the purple tufts of
stainless thistle, hawkweed,hawk's-beard, wild
lettuce, and the like, all very much alike in
their yellow blossoms, brighten the hedges
and fields. Ragweed, or Senecio sqttalidus,
has a ray of strap-shaped barren florets, like
the daisy and camomile. It is beloved of
caterpillars, striped like tigers, black and
yellow. The Scottish name for it is Stinking
William, under the belief that the Duke of
Cumberland introduced it, a story that I
always thought a libel till I heard that fifteen
new plants had sprung up round Paris from
1 84 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
the forage of the Germans. It is odd that
the universal groundsel, though without a
ray, should also be Senecio.
We have wandered away from the corn-
flowers without mentioning the other typical
one, the poppy, our only scarlet beauty ex-
cept the tiny pimpernel, the shepherd's
weather-glass, and its own near relation, the
Adonis, or pheasant's eye. Adonis may very
well have ensanguined this with his blood,
though I believe that the crimson anemone
has also the honour, and this, by the bye, is
said in Italy to be patriot's blood!
The dear Papaver Rkceas, the common
Poppy, may be seen of any size from the
well-grown plant with flowers of the circum-
ference of an orange to the starveling that
would hardly cover a shilling. Each of the
four petals is of a magnificent crimson, in
almost, not all, cases with an intensely dark
purple or black spot at the base, so as to
AUGUST 185
have a deep-dyed cross at its heart. The
profuse anthers are purple, surrounding one
large four-divided capsule or urn, with a
beautiful lid or cap, ornamented with velvety
rays from the centre. In time, after the fall
of the petals, this cover is lifted up on little
supports, to let out the numerous seeds.
The petals are very slightly attached, and
before blooming are enclosed by two sepals,
sea-green, rough, and hairy, which gradually
part over the crumpled crimson within, and
fall off when the flower expands. A ne-
glected field on a hillside shows like a red
handkerchief dropped down, and it is im-
possible to bestow due blame on the careless
husbandry that has bestowed on us such a
gorgeous spectacle. Yellow Welsh Poppies
{Meconopsis cambricd) are in these parts only
the ornament of shrubberies, and the great
white Opium Poppy, with its dark purple
cross [Papavcr soniniferinn), though found
i86 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
in English botanical books, though of course
in a wild state, is probably only a stray from
gardens, where, with P, medicinumy it grows
harmlessly and beautifully, and takes every
variety of tint of the scarlet and purple grada-
tions. We may have poppies of every size,
from the great emperor of the race, five feet
high, in robes of royal crimson, and flowers,
more than a foot across when expanded,
down to the slender white -edged Iceland
poppy, all bright and glowing, all with the
peculiar sleepy smell, reminding us of laud-
anum, and of all the various uses and abuses
of the juice scraped from them in Indian
fields, and formed into the cakes of opium.
The glory of colour has passed to the
heaths and moors. Here the heath is in its
beauty, beginning with the low growing, gray-
ish-leaved Erica tetralix, or Bell -heather,
with delicately-tinted blushing blossoms, in
a single head at the top of each stalk, gener-
AUGUST 187
ally shaded rose colour, sometimes white,
and then reminding us of the betrothal flower
of Frederick the Noble.
It never grows tall, while the Erica
cinerca, the common Heath, whose leaf, by
the bye, is not nearly so ash-coloured as that
of tetralixy can mount up by its tough-
branched, woody stem to a considerable
height, and rears its deep purple or crimson
bells in tall spires. Though not so large
individually as the blossoms of the bell-
heather, they make much more show, and
give colour to the landscape. The eight
stamens lie deep within the monopetalous
stiff, chaffy bell which hangs on, turning
purple after the seeds have ripened. The
other two British heaths i^E. ciliaris and E.
vagans^ Irish and Cornish) are both very
handsome, and are, we are told, remnants of
the days of very, very old, when mountain
chains now disrupted were all one. Why the
i88 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Cornish heath should be called vagans is not
clear, for though where planted in favourable
soil it grows freely, it has never voluntarily
wandered out of its own peninsula, but re-
mains there, just as the big Roman snails
never get beyond the precincts of the villas
where they were first introduced.
My favourite of the heather kind has been
separated as a genus, having a more open
bell. The Calhtna vulgaris^ or common
Ling, has a paler, more lilac blossom, growing
in graceful branching, ascending spires, which
always puts me in mind of early English
architecture by the peculiar elegance of its
forms. A wood, the upper part of which is
partly of unprosperous oak scrub, partly of
mountain ash, has an undercurrent of magni-
ficent ling, which contrasts with the ruddy
Midsummer shoot of the oak, and the scarlet
fruit and feathery leaves of the rowan or
mountain ash. This wood is said to be a
AUGUST 189
place where foxes are always lost, and at one
time it was supposed that they were under
the protection of a handsome witch-like old
dame, dead many years back.
Whether the woman had any connection
with the rowan, I do not know. It Is really,
little as it looks like It, a relation of the pear.
Pyrics aiccupa^'ia Is its name, and It has a mar-
vellous history really worth putting together.
To begin with, Thor Is said to have jumped
over a river by the help of a branch of It
when on his way to quell the Frost Giants.
Also the Amazons made spears of it, and
Virgil held that It attracted blackbirds and
thrushes. (I could say so of nightingales,
night-jars, and glow-worms.)
This Is for the sake of the fruit, In the
case at least of the mavis and merle, and the
bright red little berry-like fruits are used for
baits by bird-catchers, whence Its names of
the Fowler's service tree, and Lc sorbier des
I90 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
oiseaux. They are so soon devoured that
they never survive to serve as harvest
decorations. In some places they are valued
by human beings as Ingredients In pleasant
drinks.
Its mystic powers are, however, most
curious ; Rowan In Scotch, Roan or Ruon In
Scandinavia, are by some connected with the
word Rune, by others with the sea-goddess
Ran, the raiser of storms and fisher for ship-
wrecked mariners In her net. The VIklnos
always took care to have a piece of this tree
In their long ships as a protection against
her, and the belief continued —
Rowan tree and red thread
Haud the witches a' in dread.
Crosses made of the twigs, tied with red
thread, were worn by HIghlandmen sewn
into their clothes, and not only by them, but
the notion was universal. Dame Sludge
sewed a piece Into Flibbertigibbet's collar
AUGUST 191
as a protection against Wayland Smith's
sorceries. In Yorkshire, Mr. Atkinson was
told there were thirteen witches in the town,
but they could do no harm to one who had
his rowan tree safe in his pocket. So —
If your whipstick be made of ro'an,
You may ride your nag through any town \
or —
Woe to the lad
Without a rowan tree gad.
In Wales, the rowans stand in churchyards
like yew trees in England, and this is prob-
ably connected with the idea commemorated
in an old engraving of the Blessed Saviour's
descent into Hades, where He holds a rowan-
tree cross, while releasing a spirit in prison.
It is as if a bit of the Northern myth
about Thor had been Christianised, yet it is
strange that it should be in Celtic parts that
the notion prevails. Endless instances might
be collected ; indeed, some think that the
true reading of the * Aroint thee, witch,' of
192 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
the sailor's wife in Macbeth, should be ' A
foan-tree, witch.'
August is the month of the greatest beauty
in gardens, perhaps because the fashionable
world inhabits its country houses then, and
expects the borders to be full, so that more
attention has been paid to the later flowers.
The roses still are numerous, though it seems
to me that the real delicately pink, emphati-
cally rose-coloured roses keep to their proper
season of June and July, and that almost all
the later ones are either white or deep crim-
son, with very few exceptions. Is it some
delicate quality in the summer sunshine that
evokes that charming tint ? The later pinks
are in their glory, notably the dark crimson
clove, of unapproachable scent, so are all
the geranium kind, whether the many-tinted
Pelargonium, or the glowing scarlet, or the
lesser scarlets, whose blossom has been sacri-
ficed to their foliage.
AUGUST 193
The Clematis Jacknianni hangs a purple
pall over houses, or else its many varieties
show themselves much enlarged in white or
pale lilac, while the little mountain clematis
forms snowy sheets where it has taken a
hold.
The great pink or white convolvulus like-
wise becomes rampant where it has once
made a home ; indeed, that purest and most
delicate of white flowers, the Convolvulus
sepiuin, or White Bindweed, makes every
hedge-side or neglected laurel' bush charm-
ing. Its spiral buds are specially lovely ;
and it is really in its extreme purity the most
perfect of all its widespread class, well-
named ' Morning Glories.' Very delightful
is the major, in his varieties of purple spoked
with pink, crimson with white, or white with
purple, and not less so.
' His brother a minor, a cornet in blue,'
as said the one line that has stayed with me,
o
194 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
of one of the many weak imitations of the
Buttei'flys Ball and the Peacock at Ho7ne,
Then there is the small mauve (C. mauri-
tafticus), and the queen of all, the great Indian
Ip077iea, which I have only once seen, but
never can forget, very large, of the softest,
purest, most indescribable azure-blue, with
pink divisions.
SEPTEMBER
September has its associations, though to
the womankind who sit at home it means
the sound of popping in the fields around,
and the destruction of the coveys of round
plump birds, which they have seen run as
babies along the ruts, or rise in a stream
of flight in the rear of their parents.
The day used to mean a rising very
early In the morning by the young and
lively, to give their gentlemen their break-
fast, and see them off with their ecstatic
spaniels before the dew was off The dogs
knew the day as well as the men, and I
have actually known two who, when the
great day fell on a Sunday, rushed off on
196
AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
their own account without their master;
though as a rule dogs know Sunday per-
fectly well.
Things are changed now in matters of
sport, and the freshness of the morning
has ceased to be esteemed. Often, too,
the harvest is not sufficiently advanced for
the doom of the partridge — pat-rich, as the
country folk call it. They are all still busy
in the fields, and the shout proclaiming the
carrying of the last sheaf rings out in turn
from farm to farm, though most of the
picturesque observances of the harvest
home are dying away before the tramp of
the schoolmaster, and still more the squeal
and hum of the machine.
Certain evenings dwell on one's mind,
one in especial, when I stood among the
trees, with the gold of the sunset gleaming
behind the hill, and on the other side the
round red harvest moon slowly rising, while
SEPTEMBER 197
■ M * I
in the stillness the shout over the final carry-
ing rang out, mellowed by distance, and
poor Madge Wildfire's death -song comes to
memory —
Our work is over, over now,
The gudeman wipes his weary brow,
The last long wain wends slow away,
And we are free to sport and play.
The night comes on when sets the sun,
And labour ends when day is done.
When Autumn's gone and Winter's come.
We hold our joyous harvest home.
Gleaning is not what it was, mowing
and raking leave fewer ears, and it is
chiefly the holiday of the elder women for
old sake's sake, rather than the actual gain ;
and, indeed, some farmers do not permit it
at all. Pigs finish off the remnants, guarded
by a boy, to the regret of the schoolmaster,
who, if he be past his fourth standard, will
probably never get him back again, even
when he is out of work.
198 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Old-fashioned farmers still give their
harvest supper ; but the new generation,
without mutual hereditary interests between
them and the labourers, disregard it. A
general harvest feast for the entire parish
has been tried ; but to make it a success,
there should be a thorough element of
geniality and enjoyment in the entertainers.
If they only do the thing as a duty. It will
fall flat, and the company will look with
regret to the ruder pleasures, unrestrained
by the gentry. Even the steadiest do not
like the evening to end too soon, and
dancing and fireworks have their use in
keeping up the occupations, especially when
the squire's or clergyman's family possess
members to whom it is all a personal
delight.
The harvest feast in church is another
thing. It is a modern invention, but is
thoroughly enjoyed by the people, if they
SEPTEMBER 199
are encouraq^ed to make their offerincrs in
kind for the sick in hospitals. Very queer
things come, and difficult to dispose of —
enormous pumpkins, great pieces of honey-
comb, apples enough to make the church
smell like an apple-chamber, onions which
have to be relegated to the porch, and
big purple and white turnips, or long-
tailed red carrots to be judgmatically dis-
posed of. Sometimes it is the best way
to have a week-day evening for these sub-
stantial offerings, which are afterwards sent
to a hospital ; and a Sunday when beauty
is alone consulted, and the staple of the
decorations can be the three sorts of corn,
assisted by grasses stored since summer,
together with dahlias, scarlet geraniums,
the brilliant, waxy berries of the wild
guelder-rose, and the grand dark sceptres
of the reed maces, which everybody insists
on callinpf bulrushes.
200 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Loaves of home-made bread are some-
times brought, reminiscences of the time
when some of the good old house-mothers
used to present their clergyman with a loaf
out of their * leasing corn ' as their tithe.
Another tithe, acting the other way, was
that when a tenth child was born in a
family, without any previous deaths, a spray
of myrtle was fastened in its christening
cap — there were such things then — and the
parson was bound to send it to school.
Such a tithe child have I seen baptized,
and in contradiction to those who say that
a labourer cannot provide for his old
age, it is worth recording that the father,
though by no means a distinguished work-
man, but sober, steady, and with a
helpful, thrifty wife, saved enough to pro-
vide himself a weekly amount in his old
age, though he lived to be over eighty.
There was some addition made from the
SEPTEMBER 201
alms ; but even otherwise, he would hardly
have come to the workhouse.
Another apple- faced family, where the
children amount to sixteen, and without any
special powers or cleverness, have from the
first been absolutely punctual in payments,
small and great, neatly dressed, not only
without but within, as measurements for
dresses have revealed, and their cottage a
pattern of tidiness. The young men are
mostly out in the world — two soldiers and
one a sailor in the Royal Navy, whose
pay comes in part to his home. The
lads have bouo^ht a wheeled chair for an
invalid sister, and though grateful for broth
or niceties in a stress of sickness, they
never beg.
Sensation represents the labourer as get-
ting nine shillings a week with twelve small
children. The nine shillings once was true ;
but whether in the land of monogamy there
202 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
ever were twelve children all small together
may be doubted ! The hardest time in a
peasant family is when there are five or
six children, none able to earn anything,
and school laws preventing the elder ones
from acting as nurses at home, and letting
the mother earn something. It is really
the best thing for the family in the end ;
but it presses hard till the school age is
past. Then one has to submit to the girl
being a victim to the baby, and the boy
to the cows, which in spite of their calm,
innocent natures become very demoralising
to the small herdsman, who has nothing
to do but lounge about, never to be found
when his cows are where they ought not
to be.
It is drink on one side of the house,
muddle on the other, that cause real poverty,
far more than large families, or even ill-
health. Yet the sickly woman must be a
SEPTEMBER 203
heroine in spirit who keeps up incessantly
the task of beinor her own efficient servant
o
of all work, without relaxation, and without
sal volatile or any other stimulant than the
beneficent tea !
The last remnants of the harvest holidays
are often spent on blackberries. The world
has found out how handsome the despised
bramble is in its place, with its pearly blossom
and its long twining limbs, with their load of
fruit, black, red, and green in the several
stages, and the five-leafleted foliage, which
assumes every tint in the scale between
crimson and green.
I have a drawing of a spray of leaf, flower,
and fruit excellently drawn and coloured by
an invalid village girl. When she was laid
low by some spine affection, a lady, to amuse
her, gave her a paint-box and a flower-draw-
ing to copy. She did it so well that she was
encouraged to go on, and gradually developed
204 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
a really surprising talent for drawing flowers
from nature. She could not originate, but
she copied the real blossom admirably, and
generally with much taste, and by the help
of a clever contrivance of her brother, she
could make the lettering of the Old English
texts, which she illuminated, wonderfully
even and straight. One year she designed
the Christmas card for the G. E. S., but her
work was not quite certain enough to be
absolutely reliable for orders. She did, how-
ever, prosper well over illuminated texts,
cards, menu cards, and even stools. Having
been previously wretched at being a bur-
den to her family, her spirits rose when
she became an assistance to them, and the
content thus occasioned really seemed to
prolong her life, till the years of influenza
broke down her strength finally.
The stubble fields have their embroidery
in the tiny original pansy, barely freaked
SEPTEMBER 205
with jet, and not purple with love's wound,
the Viola t^^icolor. It blossoms all the year,
summer and autumn more or less, and so
do all its splendid garden varieties, of royal
dark purple velvet, glowing yellow, copper-
coloured, or strangely - eyed, like human
countenances, or cats' faces, only all these
gradually degenerate till they almost return
to their tiny original type in the cornfield.
Three faces under a hood, herb Trinity, are
among their names ; besides that maidens
call them love-in-idleness, while their jocund
looks win them the name of heart's-ease ; and
the French pens^e, from their variety, was
known to Ophelia : ' There's pansies, that's
for thoughts.' The Germans regard them
as the Stiefmtittery showing the mother-in-
law predominant in purple velvet, her own
two daughters gay in purple and yellow, the
two poor little Cinderellas more soberly and
scantily attired, squeezed in between. It is
2o6 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
a curious instance of unbending system that
Linnaeus grouped these with the compound
flowers, because like them they have five
anthers meeting in a point round the style.
Another lover of stubble is the Shepherd's
Needle, or Venus's Comb (Scandix Pecten-
Veneris), whose long spiked capsules are'
much more visible than the insignificant,
umbelliferous blossom. See, too, the neat
little gray crosses of the Field Madder [Sker-
ardia arvensis\ a near relation of the Galium^
white and yellow, that ramp about in hedge-
rows, all with multitudinous white and yellow
blossoms. They are, at least the smoother
kinds, our lady's-bedstraw, and might afford
a springy couch ; but their more scantily
blossoming brother, all over tiny pricks, is
well named Cleavers or Cliders {Galittm
aparine), for it is very hard to be rid of The
family culminates in the fragrant Woodruff
[Aspertcla odorata), over long ago. All have
SEPTEMBER 207
ansfular stems and leaves in whorls. There
are the pretty little Linarias, tiny snap-
dragons, or toad-flax ; the Linaria elatine
and spuria — one with heart-shaped leaves,
the other with egg-shaped ones — creep about
the ground, and show their long spurs and
yellow and deep purple flowers nearly all
through the year. The ivy-leaved Linaria
cymbalaria adorns old walls almost every-
where with pendent bunches of leaves, and
pretty pale purple flowers, and the very hand-
some L. vulgaris raises tall spikes of yellow
and orange flowers in the hedge. All have
long spurs, and the peculiar flower, closing
like a box, especially seen in the grand
banner of old castle walls, the Antirrhinum
77iaJ2is (Snap-dragon), with its scarlet body
and yellow lip, gay, according to Sir John
Lubbock, on purpose to attract the insects on
whom the fertilisation depends. It is amus-
ing to see a great dumbledore enter, the lid
2o8 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
close on him, and then his velvet tail back
out gradually. The papilionaceous flowers
have no such convenient doorway, so the
bees bore a hole through the wrappings of
the keel, which contains their sheaf of
stamens, with one loose from the rest to
allow for the swelling of the germ into a pod.
Darwin has an amusing account of inter-
dependence, showing how the prosperity of a
bean-field depends on the number of bumble
bees which carry about the pollen, how the
bees may be reduced by the field-mice which
eat the honey in their bag-like cells, and, I
think, how the field-mice are kept down by
hawks and owls, and so that the unspar-
ing gamekeeper does serious damage to the
crops, which are withering into blackness
now from the once fragrant black and white
labiate blossoms.
The balance of the commissariat of nature
is, as has often been observed, most marvel-
SEPTEMBER 209
lously adjusted, though man, for his own
purposes, disturbs it. Yet the instincts
intended to keep it up still survive. For
instance, certainly in one instance, I believe in
two, where the mischievous Anarcharis, the
American Pond-weed, astray from aquariums,
had begun to choke a pond, two swans,
which had lived childless for years, began to
lay eggs, and produced cygnets enough to
keep in check this their favourite food.
Even the much abused wasp has its value
in keeping down the flies. The said wasps
are at their worst in the end of August and
beginning of September, though there are
those who think the commotion they cause
by far the worst part of the wasp visitation.
In point of fact, the wasp has no desire to
sting except in self-defence, and therefore it
is wiser to let her alone in her investigations,
though when they happen to concern our
own dinner and our own heads they are
p
2IO AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
teasing, but infinitely less so than jumping
about and making dabs at her, which may
very justly exasperate her. In truth, the
modern female ought to have a sympathy
with her, as she and her sisters, like the
working bees, ants, and hornets, are the
useful spinsters of the community. The
wasp, too, is a worthier character than the
bee, though less valuable to us. She does
not murder her drone, but lets him be service-
able at home, until the final doom, when all
die together of frost, except the valiant queens.
Instead of spitefully killing their daughters,
and when withheld, bouncing forth with a
huge bodyguard, whizzing behind them, these
heroines go out alone in solitude to be the
valiant founders of fresh colonies. So much
honour do these lonely dames deserve, that I
always feel a certain cruelty in the saying —
To kill a wasp in May
Is worth a load of hay,
SEPTEMBER 211
though the cruelty is kindness to the fruit,
to the meat, and to the many people ; and I
did not sympathise with an old farming-man
who deferred his onslaught on a hornet's
nest till there should be more to kill.
This hornet's nest was just within the door
of an outhouse, where each insect had to
crawl over the beam of the doorway before
entering. Here he took his stand, and
stabbed each as it crossed the fatal beam, till
all were gone save the queen, the larvae, and
a solitary loyal guardswoman who stung him
as he slew her queen. And the chicken ate
up the grubs, including some just ready to
emerge, perfect hornets in shape, but all
white. We kept the nest for a long time,
but it was less beautiful than the solitary
wasps', which are pendent spiral gray paper
circular folds enclosing a few cells.
The swarming ants come out now. They
are perhaps the best emblems of modern
212 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
society, for while the little black or brown
unwedded females toil for the general wel-
fare, tend the infants, bring home loads,
and some at least store up corn, and serve as
the famous example to the sluggard, their
more perfect sisters perish in their vanity.
As the Spanish proverb says : ' The ant
found wings for her own destruction.'
Out they burst on a sunny day, 'just
come out,' all with pairs of silver gauze wings,
all over gravel -walks and lawns. I have
seen them very appropriately, though very
inconveniently, swarming thus over the whole
of a terraced garden prepared for an after-
noon tea. They take a short flight in the
air, soon descend, and if not eaten by birds,
some are captured by their own kind, who
bite off their wings, and bring them to
fulfil domestic duties underground. Others
are said to strike off their wings, and become
the mothers of new homes.
SEPTEMBER 213
As Kingsley says, what would become of
us if lions had the power of acting together,
and devoting themselves to the common good
that ants have ? Taking them altogether,
they seem to me the most wonderful things
in creation, with their herds of aphides, whom
they pasture, protect, and obtain food for,
from their self-devotion and ingenuity. The
great horse -ants, who build tall cones of
pine needles in the plantations, have their
roads leading up to their home ; but we have
none of those strange slave-holding soldier-
ants who become demoralised and helpless
from being constantly waited on by the poor
little black slaves whom they capture.
Let us give one glance at the great spiders
who have those cottony webs in the furze,
and may be seen at the entrance of the
funnel-like den in the centre, with their eight
legs upon their cords, ready to make their
prey sooner or later 'walk into their parlour.'
214 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
They do look wicked enough for Web-
spinner, that miser who entrapped the poor
widow, ' One Madgie de la Moth ' ; but I
have a kindness for the geometrical spider
who hangs up those delicate regular con-
structions to be gemmed with diamonds on
these dewy mornings ; also for the hunter-
spider, who lived and kept his larder under the
stigma of an iris ; and for the nest of babies
who lived in one common web in my creep-
ing juniper, generally all in one lump ; but
they would start all over the threads if the
family web were touched with a pin. And the
Gossamer (Gottes cymar) that floats over the
grass, all shining in the low sunshine, was
once Freya's veil — afterwards the Blessed
Virgin's — all the work of tiny spiders, leap-
ing from one bent to another !
Whom have we here ? An enormous cater-
pillar as thick as a finger, of a delicate apple-
green colour, with a little brown and yellow
SEPTEMBER 215
horn upon his tail, and a short dash of purple
and white on each side of all his rings, and
occasionally he rears up his head and front
legs in a position that causes him and his
kind to bear the name of Sphinx. He has
been living on privet leaves for some weeks
past, and now is come out for his final
wandering. I have in past times found a
ring of school-children in terror round this
dreadful animal, and one braver than the
rest about to dispose of it with his heavy
boot. Now, they are more inclined to pre-
sent it to their young ladies as a great
curiosity. This it scarcely can be called,
for it is the commonest sort of sphinx or
hawk-moth caterpillar. The jessamine and
elephant species are much greater prizes, to
say nothing of the strange Death's-head,
who adds to the terror of his appearance by
squeaking, and whose larva lives on potato
haulm. Did Raleigh introduce it ?
2i6 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
If you keep the privet larva, in another
day or two he will look sickly, and the beau-
tiful green will assume a yellowish tinge.
This is the beginning of his change. Give
him a deep pot of fresh soft earth, and he
will bury himself, but ere many days are past
will rise half out of his grave in mahogany-
coloured cerements, where his future pro-
boscis may be detected curled up. Let him
alone, and next spring a beautiful brown-
shaded and pinky large moth will emerge,
but generally at some impossible time, and
escape unseen. Once, indeed, instead of a
moth there escaped from the chrysalis a
whole family of little white Ichneumon flies,
to my exceeding horror and disgust, though
I have since come to believe that it does
not make much difference to caterpillar
felicity whether these creatures live within
it, or it comes to its proper development.
The larva of the puss moth, the prettiest
SEPTEMBER 217
caterpillar I ever saw, has two horns,
whence, at a touch on the back, two pink
fibres are protruded, which may be whip-
lashes to drive away the parent ichneumon
fly from laying eggs in it. Another very
pretty caterpillar may be found now, beauti-
ful pale green, but with black velvet ' revela-
tions ' between its rings as it crawls, or rolls
up in a ring, with tufts like those on a tooth-
brush along its sides, and one pink one on
its tail. Its proper name is the Tussock.
When about to change, it weaves its tufts
and any fragments of wood it can saw off
into a round cocoon, fastened against a wall.
It is a good sort to keep, for it can be seen
as through a veil in the act of weaving, with
its head going from side to side.
Moths, especially sphinxes, are seldom to
be seen in the daytime ; but one, the humming-
bird sphinx, pertains to the delicious sunny
days of September, when it is to be seen
2i8 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
hovering over late roses, blue salvias, dahlias,
or any other gorgeous autumn flower, insert-
ing its long trunk, but never settling, and
all the time quivering its wings so rapidly,
like the little birds it is named from, that
there is no detecting what they are like.
Not so the great splendid Peacock and
Red Admiral butterflies, which sit basking,
opening and closing their beauteous wings
in extreme enjoyment. Twice it has been
my good fortune to see some sixty or seventy
magnificent admirals all together. Once it
was on a heap of apples, once on some rare
foreign shrub, which had somewhat the
odour of apples. Whatever attracted them,
they made one of the most beautiful exhibi-
tions I ever beheld.
Those apples were in Devonshire, where
every one of the little low gnarled apple-
trees in the orchard, so beautiful with
blossom in the spring, begins the month
SEPTEMBER 219
with brilliant red, green, and yellow heaps
below them. The more beautiful to look
at, the more acid and uneatable, so the
orchards are safe even from the almost om-
nivorous village boy. Formerly, when cider
was a universal drink, and often part of the
weekly wages, every farm and every estate
had its cider-press — a great granite thing
nearly as large as the round table of the
drawing-room of the former half- century,
with patterns tooled on the edge, four or
five inches thick, and a hole in the middle
for the screw on which it was made to revolve
by leverage of man or horse. A Hampshire
man, who was taken to fetch home a horse
from Devon, was delighted with the cider,
which he supposed to be a treat for a
stranger. The several dialects of the
counties were amazing to one another.
'My son, you talks French,' was said to
him.
220 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Now cider is far less often home-brewed,
the granite presses have been made garden
decorations, and the apples are often ex-
ported, to be used in clearing the colours
of all those aniline shades of mauve which
are extracted from coal, and, we are told,
were stored in the primeval vegetation by
the sunshine.
The Devon saying is, that to eat a roasted
apple at bedtime prevents ever having to
send for the doctor. An apple, however, is
never so delicious as when eaten raw with
the teeth in the garden. Then were enjoyed
the stubbord, excellent in its prime, but soon
woolly, the Duke of Cornwall, of orange
below and freckled longitudinally with red,
the red-streaked Ribstone pippin, the deep
crimson Ouarendon, red even in its flesh.
These all belong to the old woman's younger
days of apple-eating, and as grafted trees are
said to have the same tenure of life as their
SEPTEMBER 221
parent stock, are in danger of becoming as
extinct as is the golden pippin, or as a huge
cooking -apple, of which we once had two
old trees, and which a farmer's wife called
the Buntry Dew. She is believed to have
meant Bonte de Dieu.
This is not a cider country ; but we have
enough to be the delight of youth, the worry
of schools, and to afford plenty of pictur-
esque apple - gathering. Alternate years
seem needed for really plentiful crops, and
one beneficent mission of spring frosts is
to cut off the blossom and rest the trees.
OCTOBER
Fresh October brings the pheasant,
Then to gather nuts is pleasant,
wrote Sara Coleridge long ago In her rhymes
for her children. And as to the first line,
one can only say, * Pity 'tis, 'tis true,' If one
is neither a sportsman nor a housewife. For
what a sight the live pheasant is If we come
on him suddenly in the evening sunshine
that lights all his coppery feathers with
metallic lustre, while he turns his stately
neck, and looks round with his eye in its
setting of red, his long barred tail giving the
dignity of a train. So tame are the beautiful
creatures, often reared under hens, that I
have known them feed on chestnuts on one
OCTOBER 223
side of a tree, while I have been picking on
the other, and it has seemed hard that their
confidence should so be deceived when
battues begin. However, it may be better
to live to be shot than never to have lived at
all ! And though, when game laws are in
peril, I own to some w^onder that the sport-
ing system should be so managed as to make
them specially irritating to the peasant and
tempting to the poacher, it must be owned
that preserving incidentally saves wild plants
from being exterminated by unscrupulous
marauders. Daffodils, snowdrops, lilies of
the valley, ferns, and even primroses, would
not long exist if every wood could be over-
run by those who have no mercy on roots,
and care not for the future.
And before we leave the pheasant, I must
record, for the benefit of the polite letter-
writer, a note in which a lady-farmer returned
thanks for the present of one, declaring that
224 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
^ — ~- ■ - ' ■ ■ ■ . I I— ■ . ^
her ' gastronomical powers did it full justice,
as it became small by degrees and beauti-
fully less,' which is not the usual course with
the appearance of a half-eaten bird !
As to the nuts, a great deal of charm has
been attributed to nutting, but it must be
in some place where the breaking of hazel
boughs is immaterial, as perhaps it was in
the old easy-going times. Now the wood-
men do not hail a rine crop with delight, as
they have hard work to guard their bushes
from being torn down. The conventional
picture of the boy in a nut-tree throwing to
the girl below, depicts what is here at least
impossible, for our hazels would hardly sup-
port a boy of seven years old !
The cluster of nuts is a pretty thing, with
the softly tinted nut sunk within the long
calyx. By the bye, what part of the nut-
bush is supposed to be of the same colour
as hazel eyes 1 The filbert is still more
OCTOBER 235
graceful, with much longer sheaths as beards,
whence the name — full-beard.
The Walnut {Jtcgians regia), the royal
Jove's acorn, namely, comes from Persia.
Walnut is really the foreign nut, the first
syllable being like Welsh, the Teutonic for
'stranger,' as the Germans call Italy Welsch-
land, and turkeys Welschhahnen. The
French dinde is Me Inde' — the most correct
of the three names for that fowl, as the wild
turkey is assuredly not Turkish, but Ameri-
can, and so shares the name with the Red
Indian and with Indian corn.
Hops and turkeys, carp and beer,
Came to England all in one year.
So says good old Izaak Walton, on the
authority of Sir R. Baker, who makes the
year 1523. Others Insert the word pickerel,
a young pike, and some say ' Reformation,'
but I believe the above to be the rl^ht
version.
226 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Beer or ale was assuredly drunk by the
oldest English, though they did not, like the
Northmen, make ale a part of their names,
as Olaf — which is really ale -giver. Prob-
ably, however, the name of beer had in
some way gone out of use, and the new
brew, flavoured by hops, assumed the name.
Hitmulus lupiiluSy the hop, is common
enough in all our hedges, though it is some-
times doubted whether it is only a stray run
wild from those hop gardens which, in their
prime, rival the vineyards of the South with
their graceful foliage and pretty leafy catkins.
It is only as wild that they grow in these
parts, and merely as a visitor that I have
seen the long alleys between the well-laden
poles. The universal holiday in hopping
villages is scarcely yet over : that time when
old and young turn out, and the peculiar fra-
grance inspires a restful feeling beneficial to
the nerves. A hop pillow was one of the
OCTOBER 227
remedies that did poor old George III. the
most good under Dr. WilHs's care. The
influx of rough strangers from the slums is
the only drawback to the glad season, and
they, poor things, are so much the better for
what is for once a wholesome festival time to
them, that it can hardly be grudged to them.
Indeed, in one case at least, it is made
by the clergy a means of trying to convey
some spiritual benefit to them, and they
show themselves grateful.
The summer birds are departing. The
swallows sit in long rows on roofs and tele-
graph wires, meditating departure, and per-
haps instructing their broods. The other
birds go more quietly, and seldom notify
their intentions, though I have once met a
flock of hen chaffinches on their way, but
here in the South migration is not so uni-
versal as in the North. Many of these ladies
remain for the winter, and so do the golden-
228 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
crested wrens, who migrate from Yorkshire,
but whom I have often seen popping about
quickset hedges in the winter.
This is the month above all of the glory
of autumn. St. Martin's or St. Luke's little
summer, or the Indian summer, whichever
we are pleased to call it, brings the brightest
of sunshine, and the sun being low compara-
tively early, lights up everything with a side-
long ray that is specially embellishing to the
red trunks of pines, and the gray lichen-clad
boles of oaks. ,
The leaves have begun to put on their
final robes of glory. Even little Herb-robert
(Geranium robertianum), while blossoming
still, has put his much-divided leaves into
the robes of a doctor of divinity. The way-
faring-tree, once a gray woolly thing, is
equally crimson. So are the docks, the
lythrums, the purple loosestrife, and the
willow herbs. In fact, the red purple flowers
OCTOBER 229
seem to have leaves also susceptible of the
same dye. They would make a beautiful
bouquet, if it were not hard to find perfect
ones, as they drop off as soon as gathered,
the flow of sap from the vessels of the stem
having ceased.
The hedge - side is a charming study
of colouring — in masses of yellow, amber,
purple, crimson, all shades of pale brown,
and green in every variety. The yellow is
generally maple, whose pinnate leaves take
sundry tints of gold and brown, while some
remain green and still show the little red ex-
crescences which are the work (I believe) of
one of the many bedeguars. The amber is
the autumn dress of the hawthorn, each of
whose tiny winged leaves takes a uniform-
colour. Purple and crimson adorn the Cornel
or Dogwood [Cormcs sanguineus), a dull, in-
significant bush in the summer, with a poor
little white four-stamened flower in corymbs,
230 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
but in autumn imperially robed in all varie-
ties of purple, sometimes so dark as to be
almost black, sometimes bright blood-red,
meriting the specific name, and the twigs
standing up into the sun, perfectly brilliant
as the light shines through them. The bits
of oak are of all shades between brown and
green, the later shoots, lingering after Mid-
summer, showing red. The dog-roses con-
tribute golden leaves and hips of shining
scarlet, or duller rounder balls of the white
field-rose, long bents stand up from the
still green grass, the bramble boughs bear
blossoms and show all tints on their leaves,
of purple, red, and yellow, sometimes mixed ;
and over all winds the Clematis vitalba, well-
named Traveller's-joy, or Old Man's Beard,
displaying those soft white woolly wigs that
are formed by the silky wings of the seeds.
A few thistles, knap-weeds In rich purple,
golden-rod in yellow, and herb-roberts in
OCTOBER 231
pink, still star the banks, and it is quite diffi-
cult to get along the lane for counting the
variations of beauty. Here and there we
have bushes of the Ettony7nus europoeus, or
Spindle-wood, Skewer-wood, some still bright
lively green, without a berry, being the male
plants ; and alternately with them, others
with the foliage further gone, but with
the unusually beautiful fruit, the five-divided
capsule of a delicate, pure pink, most un-
common in seed-vessels, and which, opening,
discloses a brilliant orange-coated seed. The
wood is very hard, and was used for the
spindle in spinning days, also for skewers,
which an old woman said were made from a
tree that grows on purpose.
Thence, of course, the English names ;
the Latin is more puzzling, as it is said to
come from Euonyme, the mother of the
Furies, whether because of the fitness of
the wood for weapons, or because the fruit
232 AN OLD WOMAN S OUTLOOK
is peculiarly unwholesome, there is no
guessing.
Above and beyond, the woods repeat and
amplify the glory. The elms begin by being
spangled with golden leaves here and there,
and gradually become towering masses of
gold. The beeches are in every shade
from green and flame colour on each tree.
I shall never forget the year of after-glows
which we were told to ascribe to the
volcanoes in Java, when in the sunsets one
especial tall, upright tree, stood up opposite
to the sunset, as it were a pillar of fire.
The oaks repeat every possible shade of
brown and 'old gold'; the wild cherries —
once piles of snow — are now pyramids of
crimson, and the seas of bracken beneath are
at first sight all a yellow field, but on ex-
amination they show golden -yellow rising
above the mass, green, edged with gold, and a
whole scale of tints, while the slender birches
OCTOBER 233
above become again silver trees loaded with
gold. The wayfaring trees and guelder roses
are In various shades of crimson.
Then there are the fungi. Under the fir
trees rose the magnificent Agaricus miis-
carucSy of tiger-like brilliance — for it is ex-
tremely poisonous to human creatures, but
its beauty Is a warning. The stem and
gills of the purest white, the upper um-
brella-like part, properly called then the
pileus or hat, deep dark crimson, some-
times plain, but oftener spotted over with
raised white dots, like pearl -headed pins
in a velvet cushion, really the remnant
of the veil. There, too, was the emi-
nently wholesome and excellent Canthar-
ellics cibariiis, or chanterelle, apricot-coloured
and apricot-scented, much admired by ad-
venturous eaters of toadstools. Their en-
tirely unquestionable friend the Mushroom
[Agaricus cauipestris), white - covered and
234 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
rosy-gilled, so charming in dewy meadows
in September, is generally over, only leaving
its green fairy rings. There is another
species, called the Horse-mushroom {Aga-
rictis arvensis), large and handsome, but
coarse-looking, growing under trees, good
for catsup, and sometimes called unwhole-
some, but really only becoming so when
decaying and eaten by slugs.
The little buff- coloured Champignon
{Agaricus oreades\ which grows in rings on
the downs, is also good to eat, and so is
St. George's Mushroom [Agm^icus georgii),
which, as the name implies, comes early in the
year. These strange, wonderful things seem
created to absorb the moisture of decaying
nature, to grow up quickly, and convert
what would otherwise be deleterious into
food for various beings, or else, themselves
passing away, form soil where other vege-
table growth can spring. The bare, red-
OCTOBER 235
brick wall or bare wall, or the rouorh bark
of a tree, soon is varied, at every joint
or corner, by the yellow or gray crust of
lichen, with invisible seeds at its edo^es.
On them soon follow tender tufts of velvet-
like moss, and by and by, if there be a
coign of vantage, the polypody, the chick-
weed, the pellitory ; in some counties the
wall penny -wort, and by and by follow the
red Valerian, the snap-dragon, and wallflower.
The lichen has begun the work ; the
mushroom is generally in moist places, and
is more developed, bearing spores contain-
ing the germs of reproduction. The Agarics
are the most developed — with their um-
brella shape — the true toadstool, appro-
priate to Puck. They come up in round
buttons, gradually open their heads into
what botanists call a pileits or hat, smooth
or sometimes warty above. A veil which
had enclosed them becomes divided, leav-
236 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
ing a fringe above upon the piletcs^ and a
ring below on the stem.
Below, the covering is divided into con-
verging rays or gills, between which are
contained the spores. Other fungi carry on
the whole work of ripening under their outer
covering ; others have their spores within
tubes, looking sponge -like. The numbers
are infinite. In one walk of little more
than a mile I counted full twenty - two
sorts.
The Puff-ball {Ly coper don), whose spores
are first hidden in a spongy consistency of
cells which becomes black powder, shut up in
a round white wall of skin, is averred to be
eatable ; but I had rather not try, and would
leave it to its proper use of smoking out bees.
The Bolettts is no beauty — a great, thick,
lumpy thing, liver-coloured, and with appar-
ently yellow sponge consisting of tiny tubes
beneath it. Break it ; when, if the fieshy
OCTOBER 237
interior retains the original lemon tint, it
is probably wholesome, and is the Boletus
cduiis, with reticulations on the bulbous stem.
If the flesh begins turning blue, it is Boletus
luridus, and poisonous. Slugs, black and
gray, seem to find both equally to their
taste. Then on stumps of trees are the
graceful, large, vase -like white Polyporus,
the edge turned over on the up-sloping
gills, so as to form cups that might be a
model. Also on trees, clusters of gray or
white curved Polyporus squamostcs, like the
eatable nests of the Chinese swallow, and
on the oak tree branches that peculiar jelly-
like Tremella ajcrantium, of a bright orange
colour, which the Germans have named St.
Gundula's lamp, in honour of the holy
maiden who was wont to go out with her
lamp in early twilight morning to visit the
sick. Probably it is luminous, as decaying
wood often is.
238 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Then there are delicate Hlac mushrooms,
and tiny, tiny red or yellow Agarics peeping
up through the grass by the roadside ^A.
coccinetts) ; also the purple, yellow, or white-
branched Clavaria. The Peziza coccinea,
or Fairy Bath, a cup of brilliant poppy-red,
is 4 to be found upon dry sticks, generally
at the back of hedges. Cup lichens, tiny
gray cups, are to be found everywhere,
and now and then that greater prize,
the kind tipped, as it were, with red
sealing-wax.
Nowhere is the story of Eyes and No
Eyes more entirely to be carried out than
in a lane in this and the ensuing months, so
amusing all the year round to Eyes, scarcely
ever interesting to No Eyes.
The gardens go on showing their late
summer glory, the scarlet geranium which,
coming from a Southern hemisphere, still
finds autumn congenial ; the heliotrope, gray,
OCTOBER 239
purple and delicious ; the fuchsia, with its
crimson calyx, veiling the purple fold of
petals, far more beautiful In the original colour-
ing: and form than in the tortured freaks
of gardeners ; the dahlia, crimson, sulphur,
purple, or white, pinked and quilled In the
double state, which for once I prefer to
the single, though that has of late been
the fashion. Both these names, like the
Kalmia, sound so friendly and natural that
it Is odd to realise that they are formed
from those of Fuchs, Dahl, and Kalm,
three of the twelve men whom Linnaeus
termed his Apostles, and sent exploring Into
tropical regions, which proved fatal to the
health of some of them.
The great vegetable marrows, called in
Kent Timnals, perhaps from a first grower,
for there seems no other cause, are in their
fullest magnificence, stretching their long
limbs covered with husfe vine- like leaves
240 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
in the utmost luxuriance, and showing their
fine-looking fruit in all patterns and grada-
tions — the ripe yellow, the striped green
in alternate divisions of light and dark,
the small -growing green, and the large,
star-like yellow flowers, and corkscrew
tendrils, reminding us for one thing of
Cinderella's coach, for another, of the fabled
husbandman who regretted that handsome
trees like oaks and handsome fruit like the
gourd did not go together, till an acorn fell
on his face, and he cried —
Rubbing the place,
How lucky this was not a pumpkin ?
I think this was in a charming book of
my childhood, which I rather believe belonged
to the S.P.C.K., but unluckily long since out
of print. It was all fables in verse, and con-
tained some capital things, of which I re-
member some fragments : one beginning —
OCTOBER 241
An owl from out a hollow tree
One afternoon was peeping ;
It was about half-after-three,
His usual time for sleeping.
He proceeds to wish it were always dark,
with no sunshine —
No glaring flowers would then be here,
So gaudy and perfumy ;
But day would just like night appear
As beautiful and gloomy.
Of course a moraliser comes by, far less
amusing.
The gourds of primitive nations, and the
pumpkin pies which are to America what
Michaelmas geese are to us, come to mind,
though it is hinted that the original 'pump-
kin pie ' was only fatde de mieux, and that
the regulation dish takes a great deal of
flavouring to make it go down.
We have had a really Scriptural experi-
ence of gourds. A marrow which appeared
at dinner was extremely bitter, and absolutely
R
242 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
nauseating, recalling in a moment Elisha's
young prophets. The plant from which it
came was hard to distinguish from its whole-
some companions.
Of Jonah's gourd, though that was prob-
ably no gourd at all, but a Palma Christi,
it is impossible not to think when, after
one fine starlight night, the glorious plant
lies a piteous wreck of ruin, wrought not
by worm, but by frost, whose first touch
destroys these natives of warmer regions.
The heliotropes are blackened, the dahlias
become wet, disgusting rags, though if
warmer days follow, their buds, having more
inherent warmth than the leaves, go on
opening their flowers, looking like orna-
ments on a withered and decayed beauty.
The scarlet geraniums survive a little longer,
so, apparently, do the perpetual roses ; but
the foundations of these blossoms are sapped,
and they fall off when gathered. The garden
OCTOBER 243
is a doleful scene of damp and decay, and
there is nothing for it but to take up the
annuals and put in the bulbs in future
hope.
But how splendid are the sunsets ! The
slant beams light up the red trunks of the
pines, and add to the glory of the foliage.
One elm, a peculiarly formed one, with
branches sloping upwards, which is always
tardier, both in putting forth and losing its
leaves, than the rest, becomes a pillar of
gold, or more than gold, against the blue
sky. Its splendour was unspeakable that
autumn of remarkable after-glow, said to be
owing to the dust of the Japanese volcano,
when the western sky was such a red or
orange hue that the young moon, by con-
trast, looked almost green. In ordinary
years, however, the pine trees stand up
dark and grand against skies of pale bright-
ness, shading from blue into daffodil, like
244 ^N OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK *
a wondrous illimitable coast of Eldorado
(for want of a better word), with a golden
surf of waves rolling in, or with the lovely
fleeces that we used to call Aslauga's golden
hair, and looked on as like dear memories,
the last lingering bright traces of a joyous
day never to be recalled. Yet it might be
' the promise of the morrow.'
NOVEMBER
November is the month most abused in the
whole year. Scott tells us that —
November's sky is chill and drear,
November's leaf is red and sere,
— valuable lines to the cappers of verse in
distress for the letter ' N.'
But, in very truth, November has many
delightfully quiet, still soft days, when ' calm
decay ' has set in, and the leaves, lately
coloured by October's frost, come gently
floating down in the ' calm undressing ' of
the woods. If it be dry weather, it is really
delightful to go crackling among them —
To heap and toss them wild and free,
Their fragrance breathe, and o'er them see
Soft evening lustre shed.
246 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Some of them are very handsome too, especi-
ally those of the sycamore, which come down
yellow, marked all over with round black spots
— I believe a sort of fungus. Their keys
are shed likewise, and produce multitudes of
little trees, of which, however, very few con-
tinue to grow after they are a few inches high.
The horse-chestnut has become brown as
to its leaves, and where the beauteous spikes
that made it a giant's nosegay once were,
are its fruits, by no means equalling the
blossoms in number, for each spike only pro-
duces at most three of the round prickly
green balls, which, when split open, as they
generally are by their fall from the tree, show
themselves to be lined with a strong white
coating, with a partition in the middle, con-
taining the two nuts, flat on one side, rounded
on the other, each in colour, markings, and
polish like a well-rubbed mahogany table,
and forming charming playthings, though
NOVEMBER 247
their bright beauty very soon disappears.
If opened when half ripe, the mixture of
brown and white makes them Hke piebald
horses, but the white is instantly discoloured
on exposure to the air. Deer like them, but
for human creatures the large yellowish flesh
within is unwholesome. However, the tree,
whether in flower or fruit, is the great bait to
boys, as affording endless * cock-shys ' ; and it
is vain to try to persuade them that, however
it may be with the fruit, it is mere wanton-
ness to throw at the flowers, and destroy the
leaves in their beauteous youth and greenery.
Another valued plaything of nursery days
was the ripe French bean, which is of a
pretty polished black, varied with mauve,
and preserves its beauty much longer than
the chestnut. It can be strung into neck-
laces, and shovelled about in bowls, and
altogether affords a far more interesting toy
than the far too perfect articles to be bought
248 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
in toy-shops, and it has the great advantage
that — barring being swallowed whole — it is
perfectly harmless.
The real chestnut is coming down now
from its handsome trees in its spiked coat-
ings. The t in its name has no reference to
the chest, but is a remnant of the Latin
castaneus. It is no native, as indeed we
still remember when we distinguish it as
Spanish chestnut, and when it has reached
its prime, the weight of its crown exposes it
to be too often ruined by sudden winds.
Here — it could not be as in Italy, where a
chestnut tree, or even part of a tree, is a
family estate, and bread is made of the
ground nuts — those that ripen here are often
wizen little things, chiefly consisting of rind ;
but the village child can devour most things,
and the paths to the school are strewn with
' shucks ' of those eaten without preliminary
roasting till the lips become raw and sore,
NOVEMBER 249
after which experience, the chestnuts are
politely presented to the school -mistress.
The chestnuts, whose roasting is a fireside
delight, or which are sold at little brasiers
in the streets, come from Spain and Italy.
Beech masts, equally prickly outside, never
attain to size within sufficient to attract any-
thing but swine.
These animals, after being herded in the
stubble, have another lively time of excur-
sions under the oak trees, prolonging the
diversions of their little Gurth till he is
pretty well spoilt for the thraldom of school.
' A visitation of acorns,' says the anxious
school-manager ; for in favourable seasons
everybody capable turns out to pick the
smooth oval fruit as it slips out of its little
rough saucer. It is well to pick it from
pastures, for the acorn is not easy of
digestion, and cows who have indulged in
it freely in plentiful years have often died
250 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
thereof. Pigs in styes have to be fed spar-
ingly on it, though, when turned out, they
eat of it in combination with other delicacies
of the season, and do themselves no harm.
We hear of ancient Britons eating acorns,
and it appears that England did not forget
the pleasing diet, for, when a creche was first
commenced in the nearest town, the poor
babies proved to be fed on a mixture of
which crushed acorns were a portion, and the
mothers complained that the good milk there
administered spoilt, their taste for their home
food. In the New Forest there is a period
called Pannage time, when the cottagers
have a right, for six weeks, to turn out their
swine to enjoy the harvest under the trees.
'Hampshire hogs' thus sometimes have
begun upon hogs' food. I do not know
whether the Hampshire man is more devoted
to his pig than the natives of other counties,
but it certainly fills an important place in the
NOVEMBER 251
family possessions, though not in the house-
hold, like ' the gintleman that pays the rint *
in Ireland. Nor does it run about at large,
high-backed and bristly — only sleeping in a
little dark den, as in Devonshire of old.
Scarcely a house is without a tidy pigstye,
the resort of the ruminating master, pipe in
mouth, in Sunday leisure. A woman dying
of a long illness expressed her mournful
regrets to her clergyman that she had never
seen the present pig, adding that her husband
said that, if he had known in time how much
she wished it, he would have carried it up-
stairs, but now it was too big and heavy.
So the pig is the family pet and pride
until the day when the parish executioner
comes. If early, the tender-hearted little girls
of the cottage hide their ears under the
blankets ; if late, their mother hurries them
off to school, out of hearing of the pro-
longed dying wails of their favourite, while
252 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
the boys either hurry up, or else linger about,
with all the horrid curiosity that used to
attend executions, to behold the last struggles,
which, happily, under an experienced hand,
are brief. Then follows the further process
of singeing off the bristles over a straw fire ;
after which piggy is hung up by the heels, fair
and white, and the family are regaled upon
fry, etc., at dinner. I am not sure whether
the story is one of the stock clerical ones,
but our rector of seventy years ago told it
as happening to himself, that, being told that
his flock could not understand the long words
in his sermons, he asked a labourer if he
knew what was meant by predestination, and
was answered : * Well, sir, I believe it is
something about the innards of a pig ! '
Here in Hampshire the further destina-
tion of the bacon pig, after being cut up into
joints and salted, is to be smoked in a
chimney adapted for the purpose, but only
NOVEMBER 253
from a wood fire, and we found it impossible
to induce cottagers to abstain from coal. The
smoking is done specially at the village shop,
and in fact both the preparing of bacon and
the curing of hams by special private recipes
are among the good arts that importation has
overpowered. Pork shows itself by its name
to be less an insular institution than bacon,
whose name is said to be not even An^lo-
Saxon, but British ; and, though we here re-
spect the pork well-roasted and furrowed with
crackle, and the fair delicate salt pork leg, we
hold that bacon is no bacon unless smoked.
It is not by any means still the only flesh
food of the labourer, who used to have his
Sunday piece, of which wife and family par-
took as far as was judged expedient, but
chiefly ate the potatoes, that * if not the rose,
had been near the rose.' Now there is more
use of tinned meats, and carts from butchers
come round and carry on a small traffic,
254 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
giving more variety, as well as other carts of
cheap fish, around which I see an unfail-
ing assembly of women. I have seen little
children, boys especially, at a school-dinner
cry at the unwonted spectacle of a slice
of meat ; but this is not the case now. At
a mothers' meeting, when I have read aloud
'Ways and Means in a Devonshire Parish,'
there have been remarks on home economies
which proved that the hearers did not live
on bread and potatoes alone ; though I con-
fess that the audience did not include those
hopeless managers who consume what-
ever the husband allows them in the first
days of the week, and at the end let their
children run about begging of their neigh-
bours scraps, which the kind-hearted women
are always ready to afford.
If pigs are attracted below the oak trees,
rooks are ready to hover above, to seize on
the acorns, which they sometimes bury, prob-
NOVEMBER 255
ably for a winter store. They also fly away
with walnuts speared upon their strong bills.
They seldom or never build on oaks ; it is
elms that are their special delight. There is
no bird whose language one would better like
to understand than that of the rooks. All
corvidce seem to be unusually intelligent ;
and rooks, like other gregarious animals,
seem to have a wonderful amount of social
qualities, if not of political.
We have vainly tried to induce them to
colonise our trees, but, being oaks, these
failed to attract them. Their conversational
notes over their nest-building are a delightful
spring sound to those who have known it
from infancy, and always justify the mean-
ing of the riddle that declares them the wisest
of birds. What a sight they are, walking
about in spring sunshine in their intensely
black glossy coats, so shining as to reflect the
sun in glancing brightness, every now and
256 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
then one giving a little sapient croak, while
their sentinel sits aloft upon a tree ready to
give warning at sight of a man with a gun,
which he is perfectly able to distinguish from
a harmless stick ! Then watch one changing
his place. The broad black wings lift him
by a flap or two, but, when about to alight, he
sails on with them outspread and motionless,
and the two claws held up, till near the ground
he puts them out, closes his wings, and begins
his walk, seldom a hop, as he searches for the
grubs of cockchafers and daddy long-legs.
A croak from the sentry will raise a black
cloud, to hurry away through the sky. There
are detached colonies in almost every park
where elms grow, but in the winter the rooks
seem to have a season. About the end of
October, or beginning of November, the dif-
ferent parties from various regions all collect
over some favourite wood and there roost,
after numerous gyrations in the air, and a
NOVEMBER 257
loud cawing and calling to one another.
* The rooks are come ' is a joyful announce-
ment to the old friends who know and love
them ; and it is really a wonderful sight to
watch them wheeling round and round, the
more distant so far off as to be the merest
black specks, coming nearer and nearer, while
the incessant caws are heard in every degree
of sound. After they have gradually settled
in the trees, the firing of a gun raises a mar-
vellous outcry, rush of wings, and renewed
wheelings, till they subside again for the
night. In February they separate to their
regular haunting- places, and only the per-
manent inhabitants remain.
To some it has been given to behold a
parliament of rooks, all upon some open
space, generally of down, where, in curious
resemblance of the human kind, they congre-
gate, and, at least apparently, hold consult-
ation. Sometimes a downcast, drooping
s
258 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
criminal or two may be guarded in a corner
till sentence Is received, when the rest of the
community fall on the unfortunates and de-
spatch them. It is reported that condign
punishment has been seen to follow stealing
sticks from other people's nests, also that
enterprising couples building In a new tree
are banished and persecuted. Mr. Fowler
reports a case of this kind ; but I know of
one which had a happier termination.
The trees within a cathedral close had
been inhabited from time Immemorial, but
never those beyond Its precincts, until a pair
were daring enough to commence a nest on
a new tree outside the close. At first the
nest underwent the Inevitable fate of being
pulled to pieces by the old conservatives ; but
afterwards a council was held on the grass
within the close, all the sable community
attending, and their caws sounding like in-
telligence. Finally — this really is true — a
NOVEMBER 259
patriarch with white feathers in his poll gave
his opinion, and forthwith the new tree was
adopted and filled with nests, while one of
the old trees was deserted. Moreover, this
ancient elm was blown down in an ensuing
storm ! The final incident is melancholy, but
vouches, as it were, for the truth of the story.
The white-marked senior, who was respected
by all the town, fell a victim to one of those
wretched beings who carry guns, and cannot
see a curious bird without marking it down
for slaughter.
Jackdaws are very amusing pets. They
are birds of a strong power of attachment to
human beings. There was one here which
selected the boy who fetched the newspapers
for his favourite, and accompanied him wher-
ever he went, whether to the station or the
houses where the papers were left. After-
wards Jack transferred his affections to a girl
pupil-teacher. He tapped at her window in
26o AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
the morning, followed her about, sitting on
the roof of the school, or peering in at the
windows, or even coming on her shoulder
when she changed books at the library !
This daw was not vicious ; but sometimes
a tame one will be the terror of children, and
likewise a great thief. I have known one
which, in the course of his perquisitions in a
cottage, was accidentally shut up in a drawer,
but obtained his release by calls of * Mother ! '
in the voice of one of the children. He was
also wont to pick up a pen, and, as it was
said by his admirers, to use it on the adjacent
paper. Jack is a very pretty bird, quaint
with his gray head, quick blue eye, and trim
black plumage, and seen most to advantage
in old towers — as Vincent Bourne, translated
by Cowper, says —
A great frequenter of the Church,
Where, Bishop-Hke, he finds a perch,
And dormitory too.
NOVEMBER 261
— which unfortunately was too often true of
the easy-going Episcopate of Cowper's day.
But he is a voracious creature, and will
kill and eat young birds when he can. In-
deed, at Exeter, he has been seen throwing
poor little daws out of the tower and murder-
ing them on the grass with vehement
squawking. Let us hope, for the sake of
daw nature, that the parents were defending
them against the aggressors." Daws, or
caddows, their old name, are said to have
driven out the Cornish chough. They
seem to like to consort together, but
apparently have not the public spirit of the
rooks.
But though this is a long chapter, I can-
not leave the crow-kind without a tender
reminiscence of the delight and terror of my
younger days, our old Magpie. He was
brought from the nest, and speedily grew up
very handsome and extremely clever. His
262 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
head was jetty black, his breast and part of
his wings pure white, the long feathers of his
wings metallic blue, his tail of the metallic
green of a cock's feathers, and he kept him-
self spotlessly and brilliantly clean and fresh,
even after the time when he established his
release from his wicker- cage, by constantly
undoing any complication which fastened the
door. He also untied and overthrew his cup
of water, and as the fragments were generally
held up to him by the maids with an ex-
clamation of ' Mag, you rascal ! ' he learnt to
make the same observation in triumph, as
soon as the smash was effected. One wing
was clipped, and he was then free of the lawn
and house, for he would come in at any open
window on the ground-floor, and hop upstairs
on predatory expeditions. He was to be
seen on the window-sill with a thimble on
the end of his beak, or any other small
article easy of transportation, which he would
NO VEMBER 263
bury In some of his hoards. Once, when a
segment of wedding-cake had been left on the
table, while we accompanied some visitors to
the end of the garden, it was missing on our
return. Mag's voice, however, was heard on
the rail at the top of the attic stairs going
through the triumphant performance with
which he was wont to celebrate his most
daring feats of mischief.
* Mag — poor Mag ! Mag, you rascal !
Master Collins ! Harriet!' repeated squeaks
like a wheelbarrow, then a fit of cough-
ing, a loud laugh, and finally an original
chatter and scream. On pursuing him, there
was a grand treasure -trove — not only the
cake reduced to crumbs, but candle-grease, a
thimble, and various other purloined com-
modities.
There stood on the lawn a very tall old
apple tree, loaded at the top with ivy.
Close to this was a pink thorn, and just
264 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
below a large Portugal laurel. The ivy was
Mag's chosen roosting-place, and about sun-
set he began to make his way up from the
ground, through the laurel and thorn. He
could come down all at once, though he
could not fly upwards, and his pan of water
being kept below, he used to proclaim his
descent by wheelbarrow squeaks till the dish
was filled, when he bathed, and, if possible,
spread himself out, an absurd spectacle, in
the sunshine, to be dried. There was, year
after year, a nut-hatch's nest about four feet
from the ground, in a hole in the trunk of the
apple tree, and to rob this nest was his desire.
The trunk was smooth and the hole inacces-
sible from below, so he used to take the trouble
of mounting his ladder again and creeping
down, branch by branch, to some long loose
trails of ivy which waved nearly over the nest,
and by which he tried to swing himself to the
hole ; but he uniformly slipped off, fell down,
NOVEMBER 265
and then stood on his dish, squeaking and
chattering in fury.
He was a tyrant on the lawn, pecking the
heels unprotected by boots, and never suffer-
ing certain polyanthuses to be touched.
Only two persons were exempt from his
attacks — his little master and one of the
maids, on whose shoulder he would sit and
drink tea out of her spoon. Once, when two
girl visitors arrived, somewhat overdone with
the long journey, and not able to rise early
the next day, shrieks were heard from their
room, and the wicked bird was found
dancing about on their counterpane, and
making vicious dabs at any finger or eye
which emerged for a moment.
A friend presented us with a second
magpie, which had long been in a cage, and
had rubbed off his tail, whence he was known
as Stumptail, or Stump, long after the next
season of liberty had repaired the loss.
266 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Even then he was never quite so handsome
as old Mag, and he must have had less brain,
for his head was flat instead of round, and he
was not nearly so clever, though his moral
character might be higher, for he was neither
thievish nor spiteful, though sometimes there
was a combat between the two birds when
old Mag disinterred his hoards.
Stump took a violent attachment to one
of our young lady visitors. He was at her
window in early morning, looked in at her all
day, and followed her about out of doors.
When she went away, he took to village life
— could be seen in the school playground
in the midst of a circle of children, as if he
were teaching a class, and strayed further and
further, till at last some stranger threw a
stone which killed him.
If I remember right, these wanderings
did not begin till after the death of the
beloved old Mag, which was strangely
NOVEMBER 267
occasioned by his running under the feet of
his young master, who was jumping off a
step, and came down with his full weight on
the poor bird's head.
There was an endeavour some thirty years
later to revive the magpie delights, but the
later one was by no means equal to the
former beauties. It never kept itself smart
and clean. One day I said to it : ' Oh, Mag,
why don't you wash ? What a figure you
are ! ' It obeyed me too literally, for its body
was found floating on the top of a tub of hot
water where some clothes had been put to
soak.
November has two noted days. Of
course we —
Remember, remember,
The Fifth of November,
The gunpowder treason and plot.
There can be no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
268 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Here we have nothing specially character-
istic, only the bonfire, which, unluckily, in
dry seasons, often leads to the burning of a
great deal of furze. There is no carrying
about of Guy, nor do the boys, as in Devon-
shire, sing —
The Pope, the Pope !
Up the ladder and down the rope.
A French traveller in England, in the
seventeenth century, records bonfires on St.
Brice's night, in memory of the massacre of
the Danes on the T3th of November. Could
he have confused this with the Gunpowder
Plot, or did this absorb St. Brice ?
As boys will not be baulked of their
saturnalia, the authorities of Winchester have
wisely devised a sort of pageant and pro-
cession, ending with fireworks, and this keeps
them out of mischief.
One of the many Saints Clement —
probably the one who is mentioned in the
NOVEMBER 269
Epistle to the Phillppians — has his feast on
the 23rd of November. Legend declares
that he was thrown into the sea with an
anchor fastened to him. Thereby he became
the patron of forgers of anchors, and thence
of blacksmiths, who have never ceased to
hold a festival on his day. It used to be a
grand affair in London, and here it is still
honoured by the smiths exploding gunpowder
on their anvils. In a neighbouring village
they have a dinner, at which a curious legend
is read of Solomon inviting all the workmen
of the Temple to a banquet, but omitting the
blacksmiths till they proved their claim by
showing the bolts and bars they had made,
when they were admitted, but washed clean !
In Great Expectations^ Joe Gargerry sings
a song at his forge where every verse
ends with ' Old Clem' — another survival ; but
I never came in for more than the bangs
upon the anvil !
DECEMBER
December sets in usually with mild weather,
a prolongation of November fogs, sparing all
the plants that survived the October frost,
and even encouraging a few to blossom.
Primroses put out a few short -stemmed
flowers, which cockneys in the country think
wonderful enough to write to the papers
about. Now and then a branch of pear tree, if
it have been nipped in the summer, attempts
to blossom, but is considered 'unlucky.'
Chrysanthemums have just attained to
their full beauty ; they are at present the
chief subjects of gardeners' transformations.
The old yellow daisy-like flower has been
persuaded into interminable shapes and
DECEMBER 271
shades, and the varieties have ahiiost as long
a list of names as the roses. Here they
are white, and curled at the tips, forming
perfect snowballs, or star-like and straggling,
or delicate sulphur-coloured, or of every
shade of crimson, sometimes yellow above
and crimson beneath — pompon when small
and compact, Japanese when large and strag-
gling — or with curled points, and lately with
a tendency — by way of variety — to give up
the central strap-shaped petals and revert to
the daisy-like eye of the original flower. In
all plants capable of variations there is first
an original wild perfect adaptation and grace ;
there is next a sort of civilised beauty ; and
there is lastly a gardener's freak worked up
into exaggeration for the sake of exhibition.
Still we will not quarrel with the flower avail-
able for church decoration, lasting long, both
gathered and ungathered, and brightening us
up far into the winter.
272 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Preferable, however, are the Christmas
roses which do not lend themselves to im-
portant diversities. Indeed, what we regard
as the flower is only the bracts. The petals
are odd little horned things, almost mixed
up with the stamens. They really are, by
their Latin name, Helleborics niger, and
belong to a poisonous race, whose name has
none of the associations of the Christmas
rose.
If it is an open winter, we have good hope
of plenty of berries ; but as to the belief that
their number foretells hard weather, it rather
points back to the absence of killing frosts at
their blossoming time in the spring, when
the holly ought to be threaded over with
tiny white four - petalled, four - stamened
flowers, to give place to the bright coral
berries which nothing equals. ' Holly ' is
really * holy.' The old people here used to
call a bush without berries 'holm,' in contra-
DECEMBER 273
distinction, and sometimes a fine branch is
termed ' Christmas.' Southey made us re-
mark how the prickly leaves cease as the
tree reaches a height beyond the reach of
cattle, breathing a wish that —
So the calm temper of my age may be
Like the high leaves upon the holly tree.
One of the most simple as well as
deep poems in the Lyra Innocentumt was
prompted by the exclamation of a little
girl, who, looking into the church before
the decorations were put up, exclaimed in
disappointment, ' No Christmas here!' —
What if that little maiden's Lord,
That awful Child on Mary's knee.
Even now take up the accusing word,
' No Christmas here I see.
* Where are the fruits I yearly seek,
As holy seasons pass away ;
Eyes turned from ill, lips pure and meek,
A heart that strives to pray ?
T
274 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
' Where are the glad and artless smiles,
Like clustering hollies, seen afar
At eve along the o'ershadowed aisles,
With the first twilight star ? '
Holly, even in berryless years, is to my
mind better alone than with any sham imi-
tations of berries, though a scarlet tie for
the sprays may be effective and allowable.
Variegated holly, especially where a few
leaves are ivory-white, is a great assistance
in brightening, but I do not love yellow -
berried holly.
Cotoneaster, though the wreaths of white
blossoms are pretty against the wall, and the
little red berries still more so, does not catch
the light enough to be effective on these
dark days. It is best to submit to the
absence, as enhancing next year's bril-
liance.
Ivy i^Hcdera helix) is the legitimate com-
panion and rival of holly — everywhere cheer-
ful, even in decay, and putting out its green
DECEMBER
275
heads of blossom so late in the year that the
black berries are only ripe in time to keep
the store which the birds have not gathered
into barns. These heads only begin to be
put forth after the ivy has ceased to climb,
and produces branches and leaves of an
unbroken pointed egg- shape, entirely dif-
ferent from the deeply divided and wonder-
fully varying leaves with which it climbs.
To collect the different forms of ivy leaves
to be met with in a walk is one of the diver-
sions I should recommend to those who are
unlucky enough to think a country walk in
autumn or winter dull.
A berry larger than the holly and as
beautiful, but seldom plentiful enough to be of
much use, belongs to the Butcher's-broom,
or Kneeholm {Ritscus amleatzis) — a very
curious plant, related, of all families in the
world, to the asparagus. Only the little
green flow^ers are divided into sexes on the
276 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
same plant, and have no stems, lying flat on
the dark green, pointed, spine-ended leaves,
where the fertile ones leave a very hand-
some red berry. It grows wild upon heaths,
and is rare, but probably was once more
common than now. The so-called Alexan-
drian laurel which makes useful wreaths is
also a Ritscus ; but it blossoms at the end of
its sprays, and does not ripen fruit in this
climate. Some say it is really the bay or
laurel of which the wreath of successful
poets was composed, and it is certainly more
convenient for the purpose than the fragrant
bay.
The other peculiarly Christmas plant.
Mistletoe ( Visctim album), is banished from
our churches on account of the associations,
sometimes merely merry, but too often
degenerating into vulgarity and rudeness,
which make all the lads go about with a
sprig of mistletoe in their hats. The tales
DECEMBER 277
of Druid worship are, as we all know, inti-
mately connected with the mistletoe, especi-
ally with the oak-grown plant, probably from
its extreme rarity ; for though it is frequent
upon ash and apple trees, it is hardly ever
found on oaks. The Druid solemnity of
cutting it down with a golden knife, and
catching it in a white cloth, is well known.
It used to be found on oaks at Norwood
when that was a wood, and being supposed
to be medicinal when so growing, was some-
times cut down for apothecaries in London.
But the men who meddled with it were said
always to fall lame or become blind of an
eye! Its French name, gui^ is probably
Celtic.
Its place in Norse myths is equally noted.
It was the exception when Freya charmed
all minerals, plants, and animals from harm-
ing Baldur, and therefore Loki pointed with
it the arrow which he persuaded blind
278 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
Hodur to shoot at the white deity. Whether
it was from some Hngering connection with
its being the means of Baldur's death is not
known, but there was a Christian legend that
it had been a fine tree till it furnished the
wood of the Cross, in expiation of which it be-
came the strange imperfect plant that it now
seems. In some parts of France it is called
therbe a la Croix, and it was thought to be
a spell against evil spirits, as well as a cure
for epilepsy and many other diseases.
Scarcely noticed in the early part of the
year, when the apple trees are in full leaf,
it comes into full prominence when they
are stripped, hanging with its yellow-green
clusters of branches from the limbs. The
root is firmly embedded in the fibre of
the tree ; the stem is repeatedly forked, a
thickened ring at each fork. The leaves
are stemless, leathery, of the same uniform
yellow - green, the flowers also stemless.
DECEMBER 27^
perched within the forks and monoecious —
the female ones giving place to a soft white
berry, which is said to missel or soil the toes
of the missel-thrush, thus naming both bird
and bush, though the derivation is not very
satisfactory.
It is not ornamental enough to be a loss
to our church decorations. I remember
many phases of them — the sticking, by the
clerk, of holly boughs into the holes made on
purpose in the ancient pews, and the gradual
interference of the young ladies, who came
timidly and felt it an exceeding honour and
privilege to be allowed to assist, while old
people doubted of the lawfulness and expedi-
ence of using flowers at all.
An honour and privilege it is still to w^ork
for the house of God and beautify the place
of His sanctuary ; but now^ that it has be-
come a matter of course, how many clerical
houses feel it a burthen and perplexity, while
28o AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
among the workers there is danger of ir-
reverence, and difficulties of temper, and
clashing taste. Well, in this world, first it
is a point to do the thing, next to do it in
the right way.
St. Thomas's Day ushers in Christmas.
'Pray, sir,' asked a boy, 'did they give St.
Thomas the shortest day because he was
not a very good saint ? ' That St. Thomas
is compensated in the Antipodes had not
occurred to him.
Here, as in some other Hampshire vil-
lages, St. Thomas's Day is spent by all the
poorer women in what they call 'gooding'
— going from house to house to receive
something towards the Christmas dinner.
A shilling to each widow, and sixpence to
each wife, is the traditional amount ; but
hardly any one keeps up the dole, since
modern changes have come in, and neither
squires, farmers, nor peasants are in the old
DECEMBER 281
semi - feudal connection. In most places
some other form of Christmas gift has
been substituted, though nowhere can those
questions which are the pain of almsgiving
be avoided — who is too well-off, and, on the
other hand, who ought not to be helped
for fear of fostering evil and deceit ? The
traditional dole, however, carried no stigma
of beggary.
Another ordinance of St. Thomas's Feast
was the arrival of certain musical gipsies.
* It's the Lees ! ' has been the answer when
asking the cause of an outbreak of drum-
ming and the like ; but this likewise has
nearly come to an end, and the genuine
gipsy is not a very frequent creature. More-
over, he travels no longer in a picturesque,
ramshackle tilted cart, where the red-ker-
chiefed mother and bright-eyed, brown-faced
children look out as from a bower, but in a
yellow van, with a stove-pipe protruding from
282 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
it. And he often has quarters in a town for
the winter.
One genuine family was here some years
ago, of thorough gipsy blood. A woman
was very ill, and a kind gentleman let them
remain in his field and sent broth and wine.
They were strictly honest, and even refused
offers of help from other quarters, saying
that they were fully provided for. The
woman died, and they lamented her with
loud cries like Easterns. They talked of
putting up a stone to her, but have never
done so. Her name was Gerania.
This gipsy music is not connected with
carols. Those carols, in the old time, had
a flavour of wild beauty about them. I
remember standing in the shrubbery in the
dark, with stars overhead, and snatches of
song floating on the wind from every quarter,
giving a sense of Christmas joy.
But they needed to be heard at a dis-
DECEMBER 283
tance. Near at hand the children, then
utterly untrained in voice, sang like ballad-
singers, generally —
While shepherds watched their flocks by night ;
but sometimes that notable carol where
Lazarus is described among the dogs —
He had no strength to drive them off,
And so — and so they Hcked his sores ;
and finally ' Divers ' (as he was always called)
sits on a serpent's knee !
The shrill thin voices of the children
were only ignorantly irreverent, but there
were parties of boisterous lads or idle
men as ignorant, more profane, and some-
times half- tipsy, and on the way to be
entirely so.
The practice had to be reformed. Pictur-
esqueness is apt not to bear close inspec-
tion, and propriety and reverence must be
enforced even through primness and a
284 AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK
little hard-heartedness. So now the children
of a fit age are taught well-chosen carols,
and go round under the surveillance of the
master and mistress, and the money-box
IS divided at the end, and produces more
than the chance pence thrown at haphazard
and not at all after the change is exhausted ;
and the children, who do not remember
the old days of license, greatly delight in
their rounds.
The elders are, or ought to be, in the
choir, and have a regular festival supper ; and
to the undesirable, it is really best to turn a
deaf ear.
Christmas, unless the salt of life be there,
grows sadder as we grow older, and it is
one of the stock moralisings of the worldly
sort to murmur at being expected to be
merry by rule, to make presents, pay bills,
and partake of indigestible fare.
The conventional Christmas of illustrated
DECEMBER 285
papers and Christmas cards Is only too apt
to foster this more outward phase of the
festival, of which the pudding wreathed with
holly is the symbol. To keep the day
primarily as the Birthday of the Lord,
rejoicing evermore, because He is close at
hand, is the only way to keep the re-
joicing through life, and hinder the external
festivities from becoming hollow and weary.
So may the ' Outlook,' going beyond the
pleasures around and the delights of nature,
illuminate them all with a brio^hter lig^ht than
o o
that which otherwise ever shone on sea or
land.
THE END
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