 CHAPTER 40 I have made Tunbridge Wells our last centre, because it is convenient, yet as a matter of strict topography the town is not in Sussex at all, but in Kent. In that it is build upon hills, Tunbridge Wells is like Rome, and in that its fashionable promenade is under the limes, like Berlin. But in other respects it is merely a provincial English inland pleasure-town, with a past, rather arid, and except under the bracing conditions of cold weather, very tiring in its steepnesses. No wonder the small Victoria and smaller pony-carriage so flourish there. The healthful properties of Tunbridge Wells were discovered, as I record a little later, in 1606, but it was not until Henrietta Maria brought her sweet hither in 1630 that the success of the new cure was assured. Afterwards came Charles II and his court, and Tunbridge Wells was made, and thenceforward to fail to visit the town at the proper time each year, although one had the poorest hut to live in the while, was to write oneself down a bour. A more sympathetic patron was Anne, who gave the first stone basin for the spring, hence Queen's Well, and whose subscription of a hundred pounds led to the purchase of the pantiles that paved the walk, now bearing that name. Subsequently it was called the Parade, but to the older style everyone has very sensibly reverted. Tunbridge Wells is still a health resort, but the waters no longer constitute a part of the hygienic routine. Their companion element, air, is the new recuperative. Not that the spring at the foot of the pantiles is wholly deserted. On the contrary the presiding old lady does quite a business in filling and cleaning the little glasses, but those visitors that descend her steps are impelled rather by curiosity than ritual, and many never try again. Nor is the trade in Tunbridge wear inlaid work in coloured woods, what it was. A hundred years ago there was hardly a girl of any pretentions to good form, but kept her pins in a Tunbridge box. The pantiles are still the resort of the idol, but of the anonymous rather than the famous variety. Our men of mark and great chams of literature, who once flourished here in the season, go elsewhere for their recreation and renovation. Abroad for choice. Tunbridge Wells now draws them no more than bath, but in the eighteenth century a large print was popular containing the portraits of all the illustrious intellectuals as they lounged on the pantiles, with Dr. Johnson and Mr. Samuel Richardson among the chief lions. The residential districts of Tunbridge Wells, its mounts, Pleasant, Zion, and Ephraim, with their discreet and prosperous villas, suggest to me only Mr. Meredith's irreproachable davidney ladies. In one of these well-ordered houses must they have lived and sighed over Victor's tangled life, surrounded by laurels and labyrinth, the lawn either cut yesterday or to be cut today. The semicircular drive a miracle of gravel unalloyed, a pan of water for tasso beside the dazzling steppe, receding at a hundred years the same author, People's Tunbridge Wells again, for it was here in its heyday that Chloe suffered. On Rusthall Common is the famous Toad Rock, which is to Tunbridge Wells what Thorwaldson's Lion is to Lucerne and the Leaning Tower to Pisa. Lucerne's Lion emerged from the stone under the sculptor's mallet and chisel, but the Rusthall monster was evolved by natural processes, and it is a toad only by courtesy. An inland rock is, however, to most English people, so rare an object that Rusthall has almost as many pilgrims as Stonehenge. The toad is free. The high rocks, however, which are a mile distant, cannot be inspected by the curious for less than six months. One must pass through a turnstile before these wonders are accessible. Rocks in themselves having insufficient drawing-power, as the dramatic critics say. A maze has been added, together with swings at a seesaw, arbors, a croquet lawn, and all the proper adjuncts of a natural phenomenon. The effect is to make the rocks appear more unreal than any rocks ever seen upon the stage. Freed from their pleasure-garden surroundings they would become beautifully wild and romantic and tropically un-English. But, as it is, with their notice-boards and bridges they are disappointing, except, of course, to children. They are no disappointment to children. Indeed, they go far to make Tunbridge Wells a children's wonderland. There is no kind of dramatic game to which the high rocks would not make the best background. Finer rocks, because more remote and free from labels and tea-rooms, are those known as pens-rocks, three miles in the south-west, in a beautiful valley. Errage, wither all visitors to Tunbridge Wells must at one time or another drive, is the seat of the Marquis of Abergavenny, whose imposing A, tied like a dressing-gown with heavy tassels, is embossed on every cottage for miles around. In character the park resembles Ashburnham, while in extent it vies with the great parks of the south-west, Arundel, Goodwood and Petworth, but it has none of their spacious coolnesses. Yet Errage Park has joys that these others know not of. Brake fern four feet high, and the conical hill on which stands Saxonbury Tower, jealously guarded from the intruding traveller by the stern fiat of Mr. McBean, Steward. Sussex is a paradise of notice-boards. There is a little district near Forest Row where the staple industry must be the prosecuting of trespasses, and one has come ordinarily to look upon these munitions without active resentment. But when the Caledonian descends from his native heath to warn the Sussex man off Sussex ground, more to warn the Saxon from his own berry, the situation becomes acute. By taking, however, the precaution of asking at a not-too-adjacent cottage for permission to ascend the hill, one may circumvent the Scottish prosecutor. The hill is very important ground in English history, as the following passage from Sir William Burrell's manuscript in the British Museum testifies. In Errage Park are the remains of a military station of the Saxon invaders of the country, which still retains the name of Saxonbury Hill. It is on the high ground to the right as the traveller passes from Frant to Mayfield. On the summit of this hill, from whence the Cliffs of Dover may be seen, are to be traced the remains of an ancient fortification. The Foss is still plainly discernable, enclosing an area of about two acres. From whence there is but one outlet. The apex of the hill within is formed of a strong compact body of stone, brought hither from a distance on which, doubtless, was erected some strong military edifice. This was probably one of the stations occupied by the Saxons under Ella, their famous chief, who, at the instance of Hengist, King of Kent, invaded England towards the close of the fifth century. It is said that they settled in Sussex, whence they issued in force to attack the important British station of Anderida, or Andredkiasta. Antiquaries are not agreed as to the precise situation of this military station. Some imagining it to have been at Newenden on the borders of Kent, others at Pevensey or Hastings in Sussex. The country, from the borders of Kent to those of Hampshire, comprises what was called the Forest of Andred's Wield, now commonly called the Wield, was formerly full of strong holds and fastnesses, and was consequently well calculated for the retreat of the ancient Britons from before the regular armies of the Romans, as well as for the establishment of points of attack by the succeeding invaders who coped with them on terms somewhat reversed. The attack of the Saxons on Anderida was successful, and the consequence was their permanent establishment in Sussex and Surrey, from which time they probably retained a military station on this hill. There is likewise within the park a place called Dane's Gate. This was doubtless a part of a military way, and as it would appear that the last successful invaders would occupy the same strong posts which had been formed by their predecessors, this Dane's Gate was probably the military communication between Krobera, undoubtedly a Danish station, and Saxonbury Hill. The view from Saxonbury extends far in each quarter embracing both lines of downs, north and south. The long, low, irregular front of Erich Castle is two or three miles to the north-west, with its lake before it. Queen Elizabeth stayed at Erich for six days in 1573 on her progress to Northiam, where we saw her dining and changing her shoes. Lord Burley, who accompanied her, found the country here about dangerous and worse than in the peak. It was another of the guests at Erich that made Tunbridge Wells, for had not Dudley, Lord North, when recuperating there in 1606, discovered that the devil-flavoured, Calibriate water of the neighbourhood was beneficial, the spring would not have been enclosed, nor would other of London's fatigued young bloods have drunk of it. Enough remains of Bayam Abbey, five miles southeast of Tunbridge Wells, to show that it was once a very considerable monastery. The founder was Sir Robert de Ternum, one of the knights of Richard Cœur de Lyon, famous for cracking many crowns with his four chants, and the founder also of Comwelle Abbey at Goudhurst, not far distant. Edward I and Edward II were both entertained at Bayam, while a fortunate visit from St Richard, Bishop of Chichester, put the abbey in possession of a bed on which he had slept, which cured all them that afterwards lay in it. In Bayam and Goudhurst is Lamberhurst, on the boundary. The church and part of the street are indeed in Kent. Lamberhurst's boast is that its furnaces were larger than any in Sussex, and that they made the biggest guns. The old iron railings around St Paul's are said to have come from the Lamberhurst ironworks, 2,500 in all, each five feet six inches in height, with seven gates. The Lamberhurst cannon not only served England, but some, it is whispered, found their way to French privateers, and were turned against their native land. Sweetest of spots in the neighbourhood of Tumbridge Wells is Witham. In the west, lying to the north of Ashton Forest, a small and retired village, with a charming church, a good inn, the dorset arms, duckings, a superb piece of old Sussex architecture, old Buckhurst, an interesting ruin, new Buckhurst's magnificent park, and some of the best country in the county. Once the south-down district is left behind, I think that Witham is the jewel of Sussex. Moreover, the proximity of the wide high spaces of Ashton Forest seems to have cleared the air. No longer is one conscious of the fatigue that appertains to the Triangle Hill district between Tumbridge Wells, Roberts Bridge, and Uckfield. Witham is notable historically for its association with the great and sumptuous Sackville family, which has held Buckhurst since Henry II, and of which the principal figure is Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, first Earl of Dorset, who was born here in 1536. Queen Elizabeth's Lord Treasurer and part-author of Gorba Duck. After him came Robert Sackville, Second Earl, who founded Sackville College at East Grinstead, and then Richard, the Third Earl, famous for the luxury in which he lived at Knoll in Kent, and Dorset House in London. Among this nobleman's retinue was a first-footman rejoicing, I hope, in the superlatively suitable name of Acton Curvet, a name to write a comedy around. Richard Sackville, the Fifth Earl, was a more domestic peer, of whom we have some intimate and amusing glimpses in the memorandum books and diaries which he kept at Knoll. Thus Henry Mattock forescolding to extremity on Sunday the 12th of October 1661 without cause. Thruppens. Henry Mattock for disposing of my caste linen without my order. Thruppens. Robert Verrill for giving away my money. Sixpence. Lastly we come to Charles Sackville, Sixth Earl, that admirable Crichton, the friend of Charles II and the patron of poets, who spent the night before an engagement in the Dutch war in writing sprightly verses to all you ladies now on land, wherein occurs this agreeable fancy. Then if we write not by each post, think not we are unkind, nor yet conclude our ships are lost by Dutchmen or by wind. Our tears will send a speedy away. The tides shall bring them twice a day. The king with wonder and surprise will swear the seas grow bold, because the tides will higher rise than ere they did of old, but let him know it is our tears bring floods of grief to Whitehall's stairs. Upon the Sixth Earl of Dorset's monument in Wytheam Church is inscribed Pope's Epitaph, beginning, Dorset the grace of courts, the muses pride, patron of arts and judge of nature died, the scourge of pride, though sanctified or great, of fobs in learning, and of knaves in state, yet soft his nature, though severe his lay, his anger, moral, and his wisdom gay. The church is very prettily situated on a steep mound, at the western foot of which is a sheet of water, at the eastern foot the village, so hidden by trees as it that approaching Wytheam from Hartfield one is unconscious of its proximity. The glory of the church is the monument in the Sackville Chapel to Thomas Sackville, youngest son of the Fifth Earl of Dorset. There is nothing among the many tombs which we have seen more interesting than this, although for charm it is not to be compared with, say, the Shirley monument at Isfield. The young man reclines on the tomb, at one side of him is the figure of his father, and at the other, of his mother, both lifelike and life-size, dressed in their ordinary style. The attitude is being extremely natural. The total effect is curiously realistic. On the sides of the tomb, in Basser-Elief, are the figures of the Sixth Brothers and Sixth Sisters of the Youth, some quite babies. The sculptor was Caus Kibber, Collie Kibber's father. Other monuments are also to be seen in the Sackville Chapel, but that which I have described as the finest. Had William Church not been destroyed by fire in 1663, in a tempest of thunder and lightning, it would now be second to none in Sussex, in interest, and the richness of its tombs, for in that fire perished in the Sackville Isle, now no more, on the northern side, other and, perhaps, nobler Sackville monuments. The vaults, where many Sackvilles lie, were not, however, injured. In the Sackville Chapel is a large window recording the genealogy of the family, which is now represented by Earl de la Wa, at the foot of which are the words in Latin, the noble family of Sackville here awaits the resurrection. William has three of the bells of John Whalett, an itinerant bell-founder at the beginning of the 18th century. His method was to call on the vicar and ask if anything were wanted, and if a bell was cracked, or if a new one was desired, he would dig a mound in a neighbouring field, build a fire, collect his metal, and perform the task on the spot. Whalett's business might be called the Higher Tinkering. Sussex has some forty of his bells. He cast the staining peal in 1724, and earlier in the same year he had made a steered Lewis, erecting a furnace there, as Benvenuto Cellini tells us he used to, and remedying defective peals all round. Among others he recast the old treble and made a new treble for Mayfield. It seems to have been universally thirsty work. The church warden's papers contain an account for beer in connection with the enterprise. For beer to the ringers, when the bell-founder was here, two shillings and sixpence, when the bell was weighed, three shillings and sixpence, when the bell was loaded, two shillings, in carrying the bell to Lewis and back again, one pound to ten shillings, when the bell was weighed and hung up, three shillings, for beer to the officers and several others are hanging up the bell, 18 shillings, in beer to the ringers, when the bell was hung, six shillings and sixpence. The William Church Warden's also expended three shillings and sixpence on beer, when way-lit came to spread thirst abroad. I find also among the entries from the Parish Account Book, which Mr. Sutton, the vicar, prints in his historical notes on William, a very interesting and informing book, the following items. 1711. April the 20th, paid to Goody Sweetman, for beer had at the books making, two shillings and sixpence. August the 19th, paid to Edward Groombridge, for digging a grave and ringing the knell for Goody Hammond, two shillings and sixpence. August the 26th, paid to Sweetman for beer at the writing of books for the window tax, two shillings. August the 15th, paid to Sweetman for beer at the choosing of Surveyor, December the 26th, five shillings. 1714, paid to Good-Wife Sweetman for beer when the bells were put to be cast, two shillings and sixpence. Buckhurst, one of the seats of Lord Delawa, is a splendid domain, with the most perfect gulf greens I ever saw, but no, dear, all of them having been exiled a few years since. The previous home of the Sacvilles was old Buckhurst in the valley to the west, of which only the husk now remains. One can see that the mansion was of enormous extent, and the walls were so strongly built, that when an attempt was recently made to destroy and utilize a portion for road mending, the project had to be abandoned on account of the hardness of the mortar. One beautiful tower, out of six, still stands. An underground passage, which is said variously to lead to the large lake in Buckhurst Park, to the church, and to Bolbroke at Hartfield, has never been explored farther than the first door that blocks the way. Nor have the seven cord of gold rumoured to be buried near the house come to light. It was of duckings the beautiful timbered farmhouse of which William is justly proud, that Jefferies thus wrote in his essay on Buckhurst Park. Our modern architects try to make their rooms mathematically square, a series of brick boxes, one on the other, like pigeonholes in a bureau, with flat ceilings and right angles in the corners, and are said to go through a profound education that can produce these wonderful specimens of art. If our old English folk could not get an arched roof, then they loved to have it pointed with polished timber beams in which the eye rested, as in looking upwards through a tree, their rooms they liked of many shapes, and not at right angles in the corners, nor all on the same dead level of flooring. You had to go up a step into one, to another, and along a winding passage into a third, so that each part of the house had its individuality. To these houses life fitted itself and grew to them. They were not mere walls, but became part of existence. A man's house was not only his castle, a man's house was himself. He could not tear himself away from his house. It was like tearing up the shrieking Mandrake by the root, almost death itself. Now we walk in and out of our brick boxes, unconcerned whether we live in this villa or that, here or yonder. Dark beams inlaid in the walls support the gables. Heavier timber placed horizontally forms, as it were the foundations of the first floor. This horizontal beam has warped a little in the course of time, the alternate heat and cold of summers and winters that make centuries. Up to this beam the lower wall is built of brick set to curve of the timber, from which circumstance it would appear to be a modern insertion. The beam, we may be sure, was straight originally and the bricks have been fitted to the curve which it subsequently took. Time, no doubt, ate away the lower work of wood and necessitated the insertion of new materials. The slight curve of the great beam adds, I think, to the interest of the old place for it is a curve that has grown and was not premeditated. It has grown like the bow of a tree, not from any set human design. This, too, is the character of the house. It is not large nor overburdened with gables, not ornamental, nor what is called striking in any way, but simply an old English house, genuine and true. The warm sunlight falls on the old red tiles, the dark beams look the darker for the glow of light. The shapely cone of the hop-oast rises at the end. There are swallows and flowers and ricks and horses and so it is beautiful because it is natural and honest. It is the simplicity that makes it so touching like the words of an old ballad. Now, at Mayfield there is a timber house which is something of a show-place and people go to see it and which certainly has many more lines in its curves and woodwork but yet did not appeal to me because it seemed too purposely ornamental. A house designed to look well, even age has not taken from its artificiality. Neither is there any cone nor cart-horses about why even a tall shanty-clear makes a home look homely. I do like to see a tall, proud shanty-clear strutting in the yard and barely giving way as I advance, almost ready to do battle with a stranger like a mastiff so I prefer the simple old home by Buckhurst Park. The forest of which Ashdown Forest was a part extended once in unbroken somber density from Kent to Hampshire, a distance of 120 miles. It was known to the Romans as Silver Anderida, giving its name to Anderida, or Pevensey, on the edge of it. To the Saxons it was Andria's wild. Wolves, wild boar, and deer then roamed its dark recesses. Our Ashdown Forest, all that now remains of this wild track, was for long a royal hunting-ground. Edward III granted it to John of Gaunt, who, there's no doubt, often came hither for sport. It is supposed that he built a chapel near Nutley. Chapel Wood marks the site, where on one occasion at least John Wycliffe, the reformer, officiated. At Forest Row, as we have seen, the later lords who hunted here built their lodges and kept their retainers. There are no longer any deer in the forest. The modern sportsman approaches it with a clique where his forerunner carried a bow. A hundred years ago, in the smuggling days, it was a very dangerous region. Hartfield, the village next to Wythium in the west, is uninteresting, but it has a graceful church, and at Bolbrook, once the home of the Dalingruges, whom we met at Bodium, and later of the Sacvilles, are the remains of a noble brick mansion. The towered gateway still stands, but it is not difficult to reconstruct in the mind's eye the house in its best period. Of old cottage architecture, Hartfield also has a pretty example in Lichgate Cottage by the churchyard. Castle Field, north of the village, probably marks the site of an ancient castle or hunting lodge of the Barrens of Pevensey that there was good hunting in these parts. The name Hartfield itself goes to prove. Between Wythium and Hartfield in the north, and Krobera Beacon and Witchcross in the south, is some of the finest open country in Sussex, where one may walk for hours and meet no human creature. Here are silent, desolate woods, the five hundred acre wood under Krobera, chief of them, and vast wastes of undulating heath, rising here and there to great heights, crowned with fir trees, as at Gill's lap. A few enclosed estates interrupt the forest's open freedom, but nothing can tame it. Sombra Dark Heather gives the prevailing note, but between Old Lodge and Pippinford Park I once came upon a green and luxuriant valley that would not have been out of place in Tyrol. While there is a field near Chuck Hatch, where in April one may see more dancing daffodils than ever Wordsworth did. And here we leave the county. End of Chapter 40 Chapter 41 The Sussex Dialect The body of the Sussex Dialect is derived from the Saxon. Its accessories can be traced to the Celts, to the Norse, thus Rape, a division of the county, is probably an adaptation of the Icelandic Creper, and to the French. Some hundreds of fusion-oes having fled to our shores after the edict of Nantes. The Hastings fishermen, for example, often say Bokko for plenty, and Frappe to strike. While in the Rhine neighbourhood, where the huge-oes were strongest, such words as disabil, meaning untidy, undressed, and peter grievous, from petit grief, meaning fretful, are still used. But Saxon words are, of course, considerably more common. You meet them at every turn. The Sussex auctioneers' list that lies before me, a catalogue of live and dead farming stock to be sold at a homestead under the South Downs, is full of them, so blunt and sturdy they are, these ancient primitive terms of the soil. Lot one, pitch-prong, two half-pitch prongs, two four-spin spuds, and a road-hoe. Lot five, five short prongs, flint-spud, prong-drag, two turnip-pecks, and two shovels. Lot nine, six hay-rakes, two sides and sneaths, cross-cut saw, and a sheep-hook. Lot thirty-nine, corn-chest, open-tub, milking-stool, and hog-form. Lot forty-three, bushel-measure, shawl, and strike. Lot one-hundred, rick-bora. Lot one-hundred and forty-three, eight-naves, and fellows. Lot one-hundred and forty-eight, six dirt-boards and a pair of wood-hames. Lot one-hundred and fifty-two, wheel-wrights-Sampson. Lot one-hundred and seventy-four, set of thill harness. Lot two-hundred and one, three plough-bolts, three tween-sticks. Lot two-hundred and four, sundry harness and pipances. Lot two-hundred and eight, tickle-plough. Lot two-hundred and twenty-two, iron-turn wrist, pronounced turn-riced, plough. Lot two-hundred and forty-two, nine-tine scarifier. Lot two-hundred and fifty-one, clod-crusher. Lot two-hundred and fifty-two, hay-teder. From another catalogue, more Ram-a-logs, these abrupt and active little words might be called, but at one. As Lot four, flint-spud, two drain-scoops, bull-lead and five dibbles. Lot ten, dung-rake and dung-devil. Lot eleven, four juts and a zinc-skip. Farm-labours are men of little speech, and it is often needful that voices should carry far, hence this crisp and forcible reticence. The vocabulary of the countryside undergoes few changes. And the noises, today made by the ox-herd, who urges his black and smoking team along the hillside, are precisely those that Piers Plowman himself would have used. Another survival may be noticed in ob-duration. A Sussex man swearing by Job, as he often does, is not calling in the aid of the patient-sufferer of Ur, but Job, the Anglo-Saxon Jupiter. A few examples of Sussex speech, mainly drawn from Mr. Parish's dictionary of the Sussex dialect, will help to add the true flavour to these pages. Mr. Parish's little book is one of the best of its kind. That it is more than a contribution to etymology, a very few quotations will show. Mr. Parish lays down the following general principles of the Sussex tongue. A, before double D, becomes R, whereby Ladder and Adder are pronounced Ladder and Arder. A, before double L is pronounced like O, Fallow and Tallow become Foller and Toller. A, before T is expanded into Ea. Rate, mate, plate, gate are pronounced Riet, Miet, Piet, Giet. A, before Ct becomes E, as Satisfaction for Satisfaction. E, before Ct becomes A, and Affection, Effect and Neglect are pronounced Affaction, Effect and Neglect. Double E is pronounced as I, in such words as Sheep, Weak, called Ship and Wick, and the sound of Double E follows the same rule in Filled for Field. Having pronounced E, E as I, the Sussex people in the most impartial manner pronounce I as E, E, and thus Mice, Hive, Dive, become Mice, Heave and Dive. I becomes E in Pet for Pit, Spet for Spit, and similar words. I, O, and O, I change places respectively, and Violet and Violent become Voilet and Violent, while Boiled and Spoiled are Biled and Spiled. O, before N is expanded into O, A, in such words as Pony, Don't, Bone, which are pronounced Pony, Doent, Boone. O, before R is pronounced as A, as Carn, and Marning for Corn and Morning. O also becomes A in such words as Rad, Crass, and Crap for Rod, Cross, and Crop. O, U is elongated into How, A, O, U, in words like Hound, Pound, and Mound, pronounced Hound, Pound, and Mound. The final O, W, as in many other counties, is pronounced E-R as Foller for Fallow. The peculiarities with regard to the pronunciation of consonants are not so numerous as those of the vowels, but they are very decided and seem to admit of less variation. Double T is always pronounced as D, as Lidl for Lidl, et cetera, and the T-H is invariably D. Waps the becomes D, and these them theirs, these dem dares. D in its turn is occasionally changed into T-H, as in Fother for Fother. The final S-P in such words as Wasp, Clasp, and Hasp are reversed to Waps, Claps, and Harps. Words ending in S-T have the addition of a syllable in the possessive case and the plural, and instead of saying that some little birds had built their nests near the posts of Mr. West's gate, a Sussex boy would say, The birds had built their nests near the posters of Mr. West's gear. Roughly speaking, Sussex has little or no dialect absolutely its own, for the country speech of the West is practically that also of Hampshire and of the east that of Kent. The dividing line between east and west, Mr. Crips of Staining tells me, is the Adour, once an estuary of the sea, rather than the stream it now is, running far inland and separating the two Sussexes with its estranging wave. Mr. Parrish's pages supply the following words and examples of their use, chosen almost at random. A done, have done, leave off. I am told on good authority that when a Sussex damsel says, Oh, do a done, she means you to go on, but when she says, a done do, you must leave off immediately. Crownation, coronation. I was married the day the crownation was, when there was a bullock roasted whole up at Foral Park. Furl, I don't know, as ever I eared anything so purty in all my leaf, but I never got no further than Foral Crossway's old need. No more didn't a good many. Dental, dainty. My master says that this here Prussian, query Persian, cut, what you gave me is a deal too dental for a poor man's cut. He wants one as will catch demise and keep herself. Done a many. I do not know how many. There was a done a many people come to see that good hog of mine when she was took bad and they all go it in as she was took with the information. We did all as ever we could farer. There was a bottle of stuff what I had from the doctor time my leg was so bad and we took and mix it in with some milk and give it to her, look warm. But now as we could give her didn't seem to do her any good. Foreigner, a stranger, a person who comes from any county but Sussex. I have often heard it said of a woman in this village who comes from Lincolnshire that she has got such a good notion of work that you'd never find out but what she was an English woman without you was to hear her talk. Frenchy, a foreigner of any country who cannot speak English the nationality being added or not as the case seems to require thus an old fisherman giving an account of a Swedish vessel which was wrecked on the coast a year or two ago finished by saying that he thought the French Frenchies take them all in all were better than the Swedish Frenchies for he could make out what they were driving at but he was all at sea with the others. Heart, condition, said of ground I've got my garden into pretty good heart at last and if so be as there weren't quite so many spars and greybirds and robots and one thing and another I don't know but what I might get a tidy lot of sass but there take no use what you do as long as there's so much vomit about. Hill, the south-down country is always spoken of as the hill by the people in the wheeled he's gone to the hill harvesting. Inkhorn, ink stand fetch me down to Inkhorn, mistress I be going to put my hand to this here partition to Parliament it is again the Romans, mistress for if so be as the Romans get up and hand on us we shall all be burned it and bloodshed it and have our Bibles took away from us and there'll be a hem set out. Just about, certainly, extremely I just about did enjoy myself up at the Cristial Palace on the Forester's Day but there was a terrible good crowd I should think there must have been two or three hundred people as crowded about. No, used as a substantive for knowledge poor fellow, he has got no know what some never but his sister is a nice knowledgeable girl lamentable, very this word seems to admit of three degrees of comparison which are indicated by the accentuation thus positive, lamentable as usually pronounced comparative, lamentable superlative, lamentable master chocks, he says to me, says he it is lamentable, pretty weather, master crockham lamentable, says I larder, corruption of ladder master's got a lodge down on the land yonder and as I was going across the other day, Moronin to fetch a larder, he keeps there a lawyer catch hold on me and scratched my face note, lawyer, a long bramble full of thorns so cold because when once they get the hold on you you don't easy get shut of them end note little, diminutive of little I never see one of these here good men there's so much talk about in the papers only once and that was up at Smithle show I'd done him any years ago prime minister they told me he was up at Lannan a little, leer, miserable, skinny looking chap as ever I see Disraeli I imagine why her says we don't count our minister to be much but he's a deal primer looking than what you're and be lonesed, alone will you lend modder to lonesed of a little tea master, pronounced mass the distinctive title of a married labourer a single man will be called by his Christian name all his life long but a married man young or old is mass even to his most intimate friend and fellow workman as long as he can earn his own livelihood but as soon as he becomes past work he turns into the old gentleman leaving the breadwinner to rank as master of the household mass is quite a distinct title from mister which is always pronounced must thus must Smith is the employer must Smith is the man he employs the old custom of the wife speaking of her husband as her master still lingers among elderly people but both the word and the reasonableness of its use are rapidly disappearing in the present generation it may be mentioned here that they say in Sussex that the rosemary will never blossom except where the mistress is master may be and may have perhaps maybe he knows mass pill-beam no, don't ya well he was a very single man was mass pill-beam very single a man he says to his mistress one day he says it is a long time says he since I've took a holiday so cardinally next morning he laid a bed till pretty nice seven o'clock and then he breakfasts and then he goes down to the shop and buys four ounces of baka and he sets himself down on the maxim and there he set and there he smoked and smoked all the whole day long Far says he it is a long time since I've had a holiday I were a very single man a very single man indeed queer to puzzle it has queered me for a long time to find out who that man is and my mistress she's been quite in a quirk over it he don't seem to be quaint with nobody and he don't seem to have no business and for all that he's always to and throw to and throw forever lasting Reynolds Mus Reynolds is the name given to the fox when I was first told that Mus Reynolds come along last night he was spoken of so intimately that I suppose he must be some old friend and expressed a hope that he had been hospitably received he helped his self was the reply and upon followed the explanation illustrated by an exhibition of mutilated poultry short, tender a rat catcher once told me that he knew many people who were in the habit of eating barn-fed rats and he added, when there in a pudding you couldn't tell them from a chick they eared so short and pretty shruck, shrieked an old woman who was accidentally locked up in a church by a pew, said I shruck till I could shuck no longer but no one come'd so I up and tulled upon the bell Spanel to make dirty foot-marks about a floor as a spaniel dog does I goos into the kitchen and I says to my mistress I says it was of a Saturday the old sow's hem-hornery I says, well, says she there ain't no call for you to come spanneling about my clean kitchen any more for that, she says so I goes out and didn't say no, for you can never make no sense of going folks of a Saturday surely there are few words more frequently used by Sussex people than this it has no special meaning of its own but it is added at the end of any sentence to which particular emphasis is required to be given tedious, excessive, very I never did see such tedious bad stuff in all my life Mr. Parish might here be supplemented by the remark that his definition explains the use of the word by Old Walker as related by Niren when bowling to Lord Frederick Bo Clark oh, he said, that was tedious near you, my lord unaccountable, a very favourite adjective which does duty on all occasions in Sussex a countryman will scarcely speak three sentences without dragging in this word a friend of mine who had been remonstrating with one of his parishioners for abusing the Parish Clark beyond the bounds of neighbourly expression received the following answer you be quite right, sir you be quite right I've no ought to have said what I did but I don't mind telling you to your head what I've said many times behind your back we've got a good shepherd, I says an excellent shepherd but he's got an unaccountable bad dog Valiant veillon, French stout, well-built what did you think of my friend who preached last Sunday, Master Piper? ah, he was a valiant man he just did stand over to pulpit why are you being to nothing at all to him? see what a noble paunch he had yarbs, herbs an old man in East Sussex said that many people set much store by the doctors but for his part he was one for the yarbs and Paul Podgam was what he went by it was not for some time that it was discovered that by Paul Podgam he meant the polypodium fern such are some of the pleasant passages in Mr. Parish's book in Mr. Coker Egerton's Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways is an amusing example of gender in Sussex the son, by the way, is always she or her to the Sussex peasant as to the German savant but it is not the only unexpected feminine in the county Mr. Egerton gives a conversation in a village school in which the master bids Tommy blow his nose a little later he returns and asks Tommy why he has not done so please sir, I did blow her but her wooden bide blowed in the foregoing examples Mr. Parish has perhaps made the Sussex labourer a thought too epigrammatic a natural tendency in the illustrations to such a work the following narration of adventure from the lips of a south-down shepherd which is communicated to me by my friend Mr. C. E. Clayton of Holm-Busch is nearer to the normal velocity of the type I mined one day I had been to buy some lambs and coming home in the dark over the Bostel I gets to a field and I knows there was a geat and I kept beating the hedge with my stick to find the geat and at last I found him and I goes to get over him and there was one of these here good ponds full of foul water I had mistook for the geat and so in I went all over my head and I tumbles out again middling sharp and I slips because it was so slubby and then I goes again and I do think I should have been rounded if it weren't for my stick and I was that frightened and there were some bullocks close by and I frightened them splashing about and they began to run around and that frightened me and stare well I was all wet through and grabby and when I got home I looked like one of the easier watercress men but I kept my peep in my mouth all the time I didn't lose him The late Mr. F. E. Sawyer another student of Sussex dialect as remarked on the similarity between Sussex provincialisms and many words which we are accustomed to think peculiarly American one cause may be the two hundred Sussex colonists taken over by William Penn who as we have seen was at one time square of Warminghurst in recent years we have gathered from the works of American comic writers and others many words which at first have been termed vulgar Americanisms but which on closer examination have proved to be good old Anglo-Saxon and other terms which had dropped out of notice amongst us but were retained in the new world take for instance two southern words probably Sussex quoted by Ray 1674 squirm Artemis Ward describes brother Uriah of the shakers as squirming like a speared eel and curiously enough Ray gives to squirm to move nimbly about after the manner of an eel it is spoken of eel another word is sass for sauce also quoted by Artemis Ward Mrs. Phoebe Earl Gibbons an American lady in a clever and instructive article in Harper's magazine on English farmers but in fact describing the agriculture etc. of Sussex in a very interesting way considers that the peculiarities of the present Sussex dialect resemble those of New England more than of Pennsylvania she mentions as Sussex phrases used in New England you hadn't ought to do it and you shouldn't ought be you for are you I see him for I saw you have a crock on your nose for a smut nother for neither parcel for parcel for parcel and a pucker for a fuss in addition she observes that Sussex people speak of the fall for autumn and guess and reckon like genuine Yankees so far Mr. Sawyer Sussex people also I might add disremember as Huck Finn used to do I should like to close the list of examples of Sussex speech by quoting a few verses from the Sussex version of the song of Solomon which Mr. Lower prepared for Prince Lucian Buonaparte some forty years ago the experiment was extended to other southern and western dialects the collection making a little book of curious charm and homeliness here is the fourth chapter one looky you be pretty my love looky you be pretty you've got Dove's eyes a your locks your hair is like a flock of goats that appear from Mount Gilead two your teeth be like a flock of ship just shared that come up from the shipwash every one of them bears tweens and nearer one among them is Baron three your lips be like a threader scarlet and your speech is comely your temples be like a spire of a pomegranate the din your locks for your neck is like the tower a dive head built for an armory what they hang a thousand bucklers on all shields of mighty men five your two breasts be like two young rows what be twins that feed among the lilies six till the daybreak and the shadows go away I'll get me to the mountain Amur and to the hill of frankincense seven you be hem pretty my love there ain't a spot in ya eight come along with me from Lebanon my spouse with me from Lebanon look from the topper Amana from the topper Shenier and Herman from the lion's dens from the mountain at the leopards nine you've stole away my heart my sister my spouse you've stole away my heart with one of your eyes with one chain in your neck ten how fair is your love my sister my spouse how much better is your love than wine and the smell of your intimants than all spices eleven your lips oh my spouse drop like the honeycomb there's honey and milk under your tongue and the smell of your garments is like the smell of Lebanon twelve a fenced garn is my sister my spouse a spring shut up a fountain sealed thirteen your plants be an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits camphire and spikynard fourteen spikynard and saffron calamus and cinnamon with all trees of frankincense myrrh and the alas would all be the best of spices fifteen a fountain of garns a well of living waters and streams from Lebanon sixteen wake, oh north wind and come, your south blow upon my garn that the spices of it may flow out let my beloved come into his garn and ate his pleasant fruits end of chapter forty-one chapter forty-two of highways and byways in Sussex this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Peter Yersley highways and byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas chapter forty-two being a post-script to the second edition it almost necessarily follows that in a book such as this which in brief compass attempts to take some account of every interesting or charming spot in a large tract of country it must be certain omissions to the stranger the survey may seem adequate but it is a hundred to one that a reader whose home is in Sussex will detect a flippancy or a want of true insight in the treatment of his own village nor rightly does he sit silent under the conviction I find that with the keenest desire to be just in criticism I have been unfair to several villages I have been unfair, for example, to Burpham which lies between Arendelle and Amberley and of which nothing is said and more than one reader has discovered unfairness to East Sussex for this the personal equation is perhaps responsible a West Sussex man try as he will cannot have the same enthusiasm for the other side of his county as for his own certainly the sun has always seemed to rise over beachy head the most easterly of our downs the call for a second edition has, however, enabled me to set right a few errors in the body of the book and in this additional chapter to amplify and fortify here and there the result must necessarily be disconnected but a glance at the index will point the way to what is new concerning Aldworth in Tennyson's poetry there is the exquisite stanza to General Hamley you came and looked and loved the view long known and loved by me green Sussex fading into blue with one gray glimpse of sea green Sussex fading into blue it is the motto for every down summit south or north with reference to Shelly and Sussex my attention has been drawn to an interesting account of Field Place by Mr. Hale White the author of the Mark Rutherford novels in an old Macmillan's magazine says Mr. White then Park at Horsham might easily have suggested more easily perhaps than any part of the country near Field Place the well known semi-chorus in the Prometheus which begins the path through which that have passed by Cedar Pine and Eew and each dark tree that ever grew is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue the Prometheus however was written when Horsham was well-nigh forgotten by its author owing to a curious lapse of memory I omitted to say that Sompting near Worthing should be famous as the home of Edward John Trelawney author of The Adventures of a Younger Son another friend of Shelley and Byron in his Sompting Garden in his old age Trelawney grew figs equal he said to those of his dear Italy and lived again his vigorous picturesque notable life Sussex thus owns not only the poet of Adonais but the friend who rescued his heart from the flames that consumed his body on the shores of the gulf and bearing it to Rome in the resting place in the Protestant cemetery the words from the Tempest his own happy choice nothing of him that doth fade but doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange the old man powerful and capricious to the last died at Sompting in 1881 within a year of 90 his body was removed to Gotha for cremation inside Shelley's heart in Rome among the wise men of Lewis I ought not to have overlooked William Durant Cooper 1812 to 1875 a shrewd Sussex enthusiast and antiquary who as long ago as 1836 printed at his own cost a little glossary of the country's provincialisms the book publicly printed in 1853 was of course superseded by Mr. Parrish's admirable collection but Mr. Cooper showed the way one of his examples of the use of the West Sussex pronoun N, Un or Um might be noted, especially as it involves another quite confusion of sex N and Un stand for him, her or it Um for them thus a black bird flew up and her killed him that is to say he killed it among the Harley Un manuscripts at the British Museum is the account of a supernatural visitation to Rye in 1607 the visitants were angels their fortunate entertainer being a married woman she however by a lapse in good breeding undid whatever good was intended for her and after that appeared unto her two angels in her chamber and one of them having a white fan in her hand did let the same fall and she is stooping to take it up the angel gave her a box on the ear rebuking her that she a mortal creature should presume to handle matters appertaining to heavenly creatures it was an error to omit from chapter 17 all reference to Frederick William Robertson Robertson of Brighton who from 1847 until 1853 exerted his extraordinary influence from the pulpit of Trinity Chapel opposite the post office and from his home at nine Montpellier terrace of Robertson's quickening religion I need not speak but it is interesting to know that much of his magnetic eloquence was the result of the meditations which he indulged in his long and feverish rambles over the downs his favourite walk was to the dyke before exploitation had come upon it and he loved also the hills above Rottingdeen Robertson says Arnold's memoir walk any man off his legs as the saying goes he not only walked he ran he leaped he bounded he walked as fast and as incessantly as Charles Dickens and like Dickens his mind was in a state of incessant activity all the time there was not a bird of the air or a flower by the wayside that was not known to him his knowledge of birds would have matched that of the collector of the natural history museum in his favourite Robertson often journeyed into Sussex on little preaching or lecturing missions he found the auditors of Hearst Peerpoint very bucolic and his family were fond of the retirement of Lindfield on one occasion Robertson brought them back himself writing afterwards to a friend that in that village he strongly felt the beauty and power of English country scenery and life to calm if not to purify the hearts of those whose lives are deeply subjected to such influences Mr. Arnold's book I might add has some pleasant pages about Sussex and Brighton in Robertson's day with glimpses of Lady Byron his ardent devotee and at Old Shoreham of Cannon Moseley and here I might mention that for a very charming account of a still earlier Brighton though not the earliest the reader should go to a little story called round about and coach office which was published a few years ago it has very fragrant old world flavor to Chichester I should have recorded belongs a Sussex saint, St. Richard Bishop of Chichester in the 13th century and a great man in 1245 he found the Sussex sea an Orgian stable but he was equal to the labour of cleansing it he deprived the corrupt clergy of their benefices with an unhesitating hand upon their successors and those that remained he imposed laws of comeliness and simplicity his reforms were many and various he restored hospitality to its high place among the duties of rectors he punished absentees he excommunicated usurers well a revolutionist indeed priests who spoke indistinctly or at too great a pace were suspended also I doubt not he was hostile to locked churches furthermore he advocated the crusades like another Peter the hermit Richard's own life was exquisitely thoughtful and simple an anecdote of his brother who assisted him in the practical administration of the diocese helps us to this side of his character you give away more than your income remarked this almond a brother one day then sell my silver said Richard it will never do for me to drink out of silver cups while our lord is suffering in his poor our father drank heartily out of common crockery and so can I sell the plate Richard penetrated on foot to the utter most corners of his diocese to see that all was well he took no holiday but would often stay for a while at Tarring near Worthing the Simon the parish priest and his great friend tradition would have Richard the planter of the first of the Tarring figs and indeed to my mind he is more welcome to that honor than St. Thomas Beckett who competes for the credit being more a Sussex man in his will Richard left to Sir Simon the Tarring sometimes misprinted fairing his best poultry and a commentary on the Psalms the bishop died in 1253 and he was at once canonized to visit his grave in the nave of Chichester Cathedral it is now in the South transept was sure means to recovery from illness and it quickly became a place of pilgrimage April the third was set apart in the calendar as Richard's day and very pleasant must have been the observance in the Chichester streets in 1297 we find Edward the first giving Lovell the Harper six shillings and sixpence for singing the saints praises but Henry the eighth was to change all this on December the 14th 1538 it being I imagine a fine day the defender of the faith signed a paper ordering Sir William Goring and William only his commissioners to repair to Chichester Cathedral and remove the bones shrine etc. of a certain bishop which they call Saint Richard to the tower of London that the commissioners did their work we know from their account for the same which came to 40 pounds in the performed prayer book however Richard's name has been allowed to stand among the black letter saints under Chichester I ought also to have mentioned John William Bergen 1813-1888 Dean of Chichester for the last 12 years of his life and the author of that admirable collection of half length appreciations the lives of 12 good men one of whom Bishop Wilberforce lived within call at Wool Evington under the shaggy escarpment of the Downs some 10 miles to the northeast Dean Bergen thus happily touches off the bishop in his south down retreat but it was on the charms of the pleasant landscape which surrounded his Sussex home that he chiefly expatiated on such occasions leaning rather heavily on some trusty arm I remember how he leaned on mine while he tapped with his stick the bowl of every favourite tree by the by every tree seemed a favourite and had something to tell of its history and surpassing merits every farmhouse every peep at the distant landscape every turn in the road suggested some pleasant remark or playful anecdote he had a word for every man woman and child he met for he knew them all the very cattle were greeted as old acquaintances the flora of his neighbourhood the geological formations every aspect of the natural history of the place a very properly indignant friend has reminded me of the claims of Burpham in the following words two miles up the Aaron valley from Arundel is Burpham a pretty village on the west edge of the Downs and overhanging the river between South Stoke and Arundel the old course of the Aaron runs in wide curves and in modern times a straight new bed has been cut under Arundel park and passed the black rabbit making with the old curves the form of the letter B Burpham lies at the head of the lower loop of the B and while there is plenty of water in the loop to row up with the flood tide and down with the ebb the straight mainstream diverts nearly all the holiday traffic and leaves Burpham the most peaceful village within 50 miles of London the seclusion is the more complete because the roads from the south end in the village and there is no approach by road from east or west or north the church contains a leper's window and passengers by the railway can see to the right of the red roofs of the village and over the line of low chalk cliffs a white path still called the leper's path which winds away to the lonely hollows of the Downs a curious feature of Burpham is a high rampart of earth running eastward from the cliff by the river which according to local tradition was constructed in the days of the Danish pirates it is said to be doubtful whether the rampart was erected by the Saxon villagers for their own protection or by the Danes as their first stronghold on the rising ground after they had sailed up the errand from Little Hampton the finer name of the neighbouring warning camp hill from which there is a great outlook over the flat country past Arendall Castle to chitch the cathedral and the cliffs of the Isle of Wight suggests memories of the same period of the little retiring church of St. Bottlef Hardham lying among low meadows between Burpham and Pulbara I ought also to have spoken for it contains perhaps the earliest complete series of mural painting in England the church dates from the 11th century and the paintings says Mr. Philip Manoring Johnson who has studied them with the greatest care cannot be much less old the subjects are the Annunciation the Nativity the appearance of the star the Magi presenting their gifts and so forth with one or two less familiar themes added such as Herod conferring with his councillors and the Torments of Hell there are the remains also of a series of moralities drawn from the parable of Deveys and Lazarus and of a series illustrating the life of St. George the little church which perhaps has every right to call itself the oldest picture gallery in England cannot be missed by any visitor to Pulbara at West Wittering in the Manhood Peninsula a little village on which the sea has hostile designs is still performed at Christmas a time-honoured play the actors of which are half a dozen boys or men known as the Tip Tears their words are not written but are transmitted orally from one generation of players to another Mr. J. I. C. Boja however has taken them down for the S. A. C. the subject once again as in some of the Hardham mural paintings is the life of St. George here called King George and the play has the same relation to drama that the Hardham frescoes have to a picture I quote so little third man, noble captain in comes I the noble captain just lately come from France with my broad sword and jolly turk I will make King George dance fourth man, King George I. C. George in comes I, King George that man of courage bold with my broad sword and spear I have won ten tons of gold I fought the fiery dragon and brought it to great slaughter and by that means I wish to win the king of Egypt's daughter neither unto thee will I bow or bend, stand off, stand off I will not take you to be my friend noble captain why sir, why have I done you any kind of wrong? King George, yes you saucy man so get you gone noble captain, you saucy man you draw my name you ought to be stabbed you saucy man King George stab or stabs the least is my fear point me the place and I will meet you there noble captain the place I point is on the ground and there I will lay your body down across the water at the hour of five King George done sir, done I will meet you there if I am alive I will cut you, I will slay you all for to let you know that I am King George over Great Britain now fight King George wounds the noble captain until the close is almost reached the west-wittering tip-tears preserve the illusion of medieval memory but the concluding song transports us to the sentiment of the modern musical its chorus runs with some callousness we never miss a mother till she's gone a portrait's all we have to gaze upon we can fancy see her there sitting in an old armchair we never miss a mother till she's gone Mark Anthony Lowers Contributions to Literature 1845 contains a pleasant essay on the South Downs of a looked when I was writing this book but from which I now gladly take a few passages it gives me, for example, a pendant to William Blake's description of a fairy's funeral on page 64 in the shape of a description of a fairy's revenge from the lips of master Fowrington a friend of Mr. Lauer who was one that believed in Pharisees as Sussex calls fairies as readily and unreservedly as we believe in wireless telegraphy Mass Fowrington had indeed two very good reasons for his credulity one was that the Pharisees are mentioned in the Bible and therefore must exist the other was that his grandmother who was a very truthful woman had seen them with her own eyes time and often they was little folks, not more than a foot high and used to be uncommon fond of dancing they drowned hands and formed a circle and danced upon it till the grass came many times as green there as it was anywhere else that's how these here rings come upon the hills least ways so they say but I don't know nothing about it nati for I've never seen none of them though to be sure it's very hard to say how them rings do come if it isn't the Pharisees that makes them beside there's our old story that we always sing at Harvest supper where it comes in we'll drink and dance like Pharisees now I should like to know why it's put like that ear in the song if it ain't true Master Fowrington's story of the fairies revenge runs thus an old brother of my wife's good grandmother sees some Pharisees once and it would have been a power better if so be he hadn't never seen them or least ways never offended them I'll tell you how it happened James meppum, that was his name James was a little farmer and used to thresh his own corn his barn stood in a very elenge lonesome place a goodish bit from the house and the Pharisees used to come there at nights and thresh out some wheat and what's for him so that the heap of threshed corn was generally bigger in the morning than what he left it overnight well, you see, Mass Meppum thought this a little odd and didn't know rightly what to make so being an out and out bold chap that didn't fear man nor devil as the saying is, he made up his mind that he'd go over some night to see how it was managed and accordingly he went out rather airily in the evening and laid up behind the mow for a long while till he got rather tired and sleepy and thought to want no use of watching no longer it was getting pretty handy to midnight and he thought how he'd go home to bed but just as he was upon to move he heard an odd sort of a sound coming towards the barn and so he stopped to see what it was he looked at a distra and what should he catch sighten a little chaps, about 18 inches high or dare away coming into the barn without up and in the doors they pulled off their jackets and began to thresh with two little frails as they had brung woodham at the hammer of a rate Mass Meppum would have been fraught if they had been bigger but as they were such tedious little fellas he couldn't hardly help busting right out a laughing house and ever he pushed a handful of straw in his mouth and so managed to keep quiet a few minutes of looking at them thump, thump, thump, thump as regular as a clock at last they got rather tired and left off to rest their selves and one of them said in a little squeaking voice as it might have been a mouse talking I say, Puck, I twet do you twet at that Gems couldn't contain himself know-how but set up a loud ho-ho and jumping up from the straw hollered out, I'll twet ya ya little rascals, what business do you got in my barn? well upon this the Pharisees picked up the frails and cut away right by him and as they passed by him he felt such a queer pain in the head as if somebody had given him a lamentable hard thump with a hammer that knocked him down as flat as a flounder how long he laid there he never rightly knowed but it must have been a goodish bit for when he come to it was getting de-light he couldn't hardly contrive to doddle home and when he did he looked so tedious bad that his wife sent for de-doctor directly but bless ya, that warn't no use and old Gems Mepham knowed it well enough de-doctor told him to keep up his spirits being, it was only a fit he had had from being a most smothered with a handful of straw and keeping his laugh down but Gems knowed better Tyent no use, sir, he says as he to de-doctor de-cusser, the Pharisees is upon me and all the stuff in your shop can't do me no good and Mass Mepham was right for about a year afterwards he died, poor man sorry enough that he'd ever interfered with things that didn't concern him poor old fella he lay buried in the churchyard over there over yonder, least ways so I've hid my wife's mother say under de-bank, just where de-bed a snow-draps grows all who know the towns must know the fairies or Pharisees, rings into which one so often steps science gives them a fungoid origin but Shakespeare, as well as master Farrington's grandmother knew that O'Bron and Titania's little people alone had the secret further proof is to be found in the testimony of John Orbury the Wiltshire Antiquary who records that Mr. Hart curator at Yatton Canell in 1633-4 coming home over the downs one night witnessed with his own eyes an innumerable quantity of pygmies dancing round and round and singing making all manner of small odd noises a word ought to have been said of the quiet and unexpected due ponds of the downs upon which one comes so often and always with a little surprise perfect rounds they are reflecting the sky they are so near like circular mirrors set in a white frame Gilbert White who was interested in all interesting things mentions the unfailing character of a little pond near Selbourne which though never above three feet deep in the middle and not more than thirty feet in diameter yet affords drink for three hundred or four hundred sheep and for at least twenty head of cattle beside he then asks having noticed that in May 1775 when the ponds of the valley were dry the ponds of the hills were still little affected have not these elevated pools some unnoticed recruits which in the night time counterbalance the waste of the day the answer which White supplies is that the hill ponds are recruited by due persons, he writes, that are much abroad and travel early and late such as shepherds, fishermen, etc can tell what prodigious fogs prevail in the night on elevated downs even in the hottest part of summer and how much the surfaces of things are drenched by those swimming vapours though to the senses all the while little moisture seems to fall Kingsley has a passage on the same subject in his essay the air mothers for on the high chalk downs you know where farmers make a sheep pond they never if they are wise make it in the valley or on a hillside but on the bleakest top of the very highest down and there if they can once get it filled with snow and rain in winter the blessed dues of night will keep some water in it all the summer through while ponds below are utterly dried up there is however another reason why the highest points are chosen and that is that the chalk here often has a capping of red clay which holds the water to the smuggling chapter might have been added again with Mr. Lauer's assistance a few words on the authorities that confronted the London Revenue officers in the Sussex humour to be confounded by to swift a horse or to agile a runner was all in the night's work but to be hoodwinked and bamboozled by the deliberate stealthy southern fun must have been eternally galling the Sussex Joker grinds slowly and exceeding small but the flower is his there was Nick Cossum the black myth the words are a shepherd's talking to Mr. Lauer he was a sad plague to them once he made an exciseman run several miles after him to take away a keg of yeast he was a carrying to ditchling another time as he was a going up new Bostell an exciseman who knew him of old saw him a carrying a tub of Hollands so he says says he master Cossum I must have that tub of yours I reckon worse luck I suppose you must look in a civil way though it's rather again the grain to be robbed like this but however I am a going your road and we can walk together there's no Laura again that I expect Oh certainly not says the other taking of the tub upon his shoulders so they chatted along quite friendly and chucker like till they came to a crossroad and Nick wished the excise man goodbye after Nick had got a little way he turned around all of a sudden and called out oh there's one thing I forgot here's a little bit wrongs to the keg paper says the excise man why that's a permit says he why didn't you show me that when I took the Hollands Oh says Nick as saucy as Heinz why if I had done that says he you wouldn't have carried my tub for me all this way would you the story at the end of chapter 19 of the Clark in old shawram church whose loyalty was too much for his ritualism may be capped by that of a south down Clark in the east of the county a seat in church commanded a view of the neighborhood during an afternoon service one Sunday a violent gale was raging which had already unroofed several barns the time came says mr. Lauer for the psalm before the sermon and the Clark rose to announce it let us sing to the praise and gloat please sir my cinnabes mill is blowed down another word on Sussex Millers John Oliver the hervy of high down hill had a companion in eccentricity in William Coombs of New Haven who although active as a miller to the end was for many years a stranger to the inside of his mill owing to a rash statement one night that if what he a separated was not true he would never enter his mill again it was not true and hence forward until his death he directed his business from the top step such is the Sussex tenacity of purpose Coombs was married at West Dean but not fortunately on the way to the church a voice from heaven calls to him William Coombs William Coombs if so be that you marry Mary you'll always be a miserable man Coombs who had no false shame often told the tale adding and I be a miserable man Coombs's inseparable companion was a horse which bore him and his merchandise to market in order to vary the monotony of the animals own God given hue he used to paint it different colours one day yellow and the next pink one day green and the next blue and so on but this cannot have perplexed the horse so much as his master's idea of mercy for when it's back was overloaded with sacks of flower but also with Coombs that humanitarian experiencing a pang of sympathy and exclaiming the merciful man is merciful to his beast would lift one of the sacks onto his own shoulders his Marcy however did not extend to dismounting our Sussex Droll Andrew Board when he invented the wisdom of Gotham invented also the charity of Coombs but the story is true Coombs must not be considered typical of Sussex nor can the tricycleist of Chaley be called typical of Sussex the weary man who was overtaken by a correspondent of mine on the aclivity called the King's Head Hill toiling up its steepness on a very old fashioned solid tired tricycle he had the break hard down and when this was pointed out to him he replied shrewdly hey master but go backwards such whimsical excess of caution such thorough calculation of all the chances is not truly typical nor is the Miller's oddity truly typical and yet if one set forth to find humorous eccentricity humorous suspicion and humorous cautiousness at their most flourishing Sussex is the county for the search it ought to be known that those Londoners who would care to reach Sussex on the Roman road have still Stain Street at their service with a little difficulty here and there a little freedom with other people's land the Walker is still able to travel from London to Chichester almost in a beeline as the Romans used Stain Street which is a southern continuation of Irming Street pierced London's wall at Billingsgate and that would therefore be the best starting point the modern traveller would set forth down the Borough High Street as the Canterbury Pilgrims did crossing the track of Wattling Street near the Elephant and Castle and so on the present high road for several not too interesting miles along Newington Butts and Cannington Park Road up Clapham Rise and Ballum Hill and so on through Tooting, Morden North Cheam and Yule so far all is simple and a little prosaic but at Epsom difficulties begin the road from Epsom Town of course climbs to the east of the Durdans and strikes away south-west on its true course again exactly at the inn the point to make for as straight as may be passing between Ashstead on the right and Langley Bottom Farm on the left is the 30 Acres Barn right on the site then direct to Leatherhead down through Birch Grove over Mickelham down and so to the high road again at Juniper Hall part of the track on this high ground is still called Irming Street by the country folk part is known as Pebble Lane where the old Roman road metal has come through the old street probably followed the present road fairly closely with a slight deviation near the Burford Bridge Inn as far as Boxhill Station whence it took a beeline to the high ground at Minnick Wood by Ansteybury four miles distant a little to the west of Holmwood this if the line is to be followed some deliberate trespassing and a scramble through Dawking Churchyard which is partly on the site hither too the Roman engineer has wavered now and then but from Minnick Wood to Tolhurst Farm 15 miles to the south the line is absolute two miles below Oakley where it is called Stone Street at Hale House Farm the road must be left again but after three miles of footpath field and wood we hit it once more just above Medisham on the road between Guilford and Horsham and keep it all the way to Pulbara through Billingshurst thus named as I have said like Billingsgate after Bellinas, Stain Street's engineer at Pulbara we must cut across country to the camp by Hardham over water meadows that are too often flooded and then through other fields, arable and pasture to the hostel on Bigner Hill which once was Stain Street passing on the right Mr. Tupper's Farm and the field which contains the famous Bigner Pavements relic of the palatial residents of the governor of the province of Regnum in the Romans day or better still, pausing there as Roman officers faring to Regnum certainly would in the hope of a cup of Filurnian the track winding up Bigner Hill is still easily recognizable and from the summit half Sussex is visible the flat blue wheeled in the north Blackdown's dark escapement in the north west Arundel's shaggy wastes in the east the sea and the plain in the south and the rolling turf of the Downs all around hence forward the road is again straight nine unfaltering miles to Chichester which we enter by St. Pancras and East Street for the first four miles however the track is over turf and among woods earthenwood on the right and northward on the left and after a very brief spell of hard road again over the side of Halnaker Down but from Halnaker to Chichester it is Turnpike once more with the savor of the channel meeting one all the way and Chichester's Spire a friendly beacon and earnest of the contiguous delights of the Dolphin where one may sup in an assembly room gracious enough to hold a Roman century or one might reverse the order and walk out of Sussex into London by the Roman way or better still through London and on by Irming Street to the wall of Antoninas merely to walk to London and their stop is nothing merely to walk from London is little but to walk through London there is glamour in that to come bravely up from the sea at Boscham through Chichester over the Downs to the sweet domestic peaceful green-wield over the Downs again and plunge into the grey city perhaps at night and out again on the other side into the green again and so to the north left, right, left, right just as the clanking Romans did that would be worth doing and worth feeling the best knower of Sussex has died since this book was printed one who knew her footpaths and spinnies her hills and farms as a scholar knows his library John Horn of Brighton was his name a tall powerful man even in his old age he was above 80 at his death with a wise shrewd head stored with old Sussex memories hunting triumphs the savour of long solitary shooting days accompanied by a muzzleloader and single dog such days as Knox describes in chapter 5 historic cricket matches stories of the Sussex oddities the long-headed country lawyers the Quaker autocrats the wild farmers the eccentric squires characters of favourite horses and dogs such was the mobility of his countenance and his instinct for drama that he could bring before you any animal he described early railway days he had ridden in the first train that ran between Brighton and Southwick fierce struggles over rites of way reminiscences of old Brighton before a hundredth part of its present streets were made and all the other body of curious law for which one must go to those whose minds dwell much in the past coming of Quaker stock as he did his memory was good and well-ordered and his observation quick and sound what he saw he saw and he had the unusual gift of vivid precise narrative and a choice of words that a literary man should envy a favourite topic of conversation between us was the best foot-root between two given points such as staining and wording for example, or Lewis and Shoreham seated in his little room with its half a dozen sporting-print on the wall and a scene or two of old Brighton he word with infinite detail removing all possibility of mistake described the itinerary weighing the merits of alternative paths with profound solemnity and proving the wisdom of every departure from the more obvious track were Sussex obliterated by a tidal wave and were a new county to be constructed on the old lines John Horne could have done it of his talk I found it impossible to tire and I shall never cease to regret that circumstances laterally made visits to him very infrequent towards the end his faculties now and then were a little dimmed but the occlusion carried compensation with it to sit with an old man and being mistaken by him for one's own grandfather dressed as though half a century had rolled away is an experience that I would not miss to the end John Horne dressed as the country gentleman of his young days had dressed he might have stepped out of one of Alken's pictures for he possessed also the well-nourished complexion the full forehead and the slight fringe of whiskers which distinguished Alken's merry sportsmen his business taking him deep into the farms he was always in walking trim with an umbrella crooked over one arm his other hand grasping the obtuse angled handle of a ground-ash stick these sticks of which he had scores he cut himself his eye never losing its vigilance as he passed through a cop's under the handle about an inch from the end he screwed a steel peg so that the stick when it was not required might hang upon his arm while a long stout pin with a flat brass head was also inserted in case his pipe needed cleaning out thus furnished with umbrella and stick, pipe and a sample of his merchandise John Horne in his wide collar his ample coat with vast pockets over the hips his tight trousers and his early Victorian headgear has been these fifty years a familiar figure in the wield as he passed from farm to farm at a steady gate his interested glances falling this way and that noting every change and perhaps a little resenting it for he was of the old Tory school and his genial salutation ready for all acquaintances but he is now no more and Sussex is the poorer and the historian of Sussex poorer still I believe he would have liked this book but how he would have shaken his wise head over its omissions end of chapter 42 and the end of highways and byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas