Tom Brown at Rugby Part 2

[34] #Backsword play#: the game of single-stick, or fencing with cudgels.

[35] #Gorse#: a thick, p.r.i.c.kly, evergreen shrub, which grows wild and bears beautiful yellow flowers.

[36] #Spinney#: a small grove filled with undergrowth.

[37] #Charley#: a fox.

[38] #Cover#: a retreat, or hiding-place.

[39] #Old Berks.h.i.+re#: an a.s.sociation of hunters.

[40] #Thatched#: roofed with straw or reeds.

One of the moralists whom we sat under in our youth--was it the great Richard Swiveller,[41] or Mr. Stiggins?[42] says, "We are born in a vale, and must take the consequences of being found in such a situation." These consequences, I for one am ready to encounter. I pity people who wern't born in a vale. I don't mean a flat country, but a vale; that is, a flat country bounded by hills. The having your hill _always_ in view, if you choose to turn toward him, that's the essence of a vale. There he is forever in the distance, your friend and companion; you never lose him as you do in hilly districts.

[41] #Richard Swiveller#: a jolly character who lives by his wits. See d.i.c.kens's "Old Curiosity Shop."

[42] #Mr. Stiggins#: a hypocritical parson. See d.i.c.kens's "Pickwick Papers."

THE OLD ROMAN CAMP.

And then what a hill is the White Horse Hill! There it stands right above all the rest, nine hundred feet above the sea, and the boldest, bravest shape for a chalk hill that you ever saw. Let us go up to the top of him, and see what is to be found there. Ay, you may well wonder, and think it odd you never heard of this before; but, wonder or not as you please, there are hundreds of such things lying about England, which wiser folk than you know nothing of, and care nothing for. Yes, it's a magnificent Roman camp,[43] and no mistake, with gates, and ditch, and mounds, all as complete as it was twenty years after the strong old rogues left it. Here, right up on the highest point, from which they say you can see eleven counties, they trenched round all the table-land, some twelve or fourteen acres, as was their custom, for they couldn't bear anybody to overlook them, and made their eyrie.[44] The ground falls away rapidly on all sides. Was there ever such turf in the whole world? You sink up to your ankles at every step, and yet the spring of it is delicious. There is always a breeze in the "camp," as it is called and here it lies just as the Romans left it, except that cairn,[45] on the east side, left by her majesty's corps of sappers and miners[46] the other day, when they and the engineer officer had finished their sojourn there, and their surveys for the Ordnance Map[47] of Berks.h.i.+re. It is altogether a place that you won't forget--a place to open a man's soul and make him prophesy, as he looks down on that great vale spread out as the garden of the Lord before him, and wave on wave of the mysterious downs behind; and to the right and left the chalk hills running away into the distance, along which he can trace for miles the old Roman road, "the Ridgeway" ("the Rudge" as the country folk call it), keeping straight along the highest back of the hills; such a place as Balak[48] brought Balaam to, and told him to prophesy against the people in the valley beneath. And he could not, neither shall you, for they are a people of the Lord who abide there.

[43] #Roman camp#: the Romans, when they conquered England, about 78 A.D., built a stronghold here.

[44] #Eyrie#: the nest of a bird of prey; here, a gathering-place for Roman soldiers.

[45] #Cairn#: a heap of stones set up to mark a spot.

[46] #Sappers and miners#: usually, soldiers employed in working on trenches and fortifications or in undermining those of an enemy; here, engaged in surveying.

[47] #Ordnance Map#: an official or government map.

[48] #Balak#: see Numbers xxii.

BATTLE OF ASHDOWN.

And now we leave the camp, and descend toward the west, and are on the Ashdown. We are treading on heroes. It is sacred ground for Englishmen, more sacred than all but one or two fields where their bones lie whitening. For this is the actual place where our Alfred[49]

won his great battle, the battle of Ashdown "aescendum" in the chroniclers), which broke the Danish power, and made England a Christian land. The Danes held the camp and the slope where we are standing--the whole crown of the hill, in fact. "The heathen had beforehand seized the higher ground," as old a.s.ser[50] says, having wasted everything behind them from London, and being just ready to burst down on the fair vale, Alfred's own birthplace and heritage.

And up the heights came the Saxons,[51] as they did at the Alma.[52]

"The Christians led up their line from the lower ground. There stood also on that same spot a single thorn-tree, marvellous stumpy (which we ourselves with our very own eyes have seen)." Bless the old chronicler![53] does he think n.o.body ever saw the "single thorn-tree"

but himself? Why, there it stands to this very day, just on the edge of the slope, and I saw it not three weeks since; an old single thorn-tree, "marvellous stumpy." At least, if it isn't the same tree, it ought to have been, for it's just in the place where the battle must have been won or lost--"around which, as I was saying, the two lines of foemen came together in battle with a huge shout. And in this place one of the two kings of the heathen and five of his earls fell down and died, and many thousands of the heathen side in the same place." After which crowning mercy, the pious king, that there might never be wanting a sign and a memorial to the country-side, carved out on the northern side of the chalk hill under the camp, where it is almost precipitous, the great Saxon white horse, which he who will may see from the railway, and which gives its name to the vale over which it has looked these thousand years and more.

[49] #Alfred#: Alfred the Great, King of the West Saxons, 871.

He defeated the Danes, who had overrun most of England, at Ashdown, and compelled them to make a treaty of peace. He is justly considered one of the n.o.blest and wisest of the English sovereigns; and the thousandth anniversary of his birth was celebrated in 1849, at Wantage, Berks.

[50] #a.s.ser#: a contemporary of Alfred; he wrote his life.

[51] #Saxons#: a name given to certain German tribes who conquered Britain, in the fifth century. The name England came from the Angles, a people of the same stock, who settled in the east and north of the island. From these Anglo-Saxons the English have in great part descended.

[52] #Alma#: a river in the Crimea where a desperate battle was fought between the Russians and the allied English and French in 1854.

[53] #Chronicler#: a.s.ser, from whom this is quoted.

Right down below the White Horse is a curious deep and broad gully called "the Manger," into one side of which the hills fall with a series of the most lovely sweeping curves, known as the "Giant's Stairs"; they are not a bit like stairs, but I never saw anything like them anywhere else, with their short green turf, and tender bluebells, and gossamer and thistle-down gleaming in the sun, and the sheep-paths running along their sides like ruled lines.

The other side of the Manger is formed by the Dragon's Hill, a curious little round self-confident fellow, thrown forward from the range, and utterly unlike everything round him. On this hill some deliverer of mankind--St. George[54] the country folk used to tell me--killed a dragon. Whether it were St. George, I cannot say; but surely a dragon was killed there, for you may see the marks yet where his blood ran down, and more by token[55] the place where it ran down is the easiest way up the hill-side.

[54] #St. George#: the patron saint of England.

[55] #More by token#: as a sign or proof that this is so.

Pa.s.sing along the Ridgeway to the west for about a mile, we come to a little clump of young beech and firs, with a growth of thorn and privet[56] underwood. Here you may find nests of the strong down-partridge and pewit, but take care that the keeper[57] isn't down upon you; and in the middle of it is an old cromlech,[58] a huge flat stone raised on seven or eight others, and led up to by a path, with large single stones set up on each side. This is Wayland Smith's cave,[59] a place of cla.s.sic fame now; but as Sir Walter[60] has touched it, I may as well let it alone, and refer you to Kenilworth for the legend.

[56] #Privet#: a shrub much used for hedges.

[57] #Keeper#: the gamekeeper, a man kept on great estates to look after the game.

[58] #Cromlech#: a rude tomb built by the first inhabitants of Britain.

[59] #Wayland Smith's Cave#: a "supernatural smith" who shod horses on payment of sixpence.

[60] #Sir Walter#: Sir Walter Scott.

The thick deep wood which you see in the hollow, about a mile off, surrounds Ashdown Park, built by Inigo Jones.[61] Four broad alleys are cut through the wood, from circ.u.mference to centre, and each leads to one face of the house. The mystery of the downs hangs about house and wood, as they stand there alone, so unlike all around, with the green slopes, studded with great stones just about this part, stretching away on all sides. It was a wise Lord Craven,[62] I think, who pitched his tent there.

[61] #Inigo Jones#: a celebrated architect of the 17th century.

[62] #Lord Craven#: the owner of the estate on which the "White Horse" is located.

THE "SEVEN BARROWS" FARM.

Pa.s.sing along the Ridgeway to the east, we soon come to cultivated land. The downs, strictly so called, are no more; Lincolns.h.i.+re farmers have been imported, and the long fresh slopes are sheep-walks[63] no more, but grow famous turnips and barley. One of these improvers lives over there at the "Seven Barrows"[64] farm, another mystery of the great downs. There are the barrows still, solemn and silent, like s.h.i.+ps in the calm sea, the sepulchres of some sons of men. But of whom? It is three miles from the White Horse, too far for the slain of Ashdown to be buried there--who shall say what heroes are waiting there? But we must get down into the Vale again, and so away by the Great Western Railway to town, for time and the printer's devil press; and it is a terrible long and slippery descent, and a shocking bad road. At the bottom, however, there is a pleasant public,[65] whereat we must really take a modest quencher, for the down air is provocative of thirst. So we pull up under an old oak which stands before the door.

[63] #Sheep-walks#: sheep pastures, for which the "downs" are much used.

[64] #Barrows#: ancient burial mounds.

[65] #Public#: a public house.

THE BLOWING STONE.

"What is the name of your hill, landlord?"

"Blawing STWUN Hill, sir, to be sure."