There Is A Story Of The Smugglers - Once Notorious Folk On
These Hills - Teaching Their Horses To Understand The Usual Words Of
Command Backwards.
If they were driving pack-horses along at night with a
load of brandy landed from a lugger, and were met by the revenue men, who
ordered them to stop that the packs might be searched, the smugglers,
like good and loyal subjects, called 'Whoa!
Whoa!' Instantly the horses
set off at a tearing gallop, for they understood 'Whoa!' as' Gee-up!'
By a farmer's door I found a tall branch of oak lying against the porch.
The bark was dry, and the leaves were shrivelled, but the bough had been
originally taken green from the tree. These boughs are discovered against
the door on the morning of the 29th of May, and are in memory of the
escape of King Charles from his enemies by hiding in an oak. The village
ringers leave them, and then go to the church and ring a peal, for which
they expect cider or small coin from each loyal person honoured with an
oak branch. Another custom, infinitely more ancient, is that of singing
to the apple trees in early spring, so that the orchards may be induced
to bear a good crop. The singers come round and visit each orchard; they
have a rhyme specially for the purpose, part of the refrain of which is
that a cup of good cider cannot do any one harm - a hint which brings out
a canful. In strange contrast to these genial customs, which accord so
well with flowery fields, I heard an instance of the coldest
indifference. An old couple lived for many years in a cottage; at last
the wife died, and the husband, while the body was in the house, had his
meals on the coffin as a table.
A hundred years since, before steam, the corn was threshed out by the
flail - a slow, and consequently expensive process. Many efforts were made
to thresh quicker. Among others, wooden machines were put up in some of
the villages, something resembling a water-wheel placed horizontally.
This was moved by horses walking round and round, and drove machinery in
the barn by belt or shafting. The labourers, greatly incensed - for they
regarded threshing by the flail as their right - tried to burn them, but
the structures were guarded and still exist. Under the modern conditions
of farming they are still found useful to cut chaff, crack corn, and so
on. The ancient sickle is yet in use for reaping in Somerset; the reapers
sharpen it by drawing the edge through an apple, when the acid bites and
cleans the steel. While we were sauntering through a village one morning,
out rushed the boys from school, and instantly their tongues began to wag
of those things on which their hearts were set. 'I know a jay's nest,
said one; 'I know an owl's nest,' cried a second; a third hastened to
claim knowledge of a pigeon's nest.
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