zz VILLAGE ENGLAND 



gather in autumn and &quot; bash &quot; the boughs with long 

 sticks and the green-black walnuts, protectively covered 

 by the green-black leaves, which bashers fail to collect 

 are carried off by the rooks before the men are out of 

 sight. Jackdaws still prefer the church to the walnut. 



The daw s not reckoned a religious bird 

 Because he keeps a cawing from the steeple. 



But he is faithful to the old tower and still drops every 

 stick, leaving it neglected on the ground, if it catches at 

 all on his first effort to penetrate the narrow slits in the 

 belfry. Spinney, hedge-row, brook, moat, church, barn, 

 farmhouse and cottage, path and stile ; green fields and 

 brown fields ; young wheat and old trees ; bird and 

 mammal and insect the place is what it was, an English 

 home village whose likeness you will hardly find in all 

 the round world, I have sometimes thought that the 

 nearest parallel lies not in Europe or America but in the 

 native villages of Fiji. But Ewelme, Hemingford Gray, 

 Yattendon, Weobly, Finchingfield, the Bourtons, Pol- 

 perro and scores of humble hamlets, such as these, rising 

 in plain and simple country scenes, are altogether too 

 English for any comparison whatever. And what homely 

 poetic names ! Of them all, just for its suggestive sound, 

 I would put first Maidens and Potters Crouch in Hertford 

 shire and Freefolk a lovely place in Hampshire. 



The English village sweetens England and English 

 life as the salt mill, in the fairy story, salts the sea. Town 

 people feel this and country people know it as well. A 

 townsman long since turned countryman, who has the 

 zeal of the convert and a knowledge of both worlds 

 asked a number of people to say in The Countryman a 

 green quarterly full of green thoughts why they chose 

 to live in the country. It was like asking a man why he 



