Then the smell of the cider-press came full and strong on the night air of the desert, and England and the West Country came back to me in the foolishness of dreams, as the Garden of Hesperides or any other Valley of Bliss my erring feet had trodden in heedless mood.
There is a story of a Dorset vicar who was explaining to his flock the meaning of miracles. He saw that his hearers were dull and inattentive, and did not seem to grasp what he was saying, so he pointed to an old rascal of a villager who always lived riotously yet never toiled, and said in a loud voice: "I will tell you what a miracle is. Look at old Jan Domeny, he hasn't an apple-tree in his garden, and yet he made a barrelful of cider this October. There's a miracle for you."
While cycling out of Swanage to Corfe—a backbreaking and tortuous succession of hills—I had the misfortune to meet a wasp at full speed and receive a nasty sting. I asked a little girl if her mother lived near, as I wished to get some ammonia for it, and was delighted to hear the child call to her mother through an open window: "Lukee, mother, a wapsy 'ath a stinged this maister 'pon 'is feace." Which reminded me of a story in Akerman's Wiltshire Glossary of a woman who wished to show off her lubberly boy to some old dames, and accordingly called him to say his alphabet. She pointed to the letter "A" and asked Tommy to name it. "Dang-my-ole-hat, I dwon't know 'un," said the child, scratching his head. His mother passed this letter by and moved the point of her scissors to the next letter. "What be thuck one, Tommy?" "I knows 'un by zite, but I can't call 'un by's neame," replied the boy. "What is that thing as goes buzzing about the gearden, Tommy?" The boy put his head on one side and considered a moment, then replied, with a sly grin: "Wapsy!"
William Barnes told a good tale of a West Country parson who preached in the rudest vernacular. A rich and selfish dairyman of his flock died, and in place of the customary eulogy at the graveside, he said: "Here lies old ——. He never did no good to nobody, and nobody spake no good o' he; put him to bed and let's prache to the living."
And here is a good story related to me by a West Country vicar. A lively old lady in his parish was very ill, and likely, as it seemed, to die. The vicar called on her and talked with professional eloquence of the splendours and joys of heaven. But the bright old creature had no fears for the future, and indeed was not so ill as they supposed. "Yes, sir," she said, "what you say may be very true, and heaven may be a bobby-dazzling place; but I never was one to go a-bell-wavering—old Dorset's good enough for me!"
Inside the old Dorset farm-houses there is much that belongs to other days than these. Many old homes have deep porches, with stone seats on each side, which lead to the large kitchen. It is large because it was built in the days when the farmer had labourers to help in the fields, and the mistress of the house had women servants to help with the spinning and the poultry, and all who lived under the same roof had their meals together in this room.
Many of the doors are as large and solid as church doors, and one that I saw was studded with nails and secured by a great rough wooden bar drawn right across it into an iron loop on the opposite side at night, and in the day-time thrust back into a hole in the thickness of the wall. But the majority are more homely than this and have only a latch inside raised from outside by a leather thong, or by "tirling at the pin," as in the old ballad.