Wild Life in a Southern County

by Richard Jefferies

The carters have a story about horses which had spent the night in a meadow being found the next morning in a state of exhaustion, as if they had been ridden furiously during the hours of darkness. They were totally unfit for work next day. Instances are even given where men have hidden in a tree with a gun, and when the horses began to gallop fired at something indistinct sitting on their haunches, which something at once disappeared, and the excitement ceased. But these things are said to have happened a long time ago.

So, also, there is a memory of a man digging stone in a quarry and distinctly hearing the strokes of a pick beneath him. When he wheeled his barrow the subterranean quarryman wheeled his, and shortly after he had shot the stones out there came a rumbling from below as if the other barrow had been emptied. The very quarry is pointed out where this extraordinary phenomenon took place. It is curious how a story of this kind, something like which is, I think, told of the Hartz Mountains, should have got localised in a limestone quarry so far apart in distance and character. How well I remember the ancient labourer who told me this legend as a boy! It is easy to philosophise on it now, and speculate upon the genesis of the tale, which may have originated in a cavernous hollow resounding to the tools; but then it was a reality, and I recollect always giving a wide berth to that quarry at night. As the old man told it, it was indeed hardly a legend; for he could disclose every detail, and what has here occupied a few sentences took him the best part of an hour to relate.

Now and then the western clouds after the sunset assume a shape resembling that of a vast extended wing, as of a gigantic bird in full flight—the extreme tip nearly reaching the zenith, the body of the bird just below the horizon. The resemblance is sometimes so perfect that the layers of feathers are traceable by an imaginative eye. This, the old folk say, is the wing of the Archangel Michael, and it bodes no good to the evil ones among the nations, for he is on his way to execute a dread command.

Herbs are still believed in implicitly by some. Not long since I met a labourer, one of the better class too, whom I had known previously, and now found deeply depressed because of the death of a son. The poor fellow had had every attention; the clergyman had exerted himself, and wine and nourishing luxuries had not been spared, nor the best of medical advice. That he admitted, but still regretted one thing. There was a herb, which grew beside rivers, and was known to but a few, that was a certain cure for the kind of wasting disease which had baffled educated skill. There was an old man living somewhere by a river fifty miles away, who possessed the secret of this herb, and by it had accomplished marvellous cures. He had heard of him, but could not by any inquiry ascertain his exact whereabouts; and so his child died. Everything possible had been done, but still he regretted that this herb had not been applied.

Nothing is done right now, according to the old men of the hamlet; even the hayricks are built badly and ‘scamped.’ The ‘rickmaker’ used to be an important person, generally a veteran, who had to be conciliated with an extra drop of good liquor before he could be got to set to work in earnest. Then he spread the hay here, and worked it in there, and had it trodden down at the edge, and then in the middle, and, like the centurion, sent men hither and thither. His rick, when complete, did not rise perpendicularly, but each face or square side sloped a little outwards—including the ends—a method that certainly does give the rick a very shapely look.

But now the new-fangled ‘elevator’ carries up the hay by machinery from the waggon to the top, and two ricks are run up while they would formerly have just been carefully laying the foundation for one of faggots to keep off the damp. The poles put up to support the rick-cloth interfere with the mathematically correct outward slope at the ends, upon which the old fellow prided himself; so they are carried up straight like the end wall of a cottage, and are a constant source of contempt to the ancient invalid. However, he consoles himself with the reflection that most of the men employed with the ‘elevator’ will ultimately go to a very unpleasant place, since they are continuously swearing at the horse that works it, to make him go round the faster.

After an old cart or waggon has done its work and is broken up, the wooden axletree, which is very solid, is frequently used for the top bar of a stile. It answers very well, and, being of seasoned wood that has received a good many coats of red paint, will last a long time. The life of a waggon is not unlike that of a ship. On the cradle it is the pride of the craftsman who builds it, and who is careful to reproduce the exact ‘lines’ which he learned from his master as an apprentice, and which have been handed down these hundred years and more. The builders of the Chinese junks are said never to saw a piece of timber into the shape required, nor to bend it by softening the fibres by hot steam, but always use a beam that has grown crooked naturally. This plan gives great strength, but it must take years to accumulate the necessary curved trees. The waggon-builder, in like manner, has a whole yard full of timber selected for much the same reason—because it naturally curves in the way he desires, or is specially fitted for his purpose.

For, like a ship, the true old-fashioned waggon is full of curves, and there is scarcely a straight piece of wood about it. Nothing is angular or square; and each piece of timber, too, is carved in some degree, bevelled at the edges, the sharp outline relieved in one way or another, and the whole structure like a ship, seeming buoyant, and floating as it were, easily on the wheels. Then the painting takes several weeks, and after that the lettering of the name; and when at last completed it is placed outside by the road, that every farmer and labourer who goes by may pause and admire. In about twelve months, if the builder be expeditious (for him), the new vessel may reach her port under the open shed at the farm, and then her life of voyages begins.

Her cargoes are hay and wheat and huge mountainous loads of straw, and occasionally hurdles for the shepherd. Nor are her voyages confined to the narrow seas of the fields adjoining home; now and then she goes on adventurous expeditions to distant market towns, carrying mayhap a cargo of oak-bark, stripped from fallen trees, to the tan-yard. Then she is well victualled for the voyage, and her course mapped out on the chart in order to avoid the Scylla of steep hills and stony ways and the Charybdis of tollgates, besides being duly cautioned against the sirens that chant so sweetly from the taps of the roadside inns. Or she sails down to the far-away railway station after coal—possibly two or more vessels in the same convoy—if the steam plough be at work and requires the constant services of these tenders.

She has her own special crew—her captain the carter—and for forecastle men a lad or two, and often a couple of able-bodied seamen in the shape of labourers, to help to load up. When on the more distant voyages to unknown shores, she takes a supercargo—the farmer’s son—to check the bills of lading; for on those strange coasts who knows what treachery there may be brewing? There are arms aboard, in the form of forks or prongs; and commonly one or more passengers go out in her—women with vast bundles and children—not to mention the merchandise of sugars and of teas from Cathay, which are shipped for delivery at half the cottages and farmsteads en route homewards. Wherefore, you see, the captain had needs be a sober and godly man, having all these and manifold other responsibilities upon his mind.