[33] “Bage” is an old Lincolnshire word meaning a sod. In the overseer’s accounts of the neighbouring parish of Roughton occurs this entry twice in the year 1707: “2s. 6d. paid for one day’s work of church moor bages”; i.e., peat cut for fuel.
[34a] The birch trees of the neighbourhood, with their silvery bark and light and elegant foliage have been very much reduced in numbers, as the wood is used for “clogs” in the manufacturing districts of Yorkshire and elsewhere.
[34b] There is a “Pyewipe” Inn at Lincoln, and Pyewipe Hall, near Kirton-in-Lindsey.
[34c] This may seem to the ordinary uninitiated mind to be a stretch of the imagination; but if we are to believe Mr. Cornish, the old practised gunners on our coasts, who make the cries of our wild fowl a life-long study can almost understand them as well as human speech. See “Animals, their Life and Conversation,” by C. J. Cornish.
[34d] They also frequented other moorlands in the north of the county, in the neighbourhood of Market Rasen and Caistor.
[35] The writer has enjoyed the privilege (often a welcome relief from hard literary, and other labours) of shooting over this ground for more than a quarter of a century, having known it for double that period. His father-in-law had it before him; a genuine sportsman of the old type, being one of a trio, who clung to the last, even far into the seventies, to the old flint gun—the late General Hall, of Sixmile Bottom, near Newmarket, being the second, and I believe the famous sportsman, Sir Richard Sutton, the third, two of whose guns became the property of my father-in-law. Only one man was left in the kingdom who made the flints. A grand weapon was a genuine “flint” of old “Joe” Manton; with plenty of metal, a hard hitter, and often equally serviceable when converted into a breech-loader. Its only drawbacks were, that the exposure of the powder rendered it uncertain in damp weather; and the slowness of ignition; but this latter, to a sportsman who had known no other “arm of precision,” was little hindrance, and naturally, entered into his calculations whenever he pulled trigger.
[36a] The writer, from one cause or another, has probably had a unique experience of shooting in the neighbourhood of Woodhall and elsewhere. To say nothing of shooting in nine other counties, he at one time shot over the whole of the Kirkstead estate. During the absence from home of the late owner of the Woodhall estate, T. J. Stafford Hotchkin, Esq., when residing abroad, he, with a friend, shot over all Woodhall. Within the nineties, he, with two others, rented the greater part of the Woodhall shooting for three years. He has shot, at one time or another, in more than 50 parishes in the county. Tempora Mutantur. Probably hard times have had an astringent effect on the hospitality of the shooting fraternity.
[36b] I quote from a poem, long ago out of print, written by Richard Ellison, Esq. (of Boultham), entitled “Kirkstead, or the Pleasures of Shooting,” and published in 1837; the proceeds of its sale to be given to the funds of a fancy fair held in aid of Lincoln County Hospital.
[38] Another anecdote of the said keeper may here be given, which is amusing. Soon after the above incident he gave notice to quit his place, in order (as he said) to better himself. He had often heard me descant on the charms of grouse shooting and deer-stalking, and he came to me to ask me to help him to a situation in Scotland. I got him the post of keeper on a large moor on the shores of Loch Ness. He was a man with a big head, a bulky body, and with rather weak bandy legs (not unlike many a sketch in “Punch”), and though a good English keeper, and able to stride along through the turnips, in a level country like our own, he was not adapted for mountaineering. One season in the Highlands cooled his ardour, and the very next year he called on me again, being out of place. “Well,” I asked my friend, “how is it you’re here again”? “To tell you the truth, sir,” he replied, “I could not stand those barelegged Highland gillies. [N.B.—He had, himself, no fine calves to show.] They were always a-laughing at me. And their gaelic was worse than Latin and Greek. You’ll never catch me in Scotland again.” We can picture to ourselves the bandy legs bearing the unwieldly body up a steep brae side; stumbling over loose stones, struggling through the tall heather, till breathless he would pause, while the agile gillies would, chuckling, leave him behind; pause and ponder with the conclusion not slowly arrived at, “What a fool I was to leave Woodhall for work like this.” The Sassenach was indeed out of his element on the Scotch hills. He took my advice; picked up a wife half his own age, and now keeps a country public-house, where he can recount his Scotch and other adventures at the bar.
[39] This is also confirmed by a writer in the “Naturalist,” of 1895, p. 67. He says the bird “is very erratic in its nesting habits.” He has found its egg in a pheasant’s nest, and in two cases the egg laid on the bare ground. Only last season I myself found an egg lying without any nest.