Ottery St. Mary
CHAPTER III
The Otter and the Axe
'Dear native brook! Wild streamlet of the West!
How many various fated years have past,
What happy and what mournful hours, since last
I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast,
Numbering its light leaps! yet so deep imprest
Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes
I never shut amid the sunny ray,
But straight with all their tints thy waters rise,
Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows grey,
And bedded sand, that, veined with various dyes,
Gleamed through thy bright transparence! On my way,
Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguiled
Lone manhood's cares, yet waking fondest sighs:
Ah! that once more I were a careless child!'
Coleridge: Sonnet to the River Otter.
The River Otter rises in Somerset, and runs nearly due south, bearing slightly westwards till it reaches Honiton. Here it makes a curve still farther to the west, and from Ottery St Mary runs southwards to the sea. In Westcote's day, when the derivations of names were taken in a light-hearted spirit, it was said: 'The river Otter, or river of otters (water-dogs), taking name from the abundance of these animals (which we term otters) sometime haunting and using it.' But the more serious authorities of to-day do not allow that the otters in this river have anything to do with the matter, and say that the name comes from the Welsh y dwr, the water. It is a rapid and very clear stream, flowing through green and fertile valleys.
Honiton filled Defoe with admiration when he came to it on his journey to the West. He describes it as 'a pleasant, good town, that stands in the best and pleasantest part of the whole country ... and to the entrance into Honiton the view of the country is the most beautiful landscape in the world, a mere picture, and I do not remember the like in any one place in England.' Beyond this pleasantness there is nothing very remarkable in the town; perhaps its most uncommon feature being a stream of clear water that runs down the street, with square dipping-places at intervals.