102 The Delights of Hedgerows. 



autumn ; nor the sloe, with its clustering flowers and 

 its fruit, with that unapproachably delicate purply bloom 

 in autumn. 



And this suggests another delightful centre of asso- 

 ciations — the harvest of the hedgerows. Did you ever, 

 dear reader, go a-blackberrying in the sweet days of 

 autumn, when the clouds are high, and there is a 

 delicious clearness in the air, and a sense as of wider 

 horizons, and soft expansiveness and ripeness and 

 warmth around, as if, to atone for the shortening days 

 and the more abundant joy of summer, nature had 

 resolved to concentrate all mildness and sweetness and 

 variety of tint into one sweet hour or two of light and 

 beauty? Idyllic symplicity, the sense of close com- 

 munion with nature, is easily realised then ; and even 

 into the bucolic mind, little touched by sentimental 

 or aesthetic influences, a sense of poetry will often 

 steal, while, at the same time, a good practical end is 

 served; for nothing could be more wholesome than 

 the blackberry, which is indeed in many forms often 

 recommended to invalids, for which purpose it sells at 

 something like fourpence a quart. It makes delightful 

 puddings, still more delightful jam, and has the true 

 wild flavour eaten fresh from the hedgerow. 



Some people are apt to speak of the rustic as utterly 

 without imagination or fancy; but if this is unquali- 

 fiedly so, how about the folk-lore and legends which 

 are so common, which touch more or less closely almost 

 everything, and certainly have been as busy with the 

 natives of the hedgerow as with anything else ? For 

 example, in some places it is believed that when the 

 blackberries begin to hang limp and shrunken, the devil 

 spit upon them in his Michaelmas travels. 



Then there is the barberry, not to be neglected, 



