68 Wild Life in a Southern County 



thatching ; and the old lady supposed she was seventeen or 

 eighteen at the first — i.e. just a century since. But in all 

 likelihood her recollections of the first thatching were con- 

 fused and uncertain : she was perhaps eight or ten at that 

 time, which would reduce her real age to a little over 

 ninety. A great part of the village had twice been de- 

 stroyed by fire since she could remember. These fires are, 

 or were, singularly destructive in villages — the flames 

 running from thatch to thatch, and, as they express it, 

 ' wrastling ' across the intervening spaces. A pain is said 

 to 'wrastle,' or shoot and burn. Such fires are often 

 caused by wood ashes from the hearth thrown on the dust- 

 heap while yet some embers contain sufficient heat to fire 

 straw or rubbish. 



The old woman's memories were wholly of gossipy 

 family history ; I have often found that the very aged 

 have not half so much to tell as those of about sixty to 

 seventy years. The next oldest was a man about eighty ; 

 all he knew of history was that once on a time some traitor 

 withdrew the flints from the muskets of the English troops, 

 substituting pieces of wood, which, of course, would not 

 ignite the powder, and thus they were beaten. Of date, 

 place, or persons he had no knowledge. He ' minded ' a 

 great snowfall when he was a boy, and helping to drag 

 the coaches out and making a firm road for them with 

 hurdles. Once while grubbing a hedge near the road he 

 found five shillings' worth of pennies — the great old 

 ' coppers ' — doubtless hidden by a thief. He could not 

 buy so much with one of the new sort of coppers : liked 

 them as King George made best. 



An old lady of about seventy, living at the village inn, 

 a very brisk body, seemed quite unable to understand 

 what was meant by history, but could tell me a story if I 



