The cuckoos came so frequently to some grass-land just outside the Chace and sloping down to the brook that I gave the spot the name of the Cuckoo-fields. There were two detached copses in them of no great extent, and numerous oaks and hawthorns, while the brook below was bordered with willow-stoles. This stretch of grass was divided into two large fields by a line of decaying posts and rails, and it became a favourite resort of mine in the warm days of spring, because I could almost always see and hear the cuckoos there.
Why they should love it so much is not easy to tell, unless on account of the comparatively barren character of the soil. The earth seemed to be of a very different kind to that in the rich and fertile meadows and fields close by; for the grass was rough, short, and thin, and soon became greyish or brown as the summer advanced, burning or drying up under the sun. It may often be observed that a piece of waste, like furze, when in the midst of good land, is much frequented by all birds and animals, though where there is nothing else but waste they are often almost entirely absent.
As the oaks come out into full leaf, the time when the meadows become beautiful, the notes of the cuckoo sound like a voice crying 'Come hither' from the trees. Then, sitting on the grey and lichen-covered rail under the cover of a hawthorn, I saw sometimes two and sometimes three cuckoos following each other courting, now round the copse, now by the hedge or the brook, and presently along the rails where they constantly perched. Occasionally one would alight on the sward among the purple flowers of the meadow orchis. From the marshy meadow across the brook apeew it rose from time to time, uttering his plaintive call and wheeling to and fro on the wing. At the sound a second and a third appeared in succession, and after beating up and down for a few minutes settled again in the grass. The meadow might have been called a plovery--as we say rookery and heronry--for the green plovers or peewits always had several nests in it.
The course of the humble bees that went by could be watched for some way--their large size and darker colour made them visible--as they now went down into the grass, and now started forward again. The honey bees, small and somewhat lighter in colour, could not be seen so far. They were busy in the sunshine, for the hive bee must gather most of its honey before the end of July, before the scythe has laid the grass in the last meadow low. Few if any flowers come up after the scythe has gone over, except the white clover, which almost alone shows in the aftermath, or, as country people call it, the 'lattermath.' Near me a titlark every few minutes rose from the sward, and spreading his wings came down aslant, singing with all his might.
Some sarsen stones just showed above the grass: the old folk say that these boulders grow in size and increase in number. The fact is that in some soils the boulder protrudes more and more above the surface in the course of time, and others come into view that were once hidden; while in another place the turf rises, and they seem to slowly sink into the earth. The monotonous and yet pleasing cry of the peewits, the sweet titlark singing overhead, and the cuckoos flying round, filled the place with the magic charm of spring.
Coming to these Cuckoo-fields day after day, there was always something to interest me, either in the meadows themselves or on the way thither. The very dust of the road had something to show. For under the shadowy elms a little seed or grain had jolted down through the chinks in the bed of a passing waggon, and there the chaffinches and sparrows had congregated. As they moved to and fro they had left the marks of their feet in the thick white dust, so crossed and intertangled in a maze of tracks that no one could have designed so delicate and intricate a pattern. If it was cloudy, still, glancing over the cornfields, just as you turned partly round to look, there seemed a brilliant streak of sunshine across them. This was a broad band of charlock: its light yellow is so gaudy and glaring in the mass that as it first catches the eye it seems as if the land were lit up by the sun. After it the buttercups appear of a quiet colour, like dead gold in contrast.
Under-foot, almost in the very dust of the road, the silverweed opened its yellow petals, and where there was a dry bank, or by the gateways leading into the corn, the pink pimpernel grew. For some time I suspected the pimpernel of not invariably closing its petals before rain, and at last by precise observation found that it did not. Twice in a comparatively short period I noted the petals wide open within a few minutes of a shower. It appears rather to close during the atmospheric change which occurs previous to rain than to rain itself. Once now and then a shower seems to come up in the driest weather without warning or change in the atmosphere: the cloud is over and gone almost before it seems worth while to take shelter. To the approach of such shower-clouds the pimpernel does not invariably respond, but it is perfectly accurate if anything serious be brewing. By a furrow in the sward by the roadside there grew a little piece of some species of gorse--so small and delicate, with the tiniest yellow flowers, that it was well worthy of a place where it would be admired; for few could have seen it hidden there.
Birds'-foot lotus covered the sward of one part of the Cuckoo-fields, on the higher ground near the woods, where the soil was dry; and by the hedge there were some bushy plants of the rest-harrow, whose prickly branches repel cattle and whose appearance reproaches the farmer for neglect. Yet though an outcast with animals and men, it bears a beautiful flower, butterfly-shaped and delicately tinted with pink. Now, as the days roll on, the blue succory and the scarlet poppies stand side by side in the yellow wheat but just outside my Cuckoo-fields, and one or two stray corncockles bloom; they are not common here and are perhaps brought from a distance. Here you may walk many miles and even wait several harvests to see a corncockle.
The thistledown floats; and see, yonder the white balls are rolling before the gentle air along the very tips of the bronzing wheat-ears. By the hedge the straggling stalks of St. John's wort lift the yellow petals dotted with black specks above the bunches of grass. The leaves, held up to the light, seem to have numerous eyelets, as if pricked but not quite through--windows in the leaf. In the grass the short selfheal shows; and, leaning over the gate, on the edge of the wheat you may see the curious prickly seed-vessels of the corn buttercup--the 'hedgehog'--whose spines, however, will not scratch the softest skin.
Resting on the rail under the hawthorn for a minute or two in early spring, when it was too chilly to stay long, I watched a flock of rooks and jackdaws soaring in the sky. Round and round and ever upwards they circled, the jackdaws of course betraying their presence by their call; up towards the blue, as if in the joy of their hearts, they held a festival, happy in the genial weather and the approach of the nesting-time. This soaring and wheeling is evidently done for recreation, like a dance. Presently the flock seems to tumble and fall, and there comes the rushing sound of the air swiftly parted by their out-spread wings as they dive a hundred feet in a second. The noise is audible a quarter of a mile off. This, too, is play; for, catching themselves and regaining their balance just above the elms, they resume their steady flight onwards to distant feeding-grounds. Later in the season, sitting there in the warm evenings, I could hear the pheasants utter their peculiar roost-cry, and the noise of their wings as they flew up in the wood: the vibration is so loud that it might almost be described as thumping.
By-and-by the cuckoo began to lose his voice; he gurgled and gasped, and cried 'cuck--kuk--kwai--kash,' and could not utter the soft, melodious 'oo.' The latest date on which I ever heard the cuckoo here, to be certain, was the day before St. Swithin, July 14, 1879. The nightingales, too, lose their sweet notes, but not their voices; they remain in the hedges long after their song has ceased. Passing by the hawthorn bushes up to the end of July, you may hear a bird within that seems to threaten you with a loud 'sweet-kurr,' and, looking in, you will find it to be a nightingale. The spelling exactly represents the sound, 'r' being twirled. 'Sweet-kurr-kurr' comes from the interior of the bushes with an angry emphasis.
Along the lower part of these meadows there was a brook, and the brook-sparrows were chattering ceaselessly as I walked among the willow-stoles by it one morning towards the end of June. On the left hand the deep stream flowed silently round its gentle curves, and on the other through the willows and alders the grassy slope of the Cuckoo-fields was visible. Broad leaves of the marsh marigold, the flower long since gone, covered the ground; light-green horsetails were dotted thickly about; and tall grasses flourished, rising to the knee. Dark shallow pools were so hidden under these grasses and plants that the presence of the black and yet clear water could not be perceived until the foot sank into it.
The sedge-birds kept just in front of me, now busy on a willow-stole, and concealed in the grasses and moss which grew out of the decaying wood; now among the sedges covering the mudbanks where the brook had silted up; now in the hedge which divided the willows from the meadow. Still the peculiar sparrow-like note, the ringing chirp, came continually from their throats; the warm sultry day delighted them. One clung to the side of a slender flag, which scarcely seemed strong enough to support it, yet did not even bend under its weight; then on again as I came nearer--but only two or three yards--to recommence singing immediately.
Pushing through the brushwood and past the reddish willow-poles, I entered a very thicket of flags, rising to the shoulder. These were not ribbed or bayonet-shaped, but flat, like a long sword. Three or four sprang from a single root, broad and tall, and beside them a stalk, and on it the yellow iris in fall flower. The marsh seemed lit up with these bright lamps of colour under the shadowy willows and the dark alders. There were a dozen at least within a few yards close around, and others dimly visible through the branches--three large yellow petals drooping, and on the curve of each brownish mottled markings or lines delicately stippled, beside them a rolled spike-like bloom not yet unfolded: a flower of the waters, crowned with gold, above the green dwellers by the shore.
Here the sedge-birds left me, doubling back to their favourite willow-stoles and sedges. Further on, the ground rose, and on the drier bank the 'gicks' grew shoulder high, towering over the brambles. It was difficult to move through the tangled underwood, so I went out into the Cuckoo-fields. Hilary had drained away much of the water that used to form a far larger marsh about here, and calculated his levellings in a most ingenious manner with a hollow 'gicks.' He took a wooden bowl, and filled it to the brim with water. Then cutting a dry 'gicks' so that it should be open at either end, like a tube, he floated it--the stalk is very light--on the bowl. Looking through this tube he could get his level almost as accurately as with an engineer's instrument, though of course it was more cumbrous to use.
There was a corner here that had not been mown for a long time, and in the autumn the wild carrots took possession of it, almost to the exclusion of grass and other plants. The flower of the wild carrot gathers together as the seeds mature, and forms a framework cup at the top of the stalk, like a bird's-nest. These 'bird's-nests,' brown and weather-beaten, endured far into the winter. The brook-sparrows still sang as I passed by again in the evening; they seem the most unwearied of birds, for you may hear them all day, all the evening, and at one o'clock next morning; indeed, at intervals, all night. By night the note is, or appears to be, less sparrow-like, or perhaps the silence of night improves it to the ear. I stayed that evening in a corner of a wheatfield not yet yellow, and watched the shadows of the trees grow longer and broader as the sun declined.
As the breeze rushed over the corn there was a play of various shades of green, the stalks as they bent this and that way taking different hues. But under the hedge it was still; the wind could not come through, though it moved the boughs above. A mass of cloud like flocks of wool, mottled and with small spaces of blue between, drifted slowly eastwards, and its last edge formed an arch over the western horizon, under which the sun shone. The yellow vetchling had climbed up from the ditch and opened its flower, and there were young nuts on the hazel bough. Far away in a copse a wood-pigeon called; nearer the blackbirds were whistling; a willow wren uttered his note high in the elm, and a distant yellowhammer sang to the sinking sun.
The brook had once been much wider, and in flood times rendered the Overboro' road almost impassable; for before a bridge was built it spread widely and crossed the highway--a rushing, though shallow, torrent fifty yards broad. The stumps of the willows that had grown by it could still be found in places, and now and then an ancient 'bullpoll' was washed up. This grass is so tough that the tufts or cushions it forms will last in water for fifty years, even when rooted up--decayed of course and black, but still distinguishable. In those times just previous to the construction of railways, when the lord of the manor came down after Parliament rose, there used to be a competition to get hold of his coachman. So few agricultural people travelled, and news came so slowly and in such distorted fashion, that the coachman became a great authority. Such a brook as this was then often a serious obstacle.
There was still an old punt, seldom used, to be found in a rickyard of Hilary's, close by which was an extensive pond. The punt was thatched over with flags from the stream. The moorhens were fond of this pond because it was surrounded with a great quantity of rushes; they were numerous all up the brook. These birds, being tame and common, are not much regarded either for sport or the table, yet a moorhen shot at the right time of the year--not till the frosts have begun--is delicious eating. If the bird were rare it would be thought to rival the woodcock; as it is, probably few people ever taste it. The path to Lucketts' Place from this rickyard passed a stone-quarry, where the excavated stone was built up in square heaps. In these heaps, in which there were many interstices and hollows, rabbits often sat out; and by stopping the entrance and carefully removing the stones they might occasionally be taken by hand. Next by the barn where in spring the sparrows made a continuous noise, chirping and quarrelling as they carried on their nesting operations: they sometimes flew up with long green bennets and grass fibres as well as with dry straws.
Then across the road, where the flint-heaps always put me in mind of young Aaron; for he once gravely assured me that they were the very best places in the world on which to rest or sleep. The flints were dry, and preserved the slumbering wayfarer from damp. He had no doubt proved this when the ale was too strong. At the house, as I passed through the courtyard, I found him just on the point of starting for Overboro' with a wallet, to bring back some goods from the shops. The wallet is almost unknown even in farmsteads now: it is a kind of long bag closed at each end, but with a slit in the centre for the insertion of the things to be conveyed. When filled it is slung over the shoulder, one end in front and the other behind, so as to balance. Without knowing the shape of a wallet the story of Jack the Giant-Killer stowing away such enormous quantities of pudding is scarcely to be understood: children nowadays never see such a thing. Many nursery tales contain allusions of this kind, the meaning of which must be obscure to the rising generation.
Within doors I found a great discussion going forward between Hilary and a farmer who had called, as to the exact relationship of a man who had just quitted his tenancy and another who died nearly forty years before. They could not agree either as to the kinship or the date; though the visitor was the more certain because he so well remembered that there was an extraordinary cut of 'turvin' that year. The 'turvin' is the hay made on the leaze, not the meadows, out of the rough grass and bennets left by the cows. To listen to the zest with which they entered into the minutest details of the family affairs of so long ago, concerning people with whom neither had any connection--how they recollected the smallest particulars--was astonishing. This marvellous capacity for gossip seemed like a revelation of a totally different state of society. The memory of country people for such details is beyond belief.
When the visitor left with his wife we walked to the gate and saw them down the road; and it was curious to note that they did not walk side by side. If you meet a farmer of the old style and his wife walking together, never do you see them arm-in-arm. The husband walks a yard or two in front, or else on the other side of the road; and this even when they are going to church.
[The end]
Richard Jefferies's essay: The Cuckoo-Fields