Right down below the White Horse is a curious deep and broad gully called “the Manger,” into one side of which the hills fall with a series of the most lovely sweeping curves, known as “the Giant’s Stairs.” They are not a bit like stairs, but I never saw anything like them anywhere else, with their short green turf, and tender bluebells, and gossamer and thistle-down gleaming in the sun and the sheep-paths running along their sides like ruled lines.
The other side of the Manger is formed by the Dragon’s Hill, a curious little round self-confident fellow, thrown forward from the range, utterly unlike everything round him. On this hill some deliverer of mankind—St. George, the country folk used to tell me—killed a dragon. Whether it were St. George, I cannot say; but surely a dragon was killed there, for you may see the marks yet where his blood ran down, and more by token the place where it ran down is the easiest way up the hillside.
Passing along the Ridgeway to the west for about a mile, we come to a little clump of young beech and firs, with a growth of thorn and privet underwood. Here you may find nests of the strong down partridge and peewit, but take care that the keeper isn’t down upon you; and in the middle of it is an old cromlech, a huge flat stone raised on seven or eight others, and led up to by a path, with large single stones set up on each side. This is Wayland Smith’s cave, a place of classic fame now; but as Sir Walter has touched it, I may as well let it alone, and refer you to “Kenilworth” for the legend.
The thick, deep wood which you see in the hollow, about a mile off, surrounds Ashdown Park, built by Inigo Jones. Four broad alleys are cut through the wood from circumference to centre, and each leads to one face of the house. The mystery of the downs hangs about house and wood, as they stand there alone, so unlike all around, with the green slopes studded with great stones just about this part, stretching away on all sides. It was a wise Lord Craven, I think, who pitched his tent there.
Passing along the Ridgeway to the east, we soon come to cultivated land. The downs, strictly so called, are no more. Lincolnshire farmers have been imported, and the long, fresh slopes are sheep-walks no more, but grow famous turnips and barley. One of these improvers lives over there at the “Seven Barrows” farm, another mystery of the great downs. There are the barrows still, solemn and silent, like ships in the calm sea, the sepulchres of some sons of men. But of whom? It is three miles from the White Horse—too far for the slain of Ashdown to be buried there. Who shall say what heroes are waiting there? But we must get down into the Vale again, and so away by the Great Western Railway to town, for time and the printer’s devil press, and it is a terrible long and slippery descent, and a shocking bad road. At the bottom, however, there is a pleasant public; whereat we must really take a modest quencher, for the down air is provocative of thirst. So we pull up under an old oak which stands before the door.
“What is the name of your hill, landlord?”
“Blawing STWUN Hill, sir, to be sure.”
[READER. “Stuym?”
AUTHOR: “Stone, stupid—the Blowing Stone.”]
“And of your house? I can’t make out the sign.”
“Blawing Stwun, sir,” says the landlord, pouring out his old ale from a Toby Philpot jug, with a melodious crash, into the long-necked glass.
“What queer names!” say we, sighing at the end of our draught, and holding out the glass to be replenished.
“Bean’t queer at all, as I can see, sir,” says mine host, handing back our glass, “seeing as this here is the Blawing Stwun, his self,” putting his hand on a square lump of stone, some three feet and a half high, perforated with two or three queer holes, like petrified antediluvian rat-holes, which lies there close under the oak, under our very nose. We are more than ever puzzled, and drink our second glass of ale, wondering what will come next. “Like to hear un, sir?” says mine host, setting down Toby Philpot on the tray, and resting both hands on the “Stwun.” We are ready for anything; and he, without waiting for a reply, applies his mouth to one of the ratholes. Something must come of it, if he doesn’t burst. Good heavens! I hope he has no apoplectic tendencies. Yes, here it comes, sure enough, a gruesome sound between a moan and a roar, and spreads itself away over the valley, and up the hillside, and into the woods at the back of the house, a ghost-like, awful voice. “Um do say, sir,” says mine host, rising purple-faced, while the moan is still coming out of the Stwun, “as they used in old times to warn the country-side by blawing the Stwun when the enemy was a-comin’, and as how folks could make un heered then for seven mile round; leastways, so I’ve heered Lawyer Smith say, and he knows a smart sight about them old times.” We can hardly swallow Lawyer Smith’s seven miles; but could the blowing of the stone have been a summons, a sort of sending the fiery cross round the neighbourhood in the old times? What old times? Who knows? We pay for our beer, and are thankful.
“And what’s the name of the village just below, landlord?”
“Kingstone Lisle, sir.”
“Fine plantations you’ve got here?”
“Yes, sir; the Squire’s ‘mazing fond of trees and such like.”
“No wonder. He’s got some real beauties to be fond of. Good-day, landlord.”
“Good-day, sir, and a pleasant ride to ‘ee.”
And now, my boys, you whom I want to get for readers, have you had enough? Will you give in at once, and say you’re convinced, and let me begin my story, or will you have more of it? Remember, I’ve only been over a little bit of the hillside yet—what you could ride round easily on your ponies in an hour. I’m only just come down into the Vale, by Blowing Stone Hill; and if I once begin about the Vale, what’s to stop me? You’ll have to hear all about Wantage, the birthplace of Alfred, and Farringdon, which held out so long for Charles the First (the Vale was near Oxford, and dreadfully malignant—full of Throgmortons, Puseys, and Pyes, and such like; and their brawny retainers). Did you ever read Thomas Ingoldsby’s “Legend of Hamilton Tighe”? If you haven’t, you ought to have. Well, Farringdon is where he lived, before he went to sea; his real name was Hamden Pye, and the Pyes were the great folk at Farringdon. Then there’s Pusey. You’ve heard of the Pusey horn, which King Canute gave to the Puseys of that day, and which the gallant old squire, lately gone to his rest (whom Berkshire freeholders turned out of last Parliament, to their eternal disgrace, for voting according to his conscience), used to bring out on high days, holidays, and bonfire nights. And the splendid old cross church at Uffington, the Uffingas town. How the whole countryside teems with Saxon names and memories! And the old moated grange at Compton, nestled close under the hillside, where twenty Marianas may have lived, with its bright water-lilies in the moat, and its yew walk, “the cloister walk,” and its peerless terraced gardens. There they all are, and twenty things beside, for those who care about them, and have eyes. And these are the sort of things you may find, I believe, every one of you, in any common English country neighbourhood.
Will you look for them under your own noses, or will you not? Well, well, I’ve done what I can to make you; and if you will go gadding over half Europe now, every holidays, I can’t help it. I was born and bred a west-country man, thank God! a Wessex man, a citizen of the noblest Saxon kingdom of Wessex, a regular “Angular Saxon,” the very soul of me adscriptus glebae. There’s nothing like the old country-side for me, and no music like the twang of the real old Saxon tongue, as one gets it fresh from the veritable chaw in the White Horse Vale; and I say with “Gaarge Ridler,”