Then I must not forget the noise of birds in flocks, ranging from the familiar wrangle of sparrows noisily going to roost, to the mysterious sound of
great flights of birds migrating at night, one of the most romantic of sounds, but to me untranslatable, since I do not know the language of these wanderers.
I come now to human sounds. It was exciting to wake at 5 o’clock some morning in June, and to learn by the sound of scythes being whetted that the mowers had arrived, and that the hay harvest had actually begun. The field had been a great sea of tall grasses, pink with sorrel and white with dog-daisies, a sacred sea into which we might not enter. But now we could at least follow the mowers, and watch the growth of the tracks made by their shifting feet, and listen to the swish of the scythes as the swathes of fallen grass and flowers also grew in length. There was something military in their rhythm, and something relentless and machine-like in their persistence. But our admiration was mixed with pity from the time that one of them told us that after the first day’s mowing he was too tired to sleep. In later years another sound was associated with haymaking, when in an Alpine meadow the group of resting peasants were heard hammering the blades of their little pre-Raphaelite scythes to flatten the dents made by stones hidden among the grass.
A well-remembered sound that came near the end of the harvest was the cry of “Stand fast!” which was heard at intervals warning the man in the cart, whose duty it was to arrange the pitched-up hay, that a move was to be made. Why it was necessary to shout the warning so that it could be heard a quarter of a mile away I cannot say. But its impressive effect depended
on its loud chant-like tone. This sound is connected with recollections of riding in the empty hay-cart, from the sea-green stack mysteriously growing in the corner of the field back to where hay waited to be carted. The inside of the hay-cart was enchantingly polished, and also full of hay-seed, which had a charm for me. The hay-making at Down was a leisurely affair, with many women gossiping as they gently turned the hay. There was, however, one man of whom we children were much afraid, a fierce red-eyed old labourer who acted as foreman, and did not hesitate to show that he thought us out of place in a hay-field.
One sound there was peculiar to Down,—I mean the sound of drawing water. In that dry chalky country we depended for drinking-water on a deep well from which it came up cold and pure in buckets. These were raised by a wire rope wound on a spindle turned by a heavy fly-wheel, and it was the monotonous song of the turning wheel that became so familiar to us. The well-house, gloomily placed among laurel bushes, had a sort of terrifying attraction for us, and I remember dropping pebbles and waiting—it seemed ages—for them to fall into the water below. We believed the well to be 365 feet deep, also that this was the height of the dome of St. Paul’s—I have never tested the truth of either statement. The opening was roofed in by a pair of hinged flaps, or doors, and I especially liked the moment when the rising bucket crashed into the doors from below, throwing them open with a brutal and roystering air, which one forgave it as having made a long and dangerous journey
up from the distant water. But the best was when the empty bucket went down, and the fly-wheel spun round till its spokes were invisible. Then was the time to remember the death of a dog (called Dick) who was killed by jumping through the flying wheel. I envied my elder brothers who could actually remember Dick: to me he was only a tragic myth. I imagine that in hot dry weather more water was drawn, or else that being more constantly out of doors we heard more of it. It is at least certain that the sound of the well came to be associated with peaceful days and happy weather in that dear garden.
Another sound I like to recall is connected with the memory of my father. He daily took a certain number of turns round a little wood planted by himself, and christened the Sandwalk. As he paced round it he struck his heavy iron-shod walking-stick against the ground, and its rhythmical click became a familiar sound that spoke of his presence near us, and was associated with his constant sympathy in our pursuits. It is a sound that seems to me to have lasted all those years that stretch from misty childish days until his death. I am sure that all his children loved that sound.
February, 1912.