If these adventures do befall you, tell no one; for you will not find belief, even in this same Shakespeare land.
It is, however, much more likely that your walk will be solitary, and that for the apricots and grapes you will have to wait until you have returned to your hotel in the town.
The last two years of Shakespeare’s life were concerned with a heated local question: none other than that of the proposed enclosure of the Welcombe common fields, including The Dingles, by William Combe who had by the death of his father become squire of Welcombe and had at once entered into an agreement with the lord of the manor and other landholders to enclose the land. The corporation and townsfolk of Stratford were bitterly opposed to this encroachment. Shakespeare’s interest in the matter appears to have been only that of an owner of tithes in these fields, and his sympathies were clearly against any such extension of private rights. An entry under date of September 1615 among others in the still-existing manuscript diary of Thomas Greene, then clerk to the corporation, who calls Shakespeare his cousin, is to the effect that Shakespeare told J. Greene (brother of the town clerk) that he—Shakespeare—“was not able to bear the enclosing of Welcombe.” The ambiguous and ungrammatical wording of Greene’s diary often renders his meaning obscure and has caused a great conflict of opinion about Shakespeare’s attitude in this affair, some reading it as in favour of the enclosure. It really appears to have been one of benevolent neutrality, and could scarcely have been otherwise. He himself was a neighbouring landowner, and friendly with others, but sentimentally, he looked with aversion upon those proposed doings. He “was not able to bear” the enclosure of the place he had roamed when a boy, but that did not give him the right to intervene at law. The corporation went to law with Combe and his fellows and won their case, but by that time Shakespeare had passed from these transient scenes. To this day The Dingles is common land.
CHAPTER XIV
The ‘Eight Villages’—‘Piping’ Pebworth and ‘Dancing’ Marston.
No one who has ever sojourned in Shakespeare land can remain in ignorance of what are the “Eight Villages.” The older rhymes upon them are printed upon picture-postcards, and on fancy chinaware, and reprinted in every local guide-book; and now I propose to repeat them, not only for their own sake and for the alleged Shakespearean authorship, but because the pilgrimage of those villages offers many points of interest. One need offer no excuse for this descriptive chapter, because although the rhymes themselves are trite, the places are by no means so well known; your average Shakespeare Country tourist being rarely so enterprising as he is commonly—and quite erroneously—supposed to be. Stratford-on-Avon, Evesham, Warwick, Kenilworth and Coventry, with their comfortable hotels, furnish forth the average pilgrim. But if you are to know Shakespeare land intimately, and if you would come into near touch with the poet and know him at closest quarters, you must linger in the villages that in every circumstance of picturesqueness are dotted about the valley of the Avon. There, as freshly as ever, when spring has not waned too far into summer, the
“Daisies pied and violets blue,
And ladysmocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight.”
“Shakespeare is Bacon,” dogmatically asserts the ancient hyphenated baronet who in these latter days posts pamphlets broadcast (incidentally favouring me with one, uninvited) seeking to dethrone our sovereign bard. Well, let who will cherish the impious opinion; but all the countryside around Stratford disproves it; the trees, the fields, the wild flowers, the rustic talk, which Bacon could never have known, that are all faithfully mirrored in the plays.
But let us to the Eight Villages, whose fame rests upon a legend of olden drinking-bouts and of competitions between different towns and villages, to decide whose men could drink the most liquor. In Shakespeare’s time, it seems, Bidford held the championship of all this countryside, and had two valiant coteries of tipplers who drank not only for their own personal gratification, but went beyond that and inconvenienced themselves for the honour and glory of their native place. Further than this, local patriotism cannot go. So famous were the doings of the Topers and the Sippers of this spot that it became familiarly known as “Drunken” Bidford; an unfortunate adjective, for it was bestowed not by any means because those convivial clubmen could not carry their liquor like men, but was intended as a direct tribute of admiration to their capacity for it. In short, such was their prowess that they went forth, conquering and to conquer, in all the surrounding villages. On an historic occasion the daring fellows of Stratford went forth and challenged the Bidford men on their own ground, Shakespeare traditionally among them. The Topers were not at home; they had gone to drink Evesham dry; but the Sippers held the fort and duly maintained the honour of Bidford. At the “Falcon” inn the contest was waged, and the Stratford men were ignominiously worsted, drawing off from the stricken field while yet there remained some with full command of their legs, and ability to carry away those of their number who had wholly succumbed. In this sort they went the homeward way towards Stratford, which is more than six miles distant, but they had proceeded no further than three-quarters of a mile when they sank down by the roadside and slept there the night, under a large crab-apple tree. When morning dawned—when night’s candles were burned out and jocund day stood tiptoe on the meadows—they arose refreshed, the majority eager to return to Bidford and try another bout; but Shakespeare refused. He had had enough of it. He had drunk with—
“Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston,
Haunted Hillborough, Hungry Grafton,
Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford,
Beggarly Broom, and Drunken Bidford.”