Gents Mag 1828 part 2 p.54
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Gentleman's Magazine 1828 part 2 p.54
of it; and at Birness, where twelve might attend gratis, that number, so great is their displike to pure ellemosynary assistance in rearing their families, very rarely attend it in that capacity. Reading has been a favourite occupation among them; and the poor-rates, generally speaking, are low, and the poor contented, honest, and thrifty." P.86. We have a relick of Anglo-Saxon usages in the paragraph next ensuing. "To these parishes resort the Witeiriding men (supposed Witreding from ƿite, a chief lord, and ræden, a council) otherwise called Thanes of that English March." P.91. In P.95 we find the mullions of a Gothic window taken out, to make way for a modern sash one, "by an Archdidiaconal command." P.95. Mr. Hodgson doubts the authenticity of Richard of Cirencester's work, "De situ Britanniae;" 1st because no manuscript of it could ever be found; 2d. because the pretended fac-simile of the first page is not in the style of any manuscript of Richard's time, but is a clumsy imitation of the hand-writing of a centruy before him, and contains abbreviations unwarranted by ancient examples; 3dly. because the Latinity is too pure and classical for a Monk of the 15th cent., especially one "whose acknowledged historical works are, in point of language, scarcely on a level with the dull and ignorant productions of his contemporaries." P).146. The following account of a Peel House at Whelpington shows the ancient mode of living in this country. "The only Peel house remaining in the place is called "the Bolt House," and consists of a byer or cow-house below, and the family apartments above, viz. an upper room with a boarded floor, and a garret, both approached by stone stairs on the outside, and the whole covered with thatch. The door-way to the cow-house is under the landing of the stairs, and the door of it was fastened with a strong bolt in the inside, for which purposes the byer and the upper-room had communication by a trap-hole, that is, by a horizontal door in a corner of the floor, and a trap or ladder; for the English word trap, in the terms, a trap-way, trap-hole, trap-door, and a trap-rock, has the same origin as the Swedish and German words trap and treppe, which means stairs, and seem to owe their origin to some obsolete inflection of the German and English verbs treten and to tread. This was the character of the principal farm-houses in Northumberland a hundred years since. The peels of the lairds or yeomanry proprietors had each a stone arch over the byer, and were frequently covered with free-stone slate, which made them more secure, than houses with thatchced roofs, from being burnt in the plundering irruptions of the Scotch, and their no less troublesome neighbours, the people of Redesdale. The cottage next to the Bolt-house, on the right, is a good specimen of an inferior farm-house, the room at the entrance of which was, and still continues in many places to be, a byer in winter and a bed-room in summer, and is called the out-bye: the in-bye, or inner room, with three small windows to the left of the out-door, was the dwelling of the family, and often partitioned by two press-beds into two apartments." P.189.Shakespeare's and Milton's use of the Fairy Mythology is well illustrated, as once a matter of serious credibility, in the following account of Rothley Mill. "The old mill, with its black water wheel, and heathery roof, far from human habitations, and shut up in a glen narrow and thick with wood, was the haunt of a family of fairies, and had many a marvelloous tale about it. For old queen Mab and her train, they say, with the help of the miller's picks, formed out of the rock the numerous circular basins which are still to be seen here in the bed of the Hart, and were every moonlight summer's evening seen like so many water-fowls, flickering and bathing in them. The mill itself was their great council-hall; and the eye of the kiln their kitchen, where, in boiling their pottage, they burnt the seeds or husks of oats the miller laid up for drying the corn he had next to grind. The meal and firing thus made use of, they took as an old customary claim for guarding and cleaning the mill and other useful services; but the miller thinking them too extravagant, was determined to disturb them; and while they were preparing their supper one night, threw a sod down the chimney and instantly fled. The falling mass dashed soot, fire, and boiling pottage amongst them; and the trembling fugitive, before he could reach the dingly verge of the glen, heard the cry, "burnt and scalded! burnt and scalded! the sell of the mill has done it;" and the old mother of the family set after him, and just as he got to the style, going into Rothley, touched him, and he doubled up, was bow-bent, and a cripple to his dying day." 305. Mr. Hodgson has been indefatigable in his researches;and has enlivened his book with numerous biographical matters, respecting the proprietors of estates in more modern areas, a practice which is not sufficiently regarded in topographical works. The pedigrees are remarkably full, elaborate, minute, and well-authenticated. General anti- |
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