[A] cf. "Rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm."
THE DEAD DRUMMER
A LEGEND OF SALISBURY PLAIN
Oh, Salisbury Plain is bleak and bare,—
At least so I've heard many people declare,
For I fairly confess I never was there:—
Not a shrub, nor a tree, Nor a bush can you see,
No hedges, no ditches, no gates, no stiles,
Much less a house or a cottage for miles;
—It's a very sad thing to be caught in the rain
When night's coming on upon Salisbury Plain.
Salisbury Plain is, as Ingoldsby rightly assures us, bleak and barren. It is remarkable to note that, although as he truly says in the legend itself he was never there, he catches exactly the spirit of that dreary Wiltshire table-land, and describes it with such insight, picturesqueness, and economy of words and space as never at any other time have been used to give a proper mental picture of that vast solitude. It is far removed from the Ingoldsby Country proper, and might easily have been more loosely described in those opening lines; but they are perfect, alike topographically and for the production of that mental picture required to start the tale of horror.
The exact spot on the plain described in the legend where the two sailors, overtaken by the storm, vainly seek shelter, and where the vision of the dead drummer appears, can, thanks to the precision of the verse, be readily found. It is in the central and wildest spot of the wilderness, two miles almost due east of the small village of Tilshead. Let us here refer to the legend:
But the deuce of a screen, Could be anywhere seen
Or an object except that, on one of the rises,
An old way-post show'd Where the Lavington road
Branch'd off to the left from the one to Devizes.
Black Down the surrounding expanse is named. Bare and bleak, the close grass a wan sage-green, the white road divides across the treeless undulations, with a signpost directing right and left to Devizes and Lavington, exactly as described. But alterations are now in the making, and when completed will thoroughly alter and abolish the solitude of the place. "They have spoiled my battlefield," exclaimed the Duke of Wellington when he revisited Waterloo and found it stuck full of monuments; and the "East Camp" on the right of this spot, and the "West Camp" on the left, with all the permanent buildings and the great masses of troops now established on the plain, are changing it beyond recognition. Where the bustard lingered longest and the infrequent traveller came timorously, the bugles blow and crowded battalions manœuvre every day.
But the true story of the dead drummer is very different from Ingoldsby's version. He has taken many liberties, both as regards scene and names, with the real facts of a remarkable case—for the legend is founded upon facts.
