Читать книгу The Trail of the Ragged Robin - Flora Klickmann - Страница 3

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If you have ever wandered in the Valley of the Wye, you will know something of its straggling hillside paths—always steep, always stony, always beautiful, and always calculated to reduce any boots to a condition of hopeless disrepair. Those paths are among the characteristics of the romantic region where the oaks and birches on the Gloucestershire hills wave greetings to the firs and larches that crown the Monmouthshire heights, but are cut off from closer companionship by the water that rushes between. Yet so narrow is the river gorge, that the birds nesting in one county can feed in the other.

In many cases the paths lie between rough walls of grey stone that would represent a mint of money were they to be assessed according to present-day labour charges! But they were built generations ago by the original settlers on the land, who erected them, not so much with the idea of keeping the strangers out and the cattle in, as to clear the land of the all-pervading rock in order to get together a little soil for cultivation. And because rock is more plentiful than earth in this district, it takes an enormous amount of digging-out, and clearing, to get any depth at all worth tilling; and the stone thus excavated must be put somewhere.

Hence, you will find massive walls, from two to three feet thick, bordering a path so diminutive that it can soon be lost sight of entirely beneath the fern and bramble and wild roses and bryony that clamber about the stones, and stretch out arms to each other from across the way. I know paths that have become indistinguishable and almost impassable in one season, when no one has chanced to pass along them.

But whether they are traversed or neglected, these paths are invariably lovely; and they lead the wanderer to unsuspected nooks of fairy-like charm, or reveal at intervals, between the trees, views of such grandeur and magnitude, that the beholder is almost bewildered in the endeavour to take mental cognizance of range beyond range of forest-darkened hills, and height above height of purple-blue mountains.

The diversity of scenery to which these paths will introduce the pilgrim is remarkable; but truth compels me to add that they seldom take him to his desired haven. For it is one of their peculiarities that, after enticing the unwary on and on, and up and up, through miles of overhanging trees, with masses of wood sorrel, primroses, violets, ground ivy, and veronica at his feet, then out into open space, where the lane is teeming with alkanet, stitchwort, bluebells, campions, foxgloves, harebells, heather, whinberries, or blackberries—according to the season, the chances are all in favour of a path finally ending at a blank wall that shows nothing but dense, uncharted forest beyond. Or it may prove to be only a “skidway,” one of the paths made by the woodmen, down which they slide the great trunks of felled timber, till they reach some road where it is possible to induce a lorry, or a trolley, to stand long enough on all fours without careering downhill, to enable them to load up. Or perhaps the lane terminates at a derelict cow-house—smothered on the shady side with the little English maiden-hair fern, no doubt, and dripping with honeysuckle in the sun, but a cow-house all the same, and a disused tumbled-down one at that; and such an architectural find at the end of a long, tiring climb, is not always worth the perspiration expended on the quest, in the eyes of the climber—more especially if he had been under delusion that he had lighted on a short cut to the next town!

On several occasions I have rescued, from lonely lanes that led nowhere, breathless, agitated, footsore wayfarers, who, by the time I found them, had become so entangled, topographically, that they saw no prospect ahead of them, for the rest of their natural lives, but an endless climbing up steep, stony paths which would forever lead them farther and farther from a cup of tea. And when at length, having calmed them, I have placed them safely beside a finger-post on the firm, broad, county road, they have gazed upon its smooth, tarry surface, its whirring motorbikes and hooting char-à-bancs, with looks of such unbounded affection, that I have ceased pointing out to them the natural beauties of the countryside.

Nevertheless, the more grassy and unfrequented a lane, the more eagerly, as a rule, does the pedestrian pursue it. There is something particularly beguiling in the sight of a narrow, straggly by-path that seems to be doing its best to avoid the eye of authority, in order to slip off quietly and have a good time, no one knows where.

But beautiful as are the footways that wind up and across the forests and the fields, still more beautiful are the waterways, where streams ripple down, always talking, and forever clothing the earth with flowers and ferns and the greenest of carpets, as they journey from the very tops of the hills to the river at the bottom of the valley. And those rare souls who try to follow the trail of the Ragged Robin, that gay, fluttering flower, that haunts the banks of the brook in June, find it indeed an adventure in beauty. For these streams are something more than mere watercourses; they are part of the indefinable glamour of the hills.

They have so many different phases, and arrest one in so many different ways. There is the rush and clamour of the full winter torrent; the mist-wraith that so often haunts the brooks at sundown; the crooning note of the summer water among the cresses in the shallows; the clear slide of the stream over ledges and broad rocks; the delight of tiny cascades dripping over steps made by the roots of ancient trees; the cool sound of the running water on a hot August day.

But above all these, and many other lovable characteristics, there stands out the wild, haunting, never-to-be-forgotten song of the stream as heard through the stillness of the night, when shimmering, golden moonlight seems to mingle with the sighing of the pines, and the night scents of honeysuckle and dew-damped fern; when the dark outlines of the high, wooded hills convey a curious sense of brooding loneliness. Then it is that a Voice, like nothing else in Nature, sings of mysteries that seem at times so near; and again, so far to reach!

Yet this is no sad-souled Undine mourning a lost lover. The song is always happy, lilting, and hopeful. Freed from the over-riding sounds of the day that gave it but little chance to be heard, the stream seems to have gained new powers, and to sing aloud with sheer abandon of joy, especially when the springs are full; and it calls to others near and far, who add their music as they hasten on to the river.

To some it may seem a misnomer, or at least only a poetic fancy, to apply the word music to the sounds made by rushing water. Yet it is music—a weird, fascinating, extraordinary music, and something quite distinct from noise.

The night-song of a mountain stream stands alone in the world of sound, and admits of no classification. Unless you have heard it, with drowsy ears, singing outside your bedroom window the whole night long, you can form no idea of its peculiar charm; and once you have heard it, you realize that it is useless to attempt to describe it by means of the ordinary alphabet.

Unlike the river in the valley—which is often restless and petulant, rushing one way or another with the tide, torrenting over the weirs, foaming against the mid-stream boulders, swirling madly round any obstruction—the streams from the uplands are, as a rule, gentle, almost caressing in their movements, providing music, motion, and colour, but always with a soothing sense of calm and peace.

These springs—as wonderful to-day as was the stream that flowed from Horeb—burst forth from what is little more than a rock, at a height where only the Hand of God could place them and keep them in touch with His mighty reservoirs. For the stream is, in most cases, never failing; in the hottest weather many will still flow steadily on, watering a very thirsty land, not only keeping plant and tree and wild-wood creature alive, but liberally supplying human needs, since on these mountain springs every household relies—from the smallest cottage to the biggest mansion. And nothing is guarded more zealously, both by peasant and peer, than the “rights” of the burbling brooks that murmur dreamily all the summer long, and make the dullest winter day throb with their ceaseless singing.

Unfortunately, you can seldom know one of these hillside streams as a whole; at best you can only love it in fragments. You may think you are in for a lengthy acquaintance, when it appears, chatty and friendly, making its way down the side of a lane; you walk interestedly at its side discoursing on the weather and the prospects of rain (a subject of unfailing interest to a brook), when suddenly, without warning or farewell, it dives beneath a rock at the roadside and is seen no more; or it loses itself in the depths of an adjoining coppice; or it silently vanishes underground at your very feet apparently without reason. Whoever was the first person to voice the old-world idea that mischievous nixies and water-sprites continually play pranks with the streams, would find unlimited material in support of his theories on our hills, for the streams are most capricious, and altogether unexpected in the tricks they play, and in the way they elude observation.

And even the most enterprising explorer cannot follow them on their travels. Unlike the paths, which are public property and open to all comers, the streams spend most of their existence on private territory; and the outsider, no matter how he may pant after the water-brooks, is not welcomed in fields that are up for hay, or in woods where the nation’s much-needed timber is in course of growing. Hence the passing tourist seldom sees them in their free, untended state, left as Nature decks them, and unspoilt by man. The brook that comes into touch with civilization is apt, alas, to show a bigger crop of old tin cans and broken crockery, than flowers and aquatic plants; and to study the little torrent that will be found rushing through many of our riverside villages, is not necessarily to know our streams at their best!

Near my own particular Flower-Patch, high up on the sunny side of one of these hills, there happen to be several rivulets with whom I am on visiting terms. One of these not only supplies my own house and garden with all the water needed, but also a near-by cottage and several wells en route. In the longest drought these streams never fail; even when the whole earth has been baked to an Egyptian brick, one of these streams has yielded at least one and a quarter gallons of water per minute in the hottest part of the hottest day on record.

These streams are typical of hundreds that course down the hills, and the Plover’s Brook, as we call the one near which some plovers nest, will serve to convey a general idea of the lovely characteristics of them all.

It starts life in a rock-strewn wood, near the top of the hill, where it bubbles out from among a confusion of great, mossy boulders, unseen in summer until you search for it, being heavily shadowed by long fern fronds that bend over it protectingly, with an almost human intuition of the need to shield this baby-brooklet from the fierce, absorbing heat of the sun. Life in the quietudes, however, accustoms one to utilize hearing as well as sight, and a stream is bound to sing, or at any rate to prattle, as it passes on its pleasant way; thus it invariably betrays its whereabouts, no matter how closely the fern may endeavour to hide it.

Seeing that the earth’s surface, in every direction, seems to be composed entirely of stones of all shapes and sizes, only held in place by the roots of the trees, cables of ivy, and long stems of clematis, woodbine, and wild rose, it is little short of a miracle that the water remains above ground; one would expect it to drop into one of the hundreds of openings between the rocks and return to its original home; but water seems, in a curious way, to be much more human than are the rocks around. At times it appears to have a living intelligence, to know what it is doing, and to have a purpose in so doing! This spring, like thousands of other mountain runnels, carefully avoids the gaping crevices, skirts its way around the cavernous hollows, and manages, with some intuition beyond human comprehension, to find a safe way on the surface, with solid ground beneath; and it keeps strictly to this course for some distance, as it journeys valleywards, with very little deviation from the straight line.

All down the rocky gulley through which it flows, ferns of various kinds grow in profusion—the Male Fern, Mountain Buckler Fern, Harts-tongue, Lady Fern, and very noticeable are the clumps of Blechnum or Hard Fern, with their long, shiny, evenly-toothed fronds; while every crevice in the rocks seems to support a cushion of the common Polypody or Wall Fern. Fortunately, this wood lies behind a farm, and is protected by its fields (which include a most conscientious bull); therefore it has escaped the ravages of the worthless, the wicked, and the wanton, who spread desolation wherever they go, by digging up and stealing any interesting plant that takes their fancy!

May the bull continue to enjoy vigorous health for years and years to come!

On reaching the edge of the wood, the brook enters a field, and, as the hill heaves over a trifle, setting the field at a slightly different angle, the stream no longer runs in the same straight line, but branches off across the field, cutting it diagonally from corner to corner. Once in the open, and clear of the rocks and overhanging trees, it enters upon a new phase of existence. No longer shadowy and demure, reflecting only the grey of the stones and the dark green of its leafy roof, out in the sunshine it throws off its sombre garb, and puts on the gayest of dress—light, airy, and exceedingly decorative.

At each season in turn, it makes some special appeal; but at the end of May the brook in the meadow is probably at its loveliest. Being full after the winter rains, and no longer kept to a rigid course by rocky walls, it spreads itself lavishly beyond its proper channel, distributing favours in all directions. You may not detect its ever-rippling waters, so luxuriant are the grasses, so high the moon daisies and the gleaming buttercups, so thickly strewn the crimson-purple orchises and their pale heliotrope cousins with the spotted leaves, with here and there a spike of the fragile white Butterfly Orchis; but you may read an announcement of its presence, written in clear, unmistakable lettering, if you have learnt the language of the open—for hundreds of rosy-pink petals are fluttering all over the meadow, like crowds of bright-winged butterflies; and where the Ragged Robin dances in the wind you may know for a certainty that there is running water somewhere in the neighbourhood.

There are other signs by which you may detect the course of the stream, such as the regiments of bright green rushes, with their tufts of brown blossoms; but at a little distance these are easily lost sight of in the grasses, whereas the Ragged Robin, when it is in bloom, is like nothing else in the fields, though they be crowded with other equally beautiful blossoms. Later on the marsh mint will be in flower; its clumps of blue-mauve blooms being quite a feature of the brook’s progress.

But so many flowers love this meadow, and one can’t name a half of them—though I think yellows and pinks predominate; it is not so much the flowers one knows, as the flowers one does not know, that give such charm to a little-cultivated meadow that is well supplied with water; there is such a wealth of blossom, such opulence, and so many surprises; from the tiniest flowers in the rich under-carpet, to the gossamer heads of the finest grasses, it is one wide array of beauty, with colours that are a real refreshment to eyes and brain.

After a brief, inconsequent youth spent in roaming down the meadow, the stream starts to take things seriously as it enters a field of oats, and proceeds decorously down by the side of the wall. No vagaries are permitted here; the farmer, knowing the ways of the local water-sprites, has seen to it that it has a good deep channel to accommodate it and keep it within bounds; he has no desire to have his oat-crop washed into the larch wood a little lower down the hill the first time there is a sudden freshet, or a special line in thunderstorms.

Land with these steep gradients is only suitable for grass or trees whose roots will help to keep the soil and rocks together; ploughed fields stand an excellent chance of being cleared a foot deep with the winter rains, when they lean so much to the upright! But it is not Mr. Farmer’s fault that oats are here. That crop is only one among many evidences of the intelligence that was kindly bestowed upon the district, by one Ministry or another, during the war. And although our village had not millions of the taxpayer’s money dumped into the river at its front door, like our more favoured neighbour Chepstow (where, as you may recall, some master-spendthrift started that National Shipyard, of more than blessed memory!), at least the authorities sent us some highly salaried officials to supervise our agriculture.

Thus it happened that a dapper young man appeared one day, and made a tour of inspection round the first of Mr. Farmer’s fields that he walked into. It was moderately good for grazing purposes, and yielded a fair hay crop considering its poor soil and its position; you can’t expect the rough, rocky hillside, near the very summit, too, to produce as much as the deep-red soil of rich, well-farmed acres at a lower level. But the dapper personage waved a governmental cane in an impressive manner over the grass, and announced:

“Now, my man, we shall require you to plough this at once and plant it with oats.”

Mr. Farmer, who had three sons in the fighting zone, and was trying his hardest to do the work of all three as well as his own accustomed duties—minus his horses that had been commandeered the first month of the war, and minus men—asked the Stranger if the War Office couldn’t manage to find him a useful little job at the front, since he seemed hard up for employment. He also reminded him that he wasn’t his man; and added, that if the dapper personage had ever encountered an oat in his past history, he would have known that it would be hopeless to plant it in that particular field.

But Mr. Farmer had to learn what most of us had to learn during the war, viz., that little jumped-up Jacks-in-office must not be spoken to in any but a reverential manner! Besides, Mr. Farmer was doing the D.P. an injustice; he did know something about oats; he had served in a grocery store before the war, and had often handled Quaker Oats in packets. Obviously he was well-equipped for the post of a sub-advisor to the Ministry of Fishing (or whatever he called himself). At any rate, he sent Mr. Farmer a long document demanding oats in that field, with horrid penalties attached if they were not forthcoming. So oats it had to be; though by the time they reared their puny heads, and returned the farmer about half a bushel of grain for every bushel he had planted, the D.P., who by this time was an O.B.E., had been promoted to another, and still better-paid, sphere of public service, as sub-advisor, or something like that, in connection with the India Office—I think it was—and who could have been better fitted for the appointment? Hadn’t he come across rice—and even curry powder occasionally—in his pre-war activities?

The main point, however, is that instead of old-fashioned grass such as our old-fashioned cows have been accustomed to ruminate upon at their ample leisure, that field now yields a magnificent crop of mauve scabious—some of the finest I have ever seen—with just an artistic sprinkling of oats here and there, to set them off (and certainly the blue-green of the oats against the unusual blue of the blossoms, forms a wonderful colour scheme); while the small, pink convolvulus creeps all over the ground, and carpets the field with its pretty, almond-scented flowers; the whole making the loveliest picture imaginable.

The only drawback is the unfortunate fact that our cows are not the least little bit artistic—they are just the plain sort; and they merely say that they don’t find pictures particularly nourishing, and threaten to go on strike!

Speaking of Official Enterprise: among the many ways in which it assisted us in our corner of the world, during the war, was a self-imposed task, technically known as “testing the water.” It was a most popular branch of service, though I hasten to add, it had nothing to do with Ragged Robins.

The method of procedure was simplicity itself. Three or four officers would detach themselves from one of the various Military or Admiralty Depôts within motor-reach of the valley. Hiring a car, they would proceed to some distant and secluded inn up the river, or among the hills, and once inside the doors it was understood that they were engaged on the necessary testing of the water. The car would wait for them; and as the car proprietor would be paid by the hour—and paid quite generously too, the bill being settled in the long run by the tax-payer—he could not object to his car earning a nice income by slumbering the whole day long beneath some spreading chestnut-tree—in fact, I don’t suppose D.O.R.A. would have permitted him to object, had he desired to do so!

As for the chauffeur—his not to reason why! His but to do his best to get the officers home again at nightfall, and try to induce them to recognize their own headquarters when they reached them.

Sometimes it would transpire that another contingent from another Military Depôt would also arrive at the same wayside inn, on the same day, and bent on the same important errand. As will be readily understood, all this scientific investigation tended to make things very bright and sociable! Though, up to the present, I have never been able to trace any record of an innkeeper’s unbottled water supply, whether pump, well, or hillside stream, having ever received even the most perfunctory glance of recognition!

But to return to the Plover’s Brook. For the greater part of its journey down the field of oats, it is hidden by a tangle of hedgerow plants, including cow parsley, dog’s mercury, hazel bushes, unlimited blackberries, straggling hawthorn bushes, wild roses, cuckoo pints, lush grass, and very tall spikes of the flowering rough cocksfoot grass, some of it over five feet in height, while noble spikes of the ubiquitous foxglove give rich colour, at intervals, to the masses of green.

Scattered Ragged Robins are also to be seen, though these belong more strictly to the open than to the thick herbage on the bank, which is frequently cut back (when a careful farmer is in the offing), in order to keep it from monopolizing the whole field.

Ferns, as a matter of course, line the lower reaches of the banks; and where the field finally ends (with another strong wall to keep it from dropping down into the lane, which is several feet below the bottom of the field), ferns, large and small, make a translucent green grotto, with ivy and overhanging hazel boughs, through which the water gurgles as it slips down over stones and dark brown tree roots, till it finds a little wooden trough (merely two pieces of mossed wood, fastened together V-shaped), which catches the water as with grateful hands, when it comes tumbling down from the higher lands, and holds it out for people to help themselves, and then lets it drop, with a very pleasant sound, into another ferny hollow in the lane-side below the bank, where more twinkling Ragged Robins are firmly established. We call such a wayside pool a well, but it must not be confused with the species of well that needs a long winding chain and an oaken bucket.

These wells, in addition to being the local water supply, are the rallying points for local chat; and the town dweller never understands how much it means, in an isolated community, to have one spot to which the inhabitants are sure to gravitate at more or less regular hours. To know that Mrs. Spring Cottage will be filling her buckets for her washing, as soon as she has got the children off to school, on Monday morning, is a reasonable incentive to Mrs. Rose Cottage to do likewise; especially as she is anxious to tell Mrs. Spring Cottage about—— Oh! all sorts of interesting things are always happening in our district, and need to be talked over. I’ve seen many and many buckets and pitchers, full to overflowing, left to take care of themselves and run all down the lane, while their owners were deep in so earnest a conversational duet, that there was not even room for a comma!

And surely women who seldom see a shop from one week’s end to another, are entitled to some meeting ground where they can stand and exchange a few sentences with a fellow-woman!

Yes, the ferny well is as necessary to the social life of our hills, as are the parks and local shops to the Londoner. And it links us up, in a very personal manner, with that far-off well by which a weary Traveller once rested, Who amazed a woman, drawing water, with the words that are now numbered among the world’s greatest treasures:

“Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into Everlasting Life.”

After splashing down into the hollow at the lane-side, the brook, without more ado, vanishes! You can see no opening, no visible means of disappearance—though it actually slips away under the road. And it will take you a long search to rediscover it unaided.

We sometimes hear a stream described as “wandering aimlessly.” Yet no lowland stream ever does any such thing, let alone the streams that flow down hillsides. These have a very definite aim in life, viz. to reach the lowest level by the shortest cut. And they proceed to do this from the moment they bubble out so mysteriously from the hill tops.

An old woodman once told me, when I was asking about the disappearance of a stream, “The paths’ll wander round and about, all askewt maybe, and as crooked as a rainbow; but the water be like the birds, it do allus take the straightest line it can find. An’ if you do want to know where the water be gone, follow ’un down, taking a straight line accordin’ as the hill tips; you’ll find ’un presently.”

And in this case a few fields lower down the hill, a stream flows out from beneath an orchard wall—apparently having no connection whatever with any other firm of the same name! Nevertheless it is an old friend, the Plover’s Brook, which has been touring underground. Why? who can say! Water can be quite as mysterious as wind!

Once within the orchard, it starts a new lease of life, with, apparently, an entirely fresh outlook. No longer the careless, gay, haphazard stream that roamed all over the meadow; nor the much-disciplined brook that was taught the way it should go, down the oat field. Now, it becomes a real water garden; edged with yellow irises, tall hemp agrimony and flowering rushes, and flowing under a natural pergola formed by the arched sprays that the wild roses love to fling abroad. In one spot, where the ground pauses for a moment in its steep descent, the brook broadens out into a fair-sized pond, crowded with irises, tall hemlock, the lovely comfry with its drooping pink and blue bells. Here the big water forget-me-nots send up a wonderful array of flowers of a colour that is rare in Nature; while red campions and ragged robins squeeze in where they can find space. And as you tread the grass about the banks of the pool, the scent of mint mingles with the purling of the water, and seems strangely reminiscent of something intangible, but beautiful, in a far, dim past, before the age of smoke and petrol, when the earth forever offered wondrous incense to its Creator.

Among the loveliest of the plants in that wild water-garden, is the Marsh Ragwort, a flower that ought to be better known and cultivated as a garden gem. It has large, loose, graceful, flower sprays, bearing clusters of daisy-like blossoms of a lovely canary yellow; the petals being slightly curved back in an exceedingly pretty manner. The flower is delicately scented, and—like most of the members of the indefatigable daisy family—it is splendid for cutting, and lasts long in water.

On one occasion I gathered some seed from this plant, and took it back with me to London. I planted it in a pot in the greenhouse, and forgot it. Later, the gardener asked me if I had any special use for the pot of groundsel I had asked him to water?

I surveyed the crop of seedlings; they certainly looked remarkably like groundsel! Still, we agreed to give them a further chance to redeem their character; but as they continued to look like groundsel, I eventually gave it up as a bad job, and turned out the pot. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when the following summer I came upon several sturdy marsh ragwort plants, throwing up bunches of yellow stars, near the rubbish heap in a damp, shady corner of the garden! And though they are not as luxuriant as their relatives beside the Plover’s Brook, they are quite creditable, and a valuable addition to a town garden. The only sorrow, in this connection, is the tendency of the many anonymous weeds which we now water and cherish tenderly, to develop into unadulterated groundsel, instead of the stray marsh ragwort seedlings for which we were fondly hoping.

On leaving the orchard, the brook enters a domain known to us as “The Tangle,” though actually it is the place where we “untangle.” It is the spot of all others where one’s difficulties are smoothed out most easily, and where one’s troubles are most likely to blow right away.

Picture to yourself a wide stretch of land, lying at a very steep angle around the elbow of a hill—by which I mean the land turns round a corner, part of it being on one side of the hill and looking up the river towards Monmouth, and part of it being the other side of the hill and looking down the river towards Chepstow. The land is neither forest nor grass land nor bare hillside; it is a mixture. Locally we merely designate it “rough land,” and shake our heads sadly over all degenerate landscapes of this particular pattern. It is useless for grazing; it would cost more in labour and dynamite to clear it than would ever be returned in veal or beef. It is equally hopeless as a building site; it would cost as much to haul up materials for a small dwelling as would build a church on level ground. Its only use is for timber-growing, according to material calculations. Nevertheless, I have found another use for it—a use that cannot easily be explained in words.

Coming upon “The Tangle” unexpectedly from the seclusion of the orchard, one has the sensation of suddenly stepping out into wide space and landing on territory which, long ago, was the playground of giants, who left great fragments of rock lying about in all directions, just where they tossed them in haphazard mood. And the spot is exceedingly lovely. Time and the kindly hand of Nature have removed all sharp edges from the stones; the storms have worn them wonderfully smooth; ivy, blackberries, wild roses, honeysuckle, and Traveller’s-joy have swathed the scars and softened every harshness; with long green moss where it is too shady for anything else to grow.

More than this; great trees appear to have been dropped here and there among the rocks, as though placed as sentinels on this out-jutting spur of the hill-range, where they can gaze up and down the valley, and warn the forests of approaching storms. In winter they are lashed about with extraordinary fury, since they catch the onslaught of the wind from whichever direction it comes; you can read this in their twisted branches, and the boughs that have fallen and strew the ground beneath, or still hang on the parent tree creaking with an uncanny sound when a breeze passes that way.

In summer the duties of these trees are light—they give shelter to numerous little families; for “The Tangle” is a perpetual whirring of wings and a scurry of furry creatures. The trees also provide splashes of refreshing green shade on what would otherwise be a sun-scorched slope. With soft whisperings of leaves each tree contributes some special characteristic to the place, beginning with spring when the osiers are tufted with yellow, the blackthorns become snowdrifts, the bird-cherries break into clouds of white, followed by the bright pink-and-white blooms on the gnarled crab-apple trees. Mountain-ash trees load the air with scent; later, the limes fling abroad their unrivalled sweetness; the abele flutters leaves like silver-white moths. Later, oaks and beeches throw down acorns and nuts for squirrels and field mice; in November the birches hang out crowds of swinging catkins that shake down the tiniest of cream-coloured petals, beloved of sparrows and chaffinches; while all the year round the pines add the throbbing mysterious music of wild æolian harps.

But perhaps the greatest charm of this wild land is the water that greets one at every turn. Of brooks alone, the place possesses three, each running down in a series of small waterfalls; sometimes lost sight of under a great rock, though you know it is there by its song; sometimes splashing down from a boulder into a tiny grotto below. And one of these is the Plover’s Brook—the same flower-decked, gladsome friend of every living thing, as in the past; but with a difference.

Freed at last from the restraints of civilization, it careers impetuously downhill, with an exuberance of spirits as gay, in its way, as the scampering of the squirrels that nest in the overhanging trees. No obstacle daunts it; it finds a way around, or over, or under, the biggest boulders, always singing as it goes. The solid stone that now forms its channel, and the little caverns through which it flows, ring with the sound of its voice; while the fall and plash of the water from stony ledge to fern-rimmed grotto, make never-ceasing sound—in dry weather, a tinkle like distant bells, which grows to a rollicking rushing tune as the water increases with the autumn rains. And the music of it all echoes and reverberates from rock to rock, filling the air with a sense of happy life and joyous movement, that is never overpowering, never too obtrusive.

Here and there, where there is any level, the brook, after dropping over some large stones, makes a tiny pool, backed by a semicircle of the rock over which the stream has tumbled. Here the pebbles look like rare white gems as they lie among yellow sand.

Yet it is the flowers that hold one spellbound in the Tangle. Owing to its steep, rugged character, it is not safe grazing ground for sheep or cattle. Only an aged horse of thoughtful habits is allowed to pass a pleasant, restful old age in this quiet sanctuary. His movements are so slow and so circumspect, he could not come to harm. He makes a few paths here and there, from one plot of sweet thymy grass to another; and he is useful in keeping down the brambles. But his few remaining teeth could not cope with all the available herbage; hence the flowers bloom on undisturbed and seed and spread in all directions, while the course of the Plover’s Brook is marked all down the hill by patches of lovely colour.

Here creeping jenny, and its cousin the yellow pimpernel, wander about the banks; cresses, forget-me-nots, and brooklime do their best to fill the bed of the stream; water-loving mosses and tiny moss-like plants cover every stone the ripples touch. Foxgloves give the whole landscape a rosy glow; and this colour is repeated in various shades and tones by the tall flowering stems of the Great Hairy Willow Herb, the magenta spikes of the Rose Bay or French Willow; while the low-growing pink milk-wort, that looks so like heather at a little distance, grows thickly in the dry parts away from the water. But prettiest of all are the drifts of pink ragged robins growing in a sea of quaking grass, wherever there is open space near the brook’s banks.

No painter, no writer could ever do justice to the picture as I have seen it many a time in June: the brooks splashing down the steep, over rocks, over massive tree roots, catching the cones from the pines in passing and tossing them about like balls; making bird baths innumerable but leaving the warm, flat stones where the woodpigeons and pheasants stand to drink, and the squirrels and rabbits sit awhile to wash their faces after a meal. And then the sweep of colour!—the bright green of the bracken; the darker tones of the thickets; the ruddy tints on the shoots of young oaks and maples; the flush of the wild roses; the cream of the elder blossoms; rank upon rank of foxgloves; dazzling sheets of ox-eye daisies; masses of rose-purple wood betony; shining yellow of trefoil, hawkweed and buttercups; and ever following the trail of the stream, the jaunty ragged robins in a mist of trembling grass.

The rest of the brook’s journey riverward is through this wild, rock-strewn land, till at last it falls six feet, then ten feet, then twenty feet—a series of full cascades—and drops into a cool, dark, fern-draped cavern under the hill, beloved of the cattle, but far from the haunts of the motoring tourist. From here, it takes a quiet stroll across the level river meadows—just a moment’s breathing space, and no more, before it joins the river, near the foaming, rushing turmoil of the weir that knows neither pause nor rest.

When a traveller from other lands visits our islands, or when a native returns after long absence, one of his earliest remarks is certain to be “How beautifully green everything is! so different from the brown fields and burnt grass of——” wherever he has resided.

But after the wanderer has been here a few weeks, and his friends and relations, ceasing to cluster round him, are resuming their normal occupation—when he has seen the sights, bought an umbrella, and discovered that the train marked on the time-table isn’t running because the weather is foggy—then, he is equally certain to remark that it isn’t the cold he minds, nor the wind, nor even the retiring nature of most of our summers; but the all-pervading damp gets on his nerves. And he wonders how in the world we ever manage to live through it!

Yet the moisture of our climate is the secret of our green landscapes and flowery meadows, thanks to the streams that dapple our country with beauty. And the song of the brook may well be a song of gratitude for rain and fog and driving storms, which bring in their train so much of earth’s loveliness.

More than this: surely the Voice that forever sings amid the silence of the sleeping hills—quieting the troubled soul and bringing healing to the sick at heart—proclaims a promise that extends beyond mere temporal needs, as it reminds us unceasingly: “The Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills.”