A Book of the West. Volume I Devon

Some years ago a convict escaped and concealed himself in a mine. Impelled by hunger, he showed himself to the men there engaged. He told them that he was, like them, a toiler underground. They agreed to shelter him, and he was kept concealed in the mine till the search for him was past. Then they gave him old clothes, and each subscribed a sum of money to help him to leave the country. He got away, and some year or two after he sent back all the money he had been given, to be repaid to the men who had subscribed to get him off, and a good present into the bargain.

A very different case was this.

A man got out, escaped from the moor, and made his way to his wife's cottage. She gave him up and claimed the five pounds reward for her treachery.

A friend was spending some months at Beardown. One evening he returned late from Tavistock, and to give notice that he was arriving fired off a pistol as he crossed the little bridge over the river below. Little did he then imagine, what he learned later, that a couple of convicts who had escaped were hiding under the bridge; they would have sprung out on him and despoiled him of his clothes and money, possibly have murdered him, but were deterred by his chance firing of the pistol. They were captured a day or two later, and this was their confession.

It is not by any means easy for a convict to escape. When they are at work there are two rings of warders about them armed with rifles, and there is moreover a signal-station that commands where they are at work, from which watch is kept upon them.

Our criminal class costs the nation a prodigious sum. The prison population for England and Scotland is about 30,000, and the prison expenditure last year (1898) was £604,696, so that the cost annually to the country of each convict is about £20.

But there are indirect costs. If we put down: —

and add to this the cost of the prisons, we reach the frightful expenditure of over ten millions. Surely the nation is penny wise and pound foolish. If instead of spending so much to get men into prison, and keep them there, it would but concern itself with keeping them out, there would be a great reduction in cost.

The convict is not such an utter black sheep as we might be disposed to think him. That which forms the class is the sending back among their fellows men who have been in prison. They cannot get out of the association, and consequently they return again and again to their cells.

There is indeed a society for helping prisoners on leaving to get into situations, but this is a duty that should be undertaken by the nation; and very often the only way to really give a poor fellow a chance is to move him entirely away from this country. It is a difficult problem, and we could not, of course, send them to our colonies; but all social problems are difficult, yet should be faced, and there is a solution to be found somewhere.

All that the convict really requires is a certain amount of discipline, a strong hand, and a clear head in a leader or master, and he may yet be made a man of, useful to his fellows.

"You don't think I'm such a fool as to like it, do you?" said a convicted burglar to the chaplain. "I do it because I can't help myself. When I leave prison I have nowhere else to go but to my old pals and the old diggings."

If it could be contrived to give these fellows, after a first conviction, a start in a new country, nine out of ten might be reclaimed. They are like children, not wilfully given to evil, but incapable of self-restraint, and cowards among their fellows, whose opinions and persuasion they dare not oppose.

There is one institution connected with Dartmoor that must not be passed over – Bellever Day.

When hare-hunting is over in the low country, then, some week or two after Easter, the packs that surround Dartmoor assemble on it, and a week is given up to hare-hunting. On the last day, Friday, there is a grand gathering on Bellever Tor. All the towns and villages neighbouring on Dartmoor send out carriages, traps, carts, riders; the roads are full of men and women, ay, and children hurrying to Bellever. Little girls with their baskets stuffed with saffron cake for lunch desert school and trudge to the tor. Ladies go out with champagne luncheons ready. Whether a hare be found and coursed that day matters little. It is given up to merriment in the fresh air and sparkling sun. And the roads that lead from Bellever in the afternoon are careered over by riders, whose horses are so exhilarated that they race, and the riders have a difficulty in keeping their seats. Their faces are red, not those of the horses, but their riders – from the sun and air – and they are so averse to leave the moor, that they sometimes desert their saddles to roll on the soft and springy turf.

Trout-fishing on Dartmoor is to be had, and on very easy terms, but the rivers are far less stocked than they were a few years ago, as they are so persistently whipped. The trout are small and dark, but delicious eating.

There would be more birds but for the mischievous practice of "swaling" or burning the heather and gorse, which is persisted in till well into the summer, and, walking over a fresh-burned patch of moor, one may tread on roasted eggs or the burned young of some unhappy birds that fondly deemed there was protection for them in England.

The "swaling" is carried on upon the commons round the forest as well as on the forest itself, so that the blame is not wholly due to the representatives of the Duchy.

One is disposed to think that the moor must be a desolate and altogether uninhabitable region in the winter. It is not so – at no time do the mosses show in such variety of colour, and when the sun shines the sense of exhilaration is beyond restraint.

To all lovers of Dartmoor I dedicate the song with which I conclude this chapter.

THE SONG OF THE MOOR

'Tis merry in the spring time,
'Tis blithe on Dartimoor,
Where every man is equal,
For every man is poor.
I do what I'm a minded,
And none will say me nay,
I go where I'm inclinèd,
On all sides – right of way.

O the merry Dartimoor,
O the bonny Dartimoor,
I would not be where I'm not free
As I am upon the moor.

'Tis merry in the summer,
When furze be flowering sweet;
The bees about it humming,
In honey bathe their feet.
The plover and the peewit,
How cheerily they pipe,
And underfoot the whortle
Is turning blue and ripe.

O the merry Dartimoor, etc.

'Tis merry in the autumn,
When snipe and cock appear,
And never see a keeper
To say, No shooting here!
We stack the peat for fuel,
We ask no better fire,
And never pay a farden
For all that we require.

O the merry Dartimoor, etc.

'Tis merry in the winter,
The wind is on the moor,
For twenty miles to leeward
The people hear it roar.
'Tis merry in the ingle,
Beside a moorland lass,
As watching turves a-glowing,
The brimming bumpers pass.

O the merry Dartimoor,
O the bonny Dartimoor,
I would not be where I'm not free
As I am upon the moor.

Note. – Articles to be consulted: —

Collier (W. F.), "Dartmoor," in Transactions of the Devonshire Association for 1876.

Collier (W. F.), "Venville Rights on Dartmoor," ibid., 1887.

" "Dartmoor for Devonshire," ibid., 1894.