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 ^