i8 



HISTORY OF HARTING. 



" Who knows what Tarberry would bear, 

 Would plough it with a golden share." 



Sir Roderick Murchison, with characteristic Scotch 

 caution, interpreted the couplet as meaning that it 

 would cost a man a golden share to plough Tarberry 

 because the soil on the brow was so hungry, and that 

 the tiller would be a fool for his pains. But the 

 mysterious saying will bear another solution, and one 

 day a Dousterswivel and Sir Arthur Wardour, most 

 likely from America, may yet dig for treasure on 

 Tarberry. The lines have, at all events, from their 

 ambiguity a curious smack of antiquity about them, 

 and may be compared with the saying about Cuck-' 

 amsley, near the Vale of the White Horse, current at 

 the beginning of the nth Century, to the effect that 



" If the Danes got up to Cuckamsley, 

 They never again would go to sea;" 



or the Roll right saying (Camden's "Britannia," 295) : 



" If Long Compton thou canst see, 

 King of England thou shalt be." 



Such couplets were probably rhymed long after the 

 sentiment that they record was expressed, in order to 

 aid the memory. 



Through the kindness of Mr. Weaver, of Up Park, I 

 am able to mention that he has a small British silver 

 coin which was ploughed up more than 40 years ago 

 in one of the fields of Church Farm, part of the ancient 

 demesne and probably first-cleared land, in the im- 

 mediate neighbourhood of Tarberry. 



