192 MANNERS AND CUSTOMS INFLUENCED BY PAKT III. 



cymbals. Like the sign of the Pack-Horse over the 

 village inn door, the modern village fair, of which the 

 principal article of merchandise is gingerbread-nuts, is 

 but the vestige of a state of things that has long since 

 passed away. 



There were, however, remote and almost impenetrable 

 districts which long resisted modern inroads. Of such 

 was Dartmoor, which we have already more than once 

 referred to. The difficulties of road-engineering in that 

 quarter, as well as the sterility of a large proportion of the 

 moor, had the effect of preventing its becoming opened 

 up to modern traffic ; and it is accordingly curious to find 

 how much of its old manners, customs, traditions, and 

 language has been preserved. It looks like a piece of 

 England of the Middle Ages, left behind on the march. 

 Witches still hold their sway on Dartmoor, where there 

 exist no less than three distinct kinds white, black, and 

 grey, 1 and there are still professors of the craft, male 

 as well as female, in most of the villages. As might be 

 expected, the pack-horses held their ground in Dartmoor 

 the longest, and in some parts of North Devon they are 

 not even yet extinct. When our artist was in the neigh- 

 bourhood, sketching the ancient bridge on the moor 2 

 and the site of the old fair, a farmer said to him, " I 

 well remember the train of pack-horses and the effect 

 of their jingling bells on the silence of Dartmoor. My 

 grandfather, a respectable farmer in the north of Devon, 

 was the first to use a ' butt ' (a square box without 

 wheels, dragged by a horse) to carry manure to field ; 

 he was also the first man in the district to use an umbrella, 

 which on Sundays he hung in the church-porch, an object 

 of curiosity to the villagers." We are also informed by 

 a gentleman who resided for some time at South Brent, 



1 The white witches are kindly j 2 Sec Part IV. Frontispiece ti> 



disposed, the black cast the "evil ] ' Bridges, Harbours, and Ferries.' 

 eye," and the grey are consulted for 

 the discovery of theft, &c. 



