<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></SPAN>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
<h3>ROTTINGDEAN AND WHEATEARS</h3>
<blockquote><p>Ovingdean—Charles II.—The introduction of Mangel
Wurzel—Rottingdean as a shrine—Mr. Kipling's Sussex poem—Thomas
Fuller on the Wheatear—Mr. Hudson's description of the traps—The
old prosperous days for shepherds—Luring larks—A fight on the
beach—The town that failed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Beyond Kemp Town's serene and silent line of massive houses is the new
road that leads to Rottingdean. The old road fell into the sea some few
years ago—the fourth or fifth to share that fate. But the pleasantest
way thither is on foot over the turf that tops the white cliffs.</p>
<p>By diverging inland between Brighton and Rottingdean, just beyond the
most imposing girls' school in the kingdom, Ovingdean is reached, one of
the nestling homesteads of the Downs. It is chiefly known as providing
Harrison Ainsworth with the very pretty title of one of his stories,
<i>Ovingdean Grange</i>. The gallant novelist, however, was a poor historian
in this book, for Charles the Second, as we have seen, never set foot
east of Brighton on the occasion of his journey of escape over the
Sussex Downs. The legend that lodges him at Ovingdean, although one can
understand how Ovingdean must cherish it, cannot stand. (Mock Beggars'
Hall, in the same romance, is Southover Grange at Lewes.)</p>
<p>Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war. <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></SPAN></span>Ovingdean is famous
not only for its false association with Charles the Second but as the
burial place of Thomas Pelling, an old-time Vicar, "the first person who
introduced Mangul Wurzel into England."</p>
<div class="sidenote">ROTTINGDEAN</div>
<p>Rottingdean to-day must be very much of the size of Brighton two
centuries ago, before fashion came upon it; but the little village is
hardly likely ever to creep over its surrounding hills in the same way.
The past few years, however, have seen its growth from an obscure and
inaccessible settlement to a shrine. It is only of quite recent date
that a glimpse of Rottingdean has become almost as necessary to the
Brighton visitor as the journey to the Dyke. Had the Legend of the Briar
Rose never been painted; had Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd remained
unchronicled and the British soldier escaped the label "Absent-minded
Beggar," Rottingdean might still be invaded only occasionally; for it
was when, following Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Mr. Rudyard Kipling found
the little white village good to make a home in, that its public life
began. Although Mr. Kipling has now gone farther into the depths of the
county, and the great draughtsman, some of whose stained glass designs
are in the church, is no more, the habit of riding to Rottingdean is
likely, however, to persist in Brighton. The village is quaint and
simple (particularly so after the last 'bus is stabled), but it is
valuable rather as the key to some of the finest solitudes of the Downs,
in the great uninhabited hill district between the Race Course at
Brighton and Newhaven, between Lewes and the sea, than for any merits of
its own. One other claim has it, however, on the notice of the pilgrim:
William Black lies in the churchyard.</p>
<div class="sidenote">"BLUE GOODNESS OF THE WEALD"</div>
<p>Mr. Kipling, as I have said, has now removed his household gods farther
inland, to Burwash, but his heart and mind must be still among the
Downs. The Burwash country, good as it is, can (I think) never inspire
him to such verse as he wrote in <i>The Five Nations</i> on the turf hills
about his old home:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<div><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></SPAN></span>No tender-hearted garden crowns,</div>
<div class="i1">No bosomed woods adorn</div>
<div>Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs,</div>
<div class="i1">But gnarled and writhen thorn—</div>
<div>Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,</div>
<div class="i1">And through the gaps revealed</div>
<div>Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim</div>
<div class="i1">Blue goodness of the Weald.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>Clean of officious fence or hedge,</div>
<div class="i1">Half-wild and wholly tame,</div>
<div>The wise turf cloaks the white cliff edge</div>
<div class="i1">As when the Romans came.</div>
<div>What sign of those that fought and died</div>
<div class="i1">At shift of sword and sword?</div>
<div>The barrow and the camp abide,</div>
<div class="i1">The sunlight and the sward.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>Here leaps ashore the full Sou'west</div>
<div class="i1">All heavy-winged with brine,</div>
<div>Here lies above the folded crest</div>
<div class="i1">The Channel's leaden line;</div>
<div>And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,</div>
<div class="i1">And here, each warning each,</div>
<div>The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring</div>
<div class="i1">Along the hidden beach.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>We have no waters to delight</div>
<div class="i1">Our broad and brookless vales—</div>
<div>Only the dewpond on the height</div>
<div class="i1">Unfed, that never fails,</div>
<div>Whereby no tattered herbage tells</div>
<div class="i1">Which way the season flies—</div>
<div>Only our close-bit thyme that smells</div>
<div class="i1">Like dawn in Paradise.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>Here through the strong and salty days</div>
<div class="i1">The unshaded silence thrills;</div>
<div>Or little, lost, Down churches praise</div>
<div class="i1">The Lord who made the Hills:</div>
<div>But here the Old Gods guard their round,</div>
<div class="i1">And, in her secret heart,</div>
<div>The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found</div>
<div class="i1">Dreams, as she dwells, apart.</div>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote">WHEATEARS</div>
<p>Of old the best wheatear country was above Rottingdean; but the South
Down shepherds no longer have the wheatear money that used to add so
appreciably to their wages in the summer months. A combination of
circumstances has brought about this loss. One is the decrease in
wheatears, another the protection of the bird by law, and a third the
refusal of the farmers to allow their men any longer to neglect the
flocks by setting and tending snares. But in the seventeenth, eighteenth
and early part of the nineteenth centuries, wheatears were taken on the
Downs in enormous quantities and formed a part of every south county
banquet in their season. People visited Brighton solely to eat them, as
they now go to Greenwich for whitebait and to Colchester for oysters.</p>
<p>This is how Fuller describes the little creature in the
<i>Worthies</i>—"<i>Wheatears</i> is a bird peculiar to this County, hardly found
out of it. It is so called, because fattest when Wheat is ripe, whereon
it feeds; being no bigger than a Lark, which it equalleth in <i>fineness</i>
of the flesh, far exceedeth in the <i>fatness</i> thereof. The worst is, that
being onely seasonable in the heat of summer, and naturally larded with
lumps of fat, it is soon subject to corrupt, so that (though abounding
within <i>fourty</i> miles) <i>London Poulterers</i> have no mind to meddle with
them, which no care in carriage can keep from Putrefaction. That
<i>Palate-man</i> shall pass in silence, who, being seriously demanded his
judgment concerning the abilities of a great <i>Lord</i>, concluded him a man
of very weak parts, '<i>because once he saw him, at a</i> great Feast, <i>feed
on</i> CHICKENS <i>when there were</i> WHEATEARS <i>on the Table</i>.' I will adde no
more in praise of this <i>Bird</i>, for fear some <i>female Reader</i> may fall in
<i>longing</i> for it, and unhappily be disappointed of her desire." A
contemporary of Fuller, John Taylor, from whom I have already quoted,
and shall quote again, thus unscientifically dismisses the wheatear in
one of his doggerel narratives:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<div>Six weeks or thereabouts they are catch'd there,</div>
<div>And are well-nigh 11 months God knows where.</div>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></SPAN></span>As a matter of fact, the winter home of the wheatear is Africa.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE SHEPHERDS' TRAPS</div>
<p>The capture of wheatears—mostly illegally by nets—still continues in a
very small way to meet a languid demand, but the Sussex ortolan, as the
little bird was sometimes called, has passed from the bill of fare.
Wheatears (which, despite Fuller, have no connection with ears of wheat,
the word signifying white tail) still abound, skimming over the turf in
little groups; but they no longer fly towards the dinner table. The best
and most interesting description that I know of the old manner of taking
them, is to be found in Mr. W. H. Hudson's <i>Nature in Downland</i>. The
season began in July, when the little fat birds rest on the Downs on
their way from Scotland and northern England to their winter home, and
lasted through September. In July, says Mr. Hudson, the "Shepherds made
their 'coops,' as their traps were called—a <b>T</b>-shaped trench about
fourteen inches long, over which the two long narrow sods cut neatly out
of the turf were adjusted, grass downwards. A small opening was left at
the end for ingress, and there was room in the passage for the bird to
pass through towards the chinks of light coming from the two ends of the
cross passage. At the inner end of the passage a horse-hair springe was
set, by which the bird was caught by the neck as it passed in, but the
noose did not as a rule strangle the bird. On some of the high downs
near the coast, notably at Beachy Head, at Birling Gap, at Seaford, and
in the neighbourhood of Rottingdean, the shepherds made so many coops,
placed at small distances apart, that the Downs in some places looked as
if they had been ploughed. In September, when the season was over, the
sods were carefully put back, roots down, in the places, and the smooth
green surface was restored to the hills."</p>
<p>On bright clear days few birds would be caught, but in showery weather
the traps would all be full; this is because when the sun is obscured
wheatears are afraid and take refuge under stones or in whatever hole
may offer. The price of each<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></SPAN></span> wheatear was a penny, and it was the
custom of the persons in the neighbourhood who wanted them for dinner to
visit the traps, take out the birds and leave the money in their place.
The shepherd on returning would collect his gains and reset the traps.
Near Brighton, however, most of the shepherds caught only for dealers;
and one firm, until some twenty years ago, maintained the practice of
giving an annual supper at the end of the season, at which the shepherds
would be paid in the mass for their spoil.</p>
<div class="sidenote">A RECORD BAG</div>
<p>An old shepherd, who had been for years on Westside Farm near Brighton,
spoke thus, in 1882, as Mr. Borrer relates in his <i>Birds of
Sussex</i>:—"The most I ever caught in one day was thirteen dozen, but we
thought it a good day if we caught three or four dozen. We sold them to
a poulterer at Brighton, who took all we could catch in a season at
18<i>d.</i> a dozen. From what I have heard from old shepherds, it cannot be
doubted that they were caught in much greater numbers a century ago than
of late. I have heard them speak of an immense number being taken in one
day by a shepherd at East Dean, near Beachy Head. I think they said he
took nearly a hundred dozen, so many that they could not thread them on
crow-quills in the usual manner, but he took off his round frock and
made a sack of it to put them into, and his wife did the same with her
petticoat. This must have happened when there was a great flight. Their
numbers now are so decreased that some shepherds do not set up any
coops, as it does not pay for the trouble."</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE LARK-GLASS</div>
<p>Although wheatears are no longer caught, the Brighton bird-catcher is a
very busy man. Goldfinches fall in extraordinary plenty to his nets. A
bird-catcher told Mr. Borrer that he once caught eleven dozen of them at
one haul, and in 1860 the annual take at Worthing was 1,154 dozen. Larks
are also caught in great numbers, also with nets, the old system still
practised in France, of luring them with glasses, having become
obsolete. Knox has an interesting description of the lark-glass<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></SPAN></span> and its
uses:—"A piece of wood about a foot and a half long, four inches deep,
and three inches wide, is planed off on two sides so as to resemble the
roof of a well-known toy, yclept a Noah's ark, but, more than twice as
long. In the sloping sides are set several bits of looking-glass. A long
iron spindle, the lower end of which is sharp and fixed in the ground,
passes freely through the centre; on this the instrument turns, and even
spins rapidly when a string has been attached and is pulled by the
performer, who generally stands at a distance of fifteen or twenty yards
from the decoy. The reflection of the sun's rays from these little
revolving mirrors seems to possess a mysterious attraction for the
larks, for they descend in great numbers from a considerable height in
the air, hover over the spot, and suffer themselves to be shot at
repeatedly without attempting to leave the field or to continue their
course."</p>
<p>To return to Rottingdean, it was above the village, seven hundred years
ago, that a "sore scrymmysche" occurred between the French and the
Cluniac prior of Lewes. The prior was defeated and captured, but the
nature of his resistance decided the enemy that it was better perhaps to
retreat to their boats. The holy man, although worsted, thus had the
satisfaction of having proved to the King that a Cluniac monk in this
country, was not, as was supposed at court, necessarily on the side of
England's foes, even though they were of his own race.</p>
<p>According to the scheme of this book, we should now return to Brighton;
but, as I have said, the right use to which to put Rottingdean is as the
starting point for a day among the hills. Once out and above the
village, the world is your own. A conspiracy to populate a part of the
Downs near the sea, a mile or so to the east of Rottingdean, seems
gloriously to have failed, but what was intended may be learned from the
skeleton roads that, duly fenced in, disfigure the turf. They even have
names, these unlovely parallelograms: one is Chatsworth Avenue, and
Ambleside Avenue another.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></SPAN></span></p>
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