G. Basil Barham

“ This is a peaceful English country of hill and vale, fine country estates—Compton Winyates with its matchless Tudor mansion is near at hand—and little churches, rich in architecture, that will repay a visit. Here you are on the outskirts of Shakespeare’s land, real generous England, full of history, that has not changed so very much since the spacious days of Elizabeth—the England that the English tourist all too seldom sees. ”

“ Apart from its legendary interest, Cadbury Castle is one of the most remarkable places in all Somersetshire. Four high earth walls surround the hill, the innermost faced with stone. Within the lowest rampart you will find King Arthur’s well; on the hill side strange terraces that were once, they will tell you, shady gardens where fair ladies walked in the cool of a summer’s evening. ”

“ Near the middle of England, where the Malvern Hills rise abruptly to a height of nearly 1,400 feet above the sea, is the double-peaked rugged Raggedstone hill about which several strange old legends centre. A restless spirit is said to haunt the bleaker portions of the summit, but a stranger legend is that of the Shadow Curse, called down upon this hill by a monk of Little Malvern in the olden time. ”

“ Bath is a wonderful city set in glorious surroundings, and you need not be an invalid to enjoy a visit there. With its memories and relics of Beau Nash, and the spacious days of the eighteenth century; its wonderful old Abbey Church, its Roman remains and its sunny sheltered walks, Bath is an amazingly attractive place in which to spend a holiday. The country round about is full of interest, the town possesses every attraction a holiday resort should possess. ”

“ A mile or two away rise the fine open Marlborough Downs with their many relics of ancient civilization. Three or four miles to the westward and you are in glorious Savernake Forest with its silent glades and its world famous avenues. Hungerford itself is a quiet, tidy little market town, little known to the tourist, yet a wonderfully convenient centre for visiting the country that surrounds it. Gallows-crowned Inkpen Beacon is but a few miles off, a hill that misses being a mountain by only forty odd feet. ”

“ Or you may go from Frome, that queer busy little town with its narrow medieval streets straggling up and down hill.
All the country round here is full of interest to the lover of nature or antiquity. It is a country of mild airs, where in the sheltered valleys the flowers bloom amazingly early. Yet the average tourist seldom wanders off the beaten track to enjoy this pleasing stretch of rural England. ”

“ And here, too, you will find, in the Museum, relics of Roman Britain unequalled in England, for to Reading have been brought the treasures excavated at Roman Silchester a few miles away, the buried city sometimes called the British Pompeii.
The neighbourhood of Reading teems with objects of natural beauty and historic interest, which more than repay the examination of the visitor to this, at first sight, rather modest modern red brick country town. Reading has seen in its time a very full share of England’s history and romance. ”

“ But if you go to Warwick’s beautiful castle you may see, to-day, the brave Guy’s armour, and [Pg 25] some bones of the ferocious cow. And there is the old tale of Guy, handed down for centuries, to prove that this mighty warrior really did live.
This is the old tale. After Guy had slain the Dun Cow, and had been to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage, he returned in disguise, and unrecognised, feeling that he wished to withdraw from the world and live a secluded life as a hermit. ”

“ As the legend is generally told Herne was a royal keeper whose unusual skill at the chase caused him to become a great favourite of his royal master, and at the same time made his fellow foresters mighty jealous of him. So they combined together to try to plot his undoing.
To one of their secret councils, held beneath great oaks in the heart of the forest, there came one day a mysterious dark man of unusual stature and strength, whose face seemed familiar yet whom none could place. ”

“ Tradition says that here Caractacus defended himself from the Romans.
It was “on a May morning on Malverene Hulles” that Piers Plowman had that vision of which Langland wrote five hundred and more years ago.
Few centres in our country offer such varied scope to the holiday-maker as the Malverns, where nature and history vie with one another in the matter of attractions.
The fresh upland air is tonic and health-giving. That weird dark shadow of the Raggedstone can never have fallen here, or, if it have, its mystical power has become impotent by reason of the many beauties of the place. ”

“ Ever so long ago there came marching over the hills a king and his army bent upon the conquest of England. As they neared the summit of the hill the king was met by a witch who told him that he had nearly achieved his desire. ”

“ King Arthur and Guinevere his queen, they say, were buried within the walls of the ancient abbey over which, as the old tale tells, St. Patrick and St. Benedict once presided as Abbots.
And, should you weary of history, there are all the natural beauties of the Mendip hills for you to explore; for both Wells and Glastonbury lie on the slopes of this beautiful range.
Few places in Europe have so much of interest to offer the visitor as Wells and Glastonbury and that pleasing country all around, over which, in the dark ages, the Witch of Wookey wielded her gruesome sway. ”

“ Some people may tell you that there never was such a person as the valiant Guy, Earl of Warwick, who slew the terrible Dun Cow that terrorized middle England in the old days, and, single handed, defeated the giant Colbrond, and cut off his head. ”

“ All round about is the rich leafy England that Shakespeare knew so well. Stratford-on-Avon is but eight miles away. Shottery—the village of Shakespeare’s wife, where Anne Hathaway’s charming little cottage still stands—Henley-in-Arden, Charlecote, and Hampton Lucy; pretty historic names we know so well, are all in the neighbourhood.
This country has a sixteenth century atmosphere even now. It is one that the foreign visitor seldom misses; yet the British tourist knows all too little of it and its peculiar rural beauty and charm.
Guy’s Cliff Caves. ”

“ Their wild doings naturally quickly reached the ears of the King, and he summoned the keepers, demanding an explanation. In terror they confessed how they had plotted Herne’s ruin, and the King, furious at their impious action, caused all of them to be hanged upon Herne’s oak.
But the ghostly chase still went on, they say, and even to this day in the dark midnight hours some [Pg 39] people believe you may hear, far away in the Great Park, the distant sound of a huntsman’s horn, and see flashing through the trees the ghostly chase led by an antlered man on a huge black horse. ”

“ Volume Four brings Legend Land nearer to the great centres of modern life. It comprises some of the old stories told of districts within easy reach of such busy cities as London, Birmingham and Bristol.
In it you will find historic and pre-historic romance mingled. Some of its tales are as old as any in our land, tales born of the very ancient belief that saw in “Druid” stones a human origin. ”

“ Nestling under the Chiltern Hills, at the head of the quiet Hambleden valley, through which a tiny stream runs to join the Thames a couple of miles or so below Henley, is the sleepy little village of Fingest, where, in days gone by, the Bishops of Lincoln had a palace.
One of these prelates, Bishop Burghersh, lies buried here, but they say that he does not rest quietly in the [Pg 29] tomb in which they laid him, with pomp and ceremony, these five hundred years and more since. For Burghersh in life was not all that a bishop should be. ”

“ And in the legend of Herne the Hunter you will recognise a story which Shakespeare himself told in “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” And it was probably an old tale when he repeated it.
In “King Arthur’s Camelot” you meet with a very old legend of that great hero of British historical romance; and in the story of “Wayland Smith” you get an echo of the lore of the old Pagan gods which invading Anglo-Saxon tribes brought to England soon after the Romans left it. ”

“ But he has not yet returned, and later that morning the villagers found the fields, where the wedding party had been held, strewn with huge upright stones, many of which remain to this day. And they say that there they will stand until the devil returns to play his evil tune; then the stones will become men and women again and will take up once more their mad dance. ”

“ These are the “Whispering Knights,” turned to stone in the very act of conspiring against their king.
Nearer to the silent king is a circle of stones, once his faithless soldiers, and all about grow elder trees, said to be descendants of that witch who was herself transformed into an elder after her magic spell had worked upon the king and his men. They tell you that if you stick a knife into these elders you will sometimes draw blood.
The Rollright Stones form a weird relic of some long forgotten time. Men have written of their strange appearance throughout many centuries. ”

“ You will come across traces of poor Weland in many parts of the country, but nowhere will you find a stranger relic of his working days than in his smithy—Wayland Smith’s cave they call it now—quite close to the side of that ancient track-way that skirts the summit of the Berkshire Downs above the White Horse Vale. ”

“ He appeared in a flash of sulphurous flame, and they knew him to be the Evil One. He told the terrified men that Herne would appear to them soon, and that they must do exactly what he bade them do, otherwise he would seize their souls.
Soon Herne appeared, a ghostly figure with huge antlers, and commanded his fellow-keepers to assemble at the oak the next midnight with horses and hounds equipped for the chase. They had to obey, and night after night, led by the ghostly huntsman, the party swept through the forest. ”

“ There are traces of Saxon work in the Church, masonry that was three or four hundred years old in the bishop’s time, and an unusual tower of great age and height, ending in twin red gables, rises high above the little church.
Down the valley you come, in a few miles, to Hambleden, with its picturesque old manor house, and a little further on to a beautiful reach of the Thames, [Pg 31] midway between Henley and Medmenham, with its old abbey and its memories of the eighteenth century “Hell Fire Club,” and the grim stories told of the wild and extravagant doings of its dissolute members. ”

“ But civilization is “improving” away romance very rapidly. And it is worth while to hang on fast to the last remaining shreds of those other days when life, though ruder, had more time for simple dreams of wonderful things. ”

“ They say that in her youth, she was a very beautiful woman, yet no man fell in love with her, and so, becoming embittered, she made a bargain with the powers of evil, so that she might wreak her vengeance upon all mankind for the slight, she held, they had put upon her. ”

“ It is that of a stately woman dressed in coif, weeds and wimple, with grave face and long thin hands, in front of which a basin, suspended by no visible means, always appears. The lady is forever trying to wash her hands in the basin, but it always moves from her before she can achieve her desire. ”

“ And because the child could not write in his copy-book [Pg 41] without making blots, he was whipped so severely that, as the old tale goes, he died. But that is only the beginning of the story.
It was his mother, Lady Hobby, who chastised the child. When you see her portrait, as you still may at Bisham, you cannot believe she meant to be so cruel. She must have been sorry for her harshness; at any rate she has been punished for it, for she can find no rest in death. ”