THE MYTH of the PENT CUCKOO Green at a Similar Crossing on the Western Brow Of

T HE M"T H O F T HE PE NT CU C KO O

A ST U D" I N F O L KL O R E

M A . .

w l it i n s Lis ten to thes e i d trad o ,

’ ti l en d "e who lov e a n a on s eg s , f l Love the b allads o a peop e,

Call to us t o paus e an d lis ten .

LO ND O N : E L LI O T ST O C K

PRE FACE

Tm: ﬁrst purpose of this work includes a scientiﬁc e nquiry into the meaning and value of the wide

of spread story the men who pent , or hedged in , the “ Tales o the [Vis a Cuckoo, which appears in the old f Men of Gothamand is also familiar in several parts

of the country at th e present day . Its further purpose is to give an account of a series of sites bearing the traditional name of Cuckoo Pens along the southern part of the Chiltern H ills and in the neighbouring districts. Fifteen such sites

n n I are k ow to me, and although h ave made frequent . enquiries I have not been able to hear of another ; A but probably there are several more . description of each of the ﬁfteen is given with more or less detail . In the majority of cases this is done from personal inspection . In the other cases it is from accounts

ff r. contributed by friends , and to these I desire to o e a an expression of thanks . As far as I h ve had opportunity of observing, the Cuckoo Pens do not appear in Tithe Awards or Enclosure Awards , but

ur the designation s vives only in popular parlance . Sometimes it has passed out of the knowledge of the villagers generally and is only handed down by those vi PREFACE

who are connected with the particular spot of ground .

In one instance, where it was well known a quarter

is f r ll of a century ago , it di ﬁcult to trace any eco ec tion of it now . But in two instances I have seen it noted in the prospectus of a sale of land .

R . i . . A R ver id . s e L tters Mr G D Leslie , . , in his e 6 (ix. p . 8) describes the downs which jut out like promontories from the ﬂanks of the Chiltems into the plains below .

The tops of these jutting spurs are more or less e are e d void of wood , though most of them dott d e about with juniper bushes, and some have on th ir summits isolated clumps of trees which are in this “ " the e I s u os e part of country call d Cuckoo Pens . pp pen means a hill or peak , but how cuckoo comes in

I know not .

’ i x om oun h . n O C And Mr . A . D Godley, f , referring ' y to this passage, suggests that the name must be identical with that of a prominent hill on the Berk shire ridge surmounted by a lofty mound and known as [Cuckhams low (Cwichelms - blaew) or Scutchamﬂy

f e Cwi chelmthe Knob . It su ﬁces to r ply that son of Cyn egils was under- king in Berkshire and would not be likely to leave his name on several spots in

u kham . C c s Oxfordshire But the Cuckoo Pens , like low, are marked in most cases by some object of antiquarian interest which will merit particular notice . Of all the tales which the folklore of our country has handed down , the Cuckoo myth is certainly one

the of most curious and interesting. And the district PREFACE vii

of the Cuckoo Pens is full of associations which have an attractive charm to the tourist and the holiday

e as the maker, as w ll abundant interest to historian

h e t e . and antiquary It is hoped , ther fore , that both the general reader and the student may ﬁnd in this

e work something that deserves attention . The subj ct would have been worthy of a technical treatise for the study of antiquarian read e rs ; but it has s ee m e d

e d sirable to treat it in a popular way , and to introduce

e e historical notes and a vari ty of illustrative matt r, in the hope that this may commend it to the wider circl e of readers who care for the old tales and legends of our land and for obj e cts of general int erest

in its an tiqui ti eSn Books from which materials have been drawn are

e nam e d as occasion requires . But special m ntion must b e made h ere of two works to which I am

n e A ll about the largely indebted . O of these is thm Mer Tales o Go a . ry f , by Mr Alfred Stapleton of

e e Nottingham , wher som of my conclusions were

The anticipat ed . other is the Rev . Edmund

’ Mc Clure s Britis h Place- Names i n their His torical

ettin S g . The substance of my account of the Medlers

e e Ber/es Bucks Bank at B nson has appear d in the ,

d x on A rchceolo ieal ou n al - an O r . 0 g J , ii 45 5

E F J. . .

CO NT E NT S

W I . THE ISE MEN OF GOTH AM

" II . ANTIQUIT OF THE GOTH AM TA LES

III . GOTH AM IN NOTTINGH AMSHIRE

IV . GOTH AM IN SUSSEX

- V . THE CUC KOO PENNERS

THE CUCKOO M"TH IN CORNWA LL

" C VII . THE COUNTR OF THE CU KOO PENS

TW B D " D" VIII . O CHILTERN OUN A R K ES

S IX. A SERIE OF CHILTERN CUCKOO PENS

A B C A C C X. U KINGH MSHIRE U KOO PEN

- XI . SOME TH A MES SI DE CUC KOO PENS W XII . T O BERKSHIRE CUCKOO PENS

C SW D XIII . SOME OT OL FOLKLORE

A A I N XIV. GOTH M T LES NORFOLK W XV . A NORFOLK O L PEN

C XVI . C U KOO LORE

" " U C XVII . ET MOLOG OF C KOO PEN

CU C XVIII . THE KING FOLK

LIS T O F I LLU S T RA T IO NS

T HE

M"T H O F T HE PE NT C U C KO O

CHAPTER I

THE WI SE MEN O F GOTHAM

O NE of the most popular chap - books which amus ed

our fore fathers was a series of twenty short stori e s

bearing the title of The Merry Tales of the Wis e Men of Gotham; the name of the place being sometimes it C ” written , as is pronounced , ottam . Among “ them The Third Tale runs as follows “ On a tim e the men of C ottam would have pinned

e in the Cuckoo , whereby she should sing all the

eere y , and in the midst of the town they made a

e hedg round in compasse , and they had got a Cuckoo, and had put her into it, and said , Sing here all the

eere y , and thou shalt lacke neither meat nor drinke .

The Cuckoo as soone as s he perceived h er selfe i n comas s ed e p within the h dge , ﬂew away . A ven

ean c e he r g on said they, We made not our hedge " e high nough . This extract is taken from a curious little black letter copy in the Bodleian Library, which is the “ oldest now forthcoming . It is entitled Th e Merry 2 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T CUCKOO

e - ta e Tal s of the Mad men of G ot m. Gather d to

e e Ph i k . s c e . g th r by A . B of y Doctor Printed at

London by B . A . and T. F . for Michael Sparke , dwelling in Greene Arbor at the sign of the Blue

1 6 0. Bible, 3 The compiler to whom this title

e attributes the collection is Andr w Borde, of whom more must be said ; and the printers are B ernard

Alsop and Thomas Fawcet . But we shall ﬁnd numerous proofs , presently to be noticed , showing that the collection had already b een current for a

e c entury before the date of this dition . It has been

e fr quently reprinted in recent years , and it will be sufﬁcient for our present purpose to give a few of the principal tales and a general ske tch of the re main der , for the sake of such light as they may throw upon the one with which we are principally

e concern d , and also for the sake of illustrating the date and history of the very eccentric compilation .

e The tw nty tales , with one or two exceptions , agre e in attributing extraordinary stupidity to the

s ufﬁ men of Gotham , and while some of them are ci en tly amusing the wit of others is feeble and point ” e The e . l ss . following is The First Tal “ G ottam There was two men of , and the one of them was going to the market to Nottingham to buy s hee e the : p , and the other came from market and — both met together upon N ottingham bridge : Well

: ee " met , said the one to the other Whither be y going

he . said that came from N ottingham Marry , said he

the e that was going thither, I go to mark t to buy

s hee e. s hee e p Buy p , said the other, and which way

4 TH E MYTH O F TH E PENT C UCKOO

m ow n e his co e upon his necke , and did ride upon his e r hors , because his horse should not ca ry to " heavy a burthen .

The next is the Cuckoo tale , with which we began . The fourth also is distinctly humorous “ There w as a man of C ottam the which went to

he the market at Nottingham to sell cheese , and as was going downe the hill to Nottingham - bridge one of his cheese did fall out of his wallet and ran downe

e the hill . Said the fellow, can you run to the mark t alon e I will send the one after the other of you . Then he layd downe his wallet and tooke the chees e s and did tumble them downe the hill one after another, and some ran into one bushe and some into another .

And at the last he said , I charge you all to meet me

- the in the Market place . And when fellow came into the Market - place to meet his cheeses he staye d

he there till the market was almost done . Then went about and did enquire of his neighbors and

e e e the other men , if th y did see his ch es s come to market " Who should bring them , said one of the

- e market men Marry themselves , said the f llow ,

He e they knew the way well enough . said , a veng

e s e e ance on th m all , I did feare to my cheeses run

e the : so fast , that th y would run beyond market I am now fully perswaded that they b ee now almost at

e Yorke . Whereupon he forthwith hired a hors to

s eeke e ride to Yorke to his Ch eses , where they were

not . But to this day no man could tell him of his ” ch e eses . “ The Eift Tale also is worth transcribing TH E WISE M EN OF GOTHAM 5

e G ottam Th re was a man of , wh o bought at

Bran d ron Nottingham a Trevet or y , and as he was going home his shoulders grew sore with the cariage

s et thereof, and he it downe , and seeing that it had three feet , said , hast thou three feet and I but two

e s o s et Thou shalt b are me home if thou wilt , and it

s et downe on the ground , and himself downe there

as upon , and said to the Trevet , beare m e as long I

for have borne thee , if thou doe not thou shalt stand

G ottam s ee still for me . The man of did that his

e oe Tr vet would not g further, Stand still , said he , in the Mare ’s [Mayor’s] name and follow me if thou

wilt , I will tell thee the right way to my Home .

his When he did come to his house, wife said , where

" e is my Trevet The man said , he hath thre legs

and I have but two , and I did teach him the way to

my house , let him come home if he will . Where left

G ottam ye the Trevet , said the wife At hill , said

the man . The wife did runne and fetch home th e

ow n e e s he Trevet her selfe , or lse had lost it through " her husbands wit . “ “ The Sixth Tale is of a smith that had a w as pes ” s et nest in the straw in the end of his Forge , and ﬁre to the straw because a man was stung wh e n h e

brought his horse to be shod . “ The S eav en thTale has some points of spe cial interest to which we shall have occasion to make further reference : “ - When that good Friday was come, the men of C ottam did cast th eir heads togeth e r what to do

with their white H erring, their red H erring, their 6 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C UCKOO

Sprats and salt Fish . One consulted with the

e oth r, and agreed that such ﬁsh should be cast into their Pond or poole (the whiche was in the middl e of the Towne) that it might increase against

e ere the next y , and every man that had any Fish

e left did cast them into the Pool . The one said ,

I have thus many white H errings ; another said , I

e hav thus many Sprats ; another said , I have thus

: many red H errings and the other said , I have thus

many salt Fishes . Let all goe together into the

Poole or Pond , and we shall fare like Lords the next

: the Lent At the beginning of next Lent following,

the men did draw the Pond to have their Fish , and ‘ aid there was nothing but a great Ecle . Ah s they

mi s cheife E ele e ate all , a on this , for he hath up all

our Fish . What shall we do with him , said th e one " to the other Kill him , said the one of them , Chop

s o him all to pieces , said another . Nay, not , said

: s o . the other, Let us drowne him be it , said all

e Thy went to another Poole or Pond by , and did

Eele L e cast in the into the water . y there, said they

th s elfe and shift for y , for no helpe thou shalt have ”

the c . of us . And there they left Eel to be drowned The Eighth Tal e relates that the men of G ottam

- w as had forgotten to pay their rent , and pay day on the morrow ; they feared that it would not reach th eir landlord in time ; but one of them said that he “ he a had taken a hare , and shall c rry it , for he is ” very quickfooted ; to which they all agreed : and they wrote a letter and put the money in a purse ’ “ and tied them about the hare s neck, saying, First TH E WISE ME N OF GOTHAM 7

Lou hb orow thou must go to g , and then to Leicester,

is and at N ewark there our Lord , and commend us hi i " to him , and there is s dut e . [This Newark is not “ ” the town of that name, but the new wark which the earls of Leicester added to their castle in the

e the earli r half of fourteenth century, and in which they resided ; and the village of Gotham was a de pendency of the honour of Leicester at that period ] “ The hare , however, did run a cleane contrary way . Some cried to him to go to Loughborough ﬁrst ;

b are some said , Let the alone , hee can tell a nearer

the us : way then best of all doe , let him goe another

s he said , it is a subtle H are, let her alone, will not ” k e e p e the highway for feare of dogs . The N inth Tale will hardly bear abbreviation “ On a time there was one of G ottamwas a mowing in the meads and found a great Gras h0pper : h e cast downe his sithe and did run home to his neighbours and said that there was a Divell in the ﬁeld that hOpp ed in the grasse : then there was every man ready with Clubs and Staves with Halberts and other weapons to goe and kill the Gras hopper : when they did come to the place where the

G ras ho er pp should be , said the one to the other, let

hims elfe every man crosse from the Divell, or we

s o will not meddle with him . And they returned a ai n e g , and said , we were well blessed this day that we went no further . Ah cowards , said he that had the Sithe in the mead . H elpe me to fetch my Sithe

s lee e no , said they, it is good to p in a whole skin , ” better it is to loose the sithe than to marre us all . 8 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T CU CKOO

e In the Tenth Tal , twelve men of Gotham went

e ﬁshing ; some waded in th e water, oth rs stayed on “ e land . Afterwards they told themselves and ev ry

he e man did tell eleven , and t twelfth man did nev r im lf h s e e . tell Alas , said the one to the other, there is some one of us drowned . They went backe to the brooke where they had been ﬁshing and sought up and down for him that was drowned and did make great lamentation . A Courtier did come riding by and he did as k what it was they did s eeke and why ”

s o . they were sorry When they had told him , “ Well , said the Courtier, what will you give me and

ﬁn de I will out twelve men Sir, said they, all the money that we have . Give me the money, said the Courtier : and hee began with the ﬁrst and did give him a recomb en dib us over the shoulders that h e

: s o groaned , and said , there is one he served all . The Eleventh Tale describes a man of Gotham riding from N ottingham and attempting to pick up

e with his sword a ch ese that lay by the wayside , but his sword was too short , and he rode back to N ottingham to buy a longer one ; while in the mean time another rider had dismounted and carried the cheese away . The remaining tales are the least interesting of

ffe e the series . Most of them are of a di rent charact r from the ﬁrst eleven ; for instead of attributing foolish actions to the Gothamites , they merely relate certain j ests more or less humorous , and some , it must be added , more or less coarse , which were made by

e e them . Two of th m are the familiar stori s in the TH E WISE MEN O F GOTHAM 9

one case of the Gossips , or sponsors , at a baptism , an d in the other case of the bridegroom at a marriage , being admonished that they must repeat certain things after the priest and persisting in saying aft er him every remark that he had occasion to make and every question that he asked of them , until in the on e case the priest was compelled to provid e new godfathers and godmothers and in the other case to defer the marriage until the man could be better instructed . In the Fourteenth Tale a man of Gotham invited

’ four or ﬁve gentl emen s servants to eat a bustard which he had caugh t , but in the meantime his wife with two of her gossips ate it and served up for the husband and his guests an old goose , which the host strenuously afﬁ rmed to be a bustard ; and he shook out the goose ’s feathers from a bag to prove it ; whereupon he received for his reward a dozen stripes with a waster or cudgel . The Fifteenth Tale tells of a young man of Gotham

’ who was advised by hi s mother to cast a sheep s eye at a fair maid whom he was wooing ; and he went to the butcher and bought seven or eight

’ sh e ep s eyes for the purpose . The N ineteenth Tale demands notice because we learn from its introductory words that the compiler of the book was aware of the existence of other such

he tales which did not include in it . It refers to the old time when thes e aforesaid j ests (as men of the

e country r ported) , and such fantastical matters were ” G ot am t f. done at , which I cannot tell hal The I O TH E M YTH O F TH E PEN T C UCKOO story is of the wives of Gotham be ing gathered to gether in an ale - house and relating to one another

e how they we re proﬁtable to th e ir husbands . N in

e e ex of them d scribe th ir various plans , but a few

s he amples will suffi ce. One declared that could

e e s he n ither bake , brew, nor work , and th refore kept every day holiday and prayed for her husband at

e s he s he home, and wh n could not go to church went

- to the ale house . Another made her household go to bed by daylight all the winter s o that s he might

her proﬁt husband by saving the candles . A third drank s o much good ale that s he cared for no meat

s o and saved the bread . Another went to the ale

’ ﬁ res an d an otherwas hed house to save , her husband s

e clothes but onc a year to save soap . Lastly, the ale

’ wife h erself drank all her husband s ale lest it should get sour .

The Twentieth Tale is a very curious on e . On As hw edn es day the Priest of G ottamwould

e e have a Collation [that is , a Conf rence , or Addr ss]

e the to his Parishioners , and said , Fri nds , time is come that you must use prayer and fasting and almes deedes e , and this week come you to shrift , and

I will tell you more of my mind , for as for prayers , I think there b e e not two persons in the Parish can s a - y halfe their Pater noster. As for fasting, you fast still : for you have not a good meales meate through

e r As alms de des e e . e e the whole y for , what should

e you do to give any thing, that have nothing to tak " to But when that you come to shrift , I will tell you more of my mind after Masse . The good man

CHAPTER I I

ANTI QU IT" OF THE GOTHAM TALES

SEVERAL int e resting questions arise in connection

a with the T les of the Wise Men of Gotham . The ﬁrst that naturally occurs i s the question when they

e were compiled . The antiquity of the coll ction as a whole appears at once in the social customs and religious Observances which are prominent in many

of them , though not actually in the Cuckoo story .

Pater Nos ter The allusions to the and the Mass , the

coming to shrift and the penance, in the last tale ; th e demand , in the ninth , that each man should cross e hims elfe from the Divell before he could venture to meddle with him the quaint story of the h errings and sprats and salt ﬁsh which remained at th e end of Lent and were to be kept for the

as next Lent , told in the seventh tale ; all these are points which could not have appeared in popular

e stories written after the reign of H nry VI I I . And the external evidence shows that they were collected at this period in the form in which they

have come down to us . No copy is known to exist of earlier date than that

1 6 0 of 3 , which has been described already . But

21 A theme Ox on ien s es Anthony Wood in his , written

1 2 AN TIQ U IT" OF TH E GOTHAM TALES 1 3

the at the close of seventeenth century , says that these tales were printed at London in the time of

King H enry VI I I . Mr . Halliwell , who reprinted the

1 8 0 series in 4 , mentions a copy of an edition issued

' at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth s reign , and

- Mr . Carew Hazlitt records others of the earlier

part of the seventeenth century . Editions of a later date were published not onlyin London but in

a several provinci l towns , as Newark , Coventry,

Hull , Edinburgh , Glasgow, and also in New York .

as 1 2 One was printed at Stirling as lately 8 9 . It is a remarkable fact that only eleven years after th e

chap- book was last printed for the amusement of the populace it was reprinted in London as a literary “ curiosity . The earlier impressions seem to have

- h . as perished , says Mr Carew Hazlitt , who included the tales in his volum es of Shakespeare Jest Books , “ and he adds , When the excessive popularity of

n w e such a piece is co sidered , can hardly wonder that all trace of the book in its ori ginal shape should ” e 1 have been lost . It was edit d anew in 900 by

Mr. Arthur Stapleton of Nottingham , with a variety

of illustrative matter. The ﬁrst known allusion to the fools of Gotham occurs in the earliest collection of miracle - plays

Town ele that has come down to us , known as the y

teries e e i ii Mys . Th y are contain d a manuscript which is believed to have belonged to Widkirk Abbey in Yorkshire and was written not later th an

the middle of the ﬁfteenth century . A facsimile of

the passage is given by Mr. Stapleton as a frontis 1 4 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T CUCKOO

piece to hi s volume . The play repre sents the

Adoration of the Shepherds at the Birth of Christ . The ﬁrst sh epherd is soliloquising upon the un cer tainty of life and like ning it to the variablen ess of

e e e the weath r, and the s cond shepherd ent rs and “ ” quarrels with him ; wh e reupon Jak G arci o (a g areon ) appears on the scene and parts them . He exclaims :

Now G od i ou a e o e al s am gy y c r f l s . a e e o e s o a e hot the o e of o a S gh I n v r n n f r f l s G th m . W0 a ow a e : o an o e a is hir th t y b r y ure syre d y ur d rn . had b een well a s h h l m H d e b rog t furth an hare : a s hepe or a a .

i n modern English

Now God e a e to ou oo all to e e giv c r y , f ls g th r l u h Saw I n ever none go thus b t t e fools of Gotham . h r a m W e t a e ou o n o da . oe is h t b r y , y ur sire a d y ur I t had b een we ll H s h o o a a e a ee or a a ad e . br ught f rth h r , sh p , l mb

’ e His to Another early allusion , cit d in Collier s ry

o Dramati c Poet Comea o Mis o on us f ry, is in the fy f g

1 60 e e which was produced about the year 5 , wh r

a ur us e - e C c g , or the Mischi f Maker, who is the dom stic “ : fool of the family , cries H a ha ha ha ha, I must neds laughe in my s lefe : the wise men of G otumare ” a ain e risen g .

Philotimus 1 8 The author of , in 5 3 , is quoted as proving that he knew the coll ection of stories in the

familiar chap - book half a century before the date of the earliest edition that we now poss ess ; for he alludes to th e men of Gotam tying their rents in a ’ purse about the hare s neck, as we have it in the AN TIQU ITY OF TH E GOTHAM TALES 1 5

Eighth Tale . Collier gives us also a comedy entitled

A Kn ack to kn ow a Kn ave , by Will Kemp, who was

famous as a play e r in the reign of Elizab eth . It had already been performed for a few years when it was ﬁrst printed in 1 594 ; and it is the more int eresting “ because it calls them the mad men of G oteham “ (not the wise and therefore it is evidently

- s ff based upon the chap book of tories , a ording an additional proof that this was well known at least forty years before the date of the old e st edition that

survives . It also illustrates the great popularity of “ ” e the tal s at that period ; for though the merriment , “ e G oteham i s or burlesqu , of the Men of only one

e e the - brief sc n in the play, it appears on title page

as if it were the chief substance of it . Moreover, it

connects the tales with the visit of a King to Gotham ,

to which we shall have occasion to refer hereafter. ’ There i s a quaint allusion in The A cceaen ce of

A rmorie e 1 by Gerard Leigh , publish d in 597, th e ﬁrst English book upon the subject of blazoning arms “ Gentlemen should not suffe r Little John or Much

’ arai ed the Miller s sonne to be in cotes of armes , as

I h ave seene some wear at Whits on tide in May - pole

mirth , which have bin pulled downe and given to Wh . oe them , by the Churchwardens of Gotham , not

on elie E el by a long deliberate doubt , drowned an e, but by advise of John of the same towne banished a

s n aile : e which d ed done , he was demanded of the

- : townes men what it was quod J ohn , it is either

e something or nothing. N one doo mor hurt to the 1 6 TH E M YTH OF TH E PEN T CUCKOO m emory of your aun ces tors then such or such like ” re e of whom it g ev thme to tell of. H ere the banishm e nt of a snail is added to the drowning of the eel . And we have s e en how the chap - book itse lf acknowledges that it does not con tain by any means all the tales that we ’re told about the men of Gotham . Mr. H azlitt mentions an addi tion al 1 6 series which appeared in 37, under the title

The S econ d Part o the I/Vis e Men o Gotham of f f , but

e nothing is known of its contents . Num rous stories ,

e ff e . howev r, have been collected by di erent writ rs

Mr . Stapleton , for instance , gives us several . The men of Gotham chained a wh e elbarrow which a mad

e dog had bitten , lest it should bite oth rs . They haule d a cow to the roof of a hous e to eat off a

e e growth of v getation , and wh n the rope round her neck was throttling her they thought that her dying groans showed the delight with wh ich s he regarde d

e the prospect of this pasture . Two broth rs quar relled on e about th e pasturage of their oxen , of them wishing to have as many oxen as he could s ee stars and the oth e r wishing to have pasturage as wide as the ﬁrmamen t and they fought about it till each killed the other. A woman of Gotham was enjoined by her husband to wet the meal before she gave it

the to pigs , and she carried out his directions by throwing the meal into the well and then throwing the pigs in afterwards . Another woman was going to market with her husband , and on the way he asked her whether s he had pulled the door after her wh en s he left the house ; ﬁnding s he had forgott en AN TIQU ITY O F TH E GOTHAM TALES 1 7

it, he sent her back to do so ; and as he waited for her return he presently s aw her toiling towards him and with a strong rope pulling the door after her

along the road . M r. Halliwell also has brought together a variety

of similar stories , most of them equally foolish but

some are of interest because of their great antiquity. For example : Som e of the Gothamites were walking

by a river where cross - currents caused the water to

boil as in a whirlpool , and they brought a quantity

of oatmeal , for it seemed an opportunity for making enough hasty po rridge to serve the village for a

: month but after they had thrown the oatmeal in , how should they know when it was ready " One was to jump in and report upon it ; but the water

was deeper than he had expected ; thrice he rose , and said nothing ; they supposed he meant that the porridge was good ; they jumped in eagerly to get

possession of it , and all were drowned . Another tale is that they found a hedgehog in the

ﬁelds , and when none could tell what animal it was they “ declared it to be one of those which Adam

had never named . There is the story also which takes the form of a nursery rhyme

Three wise men of Gotham Went to s ea in a bowl And if the bowl had been stronger a e had e e o e My t l b n l ng r .

Again , the Gothamites had only one knife among them , and they stuck it in a tree in the middle

of the village where all might use it , but the con 1 8 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T CUCKOO W sequent disputes ere troublesome . This seems to carry us back to very early days , when the usual place of meeting for public business in each little tribal community was a tree in the middl e of the village ; just as still in some remote places the tradition of it has been preserved in a tree where public notices are posted , sometimes with a rustic

seat around it , and sometimes crowning the burial

C mound of an ancient hieftain . The common knife of the primitive villages might ﬁtly be entrusted to the custody of the tree in the middle of the v illage with which s o many public interests were connected

an d which even bore a certain note of sanctity . In another tale one of the men of Gotham was

abroad one night when the rest were in bed , and ' seeing the moon s reﬂection in the hors e pond of the

w as e village he thought it green che se , and roused all his neighbours from their slumb e rs that they V migh t help him to draw it out , with a iew, it would

seem , to a nocturnal feast upon the cheese . The very absurdity of the story suggests the thought that it must have had some meaning which is lost ; and it is certainly possible that it may e mbody some

reminiscence of primitive moon - worship and the

midnight orgies that went with it . At any rate, the joke of the moon ’s reﬂection being mistaken for a

cheese , and of fools attempting to get it from the

water, is a tale of very old times . It appears , for

example, in ancient Arabian fables ; and we ﬁnd it in a collection of such fables quaintly compiled as a treatise on Clerical Discipline by Petrus Alphonsus ,

20 TH E M YTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO

In all probability , as we shall have occasion to s ee - the , the one foundation story around which all rest were made to hang was the Penning of the

Cuckoo . C ertainly that story is the general

e favourit of the series . Its subj ect forms the frontis

1 6 0 piece of the old copy of 3 , where a woodcut upon

- the title page depicts an enclosure of hurdles , or

on e railings , in which on side is a countryman

e e - dress d in tall hat , open doubl t , trunk hose and

ff the shoes , and armed with a hooked sta , and on

e other side is a bird seated upon a tre , while labels issuing from their mouths represent the man as ex

ocou Gotam Co . claiming , and the bird , Similar devices adorn the title - pages of most of the old

e e editions , and some of th s are reproduced by Mr .

Stapleton , in each of which the man and the bird

e are surrounded by a circular wattl d enclosure .

The story appears in a variety of forni s . One account is that the men of Gotham had often heard

e e e the cuckoo but had never se n her, and th refor h edged in a bush from whence her note seemed to

0 . come , in the h pe of catching her Another account t ells of their joining their hands round the bush to

e shut her in . In anoth r, they threw up a circular bank of earth around the bush ; and this is a form of the story which we shall have occasion to notice furth e r in attempting to trace out the origin of it . The frequent allusions in old writers show that

We the Cuckoo story was ve ry widely current .

ﬁnd it, for instance , in George Wither, the Puritan

1 6 1 hi s en poet who published in 3 satirical verses , AN TIQU ITY OF TH E GOTHAM TALES 2 1

e A bus es S trz t an d Whi t titl d f p , and was imprisoned

e for it , and afterwards sold his patrimony to rais a

e troop of soldiers for the Parliament . In the Sev nth ” ealous i e Satire of the First Book , Of J , he has these lines But e to ee for to res trai n e this is tru , s k ’ o a a o e a e A w m n s will , is l b ur sp nt in v in he t a e to doe it a e And h t tri s , might h v bin ’ O n e of the cr ew that hedg d the Cuckoo in .

’ e the And Fulke Grevill , Philip Sidney s friend ,

- e Elizabethan soldier poet whom James I . cr ated

Baron Brooke , writes in one of his sonnets

o doe a e e ea e If d ubt d rk n things h ld d r , Th en w ell - fare nothing once a yeare ' F or man run n e b ut on e e y , must winn , P o e th Cuckoe o l s only hedge e in .

There is also a curious satirical brochure com

1 6 1 of posed by Laud in 3 , when he was President

’ St . John s College in Oxford . It was never pub li s he d . , but Mr Stapleton gives portions of it which c have been printed in Notes an d Q ueries . Th e oc a sion of it was an outbreak in the University origina ting from a foolish controversy ; some members having objected to the un dign iﬁed custom of the

Vice - Chancellor and Doctors taking their places in the Convocation House bareheaded and when the quarrel grew s o serious that it was proposed to repeat the experiment of an older period and found

b e a college at Stamford , the future archbishop thought him of bringing contempt upon it by hi s ridicule . H e therefore described the proposed

e foundation of Gotham Colleg , and its charter of 2 2 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO

e the liberti s , in which leave is granted to Fellows “ that they may remove Cuckoo Bush and s et it in

e e some part of the Coll ge gard n , and that in remem branc e of their famous predecessors they shall bre ed a Cuckoo every year and keep him in a pound till he be hoarse , and then in midsummer moon deliver ” him to the bush and set him at liberty . Drowned

e ﬁs h- eel was to be part of th ir fare on days , and “ cheese of the same dairy with that cheese which their wise predece ssors rolled down the hill to go to market before them ” For exercise they were allowed “ no walking in the summer but to

’ e the e look for birds nests , esp cially cuckoo th ir “ ” - elections were to be at cuckoo time , and they must swear by nothing but “ by the cuckoo ” or “ by the swine that taught Minerva . To the headship of

e e the College the rectory of Gotam is to be ann x d . Thus “ Wise Men of Gotham ” became a proverbial title for any who were to be charged with folly ; and

Mr. Stapleton quotes , as the most eminent illustra tion of this , the fact that when Washington Irving caricatured the wisdom of the people of New York he called the city by the satirical name of Gotham , which has since become recognised as specially belonging to it .

When the art of printing became more general , a good many collections of tales , of a similar character

a . to the very popular Gotham Tales , ppeared . M r ’ Care w - Hazlitt s volumes contain reprints of several jest - books which are supposed to have been us ed by

Shakespeare, and of which the original copies are AN TIQ U ITY O F TH E GOTH AM TALES 23

very rare . The collection of The Hun dred Mery

Tales e 1 26 , publish d in 5 , exists only in a single copy preserved in the Royal Library at Gottingen ; and the ﬁrst of the Gotham Tales , of the three wise men quarrelling about th e sheep on Nottingham Bridge , is included also , in a slightly varied form , among the hundred but no doubt both collections took it from an e i earlier source . Other coll ct ons , which followed

’ the soon after beginning of Queen Elizabeth s reign ,

Mer Tales an d uiche A n s wers are the y Q , and the

Merie Tal r t es o S helton Poet Lau ia . f , Another

s et favourite was the Jests of Scogin , which have

been attributed to Andrew Borde, the reputed editor of the Gotham Tales but none of these eve r rivalled

that famous series in its wide popularity .

If we go back to older days , a comparison suggests itse lf between the Gotham Tales and the equally popular and somewhat similar collection of

’ S fEs 0p s Fables . {E Op i s said to have visited Athens at the time when the people were oppressed by the usurpation of the despot Pisistratus in the sixth

an d century before the Christian era , he tried to raise their spirits by giving them the fable of th e Frogs who petitioned Jupiter for a King ; the god

thereupon dropped a wooden log into the pond , and at ﬁrst they ﬂed in alarm at the splash ; but soon discovering that their King was motionless they

came back and sat upon him , and then begged Jupiter for another ; but he was angry and sent them

a - a stork , or in another version water serpent , which

AZs o seized them and devoured them . Afterwards p 24 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO c s o ame to Delphi , where he greatly annoyed the people that they condemned him to death ; and while they led him to the precipic e from which he w as hi s to be thrown down , he warned them that

of death would be avenged , telling them the fable the eagle who laid her eggs on Jupiter’s lap for

e ta saf ty, but a hornet s rtled the god and made him drop them . One or two more such stories are also attributed to ZEs op ; and these became the nucleus to which others were added from time to time—the

Dog in the Manger, the Fox and the Grapes , the

Hare and the Tortoise, and many more, until in the course of centuries upwards of two hundred of such E ’ fables were grouped together under sop s name , and collections of them were often called Ysopets . Each of th e se stories is of course intended to point a

e moral . But the Gotham Tales are mere j sts ; and whatever point of interest any of them may have had in their origin , they are put together for no other purpose than to provoke a smile . CHAPTER I I I GOTHAM I N N OTTI N GHAMSH I RE

THE Gotham Tales , in the form in which the popular

- chap book gives them , are connected with a village of that name near the south - west corner of N otting “ e hamshire . The proverb , As wis as a man of ” e Gotham , is quoted by the famous coll ctor of old stories , Thomas Fuller, in the N ottinghamshire

Worthies o E n lan d section of his f g , published in “ 1 662 , where he explains that It passeth publickly for

o eries the Periphrasis of a Fool , and an hundred F pp

f - are eigned and fathered on the Town folk of Gotham , ” a Village in this County .

Gotham stands in an isolated position , some two miles from any other village and about midway

between Nottingham and Loughborough . The Wolds rise to a considerable height on the west of

it , and the broad marshes into which they drain

the spread eastward of it . Several of tales allude to

Nottingham as the market - town which the villagers

e frequented , and one of them impli s that York was

not very remote , while another mentions Lough borough and Le icester as towns in the neighbour hood ; whence i t is evident that the collection has

2 51 26 TH E MYTH O F THE PEN T C UCKOO been adapted by a compiler who was acquainted with the district .

But some of the tales , as Mr. Stapleton points

are out , hardly consistent with such a place as

Gotham . Town life is implied in the story which “ ’ ” t ells of four or ﬁve gentlemen s servants being

e invit d to a dinner, and in that which alludes to a

’ ’ butcher s s h0p where several sheep s heads we re ready at hand , and in others which speak of con

idera le s b households where provisions were plentiful . Nor can we suppose that the lord of the castle was thefpers on atjwhomthe ridicule of the Eleventh Tale was aimed ; yet there could hardly be a second man of Gotham who would carry a sword at his side

The e when he rode to Nottingham . parish pri st ,

the too , in last tale , is a needy man , contriving to invite himself to a constant succession of meals with

aris hon ers his humbler p , whereas the rectory of

Gotham was well endowed . And in the Cuckoo

i s e story itself there an inconsistency, for it relat s that the bird was hedged round “ in the midst of the town , whereas the spot at Gotham known as the

Cuckoo Bush is some distance outside the village .

1 1 According to a little publication of the year 7 5 ,

’ E n lan d s Gazeteer entitled g , this village of Gotham “ is noted for nothing s o much as the ridiculous ’ wis e men tis fable of the here, who , said , went about to hedge i n a cuckow. What original it had does not appear, though at Court H ill in this place there is a ” bush called Cuckow Bush . The fable , as we shall

ﬁn d , is connected with several other localities , but

2 8 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C UCKOO

tion of the villagers and which in former days s up plied the material for the plaster ﬂoors and ceilings

the of N ottingham and neighbourhood . On the “ ” summit of this hill is Cuckoo Bush Field , with a

- plantation of trees and some scattered gorse bushes ,

now enclosed as a game - preserve and abounding in

rabbits . The particular point to which the designa tion of Cuckoo Bush properly belongs i s in th e

- . is south east angle of the Spinney . It a low but

- well marked tumulus , raised upon the crown of the

hill and surrounded by a shallow trench , the space

enclos e d being more than twenty yards across .

are Running ivy spreads over it, and there a few

e —an e straggling tr es oak , a be ch and a sycamore

as h- e with a tall tree standing on the centr . It is in

an angle of two ancient tracks , one of which runs

the along ridge of the hill , and the other crossing the hill carries on the direct line of the high road which runs southward from Nottingham and which

now has only a diverging course south - e astward

- 15 from Gotham . The ash tree on the tumulus

known as the Cuckoo Bush , and allusions to it are found at least as far back as the early years of th e

seventeenth century . It is said that the existing tree was planted about half a century ago i n place of another which had been killed by the thousands

of names scored upon its bark . But in former times

there was a group of tre es upon the mound . It seems sufficiently evident that the mound was a barrow beneath which some hero of old time w as

buried , though it has been thought that possibly it GOTHAM I N N OTTI NGHAMSH I RE 29

had some military purpose ; and Mr. Stapleton records the interesting fact that the villager who told him the story spoke of the Cuckoo not as being fenced in with a hedge , as it is commonly told , but as b e ing b an ked with a circular mound of earth .

Upon the same ridge of hill , and a quarter of a

mile along the old track - way to the east of the

e Cuckoo Bush , are the remains of an entrenchm nt “ ” as mot known Crow Wood Mot . This is explained

e the by a tradition , preserv d by Thoroton historian

of N ottinghamshire , that the Saxon moot or court of the H undred was held here ; whence also the hill gets

e b e its nam of Court H ill . Something must said hereafter about the word crow ; for it occurs fre quently in the names of places of primitive impor

tance . And again a little further east and at the foot of the ridge there is yet another interesting earth

work . The villagers have a tradition that it was the

Rus hcliff e . site of Hall , and that the family of St

Andrew, who were the owners of Gotham , had a

manor house here . In Domesday Book it is Rise “ ff - ff cli , which in plain English is H ill cli and its ancient importance is shown by the fact that it gives

Rus hcliff on e its name to the wapentake of , of the [

six into which the county of N ottingham is divided .

Mr . Stapleton compares the village of Thurgarton , giving its name to another of the wapentakes of the

county , and having a hill adjoining the Priory called

Castle Hill , which is pronounced to be the site of a British or Roman camp and was afterwards the

- - s o- meeting place of the folk moot . This called site 30 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C UCKOO of Rus hcliff H all is a rectangular enclosure of about a hundred yards in length by ﬁfty in breadth , pro t ected by a large and fairly p erfect moat more than twenty feet wide. Part of the moat is still supplied with water from springs in the hillside above it . From the fact that the area shows no traces of foundations it is inferred that whatever building once stood up0n it must have been of timber only. "

- It lies in a hollow of the hill front, but the trees which formerly shaded it are cut down . It appears there fore that Ris ecliff and Court H ill are only two names of the same eminence of which a portion has come to be known more commonly as Cuckoo Bush “ e he H ill . H re are t trenches of a prehistoric castle above , and a moat below representing a manor house of Norman days and here the court or folk - moot of

- - the wapentake had its meeting place . Golf links have intruded themselves but have not materially ff a ected the site. The springs which the moat guarded were e vi den tly important in early tim e s ; for th e part of the

i s Welldon well hill where they rise known as , the

dun e . e , or hill of the springs The villag rs seem to have used them from time immemorial , because the water of the valley was fouled by the gypsum and

Thros b the decayed vegetation of the soil . y, in his

’ Thoroton s His to i o Nottin hams hire Additions to o j g , “ 1 s aw in 790, relates that he asses , women and ” children , loaded with water, which they were

- carrying home across the marshy meadow land . Under the Enclosure Award of 1 804 the spring was GOTHAM I N N OTTI NGHAMSH I RE 3 1

e v sted in the surveyor of highways , a footway was

constructed between it and the village, and it was pro t ected by an enclosing wall : afterwards pipes were

laid for the conveyance of the water and ﬁnally, in

1 862 E , arl H owe erected in the village a small brick t building which is known as he Water H ouse . The traditional account of the origin of the stories

Thr a is given by os b y. It expl ins that King J ohn was proposing to cross the broad meadows n ear this

e hi s i n hab i villag on way to N ottingham , but the

tants prevented him , in the belief that the way by which a King passed would become a public road thenceforward : whereupon the King sent some

servants to inquire th e reason of their incivility , with a view to imposing upon them some ﬁne or

other punishment . The villagers , hearing of the ’ e approach of the King s s rvants , though t of an expedient to turn away H is Majesty ’s displeasure

the e from them . When messeng rs arrived at

n Gotham , they found some of the inhabitants e gaged in endeavouring to drown an e el in a pool of water ; some were employed in dragging carts upon a large barn to shade the wood from [the s un

others were tumbling their cheeses down a hill , that they might ﬁnd the way to N ottingham for sale ; and som e were employed in hedging in a

" cuckoo, which had perched upon an old bush where

the present one now stands ; in short , they were all

employed in some foolish way or other, which convinced the King’s servants that it was a village ” of fools . 3 2 TH E MYTH O F TH E PEN T C UCKOO

There is nothing in the chap - book series of stories to connect them with the visit of a King ; but the A tradition is illustrated by the Elizabethan play,

Kn ack to kn ow a Kn aoe , to which allusion has already been made . It has a scene of grotesque buffoonery

G oteham introducing mad men of , to wit a miller, ” e a cobbl r, and a smith , the ﬁrst of whom proposes , “ Let us consult among ourselves how to misbehave

’ the ourselves to King s worship , and when he

d e e comes , to eliv r him this p tition . Presently the

King enters , and the cobbler comes forward as spokesman

We the o e of Goteham , t wnsm n . ea o a e o o e wa H ring y ur gr c w uld c m this y, Did it oo for ou to a think g d y st y, But ea ou e ou o e od the e ( h r y , n ighb rs bid s m b y ring b lls,) And w e come to you alone

To deliver our petition .

The King asks his attendant what the petition is , “ and bids him read . The attendant replies , Nothing but to have a licence to brew strong ale thrice a week ; and he that comes to Gotehamand will not

a- Spend a penny on a pot of ale , if he be dry, that he ” “ may fast . Whereupon the King replies , Well , ” “ sirs , we grant your petition ; and the cobbler, We humbly thank your royal majesty . The author of

e the play , th refore , seems to have been familiar with such a story as Thros b y has recorded of the King coming to Gotham and the “ misbehaviour ” of the village notable s . Th e spot on which King John was stopped by thre e farmers of Gotham is still pointed out near a GOTHAM I N N OTTINGHAMSH I RE 33

footpath which leads to the village from the east . It i s marked by a mound which is now ploughed over

s a and has almost disappeared ; and this , they y, was

’ thrown up to obstruct the King s progress . Accord ing to one account they chained the King and his

v ' chariot to a strong post which they plan ted i n the the centre of the mound . In anoth er account King had condemned the thre e farmers to be hanged

before he found that they were merely fools . But

the main points of the story are , ﬁrst , that the

’ e e villag rs r sisted the King s approach , and secondly ,

that he did not deem them worthy of punishment . It is natural that King John should be the hero of

the story, on account of his close connection with

. he Nottingham Before his accession , when was attempting to usurp the throne during Coeur de

’ Lion s absence in the East , his partisans fortiﬁed Nottingham Castle on his behalf; and after he became King this place was assaulted by the confe derate barons who invited th e Dauphin of France to de

He throne him . was probably the King who was best known in the traditions of the neighbouring

villages . H e nce the legend of any King either before him or after him may well have been handed down

as a legend of King John . Various suggested explanations of the story have

been collected by Mr . Stapleton . It is said that

1 206 King John was probably at Gotham in , when he passed through Nottingham to Oakham for the high road southward took this direction from Nottingham as late as the beginning of the eighteenth 34 TH E M YTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO

century . One story is that he was intending to

‘ the purchase a castle and lands at Gotham , and

people dreaded having s o expensive a neighbour .

H e nry VI I . is said to have encamped near the place

1 8 e in 4 7 on his way to Stoke Fi ld , near N ewark , where he defeated the insurgent Earl of Lincoln who was espousing the cause of Lamb e rt Simn e l and the memory of some Slight offered to the King by partisans of the impostor may have been confused

with memories of King John . H enry VI I I . , too , is said to have issued a commission to the magistrates

e of Gotham to prev nt poaching, and this may have been treated as a subject of ridicule with a similar

confusion of names .

e Thomas H earne , the Berkshire antiquary , b lieved that the entire series of the Gotham Tales aros e from

e e some obsol t legal tenures in the district , where lands were held by customs somewhat similar to

e those which the tales represent . Mr. Stapl ton inclines to the belief that the tales were intended to ridicule the proceedings of the H undre d Court of

Rus hcliffe , more especially as they conﬁne their

ridicule to the men and s ay nothing of the women .

But going back behind all these theories , we may keep in mind the feature s of special interest which

are are still in existence at Gotham . These , ﬁrst , the prehistoric tumulus on the crown of the n eigh b ourin g hill where th e villagers s ay that their fore ih fathers hedged or embanked the cuckoo ; secondly , th e entrenchment known as Crow Wood Mot ; and

thirdly , the quadrangular earthwork beside the

CHAPTE R IV

GOTHAM 1N SUSSEX

R THE E is a second Gotham , a manor in the parish of

the Hailsham in Sussex ; near to which , also, in

e e parish of Westham adjoining P vens y, is some

land known as Gotham Marsh . We are assured in ’ Lowe r s Chron icles of Peven s ey that several of the “ Gotham Tales are identical with those which are still

traditionally preserved in the vicinity of Pevensey . Hence it has been suggested that the tales of the

chap - book may have belonged to the Sussex Gotham in their origin and may have been adapted by the

compiler to suit the Gotham near Nottingham .

Moreover, the tale which speaks of the inhabitants having an abundant supply of herrings and sprats has been thought to ﬁt a place near the sea rath e r than a remote inland village though at Nottingham itself the Borough records Show that four hundre d years ago the mayor was required “ to make due s erche within the town in the week afore Lenton " h r n f h her n e s e . for whyte y g , red y g , salt y , etc

What is more to the point is an ancient custom ,

a which is s id to have prevailed at Pevensey, of put ting criminals to death by drowning ; and thus the story of the murd erous eel and his punishment 36 GOTHAM IN S USSEX 37

acquires a special meaning at that place . But the

i s story , as we shall see , is told of other places . It noted also that the mayor of Pevensey was a person who ﬁgured prominently in the tales of that borough ; for it was he that told a messenger to keep his hat “ Pems e on , for though I am mayor of y, I am still but a man , and when another messenger found h im thatching his pigs tye and told him that he was read ing upside - down the missive which was delivered “ to him , he bade the man hold his tongue, for while I am mayor of Pems ey I will hold a letter which een d uppards I like and again it was he th at received a royal proclamation against the ill egal ﬁring of beacons and at once apprehended a woman

he whom found frying bacon ; and he , with the

e a whole municipal body of Pevensey, wh n a m n ‘ was cond emned to death for stealing a pair of leathern

e br eches , recommended that the verdict should be altered to manslaughter. But th e mayor in th e Gotham Tale whose authority was invoked by the owner of the trevet may have b een either of

Pevensey or of N ottingham .

It Should be observed that Dr. Andrew Borde , to whom the authorship of the Tales has usually been attributed , was born , as he himself tells us , at Boords ” Cuckﬁeld i H ill in Holms dayle, near and there s

e reason to believ that he made his home at Pevensey,

hi s at no great distance from birthplace, for it is at

e least c rtain that he had property there , since he bequeathed two houses at Pevensey in his will ; and

i s he said to have been buried there . 38 TH E M YTH OF TH E PEN T CU CKOO The occasion which is supposed to have led ’ rs ﬁeld s Dr. Bord e to write the Tales is related in Ho

His to o Lewes was ry f . A commission issued by

1 King Henry VI I I . in 5 33 to John prior of Lewes ,

Ba ham Michelham Richard abbot of y , John prior of ,

Thomas lord Dacre , and others ; and they met at

r Westham on the 3 d of October in that year, for the purpose of preventing unauthorised persons from taking ﬁsh within the privileges of the marsh of

un Pevensey . It is believed that the measure was popular and that the Gotham Tales were written to

l e pour ridicu e upon it , Gotham b ing the property of

Lord Dacre and near his residence . According to this account the dignitaries who would enforce the law were the wise men who thought to drown an eel as a criminal because they believed him to have

: de voured the ﬁsh that surrounded him . “ Andrew Borde is undoubtedly the A . B . of " Phys icke Doctor to whom the title - page of the earliest existing edition , and of others that followed

attri it , ascribes the Tales ; and they are expressly buted to him in the A then a: Ox on ien s es of Anthony

a . Wood It will be worth while , before proceeding further, to add a short notice of Andrew Borde , for few persons ever had either a more eccen tric s charac ter or a stranger history . He united in himself the diverse characteristics of an austere ascetic, a learned physician , and a facetious mountebank . At — a very early age, younger in fact , than the rules of

—he the Order allowed , became a Carthusian monk at the London Charterhouse, continuing in that life GOTHAM I N S USSEX 39

all some twenty years . It is the strictest of Orders ; and at a lat e r date we ﬁnd him writing to the prior of anoth er Carthusian house that he is nott able to h d ” y the ruguros ite off your relygyon . H e tells us also “ that he was dis pen s yd with the relygyon by the ” b s ho ff y pp of Romes bulles , being appointed su ragan bishop in the diocese of Chichester ; but he never fﬁ entered upon the duties of the o ce , and it does not a ppear that he ever received consecration . Perhaps th e vegetarianism of the Order was his particular

e stumbling block , for he still persevered in a lif of

- celibacy and severe fasting, wearing a hair shirt by

day and hanging a winding- sheet beside his bed

at night . H e obtained his degree in medicine at

Oxford and studied also in foreign schools . H e was

very successful in his treatment of diseases , and is

said to have been appointed physician to the King. But he also sold his medicines publicly in fairs and

uﬁi n markets , p g them with ludicrous harangues , whence he became known as Merry Andrew . Many writers have Spoken of him as the original from whom this name became proverbial , but this

b e appears to more than doubtful . H is love of joking was so strong that he could not refrain from

as playing upon his own name, which he latinised

A n dreas Pa ratus — or d o B e . rf , Andrew Perforated , or

Eventually he was incarcerated , for some unknown reason , in the Fleet Prison , where, after only a few

1 . weeks , he died in 549 We have a quaint and characteristic illustration of his humour in The Firs t

Boke o the I n troduction o Kn owled e f f g , which he 40 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C UCKOO

1 2 the dedicated in 54 to Princess Mary. The ﬁrst “ t reat eth chapter, which of the natural disposition ” “ of an English man , is headed by the picture of a naked man with a piece of cloathlying on his right ” arm and a pair of scissors in his left hand , with th e

verses ,

aman a an d a e ta e e I Englishm n n k d I s nd h r ,

a a e a e e . Musing in my mind , wh t r ym nt I sh ll w r

a Anthony Wood , quoting this , adds that his

the Merry Tales of Mad Men of Gotham , printed “

e . e in the time of King H nry VI I I , was th n accounted a Book full of wit and mirth by Scholars and Gentle

men . Afterwards , being often printed , is now sold ” - only on the stalls of Ballad singers .

’ Borde s authorship of the Tales has however been

questioned by eminent authorities , and it has been thought more likely that the compilation was made

- by some hack writer, probably in London , whom

e - the publisher mployed , and that the well known initials of Andrew Bord e w ere add e d on the title page to promote the sale of the book ; just as another

es ts o S co i n popular compilation , known as the j f g ,

e was attributed to him , though it is c rtain that he

the . was not author of it The only other person ,

e however, to whom the Gotham Tales have be n

e e attributed is Lucas de H eere , a Fl mish paint r who resided in England in the time of Elizabeth and who

is named as the author by Walpole . And though there is no direct evidence to Show that th ey were

’ e Borde s work, there are coincid nces which ﬁt in with the early account that ascribes th e m to him ; GOTHAM IN S USSEX 4 1 for Lord Dacre ’s manor of Gotham close to his home may well have suggested the name to him , especially if he had such a reason as has been assigned for ridiculing a meeting that was held th e re ; and we have sufﬁci ent ground for believing that he knew

e e the oth r Gotham , with which tal s like these had

ee e b n associated at least a century b fore his day , for he was a great traveller, and we learn from his “ ” Pereg ri n ation that in Noti n ghams hire he visited

Notin hamMaun s feld New erk u on Tren t g , , p , Blithe , h ” Ratfoort Baw tre e . Warsop, , But it is hardly necessary to as k th e question which of the two G othams has a prior right to claim these Tales as its own . I t is impossible to agree with thos e who have argued that th e Tale s properly and originally belong to Sussex and were transferred to the more north ern Gotham by the compiler of the chap - book ; for there is no doubt that the N ot ti n ghams hi re village bore from time immemorial the character which is here assigned to it . On the other hand , the coincidence can hardly be accidental when we ﬁnd a second Gotham near the birthplace of the alleged compiler and in a district which possessed

. is Similar stories . It probably an example of a con t r v er o s y in which both sides are right . If both Pevensey and the Nottinghamshire village are among

e the places to which tales of this kind b longed , and in particular if each of them was one of the numerous

e w e s ee e places wher , as shall , the people w re

i s credited with having penned the cuckoo, it very

’ possible that both G othams were in the compiler s 4 2 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T CUCKOO

mind and that he took stories which were told of the

one place and mad e them serve for the other place . “ e Peofen s - ea the The present nam of , isle of

Peofen , comes from some hero of Saxon days and the plac e is made famous in history by the landing of William the ‘ C on queror for in thos e days it was

’ s ea- e e on the shor , though a mile s breadth of pastur

land has now b e en silted up on the south of it . From it the Conqueror le d his N ormans forward to th e ir great victory over Harold at Senlac on th e neigh

r b ou in g hills . But the spot has an older record as

An d rida the e of the Roman occupation . It gave its name to the great forest of the An dreds w eald which

Spread northward from the s ea- coast almost to the Thames and measured more than a hundre d miles

from east to west . When the ﬁrst Saxon invaders had for nearly thirty years b een pushing th e ir

conquest up the Thames , of which the story must

e { be told in a later chapter, th e chi ftain Ella in 477 landed a new force on the coast of Sussex ; many Britons fe ll ; but many escaped into the An dreds weald and fourte en years passed before E lla could

a r accomplish the fall of An dre dce s te . Of the long and obstinate resistance mad e by its

e British defenders , and of the ﬁerce det rmination of

their assailants , a very full account has been given by H enry of Huntingdon who wrote his His tories of the E n lis h g in the twelfth century, and his graphic “ story is worth transcribing. Ella , relying upon b his vast forces , esieged the strongly fortiﬁed city of An dredeces ter : whereupon the Britons ﬂocked

44 TH E MYTH OF THE PENT CU CKOO

standing, though several others have fallen and large parts of the walls have slipped down into the

- boggy marshland . In the south east angle of the enclosure are the ruins of the Norman castle founded by Rob e rt Earl of Mortaign e who was half- brother to William the Conqueror . The very important part which Pevensey thus played in the great struggle of the Britons against their invaders is of considerable int erest in connec

the tion with probable origin of the cuckoo myth . “ e e as his - When Merry Andr w gath red , title page

e e says , the materials of h is stori s from various sourc s ,

e he may have met with this one in his native plac ,

e or at the other Gotham , or at both . At any rat the existence of Gotham stories at Pevensey gives additional reason for thinking that they sprang out of the feud between the Briton and the Saxon . CHAPTER V

THE CU CKOO - PEN NERS

IT almost goes without saying that wh e re the people

’ of any place become the butt of their neighbours wit , and are credited with abnormal folly such as is ff attributed to the people of Gotham , a di erence of

race is at the foundation of such ridicule . The

Phrygians , hemmed in among their mountains in the central district of Asia Minor and sprung from an older stock than the immigrants who surrounded

e . them , w re accounted the most stupid of the Asiatics

The Boeotians , an ancient tribe who lived in a hollow among the hills on the conﬁnes of Attica , were despised by the Athenians as the fools of Greece , so that when Horace describes a dullard it is one of whom “ you may swear that he was born in the

e foggy air of the Boeotians . And the same charact r

was borne , perhaps most notoriously of all , by

Abdera on the coast of Thrace , a town that was occupied by an Ionian colony driven from t he Opposite coast by the advance of Cyrus and never

its able to assimilate with Thracian neighbours , so “ that Juvenal : could call it the the father- land of ” - mutton heads , and when Cicero would ridicule the 45 46 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C U CKOO stupidity of the Roman senators he stigmatised their

city as an Abdera . The Germans have their proverbial fools in the

people of Schildburg , and a number of traditional stories similar to the Tales of the l/Vis e Men of Gothamwas collected and published in the latter part of the sixteenth century under the title of The

His tor o the S childbur hers e y f g , which has b en as popular in Germany as the corresponding book has

S childb ur hers been in England . The g , we are told , were d escended from on e of the famous Wise Men

s o of Greece, and were reckoned extraordinarily wise that the kings of all the various nations invited

them to take part in their councils , until at last their own home affairs be came s o neglected and their wives s o disconsolate that they were driven to feign thems e lves fools in their desire to be allowed to re main at home in peace ; and they received a

document , signed and sealed by the Emperor, according to them the privilege of perform f ing every possible act of folly . These boors o

Schilda built themselves a council - house with no

windows , and looked all round it to discover why it

w as dark then , holding a council , each one with a

torch ﬁxed upon his hat , they decided to carry some

an d daylight in , and ﬁlled boxes , baskets tubs with

sunbeams, which they tried to empty into the room

when this failed , they decided to take their roof

w as away, and that plan successful for the summ er , but when the winter came they were forced to re place the roof and have torches in their hats again TH E C U C KOO - PEN N ERS 47 till one day light fell through a crevice on a

’ councillor s beard , and they bethought th em of a window . They built a mill and quarried a huge

- millstone for it in a neighbouring mountain top , and

e carried it down with inﬁnite labour ; th n , recollect ing that it might more easily have been rolled down , they carried it up again ; but they must be sure of

its r not losing Sight of it in descent , therefo e one of them got into the hole in the middle of it ; but it

e rolled into a pond , stone and man alike wer lost , and they supposed he had carried it off and sold it ; whereupon they published a notice in the neighbour ing towns , enquiring for a man with a millstone round h is neck . Their ﬁnal achievement was to turn themselves out of house and home ; and like the J ews th ey became wanderers throughout the

i s r world , so that there no country whe e their descendants may not be found . Even if the story had not impli e d that the S childb urghers we re foreigners by assigning them a Greek origin , it would be easy to infe r that they were people of an older stock who were retained by their conquerors ,

men like the Chaldeans in Babylon , as useful who kn e w the secrets of the land ; but the newe r race

an d were eager to be rid of them at last , thus they became wandering outcasts . The joke of charging the inhabitants of a place or district with having pent up the cuckoo is to be m et with in various parts of the country as well as at

. a S omers etShi re Gotham It is best known as story .

Notes The wise men of that county , says a writer in 48 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C UCKOO

an d ueries un ﬂed e d Q , took an g cuckoo and built a high wall to imprison it ; there they fed it ; and the little bird grubbed on quietly till its wings were

: e grown, and then it ﬂew away they had forgott n that it would learn to ﬂy , and therefore they had

not thought of rooﬁng the enclosure .

e More particularly, the people of Somers t are

ridiculed as the Cuckoo - Pe nne rs by their neigh

e e bours in Wiltshire , and th y retaliat upon the “ ” O n e Wiltshire folk as the Moonrakers . of the

e men tal s already noticed as told of the of Gotham ,

the - e though not included in chap book coll ction , is this joke of raking out the moon from the village

e e horse pond under the d elusion that it was a ch es . It appears that although the whol e county gets th e

the the credit of action , story belonged originally to

e n e e . particular places in it . P wsey is o of thes More esp ecially the peopl e of Bishops Cannings

e e near Deviz s are promin nt as moonrakers , and

e other tales of the Gotham class are told of th m . Ind eed it se ems that they have kept up their “ characte r as the naturals of the district until quite re cent times for it is on record that when the comet of 1 847 appeared in the S ky the whol e village “ " s t off e e e over the hills towards the Vi s , as the n ar

e e . neighbours call Deviz s , to get a closer vi w of it

e e e Wiltshire men were cl ver nough , how ver, to make good use of their moonraking fame on on e occasion in the smuggling days when some of them had helped to run into a Dorset cove a cargo of spirit which had paid no dues to the King ; for aft er THE C UCKOO - PEN N ERS 49 they had conveyed their share of the booty into their own county, to replenish th e cupboards of the neighbouring farms , the Preventive men pursued them , only to ﬁnd that the smugglers were a party of country yokels raking a pool of water in the moonlight , and protesting, as they pointed to the reﬂection of the moon, that they were trying to get that chee se ; whereupon they were let alone as hope less idiots , and the rakes brought back the sunken

men kegs of spirits . Wiltshire would fain claim

e this incid nt as the origin of the story, and accord i l n g y they glory in their soubriquet . Thus the Swindon Football Club calls its e lf the Moonrakers and quite recently the newspapers told of some twenty of them coming to London to see a match b etw eeen two leading clubs on the Tottenham ground and causing much merriment as they passed along the streets in the smocks and hats of hay

e cart rs , with their banner of the moon and the

- . e crossed h ay rakes displayed aloft Similarly , a l ad ing cricket club in Somersetshire has decorated itself

- with th e proud title of the Cuckoo Penners . And it may fairly be presumed that here also, as in Wilt shire , the story belonged to some particular place or places before it became the property of the county .

Wilts aetas S omers aetas Both the and the , it should be remembered , brought their names to these two counties when they were merely “ set ” lers t among the Britons . They had migrated thither out of the kingdom of Wesse x wh en that 5 0 TH E M YTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO

kingdom ext ended no fa rth e r westward than the

lands which are now Hampshire and Berkshire . The district of the Wilts aetas was not ann exe d by

e 6 e n e the men of W ssex until 5 5 , wh n , as the Chro icl

e m C e awlin relat s , Cy ric and defeated the Britons at

e - b ri t he Barb ur the B ran y g , hill fort of y on Wilt

T h omrs aetas shire Downs . he district of t e S e lay outside t he Saxon realm till anoth er century had

e 6 8 pass d ; for it was not until 5 , according to the

Cen w alh the Chronicle, that won a part of lands of

S omers aetas Peon n a the by his victory at or Pen , whether this were Pen Selwood or Pen Hill in — “ M endip or Pen on Brent Knoll and he drove

e e Pedrida the W lshm n as far as , or Petherton , and made the River Parret his boundary ; and it was not

1 0 e until 7 that Ina , a later desc ndant of Cerdic ,

’ brought all the S omers aetas lands into hi s kingdom

e by the d feat of the British King Geraint . The history leads us to expect that while surviving remnants of the British race were but small in the districts of the Saxon ’s earliest conquests they would ce rtainly be more numerous in Wiltshire and more num erous still in Somerset . We may reasonably conclude that both the original moon rak ers of the one county and the original cuckoo penners of the other belonged to that British survival .

e e There is , how ver, one plac in Wiltshire where the people are said to have pent the cuckoo . The south ern boundary of the county crosses the river

Avon about twenty miles above its mouth . The

THE C UCKOO - PEN N ERS 5 1 southernmost village on the Wiltshire side is

Downton , and the northernmost village on th e

Dow n ton ith1n e . w Hampshir side is Charford At , private grounds on the south of the village, is a

British entrenchm ent of horse - shoe form opening out on the rive r and protect e d by outer banks and

e ditches behind . Trees have been plant d and

e n walks have be n laid out upo it in modern times , but its form is still plainly to be seen . At each end h of th e inner bank is a lofty mound . On the nort ern mound , known as Execution Hill , criminals have b e en put to death within the tim e s that local tradi tion has not forgotten . The southern mound ,

e seventy feet high , is Moot H ill . A d scriptive du the . Sketch of it , compiled by Rev Arthur Boulay “ Hill , sometime vicar of Downton , tells us that the Slope towards the river is carved into s ix large steps or terraces , rising one above the other from a

e an d level plat below. The space b tween this the river, naturally marshy, has now been laid out as a

e large ﬁsh pond . This r markable terraced mound is probably a unique instanc e of a Saxon open - air

' court c on s tructed within an older British earth

. e e work Downton giv s its nam to the Hundred , and doubtless the Hundred - moot as well as the

- Town moot was held at Moot H ill .

C n ric s on Cerdic and y his , two aldermen of the

e ﬁv e C erdi cs - ore Angl s , came in 495 with ships to , which was doubtless th e shore of the Solent or of

e the Southampton Water, and th y fought Britons “ - there . Twenty ﬁ ve years later they obtained the 5 2 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C UCKOO

” W the kingdom of the est Saxe , as Chronicle relates , and their descendants reigned th enceforward . In

1 Cerdics ford that year, 5 9, they fought the Britons at ,

heordics ford . which is undoubtedly C , now Charford This was the northern limit of their conquest up the the Avon . They stopped short of strong

s e fortre s of Downton . How long it resisted th m we cannot tell ; but at least it was long enough for ﬁ this line to become de n e d as a permanent boundary, and thirty - seven years pass e d before Cerdic won

w e We what know as Wiltshire . may infer there fore that Downton was a place where a British remnant survived . And its people have the reputa

- e tion of being cuckoo penn ers . A villag poet of

e e fi r c nt times has versi ed the story, and has attributed to the “ the Wise Men of Downton ” all the tales that belong to Gotham , including the attempt to outwit King John .

o e o a o the oo e a e to a e S m fr m p nd m n ss y d r k , And som e an eel w ere drowning in a l ake S ome on a Shed with carts an d waggons stood To a a a o on a o c st sh d w neighb uring wood . e e e e e o ee e o a H r wiv s w r r lling ch s s d wn hill .

e e o a - ea at a Th r b ys with p ck thr d tugging mill . o e a e e e t of a e o ﬁe S m g t s w r shut ing n ighb uring ld ,

F rom winds an d draughts the lambs an d calves to shi eld . H ere round a bush with idi otic grin was o e to e e a oo A ring f rm d h dg cuck in .

l : G Q Q

a e e a an d o for e e a te All pl y d th ir p rts , J hn v r f r Co e e of Do o a t uld n v r think wnt n without l ugh er .

It IS reasonable to infer that the Cuckoo myth was indigenous here, and that this , coupled with the fact that King John in his recorded journeys paid at TH E C UCKOO - PEN N ERS 5 3

least three visits to the place , suggested the addition

of the rest of the Gotham story , together with the

’ e e moonrakers tale which is not in the Gotham s ri s , and also others which probably the genius of th e

writer invented .

Passing from Somerset across the Severn , we ﬁnd an instance of the Cuckoo myth on the Welsh

e . bord r . It is cited by Mr Stapleton from a writer

Notes an d uer ies . in Q The people of Risca , a village situated up the Ebbw River some ﬁve miles above

e e N wport in Monmouthshire, are said to have hedg d in the cuckoo and to have earned the title of the fools ” of Risca . Since Monmouthshire belongs historically t o e Wal s , and was accounted part of Wales until

King H enry VI I I . decreed that it Should be in

i s England , Risca evidently a village of Welshmen , “ held in contempt by th e settlers i n the new port of the Saxon . And we certainly have good ground for connecting the Cuckoo myth with the feud betwee n Saxon and Briton in some cases where it appears in the N orth of England . Austwick is a township in the parish of Clapham in the West Riding of Yorkshire , and a “ wick is understood to imply a British village “ which the invaders occupied . The carles of Aust

e wick have an old r putation for stupidity , though now they are as shrewd as their neighbours . They are said not only to have hedge d in the cuckoo but also to have hauled a cow to the top of a thatched

off roof to eat the grass which had grown there . A gardener from this place a few years ago was told 54 TH E MYTH O F TH E PENT C UCKOO by his employer to carry his wheelbarrow to the carpenter when its wheel was broken ; but he re if fused , saying that a man were seen carrying a wheelbarrow he would be greet e d with Shouts of “ ” Austwick "Austwick l The position of this village

' of Austwick deserves to be not ed . It is on the borders of the old British kingdoms of Elmet and

Strathclyde , the former conquered by Edwin of

6 1 6 Eadb ert Northumbria in , and the latter by , the last of the old stock of the N orthumbrian Kings , in

- 756. Above the village on the north west rises the great hill of Ingleborough , well known to tourists for the stream that springs near its higher levels and dashes into the ghastly chasm of Gaping Gill to ﬁnd its way through three mil e s of limeston e tunnels and reappear from the deep cave s that open

of behind the village of Clapham . The ﬂat summit the mountain shows remains of primitive earth

e works , and also of stone circles popularly call d

Druidical , and these tell of the time when the Briton held his own here . But the name of Ingleborough tells the other tale of the English making it their fortress , and the village name of Ingleton beneath its western slopes tells of their making their settle

e - e ment b yond it . Yet again , the great cap shap d hill of Pen yghen t which fronts Ingl eborough on the

e east, across the Ribble , b ars a name which speaks of the conquered Briton still surviving here after the English had passed westward beyond him . As you look up from the lower valleys of Ribblesdale and gaze at these two mighty masses of limestone , TH E C UCKOO - PEN N ERS 5 5

each with its sandstone crown , rising more than

s ea- e two thousand feet above the l vel , they stand as impressive memorials of the conﬂict between the two races which gave each of them its name . And

a t Austwick, lying the entrance of the valley which l separates these two hills , may we l have been a spot where the subjugated Briton was suffered to remain . It is entirely consistent with this that the place should have remained a dependency of Clapham parochially , instead of becoming a parish , though each was a village of considerable population and whil e the annual shee p fair was held at Clapham the cattle fair was at Austwick . We ﬁnd a precisely parallel instance in the heart

e of N orthumberland , at Lorbottle , a remot hamlet in the parish of Wh ittingham , of which an interesting

’ His to Tra account is given in Mr. David Dixon s ry, dition s an d F olklore o Whittin hamVale the f g . In

2 1 1 Luv erb ota Pipe Roll of 3 H enry I I . , 77, is the

Lilleb urn land of Alexander de , and a document of ” Lu r l the next year gives the name as e b ot e. The “ bottle is of course the old English word for a house or building ; and an illustration of it may be noted from an early version of the Book of Exodus

Pharao code i n to his b otie e , Pharaoh w nt into his ” house . But the great variety of ways in which the other half of the name is written in ancient docu

—Leu Liver Lave Lou Lover ments , , , , , , and several

e - mor , Shows clearly that its meaning had been lost . It would be hazardous to conjecture what that meaning was ; but we may be sure that a scribe of 56 T HE MYTH or T HE PENT CUCKOO

’ “ Eliz abeth s tim e who wrote it Lower b otle w as

the e making a bad gu ess . The village lies in vall y “ of e the Aln , overlooked from the east by a ridg of coarse sandstone hills belonging to a serie s known

imon s ide e as the S Grits , and abounding in primitiv

e - v aen s - a e r mains . Cist and spear he ds hav been found ; cairns and tumuli are numerous ; there is an

- e e old march dyke , and mor than one British ncamp

ment . Castle H ill , rising above the village, is distin “ gui s hed as having one of the most important pre ” historic hill fortre sses in the Vale of Whittingham . “ " “ ” o are The cubs , kebs , or coves of L rbottle

e the Gothamites of N orthumberland . Som of the tales told of them connect th emse lves with a pond “ ” in the village , called Puddle . If it rained they were never aware of it till they s aw the drops

falling on the surface of this pond . One of them

e el ﬁsh e d for trout in the burn and caught a huge ,

which he took home ; but none knew what it was , “ a n d they decided to throw the beast into Puddle

’ ” n s aw an droo him . When they the moon rising over the Long Crag they took it to b e a huge red cheese and s et off with wain ropes to haul

s at it down . When they to rest upon a wooden fence none could tell which were his own legs and

’ feet and which were his neighbour s . Finally , they attempted to build the wall round the cuckoo to preve nt her departure and so to s e cure for them

selves a perpetual summer . Mr. Hardy , in his Popular His tory of the Cuckoo contributed to the

ecord 1 8 m F olklore R of 79, tells ore particularly

CHAPTER VI

THE CU CKOO M"TH 1N CORNWALL

THE Cornishmen are credited with having pent the

cuckoo in more than one village . This county , as it

stands pre - e minent in its wealth of prehistoric earth a works and stone circles , is one of the richest lso in

its legendary lore. An abundant collection of such

’ lore is to be found in Hunt s Popular Tradition s of

the Wes t o n n d f E g la . There is the demon Tregeagle “ who haunts equally the moor, the rocky coasts , ” - and the blown sand hills of Cornwall , condemned for his wicked deeds to wander till the doom ; and in every tempest the loudest din that is heard above

the winds is the hideous howling of Tregeagle , and whenever th e re is calm the plaintive murmur that

sighs over the water is his mournful wailing. And there is the Midnight Hunter with his headless

hounds , who rides into Cornwall along the ancient

’ track known as the Abbot s Way on Dartmoor, and who once caused even Tregeagle to yield up the earl ’s daughter whom he had impri soned within his castle walls . And there is the Bargest , or Bear — - ghost, the great black spectre hound , both dog and

- r bear, who brings the death wa ning to all that meet

him ; but he can never cross running water . The 5 8 TH E C UCKOO M YTH I N CO RN WALL 59

e e spectral Ship is to be seen fro m tim to tim , bring

- n ing the same death war ing, in Porthcurno Bay and l e sewhere along the coast . King Arthur hovers

about in the form of a raven , waiting for the day when he will recover his kingdom (readers of Don Quix ote will remember the legend) and th e Cornish ’ chough s red beak and talons are marked with the

’ - blood of the King s death wounds . Giants are

everywhere among th e rocks , and fairies in all the

e vall ys , and mermaids all along the coasts . Strange

customs still lingering on are relics of the Baal - ﬁres

of old heathen worship . The belief in witchcraft is

not yet forgotten , and appeared quite lately in evid ence given at the local police courts and children are still immersed in holy wells to cure them of infantile diseases and pains . Cornwall ,

ff e therefore, a ords a fertile soil on which any anci nt

myth may be expected to ﬂourish . The story of penning the cuckoo appears here at

Towednack near St . Ives , as is related by a corres

i s pondent of Notes an d Quer e . But the hedge wh ich the pe ople of this place built around the bird takes the form of a stone wall and as the escaping cuckoo

almost touched the top of it , the Cornishmen argued that they would have kept her in if th ey had made

their wall one course higher. The myth in this instance is the more interesting because it repeats it

in e self a varied form in th e story of the villag feast , as

. the told by Mr Hunt . This is held on Sunday nearest

2 8th to the ofApril , and is known as the Cuckoo Feast , — not , however, merely because this is the time that 60 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T CU CKOO

The on the cuckoo appears each year. tale is that e

e y ar, when the winter lasted late into the spring and

e Old e the cold was still sever , an inhabitant invit d his neighbours to a repast and threw upon the ﬁ re

- ﬂew a hollow tree stump , out of which a cuckoo ;

and he caught the bird and kept it by him , resolving at the same time that the feast should be held upon

this day every year, and should be called the Cuckoo Feast : for up to that time Towednack had b e en singular in not having a yearly village feast like its

neighbours . This tale of the feast plainly shows that o the purpose of hedging in the cuck o was , as at h Got am , that she might sing all the year and so

pres erve a perpetual summer. Others of the Gotham Tales have fastened them selves upon one or other of the towns and villages

i s its of Cornwall . One place ridiculed by neighbours

b e cause its ﬁshermen threw a conger- eel overboard to drown it ; another because they threw a gull over the cliff to break i ts neck ; another because

they tried to drown a man in a dry ditch . Of the

fishermen of St . Ives it is said that when a flock of sheep was blown into the b ay from the Gwithian sands they supposed that a new kind of fis hhad appeared and at once they took nets and lines and

put out their boats to catch them . Others are said to have gone out to bring home what they h supposed to be a ﬂoating grindstone , and when t ey r eached it their leader leaped upon it from the boat and it proved to be a sheet of s ea- foam gathered within a large wooden hoop . The men of Gorran TH E C UCKOO MYTH IN CORNWALL 6 1

reversed the story of the moonrakers , for they tried to throw the moon over the cliff into the sea . The Cuckoo story itself is localised also in the neighbourhood of Perranzabuloe , far down the coast of the Bristol Channel , where it is one among the numerous myths and legends with which that — . S t . particular district abounds Perranzabuloe , ' — Perran s - in - S ab ulo , or in the sand , is distinguished thus because of its wild wast e s and dreary hills of

- sand which here stretch inland from the sea beach . It is one of three parishes which bear the name of the popular Cornish Saint , Perran or Piran , who is said to have landed here from Ireland in the sixth century and something of his story deserves to be told before we come to the tale which most concerns us . H e is St . Kieran in his native land ; but the Gaelic K of the Irishman is changed into the

Brythonic P of the Cornishman . A Cuckoo tale

already belonged to him in Ireland ; though , it

e should be added , some versions of it substitute oth r

Liadhain birds . , his mother (as we read in Baring ’ Li ves o the Britis h S ain ts Gould and Fisher s f ), had founded a religious house and was one of the

ﬁrst abbesses of the Irish Church . H er kinswoman

Buri en a , of a family which St . Patrick himself had

christened , was a sister of her community ; but a

heathen named Diman from West Meath , struck

with her beauty , carried her away to his castle, and Kieran pursued and demanded that Sh e should be “ restored . Never (said Diman) , till I hear the

cuckoo call at day - dawn and arouse me from my 62 TH E M YTH OF TH E PENT C UCKOO

Sleep . A deep snow covered the ground ; but Kieran and his companions spent the night in

prayer outside the castl e walls . In the morning a cuckoo was sitting upon each of the many turrets of

i i ts the building and utter ng call ; and Diman ,

e e amazed at the marv l , r leased the maiden , who cross e d the s ea with her rescuer and b ecame known

in Cornwall as St . Buryan . There are many tales

e e of the miracles by which St . Piran b friend d the

Irish people . H e had fed ten Kings and their

r e e he a mi s for ten days with thr e cows , and had restored to life their dogs that were killed in hunt

ing elk and boar, and had raised again their warriors who fell on the battleﬁ eld ; but they cast him off a pre cipic e into the s ea with a millstone about his

e n ck in a furious storm , whereupon the tempest

s un s at ceased and the shone out , and Piran upon the stone and ﬂoated safely over into Cornwall s o the wild legend has grown out of the fact that he

carried with him his altar- stone : and he land e d on

’ th Pi ran s the 5 of March , St . Day, on the sands

that bear his name . H ere St . Piran built his

— e church , supers ded soon afterwards by the little Simple sanctuary which the sand overwhelmed in later times and explorers have unearthed in

e e e mod rn times, and besid it th y unearthed too a F ’ huge skeleton which is believed to be St . iran s own ; and a new church was built b eyond the lake which the ﬂowing sand would not cross ; but a miner drained the lake away ; and a third time the church was built where th e sand is effectually TH E C U CKOO MYTH IN CORN WALL 63 checked by the little brook between Perran and

- Cubert . The Saint is the patron of the tin miners for h e had discovered the mystery of tin by burning accidentally a heavy black stone which he had used

in his fireplace , when the heat of the fire caused the white metal to flow out of it ; and after the discove ry had become known and voyagers from far and near

- were arriving in search of the new found treasure , — — the natives as th e story goes e ntrenched St . Agnes ’ Beacon and made the great bank and ditch which protects the coast for two miles from Porth

- Brean i c - Chapel Comb to Comb , and made also th e famous circular entrenchments commonly called the ” i s b e Rounds , of which one of the ﬁnest to seen

at Perran . The Saint left his blessing also on

ff e Perran Well , and little su ering childr n were put

through a cleft rock upon the sea - shore into its a he ling water, until the spring was tapped by

e th miners in recent years , and the well is gon and e sculptured canopy which an cient piety had s et over it is gone also to adorn the grounds of a neighbour

ing mansion .

- The adjoining market town of St . Agnes was in

old times a chapelry of the parish of Perranzabuloe .

e Here the well of St . Agnes is in a dingl near the

- shore called Chapel Comb , and its healing virtue was reputed to be even more marvellous than that of

’

Pi ran s . St . Well Above this town on the east the great mass of rock rises up s i x hundred and sixty

e feet from th e shore, crowned by an anci nt cairn which w as adapted in old times as a beacon an d 64 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C UCKOO was kept ready for use when all our coasts were in

e the terror lest Napol on Should invade us . Along foot of the Beacon Rock are still to be seen the remains of the great vallum which the people of the place are said to have thrown up to protect their

e proliﬁc tin min s . And these people of St . Agnes

e have the credit of att mpting to hedge in the cuckoo . They retaliate upon their neighbours at Redruth “ the w with question , Who cro ned the donkey but this is explained by the tradition that in zeal for the Jacobite cause and disloyalty to the H ouse of Hanover a donkey was publicly crowned at Redruth "

on the day of th e coronation of King George IV . N o explanation can be found for the other jokeof

the St . Agnes folk having penned the cuckoo . The parish of Cubert lies next to Perranzabuloe

on the north . Here we have another of the holy th wells , famed for healing the sickly children of e

ff e peasantry, in a fantastic cavern of the cli , wh re the water dropping from above is coloured wi th various hues from th e richness of the minerals and forms a bed of stalagmite bright with corresponding

colours . And here on the summit of the hill we “ ” have a ﬁne Round , with its embankment well

preserved , the road from Cubert to Newlyn crossing

the middle of it , and the rest of the enclosure grow ing such stunted trees as are able to resist their

s a exposure to the sea winds . Some y that the people of Cube rt are charged with having penned

e the cuckoo . One would expect to hear furth r that

this Round with its weather- beaten trees was the

66 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO

Cornwall and has not rather been imported by some

' all ev en t chance out of England proper . But at s its appearance in the extreme south - west serves to illustrat e the extent to which it spread itself through out our land . CHAPTER VI I

T HE COU NTR" O F T HE CU CKOO PEN S

IN several of our rural parishes there is a spot which has been known from time immemori al as the

Cuckoo Pen . Usually the villagers have their own

e int rpretation of it , which is often quite worthless ,

i s but in some cases not without interest . In the

great majority of cases , if not in all , the Spot is marked by its surroundings as one of arch aeological

interest . We may therefore look for some con n ection between this traditional designation and the

fable of the men who pent the cuckoo . The district in which these Cuckoo Pens abound is along the west front of the Chiltern H ills of

the Oxfordshire and in adjacent valley, while isolated examples are known also in the more remote part of the same county and in the neighbouring counties of

Berkshire and Buckinghamshire . It will therefore b e worth while ﬁrst to take a general survey of the central district of the Cuckoo Pens and to note the value of its position from a historical and antiquarian

point of view . For the country which we know as Oxfordshire was formed by Nature to be a scene of

a w d e great events . It ﬁts like e g between our most important river and one of our most important lines 67 68 TH E MYTH O F TH E PEN T C UCKOO

of b ills . The Thames is the chi e f of the dividing lines which strike across England from west to east .

e The Chiltern H ills , though they rise to littl more

e e e than eight hundr d feet , yet hav nothing lofti r between them and the German Ocean , and they form part of the great backbone of secondary rocks which runs through the island from north to south , overlooking the l eve l tertiary strata of the eastern districts and forming an upward step towards the rugge d mountainous rocks of the primary formations on the west of it . The geologist can take his stand upon this ridge of chalk and kindred substances and s ee it as a kind of axle upon which a vast r evolution

the e has been turning, till hug crests of granite and porphyry and sandstone have roll e d themselve s up from beneath it on the one Side and the pliabl e clays and loose gravels have thrown themselve s forward from above it on the oth e r side ; so the bowels of the earth are made visible along the western coast and the sunken forests are not quit e hidden when the tides are low along the eastern coast ; and between them is this long straggling ridge of n u dula in r h e t . amb o ou g hills Fl g Head , p rforated with

S ea its fantastic caverns , juts out into the North at one end of the ridge, and Portland Bill thrusts the relics of its fossilised forest into the English Channe l at the other end , and the Chiltern H ills are in the middle of it . Such a line of uplands could not fail

' to make a strong mark upon the destinies of our country , especially at this point where it is crossed by the larges t of our rivers . And here , in the TH E CO U NTRY OF TH E CUCKOO PEN S 69

- north west angle of this important crossing, are the lands which the gradual course of history marke d off as the county of Oxford .

The dense woods , too , which clothed these hills , bore an important part in making the district what

— iltria it was . The name of the Chilterns the C of m onastic chroniclers is believed to embody a British word cael signifying a wood for its popular

’ ” interpretation as the Celts H ills is quite impos

e sible, se ing that our ancient forefathers knew nothing abo ut Celts ; and another account which would make it mean “ chalk hills ” cannot be borne out . These woods were notorious in O ld times as

- the a hiding place , ﬁrst for Britons when the Saxons

drove them from the valleys , and then for the Saxons in their turn when they were disposs e ssed

by the N ormans , and again for thieves and robbers

of all kinds to a much later date . Towards the close

of the thirteenth century Brunetto Latini , the tutor of

Dante , was travelling in England and left a record of his experiences in which he speaks of the dangers of this district when he passed through it on his way

from London to Oxford . The Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds was appointed to put down the robbers and preserve such order and security as he might

‘ along the Buckinghamshire Side of the hills ; and

fﬁ i s his o ce , which maintained to serve a convenient d purpose in m o ern politics , was far from being a

sinecure in those days . B efore we pass from the geography of this district

its to history , we shall do well to take notice of the 70 TH E MYTH O F TH E PEN T C UC KOO

courses of its ancient roads ; for the tracks by which men moved from place to place are necessarily among

e the earliest signs of human occupation . H er of

w e course ﬁnd , as we should expect to ﬁnd , the

e trackway that runs along the margin of the riv r,

d- ﬂ oo . just upon the ridge above the line And again ,

the almost equally of course , there is trackway along

the summit of the hills , keeping near the brow to ove rlook the valley ; and the trackway also that

skirts the foot of the hills , running roughly parallel

he with t upper one . Nature marked the lines of

these , and we shall have occasion to note them as a

very important feature along the Chilterns . The

lower track is part of the I ckn i eld Way . It led from the district which the Iceni occupied in Suffolk and Norfolk ; and it has been commonly understood

b e e — - e to Ic n elde weg , the Ic nian Old Way ; but in

Ice n h lt the tenth century it was y , proving it to be

’ - - Icen hilde weg, the Icenian Warriors Way . The

country - folk of the Chilt e rns know some portions " of it by an odd corruption as the Hackney Way,

and other parts , like many ancient roads , are the

—in Portway , or carrying way , fact , the road that led

to market . But practically along these hills the upper and lower tracks are the double line of a single highway ; and when you climb the hillside

b a w oodlan d y lane , with its ferns and foxgloves and

ﬂowering hedgerows , or by a hollow way washed

like a watercourse in the side of the open down , you are almost certainly upon one piece or another THE CO U NTRY OF THE C UCKOO PEN S 7 1 of th e connecting network by wh ich the two tracks were anci e ntly bound together into one .

- The Romans were the great road makers , here in

e Britain as elsewhere throughout their empir , taking the tracks which they found and often laying th e m “ with more or less of stone to make streets where

e it served their purpos , and often also adding new

roads of their own devising . Thus the track along

Ickni eld the Chilterns became the Street , passing / s in a continuous line from Cator, the castrum of the

’ Norw ich o E x eter - c es ter Romans near J j , the Ex or

u ﬁ he B16 castrum po , and beyond it to the tin mines

- at th e farthest so uth west corner of the island . Then we ﬁnd also that portions of the primitive riverside track along the Thames below the Chilterns were incorporated into another Roman

highway . This led westward from London , passing over the brow of these hills near the village of Nufﬁeld above Wallingford then crossing the ” Hackney Way at Goulds Heath , where relics of

Roman occupation are found , and meeting the river

at Ben s in gton whence it followed the river- bank

through the Roman town of Dorchester, to cross to

O the the pposite bank in neighbourhood of Abingdon , and so to wend its way up the valley of the Ock to

t he Roman settlement at Frilford , thus connecting

Dorchester directly with the great meeting - place of — Roman roads at Cirencester. This place the British

G C orin ium Durocorn ov ium oryn latinised as and , — the city of the Dob un i upon the Churn River calls 7 2 TH E MYTH OF T HE PEN T CUCKOO

as for special notice h ere . It w one of the ﬁrst towns

the which Romans occupied under Aulus Plautius ,

a e the emissary of Claudius C esar, and they mad it o n e of th e ir chief centres both for military purposes

e e i s and for civil gov rnm nt . At the present day it

on e of our richest treasure - houses of sculptured s tone s and tessellated pavem ents and oth er elabo

rate relics of Roman workmanship , among which som e fragments of its splendid basilica are carefully

preserved . Geographically also it is an important Site ; for while the spring of Thames Head is a short

distance to the west , the seven springs of the Churn a bove the town are at once the most remote from the Thames mouth and the highest above the sea

e level , and th refore are in fact the true source of our

foremost river . Here at C ori n iumthe road which we have been tracing met the Ermin Way crossing from Southampton to Gloucester and the Severn and

the e South Wales , and also Akeman Street swe ping round from London to Bath as it m erged h e re with the Fosse Way which came from the remote north east by Lincoln It is with the Akeman Street that w e are next

concerned . It took its name from its destination ,

A uce S olis the s un Bath , the Roman q , waters of , or

A uce S ulis S ul more correctly (it is said) q , from or

ulis S , the local divinity who presided over the waters ; whence it became the Saxon Akeman n es

ceas ter. Some have said , whether seriously or jocosely, that it is called from the aching man who

sought ease and cure at the warm springs . But the

74 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKO O

tell . On the surface the hills are thickly wooded with the primeval beech , the characteristic timber of the district .

But the beeches are not the only trees . The highest points Upon the Chilterns are b e ds of over lying clays , relics of a layer which once buried all the chalk beneath it . The loftiest summit in these

the e parts is at Nettlebed , boasting of being farth st point inland which could be distinguished from any

e place on the seaside, but the windmill which help d to m ake it conspicuous has lately been burnt down .

e ri kﬁeld Here the clay suppli s a b c and a pottery, and the name of the hamlet of Crocker End tells its

The - own tale . neighbouring clay bed at Stoke

Row had its pottery in Roman times , and relics of

Roman work are still discovered thereabout , while connoisseurs have professed to detect traces of the old Roman forms in the patterns of the modern work. And wherever you see a grove of oaks among

- th e beech woods , it is because there is a bed of clay for them to grow in . Then we have a series of spurs of treeless down

e projecting into the valley , decked only with f rn and juniper, and clad with a soft green turf giving a scanty pasture to the Sheep and drying up with wonderful rapidity after a soaking rain and if here and th e re an enterprising farmer has ploughed them

e e s o he gets but littl recomp nse , meagre is the covering of earth which hides the chalk . But as we get nearer to the river there are tracts of arable land

e along the slopes , some tolerably f rtile and some of TH E CO U NTRY O F TH E C UC KOO PENS 75

considerable richness . Their elements , of course , are the débris of those upper hills which have bee n

swept away in the birth - throes of our present con tin en ts and oceans ; and the ﬂi n ts which were embedded in those upper hills are lying in endless

profusion among the soil . Well worthy of examina

ﬂin ts e tion are these , with th ir strangely twisted

and perforated forms , and now and th en some

substance, organic or otherwise , enclosed in them , a

sponge, or a nodule of pyrites , or an echinus or

terebratula , either preserved entire or leaving its

imprint like a seal within the cavity. They lie thickest of all about the margins of the chalk pits which are to be seen here and there along the hill

’ e e front . But h r are not only ﬂints which N ature s hand has fashioned for we ﬁnd among them abun

e dant r lics of primitive man , th e ﬂint implements of

hi s toil and the ﬂint weapons of his warfare . We

ﬁnd , in fact , that this has been a great workshop of

ﬂin ts primeval cutlery , of which the are the materials ,

- quarri e d out from surface workings in the chalk be ds . And still the innumerable chippings of this ancient

industry are scattered all around . You may light

e upon a car fully fashioned knife , or a polished and

- pointed spear head , or a ﬁnely cut and well barbed

- e arrow h ad . Th e quantity of the ﬂint relics upon this spot suggests that the neolithic savage had here a large emporium from which he supplied his wares , and the I ckn i eld Way and its branches carried the ffi tra c hither and thither, like the railways running

e from a commercial centre of modern tim s . H istory 76 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UC KOO

th ere fore was b eing made here long before the days

of which we read the records .

Passing down to the river, we have in the district close below these hills a remarkable group of thre e

e anci nt towns, each of which will ﬁgure in the facts

w e a e e that shall h v occasion to notic . H ere is Wal

lin ford g , on the opposite bank of the river, still retaining the earthworks of it s quadrangular en

closure as the Roman - Britons raised th e m ; named

by the Saxons as a notable ford of the Wallingas , or sons of the Welsh ; disputing with Winchester the honour of being the ﬁrst chart ered borough in the

kingdom , since H enry I I . bestowed that dignity upon it ; and made memorabl e more especially by

e e its gr at N orman castle , wh re Richard King of the

s on Romans , the younger of King J ohn , maintained a court of stately magniﬁcence which his brother

King Henry I I I . could hardly rival at Windsor.

Just above Wallingford , but on the east of the river and approached through the sometime marsh

Ben s in t on land of Crowmarsh , is g or Benson , promi n ent as the town of this district which the West Saxon captured in his ﬁrst great advance across the

1 Thames in 5 7 , and thus becoming a royal vill , as the chronicler Flor ence of Worcester calls it ; its wide manor ext ending across the hills to H enley and including the great e r part of what i s now South Oxfordshire ; standing foremost among the royal

the e possessions in county in Domesday Book , wh re weread that it brought a yearly revenue of £8 5 to the King and that th e “ soke ” or j urisdiction “ of TH E CO UN TRY OF TH E C UCKOO PEN S 77

the three and a half hundreds of the Chilterns pertains to this manor but the Kings granted

away one part of it and another from time to time ,

until at last King Charles I . sold th e manorial rights

to some land speculators of the City of London .

Thirdly , we come to Dorchester, the Roman city already mentioned and still to be mentioned again ; a place that rose into fore most eminence in our ecclesiastical annals ; for it became the seat of the

Berin u . s bishopric of St Berin , or , the Apostle of

e 6 the W st Saxons , in 3 5 , when he baptised here

C n e ils - o y g , the West Saxon King, of the royal st ck

which eventually became Kings of England , and thus Dorchester has the unique honour of being the place where our royal family were ﬁrst received

into the Christian fold . Before passing on from this general survey of the district to the points in it that will demand more

particular notice, it will be ﬁtting to take account of a reasonable claim which has b e en put forward for it as having borne a leading part in the earliest scenes of the history of our island . For it has been

urged that this is the battle - ground on which the Briton in the ye ar 4 3 fought his ﬁrst conﬂict with the legions s ent by Claudius from Rome under Aulus

Plautius and V espasian . The invaders must have met with insurmountable difﬁculties if they had atte mpted to land on our eastern coasts as Julius a C esar had done a century before , because the eastern tribes were the most hostile of all ; and , moreover, the accounts which we possess imply a 78 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C U CKOO

more lengthy voyage than the mere crossing O f the

e straits . If, therefore, we must assume that th y

sailed round to the west of the island , they would

march up the Severn and down the Thames , passing

Dob un i occu through the friendly tribe of the , who

pied what is now Gloucestershire , and descending

from the Cotswolds into our Oxfordshire . Then this would be the district in which they would encounter the paramount tribe of the Catuv ellaun i under their King Caradoc or Caratacus and his

To idumn us Cun ob eli n e brother g , the two sons of , who came forward from the farther end of the Chilt e rns ; and there are good grounds for thinking

e that th ir great ﬁght took place about Dorchester.

The story of the battle , as related by the historian

To i u . d mn u Dion Cassius , appears to be this g s had

crossed over to the right bank of the Thames , and Vespasian and a large section of the Roman army

followed him , while Plautius and the main body remained on the left bank : there was a ﬁerce

engagement on the right bank , and the Britons were forced to retreat ; but they could not at once recross in the direction of their own country beyond the

as Chilterns , the main body of the Romans faced them ; therefore their only escape was eastward on

: Dob un i the other side of the river meanwhile the , already well disposed towards the Romans , had

e i d clared Openly in the r favour, and Plautius stationed a garrison to protect them against the Catuv ellaun i before he followed these down the river : then he found that they had crossed to the north TH E CO UN TRY OF TH E CUCKOO PEN S 79 bank and had taken their stand in a marshy district where they could not easily be attacked and whence th ey would have ready access to the Chilterns : but hi s other forces were conveyed across the river

e an d abov by a bridge of boats , coming upon the Britons on the Side where these were not expecting

them they gained a complete victory , and the chief tain Togidumn us was slain : while the Roman also ff su ered great loss , and instead of following up his advantage on the spot he passed down the river

towards the s ea and met Claudius hims e lf in Essex . All the story is clear and the details ﬁt well together

the if the ﬁght took place about Dorchester , if great British camp on the abrupt hill of Sin odun across

the river was the spot which Plautius garrisoned , if the ford which the Catuv ellaun i crossed was

Wallingford , and if th e marsh where they encamped w as Crowmarsh . H ere they would be protected by

a network of swamps which they knew well , while their assailan ts were ignorant of them : here the adjacent hills would offer them ready access to their native district ; and here th ey would s ee the Roman busy with his work of strengthening the fortiﬁed

h ill near Dorchester, and would little imagine that his main troop was at the same time secretly cross

ing the river to attack them .

It was to this same meeting- point of the hills and

the river that the Saxon came , three centuries later, in the great advance which made him master of all the Upper Thames valleys and soon led him forward di to the Severn . And close to the edge of this s 80 TH E M YTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO trict the e , where lin of the Chilte rns carri e s itself — on beyond the river in the Berkshire Do wns the — [Es cen dun e or Ashdown of those days th ere came the Dane in his ﬁrst incursion into the central parts

e of the land , to receive his ﬁrst great repuls from

. e the Alfred And close to the dge again , on Berk

- shire river bank, at Wallingford , was the castle to which William the Norman cam e aft er the battle of Hastings when he found hims elf compelle d to delay

e e e e e his ntranc into London , and wher he rec iv d

e Wi od the the homag of the barons , for g Saxon thegn of Wallingford was h is fri end : and under the walls

e e e e of this same castl in the next c ntury, wh n the ﬁerc

’ e itzcoun t Wi od s Bri n F , husband of g granddaughter,

for e e held it th e Empress Maud , the tr aty was sign d

’ which closed the civil wars of Ste phen s re ign : and

’ w e h n we come to the Barons wars , and pass on

e e through the various scen s of our medi val h istory, we ﬁnd that the part which Wallingford played in th e m is prominent again and again ; and the sam e castle was the last in the central parts of England to hold out for King Charles when the civil war between King and Parliament was drawing to a close ; and

e ﬁnally Cromwell order d its complete destruction . It seems as if no scene of old English history could ev er be enact e d without requiring the aid of this district in some of its e vents . All this adds to the interest of the fact that the same is the neighb our hood where we have th e remarkabl e cluster of s o called Cuckoo Pens .

8 2 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT CUCKOO starting from H enley on the Lower Thame s to reach

e e Mongew ll below Wallingford on the Upper Tham s . A leading antiquarian of the district in the nin et eenth

d rd n . An e o e century , Mr Edward Reade , mad a very care ful examination of it and left full not e s in manu

e script . H e urg d that the mode of its construction

e e e e is vidence of extr me antiquity, for it is alt rnat ly

e bank and trench , and where it is bank th re is no depression on either side from which it can hav e

the been thrown up , nor are its materials same as

e thos of the adjacent soil . It is heaped up with chalk , gravel , and clay , carried from the trench

e e e - abov , and carri d , we must suppose , in h ad loads by means of wicke r baskets and with inﬁnite labour .

turfiw a e e e the A y s v ral f et in width , running along

the inner edge of bank , is traditionally said to be the

e e e way along which these materials wer conv y d . What is the reason for this strange m ethod of con

s o struction , which would seem to us to involve much additional toil " Was there t he same super s tition that has been found among primitive races in

e oth r lands , who fear to rob for less sacred purposes the fertile soil that brings them nourishment And certainly the rude implements with which th e se ancient toilers d e lved could work more easily in single spots h ere and there than in digging all along in a continuous line through the entangled

- e roots of a half cleared forest . All this carri s our thoughts back to the earliest infancy of human handicraft . The bank was doubtless raised as a boundary by TWO C H I LTERN BO U NDARY DYKES 83 some tribe of early times which mad e i ts s e ttle m ent up the Thames on this southern e n d of the

e e Chiltern H ills . It has b n attributed to the Anca lite s ; and though it would b e rash to bas e any

e the e e argum nt upon th ori s of our older antiquaries , th e ir story of the An calites in this district deserves a

e . . Natural His tor o Ox ord notic Dr Plot , in his y f f s hire e the n e n , took Henl y to be a cient st Tow in the ” e Coun t hav i n f mhen whol y, g a British name, ro , ll meaning old , and ey, a place ; and h e adds that it perhaps might be the h ead town of the p e ople ” e An cali tes ar call d that revolted to Cms . It is

e the e r markable that Camden , historian of Que n ’ “ e An cas tle Elizabeth s time , tells of the nam still

surviving near the western part of the town . But

e in any case we may suppose a primitive trib , be

‘ e An calites e th y or not , coming up the riv r and making their ﬁrst location on the bank at H enley wh ere th eir dyke b egins and wh ence th ey ove r spread the district of which the dyke is the northern

. e An calites e e boundary And furth r, the bord r d on

e e e the Atr bat s , wh o had crossed at a lat r dat e from

e e Gaul , wh re the portion of their trib that stayed behind has bequeathed its nam e to the province of

Artois and to the city of Arras , and the British

e immigrants occupied a district south of the Tham s ,

e having Silchest r for their capital . It is at least a plausible theory that when the An calit e s had b ee n subjugated by th ese newer immigrants—for it has been supposed that th ey became herdsmen and — Shepherds of the Atrebates a remnant of th e m 84 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C UCKOO w as allowed to hold this position in the woods within the bend of the rive r. Certain it is that some primitive occupants of the extremity of the Chiltern forest formed the great earthwork . Antiquarians are divided about the meaning of

Grims Dyke for som e s ay that the root - word is to

Gren ze be found in the German , a frontier or boun dary, which appears also in the Scottish name of

ae e e Gr me or Graham, a dw ll r on the frontier . But

O n e others connect it with Grimm , the Evil ; and it may well be that when t he Saxon came he attributed

i e e such a dyke to the gr m ﬁ nd , p rhaps in aston i s hmen t at its superhuman magnitude or perhaps in

e hatred of the conquer d race who made it , just as many a similar earth work is called a devil ’s ditch or an old tumulus is known as Grimsbury . And it is

’ worth noting here that a grim s ditch on the

Berkshire Downs , nearly Opposite to this one in

o the Oxfordshire, is called in a charter f tenth cen

’ dree eles beece the tury g , dragon s ridge and the folk

O f lore that district, about Blewbury , says that it

the was ploughed by devil in one night , and two adjacent barrows are the heaps of scrapings from his plough , while a lesser one is the clod which he threw at his imp for driving crooked . The Grims Dyke at Henley has entire ly disapp eared

e in the town itself, but a document of the clos of the sixteenth century Shows that the ditch was then to be seen across Bell Street , the chief thoroughfare of thetown . It can still be traced in detached portions through the woods , though the plough has cleared

86 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO

e e e a bold and lofty bank cloth d with turf, dotted h r and there with stunte d thorn - bushes and brightene d in summer - tim e with harebell and ﬂ y- orchis and

- b e e . thyme , and now and then with the rarer orchis Here again signs of enlargement app ear in a Slight

the hollow that runs along northern side , but the materials of the bank are vastly large r than this

e e littl excavation would supply . And esp cially along these Slopes above the river, where the land was at once more fertil e and more exposed to the incursions

the of a foe, some later tribe may well have found n e ed of raising and strength ening for purposes of d e fence the bank which in its ﬁrst purpose had b ee n

e e the m r ly a tribal boundary lin e . Very probably Saxons made use of it and added to its height in

’ their gradual occupation of the Briton s land . When

the we come to the last portion , dropping down

few the e lowest declivity , a yards of bank are ov r grown with trees and underwood and the last half mile is nothing more than a slight mere - bank s ur mount e d by a h edge and palings as you follow along the strip of beech - plantations reaching to the river side .

e Just within the dyke , and sev red by it from — “ Newnham a home of new men when the Saxons

— e e settled there is Mongewell , writt n in old tim s Mun s w ell and commonly interpreted as a corruption

k w el of Mon s l. The parish stretches upward along

e the the dyke for miles into the int rior of hills , and

' the little village lies at the bottom near the rive r. The early settlers who planned their great boundary TWO CH I LTERN BO UN DARY DYKES 87

did wisely to enclose within it the beautiful well

which gives the village its Saxon name . It is a

cluster of springs , bubbling up clear as crystal out

of the chalk bed , and now spread out into a little

- lake, where it has been banked to form a mill head ; but the mill is now disused and thence it splashes on in a Shingly brook to pour its elf into the rive r

e within half a mile of its source . In the angl at the mouth of the brook is the little apsidal church with its quaint re lics of e arly N orman days ; and the elevated Site on which it stands was plainly a sacred

tumulus or barrow of a previous age, perhaps the

- e burial mound of some primitive chi ftain , or perhaps a rallying point of the primitive tribe at this limit

of their domain farthest off from H enley. Close to the church there stood until lately a mansion of

- some antiquity , where a prince bishop of Durham lived in the ﬁrst quarter of the nineteenth century ;

’ for it w as his wife s inheritance and they planted a

e e park with timber of unusual xcell nce , noble pines

e and grov s of luxuriant elms , and beeches which are

- without rivals in the neighbouring beech lands .

They also pres e rved as a turfed carriage - drive a mile or more of the ancient track along the inne r

side of Grims Bank by which , according to tradition , its materials we re carried down as the ditch was

excavated above in the woodland .

e We hav no need , therefore , to concern ourselves

iri with the theory put forward by Dr. Plot , who ,

a his book alre dy cited , fancied that this dyke was an embanked military road , leading from Walling 8 8 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C UCKOO

e e e Callev a At reb atum ford , which he b li v d to be , to

he e Colnbrook, which identiﬁed with Pont s ; nor

e A n ti uities o with the th ory of Skelton , in his q f

’ Ox ords hire b e ff f , who took this to a second O a s Dyke thrown up by that monarch when he conquered Cynewulf of Wessex at Ben s in gton in 777 and added

e this district to his Mercian realm . Who ver may have widened or h eightened Grims Dyke afterwards , it probably exist e d here before e ither Saxon or

Roman visited the valley of the Thames . We have now to pass on some two or three miles

e northward . Ther , lying almost parallel with Grims

Dyke , was a similar but less prominent earthwork

e of which some large portions remain . It b gan at

Ben s i n ton —a g or Benson , place whose history will

e — e call for fuller notice in another chapt r, and ther

Medlers it was known as the Bank ; for Dr. Plot

e e e describ s an mbank d way, running west of Benson

e e Church and called by that nam , in the s venteenth

e ee century . This dyk took a wider sw p across the

S O Chiltern Hills, as to enclose the whole of the

e e district within the bend of the river, wh r as Grims

- Dyke only enclosed about three quarters of it . A glance at the map will Show that Benson is the point at which the river turns sharply from i ts east ward course and ﬂows directly southward , and the point at which it ﬁnally resumes i ts straight course

i s eastward j ust below H enley, near the village of

B e M e dmenham . enson and Medmenham are thirt en

e e miles apart in a direct line, and the bank lay b twe n them curving out about a mile to the northward .

90 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UC KOO

the e and along Henley Hill, so passing south rn end of Stonor Park ; though no trac es of it appear to

e have attract d notice in these parts . But along the

e western portion of its course , and for mor than half

the its length , line of it is clearly made out . It

Pi s hillb ur e the shows well in y Wood , prot cting

- e north eastern front of the hill . After this it has l ft

e no signs for a mil or two, but it appears again very distinctly along the roadside we st of the hamlet of

e b e e Russ lls Water, where a rough bank is to s en som etim es north and sometimes south of the mod e rn

e . e highway which crosses it and recross s Then , aft r

e e e a Short bre ak wh r the plough has destroy d it , a

the very ﬁne bank , marked on Ordnance Map as “ ” e the Danish Intr nchment , runs through beech woods and along t he northern fron t of Swyncombe

d he . en e t Down At th e , instead of desc nding abrupt

e west rn front of the down , it forks upon the brow and throws a branch down each angle to me e t the

Ickn ield Way at the foot . From the point where the southern branch of the bank m eets it there is a

ﬁ eld- the e way ascending opposit slope , and probably there was another to converge with it from the northern branch also ; after which the line is trace abl e i n the dire ct course e ither by ﬁeld- way or by

e e the footpath , with an interruption her and th re, all

e way to Benson . We may pr sume that a great part

e the the of it , lik line of Grims Dyke, would be ditch instead of bank across the Open fields ; and accord i n l e gy along the upper part of the Ew lme fields , for nearly half a mile , we find a broad strip of waste TWO C H I LTERN BO UN DARY DYKES 9 1

e e e ground , cover d with grass and und rwood , call d

—a the Shaw, common term for a copse or shady

e - e e plac , where a ditch besid the footpath m asures

en some feet both in width and depth . It has been larged within living memory to carry off the waters of a spring which breaks out at rare intervals in the adjacent ﬁeld ; but it would seem that already the

e ditch was of considerabl e siz e . Then the track go s '

on , lost for a few yards across some marshy ground

the Pi tle s e called , but reapp aring as a footpath with

a hedge and a small trench beside it , chieﬂy remark able as forming the boundary which divides the orchards and smaller e nclosure s at the back of

Ewelme from the open ﬁelds to th e north of them . This footpath is lost for a third of a mile across th e manor of Fiﬁeld from time immemorial ; but Sixty years ago it existed along th e upper part of the

the village of Benson , forming a boundary at back

e e The of the nclosures exactly as it does at Ew lme . line of its original continuation in Benson may easily

be noted still , leading out by the Castle Inn yard and proceeding thence by the present roadway along the front of the churchyard to the river . N o traces of an embankment are now to be seen ff at B e nson except what the churchyard a ords . But the line upon which the church stands is a ridge from which the ground slopes sharply northward and slightly southward also ; and a few yards directly

east of the church , at a depth of eight feet below the surface and two feet b e low the leve l of pre vious

burials , a fragment of rude pottery was found a few 9 2 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C UCKOO

e years ago, with the jaw and other bon s of an ox , in

e the a lay r of undisturbed sand , proving that soil at this d epth had been deposited after human occupa

e tion had commenc d here . It is evident therefore

the u that Benson Church was built upon bank, j st as Mongewell Church w as built upon a primitive tumulus a mshort distance within the line of the e e parallel Gri s Dyke . In some villages an ntr nched camp b ecame the churchyard and the church was

as e built within it , at West Wycombe in the Chilt rns

e e the and at Finchampst ad in B rkshire . At Benson church stood a few yards above the easte rn boundary

e e the of the camp , which therefor lay betw en it and

e e e its e e river. Old inhabitants still r m mb r w st rn

e bank near the riv rside , with the roadway passing along within it ; but all remains of it disapp e are d e ntirely wh en the ground was levelled and enclosed

e in the middle of the nin teenth century . It is frequently mentioned in the old er d e scriptions of

the village , and to th e present day the general out line of it is pres e rved in a quadrangular m e adow

e with the road ways compl et ely ncompassing it . Its

’ former character is described in Boydell s His tory of

th iver Thames 1 e e e R , in 7 5 4, wh r we learn that west of the church is a bank and trench in a square form ; the north side still retains somewhat of its original appearance to the west and south th ey are readily traced ; but to the e ast it requires a minute ” e examination to discern them . Thomas H arne , the gossiping antiquary of the beginning of the

e eighteenth century, giv s a description of it which

94 TH E MYTH OF THE PENT C UCKOO

The name of Medlers Bank at the one end chal len ges attention by its Similarity to that of Medmen ham at the other en d for a presumption arises that both belonged to the same people who w ere called

Medlers Medmen — e or , probably as being by rac or perhaps merely by position middlemen ” between

e e e two oth r peoples . And this suggests the inf renc

that , while a British remnant occupied the southern

e end of the Chilterns b hind their Grims Dyke, these ” midmen were settled in the adjacent district , having their Me dlers Bank as thei r limit northward ; and as the Britons had th eir H enley down the river

s o Medmen within th e one bank , these had their “ e ham in the sam position within the other bank .

e If this be the tru account , it may further be inferred that wh e n the Saxons in 5 7 1 captured the British ” Ben s in aS - village which became the g ton , and took

possession of all the district northward , up the Thames as far as Eynsham and along the Chilterns

as far as Aylesbury , the Britons were Shut up within “ ” the corner of the hills and these midmen were

dwe llers between them and their conquerors . For our present purpose the Special interest of thes e two boundary dykes consists in the fact that there is attached to e ach of them on its inner or

southern side a spot known as the Cuckoo Pen . In

e each case , too, it is at th e strong st portion of the embankment where it ascends the western front of the hills in a prominent and exposed position . The

one which belongs to the more northern bank, on

Swyncombe Down , is perhaps the most striking of TWO CH I LTERN BO U N DARY DYKES 95 all the numerous Cuckoo Pens of this district ; and therefore both the spot itself and its surroundings

e will merit a detailed description . The nam of

e — Swyncomb , whether it be from the swine that

n on e i fested its woods or, as is more probable, from

it — combe Sweyn who possessed , implies a or hollow in the hillside ; and the word enters into s everal

- e afew place nam s within a radius of miles from this ,

Hun tercomb e Watcomb e Pos tcomb e as Wycombe , , , ,

e H olcomb . Though the word is British , and identical with the cumor cwmwhich occurs s o freque ntly in

e e the e Cumb rland and Wal s , Saxons adopt d it in their language ; but its common occurrence is re cog n i s ed as a plain indication that a consid e rabl e British remnant existed in the neighbourhood ; for the

e e Saxon would be likely to apply it , as a g n ral rule, only to places which he heard s o nam e d by the

Briton .

Swyncombe Down , as it is approached by the

kn i eld e I c Way below it , mak s as striking a picture

e as can well be found in the Chilt rn scenery . It is one of those bold proj e ctions which look as if Nature had built th em for the very purpose of forming

bastions for the defence of the invaded natives . The front of this steep slope consists of a pair of

rounded hills , looking almost artiﬁcial in their

peculiar symmetry , like the twin towers ﬂanking the

e gateway of a fortress . Up the front of th se rises

e the dyke , in the form already d scribed ; and on

reaching the summit it is carried on t o ~ forma defence along the northern edge of the open down 96 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO and through the thick beech - wood b eyond till it h reaches t e main tableland of the hills . Midway upon the summit of the down , and just touching the

e e e . v rg of the dyk , is the circle of the Cuckoo Pen It is enclosed in a rude triangle formed by two smaller dykes striking across from the main one .

The circle is some ﬁfty feet across , and is now

e e chieﬂy mark d by some r cently planted beeches , among which are a few survivals of Older growth ; for from time immemorial it has been a little beech

e grove . These are the only tr es upon the ridge of

n e e the dow , rising like a banner b tw en the two h eights of the hill - front as you approach from

e Ewelm , and forming a marked feature in the land scape as you look up from the farther parts of the

e valley . The tal of the Swyncomb e villagers is that within this b e ech - grown circle the Philistin es one day pent up the Cuckoo but we are left to conjee ture what race the legend would d e scrib e as

Philistines and what fugitive may be its cuckoo. Then if we pass to the side of the down where a lateral ridge lies parallel with the main one on its

e e e south rn and mor accessible slop , we ﬁnd traces of another ancient fortiﬁcation with another quaint tradition . Almost hidden among the dark foliage of the junipers which grow luxuriantly along these slopes there is a clearly marked quadrangular earth

It the the work . is scarcely more than half width of

Cuckoo Pen , and on considerably lower ground . Fragments of primitive pottery have been found

the . about it , through burrowing of abundant rabbits

98 T HE MYTH OF TH E PEN T CUCKOO branch track descending from the Ic kn ield Way cuts through the embankment . But in this case everything that may formerly have distinguished the plot from the surrounding ﬁelds has vanished entirely under the action of the plough . Yet the name survives ; and as far as the different conﬁguration of the ground

e admits , its position corresponds precis ly with that of the well - preserved Cuckoo Pen on Swyncombe

Down . CHAPTER IX

A SER1ES O F CH I LTERN CUCKOO PEN S

SEVE RAL other places along the Chiltern Hills have

e e th ir Cuckoo P ns , and they are of the same character as those which have b e en described in connection with the ancient embankm ents at Swyn

combe and Mongewell . We shall ﬁnd that in most

e cases , if not in all , the Sit s which they occupy are of considerable interest from the point of view of

primitive antiquity . One is to be seen in the inter

mediate space between the two above mentioned ,

and in the parish of Ewelme . That village is well

known in history as the home of William de la Pole, ff the exiled Duke of Su olk, who was barbarously murdered at s ea while crossing over into France in

the reign of H enry VI . , and whose widow built the

very picturesque group of church , almshouses , and schools which adorns the village and beneath which springs the perennial brook that gives it the name

- l e - e ea we m . of Ewelm , the , or water wells Ewelme Down is a proj e ction of th e hills Similar to

Swyncombe Down , but jutting out to a much Shorter

e distanc . It forms , in fact , the southern arm which ” e ncloses the combe , as Swyncombe Down forms the northern arm ; and a valley of less than a mile 99 1 00 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO

in breadth , which seems to be described in a Saxon ” e charter as F rnfeld , lies between them , with the village of Swyncombe in the innermost angle. All the front of the Slope of Ewelm e Down is thickly grown with junipers , and the upper part has been plante d with beech . At the outermost point of this

e plantation , and now enclosed within the gard ns of

e a mansion which has recently been er cted , there is

- a group of more prominent beech trees , older too

- e and more weather beaten than those behind th m , and until lately there were a few broken stumps of d e ad trees remaining among them . They stand as the straggling relics of what appears to have been a i P s en . circle . This the Cuckoo Its position is

e its lik that of neighbour, save that it occupies the front point from which the hill slopes down on thre e sides ; for Ewelme Down has no lengthen e d ridge like that of Swyncombe Down where the Cuckoo

e Pen is on a high point in the middl of it .

Sw n Again , a Short distance northward from y combe Down we come to Shirburn H ill , another abrupt projection very similar to Ewelme Down . It stretches out towards the village in which the picturesque turrets of the old moated castle , the

Ma cles ﬁeld home of the Earl of c , rise among the b ill trees and form the promin ent feature . On this the traces of early fortiﬁcations which have b ee n

e w e not d on S yncombe Down r peat themselves , with differences which make the general res emblance all the more Signiﬁcant . There are large remains of an ancient dyke, grown with junipers , running up the

1 02 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C UCKOO and in this instance again there is a well - marked

e entrenchm nt which seems to be ancient . Passing still northward beyond Beacon H ill w e

e e come to Crowell . H r a ﬁeld is called the Cuckoo

Pen , and the Older inhabitants recollect that formerly the name belonged particularly to a little copse which existed in the ﬁ e ld but which has been

e d stroyed in recent times . It is possible that those who are acquainted with the line of the Chilterns as it passes on north - westward through Buckingham shire may know other examples O f the Cuckoo Pen in that county ; but sufﬁ cient have now been noted to Show what are the characteristic features of the spots which bear that title in this part of Oxford shire . Then if we pass back to the farther part of these hills , going southward from Grims Dyke and the M ongewell Cuckoo Pen , a breadth of little more than a mile brings us to an important trackway rising up from the river - bank and thus running parallel with the dyke . It is the continuation of the

the Ickn ield Berkshire Portway , as Way is there

e called . It crosses the riv r by what is now Little stoke Ferry ; and while the Ickn ield Way Of

Oxfordshire diverges from it northward , we have this track keeping its direct course eastward . It passes along the highway of the village of Ipsden then it survives for some distance as a mere foot path ; and afterwards it climbs the hill - front in a

e - st ep ascent among the beech woods , known from

’ B ri time immemorial as e n s Hill . After this the CH I LTERN C UC KOO PEN S 1 03 road passes on across the upland by Stoke Row and

- the Roman potteries , where the cherry trees which th e Romans imported still ﬂourish in the orchards , and the very mode of grafting them which Roman writers describe is said to be still handed down as a treasured tradition . Eventually , by Witheridge

a H ill and Rocky L ne , the track seems to converge

’ s o with the line of Grims Dyke near Grey s Court , passing out of the district at H enley. ’ The steep rise called Berin s H ill takes i ts name from the famous missionary of the seventh century,

St . Berin , of whom mention has already been made . H e is said by an old tradition to have had a cell at this spot , which he used as one of the centres of his

i s mission work from Dorchester. And it a spot of

e remarkable int rest in many ways . The Romans had some kind of military outpost here and within the wood close by is an ancient well , built with large ﬂin ts and carried down a great depth into the hillside . Local tradition and the judgment of anti quari es agree in regarding it as Roman work. Well Place is an old farmhouse in the hollow dene below the well ; and here a recent owner found a gold

Cun ob elin e coin of , marked with the British horse ensign ; and many British coins as well as Roman coins of several Emperors , from Augustus to Con s tan tius , have been picked up round the spot . It became Bis p es don in Saxon times and Bishopton in later times , as being one of the manors belonging to the Dorchester bishopric . But there are remains

' an Berin s also that carry us back to earlier period . 1 04 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT CU CKOO

H ill is remarkable for two tracks hollowed out

e the e d eply in the soil , while ridge between th m is occupi e d by a mod e rn road which has supe rseded

The the them . inner track , on the right of ascent , passes through the wood a fe w yards away and escapes Observation if it be not looke d for . The outer track is in part damaged and narrowed by the making of the new road close beside it ; but

e its entire course remains , prot cted by a bank f thrown out rom it on the left , which separates it from the adjacent ﬁelds and woods . A few cottages

e stand beside this outer track, and the story of th ir older occupants is that one of the hollow ways was formerly used for ascent and the other for descent . Some have thought that they were dug out thus deeply in order to be covere d in with boughs and hidden as secret passages between the hill and the valley or it may be that their depth gave suffi cient secrecy without such covering. But w hatever may be the true account of their origin , there can hardly be a spot along the Chilterns marked with more

e curious r lics of remote antiquity . Then if we pass to the point at which the two ways converge upon the summit, as they approach the crossing of the

are - e e e upper highway, there two earth circl s b tw en them , each with a low bank and shallow trench , measuring about ﬁfteen yards across ; the one planted with lofty Scotch ﬁrs which ris e con s picu ous l the y above the surrounding woods , other now cleared of the trees which recently cove red it . The — t - or more prominent of these ear h circles, possibly

1 06 TH E MYTH O F TH E PEN T C UCKOO

e e th ir Saxon conqu rors , so the Saxons in their turn had collecte d here when th ey were ousted by the Normans ; and at this time they were rallying their

e str ngth and making themselves dangerous . H ence arose the nee d of removing Ipsden Church from the

e e upper woodland to the plain , wh r a prominent position was chosen well in view of the surrounding valley . But the folklore of the village has a tradition of yet another site . Some two miles away southward , on the lower slope of Greenhill which projects over

’ Berin s Ipsden westward from beyond Hill , there is a spot among the woods now includ e d in the parish

’ of Checkendon , known as the Devil s Churchyard . It has the same story which we have already noticed at Swyncombe , and which is also found at Benson and elsewhere . The peopl e tried to build the church in this churchyard , but the devil demolished their work night after night and they were comp elled

e e he to build it lsewh re . If t usual interpretation of

e e the legend is accept d , we must inf r that the Saxon missionary chose this site b e cause the oth e r had been associated with the pagan worship of his con verts and he therefore d esired to detach them from it , but the inﬂuences of paganism were too strong

e for him , and thus the churchyard where he attempt d

the to build was claimed by devil as his own , while the missionary was forced to take the other on the

- hill top . And it is likely , also , that this place , where the Saxons had practised their heathen rites , would be a de sec rated sanctuary of the Christian Britons CH I LTERN CU CKOO PEN S 1 07

whom they had dispossessed . We have already seen that it was probably at or near the Cuckoo a Pen , where also we h ve seen th e further tradition

a . that St . Berin had cell or chapel Thus the two entirely distinct traditions seem to ﬁt in with each

other an d with the history . There is at least one other Cuckoo Pen in this ’ Berin s district . It is a mile or more south of

H ill , and in the parish of Checkendon . A thickly wooded projection known as Ape Hill juts out a little from the ridge and up the front of this , from a point near Bottom Farm , rises a hollowed and

as - embanked track , used a bridle way through the wood . There is a deﬁnite tradition that a copse or clump near this track was called the Cuckoo Pen but though villagers of the last generation knew the spot it is not remembered n ow. The analogy of

I . that at psden , however, leaves little doubt about it A circular clump enclosed by a hedge is prominent at the end of the open ﬁeld into which the bridle - way of Ape H ill ascends , and just at the outer edge of the main ridge of the hills . Its position and character therefore mark it as corresponding with the series of Cuckoo Pens to the north of it , and we may con clude that like the rest it was the spot which the

Briton had made his own . a In the name of th e H undred of L ngtree , which M includes these parishes of ongewell , Ipsden , a Checkendon , and others adjacent , we seem to h ve an illustration of the fact that we are on the meeting ground of S axon an d Briton for if the usual inter 1 08 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO p retation is correct the Saxon adjective lang stands

e the tre her with British , the term for a dwelling or village , which forms a part of nearly a hundred of th e village - names of Cornwall and appears occasionally throughout England and in many parts of the continent of Europe where the Celtic races have left their mark.

1 1 0 TH E MYTH OF THE PEN T C U CKOO

Bray, those parishes having their common boundary in the H igh Street of the town . Of the two neighbouring tracks which we have to notice , the more southern seems to be represented at ﬁrst by a road which crosses the Coln out of

Middlesex at West Drayton , passing through

Thorney and Langley Marish , after which it is merged in the modern highroad and its anci e nt line has disappeared . But this lost line has been carefully traced in an article entitled A Corn er of

’ Mercia e 1 88 in Blackwood s Magazine of Sept mber 7 , i which s largely followed in this chapter. The track

En d led directly through Upton , Chalvey, Farnham , “ Ci en ham—a and pp , chipping ham or marketing ( village of Saxon times and a royal hunting- seat of N orman times ; then by the ruined Burnham Abbey and by a farm which bears the signiﬁcant name of “ W s to n e w , called in the fourteenth century la Wes toun e s o to cross the Thames into Berkshire

Bib rac e t . at Bray, the Roman And it should be noted that Richard King of the Romans , th e younger

- s on of King J ohn , dating his foundation charter of Burnham Abbey at Cipp en hamin 1 266 and bestow ing this manor upon it , mentions among the lands “ ” a th t he gives the wood of la Strete, thus indicating “ that a Roman Street passed this way . The track which follows a parallel course on the north of this enters the county at Iver and passes through another line of Saxon settlements ,

e arn ham e Wexham , Stoke Pog s , F Royal , Britw ll ,

Burnham and Hitcham , descending thence by A B UCKINGHAMSH I RE C U CKOO PEN 1 1 1

Cliveden , along a hollow way which can still be traced apart from the modern road , to the ferry which crosses to Cookham . H ere within the sharp bend of the river was a British village of which much remains to be said in a later chapter, and the importance of the crossing at this point i s prove d by t he discovery of a number of skeletons and of

Roman swords and javelin - h e ads when a cut for a new channel of the river was made some y ears ago across the meadow. In this track , therefore , together with that which crossed to Bray, we seem to have

e another example , such as has been alr ady observed ,

e of a double way , the one line taking the low r ground n e ar the river and th e other taking the hilly ff ground , the one or the other o ering the particular advantage which the exigencies of the hour might demand . On the higher ground along which the more northern track passes w e have the famous ancient forest of Burnham Beeches , and the beautiful park of Dropmore wh ere bits of primeval woodland are intermixed with magniﬁcent groves of pine and

e ff av nues of cedar, and the lofty line of chalk cli of Cliveden where again modern wealth has only striven to add to the beauty of the slopes while leaving the ancient forest undisturbed . A few miles to the north - east we have the great oval British camp of twenty acres at Bulstrode and again a few

miles to the north - west we have th e cluster of British earthworks at Wycombe with the fine entrenchment of Desborough Castle giving its name 1 1 2 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO to the Hundre d ; and between these points is the town of Beacon s field which seems to t e ll of the first felling of th e beeches , as the slope leads up to the

e high st point of the Chilterns at Penn Beacon . The southernmost portion of the Buckingham shire Chilterns makes its south - west ern angle in the abrupt slope of Taplow Hill , overlooking the Tham es in front of the ancient track which has been

e the describ d . As the traveller crosses river by

Maidenhead Bridge, this eminence with the turrets

’ of Lord Des b oroughs mansion appearing above the trees forms the prominent obj ect close at hand on

The e the north . slopes in front of it b ar the name of the Bury Fields ; and it i s recorded that when the

O f Norman church Taplow, which stood close to the

e the mansion , was removed in the arly part of nine t een th b e i n the century to rebuilt village street , trac es of the ditch and vallum of a British strong

e at hold w re uncovered . Close hand is a bed of clay where the water is said never to fail ; and this wat e r not only supplied the fortress but appears also to have given rise to the nam e of the adjacent

e the Ba s es ﬁeld , call d p ; for it is supposed that

’ Beri n converts of St . s mission in the seventh century received th e ir baptism here . But of all the obj ects of antiquarian interest in this county perhaps none can claim to take precedence of the great

ee tumulus , nearly ﬁft n feet high and about two

e e hundre d and forty in circumf renc , in the old

1 88 churchyard . It was opened in 3 , and minute details of its character and contents were published

1 1 4 TH E MYTH OF TH E PE NT C UCKOO fragments of m etal which may have b e en parts of

e e his armour. Her w re also the two buckets of his

e on e e warship , plac d beside his h ad and the other

e beside his f et , ﬂattened by the pressure of the earth , yet showing that they w ere made of wooden staves bound together with iron and encased with bronze

e e lik the shield , but this bronze had be n embossed

- —e with a running ornament of horse shoes , mblems ,

- it is presumed , of the Teutonic White Horse deity . Supplies of food had been given him for his j ourney to the realms b eyond the sunset for a large bronze

e vase, twelve inches in height and more than twelv

in width , with a massive handle on each side and a

s e t base loaded with lead , was beside his head .

Two drinking horns of great size, tipped with gilded

e hi s bronz and lipped with gilded Silver, were near hands ; and a smaller drinking horn with tip and lip all of Silver was near his head and another near

e e his feet . Th re w re four broken vessels of thin

sage- green glass of beautiful design and elaborate

workmanship . There were also another knife of

the iron , and bosses of two other shields , and a

- Silve r gilt ornament of crescent Shape . Some rings or beads of ivory pinned with silver were thought to be counters for a game that he might have

pastime . Finally, over the planks that covered him was laid his Spear with a barbed point and a socket

is of iron , pointing towards the west . It said , by

e thos e who know, that his ornam nts are Saxon ,

e c ertainly not , as was at ﬁrst supposed , thos of a

Scandinavian Viking, and certainly not made in our A B UCKIN GHAMSH I RE C U CKOO PEN 1 1 5

island but brought from the continent , for Similar

work is found in Merovingian tombs . Can we tell

’ who he was " They s ay that Taplow is Taepa s

Hlaw . But it need not be assumed that the hill is

We named from the occupant of this grave . Shall

e pr sently see that there are some good reasons , at

any rate , for thinking that he is a hero well known

a . in history, and not the unknown T epa We must pass meanwhile southward to a point on

the rive r- bank little more than a mile from Taplow H ill and just beyond the lin e of the other track which we have followed as far as its crossing to

Amerd n Amerd . e en Bray H ere is Bank , and is a

manor in the parish of Taplow . It was formerly known as Aumb erden e for in Taplow Church a very interesting brass of the fourteenth c entury “ Aumb erden e commemorates N ich ole de , jadis ” e i s h pessoner de Londr s , a member of the F

’ ee mongers Company . It has b n supposed that this is probably on e of the s e veral place - names which

the preserve memory of the Romanised Briton,

Ambrose , or, to name him fully , Aurelius Ambro

e ff sins , the same whom the W lsh romancer, Geo rey

M rdin of Monmouth , called y , or Merlin , and whom some identify with the famous Uther, or Victor, “ called Pen - dragon or chief dragon from the im

- perial dragon standard , and the father of King

Arthur . Ambrose is said to have bee n buried at Ames

- b ri bury , formerly Ambres y , on Salisbury Plain .

e his H e also l aves name in Essex, in the large camp 1 1 6 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT CUCKOO

' Th i s of Amb res b ury Banks in Epping Forest . ere an Ambrose Farm in the parish of Nufﬁeld on the oth er Side of the Chilterns on the high road from H e nley as it reaches the boundary of Ben s in gton just above the crossing of the Ickn i eld Way. Also

e Aldches ter in North Oxfordshire , clos to the site of

off e w e and just the Akeman Str et , have the village

Aumb er of Ambrosden . With this last the name of m dene in Taplow appears to be identical . A brose

e e was the succ ssor of Vortig rn , whose name — - the Vor tigern perhaps means simply Overlord , unfortunate British chieftain who i s said to have invited the aid of the Saxons against the Picts and

Scots , with results which are well known . When the Saxon helpers proved to be even more terrible e he the e nemies than the ot rs , Britons , harass d

e e e beyond endurance , rallied th ms lv s to a vigorous h effort of resistance under t e l eadership of Ambros e .

i s 66 H first victory is said to have been gained in 4 , and he led his forlorn hope for nearly fifty years . It is a commonplac e of our history books to regard the Saxon conquest as the result of a series of — sporadic incursions , groups of fighting men cross ing the Channel in their warships with their wives and children , taking possession of some portion of

e the soil , and adopting it thenceforward as th ir home . Piratical incursions had been continuous , even under the Roman rule . But none can fail to

fﬁ s a realise the extreme di culty, to y the least , of effe cting permanent settl e ments of families by such

e methods , in the fac of tribes practised as the Britons

1 1 8 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO

e Bede, hims lf a Northumbrian and therefore pre s umab l e y an Angle , tells us that the Angles cam “ ” the i s from country which called Angulus , that it “ was betwe en the provinces of the Jutes and the ” e e Saxons , and that it is said to have r main d from ” that time unto this day a desert . H is account ,

w as therefore , implies that the conquest of Britain a complete and absolut e migration of the entire

e English nation into our island . Thes Angles , from their position in what we now call Schleswig, had access to the sea both by the Baltic and by the

e in ﬂu Elb , and were outside the reach of Roman

e e e enc . They would naturally mak use of thes advantages when they were push e d forward in the

he e e moving of t nations . Moreov r th y are known to have possessed the most perfect and highly d eveloped organisation of any of the Teutonic nations . The Saxons lived under a merely tribal

e system , ach tribe being ruled by its own chieftain , and one of th ese Chieftains being chosen by lot when

e events demanded union under a Singl leader. But

e the Angles wer organised und e r th eir King . This circumstance explains how it came about that the

the kingly system obtained from ﬁrst in England , the Saxons b e ing content to adopt the fashion of the Angles ; and the same circumstance may explain

i 1 also how the invasion was planned and executed , it s o happened that at this period the King of the

Angles was a man of exceptional talent and power . “ As Major G ods al writes : It may have been Wiht gils , the father of Hengist and H orsa , or Elesa or A B UCKI NGHAMSH I RE C U CKOO PEN 1 1 9

Esla , the father or grandfather of Cerdic, or more

e likely still some prog nitor of Ida of Northumbria , Since it was probably to the north of Britain that the bulk of the Angles with th eir King ev en tu ” ally migrated .

e In 449, according to the Chronicl , H engist and

W e H orsa landed at ippeds fl eet . This has b en uni v ers ally identified with Eb b s fl eet in the Isle of Thanet at the extreme eastern end of Kent ; and

though Kent was eventually occupied by Jutes , we need not doubt that these ﬁrst chieftains were

e Angles . Nor need we stay to consid r whether these are truly historic nam e s or mere ly two mythi

cal re presentatives of the horse - ensign personiﬁed in the old sagas from which the Chronicle w as com

piled in the ninth century . Th e Chronicle must

tell th e tale . In 4 5 5 these two chieftains fought

w as . with Vortigern , and H orsa slain , at Aylesford

It is a ford on the Medway , and they had advanced

- [Es c to mid Kent . The next year H engist and his

s on e Sl w four thousand Britons at Crayford , and the

fugitives escaped to London Burgh , Kent being

given up to the invaders . Crayford is near the south bank of the Thames and only thirteen miles

e from London Burgh , which was doubtl ss also south ” — e - of the Tham s , the Borough , or Southwark , the

London of Middlesex being of later date . Its posi

e tion on the river, which made it the gr at mercantile

e centr of the island , must have given it a strategic importance also and this mention of it as the place where the defeated Britons sought refuge implies as 1 20 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO

We e much . may note , too , that it is one of the plac s

e L n ddin the which retain their C ltic names ; y , or

e Lake Fort, having b come Londinium . But we hear

for e O f no more of it now, the Chronicl the Conquest i s Sile nt for nine years . When King Alfred com

n o piled it he could ﬁnd , we must presume , records

e of this p riod . The next incident in the Chronicle [ is in 465 . H engist and Esc fought the Britons at

Wi eds ﬂ eet e e pp , where twelve British lead rs f ll , and also the Saxon Wipped from whom the place

e as was named . It has be n thought that the other

Wi eds ﬂ eet Eb b s ﬂeet pp became known as , so this one may be connected with Epping and may explain the pre s ence of Ambrosius at Amb res b ury Banks in um Epping Forest . In any case , during the nine recorded ye ars it cannot be doubted that London

e had been captured . The n xt entry in the Chronicle relates that in 473 Hengist and [Esc fought against

the the Welsh and took spoils innumerable , and We lsh ﬂed from the Angles as from ﬁre ; but no

G ods al s i n i place is named . Major attaches much g

e ﬁcan ce to the two places call d Walton , or Welsh

- - - m on town . At Walton the Hill the ground is ping up towards the high range between Dorking and Reigate ; while only four miles beyond it the River

e Mole curves round northward , and just b yond its

- - The outﬂow is Walton ou Thames . position of

- on - e b Kingston Tham s , a short distance a ove that point , is also signiﬁcant . We may imagine H engist and [Es c reigning there while the Briton faced th em at the Waltons . When the Britons were driven

1 22 TH E M YTH OF TH E PEN T CU CKOO

C men s - Ke n or Wlen s i n y ora, which is taken to be y , g

e at Lancing near Shor ham , and Cissa at Cissa c eas ter e - or Chichest r. So began the South Saxon kingdom and it is noteworthy that when the Roman

Re n urn the e city of g , which dominated district , f ll to

e the Saxons , it took its new nam from Cissa , and

e E . not , as we should have exp cted , from lla Then

e for tw lve years E lla is not named again . But in

8 the 4 5 , says Chronicle, he fought with the Welsh

M rc d b ur 1 near the bank of the ea rae s n . And in 49 E lla and Cissa b esieged An dreds ceas ter and slew all the Britons there ; for we we re told that at their landing, fourteen years before , while many Britons

e An dreds were slain , many ﬂed to the wood call d

An re d w ald . e d s e lea Their place of refug in the , and

e e the the si ge of P vensey , and the utter defeat of

e Britons there , have been fully described in a pr vious chapter .

The facts , therefore, that we can gather relating

’ e to E lla s lif are not numerous . H e gained a great victory on his landing in Sussex he fought a battle

Mearcr ds b urn at a place called a eight years later , but it is not described as a victory ; and after s ix years more he captured An dreds ceas ter and defeated

he the Britons of the An dre ds w eald. Further was King of the smallest of the Saxon kingdoms ; and though the settlements of his three sons appear in

Sussex he leaves no trace of his own name there .

1 . He died , if we follow Henry of Huntingdon , in 5 4

e Yet to this man , with no princely claim , is accord d a dignity in which some of the greatest of the Kings A B UCKI NGHAMSH I RE C UCKOO PEN 1 23 and warriors for two centuries were proud to follow

b e him . Meanwhile it must remembered that H en gist and his son E s c were conducting the campaign up the Thames ; for they were associated together as leaders at Crayford in 456 and also in two great victories which have been assigned the one to a spot E 6 ’ in pping Forest in 4 5 and the other to St . George s

Hill in 473 . Probably H engist retired into Kent a 88 E s c soon afterw rds , for in 4 , says the Chronicle ,

e e succe d d to the kingdom of the Kentishmen . It was not until 495 that the next great leader, Cerdic ,

m s on Cerdics ore with Cy ric his , landed at and thus

e - laid the foundation of the W st Saxon kingdom , planting in our land the stock which still lives in the royal family of England . With all th e se facts in view Major G ods al works out his very interesting conclusions in regard to the personality and history of E lla . He infers that he was a young follower of H engist and H orsa , and that his power and courage as a soldier brought him to the front , very probably in th e storming of

London . The facts suggest further that while the Kings were leading th eir army up the Thames E lla

the became the great organiser of campaign , since there is no other reasonable way of accounting for

e his rank as Br twalda. But the plan of the conquest demanded the landing of an adequate force on th e south coast to co- Operate with that upon the Thames ; and for this purpose E lla crossed to the homeland and brought over the three warships of his followers in 477 . H is victory in 485 is probably the occasion 1 24 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT CUCKOO

e E s c the - - when he joined forc s with , Mark redes burn b eing probably in the Thames district and very

e - e possibly the Battl bourne at Windsor. H ngist having now retired to Ke nt it is probabl e that E lla und ertook the chief l e ad e rship on the Th ames . H e

1 went southward afterwards , in 49 , to join with Cissa in subduing the last refuge of the Britons in the

An dreds w eald - , and thus the whole south eastern portion of the island became the possession of th e English ; but it is improbable that he ever retired

the into Sussex , although , as the leader of South

e e Saxons at th ir coming, h e may have continu d to be

Aumb erde e nominally their King. Lastly, the n on the Thames bank opposite Bray suggests the thought that E lla may well have fought his last battle with

e e e e e Ambrose h r , b for Cerdic cam to the front as h the t e chief leader of invaders . But up to this ﬁrst angle of the Chiltern district the valley of the Thames had now been secured ; and who is S O likely to have b e en honoured with the magniﬁcent burial on the prominent hill of Taplow, overlooking E the scene of conquest , as lla We have now to follow upward the parallel tracks which have been already described , the one from behind Taplow H ill and the other from a point in

Amerd front of en . A course of about s ix mile s brings us to the boundary of Langley Marish .

H ere a road running south - westward from Uxbridge crosses the one track on the east of Wexham and meets the other track at Upton . There is also a brook ﬂowing through Wexham which meets the

1 26 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT CU CKOO transfer of the name has actually take n place within

e the living m mory . But in the case now before us point of special interest is the fact that here are two anci ent ways traversing South Buckinghamshire a mile apart, each leading to an important British site on the Thames bank and each marked with a line of

e Saxon s ttlements ; and between them , upon a

- brook which they cross half way along their course, we ﬁnd a Cuckoo Pen . All this agrees with the conclusion to which the oth er instances have pointed , that a Cuckoo Pen is a spot occupied by the

Briton . CHAPTER XI

S OME THAMES - S I DE CU CKOO PENS

CERDIC of the royal family of the Angles and Cyn ri c

s on Cerdics ore which his landed in 495 at , appears to be part of the shore of the Solent . The Chronicle goes on to tell us that another party land ed at

0 1 Portsmouth in 5 , that some great victories were

1 gained , and that in 5 4 the West Saxons came to

rdi s Britain with three Ships and landed at Ce c ore . Five years later Cerdic and Cymric were acknow

he ledged as Kings of t West Saxons . Within a few years of their arrival the Roman city of Claus en tum near the coast must have yielded to them , and

B rum el a . Venta g , or Winchester, soon afterwards Perhaps they had already taken the mighty inland

Callev a Atreb atum . fortress of , or Silchester Then

2 in 5 5 they defeated the Britons at Old Sarum , and ﬁve years lat e r they gained another victory at Barb ury on the northern edge of the Wiltshire

e Downs . Thus we note how slow but sur was their

An dreds ceas ter 1 progress . The fall of in 49 had made them masters of the whole of the south - east e rn portion of the island , and about the same period they had secured the Thames Valley as far as the

- . ﬁv e outer fringe of the Chilterns N ow, sixty years 1 27 1 28 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO

later, they have gained possession of the whole of the central part of southern England as far as the great ridge which runs from the Thames and the end of the Chilterns westward across what we know

1 as Berkshire and Wiltshire . In 5 7 the time had come when they were abl e to seize the Upper Thames Valley and to advance beyond it north wards .

C n ri c 60 s on Cerdic had died in 5 34, and y in 5 , his

C eaulin Ceaulin succeeding him . While was push

e - ing his conqu sts towards the north west , th e advance along the central district was led by his Cuthwulf brother , who, as the Chronicle relates ,

fought with the Brit- welsh at Bedcan ford and

L ean b ir E eles b ir a took four towns , yg g and g g , B ene sington and Egon es ham; and the sam e year he ” died . Thus we learn that they crossed the river

e e wh th r at Wallingford , as is commonly supposed , or at any rate in this immediate neighbourhood

e and pushed forward along the Chilt rns , as i t would see m as far as B e dford (if Be dcan ford is rightly

e e id ntiﬁed , but this is doubtful) , b fore the forces of

e the Britons could concentrate against them . Th re they gained a decisive victory which resulted in the submission of four important British towns .

e Wh ther the ﬁrst of these is Leighton Buzzard , or

e Luton , or Limbury, in the same n ighbourhood , or — Len b oroughnear Buckingham for all thes e have — been claimed for i t there is no doubt about Ayl es u hwulf bury and Ben s in gton and Eynsham . C t thus added to the West - Saxon kingdom a large

1 30 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T CUCKOO

i f o upon it s insu ﬁcient to prove it s . Each of the four towns which Cuthwulf captured must have had i ts fortiﬁed stronghold, though it were of nothing more than earth and palisades . And if we look for the one point about Ben s in gton where the primitive inhabitants would be most likely to prote ct their

e e s ttlement , we can ﬁnd none more probabl than this knoll rising sharply from the south side of the brook and near the point of its junction with the

the river. We may recall too tumulus at the outﬂow

the of next brook southward , at Mongewell , and also the great British embankments at the outﬂow of the

e e n xt tributary above this , at Dorchester, pres ntly to be noticed . Moreover, human remains have been found a few yards away from this point at Benson ,

- and also a third brass coin of Constantine I I . But

e the wh n , after Saxon victory , the tribe of the Ben s i n as e g chose a spot for th ir ton , it was a furlong

e away from this , on the north sid of the brook ; and at that point they threw up their Medlers

e Bank which has been alr ady described , with its long line of ditch and bank running across to Med men ham .

- Ben s in ton Two miles north west of g , and originally included in the same parish as we ll as in the royal manor , is the village of Warborough . In the

e Wardb ur n d i ts thirte nth century it was written g, a name suggests a fortiﬁed outpost on the border of

’ t he King s domain . An important trackway from

e Dorchester to the Chilterns cross s the village , e passing by the church , which is mainly an diﬁce of SOM E T HAM ES - SI DE CU CKOO PEN S 1 3 1

’ e the e e e King John s tim , and along villag gr n , and “ ” e the e thenc to British wick of Berrick . Th re is abundant evidenc e of primitive occupation at War borough ; for in th e level corn ﬁ e lds west of the

e e - the e villag , betw en this track way and riv r ,

num erous circular outlines of primitive pit - dwellings

e e e e r e hav r vealed thems lv s in d y s asons . But for our present purpose there is a Sp e cial int ere st in the low ridge of hill that rises along the north side of

d - the O l . track way It is known as Town H ill , and an isolated pair of trees on the summit may be “ ” the assumed to mark the Site of Saxon ton .

e the e ﬁ eld- Along the l ngth of ridg runs a track , parall e l with the lower on e and it must have b een

e anciently of some importanc , for it is strongly embanke d up its ﬁrst ascent e astward from the

e e Thame str am which ﬂows b yond it . The village street of Warborough runs up the southern front of

e e e e this ridg of hill on its mor ast rn part , and as it

approaches the old cross - track upon the summit its direction is remarkabl e ; for without any apparent reason it curve s widely round towards the west S O

e as to form a large s gment of a circle . The ground

e e e i s which it thus mbrac s is a larg orchard , and this k P Cuc oo en . e e e known as the ‘ On the ast rn sid of it there was until recently a footpathleading down from the upp er track to the lower and em erging by the churchyard ; and the ditch which still protects the Cuckoo Pen on this side wears all the asp e ct of an

ancient boundary . The tradition of the nam e at

i s Ben s in ton Warborough worth no more than at g , 1 3 2 THE MYTH O F THE PEN T C UCKOO except that it preserve s something of a connection with past times and indicates that there was a particular spot in the orchard to which the designa tion of Cuckoo Pen more properly applied . The story is that in a corner of the orchard there was once a pen where the cuckoo appeared each year . But in this instance again there is ample reason for r egarding the Cuckoo Pen as the spot which the

Britons occupied . And it is signiﬁcant also that on this eastern side of the village the lower ﬁ elds nearer

e The to the riv r bear the name of the Bury Fields . term “ burh is applied to any stronghold whether of the Saxon or of the Briton ; and the nearest fortified spot to which these fields could b elong would be the rising ground about the Cuckoo Pen . And when we find the Saxon “ ton ” dominating

the e the this from high r part of the ridge beyond , inﬂuence is obvious that the Cuckoo Pen h e re as elsewhere represents the British stronghold .

e e N xt above Warborough is Dorchest r, lying

e between the Tham or Isis and the tributary Thame , and commonly supposed to derive its name from its

- - the as e . situation , Dwr ch ster , the water camp So

e his old r antiquaries understood it , and Leland in

H dro olis Swan Song fancifully latinised it as y p , to

s a make it ﬁt his vers e . More recent etymologists y

dwr that it is not from the Welsh , but that it means “ the strong camp , from a British word akin to the

Latin durus and appearing in many Roman - British

Durov ern umDurob riv ae names , as in , and Duro

v ium. c orn o The village , lying on the right bank of

1 34 THE MYTH O F T HE PENT CU CKOO e xcept as the last point to which the navigation o f the Tham e s extende d until the passing of an Act of

e 2 Parliam nt in 1 James I . by which the river was Bu opened from rc ote to Oxford . The ﬁrst barge arrived at Oxford in the summer of 1 63 5 .

et Previously none could g there , except such as could be hauled up the “ falls by a winch or

the e capstan on bank , and on its r turn it must be “ allowed to drift down the falls as best it might . One of the lanes at Burcote leading up from the river - bank to the high road is still pointed out by the villagers as the way by which in the old days wine and other merchandise was brought up from the barges to be conveyed by waggons to Oxford .

e Going back to earlier times , th re is a Saxon charter deﬁning the boundaries of Wittenham as given by King Ethelred to Ethelwulf and by him to

Abingdon Abbey in the ninth century . It mentions “ as the western boundary a highway to the Thames ” northward ; and it all corresponds with the pres ent boundary as far as the highway extends ; but it proves that where this now turns off abruptly it was formerly continued forward to the river. Its course

Northﬁeld re was obviously by Farm , where a p historic settlement with abundance of int eresting remains has been found ; and the point at which it

e Bur t e crossed the riv r was obviously co e . Th nce

e it would proce d in the direction of Baldon , passing near the site on which the Ordnance Map indicat e s a

Burcote Roman villa. The Cuckoo Pen is merely a little enclosure in the village , between the highroad SOM E THAM ES - SI DE C UCKOO PEN S 1 3 5

and the river, where nothing appears to make it remarkable ; but it is noteworthy that it lies close to these sites of early occupation and close to the point where the river was crossed by a primitive

Burcote track which the Saxons used . , it should be ” - noted , is not Burh cote , but a corruption , through ” Birdcot Bridecote , of the older form which we have in documents of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries , and which still survives as a family name

in the neighbourhood . Can it be that the true name " Britcot is , a cot of the Briton , dominated as it is by the adj acent Clifton of the Saxon CHAPTER XI I

TWO BERKSH IRE CU CKOO PEN S

IN the n ear neighbourhood of the group of Oxford shire Cuckoo Pens there i s one spot bearing the same designation on the Berkshire side of the

e e Tham s , opposite to Dorchest r . It is in the parish

e of Brightwell , wh re its important position will

best be understood by taking note of the ge ography . In the middle of the wide valley which stretches from the Chilt erns to the Berkshire Downs the malmstone of the Upper Greensand rise s into a ridge which becomes the more prominent by con trast with the dead level of the gault clay lying about its western and south e rn sides and the river

ﬂowing close beneath it on the north . Eastward it slants gradually down for two mil e s to reach the level at Wallingford . The villages of Brightwell and Sotwell with Slade End— the end of the Slad

e — e or vall y lie togeth r below the southern slope . Westward the ridge culminates in the two rounded e minences of the Wittenham Hills . Th e more

e —s o e northern of th se is Harp H ill called , as H arne “ e e b e tells, from its se ming at som distance to in ” e : the e the shape of a W lch H arp oth r, of almost

e en equal h ight , is Castle H ill , known in the sixte th 1 36

TWO BERKSH I RE C UCKOO PEN S 1 37

Sin odun e century as , which some antiquari s explain

’ to mean the hill upon the water ; but others have

e - urg d that it is Synod down , and this may connect itself with the name of Wittenham if that is to be “ interpre ted as the ham or enclosure of the Witan . Each of the two summits i s crowned with a large

e - e e clump of b ech tr s , making them a conspicuous landmark . Few spots preserve the ancient con diti on s of our country more compl e tely than Wittenham Wood which clothes some ninety acres

e of the slope of Castle H ill , r aching down to the

are — river . H ere several of the rarer plants , buck

- - b utterﬂ bean and bur marigold , tway blade and y

- orchis . And here i s also a hiding place for the white stoat , the polecat , and the badger, and in fact for all sorts of our native carnivora . Th e goosander,

- the merganser, the pin tail duck , and almost every

e has kind of duck that frequents our shor s , been known here along th e riverside : the haw ﬁn ch and the gree n woodpecker are in the wood ; the bittern

e e e has b en s en taking refuge her , and even a cormo rant has appeared within the memory of man ; the rare nutcracker has . been known here in rece nt years ; and on the beeches of the hill - top the p eregrine falcon may Often be s e en watching for the wood - pigeons and striking them down as they

ﬂy across the valley. So tenaciously does the hill

e ke p its primeval character. Castl e Hill is s o called from a large and d ee p en t ren chmen t e , nclosing a few acres of arable ground

- upon the summit, with the beech clump in the centre . 1 38 T HE MYTH O F T HE PENT C UCKOO

It app ears to b e a British camp altered and adapte d by the Romans ; and a Roman k ey and coins of the

e e The Emp rors have b en found on the hill . soil under the b eeches is strangely ridged in parallel

e e e e lin s , which som think to be a relic of form r tillag , “ ’ but traditionally th ey are soldi e rs graves . A “ hollow in the fosse , known as the money pit , has

e the reputation of containing a buried treasur , and

the e on e e villag rs tell of who attempt d to search it , but wh en he had dug to a great depth and found an

e e iron ch st a rav n appeared upon it , crying, He is ” not born yet l So the explore r knew that it was

f he e not or him to make t discov ry .

the the Adjoining Wittenham Hills on the east , as

e e e ridg d scends , is Brightw ll H ill ; and upon its high ground above the rive r a tribe called the Shillings

e app ears t o have settled at the Saxon conqu st . They left their name on the brook which skirts the eastern e dge of Witte nham Wood ; for it is called “ ” S c illi n geS - broc in the charte r of Ethelred in the

e e ninth c ntury, granting Witt nham to Abingdon

e e e e Abbey . Th y l ft th ir nam also in the ford a mile

e the e below , wher it is still retained in haml t of

the e The men Shillingford across riv r. charter just “ ” ’ - — tion ed calls the ridge Caberes b aec Caber s

e the Back ; and in a chart r of tenth century , record

’ ing King E adre d s gift of Brightwell to his thegn

Athel ard e g , who bestow d it on the N ew Minster at

e e e e Winch st r, this name is giv n in the corrupt d “ ” af rb i form of G e ce. Where this ridge of Bright well Hill rises to its high e st point w e have a well

1 40 TH E MYTH O F TH E PEN T CU CKOO the southern front of the hill would pass close to the

as spot known Redgate Farm, on which only a barn f . the o remains A little further west , under foot

e he e Castle H ill , is a small ﬁ ld bearing t nam of

s o e - Bloody Mere , called from a mer bank which has

e been l velled away within living memory. From this ﬁeld there is an ancient track deeply cut out of the hillside and ascending by a sharp angle to the em

e tr nched fortress above . The name of Bloody Mere carries with it a story that the blood of warriors slain upon the hill ran over it ; and this tradition of a sanguinary battle upon Castle H ill has been very deﬁnitely handed down among the villagers

e — of Wittenham . H ere b tween Redgate the red — way and Bloody Mere , on the line of the Roman street and at the point where the anci ent track from

e e the British fortress desc nded into the vall y, is the ﬁ e ld of nearly forty acres which has acquired the

the name of Cuckoo Pen . It lies against the side of the road running from east to west between Walling

e ford and Wittenham . In its character and app ar ance th ere is nothing to distinguish it from the adjoining ﬁelds . But here again it may well be that the true Cuckoo Pen was on the adjacent rising ground and that the name has been preserved on a plot which was formerly enclosed between Bloody

M e re and Redgate . The point of prominent interest in the surround

O f Si n odun ings of this ﬁeld is course Castle H ill , or ,

- rising over it on the north west . In a previous chapter mention has been made of the leading part TWO BERKSH I RE CU CKOO PEN S 1 4 1

which som e antiquari e s believe it to have played in the Roman invasion as the hill which Aulus Plautius D fortiﬁed for the protection of the ob un i . Its strategic importance in this district is still more forcibly illustrated by an event of a later period

ﬁtl e which therefore may be y noticed here . Wh n Offa was pushing his conquests southward and

e Ben s in ton def ated Cynewulf of Wessex at g in 777 , he added to the Mercian kingdom the whole of the valley of the Thames as far as the Berkshire Downs and the early records of Abingdon Abbey tell us “ ” the that he planted a fortress on hill of Witham , near the spot where nuns from Helen s tow at Abingdon had settled and from which the advent ff ’ of the soldiers compelled them to move away . O a s

obvious purpose was to secure his newly - acquired

territory . Wytham Hill beyond Oxford has com mon ly been taken to be the site ; but it fails entire ly

he the e to meet t conditions of story . Witt nham is “ ” Witeham e the in Domesday Book , and it me ts cas e exactly ; for Castle Hill overlooks all the valley which Offa had won . And on the western part of the

ee hill large pieces of building stone have b n found , “ ” e as in a ﬁ ld known locally Old Oxford , which ff ’ may reasonably be supposed to be O a s Fort .

e e R turning now to the Cuckoo Pen , which li s

- e under the south east rn side of the hill , we ﬁnd nothing to connect it with the capture of the fortress by Plautius in the older days or with that by Offa

in later times . But in the conquest of the Roman Britons by the Saxons in their advance northward 1 42 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T CU CKOO in 5 7 1 its position at the hill - foot and clos e against the Roman road from the south - west would n eces

a il b e s r y be one of ﬁrst importance . Let it remem bered that the Saxons already occupi e d the ridge of the B e rkshire Downs and that in this y ear th ey crossed the Thames and occupi ed a wide district on the north of it , including what we know as Oxford shire and Buckinghamshire , where the four leading

e the e towns of the Britons submitted to th m , n arest of thes e towns being Ben s in gton and the next

e Eynsham . It is commonly supposed that th y “ would cross the river at the not e d ford of the ” e he f . t W lshmen , Walling ord That ford is at eastern

ee end of the valley, at the point where the river m ts the e dge of the Chilt e rns and just above the point wh ere it breaks through b etwe en those hills and the

e e Ben s in ton B rkshir Downs . Then g would be two

e the e the miles farth r up vall y, and here at once southern river - bank slop e s up to Castle H ill which

e e h the stands thr e miles b yond up t e centre of valley . Ben s in gton and the lands of the Upper Thames to

’ Eyn sham could neve r be the Saxon s possession till h they had dislodged t e Briton from Castle H ill . Its capture must be th e ir ﬁnal effort before they crossed th e river. It is easy to work up a conj ectural picture of the

e e the scene . H er is a gr at stronghold which Saxons

e e must have secured before they could proc ed . H re is the highroad by which they must have approached

e e e it , and h re is the hollow way which its d f nders must have guarded, and at the foot of this is the spot

1 44 TH E MYTH O F TH E PEN T C UCKOO

he S a b ur Let at t great British earthwork of g y, or combe Castle , and comes down by Wantage ,

e Wan etin anci ntly g , the settlement of a Saxon tribe

Wa in s the - of n e t g , famous in history as birth place of King Alfred and well adorned recently by a noble

he - statue of him in t market place . A little further west along the ridgeway we have the most notable group of prehistoric antiquities which the county

the e poss e sses . There is Whit H orse on the hill

’ front , formerly supposed to be Alfred s work but recognised now as a Celtic device wrought by the Briton long before Saxon days ; and in modern tim e s

Thomas H ugh e s has made its scouring famous . Th ere is the grim entrenchm ent of Ufﬁn gt on Castle rising b ehind it a mil e east of this is the perforated

’ e e - e Blowing Ston , Alfr d s Bugle horn , which onc stood on the hill - top to summon the tribes but is now carried down into the valley to edify visitors at

e the waysid inn at Kingston Lisle . Again , a mile we stward on the ridgeway there is the British

’ e croml ch of Wayland s Smithy, another Saxon land

e e mark , with its w ird l gend of the mysterious forger of horse - shoes from the underworld ; and if such work has now passed into the hands of more mundane blacksmiths we know at any rate the story

’ Tres s ilian of Queen Elizabeth s days , how with Flibbertigibbet for his guide laid his groat on the

ﬂat ston e of the pile and got Whitefoot shod . The Cuckoo Pen upon the track that has been

— hamm mentioned is in the parish of Marcham the , or enclosure (as Professor Skeat tells us), on the TWO BERKSH IRE C UCKOO PEN S 1 45

r h i ma c . ts , or boundary Marcham gives name to the Hundre d and carries our minds back to the tim e when this was the border presumably b e twe en

e Wessex and M rcia , or possibly even between Saxon and Briton ; and to this parish belong two

i f r r l o d. hamlets , Garford and F Garford , anciently

G aran ford ar , on the Ock, is the ford of th e g , or

e —a e gor , triangle of land b tween the river and its i i Chldr th. southern tributary, the Childrey brook , or Upon the middle of th e tri angle rises an ancient

e barrow , which yi lded to its explorers a British urn

and human bones , glass beads , ﬂint chips , and an

iron ring . N ear the village is the site of an early

- settlement , now Blackington or Black town , but

a marke d only by a farm shed and copse.

as - From Garford a footbridge , known Gang bridge

we - which may take to be Garan bridge , crosses the

Ock to Frilford , and a pathway passes on by a raised

causeway towards that hamlet . Close to this cause way an unenclosed ﬁeld by the riverside is the

Cuckoo Pen . It is therefore in Frilford . This was

e F rz ele ord anci ntly g f , and is interpreted as Frige

- the leah ford , ford of the ﬁeld of Friga or Frea , the Saxon goddess of spring ; and the streamlet which

’ e e e e is h re crossed is Fr ya s Dyk . Thence the lin

of the trackway would continue northward over

- Frilford H eath with its ancient burial ground . H e re

i n s itu leaden cofﬁns of the Romans still lie , and in

e one of th m a skeleton was found , with its coins to

e the O f — pay the f rryman for passage the Styx , one of Constantine the Younger and one of Valens and

I O 1 46 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO

G ratiam— the e one of , showing that Romans had us d the cemete ry up to the time wh en they left the

Britons to take care of themselves . Overlying these

- were burial urns and bodies of the Saxon conquerors , and the ground was ﬁll e d with numberless re lics of

- ﬁb ulas an d umb os e both races , j , b ads and buckles ,

e pins and sp ars , bricks , sherds , and pottery, besides large numbers of Roman coins and the usual ac c oman imen i s p t of oyster shells . It not surprising that t he rustics had a tradition of ghosts hovering

- about a thorn bush which grew upon the ﬁeld . A

ﬁn e mile west of this is the site of a Roman villa, with its hypocaust and nine chambers , a corridor

e e its s v nty feet in length on western front , and a remarkable bath - chamber with its drain - pipe and

e - c ss pit a few yards away.

the Mr . Akerman , the explorer, describing burial

e the A rcheeolo ia ground and its r lics in g , suggested that the name of Frilford may point to the de s truc

e tion of a bridge by the worshipp rs of Frea, when the conquered race, who might have acquiesced in

e e submission to Christian invaders , pref rr d to die

e the rath r than yield to the fury of heathen Saxons . Must we th e n infer that the Cuckoo Pen beside — “ ’ ” Gang bridge was the Frea s lea where the Britons held out to the last "

1 48 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T CUCKOO

valleys . The name Cotswold itself contains a par abl e to illustrate the meeting of the Celt and the Saxon for the former syllable is the We lsh coed and

wold weald the other is the English or , each alike signifying a wood , although most of our wolds or wealds are now de nuded of the woods from which

e . coed the they took their nam The Briton called it , w ood which , to the Englishman was a mere name with

the no meaning, and accordingly he called it Coeds

. e wold , or Cotswold And this district on its east rn slopes is very remarkable for its abundance of pre historic remains , and is also peculiarly rich in the stories of primitive fo lklore . The village of Idbury itself verges upon the end of

the Wychwood Forest, which covers high ground

the between the Windrush and the Evenlode, two of upper tributaries of the Thames . And Wychwood ,

- called Huichwode in the Domesday Survey and

Hwiccewuda — n in an older document , is commo ly

Hwi ccas thought to take its name from the , the tribe which occupied the chief parts of what are now the

Shires of Gloucester and Worcester, and upon whose changing allegiance the fortunes of the kingdoms of

Wesse x and Mercia so largely turned . Very full of interest are the histories of this forest , which King

John enclosed , and in which Edward IV . was hunt

he ing when met with Elizabeth Woodville, the

e b e beautiful widow of Sir John Gr y, and took her to his Queen ; where also several other of our Kings followed the chase , residing sometimes in the royal borough of Witney and sometimes at their old palace SOM E COTSWOLD FOLKLORE 1 49 of Langley in the parish of Shipton - und e r - Wych wood . Across the forest ran the line of the Akeman

Street , on its way to Cirencester, where it met the Fosse Way passing through the Cotswolds in its southward course from Lincoln to Bath . From

Burford close beside the Akeman Street to Stow- on the - Wold upon the Fosse Way there i s a highroad running northward along the forest and descending

An d from the uplands near Idbury . here near the roadside the earthworks of a large military camp are to be seen . On the east side of this camp an e nclosed hill by the wayside is known as the Cuckoo i Pen . But it has little that s distinctive about it except its name . It lies upon a rising ridge of ground where a streamlet springs and ﬂows eastward to j oin the Evenlode, and the parish boundary between Idbury and Fiﬁeld follows along the bank of this

e stream . The villagers can giv no reason for calling it the Cuckoo Pen except that they suppose it to have been at one time a pen for enclosing cattle, and they infer that the beasts s o e nclosed were nicknamed

e e cuckoos . But th y also hand down a l gend of a great battle fought at the camp in Saxon times . The camp is only one of man y such remains that are to be found in the neighbourhood . In the adjoin — ing parish of Shipton - und e r Wychwood there are the two tall mounds known as High Barrow and

Leaﬁeld an Low Barrow at , and also ancient camp at Lyneh am . Just beyond this is the camp known

e- e as Knowl Bury , n ar the hamlet of Chadlington which give s its name to the H undred an d ﬁve miles 1 5 0 TH E MYTH OF THE PENT CUC KOO north of Idbury is the large circular barrow at

e Chastl ton .

‘ - e A few miles to the north ast , also , and close to

e the the Warwickshir border, is village of H ook

e e N orton , which appears to hav got its nam of Norton mere ly by assimilation to the ne ighbouring

- the e e e Chipping Norton . Through int rm diat form ” of Hoken arton w e identify it with the Hoener

Hoccen eratun the e atun or of chronicl rs , a royal

e e 1 e e e vill , wh r in 9 7 a great numb r of persons w r slain in an incursion of the Danes from N orthampton

e e and Leic ster. The ntrenchments of a camp which have almost disapp eare d ben eath the plough are probably far older than the date of that slaughte r. And half a mile b eyond it is the ﬁne circular British

the camp of Tadmarton , with remains of a triple

e e vallum , its inn rmost line b ing well preserved and

e encircl e d by a de e p fosse . Two larg tumuli are

e . n ar it , and many Roman coins have been found

- If Oxfordshire has its Gotham it is at H ook N orton .

’ ’ In Gibson s edition of Camden s Britan n ia ( 1 7 2 2) w e “ Hoken orton the read As to , inhabitants were

’ e as s d form rly such clowns and churls , that it p

e e - b e into a prov rb for a rud and ill bred fellow, to

’ ”

. e born at H og s N orton And Sir Walt r Scott , in

il orth the e Ken w , tells of learn d pedagogue Erasmus “ " Ho s n orton e Holiday H e was born at g , wher , according to popular saying, the pigs play upon the ” organ . The antiquity of such a tradition in this

e e e s a locality has been chall ng d , and som y that it “ ” only arose from confusing the word H ook or

1 5 2 THE M"TH O F THE PENT CU CKOO could he have moved six yards forward and come

V e his in i w of Long Compton ; but knights , it would

e e e e s em , stopp d him here , wh re everything els could be seen but the object of hi s ambition was hidd e n ; and he was turned to stone because his

e the aim in lif was lost , and ﬁve traitors paid the p enalty of their treachery and were turn e d to stone

e t e with him , and nothing r mained for he circl of his

The sixty soldiers but to become stones also . old f . e e O antiquary, Dr Stukel y , r ad the name Rollright

’ RhOl- Drw as gg , the Druids Wheel ; and whatever

e an mod rn critics may think of his etymology, it is interpretation which re minds us of the old days in

which unquestionably these stones were reared . Long Compton is hidden from the King Stone by

e a jutting brow of the brok n hillside , lying in such a hollow as its name implies and w e are reminded here again that this hollow w as still known as a

. ” combe in th e old tongue of the Briton when the new tongue of the Saxon called the settlement “ ” : a ton . The legend ﬁts in with the facts for it implies that wh e n the conque ring invader took pos session of the neighbourhood he fail ed to become King of all England because there was this Spot upon the hillside which w as able for a time to elude i hs grasp . This Long Compton has also anoth er legend pointing to the same conclusion that the Briton still

occupied the comb e whenthe Saxon cam e here . It i ot the e s n handed down in the traditions of p ople, but p res e rve d in the Chronicle of the Yorkshire SOM E COTSWOLD FOLKLO RE 1 5 3

erv aulx —a Abbey of J , compilation , as is supposed ,

e of the tim of King Edward I I I . , though commonly attributed to John Bromton who became abbot Of

that house half a century later. According to this

story , St . Augustine himself travelled into Oxford “ shire and cam e to preach in the town called ” e Compton, where the pri st of the town complained to him that the lord of the manor refused to pay

e tith of his possessions , and though he had often admonished him and had even threatened him with

e xcommunication he still found him obstinate . When Augustine had called for him and reason e d with him in vain he turned to the altar to begin the M ass , bidding all the excommunicate to depart ,

whereupon a corpse aros e from the churchyard .

Augustine asked him who he was , and he replied that he w as patron of the church before the English came and had died excommunicate for refusing to pay his tith e ; and the Saint e njoined him to point out the grave of the priest who had repelled him from communion ; s o he in his turn arose from h is grave and bore out the truth of the story . Then at Augustine ’s bidding his ghost absolved the other

r in ghost and both returned to their g aves peace, while the obstinate knight became a humble fol

’ e low r of the Saint s teaching. At least we may gather from the tal e that the memory of the Britons and their church at Long Compton had a place in

the minds of the Saxon conquerors . The Warwickshire pari sh of Long Compton is only one of a series of Comptons that lie in the 1 54 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT CU CKOO

e hollows of these hills . Adjoining it on the w st is

e e the Gloucest rshir parish of Little Compton . Its archi e piscopal tradition rests on more solid historic ground than that of its n eighbour ; for the hand some Elizabe than manor house was the refuge of

Archbishop Juxon in the days of King Charles I I . But for the moment w e are more concerned with a

the primeval relic which parish boasts , known as the Four- Shire Stone Some have said that this is the S ceor- ston or Shire - stane wh e re Edmund Iron sid e defeated Canute and his Danes ; but Shers ton e

Be in Wiltshire has a stronger claim . that as it may ,

since this stone marks the m e eting- point of the

e Shires of Oxford , Gloucest r, Worcester, and War i t . wick , can probably tell a tale of a much earlier age W Compton ynyates lies a few miles beyond , in

e anoth r deep hollow among the hills . It is said to

have been planted with a vineyard , whence came the special designation of the village but locally it

- in - - e is Compton the H ol . And this Compton gave its name to the ancient family which ﬁrst became famous when Sir William Compton was the

the e favourite of H enry VI I I . H e built hous , half

e fortr ss and half mansion , which still retains its handsome chap e l and its lofty hall with minstrel

- e e gallery and screen , its ghost room and its s cr t chamb e r ; and outside are its wondrous chimneys

e with their wealth of fantastic ornam e nt . Her he entertain e d his royal master ; and hith e r his grand

son , another William Compton , brought his bride when i n the disguise of a baker boy he had carried

1 56 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T CU CKOO

farther end of Wychwood , is Burford , the historic “ ” “ b eor h d g on the ford of the Win rush , where

Cuthred the We st - Saxon King in 75 2 drove back the Mercian Ethelb ald on a ﬁeld which to this day

Battleb rid e bears the name of g . And when we have the name of Cuckoo Pen applied

to a spot in this district , it is the more interesting to ﬁnd that in another spot only some twelve miles to

the north of this the Cuckoo myth itself is localised . Ebrington H ill stands conspicuously in the Cotswold range within the border of Gloucestershire and

n e looking down eastward over Warwickshire . O

of the sources of the Stour rises on the south of it , and in thehollows beneath its Sides we ﬁnd Hilcote Comb e on the north and Compton Scorpion on the

- east . The name of the market town of Chippin g Campden appears to imply a camp or battle ground in the dene or valley lying between this b ill

and the lofty ridge to the west of it , and there is evidence of the place having been important in the d ays wh en the chieftains of the Saxon tribes we re

an d pushing the Briton farther and farther west, dislodging him from his last strongholds in the

Midlands . The village of Ebrington lies under the south - western Slopes of the h ill to which it gives its

Eb b erton an d name . Locally they commonly call it ,

Edb ur hton i its true name appears to be g , S nce its

Edb ur h. church is dedicated to St . g The people of the village are credited with having perpetrated

e e s veral foolish actions in days gon by, and indeed

Ebrington is the Gotham of the Cotswolds . They SOM E COTSWOLD FOLKLO RE 1 5 7 put the clock forward to make Christmas come sooner ; when they fancied that their candles were damp they put them into the oven to dry them ; and among various other strange deeds of the same kind they brought hurdles to hedge in the cuckoo . CHAPTER XIV

GOTHAM TALES IN NORFOLK

AMO NG the counties of England that are rich in old folklore N orfolk holds a high place . To that county

e belongs , for xample , the story of the Babes in the Wood ” “ The old ballad of the Children in the Wood which is one of the darling songs of the ” e common p ople, as Addison describes it in the Spectator ; for the scene of this story is in the parish a of Merton near Watton , where the old Elizabeth n

an d hall is the home of the wicked uncle , the n e ighbouring Wayland Wood with its ancient oaks

and thick undergrowth of haz el is the burial - place of the two little victims over whom the robin Spread

the fallen leaves . A familiar story also is that of the Swaffham

e hidden p dlar, wh o was thrice by a nocturnal appari tion to go to London Bridge where he should ﬁnd a

e tr asure ; and going at last reluctantly, with his dog

for a companion , he spent a whole day walking to and fro b etween Middlesex and Surrey with no

result , till a kindly inquirer from one of the houses on the bridge heard hi s purpose ; whereupon he made the strange reply that he hims elf had once been hidden in a dream to go to a town called Sw aff 1 5 8

1 60 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT CU CKOO

e ﬂint workings of some prehistoric race , as oth rs think ; and when the sacrilegious hands of modern investigators open e d and examined the n eighbour

- ing earth mounds , it is said that the Banshee uttered

e e e her myst rious wailing among th m , distr ssed by

the disturbance of the dead . In the same district

e too, n ar Runton , the tale is told of Shock , the

headless black dog from the under world , prowling

along the s ea- cliffs to keep their dismal solitude

— e Bar ei s t e unbroken , the count rpart of the g or b ar

like dog who frequents the hills of Cornwall , as we

the Mauthe learn from local legends , and of the

Doog that haunted the guard - room of Pe el Castl e in the Isle of Man until on e day a drunken soldier daring to face him alone was struck dumb and with gaping mouth and hair on e n d died in agoni e s and

- e the spectre hound of Man app ared no more , as w e read in Peveril of the Peak and in the Lay of the

Las t Min s trel.

In the earliest of all the collections of such tal e s as thos e of Gotham the pe opl e of Norfolk are made

Des cri tio Nor olcien s ium the butt . The p f has come

down to us in three or four ancient copies , some of wh ich are of later date than others and have been

as e ampliﬁed with additional stories . It w print d in a volum e of E arly Mys teries an d other Lati n Poems of

d irtee th en turies e Twe than Th n C . th lf , by Mr Thomas

1 8 He Wright in 3 8 . assigns its composition to the

e e latter part of the tw lfth c ntury, but points out also that at least one of the stories is evidently of a much

earlier age . One of the old manuscripts of this GOTHAM TALES I N N ORFOLK 1 6 1

e e e strang collection contains also a r ply to it , writt n about half a century later by a writer who claims to be a Norfolk man and gives his nam e as John of

Des cri St . Omer and from him we learn that the p tion of the Norfolc ian s was the work of a monk

O f Peterborough . It consists of two hundred and

ﬁft - y six lines of rhyming Latin verse , in which about a doz e n ridiculous stori e s are told . Both the v ers iﬁcation and the latinity Show the work of

e a good scholar . The following is a free r ndering

e of the introductory verses , pr serving the style of its rhymes and the general form of its metre .

O nce a decree w ent from Cae sar the emperor ’ e e e a e the o e o er Bidding his m ss ng rs tr v l c untri s , i e the e o of ea on e an d u t e o e Wr t him r c rd ch , f r h rm r are e e an d are e o Ask which b tt r which inf ri r.

Forth they departe d the world to investigate All through the provinces searching they p enetrate e e o e a a a t e e a u a e Sp dily h m w rd g in h y p r mb l t , T he n before Caesar their tale they enunciate .

a e out the o e o an d t w as a e e Sp k f r m st, hus his t l b gun ea me o a ea a e o e H r , my l rd, m ny s s h v I v rrun , Through the broad lands of the world is my j ourney done ; But of all o e out of o a o pr vinc s , c mp ris n , o e s o a e as the o o on e N n is h t ful , in truth , N rf lk .

a th a an d o l e its B rren e l nd is w rth ss people is , F of all e e an d e an d o e ull nvi s li s hyp crisi s, And to all n ations their ways are the contrari es W e eo e i a e an d o are e e h r f th r m nn rs d ings witn ss s .

Bad the a as o e e e a s ee is l nd , y ur y s v ry pl inly o e of ea ou ma s ow it a e l Ch ic st wh t y y in c r ful y, Tares or some darn el at best will the harvest b e e a o a e a a th t Thes in th t c untry h v lw ys e m as ery .

Sure ly the evil on e when to the earth he fe ll D o e o o o an d a e the a o e r pp d int N rf lk m d l nd h rribl , Empti ed it wholly of all thi ngs desirabl e e o t oo a o Thenc f r h g d gr in fr m that soil is impossible . I I 1 62 TH E M YTH OF TH E PEN T CUCKOO

They gnaw and chew th e ir darnel - bread (it con tin ues - ear ) , and take a wheat for an evil spirit ; for

e on e c orn ﬁelds if they ev r discover in their , they denounce it as the devil himself and gather round it

with their cudgels , crying and shouting, Fly away ,

devil , ﬂy away quickly never shalt thou stay in our

crops . Next we are told that if a little boy goes with his

e fath r to market and sees a cake and asks what it is ,

e his father tells him to hold his tongu , for he does not want it ; such food is only for the sick ; it does

no good to the whole .

e Ther may be four towns in the county , it pro

ceeds e - , containing som half dozen men of position

who occasionally invite guests , and they have a clever d evice s o that they may never lack Wheaten

bread . They order some at the public expense and

put it in safe - keeping then when on e of th e m wants some for his guests he sends for it ; but no one dares

to break the bread , and thus it is all kept intact

until it begins to get mouldy , whereupon all are “ e at bound to it together ; and , the writer adds , this " rods wein bread they call in English , or, as another

e umrun of the copi s reads it , g cy; of which puzzling

—in words the latter portions are clear enough , the “ ” “ ” run c one case swine , and in the other case y, which is Old English for a horse ; whence we must “ ” gather that they mean some form of pig- bread “ ” - and horse bread .

The next story, though it is only found in a later

manuscript , evidently belongs to an early period

1 64 TH E MYTH O F TH E PEN T CUCKOO

man who had the chief voice among them stood up “ ” : he and held it closed in his hand This charter,

said , you must acknowledge, for with your own lips ” you ordere d the writing of it : which the lord “ e e began to d ny, and said , Giv it to the clerk ; let i t b e read at onc e but the countryman would not let down its tail ; and when one of the s ervants standing

e by him b gan to take it from his hand , there was no seal to conﬁrm it ; wherefore the learne d judges at once gave their judgm ent that th ese countrym e n must be ever as th ey were before : and b ecause they had thus taken themselves o ff from their lord th ey w ere shut up in prison till th ey had rendere d to him all the money and cattle that they pos

s e ssed .

e on e e If, it continu s , you ask of thes N orfolk

countrymen the way to any town , he laughs and “ - e e tells you , Walk by the cross way, th n l ave it ” behind you , and follow as the crow ﬂies . And then we have the familiar story of th eir going to mark et and carrying their sack of darn e l on th eir shoulders “ s o as not to hurt their hors e s ; for the fools th em

selves are on a level with the beasts . “ Next we are told that after market th ey go straight to the tavern and drink again and again ” us what we call b us l s e. Later copies explain it as

e . b er , and John of St Omer in his reply to the

b us ket e e - e lampoon calls it , and says it m ans win dr gs “ and water without any grain or spirit . And when

’ they are s o drunk that they don t know what they s ay and topple over as they try to mount their GOTHAM TALES I N N O RFOLK 1 5 5

fauv el h orses , My , they exclaim [the word has “ ba hors e latte : two meanings , a y and f ry] let m e

advise you to wait till I am on your back , or else straight to p e rdition you go and neve r get home

again . “ If anyone knocks at the door when they are

sitting at dinner, they answer, We are not at home ” : - get you gone come again to morrow. “ O n e summer a Norfolk man carefully coll e cted his honey and put it in a jar ; then he left it and

e w nt to other things ; and his dog, who was nearly

e e starved to d ath , spi d where it was and ran in and ate it all ; whereupon the man in great distress

e addr ssed his dog, Hast thou not every day two

’ the herrings heads to eat , at the very least By blazing s un thou shalt give back that hon ey " Go and fare wors e for the future " And he squeezed the dog betwe e n two sticks till the honey cam e up : then he collected it again in his earthen jar and had

e e e it tak n to the n xt market, and wh n a buyer

e said that it sm lt sour he straitly swore , It is

e e e xcell nt honey , but no doubt it has be n a little ” while in a dirty vess e l . Then we are told of a man of N orfolk who found a large b ee tl e and called it his pre tty bird : What Should he do with it " If it should bite him he would never throw it away : and he kept on “ e re peating gle fully again and again , Ha l thu " mi swet e brid " finally resolving that he would eat it . Another countryman was ploughing in the field 1 66 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO and lighted upon a large toad which he put into his pocket till his work was done and then carried hom e “ : ods i with him H ow, g p, what is this asked a “ ” e n ighbour who met him . A partridge , he replied . “ “ Why is its foot s o broad Because it go es on “ foot more than on horseback Why is its b elly “ so wide Because it is a bird and very fat . “ “ Then why has it no feathers Because it is “ a young chicken . I s it fit to b e eaten What do you mean , you donkey It is food for a ” King . The story of the dog and the honey appears again “ ” in a little volume of Coffee - House J ests printed

1 688 : in , butter taking the place of honey and it is attributed there to a cleanly woman in Cam “ b ridges hi re who made it up for Cambridge market ; but her maid told her s he was ashamed to

s ee . e such a nasty trick done H old your p ace , you

’ fool "says s he ; tis good enough for s chollards ; away to market with it The only story of this Norfolk series which appears in the Gotham Tales is that of the rider who carried the sack to save the back of the horse

was that he riding ; and this , as the editor points “ e out , is but another v rsion of the Irish exciseman ’ who , when carried over a bog on his companion s

shoulders , hoisted his cask of brandy on his own

’ shoulders that hi s porter s burd e n might be les ” e sened . Inde d there is no reason to suppose that any of these tales related originally to the people of

N orfolk. It is much more likely that the monk of

CHAPTER XV

A NORFOLK OWL PEN

N OT HING that corresponds to the Cuckoo story is told in the Des criptio Norf olcien s ium. But there is one place in Norfolk wh e re that story is actually

the current at the present day , though bird is an

In O f owl inst ead of a cuckoo . the high ground the north - eastern portion of the county is the little town of Holt , or, as it was called in former times , H olt

i I s e e s the . t Mark t , that , Market in the Wood anci nt importance i s indicated by the fact that the Hundred

e of Holt takes its nam from it . It was a royal

’ e demesne in the Conf ssor s time, and it was owned

e after the Conquest by the family of De Vaux. H re i s a large level plateau of gravel and sand , a mile or

ee two in width , which has b n styled the Garden of

e e Norfolk , and where the cultivated fi lds alt rnate with tracts of the prim eval wood from which the town took its name ; and parts are recent fi r- planta “ e - e tions , and parts are gors cover d common . The ” e e Lows , at the astern end , are an undulating h ath where N ature still holds her o wn and offers rare plants and flowers to those who will be at the pains

The e e ff t o search for them . plat au is mark d o by a

e e e d pr ssion in the ground complet ly surrounding it ,

1 68 A NORFOLK OWL PEN 1 69

and this d e e pens into a considerable valley on the

west . On this side the town of H olt stands , with the railway climbing up to it from M e lton Constable and dropping down from it again towards Sheri n g

e e w e ham and Cromer . It is evid nt , th n , that have here a geographical position which must always

e hav been important in anci ent times ; and here ,

also , we are in an exposed angle of our island , liable to constant attack from the pirat e s of the

e northern seas . The Count of the Saxon Shor m ust have needed a watchful eye as he passed along the

- coast road ofthis district from Caistor to Brancaster .

e e It has been s riously argu d , and not without good

e e s ea- grounds , that W ybourne , the n arest point to

the ae Holt , is Spot which Julius C sar chose for his landing - place wh e n he cam e to Britain that Gesso riacum s e t , from which he sail , is not Boulogne ,

e on e the as is commonly suppos d , but of ports at the m ouths of the Rhine ; and that the usual th e ory of

‘ his having crossed from Boulogne to th e Kentish coast is due to a misreading of the sense of his com men t arie e s . If anyon would study th e arguments

e e e fully, let him read an int r sting pamphl t , printed

1 868 in , in which they are well worked out by

Mr . Scott Surtees ; and if anyone would appreciate

fﬁ e the di culties which bes t the ordinary account , let him look into any annotated e dition of C aesar De

‘ Bello Gallico ae . For the campaign in which C sar was engaged was on the Rhin e and he tells us that

e e h e cross d from the t rritory of the Morini , which w e e know to have been on the coast n ar that river . 1 70 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C U CKOO An old map also shows names closely resembling

G e s s oriacum— e G oes s en G e ers d ke , Go s and , y and

e e —i n e h Go sse Di p , the district n ar t e Rhine mouth .

e Mor over, Dion Cassius , the careful and discrimina

of e e ting historian the s cond c ntury , tells us that “ Caesar crossed the Rhine and afterwards passed h over into Britain , implying that e started from a

point north of that river. H e had a fair wind and a

e quick passag , but it took his fastest ships ten hours

to cross . H e arrived at a coast of such a nature that the tr00ps of hostile Britons on the cliffs could

hurl their javelins down upon the beach below, ff exactly such cli s as we have at Cromer. H e anchored there until a favourable wind and tid e enabled him to proce e d seven mil e s to a place where

O the beach was ﬂat and pen , and where th e Britons could drive their chariots down the hillsides to the

shore , while the shore itself was so ste ep that the Romans could row their galleys close to land and hurl darts at the Britons and when they attempt e d to land they had to leap into d e ep water ; wh e re

e e also , when they landed , th y found themselv s

among marshes , yet with a plot of dry land which

gave Cws ar a standing- ground : and all this agre e s exactly with the character of the coast at Wey

bourne , where we ﬁnd the deeply shelving shingle

an d beach , the channel running up into the marshes ,

and a knoll called Green - barrow H ill in the midst

e of them , out of which Roman r mains are dug ; and the high ground of Weybourne H ope ris es

—a steeply over them , point where at high tide,

1 72 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT CUCKOO

where the ships where anchor e d ; twelve mil e s inland th ere was a camp of the e nemy ; and wh en C aesar approached it they advanced from the high ground to a river to m eet him in battl e : and h ere “ ” the are the camps to this day, all along coast , at

e e H olm and Brancast r and Holkham , and , it may be

e added , at Weybourne and Runton and els where ; “ and the coast west of Weybourne is soft and

- - e open , with its mud tracts and sand dun s ; and som e twelve miles from the marshes near Wey

e e e bourne , and four mil s south of Crom r, ther is a

on e th British camp at Hanworth , upon of e tribu

h e e e . t e taries of the Riv r Bur Finally, writ r con

clude s e e , all the minut particulars d scribed by the historians are fulﬁlled on this one spot of the coast of Britain but show me (he adds) any oth e r part of Britain wh ere one half of these undesigned

e e coincidences com tog ther. Th en he points out also that the British traditions l ead us to the same conclusions as the Latin histori ans for the Brut t ells us that Cms ar went into “ Fland ers and built hi s ﬂe et into Fland ers he ferde and makede his s chip - faerde and th en he deter mined to sail into Britain and when he returned it “ “ e e e was into Flandr , and while he was th r word ” com to France telling how he had fare d wh e nce it is evident that according to this authority the point

’ of Caesar s starting and returning were not upon

e i s the French shor . And further, it at least a coincidence worth observing that the Welsh Triads “ relate how Av arwy s on of Lludd gave Space for A N ORFOLK OWL PEN 1 73

men e e landing to the of Rom , in the narrow gre n

e the e e point , and not mor ; and consequ nc of this was the gaining of the Isl e of Britain by the men of ” Rom e ; and a narrow green point still called by the

nam e of Gre e n - barrow Hill is to be s een to this day

at Weybourne . It would be hard to ﬁnd any district of England that possesses more abundant or more inte resting relics both of a prehistoric occupation and of the Roman

invasion than this north - e ast e rn portion of N orfolk ; and the writer who has been quoted assures us that “ in all Britain there are not such a large number of British dwellings remaining as there are on the hills ” ” e lb ri The e from F gg to Weybourne . shri king pits

e of Roughton H e ath have been m ntioned alre ady .

e e e N ot far from th se , and some two mil s w st of

t he Cromer, on brow of the hill overlooking Runton ,

ﬁn e e e is a ntrenchm nt , apparently British in its origin but occupied and adapted by the Romans “ ” and known traditionally as the Roman Camp . Curious hollowed and e mbanked tracks lead up to it through the woods both on the east and

e e e on th e w st , and the asc nt from Be ston shows

on e e e in place the remains of a p bbl pavement . N ear the camp are hollows in the ground known “ - — as the leech pits , that is , presumably, the

- e lych pits , or pits of the dead . Be ston Church stands solitarily in a commanding position amidst the ﬁelds overlooking the cliffs ; and its rais e d and

e e e embanked graveyard , with embank d fenc s l ading to it in the same line at either end , has all the 1 74 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T CUCKOO

e appearanc of an oblong Roman camp , like that

- upon the neighbouring h ill top . Earthworks which may b e th e remains of yet another Roman camp are visible near the end of the hills where the cliff drops west of Sh e ringham ; but all h e reabouts has been dug and alt ered to adapt the ground for

- e the golf links which now make it famous . A littl

the farther west , on the brow of high ground of

e e We K lling Heath , ov rlooking the village of y

e i t s bourn , a small Roman camp has vallum and

e e d itch perf ct , with narrow op nings on the north

e and south . Not many yards from it a primitiv

e e are pit is w ll preserv d , and several others to be

- e found on the same common , whether pit dw llings

ﬂin t - ﬁre- " or workings or holes , or what not A group of such pits is not ed at the end of the heath

e near Kelling village ; and on the sam ground , nearer to H olt , is a group of tumuli . N or must the Roman station at Baconsthorpe , some four miles south of

e e Weybourn , be forgott n ; where a quarter of a century ago was found a huge earthen pot buried d e ep in the soil and containing from ten to fourte e n

t he e thousand silver coins , mostly of r ign of Postu

e mus , hidden here , we must suppose , by l gionaries who never came back to unearth th e m again .

- the Holt itself is an old world town , and houses for some distance along on e side of the principal street see m to testify to the former importance of its market ; for th ey are dotted about irregularly with

s et narrow alleys between them , each one in its position without any reference either to the next

A N ORFOLK O WL PEN 1 7 5

house or to the roadway , thus suggesting that they are th e succe ssors of bygone mark e t - stalls where each squatter in due cours e took a plot of ground

e for his own . The town is at pres e nt chieﬂy r mark

its e able for Grammar School , under the auspic s of

’ the i s hmon ers F g Company of London , and known as Gresham School ; for it was founded in the middle of the Sixte enth century by Sir J ohn

e e Gresham , a native of H olt who becam a m rchant

e prince of London and an ald rman of the City , brother to Sir Thomas Gresham , who founded the

e ee Royal Exchange . Their grasshopper cr st , s n in t he arms of the sch ool and conspicuous also as a

- n weather vane over the Royal Exchange , belo gs to a tradition that Sir Thomas in his infancy was cast away by his mother and left in a ﬁeld to die , but was discovered by a kindly neighbour through the chirping of a grasshopper . The school was the

- - Perers manor house of H olt , and from it Sprung

Perers e Alice , who ﬁgures in history mor promi n en tly than h onourably ﬁrst as maid of honour and afterwards as rival to Philippa the Queen of

Edward I I I . But we are concerned now with the l egends and stories of an older age . The high ground upon which Holt is built has

e already be n described . It remains to note, further ,

the that upon steep western face of this high ground , adjace nt to the main road which leads up into the

- town , there is a piece of undulating common land , its grass varied with tangled underwood , known ” locally as Spout Common , or brieﬂy The Spouts . 1 76 T HE MYTH O F T HE PENT C UCKOO

In a hollow in front of it an abundant spring of the

purest water ﬂows out of the gravel . This spring

n ow e is cov red by a brick vault, from which it pours through a spout to ﬁll a pond for the public us e of the town ; and thence it ﬂows westward in a brook

the e e let which feeds little river C laven a mil b low.

e e the Form rly, befor erection of the brick vault, the

spring - h e ad was protected only by an e nclosing

wall . The neighbours dignify the townsfolk with “ ” the o the title of H lt Knowing Ones , and illustrate it by a story of one who caught an owl and having no place to secure it for the night thrust it into this enclosure through the spout , but was astonished in the morning to ﬁnd that it had ﬂown over the

e ee the wall to r gain its fr dom . Thus the tale of “ Knowing O n e of H olt and his owl is exactly parallel to that of the wise men of Gotham and th eir

the e cuckoo . And promin nt position which the

the e town occupies , with spring issuing from und r

e the brow of the hill , is pr cisely one which of all others in that district the Briton could hold most energetically and most securely against the invading

Angle .

1 78 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO hi s Po ular His tor o the Cuckoo e the p y f , giv s us Scotch “ ’ e prov rb , You re like the gowk, you have not a ” “ an e s i n e s t rane but ; and also the German, Du g " wi e ck u k Gu c . immer einen Gesang, der g This constant repetition of the cry serves to point

of e a sneer in one the Comedi s of Aristophanes , Wh ere a man is said to have b een e le cted leader by

e e three cuckoos , meaning that his electors wer thr e noisy fellows who went on shouting for him till they seemed to be a multitude . In very mild seasons the cuckoo is heard in

February, but he seldom arrives before the begin ning of April and he ge ts eve n to the Shetlands

en d before May is out . He remains till the of the

e . summer, and the old on s leave in August But Since all parental duty is end ed as soon as th e egg

’ he i s laid t . , young are left behind They are not

the e strong enough for long ﬂight , it se ms , until

e Septemb r. Only in rare instances are they heard

lklore an d Pro . . Fo in October Mr Swainson , in his vin cial Names o Britis h Birds f , gives the rhymes which are popular in the eastern counties . Among them the Norfolk lines are best known — In April the cuckoo shows his b ill — In May he sings both night an d day; — In June he altereth his tune — In July he prepares to ﬂy — h In August go e must.

And to these the Suffolk people add

“ — ’ In S eptember you ll ollers remember — ' ” I n O ctober you ll never get over . CU CKOO LORE 1 79 And there is the following addition for N orthumber land , looking for the bird a month earlier

“ The oo o e of - a cuck c m s mid M rch ,

cucks of - A erill And mid p ,

And ganns away of midsumm er - m onth When the corn begins to ﬁll

e e where, howev r, anoth r version of the rhyme gives ” - it a month longer, of Lammas tide . The cuckoo thus identiﬁes himself with the spring “ A . s and summer the herald of warmth , the same “ writer continues , he seems to be intimately con

n ected . with St Gertrude , the successor of Freya or

e Iduna, the goddess s of love , of spring , of beauty, ” e whose tears wer pearls and ﬂowers . For St .

Gertrude , like Freya , was the banisher of ice and snow and the bringer of rain and sunshine .

Among the N e apolitan peasantry if a vin e - dresser has not pruned his vine b efore the vernal equinox ” as his neighbours will call him cuckoo, both a r e minder that the bird has arrived and as a reproach

a for his laziness . The joke is as old s the days of

H orace , for in one of his Satires the fury with which the vine - dresser replies serves as th e strongest e xample of abusive rage . And centuries further

i Works an d Da s back in classical antiqu ty, in the y of Hesiod , there is a warning to the ploughman who is behindhand in beginning his task , saying that you must hurry the work on if it happen that you are only starting it

When ﬁrst the cuckoo from the oak you hear o e h t e a In welc o me sounds f ret ll t e spring im ne r. 1 80 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C U CKOO

The advent of the bird was accordingly welcomed with festivity in some districts . In Shropshire, for

’ i Po ular A n ti uities nstance , as a note in Brand s p q

e tells us , it was the custom in the arly part of the nineteenth century that “ as soon as the ﬁrst cuckoo

e has been heard all the labouring classes l ave work , if in the middle of the day, and the time is devoted to mirth and jollity over what is called Cuckoo Ale .

It was natural , too , that anything which seemed Specially to belong to this season of the year should belong also to the cuckoo . Any bright blossom that appeared early among the wild ﬂowers would be

- ﬂ ow er the called the Cuckoo , according to fancy of

e different districts . In the east rn counties it is a

’ a little purple orchis . Elsewhere it is the L dy s

e - Smock with its pal lilac cross shaped blossoms ,

’ ” the lady s smock all silver white , as Shakespeare

- h chn is lo uculi . ﬂow er t e L s c calls it But his cuckoo , y f

Of botanists , is the Ragged Robin , with its jagged pink petals . Shakespeare puts it in low company, “ e - ﬂow ers classing together n ttles , cuckoo , darnel , ” and all the idle weeds . He Sings also of

Daisies pied an d vi olets blue

oo - of e o hue And cuck buds y ll w .

- which are doubtless the Mary buds , or Marsh

- Marigolds . The little white bells of the wood sorrel “ ” - are known as cuckoo meat , and formerly were “ ” pain de coucou . Similarly, the little mass of frothy substance with which the green frog - aphis “ ” - encases itself upon a plant is cuckoo spittle .

1 8 2 TH E M YTH O F TH E PEN T C UCKOO

- gius , or Cuckoo mount . Hera , or Juno , the queen

the of gods and wife of Jupiter , is the personiﬁcation of the warm bright sky ; and thus the cuckoo was he r s at e e sacred bird and upon her sc ptr . The disapp e arance of the bird for half the year s eem ed necessarily to have som e mystery about it . A belief is said to prevail still in Cornwall that the cuckoo remains hidden through the winter

ee O ld e in caves and hollow tr s . In tim s it was popularly supposed to assume for the winter the

e form of some oth r bird , usually of a hawk ; and this

notion has been hand e d down from ve ry early times . “ ” Aristotle , and after him Pliny, says Mr . Hardy , mentions that it was the belief of some that during a portion of the year it was converted by the altera

i t on of its voice , shape , and plumage , into a real bird

of prey. But the fancy is a natural one for though the head and claws are entirely different yet the general resemblanc e of the two birds is s o close that a cuckoo at a distanc e or on the wing is frequently

e . mistak n for a hawk Then , seeing that the cuckoo is the annual herald of the spring and also that it

disappears each year , it was easy to infer that the sam e bird always reappears each spring and sings

its song in the same grove of tre es year after year . I t is but a little step forward to the further inference

that the cuckoo never dies . The same collection of

' birds folklore quot e s a medieval eclogue ascribing

the s un to cuckoo the years of the , and quotes also ffomthe Z oolog ical Mythology of Gub ern ati s the “ ” Italian proverb , the years of the cuckoo , and the CU CKOO LORE 1 83

as the Piedmontese, as old cuckoo , to imply

O ld a e extreme g . The bird has gained an evil reputation for its habit of laying its egg in the nest of another bird ; though in fact recent naturalists assure us that it lays the egg upon the ground and then seeks a nest to place it in . It must choose the nest of a little bird , since a larger one would resent it . But it is equally well satisﬁed with the nest of the reed warbler in marshy lowlands or with that of the tit

- e lark or meadow pipit on a breezy upland . Sometim s

s a it is that of a chaffi nch or of a sparrow . They ythat the comparative smallness of the cuckoo ’s egg is to be explained on this among other grounds ; for the mother must carry it in her mouth to the nest , and it must be deposited in the small nest O f a little bird that cannot resist her, and the necessities of the case demand that incubation shall be accomplished speedily ; so that in one way or anoth e r the larger eggs would inevitably perish . And they say, too , that the reason why s he cannot have a nest of her

is e ﬁercen es s own , like other birds , becaus of the of her young ; for the little rufﬁan speedily ejects all companions , whether eggs or young, from his nest . h ’ Before eis two days old , and before he can see, “ ” s o a recent writer on The Cuckoo in the Times

—he newspaper relates , wedges himself under the

b e nestling that has to got rid of, hoists it upon

e his back to the edg of the nest , feeling about him with his stumps of wings which compensate for lack of vision , and eventually , perhaps not until after 1 84 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT CUC KOO

“ e : repeated attempts , he topples it ov r thus in less

than forty- eight hours from birth the rival princes are

the all well out of the way, and the child of vagabonds " is installed as undisputed heir . Even when he has

- had a brother cuckoo beside him , both have fought

till one or the other is thrown out U pon the ground . It was there fore a purely mythical supposition of the ancients that the parent bird devoured all the

other eggs to keep the nest for h er own . Yet the

foster - moth er toils for the imp as if he were her own offspring : and hard toil it is for the pipit or what ever little bird it be for another of the marvels that

belong to the newly - ﬂ edged cuckoo is the voracious appetite by which it feeds up its strength s o rapidly

that a month later it can take its ﬂigh t to Africa .

O e But no bserver has been able to discov r, even

- now, what number of eggs a cuckoo hen will lay in one season ; and though two eggs are sometimes found together none can tell whether th ey are the eggs of one bird or of two ; nor can it be discovered how the young birds ﬁnd their way over s ea and land in their autumn migration without the guidance of the old ones who have gone a month be fore th em 2 s o completely does the cuckoo succee d in ke eping her strange ways outside the limits of man ’s know

ledge . From the bird ’s habit of laying her eggs in another

’ bird s nest we get (says Hardy) a Ge rman proverb Thou rewardes t me as the cuckoo did the h edge ” he sparrow. And from t same habit comes the old world term cuckold (for it seems to be only an

CHAPTER XVI I

ET"MOLOG" O F “ CU CKOO PE N

IT remains to inquire what is the connection b e tween the spots which bear the name of Cuckoo Pen and the familiar story which we have in the Gotham

Tales . It is most improbable that these Spots had

ﬁrst come to be called Cuckoo Pens , and that the fable of the cuckoo - penning grew up out of that i designation . Ind e ed such a theory becomes mpos sible if the statement is correct , as reported by a

OldNotti n hams hire the writer in g , that tale of penning

e the cuckoo , as well as those of rolling the chees ,

the raking the pond for the moon , and drowning eel , is found in Germany, Sweden , Denmark, and

the N orway. Moreover, there can be no doubt that fable is far older, as well as far more widespread , than this local term Cuckoo Pen . Nor on the other hand can we suppose that familiarity with the fable le d the villagers in so many different places to

e ﬁx the titl of Cuckoo Pen upon these sites , more especially when it s o happens that these are nearly always , if not invariably, Sites which bear traces of the Briton . Thus we may safely conclude that neither can the fable have given birth to the term Cuckoo Pen nor can the term have given birth to

1 86 “ 1 8 7 ETYMOLOGY OF C UCKOO PEN l the fabl e . Yet it is obvious that there is a con n ection between them and we can only assum e that th e two things were growing side by side and the

one inﬂuenced the oth er . The most reasonable explanation would b e that these spots which the Briton had occupied were acquiring their peculiar title by some process which was helped forward by

e the wid currency of the fable . The whole matter is explaine d if Cuckoo Pen can be shown to be an

outgrowth , by corruption or development or other

e wise , of some previously xisting name . It will be we ll to examine ﬁrst the meaning of the pen ” with which the name of the cuckoo is asso

iat d the c e . In some cases it may be simply English

word , signifying an enclosure . But certainly in

most cases , and perhaps in all , it is the British word

e meaning the h ead or summit of the ground . P nn

e — in the neighbourhood of th e Cuckoo P ns, famous as giv mg its name to the family from which William — Penn the founder of Pennsylvania sprang, is the highest point of th e Buckinghamshire Chilt e rns ; and though som e authorities inte rpret it as a Saxon e n closure it is usually and much more naturally taken

- to be a British hill top . Inkpen Beacon , again , on

the southern edge of Berkshire , rises upwards of a thousand fe e t above the Kennet Valley and is re p ute d to be the highest point of all the chalk range

We in the south of England . have already had occasion to allude to the Pens of Somerset and also

- - to Pen y ghent among the Craven H ills . The word i s met with throughout England and especially along 1 88 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO

the western parts , and it occurs perpetually in Wales and Cornwall ; while, as Isaac Taylor reminds us , in many of the highest Pyrenean mountains the top

e en n e end most point is call d the p , and a rock is p in

- en n a Spanish , and a mountain top is p in Italian , and the same root appears in the Pennin e Range of the

the Alps and in the Apennines . Pen therefore is

the e British term for h ad , appearing constantly in all

e its the countries wh re the Cymric race has left mark , and appearing again in the Gadhelic form of Ben in

the the north of Scotland , and also occasionally in oth e r Gadhelic form of Ken throughout the British

Isles ; Kent itself, th e foremost headland of these

islands , being according to some etymologists the

e most prominent example of it . As th e Saxon adopt d

cwm combe e the British word or into his languag , and adopted also from the Britons the Latin words cas tor or ches ter and s treet which the Romans had

e al the given th m , he might naturally adopt so British

en word p . And accordingly we ﬁnd that in the Chilterns the spots called Cuckoo P ens occupy as a

general rule the summit of a hill, just as Penn Beacon is the summit of the whole range ; and where such spots occur on any lower ground th ey are

e ex ce commonly upon its high st point . In the p t ion al cases where this is otherwise it is easy to con

ecture . j explanations A mound or tumulus , for

e xample , though raised on low ground , may have

come to be called a pen or head . And we have seen

the example at Benson , where the name of Cuckoo Pen has been lost from the more elevated ground to

1 90 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO

Passing on along the sam e track w e come to l Cock s eas e farm at the corner of Stonor Park. Again a few miles farther eastward an anci ent road passing out of Berkshire cross ed the rive r at Cookham into the Chiltern district of Buckingham

e e e e shir , asc nding by Cliv d n H ill , as noted in a

e previous chapt r . Cookham was written Coche ham ” in Domesday Book and “ Cocham in the thirteenth century ; afterwards Cokham and “ ” k ham e e i s Co e . Its anci nt importanc shown in the fact that a Saxon gemot was held here at the

w as close of the tenth century, and there a church

e e b for the Norman Conquest , as mentioned in the

e e e gre at Survey . We hav alr ady se n that the Skeletons and weapons dug out of the river h ere indicated a spot of considerable British resistance . Recently also several oaken piles of an early pile

’ dwelling have been found at the river s edge beside the e lock, and a similar discovery has b en made on the opposite side of the river at Hedsor. From an account of the “ Place and Field Names ” of the

e . e e parish of Cookham , compiled by the lat Mr St ph n

ab un dan t illus trati on s Darby, we get of the ﬁrst

the syllable of the nam e. Of these most important

ox b orrow Cox b urh e as is C or , som times known

i Cox b ur and sometimes miswr tten Cockspur . Here from time immemorial the village pound has stood . It is an ancient enclosure close to the ancient road

e way and adjoining Ham Field , which is doubtl ss “ ” the sight of the original ham or hamlet of l Cookham and part of which was formerly E dﬁeld. “ ETYMOLOGY OF CU CKOO PEN 1 9 1

Very ﬁne spear- heads and other ﬂint implements have been found on this ground . I n the bend of the river north of the village we have C ockmars h

are Common , on which several barrows ; and in the largest of th e s e w ere ﬂint scrapers and ﬂakes with the cremated remains of a British lady , and in

e e anoth r those of a child , while a third contain d a

Saxon burial . On Cockmars h H ill there is also Cockden Grove ; and the Court Rolls of the manor

C okdon s ee e mention , which we may pr sume to be

e an ey or eyot p rtaining to Cockden . Cogwell

C okw ell Cockmars h (or ) Fishery , too , surrounds

Common , extending up the river all the way from Cookham village to Salisbury in Bi s hops w ood which marks the end of the parish . Cogwell Fishery belonged to the royal manor of Cookham , and in order to safeguard its rights the parish includes a strip of ground on the Buckinghamshire Side of the river along the parishes of Little Marlow and

— - Wooburn . All this series of names Coch ham ,

ox b urh Cockmars h Cockden C okw ell— C , , , serves to Show how strongly this word each or cook had establish e d itself upon the lands which eventually became the parish of Cookham . And it is worth adding that the primitive roadway which passes from west to east through Cookham is crossed at C ox b orrow by another from north to south ; and a

e littl farther south , in the adjoining parish of Bray , where this latter track crosses the Roman road

e Bib racte leading ov r the river at Bray or , we ﬁnd Cox Green ; just as we have already noted Cookley 1 92 THE MYTH OF THE PENT CUCKOO Green at a similar crossing on the western brow of

the Chilterns . Then if we pass to the opposite end of Berkshire

there are the two parishes of Coxwell , Great and h ll oc es we e . Little, known in Domesday Book as C The well rising between them is a fe eder of the Cole which divides Berkshire from Wiltshire and

e ﬂows northward to join the Thames at L chlade . At Badb ury H ill near Great Coxwell is a circular camp describe d as being two hundred yards in

diameter and surrounded by a ditch ten yards wide . At Little Coxwell also the remains of a square camp doubly entrenched have been noted ; and n e ar the a vill ge are the Coles Pits , covering an area of four t e en acres and described by Lysons as two hundred

- and seventy three pits , for the most part circular, excavated in the sand and varying in d e pth

- generally from seven feet to twenty two feet, one of them being forty feet in diameter and antiquaries have disputed whether they were dug for habita

- tions and hiding places or for storing corn . The

a pits app rently take their name, like the neighbour

e . ing parish of Coleshill , from the River Col

Further, crossing the Thames again to the Oxford

shire Side , we have on the banks of the Windrush “ ” Co s — the the village of gg , the Coges which Bishop

e of Bayeux owned in Domesday Book . Its nam is

cook e usually derived from the word , a littl boat ,

e Kin which we met with in Shak speare . So in g

Lear

1 94 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT CUCKOO of Eynsham wh ere the important British settl ement was on e of the four towns which yielded to Cuthw ulf

1 the Saxon after his famous victory in 57 . More over three mil e s farther down the Windrush w e

Cokethor e come to p Park, oth erwise called Cock “ ” thro e p, its name sugg sting that it is a thorpe or village of Norse i mm i grants connected with the “ ” coch illa e neighbouring v g . The hamlet adjoining “ e the park is Hardwick, a British wick wher a

cinerary urn has been unearthed in digging gravel .

re Half a mile farther, in the parish of Standlake , a the remains of a remarkable British village with

circular pit - dwelli n gs and underground storehouses

e e for grain , as w ll as r lics of primitive burials , ﬂint

the e and bronze implements , and bones of xtinct

- short horned ox .

Cuckﬁeld its the in Sussex, with weird legend of Doom Tre e always shedding a bough as a warning of approaching death to the head of the family of ’ Cuckﬁeld e—the —Plac Rookwood Hall of Ainsworth s romance may be presumed to be an early clearing

An dr ds ald made by the Briton in the e w e . It would be easy to go on enumerating Similar example s of places which have this cochsyllable in their names and which also Show evid e nce of British

on e e occupation . But that must not be passed ov r

has is Coggeshall , which the reputation of being the

e Worthies a Gotham of Ess x , and Fuller in his spe ks “ ” of it as being call ed Jeering Coxall . Its people are said to have ﬁxed hurdle s in the bed of the river

to divert its course , and hung blankets across the “ ETYM OLOGY OF C U CKOO PEN 1 95

e road to prev nt the approach of a pestilence , and pulled down one of their windmills becaus e there

e was not nough wind for two , and chained up a whee lbarrow lest it should go mad aft e r a mad dog had bitt en it a ﬁsherman among th em took rod and line to hook the moon out of the river ; and it was nece ssary for the Volunteers to have their right legs swath e d with hay - bands and their left with straw ’ “ “ ” because the s erj eant s orders of right and left “ e e e were unint lligibl to th m . A Coggeshall job is a proverbial expression in Essex for any remarkably

- foolish action . It was a site of Roman British

’ His to an d o o ra o occupation . In Wright s ry T p g phy f E s s ex w e read of various r elics found in and about “ e th e town , a phial with a lamp in it, cover d with

e e a Roman tile fourteen inches in diam t r, and also

u e some rns with ashes and bon s , and coins of the

time of Antoninus . It has been thought to be the

n um Can o i of th e Itinerary of Antoninus . In the “ ” e C o as hael eleventh c ntury it was known as gg , which suggests the thought that Cogga may have been a personal name ; and some have derived the name from a Roman called C oc cilus whose inscribed — burial urn of the colour of coral w as among the relics t found here . There were an iquaries of former times “ ” n who explained Coggeshall to mean Sunny Ba k , im from its position on a southward slope , though an

portant part of it li e s low upon the Blackwater . But

the Co es hale Cokki s other old forms of name are g ,

Cox hall e hall , ; and it may well be anoth r example

co c of the word g or co hwhich we are investigating . 1 96 TH E MYTH O F TH E PEN T C UCKOO All the facts which we have had before us point the way to a reasonable conjecture that where a spot is now known as Cuckoo Pen it was originally

the Cuck Pen ; in other words , same causes which

lea made a ham , a burh , a thorp , a , a marsh , or a

ocks b urh Cokethor well , to be called Cookham , C , p ,

Cockmars h Cookley, , Coxwell , might equally cause “ a pen to be called Cookpen and this is the more probable since we have the same ample reasons for connecting the pen with the Briton as we have in

the other instances .

e e - ock en e Lastly, we hav the w ll known C p its lf,

re taining its name unaltered . It is made famous by ' Lady Nai rn e s ballad of the early years of the

e The Lai rd o Cock en . nin teenth century, f p Its old mansion is built on a romantic spot of the carbon

iferous e rocks near the South Esk Riv r, a furlong from Dalhousie Castle and seven miles from the

Saxon fortress of Edinburgh . It has not lost its old

e - e world aspect , though ston quarri s in the surface of

- - the rocks and coal workings below, a powder factory,

- - e a paper mill , and a railway station , have encroach d

e in modern tim s very near to its solitude . But we need not hesitate to assume that it was on e of the sites where the dispossessed race continued to hold

e th i r own . The transition from C ookp en to Cuckoo Pen

on e would be a very simple , for it would merely be the addition of another pi ece of folklore to what was already current about the bird , and thus it would

readily gain acceptance . When in the changes of

CHAPTER XVI I I T H E C U C K I N G F O L K

D A MITTING, then , the probability or at least the

Cuck en possibility that Cuckoo Pen may be really p , What interpretation are we to give to this word cuck cock coke co coch e , , , g , , which we ﬁnd ntering so frequently into the names of Sites of British occupa tion In some cases it may perhaps be the British coch och e the or g , still us d in Welsh language to “ re d signify for the cock , says Isaac Taylor, is “ the red bird ; and for its appearance in place “ e the names the same authority instanc s Crib Goch , name of the striking peak which overhangs the pass ” of Llanberis . Castle Coch , too , is the Norman fortress which the late Marquis of Bute renovated ,

e f standing on a wood d hillside near Cardi f. There are place - names als o in which this syllable cock is believed to indicate a spot where cock - ﬁghtin g was

e e e e of practised . In other cas s it is m r ly the nam

’ a former owner, as in Cock s Farm at Cookham . But neither of these last can apply to very ancient

- are place names , and there numerous instances which

es ec i refuse to admit of any of these explanations , p ally when we have such a group of coch- names as that in the parish of Cookham . 1 98 TH E CU CKING FOLK 1 99

We arrive at the most probable interpretation of these names if w e take cochto be the same word that

e — we have in the t rm cuck stool for this , rather “ ' than cucking stool , is (according to Wright s E nglis hDialect Diction ary) the correct and original “ ’ ” form . The meaning is the scolds stool . Dr . John son tells us that it was an engine invented for the punishment of scolds and unquiet women , which in

' an cien t times was called tumbrel though in fact it seems that the tumbrel was the entire piece of

trib uch machinery , for which other terms were ,

- trebucket, and thew, and a dung cart was sometimes called a tumbre l whereas the cuck - stool was the

Off chair ﬁxed upon one end of it , in which the ender e was fast ned and s o ducked in water . Thus at a

Ed ew are 1 2 court of the manor of g in the year 5 5 , ’ “ E n viron s o Lon don i n quoted in Lyson s f , the habitants were pre sented for not having a Tumbrel ” i n and Cucking Stool . Gay, his Pastorals , represents Sparab illa contemplating suicide and exclaiming

’ I ll speed me to the pond where the high stool ’ n h a o r the oo O t e long plank h ngs e muddy p l , ’ a oo the ea of e o ea Th t st l , dr d v ry sc lding qu n ” " t— o n ot di e s o ea e s ure a lover sh uld m n .

It was also us e d from a very early period for the punishment of persons who transgressed the laws

O f assize , especially brewers and bakers , and is mentioned thus in the account of Chester in Domes day Book , though in later times it seems to have been continued only for scolds and disreputable M women . Its use is recorded at anchester as late 200 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T CUCKOO a 1 s 1 77 5 and at Gainsborough till after 790 . A d escription of its us e at Cambridge in the middle of ’ t he eighteenth ce ntury is quot e d from Cole s manu scripts . H e describes the chair as being well painted

e and gilded , and having its back pan l carved with ﬁgures of devils laying hold of scolds it was upon

e e e e the timb r bridge which th n exist d , b fore the

e stone bridge was built , close to Magdalen Colleg “ and there he had himself seen a woman ducked for scolding : the chair hung by a pulley fasten ed to a

e the b am about middle of the bridge, in which the woman was conﬁned , and let down under the water ” three times and then taken out . A few illustrations of the different forms O f the

a New E n lis h n me may be given , taken from the g

Diction a AS e as t he ry and elsewhere. arly ﬁrst years of the thirteenth century we ﬁnd it latinised ”

c ucke s tola O f r . as . A poem of the time Edwa d I I “ ” eler - speaks of the p y [pillory] and the cok stol , and in the Burgh Laws of Scotland of about the year “ 1 400 we read : Gif scho [she] makis evil ale scho ” ii kuk ule e v s t . sall gif j s . or be put on the The L et book of Coventry in 1 423 mentions the Cokes towle made upon Chels more Grene to pun ys che s kolders ” and chidders as the law will . In some public “ accounts at Lichﬁeld in 1 5 78 there is a charge for

85 . e making a cuckstool with appurtenances , Fletch r,

’ ’ ’ Woman s Prize 1 62 : in the , 5 , writes We ll ship em

’ out in cucks tools : there th ey ll sail till they discove r the happy lands of obedience . And in Maccles ﬁeld a street is still called Cuckstool Pit

202 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT C UCKOO

: evil stocks for the men , a ducking stool for women , ” e and a pound for b asts . In 1 669 the corporation “ of Shre wsbury ordered that a Ducking- stool be ” e erect d for the punishment of all scolds . Instances also are quoted by Brand from the Proceedings of

’ - the Vice Chancellor s Court at Cambridge , in the “ e ﬁrst year of Elizabeth , of wom n adjudged to the ” Duckin e Stoole s couldin g for g . But we have the

’ ommen taries true account in Blackstone s C , where “ he tells us that the cucking stool is frequently ” e corrupt d into ducking stool . It appears from Wright ’s Dictionary that the verb to cuck is still in use in some parts of England N orthumberland and Warwickshire being men — “ tion ed i n the sense of to make the note of the cuckoo . We have already noted the Northumbrian “ e e rhym which says , The cuckoo com s of mid ” cuck - rill w as March and s of mid Ape . The word also used formerly in the sense of ducking, or punishing with the cuck stool ; as in the record of the Court Leet of Manchester in 1 648 a woman is “ described as a common s could who should have ben e cuckt but obviously this is merely a derived sens e of the word when its us e was unknown ex ” - cept in the t erm cuck stool . It seems clear that

e e the word m ant , in its tru and fundamental sense, to s cold , or to make unintelligible sounds , such as a foreign language would be to people of another

e b e language . Thus it cam to used in a general way as a term of cont empt ; and we can hardly doubt that the us e of the word cuckoo with that TH E C UCKIN G FOLK 203

meaning is to be closely connected with it . We see m to have this secondary sense of the same word

- cakes in the middle English , a Simpleton , which is also applied to a spoilt child , whence we get the t ” “ o coax . e verb The term cockn y , or cokeney

O in its lder form , has been supposed to be derive d from it ; and though the lates t ' authoriti es maintain

coken - a that this is nothing else than the old word y, “ ' — a cock s egg a term applied to small yolkless eggs—yet it is diffi cult to suppose that the word cockney can have obtained its popular prevalence

e without a connection , real or imagined , with som

e more familiar word , especially as it comes so n ar

cokes e e to the meaning of , a simpl ton . Shakespear w uses the ord vaguely for a fool , and not specially for one who is born within the sound of Bow Bells . “ “ I am afraid , he says , this great lubber, the world , will prove a cockney . Another though less familar word which may be supposed to have been ” inﬂuenced in a similar way is Cockaigne. It is “ simply an O ld French word meaning abundance and connected with coan o and cook ; and a French “ e poem of the thirteenth century , entitl d Pays de

Cocagne , describes it as a country of luxury and idleness where geese ﬂy about offering themselves “ ” ka to be e aten . But the Land of Coc ygn e came

‘ to be synonymous with the land of simpletons , or

- lubber land .

to cuck e The verb , therefore , seems to hav been originally used more or less contemptuously for the utterance of unintelligible sounds . So to the 204 TH E MYTH OF TH E PEN T CUCKOO

— ” ears of the English a Briton a Welshman or — foreign man , as they called him would merely “ ” he cuck when spoke, and his race would be

- called the cuck folk . Thus also his home would be

- cucks - the the cuck ham or ham , and various spots

he - ﬁeld - that occupied would be cuck , cuck ley , cuck

e - cucks - e cucks - d ne, cuck marsh , gre n , well and the point of vantage - ground which he specially made his own would be in the Saxon ’s proper tongue

' cucks - burh , or if he preferred to use the Briton s

e - own t rm it would be cuck pen . Thus the spot “ the e e e cet Peon n um where W lsh wer defeat d , at ” “ the Pens , may well have been known as cuck ” e p ns to the invading Saxon , though the term has

e not clung to the spot . And h re, as in other places to which the fable of penning the cuckoo has become attached , in Warwickshire, Monmouthshire , N orth “ umb erlan d e e - and els wher , the term cuck pen may well have existed and been lost , while in the Oxfordshire district it was preserved in t he corrupt “ ” form of Cuckoo Pen . The Cuckoo Bush at Gotham has all the characteristics of the Cuckoo Pens of Oxfordshire except the name ; and we are reminded of them also in the story of the Coves of Lorbottle making th e ir wall round a particular plan t a i t on which the cuckoo was accustom ed to occupy . “ ” - en n ers are It is obvious that th e true cuck p , those who occupied the cuck - pen ; for the localities which are ridiculed thus are those in which the older race predominated , and the neighbours who make the jest against them are the Saxons ; just as the men of

206 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT CU CKOO

e e Thre miles farther southward in the valley, wh re ” the the ald burn falls into Kennet river, is Rams “ ’ b eor h e bury, the Raven s g , the s at of a Saxon

bishopric . The Saxon of Ramsbury twits the Celt of Aldbourne for fencing round his pond in orde r to “ - - coop up th e dab chick , or moor fowl . ' We may compare also a legend of St . N eot s in

e Cornwall . The Saint , coming th re as a hermit , w as harassed by various hindrances in building his

e e church . Thi ves stole his ox n by night ; but the

red - deer from the forest cam e and off ered them

in . e selves their place , and St Neot harness d them to his carts and made them draw the stones for the

The building . crows also annoyed him in his

work ; and the country - folk point out an en

e trenched enclosure in which he impounded th m .

e It is a Roman camp , which was doubtl ss used by

the Britons after th e departure of the Romans .

—a The Saint was a Saxon kinsman , and by one — account a brother, of King Alfred and thus was

an regarded as intruder among the Celts of Cornwall ,

e whom the legend transforms into crows . Wh ther the quarrel of the Cornishmen with the defenceless h e rmit was one of religious controversy or of

racial enmity does not appear, but the thought arises that some older myth may have been en

’ e grafted upon St . Neot s history by a lat r age .

The crow is certainly an uncanny bird , if only by “ ’ O reason of his blackness . The curse the crows

on you says an Irish proverb . And still more i uncanny s the owl . TH E C U CKI NG FOLK 207

of o e a an d o Birds m n d rk f ul ,

- o a e b at an d owl Night cr w , r v n , , sings an anci ent Gaelic melody in the Leg en d of

n t os e e Mo r . It is tru that the owl is the bird of

e wisdom , sacr d to Minerva . As Longfellow des crib es H erion him in yp , The owl is a grave bird , a monk , who chants midnight mass in the great ” e - t mple of N ature . But there is also the Lich owl ,

- or corpse owl , deﬁned by Dr. Johnson in his “ Dictionary as a sort of owl by the vulgar suppos e d ” f r to o etel d eath . If he is heard at a birth his note is the foreteller of misfortune . H is feathers ,

’ e according to H orace, wer used together with frog s blood by the witch Canidia in her incantations ; and

’ ’ e o an d o Add r s f rk blind w rm s sting, ’ ’ Li zard s leg an d o wlet s wing ” For a a ch rm ,

c e h e were familiar to the witches in Ma b t . And ther is the strange tale which the country- folk of — Gloucestershire used to tell , how the Saviour

’ e a e w nt into baker s shop and asked for br ad , and

’ the baker s wife at once put a pi e ce of dough into

e the oven to bake , but her daughter complain d that it was too large and took part of it back , whereupon

e s he was transform d into an owl . Ophelia in

amlet H , distracted with h er woes , takes the story to

’ ”

: e e . herself Th y say, the owl was a bak r s daughter “ And Mr. Leland , in his book on The English ” Gipsies and their Language, says that they are

’ familiar with this legend and that Maromeng ro s ’ havi C , or Baker s Daughter is their common term 208 TH E M YTH O F TH E PENT C UCKOO

Whatev r li . e es e e for an owlet behind it , the owl h r stands out clearly as a bird of evil omen .

- The dab chick , too , has gained a doubtful repu tati on by its habit of disappearing with strange

e suddenn e ss in the water. In Stirlingshir it is “ ’ ” the 0 the called Mother the Mawkins , or hares , i n e the e w e oth r words , a witch . But tal s that have be en noticing cannot b e accounted for as the out

We growth from fancies of this kind . may fairly assume that all of them are connected together in their origin ; and if this is the case , it is evident that when the bird is the impound e d crow or the en

e the - e clos d owl or cooped dab chick , these are m rely variations of the tale of the p ent cuckoo .

e e Then if this wid spread tale is to be connect d , at ” e Cook en l ast in many cases , with a spot called p , parallel explanations may suggest themselves for

e the kindred stori s . May not the Cornish story of

' e the crows at St . N ot s have grown from some designation of the spot which had become corrupt e d ” - " e into crow pen Several etymologies , mor or

e e e . less likely, sugg st th mselv s Instances are cited

crai crick carrick in which the Celtic g, , or , a rock, “ the crau - takes form of . S O crow pen may be rock ’ n li s h Dia ct Dic on ar head . And Wright s E g le ti y gives us an early Welsh and Cornish word , taking the crew craw crao crow crue krowe forms , , , , , , meaning

en ee - en a p or fold for cattle or sh p . So crow p may

- e e be a fold on a hill top . Again , Prof ssor Sk at tells i

e - crauan d creaun t re us of middl English words , , “ ” creaun t , meaning defeated , and surviving in our

2 1 0 TH E MYTH OF TH E PENT CU CKOO noises around his cell at night and feare d that his e nemies had found him he sought relief in the thought that th ey were only demons . At Crow

i ts borough on the weald of Sussex, famous for anci ent beacon - station eight hundred feet above the “ ” - e the b e or h sea l vel , there can be little doubt that g

e was a British arthwork . In Somerset we ﬁnd “ Crowcombe in a combe on the rugge d western C front of the Quantock H ills . oming back to the district of Oxfordshire where the Cuckoo Pens abound , closely adjacent to that of Benson is

Craumares Crowmarsh , the of Domesday Book,

e which Mr. Reade , the Oxfordshir antiquary who

e has mor than once been quoted , claimed as the site

’ of Aulus Plautius s complete defeat of the fugitive Britons when he had established his position up the

Thames . In one instance and another it is possible that such a Spot may take its designation from a

Saxon owner who bore the name of Crau or Crow , or even from the bird itself ; but it cannot be by chance that this word belongs so frequently to loca liti es which connect themselves clos ely with th e

Briton , suggesting the strong probability of some

i more signiﬁcant mean ng. We might go on to hazard a conjecture about the

Owl myth at H olt in Norfolk, only premising that here again it is merely guess - work But no spot in the neighbourhood could more worthily b e ar th e name of Pen ; and if the word he infrequent in the

e eastern counties , we have at least P ntlow Hill in

— c en o hlaw Essex , the Celti p joined with the Sax n . TH E C UC KI N G FOLK 2 1 1

Then , whether from some Scandinavian hero, as at U l h Burnham p a few miles away, or whether from

the bird itself, as in such names as Ulgham (pro n oun ced U ffham) and Hoolet Hall in N orthumber

land , who knows but this spot among the woods of H olt may once have bee n called U lph Pen or Owl Pen And in that case the puzzle of its quaint

myth is disentangl e d . An d if we should venture upon a further guess

- about the Aldbourne dab chick, we might suggest that perhaps a British pen of the Wiltshire Downs

lies at the foundation of the story , and possibly the

idea of a pen for the wild - fowl or the moor - hen may have sprung from such a name as “ fowl pen ” or ”

hen . pen If it were the former, we might con “ ” jecture that it may have been a foul p en in the sense of a “ pen surrounded by foul or marshy

ground . Or if it were H en Pen , then H en Toe , a

Hen f corruption of Tor, in Lancashire , af ords an exact parallel to the name : and th e form e r syl — lable is of frequent occurrence as , for example ,

Words an d Places Isaac Taylor says , in his , that

- hean from the Anglo Saxon , poor, we have H enlow, ” Hendon and H enley ; while again i t is one of the forms into which the word hamor home has in some

e cases been corrupted , and we have also s en that some antiquaries believe that in Henley there is the

e hen C ltic meaning old . Shall w e at any rate conclude that the mystery of the imprisone d an d e scaping bird may probably be

solved by the existence of such place - names as have 2 1 2 TH E M YTH OF TH E PEN T C UCKOO been suggested that the prevalence of the Cuckoo myth may be attributed to a great extent to the frequent occurrence of a Cuck - pen transformed into

Pen Cuckoo , while conversely this transformation of the name was itself largely due to the pre valence of the myth , the one fact reacting upon the other " And may we not also presume that the other forms of the myth are probably trace able to some corresponding origin " C e rtainly this ex pla nation accords with the facts which belong to the various localities , and with the fanciful legends and traditions which bear upon them . It may therefore be a suggestion worthy of being con s idered until learned antiquaries can Offer one that is worthier.

2 1 4 I N DEX

o a 2 1 0 o 1 - 2 Cr wm rsh , 79, J hn , King , 3 33 , 5 o t o e ae a 1 6 - 1 2 Cr w h rn , Julius C s r, 9 7 o oo Mot 2 20 e 1 1 Cr w W d , 9 , 9 Jut s , 7 e t 6 6 Cub r , 4, 5

Cuck 20 - 20 e t 1 1 1 88 , 3 5 K n , 9,

kho 1 e a St . 6 1 Cuc ld, 94 Ki r n , , — oo en a e 1 o on - a e 1 20 Cuck p g t s, 97] Kingst n Th m s ,

oo 1 - 202 Cuckst l, 99 Cuthwulf 1 2 a e a 1 0 1 2 , 8 L ngl y M rish , 9, 4 ux a 1 8 a t ee e 1 0 C h m, 9 L ng r Hundr d, 7 C n e ils e e te y g , 77 L ic s r, 7 C n ric 1 1 2 1 28 e o 1 0 1 y , 5 7 , L wkn r, o o 1 1 1 20 1 2 L nd n, 9, , 3

Dab - 208 2 1 1 o ot e - chick , , L rb tl , 5 5 57 e o o a e 1 1 1 D sb r ugh C stl , ' ’ Des crz tzo Nor olczen s i um1 60 a e ea 1 0 p f , M id nh d, 9 e ze 8 a a 1 D vi s, 4 M rch m , 44 D b un i r r s b urn 1 22 1 2 o , 7 1 , 78 Mea c aed , , 4

o e te x o 1 - 1 2 Medlers a 88 - D rch s r, O n, 7 , 7 7 79 , 3 , B nk , 94 1 e e a 88 8 39 M dm nh m , , 9 , 94 o to 1 2 o e e 8 2 86 D wn n , 5 5 M ng w ll , , , 97 oo a e 8 M nr k rs , 4 , 49 E b b s ﬁee 1 1 t, 9

to 1 6 eot St . 206 Ebring n , 5 N , , 1 1 6 1 20 ettleb ed Epping, , N , 74 Wa 2 20 ew ort Ermin y, 7 , 5 p , 5 3 e 1 1 00 ottmham2 - 8 Ewelm , 9, 9 , 99 , g , 5 , , 33 a 1 28 1 1 Eynsh m 1 94, , 43, 94 ffa 88 1 1 O , , 4 o e Wa 2 1 1 oo F ss y, 7 , 49, 5 5 Otm r , 7 3 o - e to e 1 Owl 20 2 10 F ur shir S n , 54 , 7, e a 1 1 6 1 Fr y , 45 , 4 , 79 i fo 1 1 1 6 ee a e 1 60 Fr l rd, 7 , 45 , 4 P l C stl , P n 0 1 e , 5 , 88 a fo 1 e 1 8 G r rd , 45 P nn , 7 Pen hen t 1 8 e t e St . 1 G r rud , , 79 yg , 54, 7

e 8 1 - 88 e a za oe 6 1 - 6 Grimsdyk , P rr n bul , 3 h 6- ut lac St. 20 e e G , , 9 Pev ns y , 3 44 e e 8 P ws y, 4 e t 1 1 - 1 2 Phr xa H ngis , 9 3 ys , 4s

- - H 8 a . 61 6 enley , 2 85 Pi r n , St , 3 o e 8 Po t c o Highm r , 5 r h urn , 59

o t o fo 1 68 1 - 1 6 21 0 o t o 1 2 H l , N r lk , , 74 7 , P r sm uth , 7 o 1 0 H ok N ort on , 5 o a 1 1 a 206 H rs , 9 R msbury, Hwiccas 1 8 ca , 4 Ris , 53 1 1 1 2 Rollright, 5 , 5 I ckn ield Wa 0 1 o o eat 1 1 y, 7 , 7 , 7 5 R ught n H h , 59, 73

1 - 1 t o 1 60 1 Idbury, 47 49 Run n , , 73 n a 0 u hcliff 2 I , 5 R s e, 9 e o o Ingl b r ugh , 54

- e 1 8 St . e 6 6 Inkp n, 7 Agn s, 3 5

- e 1 02 106 St . a toc 6 Ipsd n, Cr n k, 5 I N DEX 2 1 5

a 2 1 1 Ulgh m , o 1 2 Upt n , Bucks , 5

Vo t 1 1 6 1 1 r igern , , 9

Sin odun 1 0 , 79, 3 7, 1 4

a 1 0 - 1 2 W rborough , 3 3 ' Wat t ling S t ree , 73 ’ a a t 1 W yl nd s Smi hy , 44

e o e 1 6 - 1 W yb urn , 9 74 t o e 1 Whi e H rs , 44

t e 8 - 1 Wil shir , 4 5 e te 1 2 Winch s r, 7

a ow 1 1 2 - 1 1 2 Wi e ds ﬂ eet 1 1 1 20 T pl , 1 5 , 4 pp , 9, a et 1 1 t e 1 Th n , 9 Wi n y, 93

tte a 1 1 6 - 1 1 Wi nh m , 3 4, 3 4 oo 1 8 Wychw d , 4 ha 1 1 Wyt m , 4

t t k Pat ern os t r R ow L on don E C. E lli o S oc , 7 , e , ,