THE HAMPSHIRE ANTIQUARY &> NATURALIST. 



135 



tion, and the property came into private hands, after 

 which it has seen many changes ; and a great part of 

 the book is taken up with accounts of the families of 

 Cobb, Paulett, Henley, Drummond and Baring, by 

 which it has been successively owned. 



At one time probably, the population may have 

 been greater than at present Mr. Eyre does not 

 attempt to give it before 1871 or Swarraton would 

 hardly have wanted a church for 93 inhabitants. The 

 church possibly twelfth century or earlier was 

 pulled down in 1849, when the two parishes were 

 united for ecclesiastical purposes ; and since that time 

 we have the curious circumstance oi the rectory being 

 subsidiary to the vicarage, for the services are now 

 necessarily conducted at Northington. Northington 

 was till late years a chapelry in the ecclesiastical 

 charge of the Vicar of Micheldever. 



A large part of the united parishes forms the park 

 of the Grange, the seat of Lord Ashburton. The 

 mansion is said to have been built for Sir Robert 

 Henley from the designs of Inigo Jones, but this Mr. 

 Eyre has reasons for questioning, for the property 

 seems to have been purchased by the Henleys only in 

 1662, 10 years after Inigo Jones's death. Horace 

 Walpole wrote of the house in his letters with ad- 

 miration, but it is as the seat of the Lords Ashburton 

 that it has achieved greater distinction. Under the 

 first Lerd Ashburton of Ashburton Treaty fame it 

 was a favourite meeting place for politicians, artists, 

 and literary men, and so became known to Thomas 

 Carlyle, whose attachment to Lady Ashburton caused 

 some heartburnings between the " seer of Chelsea " 

 and his wife. To these landed families the parishes 

 doubtless owe much, though the author overrates 

 this indebtedness in his preface. The first Lord Ash- 

 burton bore the cost of the church at Northington 

 which was erected in 1832. This edifice had an 

 existence of only half a century, and is now replaced 

 by a more handsome structure. Views of both the 

 late and present church are given, and, we may here 

 mention, a double-page lithographic plate of the 

 south-east aspect of the new church (from a picture 

 by the architect, Mr. T. G. Jackson, in the Royal 

 Academy Exhibition), with a description, was pub- 

 lished in The Builder of June 21 last. 



The registers appear to have been kept with almost 

 as little care as the churches. Those ot Swarraton 

 commence only with 1754, and then are not consecu- 

 tive. The earlier registers are believed to have been 

 sent to some London solicitor at the close of the last 

 century " to save trouble," and have never been re- 

 turned. Those of Northington, which are printed in 

 this book, begin in 1579. These contain some curious 

 entries ; for instance, under 1693, 



John Dudley, a travelling man that died at the inn at 

 Totibrd, was buried in woollen without a coffin, Sept. 24. 



Besides much other interesting information, Mr. 

 Eyre gives us the derivations of local place-names, a 

 glossary of local words, some local remedies and pro- 



verbial sayings which will be interesting to the folk- 

 lorist, and some notes on the natural history of the 

 districts. In the last there is an absence of the sense 

 of proportion, for whilst flowering plants are cut off 

 with a bare ten lines, fungi in the local study of 

 which Mr. Eyre has done excellent service, as the 

 " Proceedings" of the Hampshire Field Club show- 

 have a good page and a half. The fauna is also in- 

 completely treated ; beyond the mention of the 

 cuckoo's first spring note, there is nothing but a list 

 of land and fresh-water shells found within a radius 

 of three miles. 



The book is well illustrated with views of the 

 churches, the rectory, the churchyard cross marking 

 the site of Swarraton church, and the Grange, and 

 portraits of the Henleys (Earls of Northington), 

 Drummonds, and Barings. The printers have put the 

 book out of hand verv creditably we suppose we 

 must not charge them with several errors of grammar 

 and punctuation, or, perhaps, the omission of the 

 date from the title page (an unpardonable offence) 

 and the work forms a handsome quarto volume con- 

 taining much of interest to the local student. 



"THE HANDBOOK OF FOLK-LORE." 



There is scattered about amongst the common 

 people an enormous quantity of very curious informa- 

 tion in the shape of superstitions and customs, 

 legends and proverbs, which has only of late years 

 attracted attention for the purpose of its scientific and 

 systematic collection. To the student such matters 

 have perhaps been more regarded as amusing trifles 

 than as having any value as an historic study. Now, 

 however, it is seen that a tradition or even a surviving 

 archaic word may be of assistance in the solution of 

 some ethnographic or historical problem, and some 

 archaeologists have devoted their energies to the 

 advancement of research in this direction. Among 

 the foremost of these is Mr. G. L. Gomme, Director 

 of the Folk-lore Society, under whose editorship the 

 Society has just issued a " Handbook of Folk-lore."* 

 As a science Folk-lore is yet in its infancy, and has 

 hardly yet got beyond the "collecting" stage. Yet 

 much is done in the direction of classification, and the 

 mere enumeration of the groups into which the sub- 

 ject is divided and sub-divided shows the many 

 ramifications which are opened out. There are first 

 four great groups, superstitious belief and practice, 

 traditional customs, traditional narratives (including 

 nursery tales, fables, ballads and songs, and local 

 legends), and folk-sayings (jingles, nursery rhymes, 

 proverbs, nicknames, &c.). 



These beliefs and customs and sayings are now re- 

 garded as relics of an unrecorded past, dating in some 

 instances from prehistoric times ; and it is very curious 

 * London : David Nutt. 1890. 



