Spring in a Shropshire Abbey

As he spoke the old man rapped his stick feebly along the old cement floor of the monks and crept out of the door. My big dog looked after him and growled, for the tapping of a stick is a thing that few dogs can stand.

What strong men for good or ill, I argued, they were, those men who saw the end of the eighteenth and the birth of the nineteenth century. How brave and undaunted! They fought England’s quarrels over Europe, and they died in Spain, and won on the plains of Waterloo. How narrow they were, how intolerant, and how brave! Surely fox-hunting taught them some of their endurance and courage, and the long days over woodland and moor gave them strong muscles and brave hearts, and prepared them for the hardships of war.

The morning, with its glory of sunshine had passed, and the afternoon had grown grey and still. The joy of the morning seemed hushed, a chill grey sky was overhead, and the lowering clouds promised, a wet night.

I wandered out and walked amongst the ruins. Outside the grounds I heard a dog faintly barking, and the faint murmur of children’s voices reached me, but as in a dream; all the laughter and the gaiety of May morning had fled. I noticed that the thorns were bursting into blossom, and that a white lilac was covered with snow-like flowers.

I passed into the Chapter House. Alas! in the nineteenth century one complete set of arches had fallen, but the beautiful interlaced arches were still there, although every saint had been knocked off his niche and destroyed by the hooligan of Henry VIII.’s or Elizabeth’s reign. On the northern side, says tradition, reposed the body of St. Milburgha.

THE HOLY ONE AND MIRACLES

I felt in the grey evening as if I was standing on holy ground. It was here, according to William of Malmesbury, the historian monk, “that there lived formerly a very ancient house of nuns. The place (Wenlock),” he tells us, “was wholly deserted on account of the Danes having destroyed the fabric of the nunnery. After the Norman conquest, Roger de Montgomery filled the monastery with Clugniac monks, where now,” wrote the pious monk, “the fair branches of virtue strain up to heaven. The virgin’s tomb was unknown to the new-comers, for all the ancient monuments had been destroyed by the violence of the foemen and time. But when the fabric of the new church was commenced, as a boy ran in hot haste over the floor, the grave of the virgin was broken through, and disclosed her body. At the same time a fragrant odour of balsam breathed through the church, and her body, raised high aloft, wrought so many miracles that floods of people poured in thither. Scarcely could the broad fields contain the crowds, whilst rich and poor together, fired by a common faith, hastened on their way. None came to return without the cure or the mitigation of his malady, and even king’s evil, hopeless in the hands of the leech, departed before the merits of the virgin.”

As I stood on the well-shorn turf, the holy scene seemed to come back to me; then, later, the crowd of devout pilgrims overflowing fields and common. I seemed almost to see the bands of eager devotees, to hear their outburst of faith and thanksgiving, and to feel them near. I imagined cripples cured, the blind returning with their sight, all relieved and all blessing the Giver of life and health in their strong belief of the eleventh century.

Miss Arnold Forster, in her admirable work on “Church Dedications,” declares that the little leaden geese sometimes dug up in London are the same images that were bought by pilgrims and taken back to their homes from Wenlock.

In 1501, by order of Henry VII., a splendid shrine was built for the bones and relics of St. Milburgha, but after the dissolution of the monasteries, the mob broke in and robbed the tomb of its jewels, and scattered the saint’s bones and ashes to the winds.

I thought of all the old stories connected with the place, of the many deeds of piety of the Saxon saint and of her tomb, then of the rough usage of her shrine, and of the demolition of the churches after the Reformation.

The last twenty years has brought great changes, and none are greater than the changes in many of our views respecting the Reformation. No longer a narrow Protestant spirit governs us, or makes us believe that all done at the Reformation was well done, and for the glory of God. We mourn over the ruined churches, the deserted altars, and the loss to the world of so much that was venerable and beautiful.

SAINTS WERE DRIVEN FORTH

Bishop Godwin lamented bitterly over the fall of the monasteries. “Godly men,” he wrote, “could not approve of the destruction of so many grand churches built,” as the bishop expressed it, “for the worship of God by our ancestors. It was deeply to be regretted,” he declared, “the diversion of such an amount of ecclesiastical revenues to private use, and the abolition of every place where men might lead a religious life in peace, and retirement from worldly business, devoting themselves wholly to literary toil and meditation.”

Till the reign of Henry VIII. England was studded over with beautiful church buildings and monuments. They were centres of learning and culture. Buildwas, the great Cistercian monastery only three miles away, on the banks of the Severn, was famous in the Middle Ages for its workshops, and for the many copies of the Scriptures which were penned there, whilst in many of the monasteries, as even Lord Herbert said, the brothers behaved so well “that not only were their lives exempt from notorious faults, but their spare time was bestowed in writing books, in painting, carving, graving, and the like exercises, so that even their visitors became intercessors for their continuance.” But Cromwell would not allow the monks any virtues, and declared brutally that their houses should be thrown down to the foundations, and continued to fill the king’s coffers and his private purse with their gold.

Camden wrote: “Up to the thirty-sixth year of Henry VIII.’s reign, there were six hundred and forty-five religious houses erected for the honour of God, the propagation of Christianity and learning, and the support of the poor.

“Then,” says the historian, “a storm burst upon the English Church, like a flood, breaking down its banks, which, to the astonishment of the world and the grief of the nation, bore down the greater part of the religious houses, and with them their fairest buildings.

“These buildings were almost all shortly after destroyed, their monastic revenues squandered, and the wealth which the Christian piety of the English nation had from their first conversion dedicated to God, was in a moment dispersed.”

After doing away with the smaller monasteries, Henry VIII. found himself and the State but little richer for the confiscations. The story runs that he complained bitterly to his minister, Cromwell, of the rapacity of his courtiers, and is said to have exclaimed angrily —

“By our Lady! the cormorants, when they have got the garbage, will devour the fish.”

“There is more to come, your grace,” answered the wily vicegerent.

“Tut, tut, man,” the king is supposed to have answered, “my whole realm would not stanch their maws.”

Great was the sorrow of the poor at the dissolution. For the monks, as a rule, had been kind masters. They had nursed the sick, and had given away many doles at Christmas and welcome charities. They had fed and had clothed the indigent, and had opened their houses often as places of rest to travellers and to those in distress.

“It was,” wrote Strype, “a pitiful thing to hear the lamentations that the people of the country made for the monasteries. For in them,” he asserts, “was great hospitality, and by the doing away of the religious houses, it was thought more than 10,000 persons, masters and servants, had lost their living.”

LATIMER’S PLEA

Even Latimer, strong, sturdy Protestant that he was, though he flamed with righteous wrath at the abuses that went on in many of the religious houses, prayed that some of the superior and blameless houses might be spared. It was not wise, he thought, to strike all with one sweeping blow, and he begged “that some of the monasteries might continue and be filled with inmates not bound by vows, and revised by stringent statutes, where men in every shire might meditate and give themselves up to holy prayer, and acquire the art of preaching.”

“That soul must be low indeed,” wrote Cobbett, in his “History of the Protestant Reformation,” “which is insensible to all feelings of pride in the noble edifices of its country.”

“Love of country, that variety of feelings which all together constitute what we properly call patriotism, consists in part, of the admiration and of veneration for ancient and magnificent proofs of skill, and of opulence.

“The monks built, as well as wrote, for posterity. The never-dying nature of their institutions set aside in all their undertakings every calculation as to time and age. Whether they built, or whether they planted, they set the generous example of providing for the pleasure, the honour, the wealth and greatness, of generations upon generations, yet unborn. They executed everything in the best possible manner. Their gardens, their fish-ponds, farms; in all, in the whole of their economy they set an example tending to make the country beautiful – to make it an object of pride with the people, and to make the nation truly, and permanently great.”

Full of these different thoughts, I walked beneath arch and column, and so away from the old world and its belongings, until I stood before my aviary of canaries. I entered the cage. As I watched my birds I heard a pitter-patter overhead, and, looking up, I saw, leaning against a rail, my little friend Thady Malone.

“Well, Thady,” I said, “what has brought you here? I missed you this morning during the May Dance.”

“’Deed,” said Thady, slowly, “it was sorry I was not to be wid you, for I hear the little leddy danced like a cat in the moonlight, and shone like a glow-worm at the point of day.”

“Oh, but Bess didn’t dance,” I answered laughing.

“But, ’deed, if she had,” replied Thady, enthusiastically, “there’s not a fairy in auld Oireland that would have kept pace with her, or looked half the darlint.”

“Have it your own way, Thady,” I said, for I knew that Thady had long since kissed the Blarney Stone. “And now tell me why you didn’t come. There were cakes, and singing.”

“My mother,” answered Thady, solemnly. “It was my mother that was the prevention of my best intentions. My mother,” he continued, “is as full of pride as an egg is full of meat. And ‘Thady,’ she said, in a voice as deep as death, yer leddyship knows her way of speakin’, ‘’yer must never,’ she said, ‘give the name of your father a downfall. When yer go to her leddyship’s sports it must be clad as the best of ’em,’ and where were my boots to begin with?” And Thady sighed, and looked down rather piteously at his bare feet.

But a minute later, with the grace of an Irish lad, his face became wreathed in smiles, and he turned to me saying, “Well, though I stayed at home I gave yer all the good wishes in the world, and as I couldn’t be here in the morning, ’tis here I am in the evening.”

Then I stepped out of the aviary, and, as I mounted the stairs, I noted that Thady’s face had an air of mystery. As I approached him, he held out something in his hand, and said, in a tone of charming apology, “Here is something I have for yer, and for yourself alone. It’s never dirt with yer leddyship, whatever it is that a poor lad brings yer,” and as I got near, Thady uncovered one hand, and I saw through the fingers of the other a little black bird.

“A JACK SQUEALER, BEGORRA”

“A jack squealer, begorra,” he exclaimed triumphantly, as I reached the same level that he was on. Then Thady went on to say that he had picked him up last night. “He’s tired with coming,” he explained, “poor bit of a bird, but if yer can keep him safe for a day or two, he’ll live to fly with the best over crypt and arch.” So Thady and I bore away our prize, and mounted to the old chamber, which is known as the leper’s room, and there we deposited our little feathered friend.

“He’ll do here,” said Thady, “no cat can get him here. Give him a dish of water, and he’ll catch flies for himself.” The little bird was of a dusty black, with faint green reflections, and with a light drab tint beneath his beak, but with no white whatever under the tail. His short face expressed no fear at human contact. His legs I noted were very short. I put him down on the powdery dust of the chamber. He did not attempt to fly away, but when I placed him against my dress, he ran up my shoulder, to quote Thady’s words, “as active as a rabbit in a field of clover.”

“He’s a late un,” said Thady, contemplating his little prize. “‘Last to come, first to go,’ I’ve heard ’em say about swallows, but I don’t know if ’tis true or not; but he’s pretty in a way, and doesn’t know what fear is.” Then Thady went on to say nobody hurts a squealer, not even Wenlock boys, even they let him be. He’s the Almighty’s prime favourite, after a wren or a cock robin, Thady gave as an explanation. Then he told me how he found him at the bottom of the Bull Ring last night.

“Tired he was,” continued Thady, “like a tired horse that had taken three parties to a wedding. So I took him up safe from the cats; and old Timothy, him as they call Maister Theobalds, he said, leaning on his stick and his smock floating behind him like a petticoat, ‘Let the lady of the Abbey have ’im. Varmint and such toys be all in her line. She or the lady Bess wull be sure to like ’im.’ So I brought ’im here.”

“He is most fascinating,” I answered, watching my new pet; “but how can I catch him flies?”

“Let him be,” answered Thady; “feeding birds is mostly killing ’em. With water he’ll freshen up, and go and get his own meat.”

I stood a few minutes watching the little bird. He ran about on the floor, and apparently found what was necessary for his subsistence; but his wings were so weak that he could not rise. Thady disappeared for a moment, and then reappeared with an armful of branches. “These will be a pleasure to him and harbour insects, and such birds like shade. Now he’ll do.”

We arranged the boughs, and Thady fetched a saucer of water, which he put down. The bird, after a moment’s hesitation, plunged in, expanded his wings with a cry of pleasure, and then lay contentedly on the ground.

“He’ll be well now,” said Thady, “well as Uncle Pat’s pig when it got into an orchard of cider apples.” So we shut the old door of the leper’s chamber carefully behind us, and descended the steps – overgrown with budding valerian.

FRESH NESTS TO SEE

“They be wonderfully dressy, be swallows,” piped Thady, “in the building of their nests. There’s nought that comes amiss to them. Shreds of gauze, scraps of muslin, bits of mud, in fact,” he added, “any iligant thing that they can meet with, they dart off with in a minute. ’Tis wonderful the fancy and the invention of the craythures. In August they’ll go, this sort; but where they go there’s few as knows.”

I was about to return to the Abbey, when Thady stopped me. “I’ve somethin’ else to show you, somethin’ as you’ll be pleased wid,” he said.

“What is it?”

“A real pretty bird,” was Thady’s answer. “None of yer common kinds. The cock is the bonniest little fellow I have ever seen; fire snaps, I call ’em, – that’s the name that Ben O’Mally called one that we saw together near Birmingham. He’s about the size of a robin, but ’tis a more spirited tail that he has, a black waistcoat, and a lavender head. None of your mud-pie midgeon tits, but a real gay hopper. About the bonniest little fellow that I have ever seen. He’s got a flash of brightness about him, like the foreign flower that Mister Burbidge declared he would whip the life out of me if I touched. Jump the flame, the blazer, and kitty brantail, I’ve heard him called in different places; but call ’em what they will, they all think a lot of him.”

Then I asked Thady about the plumage of the little hen.

“Oh, the missus,” answered Thady. “Well she’s purty but not so fine as her mate. She’s a bitter duller, and the fire has gone out of her tail.”

“Where is the nest?” I asked.

Thady did not answer, but walked across the ruined church to a broken column, and there, sure enough, in a little hole screened from the winds by a spray of budding eglantine, I found the nest of the redstart. The eggs, of which there are four, reminded me of those of the hedge-sparrow; but the blue was fainter, and on one or two I noticed a few dim brownish specks. Then we retired quickly, for hovering close by was the brilliant little cock bird himself. How beautiful he was! Like a vision of the tropics. The redstart is never found in great numbers in Shropshire, but every year there is a pair that comes and builds somewhere in our ruined church. Three years ago they built in a wall, last year in a crevice in the crypt, and this year in a ruined column.

The redstart visits our shores in April, and always commands attention by his brilliant plumage. He is a bold bird and not easily frightened. He dips his tail up and down, with a movement which recalls that of a water-wagtail, only it is not so fussy, or continuous; and when he flies, he leaves behind him the vision of a red-hot coal on the wing, so glorious are the feathers on the top of the tail.

I begged Thady to show no one the nest. Nests are best kept dead secrets, and this one, I said, will be a joy and an interest to me for the next two months.

“I’ve somethin’ more,” and Thady hesitated – “and a real beauty,” he added. “I know yer was occupied with play-acting and entertainments and what not,” and Thady waved his hand majestically, as if on May morning of 1904 ours had been the revels of Kenilworth, and added “it isn’t beasts, and birds, that the gentry care for at such times, so I waited my time,” and Thady beckoned to me to follow.

I crossed the garden, and let myself out by the lily gates while Thady stepped over the wall, and found myself in a few minutes’ time across the meadows and standing with Thady by the furthest point of the old Abbey fish-ponds.

A RING-OUZEL’S NEST

“’Tisn’t often as this sort will come down from the hills and the wild ground,” Thady said. “They are wild folk and belong to the north moorland. I’ve never heard of a rock-jack here. Some folks call ’em burn-dippers.” I looked, and saw amongst the branches of an old willow a nest which was not unlike that of a blackbird, but the eggs were not quite the same, being splashed with spots of a reddish brown on a ground of a brighter green.

“What is it?” I asked, for Thady’s country names did not convey much to me. And then I saw, not far off on the grass, a bird not unlike the familiar blackbird, or black ouzel of the garden, as some country folks still call him, save that he had a white throat. It was the first that I ever saw in England, although I believe the ring-ouzel is not uncommon on the Church Stretton hills; but on cultivated land, save in a few parts of Scotland, he is always a rare visitor.

I watched him hop about, with the same heavy flop of his cousin, the blackbird, but I noted that his plumage was not so brilliant as our garden favourite. He had greener shades in the black, and his plumage was almost of a rusty brown in places. Underneath his throat he had a brilliant white tie. He was certainly a handsome fellow. His movements recalled those of a blackbird, but he had not the “yellow dagger” that Tennyson praised, and at our approach he did not make his exit with the angry rattle which is so characteristic of our garden friend.

“Why, Thady,” I said, “I am pleased. The ring-ouzel is a very rare English bird. At least, so they say in books.”

“Begorra, I have never seen one in these parts but once,” answered Thady, “and that was in Sherlot Forest by the lake.”

Then we got back over the rails, and I followed Thady to one of the small plantations where the young trees were about twenty years old.

“What else have you got?” for Thady was beginning to run, so great evidently was his impatience to show me something that he knew of.

“A nest of the finest singer in Shropshire,” replied Thady, “as good, some say, as the nightingale. I’ve heard him called the mock nightingale, and by others the coal tuft, Jack smut, and black the chimney. Anyway, whatever they like to call him, he’s a fine songster for all his poor dull feathers. He can pipe loud and full right across a wood, and then warble soft as a nope’s bride. He won’t stay here in August, and flies away with the first of the swallows.”

Then I recalled the olive woods in Southern France, and remembered how sweetly I had heard the blackcaps sing in March mornings from the Hotel Bellevue windows. I looked at the little nest built in the branches of a budding bramble; it was not unlike that of a robin, save that it had no moss interwoven in its structure, and that it was entirely lined with horse hair and the hair off the backs of the red and white cows of the country. Inside I saw three eggs of a palish, reddish brown, sprinkled over with spots of purple. I could not help noticing how different the three eggs were.

“I’ve never before found eggs like this so early,” said Thady. “Generally the Jack smuts take a deal of time to settle, but this pair have a-nested and laid as soon as they got to the parish.” I bent over the nest.

THE BOWER OF THE MOCK NIGHTINGALE

“Don’t touch ’em,” cried Thady, excitedly, “since it’s yer leddyship’s pleasure to leave them; for the mock warbler, as dad calls him, he says are as shy as a hawk, and a touch of the nest will make ’em quit in a twinkling. Some morning, yer leddyship,” Thady continued, “yer must come down and hear him. If yer was to get outside the fence, yer’d catch him some day singing. For he’s got a strange voice, soft and pretty at one moment as if he was charming, and the next as if telling the tales of a thousand victories.”

Thady and I walked home in the twilight. I love seeing the nests of God’s little wild birds. How wonderfully they are built. What marvellous architects birds are, how clever and dexterous, with claw and beak.

In the still light of the dying day, the old spire of the parish church loomed like a gigantic lance across the rich meadows, and through the stillness I heard the sound of the chimes. They filled this old English spot with a sense of rest. No hurry, they seemed to call, no hurry. Leisure, the best gift of the gods, is yours and ours. Time to wander, time to see, time to sleep. I stood and gazed on the quiet scene. All the pleasant things of spring and summer were before us. White mists were gathering from the beck and running in long lines of diaphanous obscurity across the fields. There was no sound but the distant chimes. All was sinking gently to rest.

I entered the eastern gate and called to Mrs. Langdale, the old housekeeper, and begged her to give me a hunch of cake to bestow on Thady. The good dame handed it through the mullioned window sourly enough, for Thady was no favourite with such a barndoor-natured woman as my old housekeeper. “’Tis little I’d get if yer leddyship wasn’t here,” laughed Thady. “‘Get out and don’t poison the place with yer breath, yer limb of Satan,’ – that’s what I’d hear if yer wasn’t by, to stand by me,” Thady whispered, as Mrs. Langdale shut the window with an angry snap.

I passed the hunch of cake to Thady, and quickly, silently he put it into his voluminous pocket, in which it disappeared as in a well. Then Thady lifted his cap, and a second later I heard him whistling softly in the gloaming.

As I went into the chapel hall I was greeted by Constance. I congratulated her warmly on her successful morning. Nothing could have been better, I said. It was a real scene of gaiety, and gave, I am sure, all the young and old, a great deal of enjoyment.

“There not a budding boy or girl this dayBut is got up and gone to bring in May,”

I quoted laughingly. “The old times will come back to Wenlock, thanks to you, Constance,” I said. “Over each house will be hung bough and garlands, till each household is given up to laughter and frolic.”

“There is much wisdom in wholesome laughter,” my friend replied. “Perhaps the best thing that can be done for the people is to teach them how to play. They have almost forgotten how, in their desire to make money.”

Then my friend and I parted.

IN THE RUINED CHURCH

After dinner I wandered into the garden. It was a lovely night. The moon was hardly seen, only in faint peeps at intervals, but there was a mist of stars. I faintly saw the vane of the flying crane pointing due south, and in the distance I heard the hoot of an owl far away in the Abbot’s Walk. In the pathway I saw dim shadowy creatures, which turned out to be toads enjoying the cool moisture of the night. Far away, in a cornfield, I caught the harsh cry of the corncrake, calling, calling – as he would call, I knew, all through the May nights. A little later, and over Windmoor Hill on the sheep-nipped turf would glisten nature’s jewel, the glow-worm, but early in May such gems are rarely to be met with in our cold country. How lovely it was to wander round the garden and ruined church – to inhale the scent of the budding lilac, and the poet’s narcissus in the grass, for where pious knees once knelt was then a milky way of floral stars. They glittered in the grass like faint jewels, and their rich perfume gave the evening air an intoxicating sweetness.