Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

NORTH COUNTRY HUMOUR

NATURE’S POETS

Dan Gunby, in spite of his fiddling and attendance at all the dances in the neighbourhood, was not of a jovial nature. His life was hard and his outlook on it was always serious, and any humour which he had was of the dry order, which is so frequent in the northern counties. Terse remarks with a touch of humour, sly or grim, he doubtless showed at times, but a real hearty laugh he would seldom allow himself. We find this same almost unconscious habit of saying a biting thing in a sly way frequent in the counties north of Lincolnshire, as for instance, when in Westmorland a man meeting a friend says, “I hear Jock has gotten marriet” and the rejoinder, which expresses so much in so few words, both about the man in question and the subject of matrimony generally, is “Ah’m gled o’ that, ah niver liked Jock.” Another time, a man meets a ‘pal’ and for a bit of news says, “We’m gotten a chain for oor Mayor,” and the answer, “Han yo? We let yon beggar of ourn go loose” is far more funny than was ever intended. But Gunby and his likes, of whom there are more in the regions of the hills and fells than elsewhere, have not only the seriousness of those who live solitary and have leisure to do a deal o’ thinking, but dwelling apart in places where they can commune with Nature and the stars they get the poetic touch from their surroundings. The mountain shepherd goes up on to the heights and spends long hours with his dog and sheep. He marks the great clouds move by, and listens to the voice of the streams. He knows “the silence that is in the starry sky;” the great constellations are his companions; he sees the rising moon, and the splendours of the dawn and sunset. Those sights which fill us with such delight and wonder when beheld now and then in a lifetime, are before his eyes repeatedly. Now he watches the storm near at hand in all its fury, the thunder echoing round him from crag to crag; soon the clouds roll off and disclose the brilliant arch of the rainbow across the glistening valley, each perfect in its different way. At one time he must be out on the slopes sparkling with snow, at another his heart gladdens at the approach of spring, and he feels himself one with it all. And so the changing seasons of the year cannot fail to touch him more than most men, and what the heart feels the lips will strive to utter. In the same way Dan Gunby used to watch the wide sunsets across the marsh, and see the floods of golden light on the shore, and the ebbing and flowing of the far-spread tide about his anchored cabin. He saw, at one time, the ripples crested with gold by the sun’s last rays, at another the red orb rising from the sea on a clear morning; or, in the mist which closed him in, he listened to the cries of the sea-birds sweeping by invisible. At times, when the wind was up and the tide high, he heard the roar of the waves dashed on the sand; or, upon a calm night, he looked out on a gently moving water led by the changing moon. There were always some voices of the night, and usually some visions both at eve and morn; and with his observant eye and ear, and his leisure to reflect, while Nature was his one companion, how could he fail to be in some sort a poet?

I lately heard of a shepherd or crofter who was quite a case in point; but as he was not a Lincolnshire native but lived in the Scotch Lowlands, I put the account of him and his poetry, which, by the help of a Scotch lady, I have succeeded in collecting, small in quantity but some of it very good, I think, in quality, into an appendix at the end of the volume.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE MARSH CHURCHES IN SOUTH LINDSEY

Alford—Markby—Hogsthorpe—Addlethorpe—Ingoldmells—Winthorpe—Skegness—The Bond Epitaph—Croft—The Parish Books—Burgh-le-Marsh—Palmer Epitaph—Bratoft—The Armada—Gunby—The Massingberd Brasses.

Starting from Alford, a little town with several low thatched houses in the main street, and a delightful old thatched ivy-clad manor, we will first look into the church which stands on a mound in the centre of the town, to see the very fine rood screen. Before reaching the south porch with its sacristy or priests’ room above, and its good old door, we pass an excellent square-headed window. Inside, the bold foliage carving on the capitals at once arrests the eye. The pillars, as in most of these churches, are lofty, slender and octagonal. The steps to the rood loft remain, and a squint to the altar in the north aisle chapel. On the other side is a carved Jacobean pulpit of great beauty, east of which is a low-side window, and east of that again a tomb with recumbent alabaster figures of Sir Robert Christopher and his wife, date 1668, in perfect condition.

From Alford a road goes north to Louth, branching to the right three miles out, to run to Mablethorpe, the favourite seaside resort of the Tennysons when living at Somersby. But we will follow the road to Bilsby, where Professor Barnard keeps his unapproachable collection of Early English water-colours. From here we can reach Markby, a curious thatched chapel standing inside a moat, and now disused. Then we can look in at Huttoft to see the extremely fine font which resembles that at Covenham St. Mary, and Low Toynton, near Horncastle; after which, passing by Mumby, we will make for the first of the typical Marsh churches at Hogsthorpe.

Markby vicarage goes with Hannah-cum-Hagnaby rectory. Once there was an Austin or Black Friars priory at Markby, and at Hagnaby—a hamlet in Hannah or Hannay—an abbey of Premonstratensian or White Canons, which was founded in 1175 by Herbert de Orreby and dedicated to St. Thomas the Martyr.