Wild Life in a Southern County. Richard Jefferies
and the lesser striped kind will creep along the ground. The pink pimpernel hides on the very verge of the corn, which presently will be strewn with the beautiful ‘blue-bottle’ flower, than whose exquisite hue there is nothing more lovely in our fields. The great scarlet poppy with the black centre, and ‘eggs and butter’—curious name for a flower—will, of course, be there: the latter often flourishes on a high elevation, on the very ridges, provided only the plough has been near.
At irregular intervals along the slope there are deep hollows—shallow near the summit, deepening and widening as they sink, till by the hedge at the foot they broaden out into a little valley in themselves. These great green grooves furrow the sides of the downs everywhere, and for that reason it is best to walk either on the ridge or in the plain at the bottom: if you follow the slope half-way up you are continually descending and ascending the steep sides of these gullys, which adds much to the fatigue. At the mouths of the hollows, close to the hedge, the great flint stones and lumps of chalky rubble rolling down from above one by one in the passage of the years have accumulated: so that the turf there is almost hidden as by a stony cascade.
On the ridge here is a thicket of furze, grown shrub-like and strong, being untouched by woodman’s tool; here the rabbits have their ‘buries,’ and be careful how you thread your way between the bushes, for the ground is undermined with innumerable flint-pits long abandoned. This is the favourite resort of the chats, who perch on the furze or on the heaps of flints, perpetually iterating their one note, from which their name seems taken. Within the enclosure of the old earthwork itself the flint-diggers have been at work: they occasionally find a few fragments of rusty metal, doubtless relics of ancient weapons; but little worth preserving is ever found there. Such treasures are much more frequently discovered in the cornfields of the plain immediately beneath than here in the camp where one would naturally look for them.
The labourers who pick up these things often put an immensely exaggerated value on them: a worn Roman coin of the commonest kind, of which hundreds are in existence, they imagine to be worth a week’s wages till after refusing its real value from a collector they finally visit a watchmaker whose aquafortis test proves the supposed gold to be brass. So, too, with fossils: a man brought me a common echinus, and expected a couple of ‘crownds’ at least for it; nothing could convince him that, although not often found just in that district, in others they were numerous. The ‘crownd’ is still the unit, the favourite coin of the labourers, especially the elder folk. They use the word something in the same sense as the dollar, and look with regret upon the gradual disappearance of the broad silver disc with the figure of ‘Saint Gaarge’ conquering the dragon.
Everywhere across the hills traces of the old rabbit-warrens may be found in the names of places. Warren Farms, Warren Houses, etc, are common; and the term is often added to the names of the villages to distinguish an outlying part of the parish. From the earthwork the sites of four such warrens, now cultivated, can be seen within the radius of as many miles. Rabbits must have swarmed on the downs in the olden times. In the season when the couch and weeds are collected in heaps and burned, the downs—were it not for the silence—might seem the scene of a mighty conflict the smoke of the battle rolling along the slopes and hanging over the plains, rising up from the hollows in dusky clouds. But the cannon of the shadowy army give forth no thunderous roar. These smouldering fires are not, of course, peculiar to the hills, but the smoke shows so much more at that elevation.
At evening, if you watch the sunset from the top of the rampart, as the red disc sinks to the horizon and the shadows lengthen—the trees below and the old barn throwing their shadows up the slope—the eye is deceived by the position of the light and the hill seems much higher and steeper, looking down from the summit, than it does at noonday. It is an optical delusion. Here on the western side the grass is still dry—in the deep narrow valleys behind the sun set long since over the earthwork and ridge, and the dew is already gathering thickly on the sward.
A broad green track runs for many a long, long mile across the downs, now following the ridges, now winding past at the foot of a grassy slope, then stretching away through cornfield and fallow. It is distinct from the waggon-tracks which cross it here and there, for these are local only, and if traced up land the wayfarer presently in a maze of fields, or end abruptly in the rickyard of a lone farmhouse. It is distinct from the hard roads of modern construction which also at wide intervals cross its course, dusty and glaringly white in the sunshine. It is not a farm track—you may walk for twenty miles along it over the hills; neither is it the king’s highway.
For seven long miles in one direction there is not so much as a wayside tavern; then the traveller finds a little cottage, with a bench under a shady sycamore and a trough for a thirsty horse, situate where three such modern roads (also lonely enough) cross the old green track. Far apart, and far away from its course hidden among their ricks and trees a few farmsteads stand, and near them perhaps a shepherd’s cottage: otherwise it is an utter solitude, a vast desert of hill and plain; silent too, save for the tinkle of a sheep bell, or, in the autumn, the moaning hum of a distant threshing machine rising and falling on the wind.
The origin of the track goes back into the dimmest antiquity; there is evidence that it was a military road when the fierce Dane carried fire and slaughter inland, leaving his ‘nailed bark’ in the creeks of the rivers, and before that when the Saxons pushed up from the sea. The eagles of old Rome, perhaps, were borne along it, and yet earlier the chariots of the Britons may have used it—traces of all have been found; so that for fifteen centuries this track of the primitive peoples has maintained its existence through the strange changes of the times, till now in the season the cumbrous steam-ploughing engines jolt and strain and pant over the uneven turf.
To-day, entering the ancient way, eight miles or so from the great earthwork, hitherto the central post of observation, I turn my face once more towards its distant rampart, just visible, showing over the hills a line drawn against the sky. Here, whence I start, is another such a camp, with mound and fosse; beyond the one I have more closely described some four miles is still a third, all connected by the same green track running along the ridges of the downs and entirely independent of the roads of modern days. They form a chain of forts on the edge of the down-land overlooking the vale. At starting the track is but just distinguishable from the general sward of the hill: the ruts are overgrown with grass—but the tough ‘tussocky’ kind, in which the hares hide, avoids the path, and by its edge marks the way. Soon the ground sinks, and then the cornfields approach, extending on either hand—barley, already bending under the weight of the awn, swaying with every gentle breath of air, stronger oats and wheat, broad squares of swede and turnip and dark-green mangold.
Plough and harrow press hard on the ancient track, and yet dare not encroach upon it. With varying width, from twenty to fifty yards, it runs like a green riband through the sea of corn—a width that allows a flock of sheep to travel easily side by side, spread abroad, and snatch a bite as they pass. Dry, shallow trenches full of weeds, and low narrow mounds, green also, divide it from the arable land; and on these now and then grow storm-stunted hawthorn bushes, gnarled and aged. On the banks the wild thyme grows in great bunches, emitting an exquisite fragrance—luxurious cushions these to rest upon beneath the shade of the hawthorn, listening to the gentle rustle of the wheat as the wind rushes over it. Away yonder the shadows of the clouds come over the ridge, and glide with seeming sudden increase of speed down-hill, then along the surface of the corn, darkening it as they pass, with a bright band of light following swiftly behind. It is gone, and the beech copse away there is blackened for a moment as the shadow leaps it. On the smooth bark of those beeches the shepherd lads have cut their names with their great clasp-knives.
Sometimes in the evening, later on, when the wheat is nearly ripe, such a shepherd lad will sit under the trees there; and as you pass along the track comes the mellow note of his wooden whistle, from which poor instrument he draws a sweet sound. There is no tune—no recognisable melody: he plays from his heart and to himself. In a room doubtless it would seem harsh and discordant; but there, the player unseen, his simple notes harmonise with the open plain, the looming hills, the ruddy sunset as if striving to express the feelings these call forth.
Resting thus on the wild thyme under the hawthorn, partly hidden and quite silent, we may see stealing out from the corn into the fallow