Then came a Scouring in 1808, at which the Hanney men came down in a strong body and made sure of winning the prize for wrestling. But all the other gamesters leagued against them, and at last their champion, Belcher, was thrown by Fowler of Baydon;—both these men are still living. Two men, “with very shiny top-boots, quite gentlemen, from London,” won the prize for backsword play, one of which gentlemen was Shaw, the life-guardsman, a Wiltshire man himself as I was told, who afterwards died at Waterloo after killing so many cuirassiers. A new prize was given at this pastime and a very blackguard one, viz: a gallon of gin or half a guinea for the woman who would smoke most tobacco in an hour. Only two gypsy women entered, and it seems to have been a very abominable business, but it is the only instance of the sort that I could hear of at any Scouring.
The old men disagree as to the date of the next Scouring, which was either in 1812 or 1813; but I think in the latter year, because the clerk of Kingstone Lisle, an old Peninsula man, says that he was at home on leave in this year, and that there was to be a Scouring. And all the people were talking about it when he had to go back to the wars. At this Scouring there was a prize of a loaf made out of a bushel of flour, for running up the manger, which was won by Philip New, of Kingstone-in-the-Hole; who cut the great loaf into pieces at the top, and sold the pieces for a penny a piece. I am sure he must have deserved a great many pennies for running up that place, if he really ever did it; for I would just as soon undertake to run up the front of the houses in Holborn. The low country men won the first backsword prize, and one Ford, of Ashbury, the second; and the Baydon men, headed by Beckingham, Fowler, and Breakspear, won the prize for wrestling. One Henry Giles (of Hanney, I think they said) had wrestled for the prize, and I suppose took too much beer afterwards; at any rate, he fell into the canal on his way home and was drowned. So the jury found, “Killed at wrastlin’;” “though,” as my informant said, “’twur a strange thing for a old geamster as knew all about the stage, to be gettin’ into the water for a bout. Hows’mever, Sir, I hears as they found it as I tells ’ee, and you med see it any day as you’ve a mind to look in the parish register.”
Then I couldn’t find that there had been another Scouring till 1825, but the one which took place in that year seems by all accounts to have been the largest gathering that there has ever been. The games were held at the Seven Barrows, which are distant two miles in a southeasterly direction from the White Horse, instead of in Uffington Castle; but I could not make out why. These seven barrows, I heard the Squire say, are probably the burial-places of the principal men who were killed at Ashdown, and near them are other long irregular mounds, all full of bones huddled together anyhow, which are very likely the graves of the rank and file.
After this there was no Scouring till 1838, when, on the 19th and 20th of September, the old custom was revived, under the patronage of Lord Craven. The Reading Mercury congratulates its readers on the fact, and adds that no more auspicious year could have been chosen for the revival, “than that in which our youthful and beloved Queen first wore the British crown, and in which an heir was born to the ancient and noble house of Craven, whom God preserve.” I asked the Parson if he knew why it was that such a long time had been let to pass between the 1825 Scouring and the next one.
“You see it was a transition time,” said he; “old things were passing away. What with Catholic Emancipation, and Reform, and the new Poor Law, even the quiet folk in the Vale had no time or heart to think about pastimes; and machine-breaking and rick-burning took the place of wrestling and backsword play.”
“But then, Sir,” said I, “this last fourteen years we haven’t had any Reform Bill (worse luck) and yet there was no Scouring between 1843 and 1857.”
“Why can’t you be satisfied with my reason?” said he; “now you must find one out for yourself.”
The last Scouring, in September, 1843, Joe had been at himself, and told me a long story about, which I should be very glad to repeat, only I think it would rather interfere with my own story of what I saw myself. The Berkshire and Wiltshire men, under Joe Giles of Shrivenham, got the better of the Somersetshire men, led by Simon Stone, at backsword play; and there were two men who came down from London, who won the wrestling prize away from the countrymen. “What I remember best, however,” said Joe, “was all the to-do to get the elephant’s caravan up the hill, for Wombwell’s menagerie came down on purpose for the Scouring. I should think they put-to a matter of four-and-twenty horses, and then stuck fast four or five times. I was a little chap then but I sat and laughed at ’em a good one; and I don’t know that I’ve seen so foolish a job since.”
“I don’t see why, Joe,” said I.
“You don’t?” said he, “well, that’s good, too. Why didn’t they turn the elephant out and make him pull his own caravan up? He would have been glad to do it, poor old chap, to get a breath of fresh air, and a look across the vale.”