Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamphlets, Articles, &c. 157 



been published. That " The Eulogy of Kichard Jefferies " by the late 

 Walter Besant was kindly, but unsympathetic and incomplete, cannot 

 be disputed. Mr. Henry S. Salt's "Kichard Jefferies, His Life and His 

 Ideals," though a much better book, is a critical essay, and leaves the 

 way clear for such a book as I have tried to write. For over twenty 

 years I have known Jefferies' part of Wiltshire, and I hope that I have 

 got most of what the country people had to tell about him and his 

 family." 



The bulk of the book is taken up with a critical analysis of Jefferies' 

 works, with very copious extracts. The author has evidently taken 

 infinite pains to saturate himself with the atmosphere and to identify 

 the localities which are the scenes of the various works, and doubtless 

 on all such points the book will remain the standard authority on 

 Jefferies' lore. The author's superlatives are reserved for " The Story of 

 my Heart," as are also those of some other devout worshippers at the 

 Jefferies shrine, and yet the "Plain Man" — who by the way meets 

 with much obloquy in this book — continues to doubt whether Jefferies, 

 the observer and the recorder, the Jefferies of the country books, will 

 not live and be remembered long after Jefferies the mystic, the pagan, and 

 the prophet, the morbid Jefferies of the " Story of my Heart" has been 

 relegated to the limbo which is already so full of forgotten theologians 

 and philosophers. 



Eeviewed at length, Times Literary Supplement, Feb. 4th; Standard, 

 March 9th, 1909. 



Richard Jefferies. Article by T. Michael Pope in The Academy, 



March 28th, 1908, pp. 617—18. 

 Anonymous article in Journal of Education, Oct. 1908, 



pp. 703—4. 



" More Ways in Wessex, Old World Haunts in the Saxon 

 Kingdom," article in The Morning Leader, Oct. 26th, 1908, mentions 

 many places in Wiltshire. 



[StOUrtOll.] " In a Wiltshire Village : some Old Songs and Customs." 

 By E. E. Balch. The Antiquary, Oct. 1908, vol. IV.,N.S., pp. 379—382. 

 This is an interesting article describing the old Mummers' Play on 

 Christmas Eve, as well as another Christmas custom which seems to 

 have been peculiar to Stourton. 1 



" Quite distinct from the Mummers, though also coming on Christmas 

 Eve, was the Christmas Bull. The head of a bull, with great bottle eyes, 

 large horns, and lolling tongue, was manipulated by a man stooping 

 inside a body composed of a broomstick, a hide of sacking, and a rope 



1 Mrs. Story Maskelyne writes, on the authority of an informant, that about 

 1830 — 40 the Wassailers used to go round at Christmas in West Gloucester- 

 shire, and a man dressed in a bull's skin with ears and horns, and ends of 

 bottles for eyes, used to run at the people. The butler at the great house had 

 the hot drink ready in a large bowl and ladled it out at the correct moment. 



