For the neighbours the beacon is a huge barometer. Often it is covered with clouds, and this is regarded as an infallible sign of rain; hence the saying:
“When Dunkery’s top cannot be seen,
Horner will have a flooded stream.”
A former inhabitant of Luccombe, with a nicer ear for rhyme, penned the following pretty song on Dunkery Beacon, evidently modelled on “Sweet and Low,” but worth quoting all the same:—
“Stern and black, stern and black,
Low lies the storm on the mountain track:
Black and stern, black and stern,
Hardly may we thy face discern
By the light westward—lurid and red—
And the thunder voices are overhead!
Where the lightning is never still,
Who’ll now come with me over the hill?
“Grey and sad, grey and sad,
With a rain-wrought veil are thy shoulders clad:
Sad and grey, sad and grey,
Weird is the mist creeping up to-day,
Ghostlike and white from the stream where it lay,
Hanging a shroud o’er the lone wild way;
Hidden and still, hidden and still,
Who’ll now come with me over the hill?
“Fair and bright, fair and bright,
Purple and gold in the autumn light,
Bright and fair, bright and fair;
The butterflies float in the warm, soft air,
Float and suck ’midst the heather bells,
And green are the ferns in the dear-loved dells;
Now who will, now who will
Come with me, come with me over the hill?”
The “Minehead turnpike,” as it is termed, dates from the reign of George IV. Before that period the road, after leaving Timberscombe, passed up the long steep ascent of Lype Hill. The present highway is a trotting road of undoubted excellence. Being cut through hanging woods in some sections, and along the banks of the Exe in others, it is perhaps the finest and most romantic drive of its kind in the kingdom.
Note.—Watchet, the burial-place of Lorna’s mother—a rather forlorn little haven by the wash of the Bristol Channel, lies somewhat apart from our suggested route, but is easily accessible by the railway, by which it is half-spoilt. St Decuman’s Church, alone on the hill, contains exceptionally fine monuments of the Wyndham family, with effigies.