CHAPTER I 
MARTINMAS TO LADYDAY 
A garden presupposes a house, but in how many cases 
a house is merely the savage definition of a home, “ a place 
of shelter”; indeed, the Australian savage, I believe, calls his 
hut a “ breakwind.” In our case it is an old house, not 
old enough, however, to have known the stirring times of 
the Border, when “ clumps ” of spears rode out to raid, and. 
little was recked of gardens. It is about a couple of 
hundred years since the first half of it arose on the bank 
above the little trout-river, and less than a hundred since 
the addition was made which resulted in two front doors 
on the north side of the old grey house, and a double row 
of moss-grown crowsteps, crowstairs, or catsteps, as some 
call them, on the roof. I wonder why they are so called; I 
have never seen either cats or crows make any use of them; 
and although flights of rooks do pass over the house 
morning and evening, they never pause to rest on them. 
Only the starlings sit there and clamour. Craw for rook 
must be Scottish, for both Scott and Burns talk of crows 
when apparently they mean rooks. A flight of rooks is 
sometimes called a “ craw’s bridal.” Ivy grows thickly all 
over the walls, and invades even the rowens, and festoons 
the area railing in front that fences in a bank, which in 
spring is just a mass of snowdrops. Sparrows infest the 
ivy, and I fear the swallows will soon be ousted. In 
Roumania swallows are called God’s fowls ( Galinele lui Dieu ), 
and a treasure lies hid wherever the first swallow of the 
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