Then comes a double mound with two stiles—one for each ditch—made very high and intended for steps; but the steps are worn away, and it is something like climbing a perpendicular ladder. Another has a toprail of a whole tree, so broad and thick no one can possibly straddle it, so some friend of humanity has broken the second rail, and you creep under. Finally comes a steep bank, six or seven feet high, with rude steps formed of the roots of trees worn bare by iron-tipped boots, and of mere holes in which to put the toe. At the top the stile leans forward over the precipice, so that you have to suspend yourself in mid-air. Fortunately, almost every other one has a gap worn at the side just large enough to squeeze through after coaxing the briars to yield a trifle. For it is intensely characteristic of human nature to make gaps and short cuts.
All the lads of the hamlet have a trysting-place at the cross-roads, or rather cross-lanes, where there is often an open waste space and a small clump of trees. If there is any mischief in the wind, there the council of war is sure to be held. There is a great rickyard not far distant, where in one of the open sheds is the thatcher’s workshop.
He is a very pronounced character in his way, with his leathern pads for the knees that he may be able to bear lengthened contact against the wooden rungs of the ladder, his little club to drive in the stakes, his shears to snip off the edges of the straw round the eaves, his iron needle of gigantic size with which to pass the tar-cord through when thatching a shed, and his small sharp billhook to split out his thatching stakes. These are of willow, cut from the pollard trees by the brook, and he sits on a stool in the shed and splits them into three or four with the greatest dexterity, giving his billhook a twist this way and then that, and so guiding the split in the direction required. Then holding it across his knee, he cuts the point with a couple of blows and casts the finished stake aside upon the heap.
A man of no little consequence is the thatcher the most important perhaps of the hamlet craftsmen. He ornaments the wheat ricks with curious twisted tufts of straw, standing up not unlike the fantastic ways in which savages are represented doing their hair. But he does not put the thatch on the wheat half so substantially as formerly because now only a few remain the winter—the thatch is often hardly on before it is off again for the threshing machine—for the ‘sheening,’ as they call it. On the hayricks, which stand longer, he puts better work, especially on the southern and western sides or angles, binding it down with a crosswork of bonds to prevent the gales which blow from those quarters unroofing the rick.
It is said to be an ill wind that blows nobody any good: now the wind never blew that was strong enough to please the thatcher. If the hurricane roughs up the straw on all the ricks, in the parish, unroofs half-a-dozen sheds, and does not spare the gables of the dwelling-houses, why he has work for the next two months. He is attended by a man to carry up the ‘yelms,’ and two or three women are busy ‘yelming’—i.e., separating the straw, selecting the longest and laying it level and parallel, damping it with water, and preparing it for the yokes. These yokes must be cut from boughs that have grown naturally in the shape wanted, else they are not tough enough. A tough old chap, too, is the thatcher, a man of infinite gossip, well acquainted with the genealogy of every farmer, and, indeed, of everybody from Dan to Beersheba, of the parish.
The memory of the smugglers is not yet quite extinct. The old men will point out the route they used to follow, and some of the places where they are said to have stored their contraband goods. Smuggling suggests the sea, but the goods landed on the beach had afterwards to be conveyed inland for sale, so that the hamlet, though far distant from the shore, has its traditions of illicit trade. The route followed was a wild and unfrequented one, and the smugglers appear to have kept to the downs as much as possible. More than one family—well-to-do for the hamlet or village where a small capital goes a long way—are said to have originally derived their prosperity from assisting the storage or disposal of smuggled goods; and the sympathies of the hamlet would be with the smugglers still.
The old folk, too, talk of having the ague, and say that it was quite common in their early days; but it is rare to hear of a case now. Possibly the better drainage of the fields and the better food and lodging enjoyed by the labourers have something to do with this. There are, of course, no scientific or precise data for exact comparison; but, judging from the traditions transmitted down, the hamlet is much more healthy at the present day than it was in the olden times.