JOHN LOCKWOOD KIPLING
C.I.E.
1837-1911.
ALICE MACDONALD
WIFE OF
JOHN LOCKWOOD KIPLING
1910
The village of Tisbury existed in the seventh century, the earliest extant spelling of the name being "Tissebiri" or "Dysseburg," and there was a monastery over which an abbot named Wintra ruled about 647. Mr Paley Baildon, F.S.A., who has devoted considerable time to the investigation of the origin of place names, thinks that without doubt Tisbury is derived from Tissa's-burgh, Tissa or Tyssa being a personal name and owner of the estate; hence it came to be known as Tissa's-burgh.
It was at Tisbury that Rudyard Kipling wrote some of his stories after leaving India, and there can be little doubt that after some years of absence in the East the return to things desperately dear and familiar and intimate exercised a strong effect upon his thoughts and writing, and prepared a way for his delicately fashioned pictures of the Old Country in Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies.
At Barford St Martin I had the misfortune to burst the back tube and tyre of my motor cycle, and that is the real reason I arrived at Tisbury. I wheeled my machine to the Green Dragon, hoping for a lift to a place where I could get fixed up with a new tyre. A large wagon was standing outside the inn, and as it bore the name, Stephen Weekes, Tisbury, upon it, I penetrated to the bar-parlour, thinking that I might induce the driver to take me with the machine into that village.
The owner of the wagon was sitting inside with two large bottles of stout before him. He was a burly fellow in shirt-sleeves and a broad straw hat. I saw he was fifty or thereabouts—not a mere wagoner, but a small farmer who would have answered to the description of Farmer Oak by Thomas Hardy in his opening to Far from the Madding Crowd. He was of a more jovial type than most Dorset men I have met, and after submitting to his fire of questions I asked him gently, in jest, if he would require any assistance with his two bottles.
"Aye," he answered, quizzing at me with his merry eyes. "I shall require another bottle to assist me, I think."