game. [114a] But elfs and bogies have now vanished from our sylvan glades, as the will o’ the wisp has from the fens and marshes, where the present writer has seen it. Drainage, and schools, and newspapers have banished alike such phenomena, and the belief in them; and Tab-shag, like many another equally harmless, and equally perhaps misunderstood, creature, will soon be forgotten.
One more antiquarian discovery may here be noticed. Much interest was excited by an ancient canoe which was unearthed near Brigg, in North Lincolnshire, in the year 1886, while some excavators were working on the east side of the river Ancholme. It was constructed out of a single tree, which must have been a very large oak. It was 48ft. in length; its width 5ft. at the widest part, and 4ft. at the narrowest. It had three transverse stays, also cut out of the solid. It was distant from the present river about 40 yards, lying due east and west, on what must have been a sloping beach. It was completely buried in a bed of alluvial clay; one end being 5ft. below the surface, and the other 9ft. below. It is fully described in an article, written by T. Tindall Wildridge, in “Bygone Lincolnshire” (1st series). The writer gives other instances of similar discoveries—in the Medway in 1720, in the Rother (Kent) in 1822, on the Clyde, etc.; various such boats, indeed, have been found on the Clyde, and, in one case, what is further interesting, the boat had within it a beautifully-finished stone celt, thus connecting it with the race of, probably, the later stone period. Several finds of this kind have occurred in our own river, the Witham, or near it.
In digging for the foundations of a house in the upper part of the High Street, Lincoln, some 80 or 90 years ago, a boat was discovered fastened by a chain to a post, [114b] the spot being several yards higher than the present level of the Witham; thus showing that, when the Witham was a tidal river, it rose at times considerably higher than it does now.
In 1816 an ancient canoe was found, [115a] some 8 feet below the surface, in cutting a drain, parallel to the Witham, about two miles below Lincoln. This, like the Brigg boat, was hollowed out of a single oak, 38ft. long, and 3ft. at the widest part. Another was found in 1818, in cutting a drain not far from the last, but was unfortunately destroyed by the workmen before they knew what it was. Its length was about the same as that of the previous boat, but it was 4½ft. wide. Two more similar canoes—“dugouts,” as they were technically termed—were found about the same time in drain-cutting, in the same vicinity; and one of these was presented to the British Museum. [115b] The Fen men used to call their boats “shouts,” from the Dutch “schuyt,” a wherry. They propelled them along the drains by a long pole, called a “poy.” It would be too much to say that all these vessels belonged to pre-historic man, because of the presence in one case of a flint implement, connecting it with the neolithic period. Such boats have probably been used by all nations, at early stages of their existence. The Greek writer Hippocrates, about 400 b.c., mentions the “monoxyle,” or one-tree boat; one has been found in the Tunhovd Fyord in Norway. The Russians of the 9th century, in the neighbourhood of Novgorod, used them, laden with slaves for the market. The Goths of the 3rd century, as stated by Strabo, swept the Black Sea with them; and Professor Righ says that they have been used until comparatively modern times in Scandinavia; but at any rate these found in our fens belong to a period, apparently, when the fens were not yet formed, or, at most, were forming.—Article on the Brigg Boat in “Byegone Lincolnshire.”
We now come to a case nearer home. The visitor who takes a stroll from the cross roads by St. Andrew’s Church, along the Tattershall road, shortly after crossing the pellucid sewer, will see a large pond on his right, close to a farm yard; and on the other side, eastward, are two ponds, about 80 yards from the road. All these ponds are pits dug for clay, which was put on the somewhat light land to strengthen it. The present course of the sewer, now running in a straight line due east and west, from Kirkby lane to the Witham, is artificial. It formerly pursued a tortuous course, and, on
reaching the Tattershall road, flowed southward along the west side of that road, past what is now the Abbey Lodge public-house, dividing into more than one channel on its way to the Witham. This change was made soon after the Kirkstead estate passed, by purchase, from the Ellison family to that of the present proprietor, in the year 1839, when great improvements were made in the farms; the woods, [116] which then reached from the Moor ground to the Tattershall road, were cleared away, and much land brought into cultivation which had hitherto been waste, or forest. In digging for clay some 150 yards eastward from the road, and about the same distance, or a little more, south of the present course of the sewer, the labourers came upon the skeleton of a boat several feet below the surface. I am not able to discover whether it was a so-called “dug-out,” formed from one trunk, or constructed, as modern boats are, of several planks. Probably it would be the latter. But its position several feet below the surface would seem to imply considerable antiquity; while its mere existence would seem to indicate that either the sewer was formerly a larger stream than it is now, to float such a boat, or that the waters of the Witham, when unconfined by such a bank as the present, extended to this point inland. A circumstance which confirms the supposition of the sewer being larger is the fact that about this same place it is known that there was a mill-dam, and doubtless the stream turned the mill-wheel. The boat in question may not, therefore, like some of those previously mentioned, have belonged to pre-historic man; and yet it might well lay claim to an antiquity sufficiently hoar to make it a relic of some interest. But, though so long preserved beneath the surface, once above ground, it soon perished, and even the memory of it only remains with a few.
The visitor to Woodhall, who has antiquarian proclivities, may well spend an enjoyable day at Lincoln, not only for the sake of seeing the
Cathedral, which is unsurpassed by any in the kingdom, or, rather, as has been said by no less an authority than Ruskin, “worth any two others”; or of visiting the Castle, founded by the Conqueror; but there are many other objects of much interest. One of the most important discoveries of recent years is the remains of a Roman basilica, found beneath the house of Mr. Allis, builder, in Bailgate, where a small fee is charged for admission. This has been pronounced by an authority, the late Precentor Venables, to have been “the finest Roman building in the kingdom.” Its length was 250 feet, width 70 feet, and it had stately pillars rising to a height of 30 feet. Beyond this is the fine old Newport Arch, the only Roman city gate in the kingdom. “The noblest remnant of this sort in Britain,” says Leland. He will do well to furnish himself with the “Pocket Guide to Lincoln,” by the late Sir Charles Anderson, one of our greatest authorities, and “A Walk through Lincoln,” by the late learned Precentor Venables, a compendium rich in historic lore. Either of these will prove a valuable Vade mecum, but the former, perhaps, more for the study, to be perused before his visit; the latter a manual for the street.
It may be added that, within quite recent years, the visitor to Lincoln found himself at once, on landing from the train, in an atmosphere of antiquity, for, on emerging from the station of the G. N. Railway, he would see over the door of a shop, full of modern utensils, facing the gate of the station yard, the name “Burrus,” Cooper, a genuine Roman patronymic, the bearer of which we may well suppose to have been a lineal descendant of some early Roman colonist, settled at Lindum Colonia, “a citizen of no mean city,” for Precentor Venables reminds us (“A Walk through Lincoln,” p. 9) it is one (with Colchester and Cologne) of the only three cities which still preserve, embedded in their names, the traces of their ancient distinction as Roman colonies.
By way of whetting the appetite for further enquiry, I give here a succinct catena of historic items, shewing the many interesting memories which cluster round our ancient cathedral city.