Ealing

“ We have mentioned two events so far removed in time as the reigns of Edmund and Charles I, and they are the only ones in which Ealing and its vicinity seem to have been perturbed by armed forces, but it should be added that when England was threatened with invasion by Napoleon in 1797, the inhabitants of Ealing and Brentford formed a volunteer corps of some two hundred strong, and at the close of the war its colours were, happily unstained, deposited in the Parish Church at Ealing. ”

“ A black marble table with gilt letters contains some particulars of the family of Sir Frederick Morton Eden, Bart; a pyramid with arms recalls the memory of Joseph Gulston, of Ealing Grove, five times M.P. for Poole, and one of the South Sea Directors, who died in 1766. A monument of white marble is sacred to the names of John Loving, of Little Ealing, one of the Tellers of the Exchequer in the reign of King Charles the Second, King James the Second, and King William the third. ”

“ The nucleus of the town, the ancient village, lies south of the highroad to Uxbridge, west of the open Ealing Common. The place is wholly residential. At St Mary’s church, almost wholly rebuilt c. 1870, are buried John Oldmixon, the historian (d. 1742) , and Horne Tooke (d. 1812) . The church of All Saints (1905) commemorates Spencer Perceval, prime minister, who was assassinated in the House of Commons in 1812. It was erected under the will of his daughter Frederica, a resident of Ealing. Gunnersbury Park, south of Ealing Common, is a handsome Italian mansion. ”

“ I came and went between Ealing and my aunt and uncle, and presently between Effie and clubland, and then between business and a life of research that became far more continuous, infinitely more consecutive and memorable than any of these other sets of experiences. I didn’t witness a regular social progress therefore; my aunt and uncle went up in the world, so far as I was concerned, as if they were displayed by an early cinematograph, with little jumps and flickers. ”

“ Black’s new house at Ealing was happily called, she thought if one of the chiefs of the Company could afford such magnificence, their own, by comparison modest establishment, could not be considered “over-timbered,” to quote from the promoter’s vocabulary over again. ”

“ In the Manor of Ealing the custom of Borough English prevails by virtue of which lands descend to the youngest and not, as generally, to the eldest son, and if the tenant have no issue to the younger brother. The reason of this custom is, says Littleton, that the youngest son is presumed in law to be least able to shift for himself. This is a curious and interesting mark of the difference between feudal or military tenures and copyhold, which were originally agricultural. ”

“ One might hence follow the river on a byroad, circumventing the tram-line through Ealing and Hanwell, two adjacent places as to which the story is told of Thackeray’s—or who was it?—suggestion to the railway authorities that the porters should be changed who proclaimed them as Healing and ‘Anwell. Ealing is such a favourite residential suburb that it now extends for two miles along the road, and on either side has turned private grounds and mansions into streets and playgrounds. On the right rises the dignified quarter of Castlebar Hill, over which are ways to the new park on the Brent ”

“ The vicinity of Ealing appears to have known little of the horrors of war, from the time of Canute to that of the Civil war when, on November 12th, 1642, an engagement took place at Brentford between the Royalist and Parliament forces, which though of no great magnitude was the occasion of much recrimination between the King and his disaffected subjects, as it occurred at a time when efforts, more or less sincere, were being made to accommodate the differences between the Throne and the people. ”

“ The neighbouring town of Brentford has a less happy fate, and Ealing doubtless shared to some extent in the events at Brentford. In the year 1016, Ethelred, the King, dying, the country was torn by the rival claims of Edmund Ironside and Canute. London and the parts about it declared for Edmund, the remoter counties ranging themselves with the Danish King. A sharp engagement between the hostile forces gave a temporary victory to Edmund, and the Danes fled across the Thames, many of the Saxons being, in the ardour of the pursuit, drowned in the river near where Kew Bridge now stands. ”

“ He moved from Belfast to London in 1898 and eventually settled at Ealing, regularly attending the meetings of scientific societies in London. He died from heart failure at Ealing on 9 Aug. 1904, and was interred at Ipswich. ”

“ Therefore they halted early in the evening of the day preceding this imperial entry, about six miles from the metropolis, in the neighborhood of Ealing (for by that route lay their way) . They were not tired on arriving at their inn. ”

“ On rising ground on the outskirts of Ealing where it borders on Turnham Green, stands the historic mansion of Gunnersbury, now owned by Baron Rothschild. The present mansion replaces an earlier edifice, which was pulled down at the end of the last century. ”

“ In 1792 he retired to Great Ealing, Middlesex, where he died on 13 Jan. 1801, in his 73rd year. He was buried on 21 Jan. in the churchyard of St. Mary's, Ealing (Lysons, Environs of London, Supplement, p. 130) , where there is a memorial tablet describing him as ‘endeared to his friends by the gentleness of his manners’ (see engraving of tablet in Memoir, p. lxvii) . He was an admirer of Dr. ”

“ To the north lies Eling, the Mark of the Ealingas, and in regular succession from it come the various hursts, holts, and dens, now to be seen in Ashurst, Buckholt, and Dibden. The last village has a very picturesque church, its roof completely thatched with ivy, disfigured, however, by a wretched spire. In Domesday it possessed a saltern and a fishery, and a wood with pannage for six hogs (sylva de 6 porcis) . Two hydes were taken into the Forest. Eling, at the same time, maintained two mills, which paid twenty-five shillings, a fishery and a saltern, both free from tax. ”

“ Seven of them escape to Cruachan Ai, and tell there the whole story to Ailill and Medb.
Then Ailill and Medb arise, and the nobles of Connaught and the exiles from Ulster: they march into the district of Kerry Ai with their troops as far as: the Ford of Fenna.
Meanwhile the wounded men were being cared for by Flidais in the castle, and their healing was undertaken by her.
Then the troops come to the castle. Ailill Finn is summoned to Ailill mac Mata to come to a conference with him outside the castle. "I will not go," he said; "the pride and arrogance of that man there is great." ”

“ There is one little corner of England; here is another.
The Isle of Ely lying on the fens is like a starfish lying on a flat shore at low tide. Southward, westward, and northward from the head or centre of the clump (which is where the Cathedral stands) it throws out arms every way, and these arms have each short tentacles of their own. In between the spurs runs the even fen like a calm sea, and on the crest of the spurs, radiating also from Ely, run the roads. Long ago there was but one road of these that linked up the Isle with the rest of England. ”

“ Ely is in the province of the East Angles, a country of about six hundred families, in the nature of an island, enclosed, as has been said, either with marshes or waters, and therefore it has its name from the great plenty of eels taken in those marches; there the aforesaid servant of Christ desired to have a monastery, because, as we have before observed, she was descended from that same province of the East Angles. ”

“ Not till the worthy couple had retired, could she permit herself her old Irish airs, or the sonatas and sacred pieces of the Convent.
VI Accident—the key to all great inventions—supplied Eileen with a new way of educating her mistress. The cook had been impertinent, Mrs. Maper complained. "Why don't you hunt her?" Eileen replied. Mrs. Maper corrected the Irishism by saying, "Do you mean dismiss?" Eileen hastened to accuse herself of Irish imperfections, and henceforward begged to learn the correct phrases or pronunciations. ”

“ Then the king went away for the space of a year, to make his royal progress throughout the realm of Ireland, and Ailill was left behind, in the stronghold of Fremain of Tethba; there to pass away and to die.
Now upon a certain day that followed, the lady Etain came to the house where Ailill lay in his sickness, and thus she spoke to him: "What is it," she said, "that ails thee? thy sickness is great, and if we but knew anything that would content thee, thou shouldest have it." ”

“ There's the silence of death in Allerley Tower,
The taper gone out with its murky smoke,
The raven has finished her croak-croak,
The cricket is silent at midnight hour;
The last of the Allerley lords lies there,
And Allerley goes to a distant heir.
In yon tomb where was laid his young Lady May,
Lord William sleeps now by the side of her bier;
And the Allerley lords and ladies lie near.
But nearest of neighbours they nothing can say:
No "Good morrow, my lord," when the day is begun,
No "My lady, good night," when the day it is done. ”

“ The Danes now proceeded to march into East Anglia, a kingdom whose inland barrier was marked by vast sheets of water that set in from the Wash, and went winding away into the low marshes of Cambridge, far away beyond Ely, over a country above an hundred miles in extent. Along this boggy and perilous course did the pagans advance with their plunder, their cars, and their cavalry; razing the monastery of Ely to the ground as they passed, nor pausing until they came to the residence of the king of East Anglia, which stood beside a river that then divided Suffolk from Norfolk. ”

“ A STRANGELY interesting city is Ely.Unique in its way is the metropolis of the Fens; wonderful exceeding it must have been in the olden times when the fen-land was one great inland sea, studded at wide intervals with islets as satellites about the great central isle of Ely. ”

“ On another night, as Ailill lay in his sleep, upon his bed, he saw some thing, a young man and a woman, the fairest that could be found in Ireland. "Who are ye?" said Ailill. "Victory and Defeat are our names," she said. "Victory indeed is welcome to me, but not so Defeat," said Ailill. "Victory shall be thine in each form!" said she. ["What is the next thing after this that awaits us?" said Ailill. "Not hard to tell thee," said she] "let men march out from thy palace in the morning, that thou mayest win for thyself the cattle of Dartaid, the daughter of Eocho. ”

“ Ælla defeated the Britons, and made them flee for shelter to the great forest of the Andredsweald. The invaders established themselves along the coast, and were called South Saxons. They made slow progress in the work of conquest. Many native princes combined together against them, and, in 485, fought with Ælla and his sons ‘near the bank of Mearcrædsburn.’ The battle was bloody and indecisive. Ælla found his forces so much weakened that he sent for help to his countrymen across the sea. ”

“ The king went and found the Ben-ee, as her son had said. He caught her by the hair. Winding the long locks round his hand, he swore to her that he would not let her go till she gave leave for her son to go with him to Eillen-na-Muick. "Let him go then," she said; "but, if you bring my son home alive, let the sails you hoist up as you sail in the bay be red; if not, let them be black in your vessels." The king swore it to her, and they sailed for Eillen-na-Muick. [2] They came at last into the bay below the castle, and the queen stood with her twelve maids and looked from the windows ”

“ And Etain came three times, and yet Ailill kept not his tryst, and she found that same man there every time. "'Tis not for thee," she said, "that I came to this tryst: why comest thou to meet me? And as for him whom I would have met, it was for no sin or evil desire that I came to meet him; but it was fitting for the wife of the king of Ireland to rescue the man from the sickness under which he hath so long been oppressed." "It were more fitting for thee to tryst with me myself," said the man, "for when thou wert Etain of the Horses, the daughter of Ailill, it was I who was thy husband. ”

“ The South Saxons, then, at first occupied the three fertile bits of the county—the coast belt of Sussex Proper, the Valley of the Ouse, and the isolated Hastings district—because these were the best adapted for their strictly agricultural life. In spite of the legend of Ælle, I do not suppose that they were all united from the first under a single principality. It seems far more probable that each little clan settlement was at first wholly independent ”

“ In any case, I am quite certain that Welsh place-names involve allusions to the fairies [206] much oftener than has been hitherto supposed; and I should be inclined to cite, as a further example, Moel Eilio6 or Moel Eilian, from the personal name Eilian, to be mentioned presently. Moel Eilian is a mountain under which the fairies were supposed to have great stores of treasure. But to return to Mr. Gethin Jones, I had almost forgotten that I have another instance of his in point. ”

“ He had a lieutenant’s rank, but was Baron in private life, [Pg 131] belonging to an old family in Bonn. Not a Prussian, therefore, but a Rhinelander, and without the Prussian arrogance of manner. Just before the war he had been at Oxford—Brasenose College—and spoke English perfectly, and loved England with a strange, deep, unconcealed sentiment.
“Loved England?” exclaimed Brand at this part of Eileen’s tale.
“Why not?” asked Eileen. “I’m Irish, but I love England, in spite of all her faults, and all my grievances! Who can help loving England that has lived with her people?” ”