X.
Sussex Commons and Sussex Songs.
(Golden Hours, 1871.)
My first ramble into the weald of Sussex was to Horsted Keynes, a sequestered village hid in the woodlands. No more reposeful spot could be found in the world than its peaceful churchyard, sacred to the memory of pious Archbishop Leighton.
It was late in the autumn, and the yellow woods told of the year's decline. From the numberless oaks, so common in this district, the acorns were falling in myriads. Boys, women, and children were out, sometimes in whole families, gathering them into baskets and pans, and turning them into a sack. A gusty day brings a rich harvest—
"Then o'er their heads, loud lashed by furious squalls,
Bright from their cups the rattling treasure falls."
In ancient times the vast woods, which then existed all over the country, supported thousands of swine. According to Doomsday Book, in Essex alone there were nearly a hundred thousand hogs. Still more must this have been the case with the Weald, which at that time was covered with forests. Now, however, the breeding of pigs is a comparatively unimportant addition to the produce of the farm; and where it is carried on to any extent, acorns are used sparingly, since it is averred that acorn-feeding produces a pebbly sort of bacon. So that the acorn harvest, once so important, has dwindled into a gleaning of the roadsides by the unemployed people. However, they get a shilling a bushel from the farmer for rhat they find, showing that great quantities are still devoured by le Sussex pigs.
In the south-eastern portion of the Weald, taking the parishes of Heathfield, Warbleton, and Waldron as a centre, a large proportion of the labourers and small farmers keep from eight to sixteen brood-hens, and breed chickens for the fatters. They live chiefly in remote places away from the villages and hamlets, their favourite spots being the light, dry soil of the commons, and the higher grounds clothed with heather and short grass. Their special aim is to obtain large broods early in the spring, in preparation for the London market, the price of spring chicken being twice or thrice as much as can be obtained at other seasons.
Some idea of the importance of the business to this part of the Weald may be gathered from the following statistics furnished me by the vicar of Heathfield. In 1864, 163 tons, 5 cwts. 7 lbs. of fatted chicken were sent up to London from Heathfield by one carrier, being 101,547 fowls fed and fatted in the three parishes of Heathfield, Warbleton, and Waldron. In 1867 and 1868 the quantity somewhat diminished; in 1869 and 1870 it rose to 181 and 191 tons, or 105,887 fowls.
Between thirteen and fifteen thousand pounds has been paid annually to the fatters by this one carrier, besides the sums received direct from the London salesmen. The quantity this year (1871) it is estimated will reach 200 tons. To these numbers may be added about half as much again, sent up to London by a different route, besides the poultry sent to Brighton and Hastings. The estimated price of the chicken sent by both routes from Heathfield to London is £25,000 per annum.
In this part of the Weald, and along the Kentish border, hop-picking is the great business immediately the wheat harvest is over. Hop-picking is carried on in Sussex in a somewhat more Arcadian fashion than in the neighbouring county, into which Whitechapel and the East of London pours itself during the season.
One night I slept at a little inn at Rotherfield, and listened to some very curious singing going on in the bar-parlour. The songs were given to solemn tell-tale tunes, sounding in the distance very much like a recitation of the Athanasian Creed. Next day I had a talk with one of the singers, a miller, who was said to know more songs than any one else in the district. He had never seen them in print, but would try to write me out a few. Here is one he gave me in praise of the hop-bine: —
"A song and a cheer for good English beer,
That froths in the foaming can;
The beer and the bine in union join
To gladden the heart of man.
When the Spring appears, the bine it uprears,
Its circuline race begins,
Till it reaches at length its beauty and strength,
And waves in the summer winds.
Chorus—So long may the hops in their beauty stand,
And still be the pride of our native land."
And so on for four stanzas more.
In the woodlands a very important branch of labour is the felling and preparing timber for the market. St Leonard's Forest covers a tract of 9000 acres, in the cross-roads of which it is easy to lose the way, especially after dark. A sawyer, who had lived thirty-five years in the forest, told me that he could remember when it was far more extensive than it is now. Oaks are mainly raised, and some exist of an enormous size. Certain of them are quite famous.
The poverty of the people he described as excessive. He had no idea how they managed, but supposed they must be half starved. Throughout the Weald the labourers add a little to their income by working in the woods during the spring. They are employed by the timber merchant, and the job lasts about a month. They work by the piece, and their business is at first to fell the timber, and then to strip it and set up the bark. The whole of this work goes by the name of "flawing." "Faggoting the lop" and scraping and "hatching" the bark are different operations. A man can earn by "flawing" two-and-sixpence to six shillings a day; women and children do the scraping. In some parts felling timber goes on all the winter, from November to March, and if a woodman is clever he gets from twelve to fifteen shillings a week. In autumn a good deal of wood is cut for other purposes—as, for instance, making gunpowder. Near Uckfield I met a man driving a cart laden with black alder, going to be used for this purpose. The carter was unshaven, and a true Sussex man in his dialect.
Thus it would appear that a clever and industrious man on the Weald, who has his wits about him, can find something to do all the year round; and according to the Report of the Agricultural Commission such a labourer can earn on an average sixteen shillings a week. However, the labourer will tell you that there are important drawbacks not taken into account, such as having to provide his own tools in connection with the hopping work, and, if it is a wet season, firing, night after night, to dry his wet clothes.
Moreover, this estimate supposes a man not only to be industrious but clever, and must therefore be taken as the maximum of wages to be earned in the Weald. Besides, it does not take into account accident or illness. The regular day-wage varies from twelve to thirteen shillings and sixpence the week, and the amount is made up by extras, earned by piece-work connected with the hop-gardens, hay-making, and harvest. The wife generally helps at these seasons. At hop-picking and tying she can earn about £4.
No doubt among rural labourers, as amongst every other class, there are rich and poor. The rich are those who just pay their way, the poor those who are ever on the verge of pauperism. The rich are the rare exception, the poor the vast majority. When the family is young, and there is only one pair of hands to supply the food, it constantly exists in a state of semi-starvation.
Thus, at May field, in the depth of the winter, I went into a cottage, where I found a mother and eight children—four boys and four girls. They had only eighteen-pence each a week for meals. The children were having their dinner, which consisted of a dole of bread and cheese.
Happily there is much fellow-feeling among labouring families. If any one gets down very low, those who are well off come to the rescue. Here is a verse of a song the miller gave me. It may be called "A Poor Man's Song." Its note is sympathy produced by a past and a too probable future experience.
"Oh come, come to the ingle-side,
For the night is dark and drear;
The snow is deep and the mountains wide,
Then stay and rest thee here;
My board is simply spread,
I have a little food to spare,
But thou shall break my wholesome bread,
And have a wholesome share.
nbsp;For while the faggot burns
To warm my cottage floor,
They never shall say the poor man turns
A poorer from his door.
Then come, come to the ingle-side, etc.
If thou wert rich and strong,
I would not ask thee in;
But thy journey has been long
And thy tattered garb is thin.
Thy limbs are stiff with cold,
Thy hair is snowy white,
Thou art a pilgim far too old
To face this bitter night.
Less pity might there be
In breast more warmly clad,
But I have been as poor as thee,
As hungry, and as sad.
Then come, come to the ingle-side, etc.
Where a labourer or his wife is idle and improvident, the sordid misery into which they sink is something beyond belief. In Rotherfield I went into one cottage where a woman sat in the grimy chimney corner, trying to make a kettle boil over a few sticks of wood. Two little girls were hanging over the dying embers, for it was miserably cold. The mother took us upstairs, where there were two compartments. In the first, a sort of landing, the parents slept on a miserable bed almost on a level with the floor. In a small outer room was a little shake-down on which the children slept. Not a chair, nor a table, nor any other article of furniture, was in the room. In the parents' sleeping-place the wet came in, so that the woman said one night she was wet through. She had had ten children, but had only reared two. One boy died when he was nine; the others had died mostly of decline and galloping consumption—slow starvation, in fact! For this miserable habitation they paid two shillings a week. It had, however, a garden, in which they raised cabbages. Her husband earned, on an average, ten shillings a week all the year round.
As a rule, the Wealden peasant is provident. Some men subscribe as much as £8 or £9 a year to clubs; £1 for support in illness, and £7 to £8 is expended for clothes. The general arrangement in the hop districts is that the man's wages pays for rent and food, while that which the women and children earn goes towards clothes.
But provident or improvident, there can be no doubt that the majority of children and old people do not get enough to eat. The old people have a peculiar complexion arising from poorness of blood, in some cases breaking out into sores. I was told that there is widespread hereditary consumption in East Sussex.
The extinction of its ancient industry, the iron trade, the rise, of import smuggling, and the Act of Uniformity, all combined to throw the Weald into that path of retrogression from which it has only very partially emerged. Parishes in which three hundred years ago there was such an active, earnest, progressive spirit, that several of their inhabitants were burnt to death for the cause of the Reformation, are now sunk in an almost incredible ignorance and immorality.
I met with a poor boy near Cross-on-Hand, who had been paralysed since he was eighteen months old, in his leg. His body was not fit for any work, but his mind had grown. He told me that in arithmetic he had gone as far as vulgar fractions, and now longed to draw. Yet those who exercise the Christian ministry in the Weald complain of the apathy and stolid indifference of the people, of the rowdyism of the boys, and the immorality of both sexes. From all I heard, it would be difficult to exaggerate the latter evil. Let no one suppose, however, that they are peculiarly corrupt. It is poverty, ignorance, and a low state of public opinion which is at the root of the evil. I saw a kind little woman, at the risk of losing other employment, attending upon a poor old bed-ridden couple, who were being eaten by vermin, and had no one else to care for them. She had had two illegitimate children, but from the way she spoke of the fact it was believed that she only regarded it as an inconvenience.
The people are very clean, as a rule. The men generally wear black smocks, and the woman are neat and tidy in their dress. The interiors of the cottages are black from the smoke of the wood fires; but the floors and seats are scrupulously clean. Although I saw some miserable dwellings, Sussex cottages may be described as, on the whole, roomy and comfortable. Sometimes they are old farmhouses converted into two or three different tenements. In many parts of the Weald are to be found picturesque examples of ancient farmhouses and cottages, laced and interlaced with great beams. Some have been restored, and are carefully preserved by their enlightened proprietors, but they cannot restore the stalwart yeomen who were once their inhabitants.
Most of the old cottages have a large open chimney, with a pedestal of bricks in the centre of the hearth, on which a log of wood or a few sticks burn daily. Suspended above by a chain hangs the kettle, or the pot-au-feu. In front you may often see the settle or bist, as it used to be called in Sussex, a grand old bit of furniture, telling of better days. In the wall at the back of the hearth is an iron plate with two handles. This is the cottager's oven, and here they bake their bread. Those who know best say it would be a good thing if they could brew their own beer, and then all the little beer-shops would be shut up, and a vast amount of misery prevented.
Not that the peasant of the Weald is a drunkard. He is far too poor for that. It is only on club-days, and occasionally on Saturday night, that he gives way. Habitual drinking in the country is the vice of a class in a superior social position.
The Wealden labourer is inclined to be suspicious, and will fence unnecessarily with a simple question. In some places he will exhibit a certain independence of spirit, which would probably be more common if life were a little easier with him.
The existence of these poor Wealden peasants is so hard that the humour characteristic of the Teutonic race rarely shows itself. But it comes out at last in times and places where you would least expect it. How many a touch of rustic humour may be found in the village churchyard! Here is a verse from a tombstone which I saw at Burwash to the memory of a mother and her two children:—
"Down in the deep, here lie asleep,
My pretty babes and I;
God thought it best our souls to rest
From this our misery."
Hobbling along the road to Frantfield was a poor old labourer who lived at Buxted.
"Bad times here in the winter?" I asked.
"Not so bad," he replied. "The farmer keeps the married ones on, and turns off the single ones."
My admiration for the kindness of the farmer was somewhat lessened when it was afterwards pointed out that philanthropy had little to do with this arrangement, but that a single man could and would go elsewhere, while a married one with a family came at once on the rates.
"There wasn't much drinking," the old labourer said, "about there. They hadn't enough to get drunk upon."
As to witches, he hadn't heard speak of any since he was a boy; his mother used to talk of 'em. "Did I think, now, that a witch could stop a cart going up-hill?"
"Did he?"
"Well, he wasn't sure."
"Pharisees? What were they? Oh, yes; he had heard speak of fäery rings."
"Did he go to church?"
"Yes, and sometimes to the Wesleyans. All we have to do," said he, as if he wished to give a summary of his creed, "is to stick to the Bible.".
Yet even he had his difficulties.
"I be ignorant, sir, I be. Maybe ye can tell me what this means. I think it be in one of the little books where it do say, 'God came from Teman.' How can that be when it say 'God was, and is, and ever shall be'?"