Spring in a Shropshire Abbey

“I am going Home,” were her last words, and I shall never forget the exquisite certainty of her tone, as I left the room and followed Betty downstairs.

A minute later, and Betty and I found ourselves in the little kitchen below.

“I shall miss her terrible,” she said in a husky voice. “Nell and I, years and years agone, were scholards together when old Madam Challoner taught in the little white house yonder, afore the new school was built. We growed up and we married, the same year. Her got a good man; I got a beauty, and a bad one. When Harley died, he left his missus the cottage, garden, a few fields, and a tight bit of money. Soon after her was left a widow, I went to see her, for Marnwood Beaman, my man, he fell off a waggon, dead drunk, and was killed, and I was left without a penny. I couldn’t do much, for I had got cripply ever since I had got the rheumatics, so I made up my mind it war to the poor-house I war bound. One day (when I had stomached a resolution to carry this through, and it costs the poorest body a lot to do), I went, as I said, to see Nell afore I spoke to the overseer.

“When I got in, Nell, her comed up to me and her says, ‘What ails thee, Betty?’ for my eyes were red and bulgy. Then I told her what war on my mind, and that for all my cottage war a poor place, it went sadly against the grain to leave it and to have a mistress to knopple over me, and give me orders same as if I war a little maid at school.

“Then,” added Betty, “Nell her brought me the greatest peace as I have ever felt.

“Her said, with one of her grand smiles, and sometimes, for all her war but poor folk, Nell looked a born duchess, but with a bit of an angel too, ‘Don’t you think, Betty, of leaving and goin’ to the poor-house or any other institution, but stay you at home with me. Pick up your duds and us two will live together, for my daughter be married.

“‘I don’t want exactly a serving wench, nor a daughter, nor a sister, but some one as is betwixt and between, and a bit of all three. Thee can work a bit, give thee time, and we can crack an old tale together after tea; I shan’t be timid with thee, nor thee of me. Us shall be just two old folks goin’ down the hill together – and the getting down shall be natural, and friendly. I can take thy hand, and thou canst take mine.’

“And her did give me a hand,” exclaimed old Betty, warmly, “a hand that has kape me safe all these years; and I bless the Lord for such a true and good friend.”

We sat on in silence, and I could not but think how sweet, and loyal, had been the friendship of these two old people. Suddenly Betty got up and poked the fire.

“Last time as yer war callin’,” she said, “yer asked me, mam, what I could say about that Nanny Morgan, her as war a known witch. Nell won’t name her, for her says Nan was given up to the devil, and all his works, and that her has something else to think of. But since yer are wishful to know, and the little lady is not here, I’ll tell yer what I can.

THE STORY OF THE WITCH

“Nanny Morgan was the daughter of Richard Williams, and she war born and bred in a little house up at Westwood, on the way to Presthope. Yer must often have seen the place, as yer go to Five Chimneys. Nan war a fine, strapping lass when first I remembered her. Dark, tall, with steel-grey eyes. Her got into trouble when quite a maid for having a finger in the pie of robbing Mrs. Powell at Bourton. Her was tried at Shrewsbury for the robbery, and lay in prison, they said, a long time. When her got out of prison her own people wouldn’t harbour her, they said, and she went and lived with the gipsies. There she learnt card tricks, tellin’ of fortunes, and took to wandering and unchristian ways. Us didn’t see her at Wenlock for a long while, but one day she turned up at Wenlock Market on a Monday, and told a friend that her had taken ‘dad’s old house’ and meant to settle down and bide in the old place.

“Her called herself then Nanny Morgan, though who Morgan war I never rightly knew, most like some tinker man. Anyway, her went to Westwood, and there her lived, told fortunes by cards and by hand-readin’, sold love drinks, and was hired out as a curser – and of all the cursers, there war none that could curse with Nan. For her cursed the goin’s in and the goin’s out of folks, the betwixt and between, the side-ways and slip-slaps, till, as they said, there wasn’t foot-room for folks to stand on, nor a thimbleful of air for a creature to breathe, that hard could Nanny curse.

“She was terrible to meet,” continued Betty. “Once as I war walkin’ back to Homer after marketing at Wenlock, I looked up and Nan was full in my road, straight against the sky. How her had comed there, I don’t know, but there her war, terrible fierce and sudden, and her great eyes seemed to look through and through me, and I fair quailed before her, as they say a partridge does afore a hawk. Every one war feared of Nanny,” added old Betty, “for they felt before her as innocent as a child, and what war there as she couldn’t do to them?

“Nan lived on at Westwood and none dared say her nay, or to refuse her ought, and all the while she went on practising devil’s arts, till her got her death.”

“How was that?” I asked.

“Well, it war years agone.” And Betty thought for a moment and then added, “’Twas in the year 1857 that Nan got her deserts.

“There war a young lodger as had a bed at Nan’s, and Nan took to him terrible, and the lovinger her got the more he held back; and the witch played with ’um same as a cat does with a mouse, and wouldn’t let ’un off to marry his own sweetheart. So one evening, he went into Wenlock, and he bought a knife, and he stole back to her house, and she called him soft like a throstle. Then while she stirred her pot, he stabbed her to get free of her love philters. When Mr. Yates, who war mace-bearer and barber, comed up, he found Nan, they said, lying in a pool of blood, but they durst not undress her for fear of getting witch’s blood, and we all know that that is a special damnation.

“Her led a bad life, did Nan,” pursued old Betty; “her kept a swarm of cats, and one she called Hellblow and another Satan’s Smile, and her had a box of toads to work mysteries with, and these, they said, would hop at night, and leer and talk familiar as spirits, and besides these, there war a pack of wicked books. You yourself, mam, have her card-table where her used to sit. One leg of it higher than the rest, and the ledge below, was where her wickedest toad used to perch – it as they called ‘Dew,’ and that had been bred up on communion bread, to reveal secrets. Sometimes, I’ve heard, Nan would fall a-kissin’ that toad and whisper to it all sorts of unclean spells. I couldn’t abear the table. It might fall to speaking itself at nights, and then the devil only knows what it would say.”

There was a pause, and then old Betty went on to say —

“After Nan war buried, the books one and all war brought down to the Falcon’s Yard Inn and burnt publicly. So that war her end, and a wickeder woman never lived.”

As the sound of Betty’s last words died away, I heard the noise of horses’ feet gaily trotting up the lane.

“That will be my Bess,” I said, “and as the twilight is beginning, I must return.” Then I begged that Susie might come and tell me if there is anything I could send for Mrs. Harley, and we passed out of the door.

THE FIRST FLOWERS OF THE YEAR

As we neared the wicket, Bess called out, “Look, look, and see what I have found. Three snowdrops all white, a hazel nut-tail, and a nice sticky bud of a horse-chestnut; but never mind anything but the snowdrops, for they bring luck, Nana says.”

I took the first flowers of the year; what a dazzling white they were! And I recalled, as I held them, the old legend of the “white purification” as it was once called.

“And to think,” said Betty, smiling and noting our joy over the flowers, “as I haven’t a blow to give my pretty,” and she smiled at Bess; “but us has nought in blow, save a bud or two of the damsons, and I dursn’t pull it, for folks say, him as pulls fruit blossom deserves the same as her as burns bread-crumbs, and I wouldn’t bring her any ill-chance.”

Then I passed out of the little cottage precincts. I saw old Betty still holding the gate, a dim figure with a red shawl. Bess blew her a kiss, the dogs barked furiously; even Mouse joined in her deep bell notes, and once more we were under way on our own homeward journey.

A soft grey mist gathered round us, with the growing darkness. All was very still after a few minutes, and the only sound that we heard was the baying of a dog in the distance at some lonely farm.

Far away in the west gleamed a golden light. Once we passed a brown figure of some labouring man returning to his cottage, and as we neared a thicket of budding blackthorn we were greeted by the voice of a throstle singing his evening hymn. I carried my flowers reverently, for were they not the first promise of spring, the smile, as it were, of the scarce known year?

“Mum,” said Bess, as I lifted her off Jill’s back, “could you spare me one of the snowdrops to keep in my own nursery?”

I nodded acquiescence.

“Because,” pursued the child, “I should like one. Just one. It would help me, I think, to keep away eyes, and bad words, and perhaps might make me good and happy. Nan says they used to bring in snowdrops to make the children good, let me try, too.”

CHAPTER III

MARCH

“To birdes and beestes
That no blisse ne knoweth,
And wild worms in wodes
Through wynter thou them grievest,
And makest hem welneigh meke,
And mylde for defaute,
And after thou sendest hem somer,
That is hiz sovereign joye,
And blisse to all that be,
Both wilde and tame.”

    Vision of Piers Ploughman.
The winds of heaven were blowing, blowing; dust was flying on the roads. The old saying that “a peck is worth a king’s ransom” returned to my mind. February fill-dyke had filled the springs and the streams, and now March with his gay sun, and wild winds was drying them as hard as he could. How pleasant it was to see the sun again! He had been almost a stranger in the cold dark months of the young year. Yet early as it was, Phœbus was proud and glorious and at his fiery darts all nature seemed to begin and start life afresh.

Man, beast, and bird, all felt the mysterious influence of spring, whilst up the stems of all the trees and plants, the sap began to mount again.

I woke up early, but the world had already commenced its work, golden rays of sunlight were pouring into the windows and I found, too, that the restlessness of nature had seized me also, so I went and peeped out of an old chamber that commanded the eastern garden.

Outside, there was a sense of great awakening – the sun flashed merrily down on the frosty turf, and the congealed drops were already fast disappearing into the ground. Starlings hurried, hither and thither, like iridescent jewels, snowdrops lifted their heads and waved them triumphantly in the breeze. The quice, as Shropshire folk call wood-pigeons, I heard cooing in their sweet persuasive note in a distant chestnut, and as I fastened back the window the musical hum of bees sporting in the crocuses, caught my ear.

From the end of the border ascended the fragrance of a clump of violets. How sweet is the return of spring, I murmured, and how wonderful. What a joy, one of the joys we can never grow tired of, or too old to feel afresh each year. Winter seems so long, and the awakening and sweet summer all too short.

I returned to my room, dressed quickly, and then went out into the garden.

THE SONG OF BIRDS

Life, life seemed everywhere. The wild birds were singing, calling, flying backwards and forwards and seeking food. The speckled storm-cock, as they call the missel thrush in Shropshire, was singing gloriously on the top branch of a gnarled apple tree, whilst from a bush of ribes as I passed along, a frightened blackbird lumbered away with his angry protesting rattle. How handsome he is, the cock blackbird, with his plumage of raven hue, and his golden dagger of a beak. In the twilight how irresistible is the deep regret of his song. It is a song, sweet, tender, full of old memories, and brings back in its subtle melancholy, dear faces, and the touch of dear lost hands that helped and loved us once. The blackbird’s note is quite different from the thrush; the thrush’s song is all pure joy, and glad expectation. He sings of morning, and all his notes are in a major key. He chants of wholesome work, of brave endeavour, and of spring gladness. His rapture is like that of the early poets. No note of sorrow dulls his glorious morning. Joy, health, happiness, these are the keynotes of his rhapsody – and we are grateful to him as we are grateful for the sunshine, for the laughter of children, and for the scent of flowers. It is hard to say which song we love best. But why choose, for are not both God’s feathered choristers, and their songs our earliest melodies of childhood?

How feverishly busy everything was that morning, and how seriously all living things took the annual dawn of life. The birds on the lawns were pecking, pecking everywhere, finding food and seeking materials for the future homes of their young.