234 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



of the old shearing-songs will ever again awaken the 

 echoes in the daytime, nor make the roomy interiors 

 of barns ring o' nights, as they were wont to do lang- 

 syne, when the convivial shearing supper was held, 

 and the ale hummed in the cup, and, later in the 

 evening, in the head also. 



But the Sussex peasant is by no means altogether 

 bereft of his ancient ways. He is, in the more secluded 

 districts, still a South Saxon ; for the county, until 

 comparatively recent times remote and difficult, 

 plunged in its sloughs and isolated by reason of its 

 forests, has no manufactures, and the rural parts do 

 not attract immigrants from the shires, to leaven his 

 peculiarities. The Sussex folk are still rooted firmly 

 in w r hat Drayton calls their " queachy ground." 

 Words of Saxon origin are still the staple of the country 

 talk ; folk-tales, told in times when the South Saxon 

 kingdom was yet a power of the Heptarchy, exist in 

 remote corners, currently with the latest ribald song 

 from the London halls ; superstitions linger, as may 

 be proved by he who pursues his inquiries judiciously, 

 and thought moves slowly still in the bucolic mind. 



The Norman Conquest left few traces upon the 

 population, and the peasant is still the Saxon he ever 

 has been ; his occupations, too, tend to slowness of 

 speech and mind. The Sussex man is by the very 

 rarest chance engaged in any manufacturing industries. 

 He is by choice and by force of circumstances plough- 

 man, woodman, shepherd, market-gardener, or carter, 

 and is become heavy as his soil, and curiously old- 

 world in habit. All which traits are delightful to the 

 preternaturally sharp Londoner, whose nerves occupy 

 the most important place in his being. These country 

 folk are new and interesting creatures for study to 

 him who is weary of that acute product of civilisation 

 — the London arab. 



Sussex ways are, many of them, still curiously 

 patriarchal. But a few years ago, and ploughing was 

 commonly performed in these fields by oxen. 



Their cottages that, until a few years ago, were the 



