A Cotswold Village; Or, Country Life and Pursuits in Gloucestershire

by J. Arthur Gibbs

A fine stamp of humanity is the Cotswold labourer; and may his shadow never grow less.

"Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied."

Fresh and health-giving is the breeze on the wolds in autumn, like the driest and oldest iced champagne. In the rough grass fields tough, wiry bents, thistles with purple flowers, and the remnants of oxeye daisies on brittle stalks rise almost to the height of your knees. Lovely blue bell-flowers grow in patches; golden ragwort, two sorts of field scabious, yellow toad-flax, and occasionally some white campion remain almost into winter. Where the grass is shorter masses of shrivelled wild thyme may be seen. The charlock brightens the landscape with its mass of colour among the turnips until the end of November, if the season be fairly mild. But the hedges and trees are the glory of "the happy autumn fields." The traveller's joy gleams in the September sunlight as the feathery awns lengthen on its seed vessels. What could be more beautiful! Later on it becomes the "old man's beard," and the hedges will be white with the snowy down right up to Christmas, until the winter frosts have once more scattered the seeds along the hedgerow. Of a rich russet tint are the maple leaves in every copse and fence. On the blackthorn hang the purple sloeberries, like small damsons, luscious and covered with bloom. Tart are they to the taste, like the crab-apples which abound in the hedges. These fruits are picked by the poor people and made into wine. Crab-apples may be seen on the trees as late as January. Blackberries are found in extraordinary numbers on this limestone soil, and the hedges are full of elder-berries, as well as the little black fruit of the privet. Add to these the red berries of the hawthorn or the may, the hips and haws, the brown nuts and the succulent berries of the yew, and we have an extraordinary variety of fruits and bird food. Woodbine or wild honeysuckle may often be picked during October as well as in the spring. By the river the trout grow darker and more lanky day by day as the nights lengthen. The water is very, very clear. "You might as well throw your 'at in as try to catch them," says Tom Peregrine. The willows are gold as well as silver now, for some of the leaves have turned; while others still show white downy backs when the breeze ruffles them. In the garden by the brook-side the tall willow-herbs are seeding; the pods are bursting, and the gossamer-like, grey down--the "silver mist" of Tennyson--is conspicuous all along the brook. The water-mint and scorpion-grasses remain far into November, and the former scents more sweetly as the season wanes. But

"Heavily hangs the broad sunflower,
Over its grave in the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock;
Heavily hangs the tiger lily."

An old wild duck that left the garden last spring to rear her progeny in a more secluded spot half a mile up stream has returned to us. Every morning her ten young ones pitch down into the water in front of the house, and remain until they are disturbed; then, with loud quacks and tumultuous flappings, they rise in a long string and fly right away for several miles, often returning at nightfall. Such wild birds are far more interesting as occasional visitors to your garden than the fancy fowl of strange shape and colouring often to be seen on ornamental water. A teal came during the autumn of 1897 to the sanctuary in front of the house, attracted by the decoys; she stayed six weeks with us, taking daily exercise in the skies at an immense height, and circling round and round. Unfortunately, when the weeds were cut, she left us, never to return.

By the end of October almost all our summer birds have left us. First of all, in August, went the cuckoo, seeking a winter resort in the north of Africa. The swifts were the next to go. After a brief stay of scarce three months they disappeared as suddenly in August as they came in May. The long-tailed swallows and the white-throated martins were with us for six months, but about the middle of October they were no more seen. All have gone southwards towards the Afric shore, seeking warmth and days of endless sunshine. Gone, too, the blackcap, the redstart, and the little fly-catcher; vanishing in the dark night, they gathered in legions and sped across the seas. One night towards the end of September, whilst walking in the road, I heard such a loud, rushing sound in front, beyond a turning of the lane, that I imagined a thrashing machine was coming round the corner among the big elm trees. But on approaching the spot, I found the noise was nothing more nor less than the chattering and clattering of an immense concourse of starlings. The roar of their wings when they were disturbed in the trees could be heard half a mile away. Although a few starlings remain round the eaves of the houses throughout the winter, vast flocks of them assemble at this time in the fields, and some doubtless travel southwards and westwards in search of warmer quarters. The other evening a large flock of lapwings, or common plover, gave a very fine display--a sort of serpentine dance to the tune of the setting sun, all for my edification. They could not quite make up their minds to settle on a brown ploughed field. No sooner had they touched the ground than they would rise again with shrill cries, flash here and flash there, faster and faster, but all in perfect time and all in perfect order--now flying in long drawn out lines, now in battalions; bowing here, bowing there; now they would "right about turn" and curtsey to the sun. A thousand trained ballet dancer; could not have been in better time. It was as if all joined hands, dressed in green and white; for at every turn a thousand white breasts gleamed in the purple sunset. The restless call of the birds added a peculiar charm to the scene in the darkening twilight.

Of our winter visitants that come to take the place of the summer migrants the fieldfare is the commonest and most familiar. Ere the leaf is off the ash and the beeches are tinged with russet and gold, flocks of these handsome birds leave their homes in the ice-bound north, and fly southwards to England and the sunny shores of France. Such a rara avis as the grey phalarope--a wading bird like the sandpiper--occasionally finds its way to the Cotswolds. Wild geese, curlews, and wimbrels with sharp, snipe-like beaks, are shot occasionally by the farmers. A few woodcocks, snipe, and wildfowl also visit us. In the winter the short-eared owls come; they are rarer than their long-eared relatives, who stay with us all the year. The common barn owl, of a white, creamy colour, is the screech owl that we hear on summer nights. Brown owls are the ones that hoot; they do not screech.

Curiously enough I missed the corncrake's well-known call in the meadows by the river in the springtime of 1897; and not one was bagged in September by the partridge-shooters. This is the first year they have been absent. I always looked for their pleasing croak in May by the trout stream, and invariably shot several while partridge-shooting in former years.

The earthquake of 1895 was very severely felt in the Cotswolds. Next to an earthquake a bad thunderstorm is the most awe inspiring of all things to mortals. During last autumn the Cotswold district was visited by a thunderstorm of short duration, but great severity. A gale was blowing from the south; thunder and lightning came up from the same direction, and, travelling at an immense speed, passed rapidly over our house about ten p.m. The shocks became louder and louder; and whilst five or six of us were watching the lightning from a large window in the hall, there was a deafening report as of a dozen canons exploding simultaneously at close quarters. At the same time a flame of blue fire of intense brilliancy seemed to fall like a meteor a few yards in front of our eyes. At first we were sure the house had been struck, so that the first impulse was to rush out of doors; but the succeeding report being much less severe, confidence was restored. The general conclusion was that a thunderbolt had fallen, and, missing the house by a few yards, had disappeared in the earth. A search next morning on the lawn did not throw any light on the matter. Probably, if there was a thunderbolt, it fell into the river; for it is well known that water is a great conductor of the electric fluid, and thunderstorms often seem to follow the course of a stream. The summer lightning, which kept the sky in a blaze of light for two hours after the storm had passed away, was the finest I remember.