184 



MANNEBS AND CUSTOMS INFLUENCED OT PART III. 



man in his day, almost as adventurous as we should 

 now regard a traveller in Central Africa. Twenty 

 miles of sloughs, or an unbridged river between two 

 parishes, were greater impediments to intercourse than 

 the Atlantic Ocean now is between England and 

 America. There were towns situated even in the same 

 county, more widely separated, for all practical purposes, 

 than London and Glasgow are at the present day. 

 There were many districts which travellers never visited, 

 and where the appearance of a stranger produced as 

 great an excitement as the arrival of a white man in an 

 African village. 1 Although this comparative seclusion 

 of most districts produced a picturesqueness and variety 

 of manners throughout England, it also produced a con- 

 siderable amount of brutality, of which the local amuse- 

 ments of bull-running, cock-fighting, cock-throwing, 

 Plough-Monday, and such like, were the fitting ex- 

 ponents. People knew little except of their own 

 narrow district. The world beyond was as good as 

 closed against them. Almost the only intelligence of 

 general affairs which reached them was communicated 

 by pedlars and packmen, who were accustomed to retail 

 to their customers the news of the day with their wares ; 

 or, at most, a news-letter from London, after it had been 

 read nearly to pieces at the great house of the district, 

 would find its way to the village, and its driblets of 



1 The treatment lie received was 

 occasionally even less polite. When 

 William Hutton, of Birmingham, ac- 

 companied by another gentleman, 

 went to view the field of Bosworth, in 

 1770, " the inhabitants," he says, 

 " set their dogs at us in the street, 

 merely because we were strangers. 

 Human figures not their own are sel- 

 dom seen in these inhospitable re- 

 gions. Surrounded with impassable 

 roads, no intercourse with man to hu- 

 manise the mind, nor commerce to 

 smooth their rugged manners, they 

 continue the boors of Nature." In 



certain villages in Lancashire and 

 Yorkshire, not very remote from large 

 towns, the appearance of a stranger, 

 down to a comparatively recent period, 

 excited a similar commotion amongst 

 the villagers, and the word would 

 pass from door to door, "Dost knaw 

 'im?" "Naya." " Is 'e straungerr'" 

 " Ey, for sewer." " Then pans' 'im 

 Eave a duck at Mm Fettle 'im!" 

 And the "straunger" would straight- 

 way find the "ducks" tlying al>ut 

 his head, and be glad to make his 

 escape from the village with liis life. 



