CLAYTON TUNNEL.
But the shepherds have ceased to be vocal with the sheep-shearing songs of yore; it seems that their modern accomplishment of being able to read has stricken them dumb. Neither the words nor the airs of the old shearing-songs will ever again awaken the echoes in the daytime, nor make the roomy interiors of barns ring o’ nights, as they were wont to do lang-syne, when the convivial shearing supper was held, and the ale hummed in the cup, and, later in the evening, in the head also.
But the Sussex peasant is by no means altogether bereft of his ancient ways. He is, in the more secluded districts, still a South Saxon; for the county, until comparatively recent times remote and difficult, plunged in its sloughs and isolated by reason of its forests, has no manufactures, and the rural parts do not attract immigrants from the shires, to leaven his peculiarities. The Sussex folk are still rooted firmly in what Drayton calls their “queachy ground.” Words of Saxon origin are still the staple of the country talk; folk-tales, told in times when the South Saxon kingdom was yet a power of the Heptarchy, exist in remote corners, currently with the latest ribald song from the London halls; superstitions linger, as may be proved by he who pursues his inquiries judiciously, and thought moves slowly still in the bucolic mind.
The Norman Conquest left few traces upon the population, and the peasant is still the Saxon he ever has been; his occupations, too, tend to slowness of speech and mind. The Sussex man is by the very rarest chance engaged in any manufacturing industries. He is by choice and by force of circumstances ploughman, woodman, shepherd, market-gardener, or carter, and is become heavy as his soil, and curiously old-world in habit. All which traits are delightful to the preternaturally sharp Londoner, whose nerves occupy the most important place in his being. These country folk are new and interesting creatures for study to him who is weary of that acute product of civilisation—the London arab.
OLD SUSSEX WAYS
Sussex ways are, many of them, still curiously patriarchal. But a few years ago, and ploughing was commonly performed in these fields by oxen.
CLAYTON CHURCH AND THE SOUTH DOWNS.
Their cottages that, until a few years ago, were the same as ever, have recently been very largely rebuilt, much to the sorrow of those who love the picturesque. They were thatched, for the most part, or tiled, or roofed with stone slabs. A living-room with yawning fireplace and capacious settle was the chief feature of them. The floor was covered with red bricks. When the settle was drawn up to the cheerful blaze the interior was cosy. But many of the most picturesque cottages were damp and insanitary, and although they pleased the artist to look at, it by no means followed that they would have contented him to live in.