Volume II Part 4 (1/2)
While on the subject of rural economy, it may not be improper to mention a pretty implement of housewifery that we have seen nowhere else; that is, little neat besoms which our foresters make from the stalks of the _polytric.u.m commune_, or great golden maidenhair, which they call silk- wood, and find plenty in the bogs. When this moss is well combed and dressed, and divested of its outer skin, it becomes of a beautiful bright- chestnut colour; and, being soft and pliant, is very proper for the dusting of beds, curtains, carpets, hangings, etc. If these besoms were known to the brushmakers in town, it is probable they might come much in use for the purpose above mentioned.
I am, etc.
LETTER XXVII.
SELBORNE, _Dec._ 12_th_, 1775.
Dear Sir,--We had in this village more than twenty years ago an idiot boy, whom I well remember, who, from a child, showed a strong propensity to bees; they were his food, his amus.e.m.e.nt, his sole object. And as people of this caste have seldom more than one point in view, so this lad exerted all his few faculties on this one pursuit. In the winter he dozed away his time, within his father's house, by the fireside, in a kind of torpid state, seldom departing from the chimney-corner; but in the summer he was all alert, and in quest of his game in the fields, and on sunny banks. Honey-bees, humble-bees, and wasps, were his prey wherever he found them; he had no apprehensions from their stings, but would seize them _nudis manibus_, and at once disarm them of their weapons, and suck their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags.
Sometimes he would fill his bosom between his s.h.i.+rt and his skin with a number of these captives, and sometimes would confine them in bottles. He was a very _merops apiaster_, or bee-bird, and very injurious to men that kept bees; for he would slide into their bee-gardens, and, sitting down before the stools would rap with his finger on the hives, and so take the bees as they came out. He has been known to overturn hives for the sake of honey, of which he was pa.s.sionately fond. Where metheglin was making he would linger round the tubs and vessels, begging a draught of what he called bee-wine. As he ran about he used to make a humming noise with his lips, resembling the buzzing of bees. This lad was lean and sallow, and of a cadaverous complexion; and, except in his favourite pursuit, in which he was wonderfully adroit, discovered no manner of understanding.
Had his capacity been better, and directed to the same object, he had perhaps abated much of our wonder at the feats of a more modern exhibitor of bees; and we may justly say of him now,--
” . . . Thou, Had thy presiding star propitious shone, Shouldst Wildman be . . . ”
When a tall youth he was removed from hence to a distant village, where he died, as I understand, before he arrived at manhood.
I am, etc.
LETTER XXVIII.
SELBORNE, _Jan._ 8_th_, 1776.
Dear Sir,--It is the hardest thing in the world to shake off superst.i.tious prejudices: they are sucked in, as it were, with our mother's milk; and growing up with us at a time when they take the fastest hold and make the most lasting impressions, become so interwoven into our very const.i.tutions, that the strongest good sense is required to disengage ourselves from them. No wonder, therefore, that the lower people retain them their whole lives through, since their minds are not invigorated by a liberal education, and therefore not enabled to make any efforts adequate to the occasion.
Such a preamble seems to be necessary before we enter on the superst.i.tions of this district, lest we should be suspected of exaggeration in a recital of practices too gross for this enlightened age.
But the people of Tring, in Hertfords.h.i.+re, would do well to remember that no longer ago than the year 1751, and within twenty miles of the capital, they seized on two superannuated wretches, crazed with age, and overwhelmed with infirmities, on a suspicion of witchcraft; and, by trying experiments, drowned them in a horse-pond.
In a farm-yard near the middle of this village stands at this day, a row of pollard-ashes, which by the seams and long cicatrices down their sides, manifestly show that, in former times, they have been cleft asunder. These trees when young and flexible, were severed and held open by wedges, while ruptured children, stripped naked, were pushed through the apertures, under a persuasion that, by such a process, the poor babes would be cured of their infirmity. As soon as the operation was over, the tree, in the suffering part, was plastered with loam, and carefully swathed up. If the parts coalesced and soldered together, as usually fell out, where the feat was performed with any adroitness at all, the party was cured; but, where the cleft continued to gape, the operation it was supposed, would prove ineffectual. Having occasion to enlarge my garden not long since, I cut down two or three such trees, one of which did not grow together.
We have several persons now living in the village who, in their childhood, were supposed to be healed by this superst.i.tious ceremony, derived down perhaps from our Saxon ancestors, who practised it before their conversion to Christianity.
At the fourth corner of the Plestor, or area, near the church, there stood, about twenty years ago, a very old grotesque hollow pollard-ash, which for ages had been looked on with no small veneration as a shrew- ash. Now a shrew-ash is an ash whose twigs or branches, when gently applied to the limbs of cattle, will immediately relieve the pains which a beast suffers from the running of a shrew-mouse over the part affected; for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so baneful and deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. Against this accident, to which they were continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a shrew- ash at hand, which when once medicated, would maintain its virtue for ever. A shrew-ash was made thus:--Into the body of the tree a deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt, with several quaint incantations long since forgotten. As the ceremonies necessary for such a consecration are no longer understood, all succession is at an end, and no such tree is known to subsist in the manor, or hundred.
As to that on the Plestor
”The late Vicar stubb'd and burnt it,”
when he was way-warden, regardless of the remonstrances of the bystanders, who interceded in vain for its preservation, urging its power and efficacy, and alleging that it had been
”Religione patrum multos servata per annos.”
I am, etc.