Devonshire speech is not capricious, but has a syntax of its own. The classic phrase is ‘her told she.’ A pious person told me that ‘us didn’t love He, ’twas Him loved we.’ They never say ‘we are,’ but ‘us be’ or else ‘we am,’ contracted into ‘we’m.’ They say ‘I be’ as well as ‘I’m,’ but never ‘me’m’ or ‘me be,’ though invariably ‘me and Jarge be,’ or ‘me and Urn,’ or whatever the name is, and never ‘Ernest and I’ or ‘George and I.’ They say ‘to’ for ‘at’—‘her liveth to Moreton’—and formerly said ‘at’ for ‘to’—‘I be goin’ at Bovey’—but now it is the fashion to say ‘as far as’ Bovey.—A complete Grammar might be compiled.
Happily, the school has not taught them English that is truly up to date. They have not learned to say:—“The weather conditions being favourable, the psychological moment was indulged in.” They still say:—“As ’twere fine, us did’n.” And their pronunciation is unchanged: beetles are bittles, beans are banes, and Torquay is Tarkay.
Down here the Education Act of 1870 was not altogether a success. There had been a school in Lustleigh since 1825, maintained by a small endowment and the fees. Only the brightest children went there, and the others did not go to school at all. Had it gone on after 1870 as a higher-grade school, it might have done much service here; but the trustees shut it—by a breach of trust, so far as I can see. The bright children had to go to the board-school with the others who were not so bright; and their progress was retarded by these others, as the staff was never large enough to take them separately. As it is, I think more progress might be made, if the classes were only half the size, and the children were only half the time in school, some going in the morning and others in the afternoon.
In most of the parishes round here there are cottages too far away for young children to attend school in all weathers. As a rule, the able-bodied men have always got young children—families are long, and spread over many years. There is thus a difficulty in getting suitable tenants for these cottages; and many of them have been allowed to go to ruin, after being unoccupied for some long time. Families move down into villages, which now have many of the defects of a town, without its merits; and real country life is dying out—an unforeseen result of Education Acts.
Agriculture has suffered from a cause that seems equally remote—“farm-house lodgings.” People say that farms are let at so much per acre, but all farms have a house, and the house will often pay the rent; and, when the house does that, the farmer is less careful of his land. The profit is not only from the letting of the rooms, but from selling butter, eggs, fowls, etc., without the trouble and expense of going to market, and often (I am told) at more than market prices.
People crowd down here in summer, and will put up with any kind of lodging, as they mean to be out-doors all day. I have heard of rooms with “Wash in the Blood of the Lamb” in illuminated letters, where there should be a wash-stand. But this craze for rustic lodgings is comparatively new. My grandfather writes to my father, 16 January 1862:—“Tremlett they say will leave Lustleigh at Ladyday, and Hurston of Way has taken Harton and will leave Way, even Crideford (who used to let one room) will leave on Ladyday for Torquay: so no lodgers will come to Lustleigh. Perhaps when the railway comes, there may be accommodation.”
Like many other country places, Lustleigh started a flower-show, which soon became a show of vegetables and poultry, with fewer prizes for flowers than for such things as cream and honey, needlework and cookery. There were athletic sports as well, and kiss-in-the-ring and dancing on the grass to the strains of a brass band, the church bells ringing changes while the brass band played—a proper old Pandy Romy Un, as some one called it, meaning Pandemonium, I think. People came to it from a distance, as it was held on the bank-holiday in August, and they could spend their morning on the Cleave and finish off with this.
I missed the Lustleigh flower-show in 1900, having just gone up to town; but a friend wrote me this account of it next day:—“We went in about 2, when it opened, and found some disorder in the main tent, as it had partially blown down early.... Then there was a horrible noise, and a great gust of wind ripped the poultry tent almost in half. The whole thing began to collapse, men were rushing in and being pulled out by screaming females, some were tightening the ropes, which others immediately loosed, and presently a great loose flap of canvas overturned the stand of cages—a horrid mass of ducks and fowls screaming and quacking and flapping all over the crowd, pursued by their owners and upsetting everything. And just at this moment the big flower marquee—which was of course deserted—was caught by a tremendous puff of wind and torn right up and dropped on the tables inside. It wasn’t heavy enough to be dangerous, but I wish I could give you any idea of how funny it was to see ****, who was rather bossing the show, creep from under the canvas with an old lady, an infuriated fowl pecking at his knickerbockered calves. One of the nicest incidents was a little old lady in a velvet mantle and black curls, careering backwards over the ground, knocking people over as she clutched at the tail of a huge escaping and crowing cock with one hand, and with the other arm embraced a captured but still struggling and squawking goose. In about an hour after it was opened everything on the ground was swept quite flat. But excursion trains kept arriving, whose innocent passengers paid their sixpences—you couldn’t see the ruin from outside—and wondered why the crowd assembled at the gate laughed at them. However it was worth while to see the village boys fighting and scrambling under the fallen tent for the apples and potatoes.”
There is a May-day festival here, for which I am responsible. There used to be dancing round the May-pole at the flower-show and other festivals, but none upon May-day itself; and I put an end to that anomaly. The children at Lustleigh school—boys and girls—elect one of the girls as Queen, and her name is carved upon a rock on the hill behind this house. Then on May-day the Queen walks in procession under a canopy of flowers carried by four of the boys, her crown and sceptre being carried by two others; then come her maids of honour; and then all the other children of the school, most of them carrying flowers in garlands or on staves. The procession winds along through Lustleigh and through Wreyland, halting at certain places to sing the customary songs, and at last ascends the hill behind here. The Queen is enthroned upon a rock looking down upon the May-pole: the crown of flowers is placed upon her head, and the arum-lily sceptre in her hand: the maids of honour do their homage, laying their bouquets at her feet; and the four-and-twenty dancers perform their dance before her. Then comes the serious business of the day—the children’s tea. This year, 1917, there was a shortage of cereals; but I saved the situation with two hundred hard-boiled eggs.
There are two Friendly Societies here, Rationals and Rechabites; and for many years the Rationals had a church-parade upon Whit-sunday and a fête upon Whit-monday. In 1908 they decided not to have their fête that year: so the Rechabites announced a fête upon Whit-monday, and then the Rationals announced their fête as usual, fearing that their rivals would annex Whit-monday permanently. So there were two fêtes going on together in fields not far apart, and each had a big brass band.