over the down, and push your way through one of those extensive nutwoods which grow on the hills, acres and acres of hazel bushes, suddenly you come to the edge of a steep cliff, falling all but perpendicularly, and lo! at the foot is a winding river, bordered by broad green meads dotted with roan-and-white cattle.
Here in the season the angler may be seen skilfully tempting the speckled trout. Across the meads a grove of elm and oak, and the dull red of old houses dimly seen between, and the low dark crenellated tower of a village church. Behind the downs rise again, their slopes in spring a mass of colour—green corn, squares of bright yellow mustard, bright crimson trifolium, and brown fallows.
Chapter Four.
The Village—The Washpool—Village Industries—The Belfry—Jackdaws—Village Chronicles.
A short distance below the cottagers’ ‘dipping-place’ just mentioned, the same stream, leaving the deep groove or gully, widens suddenly into a large clear pool, shaded by two tall fir trees and an equally tall poplar. The tops of these trees are nearly level with the plain above the verdant valley in which the stream flows, and, being side by side, the difference in the manner of their growth is strongly contrasted. The branches of the fir gracefully depend, as if weighted downwards by the burden of the heavy deep green fringe they carry—a fringe tipped with bullion in the spring, for the young shoots are of so light a green as to shade into a pale yellow. The branches of the poplar, on the contrary, point upwards—growing nearly vertically; so that the outline of the tree resembles the tip of an immensely exaggerated artist’s brush. This formation is ill adapted for nest-building, as it affords little or no surface to build on, and so the poplar is but seldom used by birds.
The pool beneath is approached by a broad track—it cannot be called road—trampled into innumerable small holes by the feet of flocks of sheep, driven down here from the hills for the periodical washing. At that time the roads are full of sheep day after day, all tending in the same direction; and the little wayside inns, and those of the village which closely adjoins the washpool, find a sudden increase of custom from the shepherds. There is no written law regulating the washing, but custom has fixed it as firmly as an Act of Parliament: each shepherd knows his day, and takes his turn, and no one attempts to interfere with the monopoly of the men who throw the sheep in. The right of wash here is upheld as sternly as if it were a bulwark of the Constitution.
Sometimes a landowner or a farmer, anxious to make improvements, tries to enclose the approach or to utilise the water in fertilising meadows, or in one way or another to introduce an innovation. He thinks perhaps that education, the spread of modern ideas, and the fact that labourers travel nowadays, have weakened the influence of tradition. He finds himself entirely mistaken: the men assemble and throw down the fence, or fill up the new channel that has been dug; and, the general sympathy of the parish being with them and the interest of the sheep-farmers behind them to back them up, they always carry the day, and old custom rules supreme.
The sheep greatly dislike water. The difficulty is to get them in; after the dip they get out fast enough. Only if driven by a strange dog, and unable to escape on account of a wall or enclosure, will they ever rush into a pond. If a sheep gets into a brook and cannot get out—his narrow feet sink deep into the mud—should he not be speedily relieved he will die, even though his head be above water, from chill and fright. Cattle, on the other hand, love to stand in water on a warm day.
In rubbing together and struggling with the shepherds and their assistants a good deal of wool is torn from the sheep and floats down the current. This is caught by a net stretched across below, and finally comes into the possession of one or two old women of the village, who seem to have a prescriptive right to it on payment of a small toll for beer-money. These women are also on the look-out during the year for such stray scraps of wool as they can pick up from the bushes beside the roads and lanes much travelled by sheep—also from the tall thistles and briars, where they have got through a gap. This wool is more or less stained by the weather and by particles of dust but it answers the purpose, which is the manufacture of mops.
The old-fashioned wool mop is still a necessary adjunct of the farmhouse, and especially the dairy, which has to be constantly ‘swilled’ out and mopped clean. With the ancient spinning-wheel they work up the wool thus gathered; and so, even at this late day, in odd nooks and corners, the wheel may now and then be found. The peculiar broad-headed nail which fastens the mop to the stout ashen ‘steale,’ or handle, is also made in the village. I spell ‘steale’ by conjecture, and according to pronunciation. It is used also of a rake: instead of a rake-handle they say rake-steale. Having made the mops, the women go round with them to the farmhouses of the district, knowing their regular customers—who prefer to buy of them, not only as a little help to the poor, but because the mops are really very strongly made.
In the meadows of the vale the waters of the same stream irrigate numerous scattered withy-beds, pollard willow trees, and tall willow poles growing thickly in the hedges by the brook. The most suitable of these poles are purchased from the farmers by the willow handicraftsmen of the village up here, to be split into thin flexible strips and plaited or woven into various articles. These strips are made into ladies’ workbaskets and endless knick-knacks. The flexibility of the willow is surprising when reduced to these narrow pieces, scarcely thicker than stout paper. This industry used to keep many hands employed. There were willow-looms in the village, and to show their dexterity the weavers sometimes made a shirt of willow—of course only as a curiosity. The development of straw weaving greatly interfered with this business; and now it is followed by a few only, who are chiefly engaged in preparing the raw material to go elsewhere.
From the ash woods on the slopes, and the copses, of the fields, large ash-poles are brought, which one or two old men in the place spend their time splitting up for ‘flakes’—a ‘flake’ being a frame of light wood, used after the manner of a hurdle to stop a gap, or pitched in a row to part a field into two. Hurdle-making is another industry; but of late years hurdles have been made on a large scale by master carpenters in the market towns, who employ several men, and undersell the village maker.
The wheelwright is perhaps the busiest man in the place; he not only makes and mends waggon and cart wheels, and the body of those vehicles, but does almost every other kind of carpentering. Sometimes he combines the trade of a builder with it—if he has a little capital—and puts up cottages, barns, sheds, etc, and his yard is strewn with timber. There is generally a mason, who goes about from farm to farm mending walls and pigsties, and all such odd jobs, working for his own hand.
The blacksmith of course is there—sometimes more than one—usually with plenty to do; for modern agriculture uses three times as much machinery and ironwork as was formerly the case. At first the blacksmiths did not understand how to mend many of these new-fangled machines, but they have learned a good deal, though some of the pieces still have to be replaced from the implement factories if broken. Horses come trooping in to have new shoes put on. Sometimes a village blacksmith acquires a fame for shoeing horses which extends far beyond his forge, and gentlemen residing in the market towns send out their horses to him to be shod. He still uses a ground-ash sapling to hold the short chisel with which he cuts off the glowing iron on the anvil. He keeps bundles of the young, pliant ground-ash sticks, which twist easily and are peculiarly tough; and, taking one of these, with a few turns of his wrist winds it round the chisel so as to have a long handle. One advantage of the wood is that it ‘gives’ a little and does not jar when struck.
The tinker, notwithstanding his vagrant habits, is sometimes a man of substance, owning two or more small cottages, built out of his savings by the village mason—the materials perhaps carted for him free by a friendly fanner. When sober and steady, he has a capital trade: his hands are
