“’Tis born with all; the love of Nature’s works
Is an ingredient in the compound man,
Infused at the creation of his kind.”—(“The Task.”)
It is not, however, the cyclist, who rushes through our rural charms with head in the position of a battering ram, and frame quivering with the vibration engendered of his vehicle, who can dwell on these attractions with full appreciation. Nor is it his more reckless brother, the motorist, who crashes along our country roads, with powers of observation narrowed by hideous binocular vizor, and at a speed whose centrifugal force drives in terror every other wayfarer—chicken, child, woman, or man—to fly like sparks from anvil in all directions, if haply they may even so escape destruction. For him, we might suppose, the fascination must be to outstrip the thunderbolt, not to linger over mundane scenery. But to the man who walks deliberately, and with an observant eye for all about him, to him indeed nature unfolds her choicest treasures. Not only antiquities such as the British, Roman, or Danish camps on the hill sides above him have their special attractions; but the very hedge-rows and banks, with their wealth of flower and of insect life, the quarries with their different fossils, the ice-borne boulders scattered about, and even the local, and often quaint, human characters, whom he may meet and chat with. All these afford him sources of varied interest as well as instruction.
The process, again, of antiquarian investigation is absorbing and recuperative, alike to man and matter, bringing to life, as it were, habits and customs long buried in the “limbo” of the past, re-clothing dry bones with flesh, uniting those no longer articulate; like the kilted warriors springing to their feet, on all sides, from the heather, at the signal of some Rhoderick Dhu. Here also, albeit, the recording MSS and folios may be “fusty,” knights of old are summoned up, as by a long forgotten roll-call, to fight their battles over again; or high-born dames and “ladyes fayre,” may unfold anew unknown romances.
With our span-new Rural, Urban and County Councils, we are apt to fancy that only now, in this twentieth century, is our little world awakening to real activity; but the antiquary, as by a magician’s wand, can conjure up scenes dispelling such illusions; and anyone, who reads the following pages, may see that the humblest of our rural villages may have had a past of stirring incident, which must be little short of a revelation to most of its present occupants, “not dreamt of in their simple philosophy.”
Among the calls of other duties, to one whose occupations are by no means limited to this particular field of labour, the work had often, of necessity, to be suspended, and so its continuity was liable to be broken into a collection of disjecta corporis membra. Such, however, as they are, the author submits these ‘Records’ to future generous readers, in the confident hope that they will make due allowance for the varied difficulties with which he has had to contend.
He could wish the results attained were more worthy of their acceptance; but he has some satisfaction in the feeling that, in his humble degree, he has opened up, as it were, a new world (though still an old one) for their contemplation.
A popular writer has said: “To realise the charm and wealth of interest of a country side, even in one’s armchair, is an intellectual pleasure of no mean order.” If the old-time incidents found in the following pages enliven some of our modern “ingle neuks,” the author will, in some degree, have gained his reward.
J.C.W.
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