All the veins of water forming depressions have been at some remote period laboriously streamed.
Another interesting excursion may be made to South Zeal. The old coach-road ran through this quaint place, but the new road leaves it on one side. A few years ago it was more interesting than it is now, as some of the old houses have recently been removed. It, however, repays a visit. Situated at the opening of the Taw Cleave, under Cosdon Beacon, it is a little world to itself. The well-to-do community have extensive rights of common, and of late have been ruthlessly enclosing. None can oppose them, as all are agreed to grab and appropriate what they can. This has led to much destruction of prehistoric remains. There was at one time a circle of standing stones from eight to nine feet high. This has gone; so has an avenue of upright stones on the common leading to West Week. But another of stones, that are, however, small, starting from a cairn that contains two small kistvaens, is beside and indeed crosses the moor-track leading towards Rayborough Pool; and on Whitmoor is a circle still fairly intact, though three or four of the largest uprights have been broken and removed to serve as gate-posts. Near this is the Whitmoor Stone, a menhir, spared as it constitutes a parish boundary.
In South Zeal is a little granite chapel, and before it is a very stately cross. The inn, the "Oxenham Arms," was formerly the mansion of the Burgoynes. I spent there an amusing evening a few winters ago. I had gone there with my friend Mr., now Dr., Bussell collecting folk-songs, for I remembered hearing many sung there when I was a boy some forty years before. I had worked the place for two or three days previously, visiting and "yarning" with some of the old singers, till shyness was broken down and good-fellowship established. Then I invited them to meet me at the "Oxenham Arms" in the evening.
But when the evening arrived the inn was crowded with men. The women—wives and daughters—were dense in the passage, and outside boys stood on each other's shoulders flattening their noses, so that they looked like dabs of putty, against the window-panes. Evidently a grand concert was expected, and the old men rose to the occasion, and stood up in order and sang—but only modern songs—to suit the audience.
However, the ice was broken, and during the next few days we had them in separately to sup with us, and after supper and a glass, over a roaring fire, they sang lustily some of the old songs drawn up from the bottom-most depths of their memory. There were "Lucky" Fewins, and old Charles Arscott, and lame Radmore, James Glanville, and Samuel Westaway, the cobbler. I remember one of them was stubborn; he would not allow me to take down the words of a song of his—not a very ancient one either—but did not object to the "pricking" of the tune. It was not till two years after that he gave way and surrendered the words.
The old house of the Oxenham family is in the neighbourhood, but has passed away into other hands. To this family belonged, there can be little doubt, the John Oxenham who was such an adventurous seaman and explorer in the Elizabethan days. He was one of those who accompanied Francis Drake in the expedition to Nombre de Dios in 1572, and afterwards, in an adventure on his own account, was the first Englishman who launched a keel on the Pacific Ocean, or South Sea, as it was then called. He fell into the hands of the Spaniards, and was carried to Lima, where he was executed as a pirate. His story has been worked into Kingsley's Westward Ho! The omen of the appearance of a white bird before death, supposed to belong to the family, is there effectively introduced.
The house of Oxenham is of the last century, and was built about the year 1714, the date which is sculptured on one of the granite pillars of the entrance gates. The family does not seem to have been qualified to bear arms in 1620, the last Herald's visitation, but the coat borne by the family is ar. a fess embattled between 3 oxen sa. The story is told that once upon a time a certain Margaret Oxenham was about to be married to the man of her choice. In the midst of the preparations on the wedding morn, when all was going merrily, the white bird appeared and hovered over the bride-elect. The ceremony, however, proceeded, and at the altar of South Tawton the hapless bride was stabbed to death by a rejected lover.
There is a remarkably circumstantial printed account of some appearances of the family omen in the year 1635 in a very rare tract, entitled, A True Relation of an Apparition in the likenesse of a Bird with a white brest, that appeared hovering over the Death-Beds of some of the children of Mr. James Oxenham, of Sale Monachorum, Devon, Gent. Prefixed to the tract is a quaint engraved frontispiece. It is in four compartments; in each of the first three is a representation of a person lying in a bed of the four-post type, and in the fourth is a child in a wicker cradle. Over each individual is a bird on the wing, hovering. At the foot of these pictorial compartments are the names of those above whom the bird appears: John Oxenham, aged 21; Thomasine, wife of James Oxenham the younger, aged 22; Rebecca Oxenham, aged 8, and Thomasine, a babe.
This tract may have been provoked by a letter of James Howell to "Mr. E. D.," dated 3rd July, 1632, and written from Westminster:—
"I can tell you of a strange thing I saw lately here, and I believe 't is true. As I pass'd by St. Dunstans in Fleet-street the last Saturday, I stepp'd into a Lapidary, or stone-cutter's shop, to treat with the Master for a stone to be put upon my Father's Tomb; and casting my eyes up and down, I might spie a huge Marble with a large inscription upon 't, which was thus to my best remembrance:—
"'Here lies John Oxenham, a goodly young man, in whose chamber, as he was struggling with the Pangs of Death, a Bird with a white brest was seen fluttering about his Bed, and so vanished.
"'Here lies Mary Oxenham, the sister of the said John, who died the next day, and the same Apparition was seen in the Room.'
"Then another sister is spoke of. Then:—
"'Here lies hard by James Oxenham, the son of the said John, who dyed a Child in his Cradel a little after, and such a Bird was seen fluttering about his head, a little before he expir'd, which vanish'd afterwards.'
"At the bottome of the Stone ther is:—
"'Here lies Elizabeth Oxenham, the Mother of the said John, who died sixteen years since, when such a Bird with a white Brest was seen about her bed before her death.'
"To all these ther be divers Witnesses, both Squires and Ladies, whose names are engraven upon the Stone. This Stone is to be sent to a Town hard by Exeter, wher it happen 'it."[22]