Grain and Chaff from an English Manor

by Arthur Herbert Savory

I heard an amusing story about these spars. A certain thatcher, we may call him Joe, was engaged upon the roof of a cottage, when the parson of the parish chanced to pass that way. Joe had of late neglected his attendance at church, and the vicar saw his way to a word of advice. After "passing the time of day" he took Joe to task for his neglected attendance and waxing warm expressed his fears that Joe had forgotten all his Sunday-school lessons; he was doubtful even, he said, if Joe could tell him the number of the Commandments. Joe confessed his ignorance. "Dear me," said the vicar, "to think that in this nineteenth century any man could be found so ignorant as not to know the number of the Commandments!" Joe bided his time until the vicar's attention had been called to the spars, when Joe asked him how many a bundle contained. It was a problem that the vicar could not solve. "Dear me," said Joe, "to think that in this 'ere nineteenth century any man could be found so ignorant as not to know the number of spars in a bundle!" Joe always added when telling the story, "But there," I says, "every beggar," I says, "to his trade," I says.

Sometimes a picturesque gipsy would come to the Manor House with clothes-pegs for sale, and she generally negotiated a deal, for everybody has a sneaking regard for the gipsies and their romantic life sub Jove. Walking round the farm shortly afterwards I would come upon the remains of their fire and deserted camp by the roadside close to the brook, the ground strewn with the peel and refuse from the materials with which they had supplied themselves gratis, and I recognized that we had been buying goods made from my own withies. Even so we did not complain, for no real harm was done to the trees.

The heads of these old pollards are favourite places for birds'-nests, and all kinds of plants and bushes take root in their decaying fibre, the seeds having been carried by the birds; so that ivy, brambles, wild gooseberries, currants, raspberries, nut bushes and elders, can be seen growing there. Whenever the foxhounds ran a fox to Aldington he was always lost near the brookside, and it was said that the cunning beast eluded the hounds by mounting a pollard and jumping from one to another, until the scent was dissipated. It was also a tradition that when hunting began on the Cotswolds the experienced foxes left for the Vale, leaving the less crafty to fight it out with the hounds; for the Evesham district was seldom visited by the hunt, owing to possible damage to the highly cultivated winter crops of the market-gardeners.

Jarge had a very narrow escape when grubbing out an old willow overhanging a pool. He had been at work some hours, and had a deep trench dug out all round the tree, to attack the roots with a stock-axe. He had cut them all through except the tough tap-root, when I reached him, and he was standing in the trench at work upon it. He was certain that it would be some time before the tree fell, the tap-root being very large; but, as I stood watching on the ground above, I thought I saw a suspicious tremor pass over the tree, and an instant later I was certain it was coming down. I shouted to him to get out of the trench. It took a second or two to get clear, as the trench was deep, and he was not a tall man, so he was scarcely out when the tree fell with a crash on the exact spot where he had been at work. Had I not been present it must have fallen upon him, for not expecting the end was so near he had not been watching the signs. Though not a tall tree, it was a very stout and heavy trunk, and the tap-root on inspection proved to be partly rotten.

"Forth into the fields I went,
And Nature's living motion lent
The pulse of hope to discontent.

"I wonder'd at the bounteous hours,
The slow result of winter showers:
You scarce could see the grass for flowers.

"I wonder'd, while I paced along:
The woods were fill'd so full with song,
There seemed no room for sense of wrong."

Such is Tennyson's description of a spring day in the fields and woods, and nothing more beautiful could be written. And so it was with joy that my men and carter boys with waggons and teams started early on the spring mornings to bring home the newly purchased hop-poles from the distant woods. These poles are sold by auction in stacks where they are cut, and the buyer has to cart them home. Usually, after a successful hop year they were in great demand; prices would rise in proportion, and the early seller did well, but when the later sales came sometimes, the demand being satisfied, there would be a heavy fall in values, and as a cunning buyer expressed it, "The poles lasted longer than the money."

The dainty catkins of the hazel are the first sign of awakening life in the woods; they are well out by the end of January or early in February, and as they ripen, clouds of pollen are disseminated by the wind. Tennyson speaks of "Native hazels tassel-hung." The female bloom, which is the immediate precursor of the nut itself, is a pretty little pink star, which can be found on the same branch as the catkin but is much less conspicuous; and both are a very welcome sight, as almost the earliest hint of spring. The hazel bloom is shortly followed by the green leaves of the woodbine, which climbs so exultingly to the tops of the highest trees and breathes its fragrance on a summer evening. In the New Forest the green hellebore is early and noticeable from its peculiar green blossoms, but I have not seen it in Worcestershire.

My men and teams were generally off to the hills, Blockley, Broadway, Winchcombe, Farmcote, and suchlike out-of-the-way places, when the wet "rides" in the woods were drying up. The boys especially revelled in the flowers—primroses and wild hyacinths—and came home with huge bunches; they enjoyed the novelty of the woods and the wild hill-country, which is such a contrast to the flat and highly cultivated Vale.