Not far from the little inn where we stopped we saw the ruins of King John’s palace. But little is left of it now, the stones having been put to other purposes, and it looks as like the ruins of an old barn as those of a palace.
We leave the road and pass into the forest proper—the old Sherwood Forest, sacred to the memory of Robin Hood and Little John and the merry monks of the olden time.
We enter Birkland. Saving those wondrous and ancient oaks that stand here and there, and look so weird and uncanny as almost to strike the beholder with awe, the forest is all new. Long straight broad avenues go in all directions through it. The ground on these is as level as a lawn, and just as soft and green. Here is the Shamble Oak. Its weirdlike arms are still green, though it is said to be 1,700 years old, and may be more. The trunk, round which twelve good strides will hardly take you, is sadly gutted by fire. Some boys set it alight in trying to smoke out a hornet’s hive. Here, in this oak, it is said, Robin Hood hung his slaughtered deer, and, in more modern times, keepers and poachers used it as a larder.
A quaint and pretty log-hut à la Russe has recently been erected near the Shamble Oak. It is not yet furnished, but we found our way inside, the keeper in attendance here giving us great and impressive injunctions to wipe our feet and not step off the canvas. I wonder he did not bid us remove our shoes.
From the balcony of this log-hut one could have rabbit-shooting all day long, and pigeon-shooting in the evening. I hope no one ever will though.
We went home a different way, Mr Tebbet opening the double-padlocked gates for us. We passed the Parliament Tree, as it is called, where they tell us King John used to assemble his councillors. It is an oak still, a skeleton oak hung together by chains.
From the brow of a hill which we soon reached, we enjoyed a panorama, the like of which is not elsewhere to be seen in all broad England. From Howitt’s “Rural Life in England” I cull the following:
“Near Mansfield there remains a considerable wood, Harlowe Wood, and a fine scattering of old oaks near Berry Hill, in the same neighbourhood, but the greater part is now an open waste, stretching in a succession of low hills and long winding valleys, dark with heather. A few solitary and battered oaks standing here and there, the last melancholy remnants of these vast and ancient woods, the beautiful springs, swift and crystalline brooks, and broad sheets of water lying abroad amid the dark heath, and haunted by numbers of wild ducks and the heron, still remain. But at the Clipstone extremity of the forest, a remnant of its ancient woodlands remains, unrifled, except of its deer—a specimen of what the whole once was, and a specimen of consummate beauty and interest. Birkland and Bilhaghe taken together form a tract of land extending from Ollerton along the side of Thoresby Park, the seat of Earl Manvers, to Clipstone Park, of about five miles in length, and one or two in width. Bilhaghe is a forest of oaks, and is clothed with the most impressive aspect of age that can perhaps be presented to the eye in these kingdoms... A thousand years, ten thousand tempests, lightnings, winds, and wintry violence have all flung their utmost force on these trees, and there they stand, trunk after trunk, scathed, hollow, grey, and gnarled, stretching out their bare sturdy arms on their mingled foliage and ruin—a life in death. All is grey and old. The ground is grey beneath—the trees are grey with clinging lichens—the very heather and fern that spring beneath them have a character of the past.
“But Bilhaghe is only half of the forest-remains here; in a continuous line with it lies Birkland—a tract which bears its character in its name—the land of birches. It is a forest perfectly unique. It is equally ancient with Bilhaghe, but it has a less dilapidated air. It is a region of grace and poetry. I have seen many a wood, and many a wood of birches, and some of them amazingly beautiful, too, in one quarter or another of this fair island, but in England nothing that can compare with this... On all sides, standing in their solemn steadfastness, you see huge, gnarled, strangely-coloured and mossed oaks, some riven and laid bare from summit to root with the thunderbolts of past tempests. An immense tree is called the Shamble Oak, being said to be the one in which Robin Hood hung his slaughtered deer, but which was more probably used by the keepers for that purpose. By whomsoever it was so used, however, there still remain the hooks within its vast hollow.”
But it is time to be up and off. We lay last night in Mr Tebbet’s private meadow. Had a long walk before I could secure a suitable place. But the place was eminently quiet and exceedingly private, near lawns and gardens and giant elms. The elm that grows near the pretty cemetery, in which haymakers were so busy this morning, is, with the exception of the oak at Newstead Abbey gates, the finest ever I have seen; and yet an old man died but recently in Mansfield workhouse who remembered the time he could bend it to the ground.