LITTLE HUCKLOW : ITS CUSTOMS AND OLD HOUSES. 45 



Sittings (the first " i " is long), half a mile from the village. 

 They carried it on their heads in large burn-cans,* which had 

 a ring on the top and a handle at the side, their heads being 

 padded with neatly-made round cushions, hollow in the middle 

 like a quoit. 



A sycamore, an elm or two, or a mountain ash grow near 

 one or two of the homesteads, but there is hardly a tree in the 

 fields to protect the cattle from the heat and rain. The moor- 

 land air is fresh and cool ; the short, green turf springs under 

 the feet, and there is no better pasturage for sheep and cattle. 

 A novelist might call the place Grey Walls. The grey lime- 

 stone fences that surround the narrow enclosures are very 

 numerous, and the building of them must have been costly, 

 for they cover the green sward for miles together like patch- 

 work on an old bed-quilt. On a bank near Windmill, looking 

 to the south, a number of terraces, here called lenches, rise 

 one above another, as if frequent ploughing had thrown the 

 earth down the hill. Some of the enclosures near the village 

 are long strips placed at right angles to each other. In these 

 lenches and strips we have the remains of the ancient open- 

 field husbandry. The homesteads of the village adjoined the 

 unenclosed moorland on the west, whence the inhabitants 

 fetched heath to light their fires. They call this heath 

 " kindling," and a handful of it is enough to set a fire going, 

 without using paper, the roots being turned upwards and the 

 match applied to the flowers or leaves. You may still see a 

 woman dragging a great bundle of kindling with a rope for a 

 mile or more. 



The early settlers came here to dig for veins of lead, not 

 to stub up heather and furze to make good land. This metal 

 has been worked in the village beyond historic memory, and 

 the discontinuance of lead-mining is said to be due not to 

 the exhaustion of the mines, but to foreign competition, tithes, 

 and manorial dues. The cessation of this industry has been 

 followed by the decay of the village; nearly a third of the 



* Burft is used dialectically as a shortened form of burden. 



