The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 573, October 27, 1832

In April, Dove's flood
Is worth a king's good.

It is also said of Dove's banks in spring, that a stick laid down there over-night shall not be found next morning for grass.

St. Hellen's Well, near Rushton Spencer, in Staffordshire, is remarkable in superstitious history, for some singular qualities. It sometimes becomes suddenly dry, after a constant discharge of water for eight or ten years. This happens as well in wet as in dry seasons, and always at the beginning of May, when the springs are commonly esteemed highest; and so it usually continues till Martinmas, November 12, following. The people formerly imagined, that when this happened there would soon follow some stupendous calamity of famine, war, or some other national disaster, or change. It is said that it grew dry before the civil war, and again before the beheading of Charles I.; against the great scarcity of corn in 1670; and in 1679, when the miscalled Popish plot was discovered; but we do not hear that St. Hellen's Well withheld its supplies previous to, or upon, the breaking out of the last calamitous war.

Prodigious Elm.—At Field, adjoining Rushton Spencer, grew a prodigious witch elm, which was felled in 1680. Two able workmen were five days in stocking or felling it. It was 120 feet in length; at the butt-end it was seven yards in circumference; its girth was 25-1/2 feet in the middle. Fourteen loads of firewood, as much as six oxen could draw, broke off in the fall; there were 47 loads more fire-wood cut from the top; they were compelled to fasten two saws together, and put three men to each end, to cut the body of it asunder. Out of this tree were cut 80 pairs of naves for carriage-wheels, and 8,000 feet of sawn timber in boards and planks, at six score per cent.—which, for the sawing only, as the price of labour then was, came to the sum of 12l.

Newcastle-under-Line.—The right of election in this borough has been several times the subject of parliamentary investigation. At the last inquiry, the greater part of the borough appeared to be the property of the Marquess of Stafford; and it was found customary for the burgesses to live ten, fifteen, and even twenty years in the houses, without payment of rent!

Monument to a Faithful Servant.—In the church of King's Swinford, Staffordshire, is a plain stone, erected by Joseph Scott, Esq., and his wife, in memory of Elizabeth Harrison, who had been thirty years in their service, and had conducted herself with such integrity, and anxiety for her master's interest, as drew from him the following epitaph:

While flattering praises from oblivion save,
The rich, and splendour decorates the grave,
Let this plain stone, O Harrison, proclaim
Thy humble fortune and thy honest fame.
In work unwearied, labour knew no end—
In all things faithful, everywhere a friend;
Herself forgot, she toiled with generous zeal,
And knew no interest but her master's weal.
'Midst the rude storms that shook his ev'ning day,
No wealth could bribe her, and no power dismay;
Her patrons' love she dwelt on e'en in death,
And dying, blest them with her latest breath.

She departed this life June 19, 1797. Aged 50 years.

Farewell, thou best of servants—may the tear
That sorrow trickled o'er thy parting bier,
Prove to thy happy shade our fond regard,
And all thy virtues find their full reward.

Mr. Warwick, on the Ostrich, in our next.

notes

1

Rhodes's Peak Scenery, Part IV.

2

Britton's Architect. Antiq. ii. 86.

3

Rhodes's Peak Scenery, Part iv. p. 4.—One of the oldest of these structures at present in the kingdom, is Moreton Hall in Cheshire, which, though a highly-ornamented building, is entirely composed of wood, and was erected at a time before stone was generally used even for the lower apartments. The earliest date about this ancient remain is 1559.

4

Hist. Middle Ages, vol. iii., p. 420.

5

Hist. of Whalley. In Strutt's view of Manners, we have an inventory of furniture in the house of Mr. Richard Fermor, ancestor of the Earl of Pomfret, at Easton in Northamptonshire, and another in that of Sir Adrian Foskewe. Both these houses appear to have been of the dimensions and arrangement mentioned. And even in houses of a more ample extent, the bi-section of the ground-plot by an entrance-passage, was, I believe, universal, and is a proof of antiquity. Haddon Hall and Penshurst still display this ancient arrangement, which has been altered in some old houses. About the reign of James I., or, perhaps, a little sooner, architects began to perceive the additional grandeur of entering the great hall at once. This apartment subsequently gave its name to the whole house.—See an interesting paper on Old English Halls, Mirror, vol. xviii. p. 92-108.

6

Hist. Middle Ages, vol. iii., p. 423.—The most remarkable fragment of early building which I have any where found mentioned is at a house in Berkshire, called Appleton, where there exists a sort of prodigy, an entrance-passage with circular arches in the Saxon style, which must probably be as old as the reign of Henry II. No other private house in England can, I presume, boast of such a monument of antiquity.

7

Vide Introduction to Owen's Translations of the Elegies of Llywarch Hen.

8

Gaelic Antiquities, p. 21.

9

Vide Richard of Cirencester.

10

Herodotus describes the subject more minutely.

11

See also "the Druids and their Times," from the German of Wieland, p. 20 of the present volume.

12

The shortest and most convenient passage from France to England appears to have been from Whitsand to Dover. The tenure of certain lands in Coperland near Dover, was the service of holding the King's Head between Dover and Whitsand whenever he crossed there.

13

Some curious facts in the economy of the Ostrich will be found at page 262 of the present volume.

14

From the Private Correspondence of a Woman of Fashion.