216 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



Such pictures still hold. In the fen country, which receives 

 the first brunt of the east winds, one remembers hearing 

 the ice tinkle against the sides of the milk cans being 

 carried home by the children ; and pictures straight from 

 Holland have arisen along the great dykes of that wonderful 

 country. On the meres the fenmen played at bandy, and 

 along the dykes they set off in queues, swinging arms and 

 legs in time, on twenty or thirty mile journeys, as if the 

 iceway were an established thoroughfare in their country. 

 Wonderful accounts of winter which was really winter were 

 written of this district hundreds of years ago. Not only was 

 winter, winter, but the country, country. The place was 

 rough and wild : and man struggled for life along with the 

 beasts. In winter he fished and trapped. 



December, nevertheless, is the deadest month of the year ; 

 and though when winter begins, at the end of December, 

 the awakening is near, you must still peer closely and with 

 knowledge to find the signs of life. The trees are still 



'Bare, ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.' 



In spite of Christmas roses and some spring flowers, in spite 

 of spikes of bulb stems which ' hail far summer with a lifted 

 spear,' in spite of the spawning of fishes and the rush of 

 the salmon, and the seeding of mosses, the world is in out- 

 ward appearance flowerless and leafless and lifeless. Whether 

 a bright and starry sky follows the setting of a sun blood-red 

 in the mist, or whether ways are foul, and the air dark and 

 the heavens murky and the winds wild, the season speaks 

 its lesson. Its mood is perceptible. Perhaps because there 

 are few things to notice in the winter landscape, the few are 

 the more firmly implanted in the memory. The bare forms 

 of trees are more easy to remember than the green domes. 

 The green woodpecker, who laughs as he travels in his ridge 



