When hare-hunting is over in the low country, then, some week or two after Easter, the packs that surround Dartmoor assemble on it, and a week is given up to hare-hunting. On the last day, Friday, there is a grand gathering on Bellever Tor. All the towns and villages neighbouring on Dartmoor send out carriages, traps, carts, riders; the roads are full of men and women, ay, and children hurrying to Bellever. Little girls with their baskets stuffed with saffron cake for lunch desert school and trudge to the tor. Ladies go out with champagne luncheons ready. Whether a hare be found and coursed that day matters little. It is given up to merriment in the fresh air and sparkling sun. And the roads that lead from Bellever in the afternoon are careered over by riders, whose horses are so exhilarated that they race, and the riders have a difficulty in keeping their seats. Their faces are red, not those of the horses, but their riders—from the sun and air—and they are so averse to leave the moor, that they sometimes desert their saddles to roll on the soft and springy turf.
Trout-fishing on Dartmoor is to be had, and on very easy terms, but the rivers are far less stocked than they were a few years ago, as they are so persistently whipped. The trout are small and dark, but delicious eating.
There would be more birds but for the mischievous practice of "swaling" or burning the heather and gorse, which is persisted in till well into the summer, and, walking over a fresh-burned patch of moor, one may tread on roasted eggs or the burned young of some unhappy birds that fondly deemed there was protection for them in England.
The "swaling" is carried on upon the commons round the forest as well as on the forest itself, so that the blame is not wholly due to the representatives of the Duchy.
One is disposed to think that the moor must be a desolate and altogether uninhabitable region in the winter. It is not so—at no time do the mosses show in such variety of colour, and when the sun shines the sense of exhilaration is beyond restraint.
To all lovers of Dartmoor I dedicate the song with which I conclude this chapter.
THE SONG OF THE MOOR.
'Tis merry in the spring time,
'Tis blithe on Dartimoor,
Where every man is equal,
For every man is poor.
I do what I'm a minded,
And none will say me nay,
I go where I'm inclinèd,
On all sides—right of way.
O the merry Dartimoor,
O the bonny Dartimoor,
I would not be where I'm not free
As I am upon the moor.
'Tis merry in the summer,
When furze be flowering sweet;
The bees about it humming,
In honey bathe their feet.
The plover and the peewit,
How cheerily they pipe,
And underfoot the whortle
Is turning blue and ripe.