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BEQUEST OF
REV. CANON SCADDtNG, D. D.
TORONTO, 1901.
r^
LEGENDS,
SUPERSTITIONS, AND SKETCHES
OF
DEVONSHIRE
HI Hiljfik!- U
THE TAMAK AND THE TAVY,
ILLUSTRATIVE OB ITS
MANNERS, CUSTOMS, HISTORY, ANTIQUITIES, SCENERY. AND NATURAL HISTORY,
ILLUSTRATED BY WOOD CITS.
MRS. BRAY,
Al/IHUK OK HKNHY L> E POMP.ROY: WARLKIOH. OH FATAL OAK; THFI.AWNEY OF TRF.LAWN F. : FTC.
•' I own the power Of local sympathy, that »'er the fair Throws more divine allurement, and o'er alJ The great, more grandeur.'
Carrington's Dartmoor
IN THREE VOLUMFS— VOL. L
LONDON: 7/7v * *
JOHN MURKAY :
A. K. NEWMAN AND COMPANY.
1844.
<
London :-Darling and Son, Printers, 31, Lcadenhall Street.
LETTERS TO THE LAUREATE,
$c. 8pc.
LETTER I.
TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.
Contents. — Allusion to the original plan of the work being suggested by the Laureate — Sources to be employed in its progress — Climate, situation, and natural advantages of the Town — Anecdote of Charles II. — Dartmoor heights, rivers, arid streams : their character — Weather: humorous lines on the same — Mildness of the climate; vegetation ; laurels, &c. — Myrtles : account of some extraordinary ones at Warleigh — House Swallows, or Martens — Story of a deep snow : a gentleman imprisoned by it — Origin of the name of Moreton Hampstead — Frozen Swans — A Christening Anecdote of the last generation — Snow in the lap of May — Pulmonary con- sumption unknown on Dartmoor — Snow-drops ; strawberry- pi ants ; butterflies at unusual seasons — Blackbirds and Thrushes — Winter weather — Monumental stones of Romanized British Chiefs- Reasons given by the Writer for going at once to Dartmoor — Vestiges of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of that region.
Vicarage, Tavistock, Devon, Feb. 11, 1832. My dear Sir,
Ever since yon so kindly suggested that, ac- cording to a plan you yourself pointed out, I should attempt giving an account of this place and neigh- bourhood, I have felt exceedingly desirous to begin the task, that, previous to your honouring Tavistock with the promised visit, you may know what objects., possessing any interest in themselves, or in relation to past times, may be found here worthy your atten-
VOL. I. b
2 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. [LET.
tion ; and though to do justice to such a work as you have suggested to me would require your own powers fully to execute it, and conscious as I am how inadequate I must be to the undertaking, yet 1 will attempt ;is far as I am able, to meet your wishes — "..ell knowing, by my own experience, that you are one of those who receive, with kindness and indulgence, any information that may be gleaned even from the humblest source.
Nor shall I forget that it is your wrish I should give not only all the history and biography of this plac 3, and gather up whatever of " tradition and manners can be saved from oblivion." but also (again to quote your own words) state " every thing about a parish that can be made interesting" — "not omitting some of those ' short and simple annals' of domestic life which ought not to be forgotten." Whilst I attempt, therefore, to give to subjects of historical import the serious attention they demand, I shall likewise en- deavour to vary and lighten those more grave parts of my letters, by stating, sometimes, even trifling things, in the hope they may not be altogether void of interest or amusement ; for a traveller, though he srts out on a serious pursuit, may be pardoned if he now and then stoops to pick up a wild flower to amuse his mind for a moment, as he journeys on his way. In the accounts which I purpose transmitting to Keswick, I shall not only give you such informa- tion as I have myself been able to collect, but I shall also, when I come to speak of Tavistock Abbey, derive some assistance b}T occasional references to a series of papers written by my brother,* respecting
* Alfred John Kempe, F.S.A.
I.] CLIMATE OF TAVISTOCK. 3
that monastic foundation, which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine about two years ago.
I have, I believe, before mentioned to you, that at a very early period of life, Mr. Bray entertained some thoughts of writing a history of his native town, including descriptive excursions in its visinity — the latter more particularly embracing the western limits of Dartmoor. Though, from living retired, and not meeting with that encouragement which is so useful and so cheering to young authors, he never threw :nto a regular form his purposed work ; yet he made for it a considerable body of notes, principally derived from his personal observations on the scenes and antiquities that excited his interest and attention. Some of these papers have now become exceedingly valuable, because, unfortunately, many of the me- morials of past times, which they most minutely de- scribe, have of late years been seriously injured, or entirely destroyed. In my letters, therefore, I pro- pose, from time to time, to transmit to you very copious extracts from these papers, as it would be both needless and presumptuous in me to attempt giving my own account of those vestiges of antiquity and picturesque scenes, which have already been so carefully investigated and faithfully delineated by my husband.
Before I enter, therefore, upon any historical notices of Tavistock, I shall say something respecting the climate, situation, and natural advantages of our neighbourhood : since I am much disposed to think that the monks, who knew so well how to choose their ground, whenever an abbey was in question, were induced to fix on this spot on account of its many and most desirable localities for the erection of that
b 2
4 ANKCDOTE OF CHARLES II. [i.ET.
noble pile, whose existence gave celebrity to the place, and was as a refuge of honour and security to the lea ruins;-, science, and piety of those times — which now. with more flippancy than truth, it is so much the fashion to rank under the name of the "dark ages," though our own boasted light, was caught from that flame which they had saved from extinction.
I have invariably found, with persons who rather choose to see the faults and deiiciencies than to trace the advantages either of the natural or the moral world, that whenever I speak in praise of Devon- shire, or of Tavistock in particular, they oppose to such commendation — the climate ; and ask me how I can be partial to a place so constantly exposed to rain ? The objection has received even the sanction of royalty, since it is traditionally averred that whilst Charles II. was in Tavistock (in his father's life- time, during the civil wars) he was so annoyed by wet weather, that if any body remarked it was a fine day, he was wont to declare ever after, " that, how- ever fine it might be elsewhere, he felt quite sure it must be raining at Tavistock."
That we have a more than due proportion of wet I will not deny; but it is, I believe, a fault com- mon to mountainous countries ; and if we have some discomforts arising from this circumstance, I am con- vinced that we owe to it many of our advantages also. I have never seen your majestic mountains and lakes ; but, judging from a beautiful collection of drawings,* in my own possession, of Cumberland and Westmoreland, I am induced to believe that a very great resemblance may be traced between the
* By the late lamcmted C. A. Stothard, F.S.A.
I.] TAVISTOCK. 5
valleys of those fine counties and our own; and I rather think that you also have no want of showers.
Our Dartmoor heights are frequently distinguished by bold and abrupt declivities of a mountainous cha- racter ; our verdure is perpetual — and we owe to those watery clouds, which so much annoyed the lively young prince, not only our rich pastures, but the beauty of our numerous rivers and matchless mountain streams. Of these I shall have occasion to speak hereafter, since, go where we will, they meet us in our walks and rides at every turn — and always like pleasant friends, whose animation and cheer- fulness give an additional delight to every surround- ing object. So much, indeed, do I feel prejudiced in their favour, that, after having become for so long a time familiar with the tumult and the beauty of our mountain rivers, I thought even the Thames itself sluggish and dull, and very far inferior to the Tavy or the Tamar.
Tavistock owes much of its humidity to the neigh- bourhood of Dartmoor ; for there the clouds, which, owing to the prevalence of the westerly winds in this quarter, pass onward from the Atlantic ocean, are attracted by the summits of its granite tors, and, spreading themselves in every direction, discharge their contents not only on the moor itself, but for many miles around its base. Some ingenious person (whose name I do not know, or it should find a re- cord) has described our weather with much humour in the following lines : —
" The west wind always brings wet weather, The east wind wet and cold together, The south wind surely brings us rain, The north wind blows it back agaiu.
G TAVISTOCK. [LET.
If the sun in red should set, The next day surely will he wet ; If the sun should set in pray, The next will be a rainy day."
Tims you sec, my dear sir, poets will sometimes be libellers, and help to keep alive a popular prejudice ; for let the weather-grumblers say what they will, I can aver that our climate (whose evil reputation is taken for granted, without sufficient inquiry into its truth), bad as it may be, has, nevertheless, its re- deeming qualities ; and, amongst others, assuredly it teaches us to know the value of a good thing when we have it, a virtue getting somewhat scarce in these times ; for a real fine, diy, sun-shiny day in Tavi- stock can never pass unnoticed, all living things rejoice in it ; and the rivers run and leap and sparkle with such brilliancy, and offer so much to delight the eye and cheer the spirits, that the clouds and the damp and the rain that helped to render them so full and flowing, are all forgotten in the gladness of the o-enial hour; and the animals, and the birds, with the insect tribe (which is here so numerous and varied) play, or sing, or flutter about with a vivacity that would almost make one believe they hailed a fine day as truly as would King Charles, could he have met with such a recreation on the banks of old Tavy.
The mildness of our climate is so well known, that it needs no eulogy of mine ; our laurels and bays are the most beautiful evergreens in the world, and, like those of one who shall be nameless, never fade. Our myrtles, too, flourish in the open air ; and we used to boast of some very fine ones that grew in our garden. In a hard frost, however, they should be carefully matted ; for the severe weather of January, 1831,
r.] MILDNESS OF CLIMATE. 7
killed ours, in consequence of their having been neglected in this particular. I cannot give a stronger proof of the mildness of our climate, than by men- tioning the following circumstance, which I received from my esteemed friend, Mrs. Radcliffe, of Warleigh. That lady says, in one of her letters to me, " Four myrtle trees grew in the open air, in the recesses of Warleigh House, from twenty-seven to thirty feet in height, the branches spreading nearly from the roots. One was a foot and a half in circumference at the base, and proportionably large to the top. The other three were nearly as high, and one of them was two feet in circumference near the root. Two of the four were of the broad-leaved kind, one small- leaved, and the other double-blossomed, the flowers of which might be gathered from the windows. They were cut down in 1782, from the apprehension of their causing the walls of the house to be damp. The late Mr. Radcliffe, who cut them down, remarks, in a memorandum, ' I have been the more par- ticular in describing these myrtles, as I doubt not they were the largest in England. Four-and-twenty fagots, of the usual size, were made of the brush- wood. The stem, main branches, and principal parts of the roots were in weight 452 lbs.' Tea-caddies, made from the wood, and a block of it, remain in our possession at Warleigh."
I here also may add (as another proof of the mild- ness of our air) the following particulars, which I have seen stated in Dr. Moore's Catalogue, lately published, of the birds of Devon. The Doctor says, " Of the house swallow, or marten, I have seen the old birds feeding their young on the 20th of Sep- tember, 1828, at Warleigh ; and have been assured,
c
8 A DEEP SNOW. [LET.
by a good observer, that martens have frequently been seen flying during- mild weather even in the Christmas week, at Plympton. These birds build in the hollows of the rocks under Wembury dirt's, as well as about the houses in this neighbourhood."
Our winters are seldom severe ; and when we have snow it does not lie long upon the ground. But Dartmoor, from its great elevation, is far more liable to snow storms and hard weather than we are, who live in a less elevated country. Mr. Bray recollects that, when he Avas a boy, returning from school at Christmas, three men with shovels went before the carriage as it crossed the moor, in order to remove the snow heaps that, in particular places, would otherwise have rendered it impassable.
The severest winter that I have heard of within the memory of persons now living, occurred about twenty years since, when my husband's father met with an adventure that was a good deal talked of at the time, and found its way into the public prints. Had you crossed the moor to visit us when you were last with your friend Mr. Lightfoot, it is not impossible you might have had a somewhat similar one, since I perfectly well recollect then hearing that, for several days, the road from Moreton to Tavistock was exceedingly difficult of access on account of the drifted snow. I here give you Mr. Bray's adventure.
That gentleman had been at Exeter to take the oaths as portreeve of the borough of Tavistock, and was returning by the nearest road through Moreton Hampstead, situated about twelve miles from Exeter and twenty from home. There was a hard frost on the ground, and the evening being exceedingly cold, Mr. Bray determined to pass the night at a little
I.] UNEXPECTED ADVENTURE. 9
comfortless inn (the only one, I believe, which could then boast such a title in the place), and to continue his journey across Dartmoor on the following morning.
He retired to a bed that was anything but one of down, and lay shivering all night, wishing for the hour that was to convey him to his own home, where warmth and comfort might be found at such a sea- son. Morning came ; but what was his amazement, when, on getting up, the first thing he beheld was the whole face of the surrounding country covered by such a fall of snow as he had never before witnessed in Devon, his native county. How to get home was the question ; and, like many other puzzling queries, it was more easily started than answered.
With much eagerness Mr. Bray now consulted landlord and drivers, on the practicability of so de- sirable an object. After much deliberation, every possible expedient being suggested and discussed, the thing was found to be impossible, for the roads were literally choked up with snow, not one could be found passable, either on horseback or in a carriage ; nothing less than a whole regiment of labourers, could they have been found, to dig out a passage for many miles, could have effected the object ; and even then, so thickly did the skies continue to pour down their fleecy showers, such efforts might have been unavailing. To reach Tavistock was out of the question ; and he next inquired if it might be practicable to get back to Exeter. But the road in that direction was equally choked up ; and the drivers assured him, in their Devonshire phrase, that " not only so thick was the fall of snow, but so hard was the frost, that the conchables" (meaning icicles, pro- bably derived from the conch shell, to which indeed
b3
10 MORETON HAMPSTEAD. [LET.
they bear some fanciful resemblance) " hung from the horses' noses as they stood in the stables."
There was nothing- to be done ; and as people must submit to mischances when they cannot run away from them, he was condemned to exercise Job's vir- tue, as many others do, because he could not help it. Finding this to be the case, he now began to think how he should contrive to pass the time during his imprisonment, and the landlady was called up and consulted as to what recreations or comforts her house could afford to a distressed gentleman under such circumstances : the prospect was a dreary one, for neither books nor company were to be found. Mr. Bray's situation, however, being communicated to the clergyman and squire of the place, he became indebted to both for the kind attentions with which they endeavoured to cheer the time of his detention at Moreton Hampstead, that lasted during the space of three weeks ; and at length, when he did escape, he was obliged to reach his own home by travelling through a most circuitous road.
Thus, in regard to him, arc verified all the con- stituents that are said to have given rise (but with what etymological accuracy I will not vouch) to the name of Moreton Hampstead ; i. e. a town on the moor instead of home — for tradition says, that it was so denominated from the circumstance of persons returning after Exeter market being oftentimes com- pelled to pass the night in a few wretched hovels, on the spot where the town now stands, in lieu of home ; these hovels having originally been colonized by certain vagabonds and thieves who broke out of Exeter gaol in days of old.*
* I speak here, 'of course, only of the country tradition ; for the
I.J EFFECTS OF HARD WEATHER. 11
I have heard, likewise, of one or two other in- stances of the effects of hard weather in this neigh- bourhood, which I deem worthy of record in the annals of our town, because they are rare. The first relates to some favourite swans of the above- named gentleman. These fine birds were in pos- session of a piece of water, which had formerly been part of the stew-ponds of the abbey. One morn- ing, during a hard frost, the swans were seen, like the enchanted inhabitants described in one of the Arabian tales, who had become, all on a sudden, statues of marble. There the birds were — white, beautiful, but motionless. On approaching near them, they were found to be dead and frozen — killed during the night by a sudden and severe frost.
I add the following anecdote, not only as a very remarkable circumstance in this my letter on frost and snows, but also as forming the very first I can meet with in the life of my husband, whose claim to being ranked among the worthies of Tavistock I intend by and by to establish, when I come to my biographical department. But as I like my cha- racters, whenever they can do so, to speak for them- selves, I shall tell this story in Mr. Bray's own words. It may also afford a useful hint to those who are fond of observing the gradual changes in the man- ners and customs of polished society; since our modern fine ladies will be somewhat surprised at the politeness of the last generation, on occasions of emergency. Here is the extract from Mr. Bray's letter, addressed to myself when I was in London last year.
real etymology must be from the Saxon ham, stede, — i. e., the place of the house, &c.
12 SNOW IN MAY. [LET.
" You must allow this is a very cold May, though a dry one. Mrs. Sleeman, with whom I dined at Whitchurch the other day, told me that it was a common saying among her friends, when any one remarked that the weather was cold in May, ' But not so cold as it was at Mr. Bray's christening, when, on the first of May, so much snow fell in the even- ing, that the gentlemen who were of the party were obliged to carry home the ladies in their arms.' I knew not that any thing remarkable had happened on the day of my christening ; but, by tradition, I knew that on my birth day so great was the re- joicing, that after drinking some imperial Tokay, followed, perhaps, by wines less costly, if not even by common punch, the doctor threw his wig into the fire, and burnt it, whether as an offering to Bacchus orLucina, I know not; but, as I understand the wig was full-bottomed, and well saturated with powder and pomatum, the incense could not have been very fragrant on the occasion."
These instances of hard weather are not, however, common ; for so celebrated is the mildness of the climate in this part of the west, that when the doctors can do no more with their consumptive patients, the}r often send them into Devon, and many have recovered, whose cases were considered hopeless. I have heard it repeatedly asserted, and from a careful inquiry believe the assertion to be true, that no person born and bred on Dartmoor was ever yet known to die of pulmonary consumption ; a certain proof that, however bleak and rainy that place may be, it cannot be unhealthy. This, indeed, is easily accounted for, since the land is high, the air pure, and the waters are carried off by mountain-torrents and streams.
I.] MILDNESS OF DEVON. 13
As additional proofs of the mildness of our climate, I may add, also, a few facts that have come under my own observation. I have seen in our garden (which is very sheltered) snow-drops as early as the first week in January. We have some strawberry- plants, (I think called the Roseberry, but am not certain,) that grow under the windows of the parlour where I am now writing to you ; and so late as the 14th of last November, did 1 pluck a few well- flavoured strawberries from these plants. The slugs devoured some others that were remaining before they were half ripe. The llev. Dr. Jago, of Milton Abbot, who is a most intelligent observer of nature, informs me, that on the 18th of last December, he saw in his garden the yellow butterfly, an insect, seldom seen in midland counties before the month of March.
I confess that, though a great admirer of birds, I am not sufficiently acquainted with the feathered tribes to understand critically their " life and con- versation," a circumstance which renders White in his Selborne, and the author of the Journal of a Naturalist, so truly delightful ; but I believe it is no wonder, though it may be as well to mention it, that our blackbirds and thrushes sans: to us at Christmas their carols, so lightly and so sweetly, that I, who had the concert for nothing, was as well pleased with it as an amateur might be to pay the highest price to hear Signor Paganini play his violin.
And now what shall I add more in favour of our poor abused climate and its weather? Shall I tell you that I have often, in the " hanging and drown- ing " month of November, found lively spirits, sun- shine, and beauty on the banks of the Tavy? and
14 MILDNESS OF DEVON. [LET.
that in December, when the good people of London
are lost in fog, in " the dark days before Christmas,"
as they call them, and substitute gas lights for the
sun's beams, I have often enjoyed a lovely walk to
Crowndale, the birth-place of Sir Francis Drake, and
have experienced that pleasure which I can describe
in no language so well as you have done it, in your
own winter excursion to Walla Crag ; an excursion
whose records will endure as long as the scenes it
describes, and which will be read with delight so long
as there are hearts alive to nature, truth, and feeling.
" The soft calm weather has a charm of its own ; a
stillness and serenity unlike any other season, and
scarcely less delightful than the most genial days of
spring. The pleasure which it imparts is rather
different in kind than inferior in degree: it accords
as finely with the feelings of declining life, as the
bursting foliage and opening flowers of May with
the elastic spirits of youth and hope*."
I am aware that some of my worthy friends in this part of the world, who find consolation in charging all their infirmities to the score of the weather, would be apt to exclaim against me, and say that I have given too favourable an account of that at Tavistock; but I confess that I like, literally speaking, to be weather-wise, and to look on the cheerful side even of the most unpromising things ; and if we have so much rain, and cannot help it, surely it is as well to consider the bounties which flow upon us from the skies, as to find nothing in them but sore throats and colds, and to fancy that our Devonshire showers fall, like the deluge, on no other errand than that of destruction.
* See Colloquies, vol. i.; p. 116.
I.] MILDNESS OF DEVON. 15
And now, my dear Sir, having commenced my letters, like a true native of England, with talking about nothing but the weather, I shall give you my reasons for proposing to take you, in the next, to Dartmoor, before I set you down amongst the ruins of our abbey. First, then, Tavistock owes not only many of its advantages, but its very name to its river, which rises on Dartmoor. And though the glory of our town, in after ages, was its stately abbey ; yet as the river Tavy has associated its appellation with the place from times beyond human record, that fact is a sufficient presumption that it possessed, in the aboriginal age, a certain degree of importance.
This, indeed, we may consider as confirmed by the inscribed monumental stones of Romanized British chiefs that have been found in this neighbourhood, two of which arc still preserved as obelisks in our garden. On Dartmoor, where this river rises, we find such abundant vestiges of the aboriginal in- habitants of this part of the west, that very imper- fect would be any history of Tavistock which com- menced in the Saxon era. I know there are those who have been sceptical about the Druidical remains on the moor ; but no one should venture to deny the existence of what they have never seen, only because they have never heard of it. We will begin, there- fore, upon Dartmoor in the next letter ; and I trust you will find it not altogether unworthy your atten- tion, as it has much engaged that of,
My dear Sir, Your most gratefully obliged and faithful servant,
A. E. Bray.
LETTER II.
TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.
Contents : — Dartmoor — Origin of its name — made into a forest by King John— Henry III. gave it bounds— Edward III. bestowed it on the Black Prince — Its extent, &c. — Impression it is calculated to produce on the mind — Granite Tors — Sunshine unfavourable to the Moorland scenery ; various effects produced by the clouds, times, and seasons — Rivers, their character, &c. — Variety and beauty of the mosses and lichens — Channels worn by the rivers — Crags and cliffs — Tavy Cleave, its grandeur — Scenery of the Moor where com bined with objects of veneration, their founders being tbe Druid priests and bards — The Moor barren of trees — Soil — Primary and secondary rock — Pasture for cattle — Peat — A hut ; the crook of Devon ; peasantry of the Moor, children, &c. described — Language of the people. Origin of the word ' Logan ' — Snow-storm on the Moor, and the adventures of a traveller, with a traveller's tale.
Vimrage, Tavistock, Feb. 20, 1832. My dear Sir,
Dartmoor, or the forest of Dartmoor, (as it is still called in all grants and deeds of the Duchy of Cornwall,) is situated in the western limits of the county of Devon. It is thirty miles in extent from north to south, and fourteen from east to west. Few places are really less known, and few are more deserving- of attention. It is considered to derive its name from the river Dart, which rises on the moor, in the midst of a bog at Cranmere pool. This river, which is sometimes written Darant, is supposed to be called the Dart from the remark- able rapidity of its course. " Dartmoor was," says Risdon, " made into a forest by King John, and not
LET. II.] ORIGIN OF DARTMOOR. 17
only confirmed by King Henry III., but had bounds set out by him in a charter of perambulation." And Edward III. gave it to his son the Black Prince, when he invested him with the title of Duke of Cornwall.
This vast tract of land, which has been computed to contain 100,000 acres,* is distinguished by heights so lofty and rugged, that the}- may in some parts be termed mountainous ; and though a large portion of the high road, over which the traveller passes in crossing it, presents an unvaried scene of solitariness and desolation, yet to those who pursue their in- vestigation of the moor beyond the ordinary and beaten track, much will be found to delight the artist, the poet, and the antiquary.
By a mind alive to those strong impressions which the vast and the majestic never fail to create, Dart- moor will be viewed with a very different feeling to that experienced by the common observer who declares it is " all barren." To him, no doubt, it is so : since, in its bleak heights, he is sensible to nothing but the chilling air; in its lofty tors, still rude as they were created, he sees nothing but bare rocks ; and in its circles of stones, its cairns and its fallen cromlechs, he finds no associations to give them an interest by connecting them with the his- tory and manners of ages long past away.
The feelings inspired by visiting Dartmoor are of a very different order from those experienced on viewing our beautiful and cultivated scenery. The rich pastures, the green hills, the woodland declivi-
* There are said to be 20,000 acres in addition to this, distin- guished by the name of the Commons.
18 SCENERY. [LET.
tics of Devon ; its valleys, alive with sparkling streams, and skirted by Banks whose verdure never fails, studded as they are with cottages and farms, convey to the mind that sense of pleasure which ren- ders the spirits cheerful and buoyant. There is nothing in such scenes to raise a thought allied to wonder or to fear; we know that we could dwell among them in security and peace ; they delight and soften the mind, but they seldom raise in it those deep and impressive reflections, which scenes such as Dartmoor affords seldom fail to create.
The peculiar character of the moor is derived from its granite tors; these are mostly found on the summits of its numerous heights, and lie piled, mass on mass, in horizontal strata. Some por- tion of dark iron-stone is found amongst them. There are, also, rocks of secondary formation, and several that are considered by geologists to be of volcanic fusion.
No one who would wish to view the moor in all its grandeur should go there on a very fine or rather sunny day : for it then possesses none of those effects produced by that strong opposition of light and shadow, which mountain-scenery and rugged rocks absolutely require to display the bold cha- racter of their outline, and the picturesque combina- tions of their craggy tops. Indeed, most scenery derives its pictorial effect principally from the clouds, and even the most beautiful loses half its beauty when viewed in unbroken light. I have seen Dart- moor under most of the changes produced by sun- shine, cloud, or storm. The first shows it to dis- advantage ; for the monotony of its barren heights then becomes predominant. A gathering storm
II.] THE MOOR IN A TEMPEST. 19
gives it a character of sublimity ; but a day such as artists call a "painter's day" is that which gives most interest to moorland scenery.
The pencil is more adapted than the pen to de- lineate such scenes as will then be found on the moor. I have often seen it when,, as the clouds passed slowly on, their shadowy forms would fall upon the mountain's breast, and leave the summit glittering in the sun with a brilliancy that might bear comparison with the transparent hues of the richest stained glass. The purple tints of evening here convey to the mind visions of more than natural beauty; so etherially do the distant heights mingle themselves with the clouds, and reflect all those delicate and subdued tints of sunset, that render the dying day like the departure of some beneficent prince, who leaves the world over winch his course has cast the lustre of his own "long and lingering" glory.
And often have I seen the moor so chequered and broken with light and shade, that it required no stretch of the imagination to convert many a weather-beaten tor into the towers and ruined walls of a feudal castle. Nay, even human forms, gigantic in their dimensions, sometimes seemed to start wildly up as the lords and natural denizens of this rugged wilderness. But who shall picture the effects pro- duced by a gathering tempest ? when, as the poet of such scenes so truly describes — " The cloud of the desert comes on, varying in its form with every blast ; the valleys are sad around, and fear, by turns, the storm, as darkness is rolled above." In these mo- ments, the distant heights are seen in colours of the deepest purple, whilst a solitary ray of the sun
20 MOSSES AND LICHENS. [LET.
will sometimes break through the dense masses of cloud and vapour, and send forth a stream of light that resembles in brilliancy, nor less in duration, the flash of" liquid fire."
The rivers, those veins of the earth that, in their circulation, give life, health, and vigour to its whole frame, here How in their greatest purity. So constant is the humidity produced by the mists and vapours which gather on these lofty regions, that they are never dry. Sometimes they are found rising, like the Dart, in solitude and silence, or springing from so small a source that we can scarcely fancy such a little rill to be the fountain that sustains the ex- pansive waters of the Tavy and the Teign. But all these rivers, as they pass on, receive the contribu- tions of a thousand springs, till, gathering as they flow, they become strong, rapid, and powerful in their course. Sometimes, bounding over vast masses of rock, they exhibit sheets of foam of a dazzling whiteness : and frequently form numberless little cascades as they fall over the picturesque combina- tions of those broken slabs of granite which present, growing on their surface, the greatest variety of mosses and lichens to be found throughout the whole county of Devon.
Often do the waters play upon rocks literally covered with moss, that has in it the blackness and richness of the finest velvet. In others, the lichen is white as the purest marble, or varied with the grada- tions of greys, browns, and ochres of the deepest or the palest tints. There is also to be found, on the moor, a small and beautiful moss of the brightest scarlet ; and nothing can be more delicate than the fibrous and filigree formation of various other species,
II.] RIVER-SCENERY. 21
that can alone be compared to the most minute works in chased silver, which they so much resemble in colour and in form.
There are scenes on the moor, hereafter to be noticed more particularly, where the rivers rush through the narrow channels that they have torn asunder at the base of the finest eminences of over- hanging crag and cliff. Such is Tavy Cleave, an object that fills the mind with a sense of surprise mingled with delight. There, after heavy showers or sudden storms, is heard the roar of the Tavy, with a power that renders the observer mute whilst he listens to it. There the waters flow wildly for- ward as their rush is reverberated amidst the clefts and caverns of the rocks ; and, as they roll their dark and troubled course, they give to the surround- ing scene that character of awe and sublimity which so strongly excites the feelings of an imaginative mind ; for there the deepest solitude to be found in nature is broken by the incessant agitation of one of the most powerful of her elements. Such a contest of waters — of agitation amidst repose — might be compared, by a poet, to a sudden alarm of battle amidst a land of peace, and those struggling waves to numerous hosts, as they press on with eagerness and fury to the field of strife.
Indeed, the whole of the river-scenery of Dart- moor is full of interest, more especially where it becomes combined with those objects of venera- tion which claim as their founders that " deathless brotherhood" the Druid priests and bards of the most ancient inhabitants of the West. Except in a few instances, the moor is totally barren of trees ; but they are not wanted ; since its vastness, — its
22 MOOR-HUT. [LET.
granite masses, — its sweeping outlines of height or precipice, arc best suited to that ragged and solemn character which is more allied to grandeur and sub- limity than to the cheerfulness and placidity of a cultivated or woodland-landscape.
The soil of the moor is of a deep black colour, and in most parts it is merely a formation of decayed vegetable matter, covering a foundation principally of granite ; for it is not altogether confined to this primary rock, as occasionally there are others of secondary formation. Though there are some bogs as well as marshes on the moor, yet the soil affords the finest pasture for cattle in summer, and produces a vast quantity of peat, that supplies fuel throughout the whole of the year ; whilst the sod also is useful in another way, since a good deal of it is employed in the building of huts, generally composed of loose stones, peat, and mud, in which the few and scattered peasantry of the moor are content to make their dwelling. A hardy and inoffensive race, the}r, at no very remote period, were looked upon as being little better than a set of savages ; and to this day they arc assuredly a very rude and primitive people. A Dartmoor family and hut may be worth noticing ; and a sketch of one will, generally speaking, afford a tolerable idea of all, though there are exceptions, a few comfortable cottages being scattered here and there upon the forest. Imagine a hut, low and irregular, composed of the materials above-named, and covered with a straw roof, or one not unfrequcntly formed with green rushes, so that at a little distance it cannot be distinguished from the ground on which it stands. Near the hut there is often seen an out- house, or shed, for domestic purposes, or as a shelter
II.] THE CROOK OF DEVON. 23
for a cart, if the master of the tenement is rich enouerh to boast such a convenient relief to his labour in carrying home peat from the moor.
But this cart is a very rare possession ; since the moormen most commonly convey their peat, and all things else, on what is called a crook, on the back of a poor, patient, and shaggy-looking donkey. You will say, " What is this crook ? " and I must answer, that I can really hardly tell you ; unless (as did Mr. Bray for the late King, when he was Prince of Wales, at the request of Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt) I make a draw- ing of it, and send it in my letter. This I hope to do when I can find leisure, together with a few more sketches by way of illustrating any subject that may absolutely require the aid of the pencil. In the in- terval, try if you can understand such an account as the following, which I confess is an attempt to de- scribe what is indescribable. Imagine the poor donkey, or a half- starved horse, laden first with a huge pack-saddle, never intended to bear anything else but a crook ; and across this saddle is placed that very machine, which is made of wood, and so constructed as to keep from falling to the ground any load of peat, firewood, &c, that is frequently piled up twice as high as the poor beast that bears it. At either side of this machine arise too crooked pieces of wood, turning outward like the inverted tusks of the walrus. These in themselves have a somewhat formidable appearance, but more so when, after they are unloaded, the thoughtless driver, as too frequently happens, places his pitchfork in an oblique direction from the saddle to one of the shafts of the crook : for thus, whilst the animals are ad- vancing at a brisk pace and in no very regular
24 THE DEVILS TOOTHPICK. [LET.
order, the prong of it may lacerate the leg of any unhappy horseman that meets them, and has not time or dexterity to avoid their onset. The crook is here known by the name of the Devil's Toothpick.
I may here perhaps he permitted to mention an anecdote of the late Mr. Bray, connected with the present subject. On ascending a hill in an open carriage near Moreton, he overtook a man on foot who had the care of several horses, laden with fag- gots on crooks. From the steepness of the acclivity, he was obliged to guide his horse in a somewhat sinuous direction, and he soon found that some or other of the crook horses invariably crossed him on the road, and considerably impeded his progress. This he was satisfied was owing to two words of the driver, namely, gee and rep, which he took a ma- licious pleasure in calling out contrary to Avhat he ought, — making them go to the right when they should have gone to the left, and vice versa. Mr. Bray remonstrated, but in vain. At length, when he reached the brow of the hill, he said to the churl, " You have had your frolic, and now I will have mine ;" and, not only whipping his own horse but the others also, he put them into a full gallop. The consequence was that they all threw oft their loads one after the other, the driver begging him in vain to stop, and receiving no other answer than " You have had your frolic, and now I have mine.'1
The manners of the peasantry may in some mea- sure be estimated by their dwellings. They are not overt-lean ; and though they are surrounded on all sides by mountain-streams and rills of the purest water, I have generally found, close to their doors, as if they delighted in the odour it produced, a pool
II.] THE MANNERS OF THE PEASANTRY. 25
into which are thrown old cabbage-leaves and every sort of decaying vegetable matter.
Out of these huts, as you pass along, you will see, running to gaze upon you, some half-dozen or more of children, not overburdened with clothes, and such as they have, like Joseph's coat, being often of many colours, from the industrious patching of their o-ood mothers. The urchins, no doubt, are not bred up as Turks, since frequent ablution makes no part of their devotion. Now and then, however, you find a clean face, which is as rare as a dry day on Dart- moor ; and when this is the case, it is generally found worth keeping so, as it discloses a fine, fat, round pair of cheeks, as red, — I must not say as roses though writing to a poet, for the simile would be much too delicate for my Dartmoor cupids, — but. as red as a piece of beef, which is a great deal more like the cheeks in question. Legs and arms they have that would suit the infant Hercules; and if they had any mind to play off the earliest frolic of that renowned hero, the moor would supply the means, since snakes and adders it has in abundance, and a good thing it would be if they were all strangled.
The hair of these children, which, to borrow the language of Ossian, " plays in the mountain winds," is generally the sole covering of their heads. This sometimes is bleached nearly white with the sun ; and, as you pass along, there they stand and stare at you with all their eyes. One token of civilized life they invariably give, as they salute you with that sort of familiar bob of the head now become a refined mode of salutation in fashionable life, so widely differing from the bowing and bending of the days
vol. i. c
26 PECULIAR DIALECT. [LET.
of Sir Charles Grandison, when no gentleman could salute another as lie ought to do without removing from his head a little three-cornered cocked-hat, and when the management of a lady's fan was an essential part of her good manners in the dropping of a courtesy.
But I am digressing : to return then to the sub- ject. A peasant, horn and bred on the moor, is generally found to be a simple character, void of guile, and, as Othello says of himself, —
" Rude in speech.
And little versed in the set phrase of peace ;"
and to this may be added, very unintelligible to all who are not accustomed to the peculiar dialect of the moor. It is not English ; it is not absolutely Devon- shire, but a language compounded, I should fancy, from all the tongues, — Celtic, Saxon, Cornish, — and, in short, from any language that may have been spoken in these parts during the last 2000 years. I would attempt to give you a few specimens, but I cannot possibly guess how I am to spell their words so as to convey to you any idea of them. I have been assured that they retain some British words resembling the Welsh, and that now and then they use the form of the old Saxon plural, for they some- times talk about their housen and their shooeu ; and I once heard a woman tell one of her daughters, in a Dartmoor cottage, " to log the child's cradle." There, thought I, is a British word; log means to rock, hence logging, or logan stone. Borlase said he could never trace the origin of the word logan. What a pity he had not been driven by a shower of rain into a Dartmoor cottage, where there was a young child and a mother anxious to rock it asleep.
II.] a traveller's tale. 27
How the cars of a real antiquary would have tingled to have heard but that single expression from the mouth of a peasant, born and bred in the very heart of Druid antiquity.
Though it certainly is a great libel on the poor people of Dartmoor to consider them, as was the case about a hundred years ago, to be no better than* savages, yet, no doubt, they are still of " manners rude," and somewhat peculiar to themselves ; but as an instance, like a fact in law, carries more weight with it than a discussion, take therefore the follow- ing as an illustration. It was related to me but last night, by my husband, who had it from a gentle- man who, I conclude, received it from the gentleman to whom the circumstance occurred ; and as all these parties who related it were, as Glanville says of his relators when telling his tales about old witches, " of undoubted credit and reputation and not at all cre- dulous," I do not know that you will receive it any- thing the worse for coming to you at the fourth hand. Well, then, once upon a time, as the old story-books say, there was a gentleman who, mounted on a horse, (at the breaking up of a very hard and long frost, when the roads were only just beginning to be passable,) set out in order to cross over Dart- moor. Now, though the thaw had commenced, yet it had not melted the snow-heaps so much as he expected: he got on but slowly, and towards the close of day it began to freeze again. The shades of night were drawing all around him, and the mighty tors, which seemed to grow larger and taller as he paced forward, gradually became enveloped in vapour and in mist, and the traveller with his horse did not know what to do.
c2
28 A TRAVELLERS TALE. [LET.
To reach Tavistock that niffht would be im- possible, as a fresh snow-storm was fast falling in every direction, and would add but another impedi- ment to the difficulties or dangers of his way. To stay out all night on the cold moor, without shelter or food, must be certain death, and where shelter was to be found somewhat puzzled the brains of our bewildered traveller. In this dilemma he still paced on, and at length he saw at a distance a certain dark object but partially covered with snow. As he drew nearer, his heart revived; and his horse, which seemed to understand all the hopes and fears of his master, pricked up his ears and trotted, or rather slid, on a little faster. The discovery which had thus rejoiced the heart of man and beast was not only that of the dark object in question, but also a thick smoke, which rose like a stately column in the clear frosty air from its roof, and convinced him that what he now beheld must be a cottage.
He presently drew nigh and dismounted ; and the rap that he gave with the butt-end of his whip upon the door was answered by an old woman opening that portal of hope to him and his distresses. He entered and beheld a sturdy peasant, that proved to be the old woman's son, and who sat smoking his pipe over a cheerful and blazing peat tire. The tra- veller's wants were soon made known. An old out- house with a litter of straw accommodated the horse, which, it is not unlikely, ate up his bed for the want of a better supper ; but this is a point not sufficiently known to be asserted.
Of the affairs of the traveller 1 can speak with more certainty; and I can state, on the very best authority, that he felt very hungry and wanted a
n.] a traveller's tale. 29
bed. Though there was but one besides the old woman's in the house, the son, who seemed to be a surly fellow, promised to give up his own bed for the convenience of the gentleman ; adding that he would himself sleep that night in the old settle by the chimney-corner. The good dame busied herself in preparing such food as the house could afford for the stranger's supper ; and at length he retired to rest. Neither the room nor the bedding were such as promised much comfort to a person accustomed to the luxuries of polished life ; but as most things derive their value from comparison, even so did these mean lodgings, for they appeared to him to be pos- sessed of all that heart could desire, when he re- flected how narrowly he had escaped being perhaps frozen to death that night on the bleak moor. Before going to rest, he had observed in the chamber a large oak-chest : it was somewhat curious in form and ornament, and had the appearance of being of very great antiquity. He noticed or made some remarks upon it to the old woman who had lighted him up stairs in order to see that all things in his chamber might be as comfortable as circumstances would admit for his repose. There was something, he thought, shy and odd about the manner of the woman when he observed the chest ; and, after she was gone, he had half a mind to take a peep into it. Had he been a daughter instead of a son of Eve he would most likely have done so ; but, as it was, he forbore, and went to bed as fast as he could.
He felt cold and miserable ; and who that does so can ever hope for a sound or refreshing sleep ? His was neither the one nor the other, for the woman and the chest haunted him in his dreams ; and a
30 A traveller's tale. [let.
hollow sound, as if behind his bed's head, suddenly started him out of his first sleep, when a circumstance occurred which, like the ominous voice to Macbeth, forbade him to sleep more. As he started up in bed, the first thing he saw was the old chest that had troubled him in his dreams. There it lay in the silvery silence of the moonlight, looking cold and white, and, connected with his dream, a provoking and even alarming object of his curiosity. And then he thought of the hollow sound which seemed to call him from his repose, and the old woman's odd manner when he had talked to her about the chest, and the reserve of her sturdy son, and, in short, the travellers own imagination supplied a thousand sub- jects of terror ; indeed so active did it now become in these moments of alarm that it gave a tongue to the very silence of the night, and action' even to the most inanimate things ; for he looked and looked again, till he actually fancied the lid of the chest began to move slowly up before his eyes !
He could endure no more ; but, starting from his bed, he rushed forward, grasped the lid with trem- bling hands, and raised it up at once. Who shall speak liis feelings when he beheld what that fatal chest now disclosed ? — a human corpse, stiff and cold, lay before his sight ! So much was he over- come with the horror of his feelings, that it was with extreme difficulty he could once more reach the bed.
How he passed the rest of the night he scarcely remembered; but one thought, but one fear, pos- sessed and agonized his whole soul. He was in the house of murderers ! he was a devoted victim ! there was no escape : for where, even if he left the chamber,
II.] a traveller's tale. 31
at such an hour, in such a night, where should he find shelter, on the vast, frozen, and desolate moor ? He had no arms, he had no means of flight ; for if plunder and murder might be designed, he would not be suffered to pass out, when the young man (now, in his apprehension a common trafficker in the blood of the helpless) slept in the only room below, and through which he must pass if he stirred from where he was.
To dwell on the thoughts and feelings of the tra- veller, during that night of terror, would be an end- less task; rather let me hasten to say that it was with the utmost thankfulness, and not without some surprise, that he found himself alive and undisturbed by any midnight assassin, when the sun once more arose and threw the cheerful light of day over the monotonous desolation of the moor. Under any circumstances, and even in the midst of a desert, there is pleasure and animation in the morning ; like hope in the young heart, it renders all things beau- tiful. If such are its effects under ordinary circum- stances, what must it have been to our traveller, who hailed the renewed day as an assurance of renewed safety to his own life ? He determined, however, to hasten away ; to pay liberally, but to avoid doing or saying anything to awaken suspicion.
On descending to the kitchen he found the old woman and her son busily employed in preparing no other fate for him than that of a good breakfast ; and the son, who the night before was probably tired out with labour, had now lost what the gentle- man fancied to have been a very surly humour. He gave his guest a country salutation, and hoping " his honour " had found good rest, proceeded to recom-
32 a traveller's tale. [let.
mend the breakfast in the true spirit, though in a rough phrase, of honest hospitality; particularly praising the broiled bacon, as " Mother was reckoned to have a curious hand at salting un in."
Daylight, civility, and broiled bacon, the traveller now found to be most excellent remedies against the terrors, both real and otherwise, of his own imagi- nation. The fright had disturbed his nerves, but the keen air of those high regions, and the savoury smell of a fine smoking rasher, were great restora- tives. And as none but heroes of the old school of romance ever live without eating, I must say our gentleman gave convincing proofs that he under- stood very well the exercise of the knife and fork. Indeed so much did he feel re-assured and elevated by the total extinction of all his personal fears, that, just as the good woman was broiling him another rasher, he out with the secret of the chest, and let them know that he had been somewhat surprised by its contents ; venturing to ask, in a friendly tone, for an explanation of so remarkable a circumstance.
" Bless your heart, your honour, 'tis nothing at all," said the young man, " 'tis only fayther !"
" Father ! your father !" cried the traveller, " what do you mean ?"
" Why you see, your honour," replied the peasant, u the snaw being so thick, and making the roads so cledgey-like, when old fayther died, two weeks agon, we couldn't carry un to Tavistock to bury un ; and so mother put un in the old box, and salted un in : mother's a fine hand at salting un in."
Need a word more be said of the traveller and his breakfast; for so powerful was the association of ideas in a mind as imaginative as that of our gentle-
II.] A TRAVELLERS TALE. 33
man, that he now looked with horror upon the smoking rasher, and fancied it nothing less than a slice of " old fayther." He got up, paid his lodging, saddled his horse; and quitting the house, where surprise, terror, joy, and disgust had, by turns, so powerfully possessed him, he made his way through every impediment of snow and storm. And never could he afterwards be prevailed upon to touch bacon, since it always brought to mind the painful feelings and recollections connected with the adven- ture of " salting un in."
c3
LETTER III.
TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.
Contents. — Wild animals in ancient times on the Moor — Old custom of Fenwell rights — Banditti once common — Road across the Moor; mode of travelling before it was made — Atmosphere, remarkable — Thunder and lightning, not common — Tradition of Conjuring Time noticed — Witchcraft, still a matter of belief — Extremes of heat and cold — Shepherd lost ; his dog — Two boys lost in the snow — Hot vapour on the Moor, its appearance — Scepticism respecting the druidical remains, noticed ; its being wholly unsupported by reason, knowledge, or enquiry — The Damnonii, their origin with the rest of the ancient Britons ; their history, &c. &c. — Camden quoted— Aboriginal inhabitants of the Moor; their Druids, &c. — Orders of the Bards — Poetry — Regal power assumed by the Priesthood — Priests and Bards distinct orders — Sacred groves, &c. — Allegory of Lucian — Tacitus quoted, and other authorities respecting the Druids — Their customs, laws, &c, briefly noticed — Vestiges of British antiquity at Dartmoor — Spoliation there carried on — an assault made on the an- tiquities of the Moor a few years ago, related.
Vicarage, Tavistock, February 23rd, 1832.
My dear Sir,
I have somewhere seen it asserted that, in former times, Dartmoor was infested by many wild animals ; amongst them the wolf and the bear : for the latter I have found no authority that would justify me in saying such was the case ; but Prince, I see, mentions in his ' Worthies of Devon,' that, in the reign of King John, the Lord Brewer of Tor Brewer received a licence from his sovereign to hunt the fox, the wild-cat, and the wolf throughout the whole of the county of Devon : Dartmoor, no doubt, afforded a fine field for such a chase. And I may
LET. III.] VENWELL RIGHTS. 35
here notice that there is a tradition (mentioned also by Polwhele) amongst the people on the borders of the moor, which they state to have derived from their forefathers, " that the hill country was inha- bited whilst the vallies were full of serpents and ravenous beasts."
There is, likewise, an old custom, commonly re- ferred to as the " Fenwell rights," which supports the truth of the assertion respecting the wolves : since the " Venwell rights," as the peasantry call them, are nothing less than a right claimed by the inhabitants of a certain district of pasturage and turf from the fens free of all cost : a privilege handed down to them through many generations, as a reward for services done by their ancestors in destro}-ing the wolves, which, in early times, so much infested the forest of Dartmoor. Many stories and traditions are, indeed, connected with these wild regions : some of which, in due season, I purpose giving you ; and many remarkable customs, now falling fast into decay, were there practised ; whose origin, as I shall endeavour to show, may be traced back even so far as the earliest times of which we have any authentic records, subsequent to the invasion of Britain under Caesar.
It is nothing wonderful that such an extensive waste as the moor, so full of rocks, caverns, tors, and intricate recesses, should have been, in all ages, the chosen haunt of banditti ; and in former days they did not fail to avail themselves of its facilities for conveying away plunder, or for personal security against detection ; whilst the gentry of those times, unless in a numerous and armed company, feared to cross the moor, so dangerous as it was known to be
36 DARTMOOR MISTS. [LET.
from lawless men, and so reputed to be haunted by the spirits and pixies of credulity and superstition.
There is now an excellent road across the moor ; as I trust you will find when you next travel west- ward. This road was made between sixty and seventy years ago ; and till that work was executed it was most perilous to the traveller : for if he missed his line of direction, or became entangled amidst rocks and marshy grounds, or was enveloped in one of those frequent mists, here so much to be dreaded, that prevented him even from seeing the course of the sun above his head, he had no alternative, but to follow, as well as the difficulty of the way would admit, the course of a river or stream ; and if this last resource failed, he was likely to be lost on the moor, and, in the depth of winter, to be frozen to death, as many have there been.
The atmosphere of Dartmoor deserves particular notice ; it is at all times humid. The rain, which frequently falls, almost without intermission, for many weeks together, is generally small; and re- sembles more a Scotch mist than a shower. Some- times, however, it will pour down in torrents ; but storms, attended with thunder and lightning, are not very common : and whenever they do occur, one would think that the peasantry still retained the superstitious awe of the aboriginal inhabitants of the moor, who worshipped thunder as a god under the name of Tiranis ; for they call a storm of that description conjuring time, from the thorough per- suasion that such effects are solely produced by the malice of some potent spirit or devils : though, mingling their Pagan superstitions with some ideas founded on Christianity, (just as their forefathers
III.] EXTREMES OF COLD AND HEAT. 37
did when, on their first conversion, they worshipped the sun and moon, as well as the cross,) they make a clergyman to have some concern in the business : for while " conjuring time " is going on, he, in their opinion, is as hard at work as the devils themselves, though in an opposite fashion ; since, on all such occasions, they say, " that somewhere or other in the county there's a parson a laying of a spirit all in the Red Sea, by a talking of Latin to it ; his clerk, after each word, ever saying Amen.''
Indeed, our superstitions here are so numerous, and so rooted amongst the poor and the lower classes, that, I think, before I bring these letters to a close, I shall have it in my power not a little to divert you. Witchcraft is still devoutly believed in by most of the peasantry of Devon ; and the distinctions (for they are nice ones) between a witch and a white witch, and being bewitched, or only overlooked by a witch, crave a very careful discrimination on the part of their historian.
The extremes of cold and heat are felt upon the moor with the utmost intensity. Many a poor creature has been there found frozen to death amidst its desolate ra\"ines. I remember having heard of one instance, that happened many years ago, of a poor shepherd who so perished, and was not found till some weeks after his death : when his dog, nearly starved, (and no one could even conjecture how the faithful animal had sustained his life during the interval,) was discovered wistfully watching near the body of his unfortunate master.
I have also learnt that, a few years since, two lads, belonging to a farm in the neighbourhood, were sent out to look after some strayed sheep on the moor.
38 HEAT AND VAPOUR. [LET.
A heavy fall of snow came on, and the boys, not returning, the farmer grew uneasy, and a search after them was commenced without delay. They were both discovered, nearly covered with snow, benumbed, and in a profound sleep. With one of the poor lads, it was already the sleep of death ; but the other was removed in this state of insensibility, and was at length, with much difficulty, restored to life.
On a sultry day, the heat of the moor is most oppressive; as shade or shelter are rarely to be found. At such a time, there is not, perhaps, a cloud in the sky : the air is perfectly clear and still ; yet, even then, you have but to look steadily upon the heights and tors, and, to your surprise, they will appear in waving agitation. So thin, indeed, is the hot vapour which on such sultry days is constantly exhaled from the moor, that I can only compare it to the reeking of a lime-kiln. The atmosphere is never, perhaps, other than humid, except in such cases, or in a very severe frost. I have heard my husband say that the wine kept in the cellars of his father's cottage on Dartmoor (for the late Mr. Bray built one there, and made large plantations near the magnificent river-scenery of the Cowsic) acquired a flavour that was truly surprising ; and which, in a great degree, was considered to arise from the bottles being constantly in a damp state. This perpetual moisture upon them was wont to be called " Dart- moor dew ;" and all who tasted the wine declared it to be the finest flavoured of any they had ever drunk in England.
Before I enter upon a minute account of the British antiquities of Dartmoor, it will, perhaps, be
HI.] DAMN0NI1. 39
advisable to offer a few remarks, which, I trust, may assist in throwing some light upon a subject hitherto treated with slight notice, and not unfrequently with absolute scepticism ; since some, who have never even investigated these remains upon the moor, — who have never even seen them, — have, notwith- standing, taken upon themselves to assert that there arc none to be found. But assertion is no proof; and those who shun the labour, patience, and inquiry which are sometimes necessary in order to arrive at truth must not wonder if they often miss the path that leads to it ; but they should at least leave it fairly open to others, who are walling to continue the search.
It is not my purpose in this letter to enter upon any discussion as to who were the first settlers in this part of Britain. Wishing to inform myself upon the subject, many and opposite opinions have I examined; and the only impression that I have received from these discussions was, that the writers themselves were too much puzzled in the mazes of controversy to convince their readers, however much they might have convinced themselves, that each, exclusively, entertained the right opinion.
It seems to me, therefore, the wisest way to rest satisfied that the Damnonii had one common origin with the rest of the ancient Britons ; and without attempting to penetrate that obscurity which has defied for so many ages the ingenuity of the most patient investigators, to admit without scepticism the commonly-received opinion — namely, that the first settlers in this part of the west were, like the people of Gaul, descended from the Celtse, a branch of the nations from the east. Devonshire, according
40 THE DAMNONIT. [LET.
to Camden, was called DufTncunt, deep valleys, by the Welsh ; and certainly a more appropriate name could never have been chosen for a country so peculiarly characterized by the beauty and richness of its valleys, watered as they are by pure and rapid rivers or mountain streams*.
The Damnonii, perhaps, were less warlike than the inhabitants of other kingdoms of the Britons ; since they readily submitted to the Roman power, and joined in no revolts that were attempted against it : a cir- cumstance which, according to some historians, was the cause that so little was said about them by the Roman writers. The Damnonii were distinguished for the numbers and excellence of their flocks and herds. It is possible that this very circumstance might have rendered them less warlike than their neighbours, since the occupations of a pastoral life naturally tend to nourish a spirit of peace ; whereas, the toils, the tumult, and the dangers to which the hunters of those days were constantly exposed in the chase, which so justly has been called " an image of war," must, on the contrary, have excited and kept alive a bold and restless spirit, that delighted in nothing so much as hostile struggles and achieve- ments in the field.
But still more probable, perhaps, is the conjecture that the Damnonii, from their long and frequent intercourse with the Phoenicians, who traded to their
* Camden says, " the hither country of the Damnonii is now called Denshire ; by the Cornish Britons Dennan ; by the Welsh Britons Diifiiieynt,— that is, deep valleys ; because they live everywhere here in lowly bottoms ; by the English Saxons, Deumerchine, from whence comes the Latin Devonia, and that contracted name, used by the vulgar, Denshire. It was certainly styled Dyfneint by the Welsh. See Richards in voce.
>
*
III.] THE DRUIDS. 41
coast, as well as to that of Cornwall, for tin, had become more civilized than the inhabitants of the other kingdoms of Britain. Possibly, indeed, they had learnt to know the value of those arts of peace to which a warlike life is so great an enemy. Hence might have arisen their more willing submission to their Roman conquerors, who were likely to spread yet further amongst them the arts and advantages of civilized society. This is mere conjecture, but surely it is allowable — since there must have been some cause that operated powerfully on a whole kingdom to make it rest satisfied with being con- quered ; and we have no evidence, no hint even given by the earliest writers, to suspect the courage or manly spirit of the aboriginal inhabitants of Devon.
So celebrated were the British priesthood at the time of the invasion of the Romans under Caesar, and so far had their fame extended into foreign lands, that we know, on the authority of his writings, " such of the Gauls as were desirous of being perfectly instructed in the mysteries of their religion (which was the same as that of the Britons), always made a journey into Britain for the express purpose of acquiring them.''' And in +hese king- doms, as in other nations of Celtic origin, it is most likely that those who preferred peace to tumult, — who had a thirst after the knowledge of their age, — or who liked better the ease secured to them by having their wants supplied by others than the labour of toiling for themselves, became the disciples of the Druids. Their groves and cells, appropriated to study and instruction, afforded security and shelter ; and there, undisturbed by outward circumstances,
42 THE DRUIDS. [LET.
they could drink of that fountain of sacred know- ledge which had originally ]>ourcd forth a pure and undeliled stream from its spring in the Eastern world, but had become turbid and polluted as it rolled through the dark groves of druidical superstition.
In these groves, it is believed, they learnt the secret of the one true and only God, the immortality of the soul, and a future state of rewards and punish- ments. But this was held too excellent for the people, who it wTas deemed required a grosser doc- trine, one more obvious to the senses. To them, therefore, it Avas not fully disclosed ; it was not to be shown in all its simple and natural lustre ; the doctrines which " came of men " were added to it ; and these being of the earth, like the vapours which arise from it, ascended towards Heaven only to ob- scure its light *.
The poetry of the ancient British priesthood has ever been a subject of the highest interest ; and its origin, perhaps, may be referred to the most simple cause. Nothing of import was allowed to be written down ; nor is there any possible means' of knowing
* There can be little doubt that the Druids, Celts, and Cyclops were all of the same origin. The Druids, in fact, were nothing more than the priesthood of that colony of the Celtic race established in Britain. There cannot be a stronger proof of the truth of this assertion, than that all Celtic works, in whatever kingdom they are found, are exactly similar. Dr. Clarke, in his delightful ' Travels,' mentions several antiquities of Celtic date in Sweden and elsewhere, the same in their construction as those found on Dartmoor. He. tells us, that old Upsal was the place renowned for the worship of the primeval idolatry of Sweden ; that a circular range of stones was the spot where its ancient kings went through the ceremony of inauguration. " This curious circle exists in the plains of Mora, hence it is called Morasteen, the word mora strictly answering to our word 7/wor." — Clarke's Travels, vol. ix., p. 216.
III.] DRUIDICAL SYMBOLS. 43
when symbols, or written characters, were first intro- duced among them. To supply this defect, it be- came absolutely necessary that the laws, both civil and religious, should be placed in such a form as most readily to be committed to memory, and so transmitted to their posterity. For this purpose no means could be so effective as those of throwing them into the form of apophthegms in verse : the triads are an example.
In process of time, however, what at first was had recourse to as a matter of necessity, became a subject of delight and emulation ; and poetry, in all proba- bility, was cultivated for its own sake : for its capa- bility of expressing the passions of the soul, for the beauty of its imagery, and the harmony of its num- bers. Those who had most genius would become the best poets ; and giving up their time and atten- tion to the art in which they excelled, it is not im- probable that they were left to the full exercise of their talent, and became a distinct, and at last a secondary, order of the Druids : those graver per- sonages, who did not thus excel in verse, retaining and appropriating to themselves the higher order of the priesthood, — that of performing the rites and ceremonies of religion, sitting in judgment on the criminal, and acting the part both of priests and kings : for certain it is that though the regal title was still retained by the princes of the Celtse, all real power was soon usurped by the priests ; and it is not a little remarkable that, both in ancient and modern times, this tendency to encroachment on the part of the priesthood has always been observable in those who were followers of a false or corrupted religion* Where God, on the contrary, prevails in
-14 THE BARDS. [LET.
all the purity of his worship, where he says to his chosen servants " these shall be my ministers," re- spect, submission, and a willing* obedience to civil government, for conscience' sake, invariably accom- panies the holy function and its order. But idolatry, in ancient times, among the heathen Celtse, — in modern, under the popes, — constantly produced a tendency to a quite opposite spirit : kings there might be, so long as they were secondary ; but the priesthood, we too often find, were struggling for power, and under the Roman pontiffs, as well as under the druids, were frequently found usurping and dispensing it with the most arbitrary rule.
To return from this digression to the bards : and as I am writing from the very land they once in- habited, and to the bard who, in our own times, "so deservedly wears the laurel of England, I feel a more than ordinary interest in my subject, which I trust will plead my apology if I somewhat dwell upon it.
Supposing, then, that at first there was but one order of the Druidical priesthood, (and I have found nothing to contradict this supposition, which seems most natural,) and that in such order some of the members excelled others in the readiness of throwing into verse the laws and customs of their religion and government, and that this talent at length was their sole occupation, till they became, in some measure, secularized priests, it would naturally follow that in process of time the Druids absolutely divided and separated themselves into two orders, priests, and bards. And, amongst the latter, another division soon, perhaps, arose ; for some of these excelled in composing the verses connected with the religion and rites of the sacred festivals, whilst others pro-
III.] THE BARDS. 45
bably took more delight in celebrating the actions of chiefs and kings, and in singing the fame of their heroes who had fallen in battle. Hence came the third order. Those who celebrated the praises of the gods, of course, stood higher, in a land of super- stition, than those who merely sung the praises of men. The former, therefore, were called hymn- makers, or vates ; and the latter, bards. So great was the power of this priesthood, whether wholly or separately considered, that its members not only exercised all rites of a sacred nature, but determined upon and excited war, — interfered to command peace, — framed the laws and judged the criminal; and also held within their hands the most useful as well as the most delusive arts of life. They cured the sick, — foretold the events of futurity, — held commerce Avith invisible spirits, — exercised augury and divination, — knew all the stars of Heaven and the productions of the earth, and were supreme in all controversies of a public or of a private nature ; whilst their wrath against those who displeased them vented itself in their terrific sentence of excommunication, — a religious sentence which has scarcely a parallel in history, if we except that of excommunication as it was once enforced by the tyrannic church of Rome.
In the sacred groves, the disciples learnt the fear- ful rites of human immolation to the deified objects of human craft; and, mingling in their study of poetry the beauty and innocence of fiction with some of its worst features, they also made hymns in praise of the seasons, of the birds and the plants, and cele- brated the seed-time, and the " golden harvest," in the numbers of their verse. Here, likewise, they
46 DRUIDICAL ORATORY. [[.ET.
learnt, to frame those Avar-song's of impassioned eloquence, which depicted the hero in such glowing1 colours, that they who listened caught the inspira- tion and rose to emulate his deeds ; and their kings and chiefs were sent forth to the battle " with a soul returned from song more terrible to the war."
The refinements of polished life and education were not theirs ; but their imagination, unfettered by rules, and impressed from infancy by the wild grandeur of the scenes in which they lived, was strong and bold as the martial spirit of their race. Those arts which teach men to subdue or to hide their feelings were unknown; and, following the impulse of nature, they became masters in the true eloquence of the heart. Hence arose the power of the bards, in whose very name there is so much of poetry, that, in our own language, we could find no other term so suited to express the feathered songsters of the air, and, therefore, were they called " the bards of the woods*."
The power of oratory was eminently displayed in all their compositions; and so highly was that art esteemed by the Druids of the Celtse, that it gave birth to the beautiful allegory told by Lucian, who says that, whilst he was in Gaul, he saw Hercules represented as a little old man, who was called by the people "Ogmius;" and that this feeble and aged deity appeared in a temple dedicated to his worship, drawing towards him a multitude who were held by the slightest chain fastened to their ears and to his tongue. Lucian, wondering what so strange
* Most of the peasantry iu Devonshire still pronounce this word (birds) bards.
III.] ANCIENT BRITISH BARDS. 47
a symbol was intended to denote, begged that it might be explained to him ; when he was presently- told, " that Hercules did not in Gaul, as in Greece, betoken strength of body, but, what was of far greater power, the force of eloquence ; and thus, therefore, was he figured by the priests of Gaul." Lord Bacon possibly might have had this image in his mind when he so emphatically declared that '* knowledge is power."
All the Celtic tribes appear to have studied these arts with extraordinary success. The Germans, as well as the Gauls and Britons, did so ; for " they abound," says Tacitus, " with rude strains of verse, the reciters of which are called bards ; and with this barbarous poetry they inflame their minds with ardour in the day of action, and prognosticate the event from the impression which it happens to make on the minds of the soldiers, who grow terrible to the enemy, or despair of success, as the war-song produces an animated or a feeble sound."
The genius for poetry evinced by their bards was one of the most remarkable qualities observable among the ancient priesthood of Britain : so simple, yet so forcible, was the imagery they employed, — so feeling the language of their productions, — that, even at this day, such of their poems as have come down to us can never be read with other than the deepest interest by those in whose bosom there is a responsive chord, true to nature and to feeling. The passions they expressed in these poems were rude but manly ; their indignation was aimed against their foes, — against cowardice and treachery ; whilst the virtues of courage, — of generosity, — of tender- ness,— of the " liberal heart " and " open hand,"
48 ANCIENT BRITISH BARDS. [LET.
were honoured and praised by the Sons of Song ; and the brave man went forth to battle, strong in the assurance that, if he conquered or if he fell, his fame would be held sacred, and receive its honours from the harp of truth.
The learning of the British priesthood has been frequently spoken of by ancient authors in terms of commendation ; and in this particular they have been ranked with the nations of the East. Pliny compares them to the magi of Persia, and says they were the physicians as well as the poets of the country. Caesar observes that they had formed systems of astronomy and natural philosophy. Twenty years of study was the allotted time for rendering a novice competent to take upon him the sacred order ; and, when initiated, the education of the sons of the British nobles and kings, the mysteries of religion, legislation, and the practice of the various arts that Avere exclusively theirs, must have afforded ample scope for the constant exercise of that learning which had been acquired with so much diligence and labour.
That they exercised their genius, also, on matters of speculative philosophy, cannot be doubted ; since Strabo has recorded one of their remarkable opinions respecting the universe ; — " that it was never to be destroyed, but to undergo various changes, some- times by the power of fire, at others by that of water." And Caesar mentions their disquisitions on the nature of the planets, " and of God, in the power he exercised in the works of his crea- tion." Many opinions, purely speculative, have been broached to account for the choice of a circular figure in their temples. Some have supposed it was de-
III.] DRUID1CAL LEARNING. 49
signed to represent that eternity which has neither a beginning nor an end. But it is not improbable that, as they taught the multitude to worship visible objects, the form of their temples might have had a reference to those objects; and the planets they so much studied (the sun and moon, in particular, as the chief amongst their visible deities) might have suggested an imitation of their form in the circular shape of the temples dedicated to their worship.
The use of letters was not unknown to the Druids of Britain; for Caesar states " that in all affairs and transactions, excepting those of religion and learn- ing," (both of which belonged to the mysteries of Druidism,) " they made use of letters, and that the letters which they used were those of the Greek alphabet*." There was no want, therefore, of that learning which is requisite for the purposes of history, had they chosen to leave a written record of the public transactions of their country. But in these early times the poet was the only historian ; and his verses were committed to memory, and were thus handed down from age to age. The laws were framed and preserved by the same means ; so that,
* The Rev. Edward Davies, in his most interesting account of the Lots and the Sprig Alphabet of the Druids, has very satisfactorily shown that many antiquaries, by an inattentive reading of a particular passage in Caesar, adopted the erroneous notion that the British priests allowed nothing to be written down ; whereas, CaBsar only states that they allowed their scholars to commit nothing to writing. The symbols, or sprigs, chosen from different trees, gave rise to the sprig alphabet of Ireland ; and Toland, in his very learned work on the Druids of that country, has established the fact of their having some permanent records, by a reference to the stone memorials of Ireland, which in his day, about a century ago, still bore the vestiges of Druidical inscriptions.
VOL. I. D
50 DRUIDICAL SCHOOLS. [LET,
in those days, what are now the two most opposite thing's iu the literature of modern nations, — law and poetry, — went hand in hand ; and the lawyers of the ancient Britons were unquestionably the wearers of the long- blue robes instead of the black ones*.
It was, indeed, a favourite practice with the nations of antiquity to transmit their laws from generation to generation merely by tradition. . The ancient Greeks did so ; and the Spartans, in par- ticular, allowed none to be written down. The Celtsc observed the same custom; and Toland mentions that, in his time, there was a vestige of it still to be found in the Isle of Man, where many of the laws were traditionary, and were there known by the name of Breast Laws. When speaking of the jurisprudence of these primitive nations, Tacitus gives a very striking reason for the administration of the laws being confined to the priesthood. " The power of punishing," says that delightful historian, " is in no other hands : when exercised by the priests, it has neither the air of vindictive justice nor of military execution ; — it is rather a religious sentence.'''' * * " And all the people," says Strabo, " entertain the highest opinion of the justice of the Druids : to them all judgment, in public and private — in civil and criminal cases, is committed."
We learn, also, from the classical writers, that the Druids had schools or societies in which they taught
* In the ' Triads,' the bards are described as wearers of this par- ticular dress, which no doubt was adopted to distinguish them from the white-robed Druids : " Whilst Menu lived, the memorial of bards was in request ; whilst he lived the sovereign of the land of heroes, it was his custom to bestow benefits and honour and ileet coursers on the wearers of the long blue robes."
HI.] DRUIDICAL SUPERSTITIONS. 51
their mysteries, both civil and religious, to their disciples ; — that such seats of learning were situated in forests and groves remote from, or difficult of, general access ; since secrecy and mystery were the first rules of their instructions. Had they taught only truth, neither the one nor the other would have been required ; since it is only falsehood that seeks a veil, and when that is once lifted, she is sure to be detected. False religions, or those corrupted by the inventions of men, have always observed the same kind of mysticism, not only in rude but in polished ages also. No one was suffered to lift the sacred mantle of the goddess Hertha, except the priest : the people were charged to believe in her most terrific superstitions, but none could see her and live*. The popes insisted on the same kind of discipline : their own infallibility was the chief point of faith; but no layman was to open that sacred book in which it could not be found.
To enlarge on the frauds, the arts of magic, soothsaying and divination, practised by the Druids to blind and lead the multitude, would extend much beyond the proposed limits of this letter. Should it never go farther than Keswick, all that I have said respecting the ancient priesthood I know would be unnecessary. But should these papers so far meet your approval as to sanction their hereafter appear- ing in print, I must consider what might be useful to the mere general reader ; and it is possible that some one of that class may not have troubled him- self much about the early history of that extra- ordinary priesthood who once held a power so truly
* See ' Manners of the Germans.' Murphy's Tacitus, page 351.
d2
52 WILDS OF DARTMOOR. [LET.
refill in the islands of Great Britain. To such readers, this sketch, slight as it is, may not be un- acceptable, should it only excite in them a wish to consult better authorities ; and I trust, also, it may serve the chief purpose which I now have in view — namely, that of raising some degree of interest, by speaking of the Druids, to lead them, should they have the opportunity, to an examination of those ancient vestiges and structures that still remain on the wilds of Dartmoor. Of these I shall speak in the subsequent letters ; and in doing so I shall endeavour to execute my task with fidelity, since not the least motive in prompting me to it is the wish I entertain to throw some light on a subject that has hitherto been involved in much obscurity ; and even my labours, like those of the " little busy bee," may bring something to the hive, though they are gathered from the simplest sources around me.
I may also add, that in pointing out to this neigh- bourhood in particular the connexion that really exists between the remains of British antiquity (so widely scattered on the moor) and the early history and manners of the first inhabitants of their country, it is to be hoped that a sufficient interest may be excited in favour of those vestiges, to check the unfeeling spoliation which has of late been so rapidly carried on. When we find on Dartmoor masses of granite, buried under the earth and resting upon its surface, — here lying close to the road, and there impeding the culture of its soil — surely it would be better to serve the purposes of commerce from sources like these, than. to despoil (as they are now doing) the summits of its eminences, — of those very tors that give beauty and majesty to the desolation
HI.] ASSAULT ON DARTMOOR. 53
of the moor. The cairns, — the obelisks, — the circles, and the poor remains of British huts, might be per- mitted to last out their day, and to suffer from no other assaults than those which are inevitable — time and tempest ; and these are enemies that will not pass over them in vain.
Dartmoor has, indeed, been a field to the spoiler ; and many of its most interesting memorials have been destroyed within the last twenty or thirty years : for during those periods, vast walls of stones, piled loosely together without cement, and extend- ing, in every direction, for many miles, have been placed up as boundaries or enclosures for cattle. This great demand for stones caused the workmen to remove those which lay, as it were, ready to their hand ; you may judge, therefore, what havoc it made with the circles, cairns, and cromlechs. Others — such as were straight and tall — have been carried off (so the people of the moor tell me) to make rubbing-posts for cattle, a rubbing-post being some- times called " cows' comfort " in Devon.
One assault on the antiquities of Dartmoor was so atrocious that it must not here be passed in silence. Many years ago, a young man of this place cele- brated his freedom from his apprenticeship by lead- ing out a parcel of young fellows, as wanton and as silly as himself, to Dartmoor, for no other purpose than that of giving themselves the trouble to do what they could in destroying its antiquities. As if, like the ancient inhabitants of the moor, they had been worshippers of the god Hu, — the Bacchus of the Druids, — they commenced the day with a liba- tion, for they made punch in the rock-basins, and roared and sung as madly as any of the old devotees
54 ASSAULT ON DARTMOOR. [LET. III.
might have done during- the riots of a saturnalia in honour of Hu himself in the days of his pride. This rite accomplished, and what small remains of wit they might have had being fairly driven out by these potent libations, they were ungrateful enough to commence their havock by destroying the very punch-bowl which had served them, and soon set about the rest of their work. They were a strong and a willing band; so that logans were overturned, obelisks knocked down, and stones rooted from their circles, till, work as hard as they would, they found the Druids had been too good architects to have their labours shaken and upset in a day. They left off at last for very weariness, having accomplished just sufficient mischief to furnish the moralizing antiquary who wanders over Dartmoor Avith the reflection their wanton havoc suggests to his mind, — that wisdom builds not without time and labour ; but that folly overturns in a day that which it could not have pro- duced in an age — so much easier is it at all times to effect evil than to do good*.
Allow me the honour to remain, My dear Sir, Ever truly and faithfully yours,
A. E. Bray.
* I am the more induced to dwell on this circumstance, since, even in our own day, a naval officer overturned the celebrated logan in Cornwall ; and, much to the credit of government, was compelled to set it up again, which he effected with extreme difficulty.
LETTER IV.
TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.
Contents. — Subject continued — Dartmoor, a region fitted by na- ture for the rites of Druidism — Tor's retain their British names — Hessory-tor, Bel-tor, Mis-tor, Ham-tor, noticed by Borlase — Bair (or Baird) Down — Wistman's Wood — Secrecy and mystery observed by the Druids in their societies — Solitary places and deep groves — Antique Forest ; its only vestige — Trunks of trees found in bogs and below the surface — Birds sacred to British superstition still seen on the Moor— Black Eagle once found there — Story of the white- breasted Bird of Oxenham — Heath Polt, or Moor Blackbird— Birds in flocks— Dartmoor probably the largest station of Druidism in Britain — Reasons assigned as the probable causes wherefore the Druidical Remains on the Moor are of less magnitude than those of other and more celebrated stations — Circles on the Moor ; memorials of consecration of the Tors — Architects of Egypt ; level country — Vixen Tor compared to the Sphinx; rock-basins on its top — Lines from Carrington — Morning on the Moor — Herds of Cattle, &c. — Extraordinary Feat of a Dartmoor Pony — Insect world — Cuckoo lambs — Birds of the Moor, rare and common, briefly noticed.
Vicarage, Tavistock, Devon, Feb. 25, 1832.
My dear Sir,
The earliest records respecting the history of Dartmoor must be sought on the moor itself, and that with no small diligence and labour. And as I presume no reasonable person would deny that the Damnonii, as indeed all the other inhabitants of Britain, upheld the priesthood of Druidism, I shall proceed to show that, throughout the whole county, no place was so fitted to the august rites of their superstition, to the solemn courts of their judicature,
56 HILLS OF DARTMOOR. [LET.
or to the mystery and retirement which they sought in the initiation of their disciples, as amid the rugged and rock-crowned hills of Dartmoor.
We know that the Druids not only held it unlaw- ful to perform the rites of their religion within covered temples, but that they preferred, whenever they could be found, eminences and lofty heights for that purpose ; as such situations gave them a more open and commanding view of those planets which they studied as philosophers and worshipped as idolaters.
Dartmoor abounds in heights that, in some in- stances, assume even a mountainous character; and when we find that many of these retain to the present hour the very names of those false gods (though cor- rupted in their pronunciation, as are the names of towns and villages, by the lapse of years and the changes in language) to whom altars were raised by the priesthood of Britain, surely this circumstance alone becomes a strong presumptive evidence that the moor itself was a chosen spot for the ancient and idolatrous worship of the Damnonii. I shall here give a few of the most prominent examples ; and it is not unlikely that any one learned in the old British tongues — the Cornish or Welsh — would be able to find a significant meaning in the names of various other heights and tors on the moor, that now scund so strange and whimsical to unlearned cars like my own.
The Britons worshipped the Almighty, or, as he was not unfrequently called, the God of Battles, under the name of Hesus. On Dartmoor we find a height called Hessory-tor. The sun, that universal object of adoration even from the earliest times with
IV.] TOR-HEIGHTS. 57
heathen nations, was also held sacred by the Druids, and the noblest altars and temples were dedicated to his honour. The sun was adored under various names, but none more commonly than that of Belus, or Bel*; and on Dartmoor we have Bel-tor to this day. The sun, and also the moon, were sometimes worshipped under the names of Mithra or Misor : on the moor we have Mis-tor, a height on whose con- secrated rocks there is found so large and perfect a rock-basin as to be called by the peasantry Mis-tor Pan. Ham, or Amnion, was ranked amongst the British deities : on Dartmoor the heathen god still possesses his eminence, unchanged in name, as we there find Ham-tor to this day ; and my venerable and learned friend, the Rev. Mr. Polwhele, in his ' History of Devon,' refers to the worship of that deity all the numerous Hams of this county f. We have also a spot which you as a poet must visit, — Baird-down (pronounced Bair-down), which Mr. Bray conjectures to mean the hill of bards ; and, opposite to it, Wistman's, or (as he also conjectures) Wisemans Wood, of which I shall presently speak in a very particular manner, as embracing some of the most remarkable points of Druid antiquity to be found throughout the whole range of the moor.
We learn from Csesar, and other classical writers, that the Druids lived in societies and formed schools,
* Borlase notices these tors on Dartmoor as still bearing the names of Druid gods.
f According to Kennet's ' Glossary,' however, Hamma is from the Saxon Ham, a house ; hence Hamlet, a collection of houses. It some- times meant an enclosure ; hence to hem or surround. This is the sense in which it seems chiefly used in Devonshire, as the South- hams, &c.
d3
58 SCENES* OF DARTMOOR. [LET.
in which they taught the mysteries of their learning, their religion, and their arts. We find, also, that such seats of instruction were situated in forests and groves, remote from or difficult of general access; since secrecy and mystery accompanied all they taught. Where, therefore, could the priesthood of the Damnonii have found, throughout the whole of the west, a place more suited to these purposes than Dartmoor ?
It was a region possessed of every natural ad- vantage that could be desired in such an age and by such a people. It was surrounded and girded by barrier rocks, hills and eminences, mountainous in their character. No enemy could approach it with any hostile intent, without having to encounter difficulties of an almost insurmountable nature ; and such an approach would have been announced by the flaming beacons of the hundred tors, that would have alarmed and called up the country to prepare for defence in every direction.
Though Dartmoor is now desolate, and where the oak once grew there is seen but the lonely thistle, and the " feebly- whistling grass/' and its hills are the hills of storms, as the torrents rush down their sides, yet that it was once, in part at least, richly clothed with wood cannot be doubted. The very name, so ancient, which it still bears, speaks its original claim to a sylvan character — the Forest of Dartmoor*; and though of this antique forest no- thing now remains but the wasting remnant of its days, in the " lonely wood of Wistman," (as Car-
* Foresta q. d. Feresta, hoc est ferarum static Vide Du Cange in voce, who defines it also Saltus, Silva, Nanus, evidently inclining to the opinion that it should be a woody tract.
iv.] wistman's wood. 59
ring-ton has designated it,) to show where the groves of the wise men, or Druids once stood, yet evidence is not wanting to prove what it has been : since in bogs and marshes on the moor, near the banks of rivers and streams, sometimes imbedded twenty feet below the surface of the earth, are found immense trunks of the oak and other trees *.
These rivers and streams, which everywhere abound on the moor, afforded the purest waters; and many a beautiful and bubbling fountain, which sprang from the bosom of that earth, once wor- shipped as a deity by the Celtic priesthood, (and to whom they ascribed the origin of man) became, no doubt, consecrated to the mysteries of her circle and her rites. It is not improbable that one or two springs of this nature, still held in high esteem on the moor, may owe their sacred character to the superstitions of the most remote ages : such, per- haps, may be the origin of that estimation in which Fice's well is still held ; but of this more hereafter.
The groves of oak, whose " gloom," to use the language of Tacitus, " filled the mind with awe, and revered at a distance, might never be approached but with the eye of contemplation," were filled with the most varied tribes of feathered inhabitants . Some of these were of an order sacred in the estimation of Druid superstition. The raven was its tenant, whose ill-omened appearance is still considered as the harbinger of death, and still is as much dreaded by the peasantry as it was in the days of ancient augury and divination. The black eagle, that native
* A very large, trunk of an oak tree so found on Dartmoor is now preserved in the vicarage gardens of Tavistock.
60 DRUIDICAL OMENS. [LET.
of the moor, long spread her sable wing, and made her dwelling amidst the heights and the crags of the rocky tors, when she had long been driven from the valleys and the more cultivated lands. She is still said to revisit the moor, like a spirit of other times, who may be supposed to linger around the scenes in which she once proudly held her sway; but her nest is nowhere to be found*. There also the " white-breasted bird of Oxenham j," so fatal to that house, still appears with her bosom pure and unsullied as the Druid's robes, and, like him, raises a cry of augury and evil. Her mission done, she is seen no more till she comes again as a virgin mourner complaining before death. There, too, may be found the heath poult, or moor black-bird, once held sacred : so large is it, and sable in colour, that it might, at a little distance, be mistaken for the black eagle. Her eye, with its lid of the brightest scarlet, still glances on the stranger who ventures on the recesses of the moor ; and, like a watchful genius at the fountain, she is chiefly seen to make her haunt near the source of the river Dart.
* "I have been told," says Mr. Polwhele in his 'Devon,' " by a gentleman of Tavistock, that, shooting on Dartmoor, he hath several times seen the black eagle there, though he could never discover its nest."
f " There is a family" (says Prince, speaking of Oxenham, in his ' Worthies of Devon') " of considerable standing of this name at South Tawton, near Oakhampton in this county ; of which is this strange and wonderful thing recorded, That at the deaths of any of them, a bird, with a white breast, is seen for a while fluttering about their beds, and then suddenly to vanish away. Mr. James Howell tells us that, in a lapidary's shop in London, he saw a large marble-stone, to be sent into Devonshire, with an inscription, ' That John Oxenham, Mary, his sister, James, his son, and Klizabeth, his mother, had each the appearance of such a bird fluttering about their beds as they were dying."'
IV.] WOODS, ETC., OF DARTMOOR. 61
No place could have been better adapted for observing the flight of birds in Druid augury, than the woods and heights of Dartmoor. I have often there seen them in flocks winging their way, at a vast elevation across its hills. Sometimes they would congregate together, and with a sudden clamour that was startling, rush out from the crags and clefts of one of the granite tors, with the utmost velocity. At others, they would pause and rest for a moment among the rocks, or skim along the rivers and foaming streams, and dip their wings and rise again with restless rapidity.
The vast quantity of rock, the masses of granite that are everywhere strewn throughout the moor, the tors that crowned the summits of every hill, must have afforded such facilities for the purpose of their altars, circles, obelisks, cromlechs and logans, that no part of this kingdom had, perhaps, a more celebrated station of Druidism than Dartmoor : not even Mona, Classerness, nor the plains of Abury and Salisbury. But they who, like the Druids themselves, have been accustomed to pay an almost idolatrous worship to that primitive and most noble structure Stonehenge, may here exclaim, — " If this be true, how is it that you have no such memorial of equal magnitude on Dartmoor ?"
To this I answer, Stonehenge (like Carnac in Britanny, which I have cursorily visited and de- scribed*) stands on a plain : it required, therefore, such a structure to give to the ceremonies of dru- idical worship that awful and imposing effect which Tacitus so repeatedly implies to have formed the
* In ' Letters written during a Tour through Normandy and Britanny in 1818.'
62 ANTIQUITIES ON DARTMOOR. [LET.
chief character of their religious mysteries. On the plains of Salisbury nature had done nothing for the grandeur of Druidism. and art did all. On Dart- moor the priests of the Britons appropriated the tors themselves as temples, erected by the hand of nature, and with such majesty, that their circles were only memorials of their consecration : so that what in level countries became the most imposing object, was here considered as a matter of comparative indifference. In such scenes a Stonehenge would have dwindled in comparison with the granite tors into perfect insignificance; it would have been as a pyramid at the foot of Snowdon. The archi- tects of Egypt, like the Druids of Salisbury Plain, had a level country to contend with, and they gave to it the glory of mountains, as far as art may be said to imitate Nature in the effect of her most stu- pendous works.
Whoever attentively examines the tors and ves- tiges of antiquity on Dartmoor will soon be convinced that art was but very slightly employed in the masses of granite which crown the heights that were consecrated to the divinities of British idolatry. In Vixen-tor, that sphinx of the moor, the mas"s was so completely formed by nature to suit their desires, that three basins, chiselled on the very summit of this lofty and insulated rock, is the only mark left of its having been selected for an)- one of the nu- merous rites of Druidical superstition.
On Dartmoor, then, we may fairly conclude that whatever was most advantageous to the hierarchy of the ancient Britons was most amply to be found; and, in my next letter, I shall proceed to a more minute examination of what use was made of such
IV. J SUBLIMITY OF DARTMOOTt. 63
advantages, by describing what still remains to interest vis as records of the being, the history, and the religious rites of the priests of the Damnonii. Nor can I conclude these remarks without observing; that, on the moor, the Druid moved in the region of the vast and the sublime : the rocks, the winter torrent, the distant and expanded ocean, the works of the great God of nature, in their simplest and in their most imposing character, were all before his view; and often must he have witnessed, in the strife of elements, that scene so beautifully described by our poet, who has celebrated the moor with a feeling true to nature, and with a boldness and vigour suited to the grandeur of the subject he pourtrayed.
" Fierce, frequent, sudden is the moorland storm ; And oft, deep sheltered in the stream-fed vales, The swain beholds upon the lessening tor The heavens descend in gloom, till, mass on mass Accumulated, all the mighty womb Of vapour bursts tremendous. Loud resounds The torrent rain, and down the guttered slopes Rush the resistless waters. Then the leap Of headlong cataract is heard, and roar Of rivers struggling o'er their granite beds — Nor these alone — the giant tempest passed5 A thousand brooks their liquid voices raise Melodiously, and through the smiling land Rejoicing roll."
And here, ere I say farewell, let me pause a moment to express my regret for that indifference with which many persons, in this part of England, look on Dartmoor. Carrington found in it a subject for a poem that has ranked his lamented name amongst the first of our British bards. And though all are not poets, nor have the feelings that are allied to
64 MORNING ON THE MOOR. [LET.
poetry, yet all might find some pleasure, would they but learn to value it, — a pleasure pure as it is powerful, — in the heights and valleys of the lonely moor.
A morning's walk there, in the spring or the summer, is attended with a freshness, from the bracing temperature of the air, which gives cheer- fulness to the mind and content to the heart. A thousand circumstances in Nature everywhere lie around to interest him who would but view her with a kindly and a feeling eye. The mists that hang about the tors are seen gradually dispersing ; and the tors themselves, as we watch them, seem to put on a thousand forms, such as fancy suggests to delight the mind in which she dwells. The cattle arc seen around,, grazing on the verdant pastures, studded with myriad drops of dew. As we look on them, they call to mind some of the bronze works of antiquity that so nobly represented those creatures : for in symmetry of form and limb, as well as in rich- ness of colour, the cattle of Devon are models of beauty in their kind. The wild horses and colts, with their unshorn and flowing tails and manes, recall also to our recollection the forms of antique sculpture. To observe them in action, as they bound, race, or play together, in the very joy of their freedom, affords a spectacle of animal delight that is replete with interest. The horse thus seen in his natural state, before he is ridden by man, becomes a perfect study for a painter, and gives a much finer view of that noble creature than can be witnessed by those who have only seen him trimmed and saddled from a stable*. And the
* The following circumstance, respecting a pony that was one of a
IV.] ANIMALS ON THE MOOR. 65
poor ass, that useful and patient drudge, — an animal, excepting the goat, the most picturesque in nature, — is seen quietly browsing on the grass, waiting the hour of labour in the service of his master.
The instinct of the lambs and the care of their mothers have often interested me, as I have observed the perseverance with which one of the latter would range around the flock till she found her own off- spring, to give it the earliest meal of her living milk. And the bleating of some other poor little straggler, as it would stand still and call upon its dam, was so like the cry of infancy, that it could not fail to raise a feeling of pity for so helpless and harmless an animal*.
The rivers and streams, as they run in the morn- ing light, have something so exhilarating that it glads the heart and the eye to look on their lively and sparkling waters as they flow,
" Making sweet music with the enamelled stones."
And then the fresh air of the moor, which renders the very step light as we inhale it, and the clear blue skies., and the varying and changing clouds,
very fine breed the late Mr. Bray had on the moor, is worth noticing here. It is also mentioned by Mr. Burt in Carrington's Poem. The late Cant. Cotgrave, who was engaged in some duty at the French prison, had seen a pony he wished to detach from the herd at Bair- down. In the endeavour to effect his object, the animal was driven on some blocks of granite by the side of a tor. A horseman instantly rode up in order to catch it, when, to the astonishment of all who witnessed the feat from below, the pony fairly and completely leapt over horse and rider, and escaped with a fleetness that set at defiance all further pursuit.
* Early lambs are never reared on Dartmoor, on account of the cold- ness of the air. Those that come late, however, are considered to do well there. These are called cuckoo lambs, as being contemporary with the appearance of that bird.
66 INSECT WORLD. [LET.
now white, now roseate, or opening and closing before the view, are all objects of the highest enjoyment. And the insect world, that starts at once, as it were, into its ephemeral being, — a world of which none in Nature presents a greater variety, — all useful, all governed by a beautiful economy in their order and their kind, — can never be seen with indifference by those who have once given such subjects even but a slight attention. We are pleased to sec around us, reviving into life, even our most familiar acquaintance, the common house-fly; and the very insects that love rivers and haunt pools add some degree of animation to the hour. No place will afford a more interesting field for the entomologist than the hills and vales of Dartmoor. There, too, we meet in spring, upon a sunny day, the pale yellow butterfly, usually the tenant of the garden and the flower-bed ; and it is often seen, like infancy by the side of age, sporting on the front of some old grey rock, or settling on the wild thyme, — or on the golden furze, — as its wings vibrate with a quickness that will sometimes dazzle the sight.
And how beautiful is " the song of earliest birds," the thrush that never tires, or the lark that sings first and soars highest, like youth who thinks the world is a region of pleasure to be compassed on the wing of hope. Dartmoor is rich in birds, and those often of an uncommon kind*. The pretty little wheatear, or English ortolan, builds its nest amongst the old rocks, whose colour it so resembles in the black and grey of its wings, that you sometimes do not observe
* Dr. Moore, of Plymouth, has lately published a catalogue of all the birds that frequent the different parts of the county of Devon.
IV.] BIRDS OF DARTMOOR. 67
it perched upon the clefts till you hear its small cry. There too has been seen the goshawk,, so rare in Devon ; and the kite, that is now seldom found in its peaceful and inhabited valleys, still prowls, like a bandit, about the moor, as if he came to make his prey with impunity amidst its unfrequented wilds. And the honey-buzzard, rare as it is in this county, has there, nevertheless, been marked chasing the dragon-fly, as that beautiful insect endeavoured to evade its enemy, and would
" Dart like a fairy javelin by."
And the ring-ouzel finds its dwelling in the hollows and cavities of the rocks, and the poor little reed- wren makes them her home ; and robin, that favourite of old and young, there need fear no pilfer- ing youngster — since so much is this pretty bird the familiar friend of children in our neighbourhood, that the boys will pelt any one of their companions who may steal but an egg from " poor Cock Robin's" nest. The snow-buzzard and the stormy petrel are sometimes found on these hills ; and even the bit- tern will make her cry amidst its desolation. But these are birds of a melancholy season ; since the first we know, by its name, comes in the dreary time, and the petrel, suifering from the storm that gives her a claim upon our commiseration, has been driven to land, and found dead upon the moor.
But in a spring or a summer morning no birds are seen but those which give delight. They are not vain monitors ; for all their occupations are divided between rejoicing and industry. They sing in the gladness and thankfulness of their existence, or they labour to find food and shelter for their
68 REFLECTIONS. [LET. IV.
young-. To them nothing is indifferent within the range of their capacity. The straw or the fallen leaf, — the tuft of wool that hangs on the briar as it was torn from the sheep, — a very hair is treasured and placed to the account of what is useful in the internal structure exhibited by the little architect in its nest.
To watch the economy of birds, — to mark the enjoyment of the animal world, — to view with an eye of interest and contemplation the fields with " verdure clad," and every opening blossom burst- ing into beauty and to life, are enjoyments that instruct, and delight youth, middle and old age. They supply us with a source of innocent employ- ment, to which none need be dead but those who wilfully become so by keeping their eyes closed before that book of Nature which is everywhere spread around, that Ave should read in it those characters of an Almighty hand that lead the mind to wonder at and adore his goodness, and the heart to acknowledge and to feel his power, as a Father, who in his " wisdom has created " and pre- serves them all.
Adieu, my dear Sir ; And believe me,
With grateful esteem, Ever most truly yours, A. E. Bray.
LETTER V.
TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.
Contents. — Bair-down supposed to have been the Hill of Bards — Inscriptions on the Rocks: how cut — House on the Eminence — Beautiful Ravine : Bridge of a lofty single arch over the River Cowsick — Trees planted in the ravine by the late Mr. Bray- Remarks on the etymology of Bair-down — and Wistman's Wood — Observations on the English Distich — Merlin's Cave in the Rocks — Wand or rod — Rural Inscriptions on the Granite.
f'icarage, Tavistock, March 2, 1832.
My dear Sir,
Having given you, in my former letters, a general account of Dartmoor, I shall now proceed to a more particular description of its localities, and in doing so I shall principally avail myself of the journals of my husband, written at different in- tervals so far back as the year 1802 down to the present period. I purpose beginning with Bair- down : first, because it was enclosed by the late worthy and respected Mr. Bray, who there built a house, and was fond of retiring to it during the summer and autumn ; and secondly, because, as you will presently find, my husband considers Bair-down to have been the hill of bards. In addition to my former allusions on this subject, I may here state, that should it be thought he is incorrect in his view of the original claims of the hill to a bardic cha- racter, he has now at least fully established them,
70 BAIR-DOWN. [LET.
by the inscriptions on the granite with which he has partly covered several of those enormous masses that arise, with so much magnificence, in the midst of the river Cowsick, that flows at the foot of the eminence on which the house was built by his father.
Some of these inscriptions are now so moss-grown, so hidden with lichen, or so worn with the weather and the winter torrents, that a stranger, unless he examined the rocks at a particular hour of the day when the sun is favourable, would not be very likely to discover them. Others, though composed by him for the same purpose, were never inscribed, on account of the time and labour it required to cut them in the granite. The mode he adopted with those which have been done was as follows : he used to paint the inscriptions himself, in large characters, upon the rocks, and then employ a labourer with what is here called a pick (pick-axe) to work them out. Some of these inscriptions were in triads, and engraved on the rocks in the bardic character of the sprig alphabet, as it is given by the Rev. Edward Davies in his f Celtic Remains.'
As a further motive to the task, he wished to indulge his fancy by peopling, as it were, a wilder- ness, with his favourite authors to enliven its solitude : and when I shall presently tell you the number of poems he wrote at that early period of his life (which, a few only being ever printed, still remain in manuscript) as he delighted to cultivate the poetical visions of a youthful fancy on the moor, you will not wonder that he should have attempted, with somewhat the same senti- ments as those so beautifully described by Shak-
V,] HOUSE ON B AIR- DOWN. 71
speare, to give a tongue to the very rocks, so that there might be found, even in the midst of a desert,
" books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."
The eminence of Bair-down, on which stands the cottage erected by his late father, is situated about eight miles from Tavistock, near the Moreton road. It is extensive, and to one approaching it from this quarter is seen surrounded on the north and east by lofty tors. In the latter direction it declines gently but deeply, where flows the Dart ; whilst the descent is more sudden at the south, and on enter- ing the grounds from the turnpike road, presents itself, most unexpectedly, as a ravine, its sides picturesquely clothed with wood, through which, amid innumerable rocks, rushes the foaming Cow- sick. As you continue to advance, the path winds by the side of this ravine, which gradually opens and presents a scene of the most peculiar and romantic kind,— a scene so beautiful that, though I have often viewed it, it always affords me that delight which is generally supposed to be the result of novel im- pressions. The Cowsick rushes down this ravine, over the noblest masses of granite, broken into a thousand fantastic forms, and scattered in every direction. A picturesque bridge of a single, lofty arch, crosses the river at that spot where the fall is most striking and precipitous : after heavy rains, it there presents a combination of waterfalls that are of the greatest beauty. In the midst of the stream, at some short distance from the bridge, the river branches off in two rocky channels, as it is there interrupted by a little island, on which stands a thick grove of trees. On either side the banks of this
72 ETYMOLOGY OF BAIR-DOWN. [LET.
steep ravine are seen a number of trees of various kinds, all in the most flourishing state, on account of their being- so sheltered from the bleak winds of the
moor.
Such is Bair-down. All the trees were planted by my husband's father, who built the house and the bridge, and who raised the loose stone walls as enclosures for cattle for many miles in extent ; and, in short, who literally expended a fortune on the improvements and enclosures on this estate. In the barn behind the cottage, for two years, divine service was performed every Sunday, by one of the Prince of Wales's chaplains, by a dispensation from the Bishop of Exeter. This estate is now let by Mr. Bray to a respectable farmer, named Hannaford (of whom you will hear more in these letters) for a very trifling rent. I now take my leave of you ; for all that here follows is from the pen of my husband. The only share I have in it, is that of transcribing it, verbatim, from his old journals. Adieu, there- fore, till wc meet again.
REMARKS ON THE ETYMOLOGY OF BAIR DOWN. RURAL INSCRIPTIONS, &c.
By Edward A. Buay, 1802.
The most obvious idea as to the origin of this name is, that it either has a reference to Bear, the sub- stantive, or Bare, the adjective. But though a vague rumour, which can hardly be styled tradition, states that it was so called because it was the spot where the last bear was destroyed on the moor ; I should rather think that some recent poetical spirit has thus given, " to an airy nothing, a local habi-
v.] wistman's wood. 73
tation and a name." And the second supposition can hardly be supported, when we come to consider that this part of the moor, so far from being bare, or void of vegetation, is perhaps nearly the best land in the whole of this extensive desert. Rejecting, therefore, those ideas as equally unfounded, we must derive our information from other sources ; and for- tunately these sources are immediately at hand. On the opposite side of the river Dart, which bounds my fathers property, stands Wistman's wood — the only remaining vestige of the ancient forest. Wist is the preterit and participle of Wis, from piyyan, Saxon, wissen, German, to know; and is not at present altogether obsolete, as it is still used in scripture in this sense. From the same etymon comes also wise : " sapient ; judging rightly; having much knowledge" — {Johnsons Did.) Thus Wiss- man's or Wistman's Wood signifies Silva Sapien- tium*, the wood of wisemen. The Druids and Bards were unquestionably the philosophers or wisemen of the Britons. We may naturally conjecture, there- fore, that this was their principal or their last place of assembly; and the many stone circles on Bair- down immediately opposite the wood confirm the opinion. I am not ignorant that Wistman's Wood is sometimes called also JVelchmans Wood : the one name may easily be the corruption of the other ; but if not, and they are distinct appellations, the con- clusion will be pretty much the same.
* See Stuart's < View of Society,' p. 337, to prove that the Wites were the same as Sapientes; and LL. Anglo-Saxon ap Wilkins there referred to. See also a curious supplication del County de Devon- shire to Edward III. Coke's 4. Institute, p. 232. Barons and Autres Sages, &c.
VOL. I. E
74 WI SEMEN. [LET.
When the ancient inhabitants of this country were subjugated by the Romans, some relived into Wales, and others into Cornwall. Torn wall was considered as part of Wales, and, from its form, was called Cornu Wallise, the horn of Wales. Indeed it is frequently styled West Wales by the British writers. (See 'Rees's Cyclop.') The inhabitants, therefore, of Cornwall, as well as Wales, might be called Welch. And in this supposition I am confirmed by Borlase, who states that the Saxons " imposed the name of JVeales on the Britons, driven by them west of the rivers Severn and Dec, calling' their country, in the Latin tongue, Wallia." It is not improbable that, in the centre of Dartmoor, a colony might still be permitted to exist, either from their in- significance or their insulated situation ; and that this colony might be called by the other inhabitants Welchmen, from their resemblance to the inhabit- ants of Cornwall and Wales.
No colony can be supposed to have existed among* the ancient Britons without having their Druids or Wisemen, who, indeed, had the whole of the spiritual, and the greater part of the temporal, power in their hands. Bair-down, then, from its commanding situation, and its gently- ascending acclivities, on which were spread their sacred circles, must, without doubt, have been frequently resorted to by them.
Dun, now altered to down, signifies a hill. WTe may naturally imagine, therefore, that it was ori- ginally called Baird, or Bard-dun, Bardorum-mons, the hill of bards. And the etymology of the word bard will confirm this opinion: it is derived by changing u into b, which is by no means uncommon,
V.] ETYMOLOGY OF BAIR-DOWN. ' 75
particularly as the German iv is pronounced like our v, from waird, whence comes the modern English word. This, like the Greek titos, signified not only verbum, a word, but carmen, a song. The bards then were so called from being singers, or persons who celebrated in songs the achievements of warriors and great men. What, therefore, was originally pro- nounced Baird-down may easily be supposed, for the sake of euphony, to be reduced to B air- down.
P.S. On further inquiry I find that some derive bard from Jmr, a fury. The analogy between this and the furor poeticus of the Romans must strike every one. The plural in Welch is bcirdd. Taliesin is called Pen Beirdd, i.e. the Prince of the Bards. Thus Beirdd-dun is literally the hill of the Bards.
The Druids were divided into Vacerri, Bcirdd> and Eubages. The second order, or Bards, sub- sisted for ages after the destruction of the others, and, indeed, were not totally extirpated by the bloody proscription of Edward.
Rural Inscriptions on the Rocks of B air-down.
A gentleman, for whose taste and learning I entertain the highest respect, on my submitting " the Inscriptions" to his criticism, communicated to me, in conversation, the following remarks. Not feeling myself sufficiently confident personally to discuss the subject, and convinced that his opinions are entitled to the most mature and serious reflection, I propose at present to state my reasons why I cannot implicitly submit to them. He objected to their being (as
e 2
70 THE ENGLISH DISTICH. [LET.
most of them arc) in the form of distichs, from an idea that it was impossible to condense any really characteristic or poetical tliouglit into two lines in the English language. This, he said, might possibly he accomplished in Latin ; but extracts and selec- tions from the best authors of different ages and countries -would, he thought, be still better.
Now, in stating the reasons by which I was ac- tuated in the composition of these inscriptions, and in confining myself to their present form, it will be necessary to mention the ideas that suggested them- selves to me upon the subject. At first the idea occurred to mc, as well as to my friend, that nothing more Mould be required than to select passages from my favourite authors, and I actually laid some Latin and Italian poets under contribution for that very purpose ; but I found that the long hexameter lines of Virgil could not easily be brought within the compass of a rude granite stone, where capitals only could be used, and those too of no small dimensions; that many of the most appropriate passages were of some length ; and that, were I to have followed the example of Procrustes, however they might still be discovered to be disjecti membra poeta, the sight would have given more disgust than satisfaction to the eye of the spectator. A consideration of no small importance likewise occurred ; namely, that though I traced them myself beforehand upon the surface, it was not probable that the person I em- ployed to cut them into the solid granite would be so attentive as not to commit blunders, especially as his labours were only proceeded in during my ab- sence. It was obvious that fewer mistakes would probably occur in English, of which, at any rate, he
V.] INSCRIPTIONS ON THE ROCK. 77
may be presumed not to be so entirely ignorant as he certainly is of the former, being only a common mason. In addition to which, inscriptions of this kind have been so frequently repeated that I could not hope to attract attention by any novelty of application. On further reflection, however, I made a great alteration in my original design, and, con- sidering poetical inscriptions as of subordinate con- sequence, resolved to consecrate particular rocks to particular persons. As the name alone of Theocritus or of Virgil could not fail to communicate to a poetical mind a train of pleasing associations, I did nothing more, at first, than inscribe upon a few rocks " To Theocritus," « To Virgil," &c. This of itself, in so wild and solitary a scene as Dartmoor, was not without its effect : it seemed to people the desert ; at any rate one might exclaim, " The hand of man has been here !" I then conceived that it would give more animation to the scene by adding something either addressed to, or supposed to be uttered by, these fancied genii or divinities of the rock ; and accordingly, for the sake of conciseness as Avell as a trial of skill, composed them in couplets. I certainly should have found it much easier to have expanded them into quatrains, or any indefinite number of lines; but I chose to impose this task upon myself for other reasons as well as those above stated, which, however, I cannot help thinking are sufficient.
I entertain a higher opinion of the English lan- guage than to think it so deficient in conciseness as to be unable to adapt itself to the form of a dis- tich. I am rather inclined to think that the moral distichs of Cato might be very adequately translated
78 merlin's cave. [let.
in the same form. D'Avanzati's translation of Taci- tus lias acquired great reputation for its conciseness; but. for the sake of curiosity, I have proved that it may be more concisely translated into English than Italian. I may possibly have failed, however, in showing- its superior excellence in this particular by my inscriptions, but these 1 have not the vanity to imagine as just criteria of its powers.
In the island, to which I would appropriate the name of the Isle of Mona, I propose to put none but Druidical inscriptions, principally in the form of triads. These shall be in bardic characters, as they arc represented in Daviess ' Celtic Researches.' By way of amusement to those who may wish to decipher them, I shall mark this simple alphabet on a white rod, and call it the mrgula divined or la, or the diviner's wand, which is still so celebrated among the miners, so that literally few, if any, will be able to understand it without the assistance of this magic rod. It will add to the effect to call a recess, or kind of grotto, that is contiguous to this island, Merlin's Cave, and on a rock, which may be con- sidered as his tomb, to inscribe —
These mystic letters would you know, Take Merlin's wand that lies below.
It will be right, perhaps, to have two wands, of equal length ; one to be a kind of key to the other ; one to be marked with the Bardic letters, and the other at corresponding distances with the English alphabet, thus —
ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPKSTUVWY
v.]
INSCRIPTIONS.
Inscription the First. — To my Father. Still lived the Druids, who the oak revered, (For many an oak thy peaceful hands have rear'd,) The hill of Bards had echoed with thy name, Than warrior deeds more worthy songs of fame.
No. II.
To the Same. Who gilds the earth with grain can bolder claim The highest guerdon from the hands of Fame, Than he who stains the martial field with blood, And calls from widow'd eyes the bitter flood.
No. III. To the Same. This tender sapling, planted now by thee, Oh ! may it spread a fair umbrageous tree ; Whilst seated at thy side I tune my lays, And sing beneath its shade a father's praise.
Druidicat. and other Inscriptions. . No. I. Ye Druid train, these sacred rocks revere, These sacred rocks to minstrel spirits dear! If pure your lips, if void your breast of sin, They'll hear your prayers, and answer from within.
No. II. Read only thou these artless rhymes Whom Fancy leads to other times ; Nor think an hour mispent to trace The customs of a former race : For know, in every age, that man Fulfils great Nature's general plan.
No. III. Oh ! thou imbued with Celtic lore, Send back thy soul to clays of yore, When kings descended from their thrones To bow before the sacred stones, And Druids from the aged oak The will of Heaven prophetic spoke.
80 INSCRIPTIONS. [LET.
Inscriptions on the Rocks ok B air-down, in the hiver Cowsick, &e.
7'o Merlin.
Born of no earthly sire, thy magic wand Brought Sarum's hanging stones from Erin's land: To me, weak mortal ! no such power is known, And yet to speak I teach the sacred stone*
,i.*
Inscriptions in Triads, &c. No. I. Though worshipp'd oft by many a different name, God is fent one, and ever is the same, To him at last we go, from whom at first we came.
No. II.
Know, though the body moulder in the tomb,
That body shall the living soul resume,
And share of bliss or woe the just eternal doom.
No. III.
Proud man ! consider thou art nought but dust ;
To Heaven resign thy will, be good, be just,
And for thy due reward to Heaven with patience trust.
No. IV. Their earthly baseness to remove, Souls must repealed changes prove, Prepared for endless bliss above.
* It is pretended that Merlin was the son of an Incubus and a vestal. He is said, by the power of magic, to have brought from Ireland those immense masses of granite that form Stonehenge, which means, according to some antiquaries, hanging-stones ; or stones hanged, hung, or connected together ; or as the poet says, " poised by magic." The hinge of a door ma}' probably be referred to the same origin. Merlin's original name was Ambrosiu?. It is thought that Amesbury, or Ambresbury, near Stonehenge, took its name from Ambrosius Aurelius, a British Prince. May not the credulous vulgar have confounded him with Merlinus Ambrosius, and thus ascribed this pro- bably Druidical monument to the supernatural powers of this celebrated enchanter ?
V.] INSCRIPTIONS. 81
No. V. Adore great Hu*, the god of peace; Bid war and all its woes to cease ; So may our flocks and fruits increase.
No. VI. To Odinf bow with trembling fear, The terrible, the God severe : Whose bolt, of desolating fire, Warns not, but wreaks his vengeful ire ; Who roars amid the bloody fight ; Recalls the foot that turns for flight ; Who bids the victor's banners fly; And names the name of those to die.
Inscriptions to the Bards alluded to by Grey.
To Cadwallo. Mute is thy magic strain, " That hush'd the stormy main."
To lioel. Thy harp in strains sublime express'd The dictates of thy " high-born " breast.
To Urien. No more, awaken d from thy " craggy bed," Thy rage-inspiring songs the foe shall dread.
To Llewellyn.
Mid war's sad frowns were smiles oft wont to play Whilst pour'd thy harp the " soft," enamour'd " lay.'
To Modred. Thy <: magic song," thine incantations dread, " Made huge Piinlimmon bow his cloud-topt. head."
* Hu Gadran, the peaceful ploughman. One of the names of the deity among the Celtaj.
f Odin, the Deity of the Goths and other Northern nations.
E 3
82 INSCRIPTIONS. [LET.
Additional Triads. No. I. From Mela. Ut forent ad bella meliores ; j35ternas esse animas, Vitamque alteram ad manes.
The soul 's immortal — then be brave, Nor seek thy coward life to save ; But hail the life beyond the grave.
Another from Diogenes Laertius.
XXI fivdiv xxxav $paV) xui uv^gnxv atrxuv.
Adore the Gods with daily prayer, Each deed of evil shun with care, And learn with fortitude to bear.
Alluding to the Druids' belief in the Metempsychosis*.
Here all things change to all — what dies,
Again with varied life shall rise :
He sole unchanged who rules the skies.
Alluding to the Druidical Sprig Alphabet.
Hast thou the knowledge of the trees ? Press then this spot with votive knees, And join the sacred mysteries.
A Triad, founded on the Maxims of the Druids in Rapin's History of England, vol. i. p. 6, Introduction.
None must be taught but in the sacred grove :
All things originate from Heaven above ;
And man's immortal soul a future state shall prove.
* Caesar speaking of the Druids (Lib. 6, Sec. 13) says, — In primis hoc voluut persuadere, non interire animas, sed ab alias post mortem transire ad alias : at que hoc maxime ad virtutem excitari putant, metu mortis neglecto.
V.] INSCRIPTIONS.
83
To my Father. Inscribed on a rock in the river Cowsick,
THE BANKS OF WHICH HE HAD PLANTED.
Ye Naiads ! venerate the swain Who join'd the Dryads to your train.
Inscription for an Island in the river Cowsick, to which I
HAVE GIVEN THE NAME OF MoNA.
Ye tuneful birds ! ye Druids of the grove ! Who sing not strains of blood, but lays of love, To whom this Isle, a little Mona 's given — Ne'er from the sacred spot shall ye be driven.
Inscription for a rock on the lower Island. Who love, though e'en through desert wilds they stray, Find in their hearts companions of the way.
For the same Island. To thee, O Solitude ! we owe Man's greatest bliss — ourselves to know.
Inscription on a rock in the woods near the Cowsick. The wretch, to heal his wounded mind, A friend in solitude will find ; And when the Blest her influence tries, He'll learn his blessings more to prize.
For a rock on Bair-down. Sweet Poesy ! fair Fancy's child ! Thy smiles imparadise the wild.
Inscription for an Island in the Cowsick, to which I have
GIVEN THE NAME OF VeCTIS.
When erst Phoenicians cross'd the trackless main For Britain's secret shore, in quest of gain, This desert wild supplied the valued ore, And Vectis' isle received the treasured store.
For a rock in Wistman's Wood. The wreck of ages, these rude oaks revere ; The Druid, Wisdom, sought a refuge here, When Rome's fell eagles drench'd with blood the ground And taught her sons her mystic rites profound.
84 INSCRIPTIONS. [LET.
For the Same. These rugged rocks, last barrier to the skies, Smoked with the Druids1 secret sacrifice; Alas ! blind man, to hone with human blood To please a God, all merciful, all good.
Inscription fou a Rock on Baik-down. Mute is the hill of Bards, where erst the choir, In solemn cadence, struck the sacred wire : Yet oft, methinks, in spells of fancy bound, As swells the breeze, I hear their harps resound.
Inscription near the Island. Learning's proud sons ! think not the Celtic race, Once deem'd so rude, your origin disgrace : Know that to them, who counted ages o'er, The Greeks and Romans owe their learned lore.
(Celtic Res : passim.)
Inscription for a Rock near the Cowsick. Here, though now reft of trees, from many an oak To Druid ears prophetic spirits spoke; And, may I trust the muse's sacred strain, Reviving groves shall speak of fate again.
Near the Same. Ye minstrel spirits! when I strike the lyre, Oh ! hover round, and fill me with your fire!
To Boadicea. Roused by the Druid's songs, mid fields of blood, Thine arm the conquerors of the world withstood.
To Caractacus, Imperial Rome, that ruled from pole to pole, Could never tame, proud chief! thy mighty soul.
To Ta/iesin.
How boil'd his blood ! how thrili'd the warrior's veins ! "When routed to vengeance by thy patriot strains.
V.] INSCRIPTIONS. 85
To Fingal and his Bards. See Ossian, passim. Spirit of Loda* ! round their shadowy king, Here may the ghosts of song his deeds of glory sing.
To Carrilf. Mid flowing shells, thy harp of sprightly sound Awoke to mirth the festive warriors round.
To Ossian.
When sings the blast around this mossy stone,
I see thy passing ghost, I hear thy harp's wild tone.
To Cronnan J. Oft to the warrior's ghost, of mournful tone, Thy harp resounded near his mossy stone.
To Ryno §.
First of his sons of song, thy war-taught string Defiance spoke from woody Morven's king.
To Utiin.
Son of the harp of Fame ! thy fateful power Could fill with joy the warrior's dying hour.
To Malvina. Oft thy white hand the harp of Ossian strung, When, hapless sire ! thine Oscar's fate he sung
To Minona ^[. Thy harp's soft sound, thou fair-hair'd maid, was dear, More dear thy voice to Selma's royal ear.
* The same as Odin.
f This name imports sprightly and harmonious sound.
\ This name signifies mournful sound.
§ One of Fingal's principal Bards.
|| Oscar, the son of Ossian, and lover of Malvina, was slain in battle.
€[ This name signifies soft air. Fingal is styled King of Selma as well as of Morven.
86 INSCRIPTIONS. [LET.
To the Cowsick. To thee, fair Naiad of the crystal flood, I offer not the costly victim's blood ; But as I quaff thy tide at sultry noon, I bless thee for the cool, reviving boon.
To JEsop. E'en solitude has social charms for thee, "Who talk"st with beast, or fish, or bird, or tree.
To Thomson. To Nature's votaries shall thy name be dear, Long as the Seasons lead the changeful year.
To Shakspeare. To thee, blest Bard ! man's veriest heart was known, Whate'er his lot — a cottage or a throne.
To Southey,for a rock in Wislmari's Wood. Free as thy Madoc mid the western waves, Here refuged Britons swore they'd ne'er be slaves.
To Savage. What ! though thy mother could her son disown, The pitying Muses nursed thee as their own*.
To Spenser. The shepherd, taught by thine instructive rhyme, Learns from thy calendar to husband time.
To Shenslone. Nurtured by taste, thy lyre by Nature strung, Thy hands created what thy fancy sung.
To Browne. I bless thee that our native Tavy's praise Thou'st woven mid Britannia's pastoral lays.
* See Johnson's ' Life of Savage,' and his poem of the « Bastard.
V.] INSCRIPTIONS. 87
To Burns, Long as the moon shall shed her sacred light, Thy strains, sweet Bard ! shall cheer the Cotter's night
To Collins, In orient climes let lawless passions rove, Blest be these plains with friendship and with love.
To Bacon. Thy prayers induced Philosophy on earth To call the sciences and arts to birth.
To Walton. The angler's art who from thy converse learns, Happier and better to his home returns.
To Falconer, Oft shall the rustic shed a feeling tear, The shipwreck'd sailor's piteous tale to hear.
To Dante. To Faith, not Purgatory, know, 'tis given, To shut the gates of hell, and ope the gates of Heaven.
To Rowe. Oh turn, ye fair, from flattery's voice your ear, Nor live to shed the penitential tear.
To Malhias. On Thames' loved banks thou strik'st th' Ausonian lyre, And call'st from Arno's waves the minstrel choir.
To Watts. The pious rustic from thy sacred lays May learn to sing the heavenly shepherd's praise.
88 INSCRIPTIONS. [LET.
To Rochester. Dearer than self was nothing to thy hreast — Now, since thou'rt nothing, sure thou'rt doubly blest *.
To Aikin.
Nature's free gifts thou taught' st th' admiring swains f, To calendar, and praise with grateful strains.
To Scott. Cease not thy strains ; from dawn till close of day, I'd list, sweet minstrel ! to thy latest lay.
To Wieland. Thy magic wand, by Oueron'x fairy power Mid barren wilds can weave love's roseate bower.
To Farro. Thy patriot virtue taught the happier son To turn the soil his father's falchion wonj.
To Chaucer. Rude though thy verse, discordant though thy lyre, Each British minstrel owns thee for his sire.
To La Fontaine. He taught the beasts that roam the plains To speak a moral to the swains.
To Cowley. Oft mid such scenes the livelong day " The melancholy Cowley " lay.
To Young. Oh ! lead my thoughts to Him, the source of light, Ere sleep enchains them in the cave of night.
* Dr. Johnson considers Rochester's poem on Nothing his best composition.
f See Dr. Aikin' s ' Calendar of Nature.' X Varro wrote on Husbandry.
V.] INSCRIPTIONS. 80
To Parnell. Oh ! be it mine with men to dwell, But oft to seek the hermit's cell.
To Gray. The youthful swain, where his " forefathers sleep," Shall sing thine elegy, sweet Bard ! and weep.
To Rogers. To every swain grown grey with years Memory his native vale endears.
To Akenside*.
Imagination's airy dream
Finds Naiads in each purling stream.
To Anne Radcliffe. Nature, enthusiast nymph ! a child Found thee, and nursed thee in the wild.
I have now, my dear Sir, given you a very nu- merous collection of Mr. Bray's inscriptions for the rocks of B air-down and the river Cowsick; yet, numerous as they are, there remain not less than 115 in distichs, which I have not sent, because they would have been too many for insertion in these letters. In the next, I purpose taking you to Wistman's Wood, where I trust you will find some objects worthy your attention ; till then,
Allow me the honour to remain, &c.
A. E. B.
* Alluding to his ' Pleasures of Imagination,' and his ' Hymn to the Naiads.'
LETTER VI.
TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.
Contents. — Wistman's Wood — Considered as the posterity of a
Druid grove — The antiquity of such groves, as places of resort of
Eastejfe idolaters — Examples found in the Bible quoted — Customs
of the ancient idolaters — Horses devoted by them to the Sun —
Customs of the ancient Germans and Gauls in their Superstitions
— Celtic priesthood — Record preserved in the Office of the Duchy
of Cornwall respecting Wistman's Wood — The subject of its high
antiquity further considered — Hill of Bards, and Wood of the
Wisemen contiguous — Account of the Wood, and its localities in
their present state — Progress towards it — Adders plentiful on the
Moor — Superstition respecting them — How to charm them — Ashen
wand — Serpent's egg — Diviner's rod — Pliny's notice of the magic
of Britain — Taliesin's account of the wand — The Caduceus, its
orijrin — Toland's account of ancient amulets — Custom of Charm- ed
ing adders : a vestige of British superstition — Spring of water — Lucan's notice of Caesar on entering a Druid grove — Lines on Wistman's Wood — The Farmer's legend about the old grove — The ascent to it — Masses of granite — The extraordinary oaks of Wist- man's Wood described — Isabella deFortibus by some said to have planted the Wood — Ages of trees, &c. — Silver coins found ; and human hair in a kairn on the Moor — British monuments destroyed — Crockernton — Circles of stone numerous — Wistman's Wood pro- bably the last retreat of the Druids and Bards of Damnonia.
Vicarage, Tavistock, March 6, 1832.
My dear Sir,
I now take up my pen to give you some account of Wistman's Wood, which, if you will allow the expression, we have always considered as the posterity of a Druid grove ; and I cannot help think- ing that when I shall have stated the various cir- cumstances which induce us to come to this con-
VI.] ANCIENT IDOLATERS. 91
elusion, you will admit it is not wholly without pro- bability or reason.
Every one at all conversant with history is aware that no community of the British priesthood was without its sacred grove, a custom derived from the most remote countries and ages, for the Bible in- forms us that such groves were the resort of Eastern idolatry in its most fearful rites, and that such were generally found on eminences or " high places." We read in the Second Book of Kings, that when " the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God, they built them high places in all their cities," they " set them up images and groves on every high hill and under every green tree, and there they burnt incense in all the high places." And again we find these corrupt Israelites " left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of Heaven, and served Baal."
The Druid priesthood did the same in after ages ; and their groves, their altars and " high places," are still remaining, though in the last vestige of their decay, as witnesses of their idolatry, in the extensive wilderness of Dartmoor. How striking a resemblance does the folloAving passage of scripture bear to the superstitions and practices of Celtic nations ! Speak- ing of Ahab, it is recorded that " he reared altars for Baal, and made a grove ; and worshipped all the host of Heaven and served them;" and that "he made his son pass through fire, and observed times and used enchantments with familiar spirits and wizards." And when Josiah conquered these in- fidels, it is written that he destroyed the « groves and vessels made for Baal,— for the sun, the moon,
92 QUOTATIONS FROM THE BIBLE. [LET.
and the planets, and put down the idolatrous priests who had burnt the incense to them on high places ;" and that " he defiled Tophet, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Moloch.'' And he " took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun*." How much does this superstition (of the horses given to Baal, or Bel. the God of the Sun,) agree with a passage in Tacitus, where, speaking of the manners of the ancient Germans, he says, " a number of milk-white steeds, unprofaned by mortal labour, are constantly maintained at the public expense, and placed to pasture in the religious groves ! When occasion requires, they are harnessed to a sacred chariot ; and the priest, accompanied by the king, or chief of the state, attends to watch the motions and the neighings of the horses. No other mode of augury is received with such implicit faith by the people, the nobility, and the priesthood. The horses, upon these solemn occasions, are supposed to be the or- gans of the Gods, and the priests their favoured interpreters."
Caesar and Diodorus both speak of the Druid groves of superstition ; and Tacitus does the same in regard to the Germans, who, as well as the Gauls and Britons, were followers of the Celtic idolatry. " Their deities," says that admirable historian, " are not immured in temples, nor represented under any kind of resemblance to the human form. To do cither were, in their opinion, to derogate from the
* In the same chapter we read, that Josiah " slew all the priests of the high places that were there, upon the altars, and burnt men's bones upon them."
VI.] ANTIQUITY OF WISTMAN's WOOD. 93
majesty of supreme beings. Woods and groves are the sacred depositaries, and the spots consecrated to their pious uses :. they give to that sacred recess the name of the divinity that fills the place." So nu- merous are the allusions of the classical writers to the groves of Druidism, that it is not necessary to recite examples ; since no fact is more clearly esta- blished than that no society of the Celtic priesthood was without its grove, for the purposes of instruction, retirement, augury, and numerous other religious rites. The custom of cutting the misletoe from the oaks of these sanctuaries is too generally known to need any particular notice ; since the commonly- received idea of a Druid, with those Avho scarcely read at all, presents itself to the mind under the figure of an old man with a long beard, who cuts misletoe from the oaks with a golden hook.
In order to ascertain how far the conjecture is founded on probability that Wistman's Wood, on Dartmoor, is the posterity of a Druid grove, we must consider its known antiquity* — its localities — the extraordinary appearance and actual state of the dwarf and venerable trees, that still flourish in decay amidst the rudest storms, and in one of the rudest spots throughout the whole of the moor ; — the pro- bable age of these oaks, and how far one tree would be likely to succeed another ; — and though last, not
* In the office of the Duchy of Cornwall there is preserved a Perambulation of the Moor, of very high antiquity, by which it appears that Wistman's Wood was nearly in the same state as at present at the time of the Norman Conquest. This is a very curious fact, and it should be borne in mind by the reader, as it goes far to establish the opinion the writer has ventured to give on this most interesting vestige of the forest.
94 LOCALITY OF WISTMAN'S WOOD. [LET.
least, their relative situation with Ihe other British antiquities, by which they are in fact surrounded, and that close at hand. Mr. Brays derivation of the name of Wistman's Wood, given in the last letter, must also be borne in mind ; since this most curious antiquity in the vegetable world is very near Bair- down : so that if he is right in his derivation in both instances, the hill of Bards, and the wood of the Wiscmen, or Druids, were contiguous.
Wistman's Wood, then, lies on the side of a steep hill, opposite Bair-down ; at its base runs the western branch of the river Dart. Let me fancy for a moment that you are with us — (a dream I one day hope to see realized) — join our excursion, and, whilst attempting to visit this eminence, are helping me along from Bair-down ; a friendly arm being a very necessary support to a female who ventures on the expedi- tion ; which to one like myself, not overburdened with strength or health, is a task of no small labour, though replete with interest.
The farmer, Hannaford, is our guide ; and after having passed up and down hill, and over one of the boundary-walls, or enclosures, some of the stones of which he removes (and builds up again) to afford us an easier way of clambering over it, we have ma- naged, by jumping from rock to rock, in part to ford the river Dart, the waters not being so high as to prevent our doing so, till at length we come to one place so puzzling — so difficult — that our Her- culean guide can see no other way of getting me over but that of taking me up, and putting me across with as much ease and good will as Gulliver would have displayed in assisting the Queen of Lilliput in crossing a puddle. At last we are landed on the
VI.] CHARMING ADDERS. 95
opposite bank, and there lies Wistman's Wood, rocks and all, before us ; — an inviting object to curiosity and speculation with those who love to indulge in visions of the " olden time."
The summit of the eminence cannot be seen, on account of its steep ascent ; and huge piles, mass on mass of granite blocks seem to rise and grow before us as we pace upwards towards the wood. Every step requires wary walking, since to stumble amidst such rocks, holes, and hollows might be attended with an accident that would prevent all further in- vestigation ; and the farmer says, " 'Tis a wisht old place, sure enough, and full of adders as can be." This last communication somewhat cools my en- thusiasm about Druid groves ; but the farmer offers and supplies a speedy remedy,— one, too, of most mystical origin, and not a little heathenish, being derived from the very Druids upon whose haunts we are about to intrude ; for he transfers to my hand the ashen bough or sprig that he was carrying in his own, and initiates me, on the spot, into the pagan rites of charming adders, to render them harmless as the poorest worm that crawls upon the earth. He tells me, that the moment I see an adder I have nothing to do but to draw a circle with an ash rod round it, and that the creature will never go out of it ; nay, if a fire were kindled in the ring, it would rather go into the fire itself than pass the circle. He believed, also, that an animal bitten by this venomous reptile may be cured by having a kind of collar woven of ash-twigs suspended round his neck. He likewise mentions having, a year or two ago, killed a very large adder that had been
06 DRUIDICAL AUTS. [l.KT.
tamed by the above charm, when he took fifteen young ones from its belly.
To return to our expedition : these superstitions (as we pause a moment to take breath before we continue the rough ascent) become the subject of our conversation ; and we cannot help remarking how appropriate they are to the place of Druid antiquity, since the one may be traced to the ser- pent's egg, and the other, very probably, to the virga divinatoria, or diviner's rod. Indeed all ma- gicians and sorcerers are described, from the earliest ages, as being armed with a wand or rod : we read of this, too, in the Bible, where the rods of the magicians were turned into serpents, and the rod of Moses, so transformed, swallowed them up. That the Druids professed magical arts cannot be doubted, since Pliny calls that priesthood " the magi of the Gauls and Britons;" and of this island he says, " Magic is now so much practised in Britain, and with so many similar rites, that we cannot but come to the conclusion, that they immediately derived it from the magi of the Persians." The bard Talicsin thus speaks of the magic wand of the Druids : " Were I to compose the strain, were I to sing, magic spells w7ould spring, like those produced by the circle and wand of Twrch Trwyth." I think I have somewhere read, that the sophists of India, also, pretended to possess the power of charming venomous reptiles ; and there can be little doubt the art was long practised in Britain, since it has been supposed that the caducous seen in the hand of Mercury had its origin in the British isles, where the Druids exercised the arts of charming serpents. And Toland, who, in his very learned work, has
VI.] SPRING AT WISTMAN's WOOD. 97
brought to lis:lit so much curious information respect- ing Druidism, informs us that, in the Lowlands of Scotland, many glass amulets were found which the people of that country called adder stanes. The Druids, we know, carried magic amulets about their persons; and it may also be remarked, that the adder itself was held as a symbol of the Helio-arkite god, and, therefore, of his priest, who took his sta- tion on the sacred mount, or in the no less sacred Diluvian lake *.
Now, all these things considered induce me to believe that as Dartmoor must from the earliest times have been most prolific in vipers, the mode of charming them with an ashen wand, still retained by the peasantry of the moor, is nothing less than a vestige of the customs of Druid antiquity.
Having paused a moment to consider the origin of the ashen wand and the circles about the adders, we once more turn our attention to Wistman's Wood ; and near its commencement, on the south side, we find a spring of the clearest and the purest water, which Hannaford, the farmer, tells us never fails. It bursts from beneath a rock, and, like most of the blessings of Providence (whether Ave avail ourselves of them or not), it still pours its limpid
* The serpenfs egg, which the Druids pretended to catch in the air, in order to impose upon the multitude, was held as a mystery. They wore this egg round their necks ; no one in Britain except them- selves knew the secret of manufacturing this kind of glass. " The priests,-' says Davies, •' carried about them certain trinkets of vitrified matter, and this custom had a view to Arkite mysteries." The great. Druid temple at Carnac (which I visited in early life) is, I am informed, now ascertained to be in the form of a serpent. Might it not, therefore, have had reference to the mysteries of the Diluvian, Helio-arkite god ? Carnac stands very near the sea shore. VOL. I. F
98 a druid's grove. [let.
fountain in fruitful abundance, amidst the wildness and desolation of the spot, and nourishes a thousand beautiful mosses and flowers, that render the moor, though a desert in one sense of the word, as a rich wilderness for Flora and her train.
We now view with surprise the oaks before us: and such is their singular appearance, that, without stopping to reason upon the subject, we are all dis- posed to think that the}- are really no other than the last remnant of a Druid grove ; or rather the last vestige of its posterity. You, being a poet (for I must still be allowed to fancy you by my side), think of Lucan ; and repeat the passage in his c Pharsalia/ where lie describes the impression made on the Roman soldiery under Caesar, on their entering beneath the gloom and solemnity of a Druid grove ; their horror, their silent dread to touch with the axe that old and honoured wood : till Caesar snatching it from their trembling hands, aimed the first blow and violated the oaks so long held sacred to a dark and sanguinary superstition.
When you have finished your quotation from Lucan, I tell you that Rowe, who was his translator into English verse, is said to have been born in Lamerton, only three miles from Tavistock ; of which pretty little village his father was the incumbent. And Mr. Bray, who has long been an enthusiast about Dartmoor and the Druids, is ready to follow your quotation by repeating the noble lines from Mason's ' Caractacus ' descriptive of a Druid grove ; whilst I, determined to have my share of poetical feeling, recite the sonnet, written by my husband, when very young, on Wistman's Wood ; quite aware that, though I repeat it to the author of ' Madoc,' he
VI.] LEGEND OF THE OLD TREES. 99
has that generous feeling, not always found in those who have reached the summit . of their art, to listen with good nature and indulgence to the productions of others who may stand afar off: —
To Wistman's Wood. Sole relics of the wreath that crown' d the moor !
A thousand tempests (bravely though withstood,
Whilst, shelter'd in your caves, the wolfs dire brood Scared the wild echoes with their hideous roar.) Have bent your aged heads, now scathed and hoar
And in Dart's wizard stream your leaves have strew'd,
Since Druid priests your sacred rocks imbrued With victims offer'd to their gods of gore. In lonely grandeur, your firm looks recall
What history teaches from her classic page; How Rome's proud senate on the hordes of Gaul
Indignant frown'd, and stay'd their brutal rage. Yet Time's rude hand shall speed, like theirs, your fall,
That selfsame hand so long that spared your age.
Whilst these poetical feelings prompt each to some suitable expression of them, the farmer, a matter-of-fact man, looks as if he thought us all " a little mazed," as they say in Devonshire, " about the wisht, old trees ;" and now it being his turn to say something, he gives us his own legend about them ; which is, that according to tradition, or as he ex- presses it, " as the people do tell, that the giants once were masters of all the hill country, and had great forests, and set up their karns (he calls them by their right name), and their great stones and circles, and all they old, ancient things about the moor."
As we advance we again contemplate with wonder and interest the extraordinary object before us. It is altogether unlike anything else. There is a steep height, to toil up which I compare to going up the
f2
100 '.DWARF OAK TREKS. [LET.
side of a pyramid ; but you say it is a mole-hill com- pared to Skiddaw; and Mr. Bray talks about the grand mountains of North Wales; neither of which I have ever visited, though 1 have seen a real moun- tain in South Wales, and toiled up one, too.
The ascent to Wistman's Wood is strewn all over with immense masses of granite, that lie scattered in every direction. The soil about these rocks is very scant)-, and appears, the same as in many other parts of the moor, to be composed of decayed vege- table matter. In the midst of these gigantic blocks, growing among them, or starting, as it were, from their interstices, arises wildly, and here and there widely scattered, a grove of dwarf oak trees. Their situation, exposed to the bleak winds, which rush past the side of the declivity on which they grow, and through the valley of the Dart at their base (a valley that acts like a tunnel to assist the fury of the gust), the diminutive height of the trees, their sin- gular and antiquated appearance, all combine to raise feelings of mingled curiosity and wonder. The oaks are not above ten or twelve feet high, so stunted is their growth by the sweeping winds to which they stand exposed; but they spread far and wide at their tops, and their branches twist and wind in the most tortuous and fastastic manner ; sometimes re- minding one of those strange things called man- drakes ; of which there is a superstition noticed by Shakspeare —
Like shrieking mandrakes, torn from out the earth.
In some places these branches are literally festooned with ivy and creeping plants ; and their trunks are so thickly embedded in a covering of fine velvet
VI.] DWARF OAK TREES. . 101
moss, that at first sight you would imagine them to be of enormous thickness in proportion to their height. But it is only their velvet coats that make them look so bulky ; for on examination they are not found to be of any remarkable size. Their whole appearance conveys to you the idea of hoary age in the vegetable world of creation; and on visiting Wistman's Wood, it is impossible to do other than think of those " groves in stony places" so often mentioned in Scripture, as being dedicated to Baal and Ashtaroth. This ancient seat of idolatry seems to have undergone, also, a great part of the curse that was pronounced on the idolatrous cities and groves of old; for here, indeed, do " serpents hiss," and it shall never be inhabited, " neither doth the shepherd make his fold there ;" " but the wild beasts of the desert and the owl dwell there," and " the bittern" still screams amidst its " desolation."
Many of the immense masses of granite around and under the trees are covered with a cushion of the thickest and the softest moss ; but to sit down upon them would be rather too hazardous ; since such a seat might chance to disturb from their com- fortable bed a nest of adders that are very apt to shelter in such a covert; and few persons, now-a- days, would feel quite so confident as honest Kanna- ford in the power and efficacy of the ashen wand to render them innocuous. The oaks, though stunted and turning from the west winds to which they arc most exposed, are by no means destitute of foliage; and the good-natured farmer cuts me down a branch to carry home in triumph, after having achieved the adventure of a visit to Wistman's Wood, — a visit by no means common with ladies. This branch has
102 TRADITION OF WISTMAN's WOOD. [LET.
upon it. several acorns, the smallest I ever saw in all my life ; but the leaves are of the usual size, and as vigorous as most other trees of the same kind.
I shall now give you a short extract from a very brief entry in Mr. Bray's journal of August 9th, 1827, concerning this wood. He says as follows : — " Tradition relates that Wistman's Wood was planted by the celebrated Isabella de Fortibus, Countess of Devon *. Eut I do not hesitate to say, that, to any one who has visited the spot, it is evident no other hand has planted it than that of God. No one would or could have planted trees in the midst of such rocks. f They unquestionably can be no other than the remains of the original forest; which, though in its original acceptation — according to Du Cange in V. Foresta, it comes from feris, that is, ferarum statio, a station for wild beasts — it means but ' a wild uncultivated ground interspersed with wood,'! must yet have had some trees, at intervals, in every part of it. At present (except here, and in some modern plantations, of which those of my father are the finest) there are none, though the trunks of trees are occasionally found in the bogs. It is not improbable that these trees were first very
* Among the peers of Henry the Second, was William de Fortibus, Earl of Albemarle, created Earl of Devon in right of his wife Isabel, sister and heiress to Baldwin de Redvers, or Rivers, eighth Earl of Devonshire. The title thus created in 12G2 became extinct in 1270.
f That Wistmaivs Wood was not planted by Isabella de Fortibus is proved by the fact before noticed, that the record of a perambulation of the moor (made immediately after the Norman conquest) is still preserved in the office of the Duchy of Cornwall, by which we find Wistman*s Wood was even at that remote period much the same as it now appears.
X Todd's Johnson's Diet. See also there the legal sense of the word.
vi.] evelyn's silva. 103
generally destroyed by fire, in order to extirpate the wolves. The few that remained were destroyed by cattle afterwards pastured there ; and it is only, per- haps, owing to their being so surrounded and inter- spersed with rocks that those of the wood in question have been preserved from a similar depredation.
" At the late visitation at Tavistock, on the 31st of May, Archdeacon Fronde,, a. gentleman possessed of considerable antiquarian information, told me that he had lately obtained part of a tree from this wood, with a view, if possible, to discover its age by the number of circles from its centre to the circum- ference; that, by the aid of a microscope, he had counted about seven hundred ; but that at times the divisions were so minute as hardly to be distin- guishable ; that, different from any other trees he had ever seen, the circles were more contracted, and in a manner condensed, on one side than on any other ; and that he supposed this was the side the most exposed to the beat of the weather. On con- sulting Evelyn's Silva, I found the following pas- sages in his second volume, which may throw some light upon the subject : —
" ' The trunk or bough of a tree being cut trans- versely plain and smooth, sheweth several circles or rings more or less orbicular, according to the ex- ternal figure, in some parallel proportion, one with- out the other, from the centre of the wood to the inside of the bark, dividing the whole into so many
circular spaces by the largeness or smallness
of the rings, the quickness or slowness of the growth of any tree may, perhaps, at certainty be estimated. " —p. 201.
" ' The spaces are manifestly broader on the one
104 SILVER COINS, ETC. [LET.
side than on the other, especially the more outer, to a double proportion, or more ; the inner being near an equality*
" ' It is asserted that the larger parts of these rings are on the south and sunny side of the tree (which is very rational and probable) insomuch, that by cutting a tree tranvcrse, and drawing a diameter through the broadest and narrowest parts of the ring, a meridian line may be described.
" ' It is commonly and very probably asserted, that a tree gains a new ring every year. In the body of a great oak in the New-Forest cut transversely even (where many of the trees are accounted to be some hundreds of years old) three and four hundred have been distinguished.' These and other remarks, he attributes (p. 204) to ' that learned person, the late Dr. Goddard.' For the age of trees, see Clarke's Travels, vol. vii., p. 312. 4th Edit. Svo.
" My tenant, Hannaford, said that his uncle had found a few silver coins, about the size of a sixpence, in some of the kairns on the moor, and promised, if possible, to obtain for me a sight of them. He farther informed me that he had lately destroyed what he called a cave,* which he described as com- posed of a large oblong stone supported, as a cover, by others set on edge at the head and foot, and on either side ; and that, among the stones and earth within, he found some human hair clotted together, but no bones or other vestige of the body. Hair, it is said, will grow as long as there is any moisture in the body ; but whether it will last longer than bones
* Or Kieve : which signifies, I believe, any large vessel, from a puncheon to a caldron. There is a waterfall in Cornwall called St. Nathan's Kieve, probably from the basin into which it falls.
VI.] VESTIGES OF DRUIDISM. 105
is a question that seems hardly yet decided. Might it not have been the scalp of an enemy, or hair offered up to the manes of the departed, or to some deitv, of which this might be the altar ? The re- mains of one of these British monuments still exist on JBair-down ; but the ancient circular enclosures (of which there are so many near Wistman's Wood) that I myself remember there, were unfortunately de- stroyed when my father erected his ring-fence."
I have, my dear Sir, already given you Mr. Bray's conjectures as to the etymology of Wistman's Wood; and the opinion of its having been a grove sacred to the rites of Druidism, obtains no inconsiderable support from its immediate localities; since, notwith- standing the spoliation of successive ages, there still remain, close to it, many British antiquities. Such, for instance, as three cairns (and several others have been destroyed within the last twenty years to supply stones for the boundary walls, &c), some hut rings, and the circles noticed by Mr. Bray in his Journal : these are all near the wood ; whilst to the south of it lies Croekerntor, the undoubted seat of British juris- prudence on the moor, and of which I shall speak at large in my next letter. To the west, separated only by the narrow valley that is watered by the river Dart, is found B air- down, or the hill of Bards. And Little- ford tor is also not far distant from Wistman's Wood, contiguous to which is seen a group of above sixty hut circles. Thus then do we find that this venerable grove, situated in the very heart of the moor, is on all sides surrounded by vestiges of Druid antiquity.
Before I conclude this account of the wood (in which there is not one circumstance fictitious, ex- cepting my having indulged in the fancy of your
F 5
106 BRITISH BARDS. [l,ET.
being of the party when I visited it in L827), I ought to mention that Mr. Bray conjectures that it was very probably one of the last retreats of the Druids of Damnonia. after they were exposed to the perse- cution of the Roman power. There appears to me nothing improbable in this conjecture; for we all know how long after that epoch the bards sought shelter, and existed in Caledonia, Armorica, Wales, and Cornwall. Dartmoor, so near the last named retreat, from its mountainous character, its want of roads, its deep recesses, its loneliness and general difficulty of access, must long have stood as an im- penetrable barrier against persecution.*
On the moor, shelter and even safety might be found for those who, to the last, struggled to main- tain their power ; and who, rather than yield up the sacred privileges of that priesthood in which they had been trained from their earliest years, fled to rocks and deserts as their retreat; and there still preserved their sway, though reduced in numbers and confined within a comparatively small space for their dominion.
That such men were long welcome to, and upheld by the British people, is proved by the circumstance of the Bards having existed for so many generations in Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, and Wales, when they were extinct in all other parts of Great Britain. The natives of the soil, it cannot be doubted, long maintained a veneration for their ancient customs and superstitions; and their bards possessed that
* Mr. Pohvhele considers that the Romans never penetrated into Dartmoor; and that this circumstance is the cause of no Roman bar- rows or antiquities being1 there found ; all that have hitherto been discovered being undoubtedly British.
VI.] GENIUS OF THE BARDS. 107
feeling, that tenderness which is ever the companion of poetry; and without which real genius, in any branch of literature, surely cannot exist : for if Plato's definition of genius be really true, that, even in its highest order, it is nothing more than " extent of sympathy," the bards might claim it as their own. Hence arose their power, and hence was it that they kept alive, by their pathetic appeals to the hearts of the Britons, all the pity that their own persecuted state was likely to call forth. They were, it is true, " fallen from their high estate,'1 and from their ac- knowledged power; they were seared and blighted — yet from that very cause were they become but the more cherished and honored ; even as the ancients hallowed those spots of earth that had been blasted by the lightning and the thunder-bolt of Jove — misfortune had touched them, and they were sacred. In their bards, also, the Britons heard the voice of " other times," the history of their forefathers, the legends and traditions of their country. Such re- citals could elevate or soften the souls of their auditors, as they sat around with the glistening eye, the suppressed respiration, and the varying and accompanying feeling to each modulation of their song, that could nerve the arm to action, or melt the heart to pity, as the subject arose to energy, or, chord by chord, died away in low sounds as the melody of melancholy spoke with irresistible power in the cadence of their harp. And when he, too, should be no more, the hardy British chief looked to the genius of the bards as the bulwark of his fame. The mossy stone and the cairn might mark the spot where rested the mortal fabric of his body, but his more enduring monument was in immortal verse;
108 GENIUS OF THE BARDS. [LET,
that spirit of poesy, which, given by the great Giver of all good, is as a ray of the divinity here on earth. Long, therefore, were the bards cherished, long did they survive, honored in their ruin and in their fall ; and now, perhaps, in the lonely and melancholy wood of Wistman, we behold one of the last decaying vestiges of their retreat.
Allow me to remain, my dear Sir, Yours, Sec, &c,
A. E. B.
109
LETTER VII.
TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.
Contents: — Fabrics of unhewn stone of Eastern origin — Examples given — The Gorseddau or Court of Judicature ; its high antiquity — The solemnity of trial — Druid judges in civil and religious causes — Courts of Judicature held in the open air with the nations of anti- quity— Crockerntor or Dartmoor — Such a Court in the Cantred of Tamare — Since chosen for the Court of the Stannaries— Account of Crockerntor in ancient and modern times — Tin traffic — Stannaries, &c. — The Judge's chair — Parliament-rock, &c, described — Longa- ford Tor — Rock basin — Many barrows on Stennen Hill — A pot of money, according to tradition, found in one of them — Bair-down Man, or British obelisk — The Grey Wethers; stones so called — — Causes for Crockerntor being chosen by the Stannaries for their Parliament— Probably the Wittenagemot of this district succeeded on the very spot where the Gorseddau was held in British times — Grimspound a vast circular wall; its antiquity — Account of similar structures byStrabo and Caesar— Arthur's Stone, a British structure of great interest— Flocks and herds of the Britons— Tin traffic — The scarlet dye mentioned by Pliny, probably alluding to the scarlet moss, from which dyes are formed, on the Moor — Excursion in search of Dennabridge pound — Horses in their free state — The river at Dennabridge — Judge Buller exonerated from having re- moved the great stone, used as a table by the old Stannators at Parliament-rock — The stone found at last far from its original station — Dennabridge pound, its extent, &c, described — Trunk of an oak tree, found by Hannaford, in a bog — Oak bowls found in a hog on the Moor; their great antiquity — River Cowsick — Inscrip- tion to Shakspeare on the ruck below the bridge.
Vicarage, Tavistock, March 9th, 1 832.
My dear Sir,
I purpose in this letter giving you some account of a place on Dartmoor which, it is most probable, was used in the days of the Britons as a tribunal of
110 TEMPLES, ETC., OF STONE. [LET.
justice. Unhewn stones and circles of the same, it is generally admitted, were raised for courts of this description; and we have the most ancient and un- doubted authority — the Bible, for considering that fabrics of unhewn stone derive their origin (like the more rational parts of the religion of the Druids) from those eastern nations of which the Celtse were a branch.
We find that the custom of erecting, or of conse- crating monuments of this nature as memorials of a covenant, in honour of the dead, as places of wor- ship, &c, prevailed even from the earliest times. Jacob and Laban made a covenant in Gilead; and no sooner was this done, than " Jacob took a stone and set it up for a pillar." Joshua in passing over Jordan with the ark caused a heap of stones to be raised, that they " should be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever." And certain tribes also " built there an altar by Jordan, a great altar to see." And after Joshua had destroyed Achan, " they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day." The Jewish conquerors did the same by the King of Ai ; and on Absalom " did they heap stones :" and Rachel's monument, the first we read of in the Bible, was of stone, for Jacob " set up a pillar upon her grave." *
There cannot, I think, be a doubt that the courts, as well as the temples of unhewn stone, had their origin in the East. And as the laws of the British people were delivered to them by the Druids, not as secular ordinances, but as the commands of the gods whom they adored, this circumstance no doubt added
* Vide Herodotus for the stones set up by Sesostris.
VII.] THE GORSEDDAU. Ill
to the solemnity of their administration : so that it is not improbable the spot appointed for the Gorseddau or Court of Judicature was chosen with a view to the most advantageous display of its august rites. Hence an elevated station, like the temples of their worship, became desirable; and there must have been a more than ordinary feeling of awe inspired in the mind of the criminal, by ascending heights covered, perhaps, with a multitude, to whose gaze he was exposed, as he drew nigh and looked upon those massive rocks, the seat of divine authority and judg- ment. How imposing must have been the sight of the priesthood and their numerous train, surrounded by all the outward pomps and insignia of their office; as he listened, may be, to the solemn hymns of the Vates, preparatory to the ceremonial of justice, or as he stept within the sacred enclosure, there to receive condemnation or acquittal, to be referred to the ordeal of the logan, or the tolmen, according to the will of the presiding priest ! — As he slowly advanced and thought upon these things, often must he have shuddered and trembled to meet the Druid's eve, when, to use the words of Ossian, he stood by "the stone of his power."
The Druids not only adjudged, but with their own hands executed the terrific sentence they had decreed. The human victims which they immolated to appease, or to render propitious their deities, (particularly those offered to Hesus the God of Battles, and to Bel, or the Sun,) were generally chosen from criminals; unless when the numbers demanded by the sacrifice induced them to mingle the blood of the innocent with that of the guilty, to
I 1.2 ANTIQUITY OF THE GORSEDDAU. [LET.
supply their cruel rites. Aud as these sacrifices were not merely confined to the eve of a battle, or to make intercession for the calamities of a kingdom, but were frequently offered up at the prayer of any chief or noble afflicted by disease, it is not unlikely that the condemned criminal was hurried from the Gorseddau to suffer as a victim to the gods, against whose supreme will all crimes were held to be com- mitted that were done upon the earth.
That these ancient courts of justice were kept in the open air seems to be the most probable opinion, since such was the custom with many of the nations of antiquity ; the Areopagus of the Greeks is an instance. And in earlier ages we find it to have been much the same ; as Ave read in the Bible of the elders pronouncing judgment " sitting in the gates." These gates were at the entrance of a town or city ; a court that must have been in some measure held in the open air. With the Celtic nations it was un- questionably a practice that long prevailed amongst their posterity ; since, in the ancient laws of Wales, the Judge was directed " to sit with his back to the sun or storm, that he might not be incommoded by either." *
One of these primitive courts, handed down as such by successive ages from the earliest times, through the various changes of government and
* Dr. Clarke when describing the Celtic remains at Morasteen, near old Upsal, says, "We shall not quit the subject of the Morasteen (the circle of stones) without noticing, that, in the central stone of such monuments, we may, perhaps, discern the origin of the Grecian (Bjj^a) Bema, or stone tribunal, and of the ' set thrones of judgment' men- tioned in Scripture and elsewhere, as the places on which kings and judges were elevated ; for these were always of stone."
VII.] CROCKERNTOR. 113
religion, is to this day found on Dartmoor : it is known by the name of Crockerntor,* the most curious and remarkable seat, perhaps, of Druidical judicature throughout the whole kingdom. It re- mained as the Court of the Stannaries till within the last century, and hence was it commonly called Parliament-rock. On this spot the chief miners of Devon were, by their charters, obliged to assemble. Sometimes a company of two or three hundred persons would there meet, but on account of the situation, after the necessary and preliminary forms had been gone through, they usually adjourned to Tavistock, or some other Stannary town, to settle their affairs. The Lord Warden, who was the Supreme Judge of the Stannary Courts, invariably issued his summons that the jurors should meet at Crockcrntor on such a day; and by an accidental reference to an old magazine, I find a record of a meeting of this nature having been there held so late as the year 1749. If this was the last meeting or not, I cannot say, but I should think not, and that the custom died gradually away, till it was altogether abolished.
Some powerful motive, some deep veneration for ancient usages, or some old custom too well esta- blished to be easily set aside, must have operated to have caused these Stannary Courts, in comparatively modern times, to be held on such a spot as Crock- erntor ; whose rocks stand on the summit of a loftv
* Mr. Polwhele says, in his Devon, " For the Cantred of Tamare we may fix, I think, the seat of judicature at Crockemtor on Dartmoor; here, indeed, it seems already fixed at our hands, and I have scarce a doubt but the Stannary Parliaments at this place were a continuation even to our own times of the old British Courts, before the age of Julius Ctesar.''
114 PARLIAMENT-ROCK. [LET.
height open on all sides to the bleak winds and to the weather, affording no shelter from a storm, re- mote from the habitations of men, and, in short, presenting such a combination of difficulties, and so many discomforts to any persons assembling on matters of business, that nothing can be more im- probable, I had almost said impossible, that such a place should have been chosen for the Stannary Courts, had it not been handed down as a spot con- secrated to justice from the earliest ages.
Having offered these few introductory remarks on the subject of Crockerntor, I now give you the fol- lowing extracts from Mr. Bray's journal of his sur- vey of the western limits of Dartmoor, so long ago as the year 1802; when, though a very young man, he was the first person who really examined and brought into notice many of those curious Druidical antiquities in which it abounds. He spoke of them in various quarters ; and some persons were induced, by what he said, cursorily to explore them. Of these a few, now and then, published some account, and though not unfrequently availing themselves of Mr. Bray's information, I do not know, excepting in one instance, that any person ever did him the jus- tice to acknowledge the obligation, or even to men- tion his name as having been the first to lead the way to an investigation of what was still to be found on the moor : —
EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL.
" September 20th, 1802. Crockerntor, or Par- liament-rock, is situated on Dartmoor, near the turn- pike-road leading from Moreton to Tavistock, at the distance of about eleven miles from the former, and nine from the latter. Prince, in his ' Worthies of
VII.] PARLIAMENT-ROCK. 115
Devon,' p. 168, in his account of the family of Crocker, after informing us that Crockernwell re- ceived its name from them, says — ' There is another famous place in this province, which seems to derive its name also from this family, and that is Crockern- tor, standing in the forest of Dartmoor, where the parliament is wont to be held for Stannary causes ; unto which the four principal stannary towns, Tavi- stock, Plimton, Ashburton, and Chagford, send each twenty-four burgesses, who are summoned thither when the lord warden of the Stannaries sees oc- casion : where they enact statutes, laws, and ordi- nances, which, ratified by the lord warden aforesaid, are in fidl force in all matters between tinner and tinner, life and limb excepted. This memorable place is only a great rock of moorstonc. out of which a table and seats are hewn, open to all the weather, storms and tempests, having neither house nor refuge near it, by divers miles. The borough of Tavestock is said to be the nearest, and yet that is distant ten miles off.'
"I am not inclined to agree with Prince about the origin of the name of this rock, nor, from the present appearance of it, do I think his a correct description. The first thing that struck me was a rock, with a fissure in the middle, with one half of it split, either by art or nature, into four pretty regular steps, each about a foot and a half high and two feet broad.* Whether these were used as seats of emi-
* Crockerntor is not entirely granite, it is partly, I believe, of trap formation. The following very curious passage from ' Clark's Travels,' vol. iv., will be found most interesting here: — " Along this route, par- ticularly between Cana and Turan, we observed basaltic phenomena ; the extremities of columns, prismatically formed, penetrated the sur-
116
TARLIAMKNT-ROCK.
[let.
nence at the assembly of tlie tinners, I cannot pre- tend to say.
" Before tliis mass, towards the north, is a short ledge of stones evidently piled up by art, which might have been a continued bench. On ascend- ing higher, I arrived at a flat area, in which, though almost covered with rushes, I could plainly trace out four lines of stones forming an oblong square, twenty feet in length and six in breadth, pointing nearly east and west. The entrance seems to have been at the north-west corner. At the north side, four feet distant, is another imperfect
face of the soil, so as to render our journey rough and unpleasant. These marks of regular or of irregular crystallization generally denote the vicinity of a bed of water lying beneath their level. The traveller, passing over a series of successive plains, resembling, in their gra- dation, the order of a staircase, observes, as he descends to the inferior stratum upon which the water rests, that where rocks are dis- closed, the appearance of crystallization has taken place; and then the prismatic configuration is vulgarly denominated basaltic. \\ hen this series of depressed surfaces occurs very frecpuently, and the prismatic form is very evident, the Swedes, from the resemblance such rocks have to an artificial flight of steps, call them trap ; a word signifying, in their language, a staircase. In this state science remains at pre- sent concerning an appearance in nature which exhibits nothing more than the common process of crystallization, upon a larger scale than has hitherto excited attention." — p. l'Jl.
VII.] TIN TRAFFIC. 117
line, and ten feet on either side is a straight natural buttress of rock. Possibly the table might have stood in the centre of this area, and these lines may be vestiges of the seats around it. I can hardly suppose the stone was so large as to rest on these as its foundation, though there are no stones in the middle that might have answered that purpose. Whilst the Lord Warden and Stannators presided at this table, probably the rest of the assembly filled up the remainder of the area, or climbed the rocks on each side.
" As an instance of the powers of the Stannary Court, I have been informed that a member of the House of Commons having spoken in it of the Stannaries in a manner that displeased the Lord Warden, as soon as the offending member came within the jurisdiction of his court, he immediately issued his precept, arrested him, and kept him in prison on bread and water till he had acknowledged his error and begged pardon for his transgression.
" Tin, on being melted, is put into moulds, holding generally somewhat above three hundred weight (then denominated block-tin), where it is marked, as the smelters choose, with their house-mark [that brought to Tavistock bears, I have generally ob- served, an Agnus Dei, or lamb holding a pennon] by laying brass or iron stamps in the face of the blocks while the tin is in a fluid state, and cool enough to sustain the stamping iron. When the tin is brought to be coined, the assay-master's de- puty assays it by cutting off with a chisel and hammer a piece of one of the lower corners of the block, about a pound weight, partly by cutting and partly by breaking, in order to prove the roughness
118 judge's chair. [let.
[query toughness ?] and firmness of the metal. If it is a pure good tin, the face of the block is stamped with the duchy seal, which stamp is a permit for the owner to sell, and, at the same time, an assurance that the tin so marked has been examined and found merchantable. The stamping of this impression by a hammer is coining the tin, and the man who does it is called the hammer-man. The duchy seal is argent, a lion rampant, gules, crowned, or with a border garnished with bezants." See Bees'' Ency.
The punishment for him who, in the days of old, brought bad tin to the market, was to have a certain quantity of it poured down his throat in a melted state.
Tin was the staple article of commerce with the Phoenicians, who used it in their celebrated dye of Tyrian purple, it being the only absorbent then known. This they procured from the Island of Britain. Its high value made the preservation of its purity a thing of the utmost consequence ; any adulteration of the metal, therefore, was punished with barbarous severity. The Greeks were desirous of discovering the secret whence the Phoenicians derived their tin, and tracked one of their vessels accordingly. But the master of her steered his galley on shore, in the utmost peril of shipwreck, to avoid detection; and he was rewarded, it is said, by the State for having preserved the secret of so valued an article of national commerce.
The next extract I here send you is from Mr. Bray's Journal of June 7th, 1S31.
" My wife, her nephew, and myself, set out from Bairdown, between twelve and one o'clock, for Crockerntor. In addition to the wish she had long felt of seeing it, her curiosity was not a little raised
VII.] PARLIAMENT-ROCK. 119
by my tenant's telling her that he could show her the Judges Chair. And I confess that my own was somewhat excited to find out whether his traditionary information corresponded with my own conjectures, made many years ago, as to this seat of the president of the Stannators. He took us to the rock (situated somewhat "below the summit on the south side of the Tor) which bears the appearance of rude steps, the highest of which he supposed to be the seat. It seems to be but little, if at all, assisted by art, unless it were by clearing away a few rocks or stones. Below it is an oblong area, in which was the table, whilst around it (so says tradition) sat the court of Stannators : whence it is also known by the name of Parliament-rock. This stone, I had been informed, was removed by the late Judge Buller to Prince Hall ; but my tenant told me that it was drawn by twelve yoke of oxen to Dennabridge, now occupied by farmer Tucket, on the Ashburton road, about ten miles from Tavistock. It is now used, he said, as a shoot-trough, in which they wash potatoes, &c.
"From this, as far as I can comprehend his mean- ing, I should conceive that it serves the purpose of a lip, or embouchure, to some little aqueduct that conveys the water into the farmer's yard. The Tor itself is of no great height, and is now much lower than it was, by large quantities of stone having been removed from its summit for erecting enclosures and other purposes. It could not be chosen, therefore, for its supereminent or imposing altitude; though possibly it might be so for its centrical situation; but I am disposed to think that it was thus honoured from being used as a judicial court from time imme- morial. My reasons I shall mention hereafter. I
120 LONGFORD TOR. [i-ET.
shall remark here, however, that it is the first tor of any consequence that presents itself on the east side of the Dart, upon the ridge that immediately over- hangs its source.