Читать книгу Urith: A Tale of Dartmoor - S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould - Страница 10

Table of Contents

In the tavern with the sign of the Hare and Hounds, a fire of peat was burning on the hearth. A huge oak settle occupied the side of the fireplace opposite to the window; and beneath and before the window was a long table, the end of which admitted of being drawn out so as to make it serve as a shuffle-board for the use of such as liked to play at that game so popular in the reign of Elizabeth, illicit in the time of the Commonwealth, and at the epoch of my story almost obsolete, except in stray corners remote from fashion.

The settle was of a construction then usual, now rarely met with, and therefore deserving a description as a domestic curiosity. The seat was on hinges, and could be raised, disclosing beneath it a cavity like a clothes chest; the settle back opened in compartments and revealed sides of bacon and hams that had been smoked, and there awaited cutting up. Above the heads of those who sat in the settle was a sort of projecting roof to cut off all down draught; but this also served as a cupboard for vinegar, salt, spices, and other groceries. The chest, that was also seat, to a mother with an infant, was of extraordinary service; when she was engaged at the fire, baking or cooking, she raised the lid or seat and buttoned it back, then she planted the babe in the box, where it lay warm and secure, close to her, without the chance of coming to harm. If the child were in the age of toddledum, then it ran up and down in the box with the little hands on the edge, saw its mother, crowed to her, watched her proceedings, and ran no risk of falling into the fire, or of pulling over and breaking the crockery. Altogether the settle was a great institution, and the march of culture, instead of improving it, has abolished it. More is the pity.

The fireplace was of granite uncarved, but rudely chamfered, very wide and very deep, so deep as to allow of a seat recessed in the wall at the side, in which a chilly old man might sit and toast his knees, protected from the down draught and falling soot by the arched roof of the recess. It used to be said of one of these great fireplaces, in which wood and peat were burned, that a necessary accompaniment was an old man and a pair of tongs, for the logs when burnt through in the midst fell apart, and required some one at hand to pick the ends up, and reverse them on the hearth, and to collect and repile the turfs when they fell down. At the fire-breast burnt, what was called a "spane," that is, a slip of deal steeped in resin, which lighted the housewife at her operations at the fire. But the "spane" emitted more smoke than light. Opposite to the ingle-nook was the "cloam" oven, that is, the earthenware oven let into the wall for baking.

In more ancient times ovens were constructed with enormous labour out of granite blocks, which were scooped out in the middle, but the disadvantage attendant on granite was that it became in time resolved into sand by heat, and crumbled away like sugar.[1] These were rapidly got rid of when the earthenware oven was introduced, and hardly a specimen remains. Not so, however, with the stone frying-pan, which is only just, and not altogether, superseded. Housewives contend that the iron pan is not so good at frying as the scooped-out pan of stone, and that rashers of bacon done in the latter are incomparably superior to those burnt in iron. Thus, it will be seen that in the West we are only recently, in some particulars emerging from the Stone-Age, but it is with a leap over that of Bronze into the era of Iron.[2]

The walls of the "mug-house" of the Hare and Hounds were well white-washed and ornamented with a quantity of broadside ballads, the illustrations very generally bearing no intelligible relation to the letterpress.

A single rush-candle burning on the table, served to light the room. The servant-wench was expected to act as snuffer, and she regularly at intervals of ten minutes left the work on which she was engaged, cooking, washing, drawing ale, and like the comet that sweeps up to and about the sun, and then dashes back into obscurity, so did she rush up to the candle, snuff the wick between the forefinger and thumb, and plunge back to the work on which she was engaged, at the fire, in the back-kitchen, or in the cellar.

At the fire and about the table were seated Anthony Cleverdon, Fox Crymes, the host of the Hare and Hounds. Mr. Solomon Gibbs, also a quaint old grey-haired man in sorry garb, and a couple of miners from the moor.

At the time of the tale, and, indeed for a century after, it was customary for men of all classes to meet at the alehouse, parson and Squire, surgeon, farmer, and peasant, comrades all in merry-making—and at that period there was no social-democracy, no class-hatreds—how could there be, when all classes met, and gossiped, and smoked, and boozed together? No good thing comes without bringing a shadow after it. Perhaps it is well that parson and Squire do not now go to the tavern to take pipe and glass with yeoman and ploughboy, but—the misfortune is that there has come class-alienation, along with this social amelioration of the better sort.

Mr. Solomon Gibbs was at the table. He had occupied the corner of the settle all the afternoon, searching for his niece in the bottom of his tankard, but after a while, as evening settled in, he declared he felt the heat too greatly by the fire, and then withdrew to the table. In fact, when occupying the settle, his can of ale had stood on a three-legged stool between his feet, and whenever he lusted after a drink he was obliged to stoop to take it up. As the ale got into his head, he found that this stooping produced a fulness of the veins that made him giddy, and he had fallen forward once on his hands, and upset the stool and his ale. Then he deemed it advisable to retire to the table, but as men never give direct and true reasons for their proceedings, he explained to those who were present that——

"There was thunder in the air, and when there was, he was liable to fits of giddiness; moreover, the heat of the fire was insufferable."

His wig was very much awry; underneath it was a strong stubbly growth, for Mr. Gibbs had not had his head shaved for a fortnight. His mulberry coat was much stained with ale, and the elbows were glossy.

The old man in the threadbare coat occupied a chair near the table, and he stood up, turned his eyes to the ceiling, extended his arms rigidly before him, planted his legs apart, and began to sing a song at that time exceedingly popular, "The Catholic Cause;" his voice ranging through an extensive scale, from bass to falsetto.