Spring in a Shropshire Abbey

I looked at the old Dutch clock. Ten minutes, I said, before going to bed. Ten minutes, ten golden minutes, when it is not a duty to do anything, or a matter of reproach to be idle. The fire was dying softly down. I saw all faintly by the dim light of the lamp – the dark panelling, the two Turners, the old Bohemian bench, the stern outline of the altar, and outside the still night.

THE COMPANY OF SAINTS

“Are you not afraid to sit by yourself?” a somewhat foolish friend once asked me. “I should be terribly alarmed of ghosts.”

“Afraid of holy spirits?” I remember answering. “No crime is associated with Wenlock. There is only an atmosphere of prayer and saintliness there, a fragrance from holy lives rising up to God in perpetual intercession; surely such thoughts should make nobody uneasy or unhappy.”

“I don’t know,” my friend had replied. “But lancet windows, I know, always make me creepy – and living in a church,” she added inconsequently, “would be almost as bad as having a house with a curse. I am sure I should always be dreaming of finding a walled-up skeleton, or something mediæval and uncomfortable.”

At which we had both laughed, and I confessed that I liked being left to my angels and my prayers, and that it was good to believe that one had a soul, and that all the forces of God’s world were not comprised in steam, the Press, and electricity.

Then, as I sat on, my mind reverted to the little child, sleeping, I hoped, peacefully upstairs. “Poor little impetuous Bess,” I said to myself, “I trust some day she will not break her heart against the bars of earth. She wills, and wants, so strongly when the fit is on her, and then afterwards, remorse, sorrow, and despair.”

The child is the father of the man, and in my mind’s eye I saw my little maiden as she would be in womanhood – dark, passionate, devoted, generous, impulsive, with a golden heart, but self-willed and not easy to guide. Heaven grant her pathway may not lie across many briars, and that I may be able to protect, and water the flowers, in the garden of her soul.

All education is a hard matter, and we parents are often like children groping in the dark. It takes all that mother and father can do, friends and contemporaries, and, after all, in Burbidge’s homely language, is often “a parlous and weedy job.” We so often give the wrong thing to our children, and, what is worse, the wrong thing out of love and affection. We so often, as Montaigne wrote, “stuff the memory and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.” We are too often knowing only in what makes present knowledge, “and not at all in what is past, no more than which is to come.” We do not think sufficiently of the development and growth of character. Above all, few fathers and mothers try simply to make their children good men and women, without which all is lost; for, as the great essayist said, “all other knowledge is hurtful to him or her who has not the science of goodness.”

We must not be afraid of emotion, at least, not of right emotion; nor must we be shy of offering our highest tributes of admiration to honour, virtue, and real greatness. We must not be ashamed to mention honourable deeds, and we must teach our children that honourable failure is better than dishonourable success.

Life is not all an armchair for youth to rest in, or a country of roast larks even for the youngest, and there are higher and better things even than having “a good time.” Such were the thoughts that flashed through my brain as I lighted my yellow Broseley-ware candlestick and went up the oak stairs to bed.

The next day, as soon as I had finished breakfast, I got a message from our old gardener, Burbidge, to the effect that he wished to speak to me, and that at once.

BROTHER BEN IS “OVERLOOKED”

I found the old man in the long lower passage of the monks.

“What is it?” I asked. “Nothing wrong in the garden?”

“Not so bad as that; but ’tis about my brother as I’ve come.”

“Your brother, Burbidge?” I repeated. “I did not even know that you had one.”

“Well,” replied Burbidge, “’tisn’t often as I speak of him, and ’tis twenty year agone since I’ve seen ’im, for when folks be hearty yer needn’t trot round the country like a setter to see ’em; but now as Benjamin is old and in danger, I think as I’d better have a day off, and go and see him.”

“Where does he live?” I asked.

“At Clun, just outside the town,” was Burbidge’s reply. “He’s been there these seventy year, and more. When he were quite a lad he lived at Bridgnorth, but over seventy year he have a-lived with Farmers Benson – first with Farmer James, then with his son Joshua, and lastly with his grandson, Farmer Caleb. Benjamin he have a-buried two wives and thirteen childer, and the berrial of the lot have a-come upon him like tempest in summer. But he have allus kept hale and hearty – till this year.”

“Has Benjamin been able to work all these years?” I inquired.

“Of course he ’ave,” replied Burbidge, scornfully. “Of course he did, till he war overlooked.”

“Overlooked?” I said, and turned to Burbidge puzzled.

After a pause, Burbidge, seeing that I did not realize the full importance of his statement, repeated, “Overlooked, and by a black witch too.” And then he lowered his voice and added, “For all their education, parsons, newspapers and what not, there be black witches, and some of ’em has hearts as black as hell, and can suck the very life out of a fellow.”

“But surely your brother doesn’t believe that now?”

“Doesn’t he,” answered Burbidge. “My brother knows better than to disbelieve in devils and witches. You don’t catch him going against the Word of God like that. Yer might as well try to stir a puddin’ with an awl, or to repeat a verse of Hebrew under a moonless sky, as tear up the old belief in the old Shropshire folk. The devil he won’t go out of Shropshire for all the papers daily, and weekly, as ever town people read or write; no, not even to make place for trains, and motors. He ’ave his place here, and he’ll keep his wenches, the witches, near him.”

“But what has happened to your brother?” I asked, as soon as I could get a word in.

“Why, just the same as has been happening for years, and thousands of years to others, and which will happen, whether Shropshire be ruled by a king or a queen, and which be Gospel truth whatever they say, and which may come dwang-swang to any Christian man.”

And thereupon I heard the story of how old Benjamin Burbidge had been bewitched. I listened amazed, for the tale was more like an incident in some witch’s trial in James I.’s time than a story of modern life.

BECKY SMOUT, THE WITCH

“Yer must know,” continued our old gardener, “as Benjamin war waggoner at Bottomly Farm – and he have a-been so for years and years. And a fine team his war – a team of roans and all mares – to get foals off at the close. Well, and fat they war, and for all he war old, horse and harness Benjamin minded surely. His horses were to him like gold, and he put in elbow grease as if he war a lusty lad of twenty in minding ’em. Well, one day his granddaughter Sally, who keeps house for him, war mixin’ meal for the poultry, when up comes Becky Smout as they call her there, an old gangrel body, weazen, dark as walnut juice, and the look of a vixen in her eyes. Some folks say she came to Shropshire on a broomstick, and some seventy year agone from Silverton on the Clee-side. ’Tis a land of witches that Clee Hill, and allus have been a stronghold of the devil, as old Parson Jackson used to say. When Becky saw the poultry meat, her belly craved for it. Her held out both hands ape-like and her cried out, ‘Let it be a howgy sup, my wench.’ But Sal war in a temper it seems. ‘Let be,’ she sang out; ‘dost think I’ve nought to do but to cram thy belly as if thee were a yule-tide hog;’ and folks say with both bowl, and spoon, Sal flung out in a fanteag, because it seems Benjamin had promised her for her own gewgaws what her could make by the sale of the fat hens and the widdies come Christmas. And Becky her let her rage and never, they say, spoke one single word, but looked at her darkly, speered round, and wrote some devil’s characters in the dust outside the door; and as she passed down the lane they heard her laughin’, laughin’ like an ecall on an April morning, fit to split her sides in half. The next morning, when Sal got out to feed her poultry, she picked up the speckled hen, and a morning or two arter she found the yellow cock all stiff and cold with a kind of white froth round his mouth. And after that, her war all of a tremble, war Sal. Her began to hear voices, and to see things as folks shouldn’t see, and to hear bits of noises everywhere. And a kind of sweat seemed to ooze out from her hands and feet, and her felt cold and hot all to a time, and the doctor’s physic did her no good, nor could any of Mrs. Benson’s draughts ease her. And they sent her off to the sea to stay with a sister at Rhyl; but Sal her came back queerer than ever, and her wouldn’t speak, but would sit gaping and blinking as if her couldn’t mak’ nothin’ out, nor understood nought. And all the while Becky would prance about aunty-pranty, and speer over the hedge, and laugh and jabber and talk a heathen tongue.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“Why, their own tongue.”

“What is it like?”

“Oh, never you ask, marm,” replied Burbidge sternly. “No pure-minded woman ever spoke that tongue, but witches they take to it like widdies” (ducklings) “to a horse pond. And for all Ben had cried ‘Fudge,’ and ‘You don’t catch an old fox nappin’,’ as he did at the first when Sal were overtaken, he got mighty fidgety and couldn’t stop still. He took to dropping his pipe, wud begin a story and then wud break off and laugh afore the joke was come, and his speech got queer like Sal’s, and at last he could bear it no longer, and he went off to Becky. And he took a golden guinea that he had had off the first Mrs. Benson, her as they called madam, for folks said that she war a parson’s daughter, and that she had given him for pulling her lad out of a brook over seventy years agone, and that he valued like the apple of his eye, and he pulled out the guinea from his waistcoat pocket and he said ‘This be yourn,’ to Becky, ‘if for the love of God you’ll take the curse off me and mine.’ But her wudn’t, wudn’t Becky, and her only laughed and laughed, same as an ecall in the Edge wood. And then Ben ran out frightened, so that his legs seemed to give under him, same as a hop shoot that has no stake, and he came home jabbering, crying, and laughing like a frightened child, and nobody could do nought with him.

BURBIDGE SEEKS HIS BROTHER

“Farmer Benson, he tried to do what he could as maister; but Benjamin had lost all respect, and laughed at him same as if he had been his gossip. Nor could any of his childers bring him to reason, neither Frank nor Moses, his grown sons who live at Wolverhampton, and have families of their own. So at last Mrs. Benson, her has a-wrote to me, to come and try what I can do. And seeing that Ben and I we be true brothers, and he so down in his luck, I thought as I’d like to go and see him, and look in at a Craven Arms bit of a show of a few spring things, and so get a holiday and a sight of poor Ben at the same time, if so be I can be free to-day.”

I assured Burbidge that he was quite free, as he expressed it, and I trusted that he would find his brother better than he expected. “Only make him believe that Becky Smout is an impostor,” I said, “and has no real power to injure him or his granddaughter, and all will go well.”

But at this advice Burbidge solemnly shook his head.

“They ideas does for the Quality,” he grumbled, “but workin’ folks know better. Us wouldn’t hold such creeds if they warn’t deadly real.” And so saying, my old friend clumped down the mediæval passage, and I was left thinking how little Shropshire was changed, in spite of board schools and daily papers, from the Shropshire of the Stuarts.

A minute later and I heard a child’s voice close to my elbow, and saw a little girl, Susie Rowe by name. “You here, Susie?” I said, and asked the reason of her visit.

I was told “that grandam was but poorly,” and Susie begged for a bit of tea and a drop of broth. “Grandam doesn’t know,” added Susie, blushing, “for her don’t hold to begging; but Betty Beaman, the old body what lives with her, her says, ‘Hasten up, my maid, and bring her something nice from the Abbey.’”

“Of course,” I answered, “Mrs. Harley shall have anything I have.” And I called to Auguste to fill the basket with good things.

He filled a little can with milk, got a packet of tea and filled a gallipot with crême de Volaille from the larder. Susie passed me a few minutes later, weighed down by her basket, but all smiles, and she promised she would tell her grandmother to expect a visit from me in the course of the afternoon.

Just before luncheon my little maiden appeared. She was sad, and silent, and I did not allude to what had taken place yesterday; but at luncheon-time I told her I was going to Homer, and invited her to ride Jill whilst I walked.

It was a lovely afternoon, sweet and almost warm, but there was little sunshine. All was enveloped in a soft grey mist. We walked along the lanes, Jill nosing me at intervals for lumps of sugar.

Mouse was of the party, and ran backwards and forwards very pleased and gay. A pony is always a pleasure to a dog; it seems to give state and importance to a walk. Tramp and Tartar scampered ahead, and sniffed and skurried round, and up, and down the high banks that skirted the track.

At length we reached the lane that turns off from the Wenlock Road, and Farley Dingle, and we stood on the top of the edge before dipping down into the valley to the little hamlet below known as Homer.

BANISTER’S COPPICE

I stopped to look at, and admire the view; even in the subdued light of a grey winter’s day it was enchantingly beautiful. The little cottages of Homer clustered in a circle at my feet, whilst round them nestled orchards of apple trees and damsons, which last would soon be out in a mist of white blossom, like a maze of stars on a frosty night. Far away I saw Harley church, the woods of Belswardine, the smoke of Shrewsbury lying like a mantle of vapour on the distant plain, and to the west rose the great hills of Carodoc and the Long Mynde, whilst immediately before me stretched the ill-fated spot known as Banister’s Coppice.

It was here, according to old tradition, that the unfortunate Duke of Buckingham, in Richard III.’s reign, was betrayed by his faithless steward at his house at Shinewood. The story ran that the duke’s cause did not prosper, and that his Welsh allies melted away, so that he, finding himself hard pressed by the royal forces, and not able to collect fresh troops, hurriedly disbanded his followers and fled to the house of his servant Banister, or Banaistre, as he was called by some of the old chroniclers.

Buckingham thought, having conferred great benefits on his servant, that he could count upon his loyalty; but Banister was tempted by the great reward, £1000, offered by the king for his master’s apprehension, and told “Master Mytton,” then sheriff, where he was concealed.

The duke, according to the old story, lay in a ditch near the house, on the outskirts of the coppice, disguised, it is said, in the smock of a countryman, and was arrested at night by John Mytton, who came over from the old hall at Shipton, with a force of armed men. When Buckingham knew that his arrest was due to the treachery of his servant, he broke forth and cursed his faithless steward in the most awful, and terrible manner. He cursed his goings in, and goings out, the air he breathed, the liquor he drank, and the very bread he ate, and with the same curse, he cursed all his family. According to tradition, they all ended miserably.

An old writer declares, “Shortly after Banister had betrayed his master, his son and heir waxed mad, and died in a boar’s stye; his eldest daughter, of excellent beauty, was suddenly stricken of a foul leprosy; his second son became very marvellously deformed in his limbs, whilst his youngest son was drowned ‘and strangled’ in a very small puddle of water. And Banister himself, when he became of extreme old age, was found guilty of a murder, and was only saved by the intervention of the clergy, to whom he had paid large sums. As for the £1000, the king,” says the same old writer, “gave him not one farthing, saying ‘that a servant who had been so untrue to so good a master, would be false to all other.’”

Shinewood House – for the old manor of the duke’s time has gone – I could not see, but I knew the place, and as I looked across wood and meadow, all the old story and its tragedy came back to me. Some writers say that Buckingham was executed at Shrewsbury, but Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More declare that he was executed at Salisbury on the feast of All Souls.

A VISIT TO DONKEYLAND

Bess and I walked down the cart-track and looked below. Five or six donkeys were browsing on the scant herbage, for every one at Homer keeps a donkey, and the common name of the hamlet is Donkeyland. After a few minutes’ walking, we left the main track, and made our way to a little homestead that nestles close against the hill, and is surrounded by a bower of fruit trees. As we turned through the wicket a band of dark-eyed children quitted the little school and greeted us. The children looked as if they belonged to another race than those at Much Wenlock. They had dark, almost black eyes, and swarthy skins. I have been told that in the end of the eighteenth century a gang of gipsies came and settled at Homer, built huts for themselves, married and settled there; and that is why the good folks of Homer seem of a different race from the rest of the neighbourhood. I paused before knocking at the cottage door, and begged Fred, the groom who had followed us, to take my little maiden for a ride, and bring her back in half an hour.

“Mayn’t I come in?” asked Bess.

“Not to-day, for Mrs. Harley is really ill,” I answered. “Take the dogs, and come back presently.”

Bess and her pony, followed by Tramp and Tartar, vanished, and old Betty opened the cottage door. All was irreproachably clean. The brass warming-pan over the chimney piece shone like gold, and the old-fashioned dresser was garnished with spotless blue and white china. There was a mug or two of lustre-ware, a few embroidered samplers on the walls, and a pot or two of budding geraniums behind the windows. Upon the hob a copper kettle hissed gaily.

I asked after Mrs. Harley, the owner of the cottage. But Betty shook her head. “She ’ave a-heard the Lord’s call,” she replied; “but she’s ready – been ready this forty years, and her wants to go.”

A minute later I found myself by my old friend’s bedside. She had a wonderful face, this old village woman. Through it shone the inner light which once to see is never to forget. I sat down by her, at a sign from Betty, and asked her how she did.

For all answer Mrs. Harley smiled.

“I fear you suffer?”

“That does not matter,” came back from her, “for I am going home.”

The room was a plain little room with old oak beams across the ceiling, the covering on the bed was old and worn, there were only the barest necessities of life, and yet as I sat watching my old friend, I could almost hear the sound of angels’ wings.

In spite of pain, long nights of sleeplessness, and a long and weary illness, my old friend’s face glowed with happiness, and in her eyes was that perfect look of peace, which remains as a beacon to every pilgrim who has ever met it. I offered to read to Mrs. Harley, but she declined.

“No readin’, dear, for I can hear Him myself. There’s no need now to speak or pray, I’m goin’ Home. I, what be so tired.” Then she thanked me for coming, and asked me with an ethereal smile about “the little one. Mak’ her grow up worth havin’,” she added seriously. “Every child is made in the image of God, and it isn’t parents as ought to deface His image. ’Tisn’t only book learning, and fine dressing, as will make her a lady, but you’ll do yer best,” and she patted my hand affectionately.

TWO OLD FRIENDS

Then my old friend began to talk of her past life, of her early marriage, “fifty years agone,” with a right God-fearing man; of her happy married life, and then, calmly and bravely, of her joyous and approaching death.

“I am going Home,” were her last words, and I shall never forget the exquisite certainty of her tone, as I left the room and followed Betty downstairs.

A minute later, and Betty and I found ourselves in the little kitchen below.

“I shall miss her terrible,” she said in a husky voice. “Nell and I, years and years agone, were scholards together when old Madam Challoner taught in the little white house yonder, afore the new school was built. We growed up and we married, the same year. Her got a good man; I got a beauty, and a bad one. When Harley died, he left his missus the cottage, garden, a few fields, and a tight bit of money. Soon after her was left a widow, I went to see her, for Marnwood Beaman, my man, he fell off a waggon, dead drunk, and was killed, and I was left without a penny. I couldn’t do much, for I had got cripply ever since I had got the rheumatics, so I made up my mind it war to the poor-house I war bound. One day (when I had stomached a resolution to carry this through, and it costs the poorest body a lot to do), I went, as I said, to see Nell afore I spoke to the overseer.

“When I got in, Nell, her comed up to me and her says, ‘What ails thee, Betty?’ for my eyes were red and bulgy. Then I told her what war on my mind, and that for all my cottage war a poor place, it went sadly against the grain to leave it and to have a mistress to knopple over me, and give me orders same as if I war a little maid at school.

“Then,” added Betty, “Nell her brought me the greatest peace as I have ever felt.

“Her said, with one of her grand smiles, and sometimes, for all her war but poor folk, Nell looked a born duchess, but with a bit of an angel too, ‘Don’t you think, Betty, of leaving and goin’ to the poor-house or any other institution, but stay you at home with me. Pick up your duds and us two will live together, for my daughter be married.

“‘I don’t want exactly a serving wench, nor a daughter, nor a sister, but some one as is betwixt and between, and a bit of all three. Thee can work a bit, give thee time, and we can crack an old tale together after tea; I shan’t be timid with thee, nor thee of me. Us shall be just two old folks goin’ down the hill together – and the getting down shall be natural, and friendly. I can take thy hand, and thou canst take mine.’

“And her did give me a hand,” exclaimed old Betty, warmly, “a hand that has kape me safe all these years; and I bless the Lord for such a true and good friend.”

We sat on in silence, and I could not but think how sweet, and loyal, had been the friendship of these two old people. Suddenly Betty got up and poked the fire.

“Last time as yer war callin’,” she said, “yer asked me, mam, what I could say about that Nanny Morgan, her as war a known witch. Nell won’t name her, for her says Nan was given up to the devil, and all his works, and that her has something else to think of. But since yer are wishful to know, and the little lady is not here, I’ll tell yer what I can.

THE STORY OF THE WITCH

“Nanny Morgan was the daughter of Richard Williams, and she war born and bred in a little house up at Westwood, on the way to Presthope. Yer must often have seen the place, as yer go to Five Chimneys. Nan war a fine, strapping lass when first I remembered her. Dark, tall, with steel-grey eyes. Her got into trouble when quite a maid for having a finger in the pie of robbing Mrs. Powell at Bourton. Her was tried at Shrewsbury for the robbery, and lay in prison, they said, a long time. When her got out of prison her own people wouldn’t harbour her, they said, and she went and lived with the gipsies. There she learnt card tricks, tellin’ of fortunes, and took to wandering and unchristian ways. Us didn’t see her at Wenlock for a long while, but one day she turned up at Wenlock Market on a Monday, and told a friend that her had taken ‘dad’s old house’ and meant to settle down and bide in the old place.

“Her called herself then Nanny Morgan, though who Morgan war I never rightly knew, most like some tinker man. Anyway, her went to Westwood, and there her lived, told fortunes by cards and by hand-readin’, sold love drinks, and was hired out as a curser – and of all the cursers, there war none that could curse with Nan. For her cursed the goin’s in and the goin’s out of folks, the betwixt and between, the side-ways and slip-slaps, till, as they said, there wasn’t foot-room for folks to stand on, nor a thimbleful of air for a creature to breathe, that hard could Nanny curse.