Wild Life in a Southern County

by Richard Jefferies

A cottage attached to a farmstead, which has been occupied by a steady man who has worked on the tenancy for the best part of his life, and possibly by his father before him, sometimes contains furniture of a superior kind. This has been purchased piece by piece in the course of years, some representing a a little legacy—cottagers who have a trifle of property are very proud of making wills—and some perhaps the last remaining relics of former prosperity. It is not at all uncommon to find men like this, whose forefathers no great while since held farms, and even owned them, but fell by degrees in the social scale, till at last their grandchildren work in the fields for wages. An old chair or cabinet which once stood in the farmhouse generations ago is still preserved.

Upon the shelf may be found a few books—a Bible, of course; hardly a cottager who can read is without his Bible—and among the rest an ancient volume of polemical theology, bound in leather; it dates back to the days of the fierce religious controversies which raged in the period which produced Cromwell. There is a rude engraving of the author for frontispiece, title in red letter, a tedious preface, and the text is plentifully bestrewn with Latin and Greek quotations. These add greatly to its value in the cottager’s eyes, for he still looks upon a knowledge of Latin as the essential of a ‘scholard.’ This book has evidently been handed down for many generations as a kind of heirloom, for on the blank leaves may be seen the names of the owners with the inevitable addition of ‘his’ or ‘her book.’ It is remarkable that literature of this sort should survive so long.

Even yet not a little of that spirit which led to the formation of so many contending sects in the seventeenth century lingers in the cottage. I have known men who seemed to reproduce in themselves the character of the close-cropped soldiers who prayed and fought by turns with such energy. They still read the Bible in its most literal sense, taking every word as addressed to them individually, and seriously trying to shape their lives in accordance with their convictions.

Such a man, who has been labouring in the hay-field all day, in the evening may be found exhorting a small but attentive congregation in a cottage hard by. Though he can but slowly wade through the book, letter by letter, word by word, he has caught the manner of the ancient writer, and expresses himself in an archaic style not without its effect. Narrow as the view must be which is unassisted by education and its broad sympathies, there is no mistaking the thorough earnestness of the cottage preacher. He believes what he says, and no persuasion, rhetoric, or force could move him one jot. His congregation approve his discourse with groans and various ejaculations. Men of this kind won Cromwell’s victories; but to-day they are mainly conspicuous for upright steadiness and irreproachable moral character, mingled with some surly independence. They are not ‘agitators’ in the current sense of the term; the local agents of labour associations seem chosen from quite a different class.

Pausing once to listen to such a man, who was preaching in a roadside cottage in a loud and excited manner, I found he was describing, in graphic if rude language, the procession of a martyr of the Inquisition to the stake. His imagination naturally led him to picture the circumstances as corresponding to the landscape of fields with which he had been from youth familiar. The executioners were dragging the victim bound along a footpath across the meadows to the pile which had been prepared for burning him. When they arrived at the first stile they halted, and held an argument with the prisoner, promising him his life and safety if he would recant, but he held to the faith.

Then they set out again, beating and torturing the sufferer along the path, the crowd hissing and reviling. At the next stile a similar scene took place—promise of pardon, and scornful refusal to recant, followed by more torture. Again, at the third and last stile, the victim was finally interrogated, and, still firmly clinging to his belief, was committed to the flames in the centre of the field. Doubtless there was some historic basis for the story; but the preacher made it quite his own by the vigour and life of the local colouring in which he clothed it, speaking of the green grass, the flowers, the innocent sheep, the faggots, and so on, bringing it home to the minds of his audience to whom faggots and grass and sheep were so well known. They worked themselves into a state of intense excitement as the narrative approached its climax, till a continuous moaning formed a deep undertone to the speaker’s voice. Such men are not paid, trained, or organised; they labour from goodwill in the cause.

Now and then a woman, too, may be found who lectures in the little cottage room where ten or fifteen, perhaps twenty, are packed almost to suffocation; or she prays aloud and the rest respond. Sometimes, no doubt, persons of little sincerity practise these things from pure vanity and the ambition of preaching—for there is ambition in cottage life as elsewhere; but the men and women I speak of are thoroughly in earnest.

Cottagers have their own social creed and customs. In their intercourse, one point which seems to be insisted upon particularly is a previous knowledge or acquaintance. The very people whose morals are known to be none of the strictest—and cottage morality is sometimes very far from severe—will refuse, and especially the women, to admit a strange girl, for instance, to sleep in their house for ample remuneration, even when introduced by really respectable persons. Servant-girls in the country where railways even now are few and far between often walk long distances to see mistresses in want of assistance, by appointment. They get tired; perhaps night approaches and then comes the difficulty, of lodging them if the house happens to be full. Cottagers make the greatest difficulty, unless by some chance it should be discovered that they met the girl’s uncle or cousin years ago.

To their friends and neighbours, on the contrary, they are often very kind, and ready to lend a helping hand. If they seldom sit down to a social gathering among themselves, it is because they see each other so constantly during the day, working in the same fields, and perhaps eating their luncheon a dozen together in the same outhouse. A visitor whom they know from the next village is ever welcome to what fare there is. On Sundays the younger men often set out to call on friends at a distance of several miles, remaining with them all day; they carry with them a few lettuces, or apples from the tree in the garden (according to the season), wrapped up in a coloured handkerchief, as a present.

Some of the older shepherds still wear the ancient blue smock-frock, crossed with white ‘facings’ like coarse lace; but the rising generation use the greatcoat of modern make, at which their forefathers would have laughed as utterly useless in the rain-storms that blow across the open hills. Among the elder men, too, may be found a few of the huge umbrellas of a former age, which when spread give as much shelter as a small tent. It is curious that they rarely use an umbrella in the field, even when simply standing about; but if they go a short journey along the highway, then they take it with them. The aged men sling these great umbrellas over the shoulder with a piece of tar-cord, just as a soldier slings his musket, and so have both hands free—one to stump along with a stout stick and the other to carry a flag basket. The stick is always too lengthy to walk with as men use it in cities, carrying it by the knob or handle; it is a staff rather than a stick, the upper end projecting six or eight inches above the hand.