TURF MOOR: THE FROZEN MARSHES.
It is now some years since, through the giving way of the bank of one of the moorland rivers, a large part of the low-lying land in the heart of Somersetshire was under water all through the autumn. Many tenants of cottages on the moor were, as they would put it, "drownded out," and there were outlying villages that for a long while could only be reached by means of boats. During a recent autumn another wide area in the same county was flooded. Frost set in while a vast tract of land was still inundated. Miles of flooded marshland were entirely frozen over, and many cottages, after standing in the water for months past, were surrounded by the ice. So sharp was the cold that, on the second day of the frost, the fortunate few who were able to avail themselves of the opportunity had a perfect skating-ground, which must have measured thousands of acres.
A heavy snowfall, however, has changed the face of things altogether. Some of the moor men, whose ordinary avocations have long been at a standstill, have cleared a pretty fair piece of ice. But the rest is covered with snow. Much of it has sunk and broken, owing to the draining away of the water from beneath it; so that, vast as is still the frozen area, comparatively little of it is good enough to satisfy a fastidious performer.
But it is a wonderful landscape that, on every side of the little house which skaters on this part of the marshes use as their headquarters, lies glistening in the sunshine. A few old alder trees and storm-beaten Scotch firs shelter the cottage a little from the wind. And its all too scanty stacks and its picturesque sheds and outbuildings, whose roof of tiles are weathered to every imaginable shade of red and brown, help to give an air of warmth and comfort. A primitive place. A place such as might have given shelter to King Alfred before that desperate fight yonder on the hills of Ethandune. The master of the house is a neatherd too, as it happens, and his heifers are at this moment all huddled in the byres about the cottage, only too glad to make the acquaintance of a sympathetic stranger. There is no entrance at the front. The frozen ground has "lifted" and has jammed the door. You must make your way in through the hospitable-looking brick-floored kitchen at the back.
Before the frost began the water was over the garden, and even on the cottage floor. And now, though the house is clear, the ice stretches away almost from the threshold, as far as the eye can see over the level country. It would be hard to picture a scene more absolutely desolate. On the skyline to the southward, just seen through the wintry haze, is a long line of low bluehills, with patches of snow on them dimly showing. Over a dark belt of fir trees to the eastward rises the Tor of Glastonbury, snow covered, too, for once. And right to the bases of the hills, over field after field, stretches for miles the great white plain, broken only by lines of pollard willows, by tall aspens and clumps of alder; with patches of furze that look strangely out of place rising up through the ice, with here and there a gate, half-hidden, with haystacks standing forlorn upon the wintry level, and, sadder still, with cottages that, long since rendered uninhabitable by the water, are now completely surrounded by the ice.
In that cottage, some hundred yards farther on, whose walls have settled so much in the soft peat that there is not a straight line in all its primitive architecture, the water is still nine inches deep in all the rooms. The tenant of it is that moor man standing yonder, lending a helping hand to the skaters preparing for the ice. A picturesque figure, whose old brown coat, with its endless varieties of shade would delight the soul of an artist. You can understand why he wears boots up to his knees when you learn that every day, from the beginning of December until a fortnight since, he waded to his door through more than a foot of water. He is better off since the frost, for now he can slide in.
A characteristic touch about these cottages is the store of winter fuel, the stacks of peat heaped against the wall. Almost more characteristic still is the quaintly-shaped boat, flat-bottomed, sharp at both ends, that you see in so many gardens; for not only are floods here far too common, but the innumerable ditches make convenient waterways for bringing home grass or peat.
A strange silence broods over the landscape. No birds are visible save the few that hang about the outbuildings. The flocks of gulls and the few ducks that were here before the floods were frozen have all disappeared. Multitudes of skylarks, too, passed over when the snow set in, but they soon vanished. This was once a great country for wild-duck. Twenty years ago there were four decoys almost in sight from this cottage. Now they are all drained—"let off" as the moor folk put it. The only sound besides the low lament of the wind among the alders, the plaintive protests of the heifers in the byres, and the laughter and voices and occasional clink of steel where the skaters are preparing for work, is a strange, hollow, booming sound under the ice, or the sharper crash when it gives way because the water has gone from under it. It is strange to see great sheets of ice caught in the bushes or among the alder stems, feet above the general level.
It is a wintry wind that sweeps over the frozen marshes. But here, in this sunny corner, with a heap of dry peats to sit on, in the shelter of a stable on whose door is nailed a lucky horseshoe, there is the warmth of very summer.