An Old English Home and Its Dependencies

So much for the symbolic meaning of the screen. And yet, no – one word more must be added. Last summer I was walking along the north coast of Devon, when I visited the very fine parish church of Coombe Martyn. This noble church possesses an exceedingly fine rood-screen that has not been demolished. The church possesses something else of interest – a very intelligent, quaint old parish clerk.

As I was admiring the screen, the old man, who was dusting in the church, came up to me and said: "Please, your honour, have y' ever heard tell why the screen-doors niver shut?"

I expressed my doubt that this was so.

"Now, do y' go and look at ivery old church screen you seez," said the clerk. "If it ho'n't been meddled wi' by them blessed restorers, you'll find for sure sartain that the oak doors won't shut. Zur, see here. Here be the doors. Try 'em; they can't be made to shut."

I answered that the wood had swelled, and the joinery was imperfect.

"No, your honour," said the old man. "If you look close, you'll see it was made on purpose not to fit."

On examination it certainly did appear that the doors in question never could have been fastened. I admitted this, but doubted whether it was the same with all screen-gates.

"It's the same wi' all," said the old man. "I've looked at scores, and they was all made just the same, on purpose not to fit."

"That is very odd," said I, still incredulous.

"It was done on purpose," said the old man.

Then he came out with his explanation.

"Doant y' see, your honour. Them old men as made the screens weren't bad joiners, and they weren't fules neither. They was a sight better joiners than we be now. The reason they did it was this. For sure sartain the chancel means heaven, and the body of the church means airth. And then, doan't it say in Scriptur, 'The gates shall not be shut at all?' Very well, if the chancel be meant to tell o' the heavenly Jerusalem, then the screen gates must be made not to fit, that never nobody may never be able to fasten 'em no more. The old men weren't bad joiners, nor fules – not they."

And now – to the liturgical significance of the screen. As already said, it supported the crucifix, and the rule was that during Lent all images were to be veiled or covered with wraps. Accordingly, on the top of the screens were galleries by means of which the crucifix could be reached for the veiling on Shrove Tuesday, and the unveiling on Easter Eve.

But the screen served a third purpose, and that was eminently practical. On it sat the orchestra and choir. The gallery was made broad and solid to support them, and was furnished with a back to the west, against which the performers might lean, and which concealed them from the congregation in the nave. These backs have for the most part disappeared; nevertheless, several remain. They naturally were the first part of a screen to give way through the pressure of somnolent human beings against it.

The choir and instrumentalists sat on the rood-screen, where they could see every movement of the priest at the altar, and so take their cues for singing and playing. It was essential that they should be in this position. In Continental churches, where in many places the screens have been mutilated or removed, the choirs still occupy their old places. For instance, at Bruges, where the screen in the cathedral is reduced to a mere block of black and white marble beside the chancel steps, the musicians remain perched at the top. At Freiburg, where the screen and gallery have been erected in one of the transepts, quite out of sight of the altar, the singers and orchestra are on it.

At the Reformation, when the crucifix was torn away, a great ugly gap was left in the gallery-back above the screen. In cathedrals this gap was filled up with the organ. And in cathedrals and large churches the organ displaced the instrumentalists.

In many churches the screen itself was destroyed or allowed to fall into decay. But the use of the gallery was not forgotten. The priest now occupied the reading-desk, and as this was very generally in the body of the church, something had to be done to bring the choir and orchestra into a suitable position facing him.

Accordingly, in a great number of cases the gallery was removed to the west end of the church, and those who rendered the musical portion of divine service moved with it. Hence it came about that in a vast majority of cases the gallery at the west end, under the tower arch, came to be the great focus and centre of music and discord.

Now the fashion has set in everywhere to pull down the west gallery and open out the tower arch. But when the west gallery is gone, whither is the organ to go? Where is the choir to be put? The choirs are now very generally accommodated in the chancel, but the organ has been moved about into various places more or less unsuitable.

At one time the fashion was to build out a sort of chapel on the north side and to fit the organ into it; boxing it up on all sides but one. Naturally, the organ objected to this treatment. It was made to occupy an open space: it demanded circulation of air. In the pocket into which it was thrust it became damp, and went out of tune.

Nothing could have been designed more senseless than these cramped chapels for organs. The organ sets waves of air in motion, and the walls boxing in the pipes prevented the waves from flowing. It was found that organs in this position did not give forth a volume of sound commensurate with their cost and size, and they were pulled out, and stuck in side aisles, and painted and gilt, and an attempt made to render an unsightly object comely by flourish of decoration.

But again difficulties and objections became evident. An organ ought not to be on the damp floor, and it ought to be well elevated. Moreover, planted at the east end of an aisle, it did not support the congregation in their singing. It roared and boomed in the ears of the choir; and if the service is to be an elaborate performance, in which the congregation takes the part of audience only, then it is in the right place. But if the divine worship is to be congregational, if all are to be encouraged to sing, then the organ is out of place.

Consequently in a good many cases there is a talk of moving back the organ into a west gallery.

Unhappily, an organ is a very expensive traveller. An individual can tour round the globe at about the same cost that will move an organ from one end of a church to another. Hundreds on hundreds of pounds have been spent in marching the unhappy organ about; and we cannot be sure that its wanderings are over yet.

In these restless and impatient days, when everyone has a theory and a scheme, and desires to do what is contrary to what has been done, the hardest of lessons to acquire, and that entailing most self-restraint, but that which is least costly, and most calculated to give a man peace at the last, is to let well alone.

And now before we leave the old church, something must be said about the tower and bells.

On the Continent there is absolutely no art in bell-ringing – it is what any fool can do; the bells are clashed together, there is no sequence of notes, no changes in succession, there is noise, not melody. I remember many years ago passing through the queer little village with a queerer name, Corpsnuds, in the French Landes, on Midsummer-day. From the quaint church-tower sounded the most extraordinary clatter of bells, without sequence and without harmony. Moreover, from the top of the tower fluttered an equally extraordinary flag. On more attentive examination of the latter, when the wind was sufficiently strong to unfurl and expand it, it became obvious that this flag was nothing more nor less than a pair of dingy black trousers split at the seam, and reseated with a dingy navy-blue patch.

Having made the observation, I entered the belfry, to ascertain what produced the clatter among the bells.

There I discovered the sexton, in his blouse, very hot, very red, profusely perspiring, racing about the interior swinging the end of a single bell-rope.

On seeing me he halted, and wiped his brow on his sleeve. I asked him how it was that he alone was able to ring a peal of bells.

"Mais!" he answered, "C'est bien possible. I have tied a broomstick in a knot of the rope, among the bells, and as I whisk the rope about, the stick rattles this bell, that bell, all of them. Voila tout!"

"And the banner waving augustly above the tower?" I further inquired.

"Bien simple," was his answer. "An old pair of my patched pantaloons. My wife slit them; we have no parish flag, so I said —allons! mes pantalons. There they are: aloft! One must do what one can in honour of the bon Saint Jean."

It is in England alone that bell-ringing is an art, and oh! how lovely an art it is – to those far away who hear the swell and fall of the bells, the music always having a certain sadness in it. But it has its sordid side, as has all art, and the sordid side is the interior of the belfry; or, let us say, was, before reform pushed its way there.

There was some excuse for the ringers to conduct themselves in a free and easy manner in the belfry when it was shut off from the body of the church by a screen of boards against which the west gallery was erected. Then the belfry was so much apart from the church that it ceased to be regarded as pertaining to it, or being included within its sacred atmosphere. Accordingly the ringers conducted themselves in the belfry as they saw fit. They introduced pipes, also a barrel of beer. They sketched each other on the boards, never in complimentary style. They wrote scurrilous verses on the screen, and sometimes conducted there all kinds of buffoon games, and played practical jokes on each other.

Not only did they consider that they might do as they liked in the belfry, but that they might have access to it when they liked, and ring on whatever occasion they pleased.

Another abuse crept in. The ringers considered that they had done quite sufficient when they had rung a peal before Divine Service. Their ringing ended, they would withdraw to the road or loiter about the churchyard, talking and smoking, whilst worship proceeded within the church.

In a certain place that I know the ringers had been allowed their own way under an indifferent rector, and the worst possible condition of affairs had resulted. Then came a new rector with the reforming spirit in him, and he resolved to put matters to right. Hitherto the belfry key had been retained by the sexton, a prime offender. The parson demanded it. The sexton refused to surrender it. Then the rector went with a blacksmith to the tower door, broke it open, and affixed a new lock to it with a key that he retained for himself.

Great was the indignation among the ringers, and an anonymous letter was received by the rector:

"This be to giv Nottis. If you pass'n doant mind wot your about and let we ring the bells as plazes we, then us wull knock your little 'ed off."

The rector was not to be intimidated. That night he went to the belfry and locked himself in.

At the usual time for the practice to begin the ringers arrived, and he heard them discuss him and his doings in the churchyard. That he did not mind.

"I say," remarked the sexton, "ain't he the minister? Wot do that mean but that he's sent by the bishop to minister to us and do jist as us likes?"

"Shure, b'aint no meanin' in words if that ain't it," responded another.

"Us won't be pass'n-ridden," said a third.

"Us'll break open the door," said a fourth.

"And if he interferes, us'll scatt his little head open," said a fifth, "as us wrote he – you knaws."

Then came a bang against the tower door.

Now there happened to be a little window close to the door, just large enough for a man to put his head, but not his shoulders, through.

"I put on the lock, and I'll have it off," said the blacksmith. "I've brought a bar o' iron on purpose."

Then the rector put his head through the window, and said, "Will you? Here's my little head, scatt that first."

The men drew back disconcerted.

He had gained the day, and established his authority over the ringers, and control of the belfry door.

And now, in the same place, there is as well-conducted a set of ringers as may be found anywhere, and some of the old lot are still there. The first step in the reform of the belfry was that of obtaining mastery over the key.

A second step was taken when the west gallery was demolished and the tower-arch thrown open, so that the bell-ringers were visibly in the church, and so came to feel that they were in a sacred building in which there must be no profanity.

In several instances much good has been done by the rector or the curate becoming himself a ringer, or, if not that, taking a lively interest in the ringing, and being present in the belfry, or visiting it, on practising nights.

Some curious customs remain connected with bell-ringing. In Yorkshire it is customary when there occurs a death in the parish to toll the bell. Three strokes thrice repeated signify an adult male; three strokes twice repeated signify an adult female; two, two, three, a male infant; two, two, two, a female child. These strokes are then followed by as many as there were years in the age of the deceased. At Dewsbury and at Horbury, near Wakefield, on Christmas Eve, at midnight, the devils knell is rung. When I was curate at the latter place, at first I knew nothing of this singular knell. On my first Christmas Eve I had retired to bed, when at midnight I heard the bell toll.

Now, my window looked out into the churchyard, and was, in fact, opposite the tower door. I was greatly shocked and distressed, for I had not heard that anyone was ill in the parish, and I feared that the deceased must have passed away without the ministrations of religion.

I threw up my window and leaned out, awaiting the sexton. I counted the strokes – three, three, three: then I counted the ensuing strokes up to one hundred.

Still more astonished, I waited impatiently the appearance of the sexton.

When he issued from the tower, I called to him:

"Joe, who is dead?"

The man sniggered and answered, "T'owd un, they say."

"But who is dead?"

"T'owd chap."

"What old man? He must be very old indeed."

"Ay! he be owd; but for sure he'll give trouble yet."

It was not till next day that my vicar explained the matter to me.

At Dewsbury the devil's knell is thus accounted for. A certain bell there, called Black Tom of Sothill, is said to have been an expiatory gift for a murder, and the tolling is in commemoration of the execution of the murderer. One Thomas Nash, in 1813, bequeathed £50 a year to the ringers of the Abbey Church, Bath, "on condition of their ringing on the whole peal of bells, with clappers muffled, various solemn and doleful changes on the 14th of May in every year, being the anniversary of my wedding-day; and also on the anniversary of my decease, to ring a grand bob-major and merry peals unmuffled, in joyful commemoration of my happy release from domestic tyranny and wretchedness."

A singular and beautiful custom still subsists in the village of Horningsham, Wilts, where, at the burial of a young maiden, "wedding peals" are rung on muffled bells.

At the induction of a new vicar or rector it is customary for him to lock himself into the church, and then proceed to the belfry and "ring himself in." It is, I believe, universal in England for the parishioners to count the number of strokes he gives, as these are said to indicate the number of years during which he will hold the cure.

There still remain in some places certain forcible evidences that the ringers regaled themselves in the belfries, and these have taken the shape of ale-jugs. At Hadleigh, in Suffolk, is such a pitcher of brown glazed earthenware, that holds sixteen quarts, and bears this inscription:

"We, Thomas Windle, Isaac Bunn, John Mann, Adam Sage, George Bond, Thomas Goldsborough, Robert Smith, Harry West."

and below the names are these lines:

 
"If you love me doe not lend me,
Use me often and keep me cleanly,
Fill me full, or not at all,
If it be strong, and not with small."
 

At Hinderclay, a ringer's pitcher is still preserved in the church tower, with the inscription on it:

 
"From London I was sent,
As plainly doth appear:
It was with this intent,
To be filled with strong beer.
Pray remember the pitchers when empty."
 

In a closet of the steeple of St. Peters, Mancroft, Norwich, is another, that holds thirty-five pints. At Clare is a similar jug that holds over seventeen quarts, and one at Beccles that will contain six gallons less one pint.

As already said, the church bells, which the ringers regarded as their own, or as parish property, they chose to ring on the most unsuitable occasions, as when a "long main" at cock-fighting had been won. Church bells were occasionally rung for successful racehorses. In the accounts of St. Edmund's, Salisbury, is this entry:

"1646. Ringing the race-day, that the Earl of Pembroke his horse winne the cuppe – vsh."

At Derby, when the London coach drove through the town in olden times it was usual to announce its arrival by ringing the church bells, that all such as had fish coming might hasten to the coach and secure the fish whilst fairly fresh.

It used to be said that St. Peter's six bells, which first sounded the approach of the London coach, called "Here's fresh fish come to town. Here's fresh fish come to town." Next came All Saints', further up the street, with its peal of ten, "Here's fine fresh fish just come into the town. Here's fine fresh fish just come into the town." Close by All Saints' stood St. Michael's, with but three bells, and one of them cracked, and the strain of this peal was, "They're stinking; they're stinking!" But St. Alkmund replied with his six, a little further on in the street, "Put more salt on 'em, then. Put more salt on 'em, then."

The earliest bells we have are the Celtic bells of hammered bronze, in shape like sheep bells, and riveted on one side. When these bells were first introduced they caused great astonishment, and many stories grew up about them. Thus, in the church of Kelly, in Devon, is an old stained-glass window that represents St. Oudoc, Bishop of Llandaff, with a golden yellow bell at his side. The story is told of him that he was one day thirsty, and passing some women who were washing clothes, he asked of them a draught of water. They answered laughingly that they had no vessel from which he could drink. Then he took a pat of butter, and moulded it into the shape of a cup or bell, and filled it with water, and drank out of it. And this golden bell remained in the church of Llandaff till it was melted up by the commissioners of Henry VIII.

A still more wonderful story was related of St. Keneth, of Gower, who, as a babe, was exposed in an osier coracle to the waves. The seagulls fluttered over him, and bore him to a ledge of rock, where they made a bed for him of the feathers from their breasts. Then they brought him a brazen bell to serve as baby's bottle, and every day the bell was filled with milk by a forest doe.

It is with bells as with all the faculties of man. They are all "very good" when used harmoniously; but the "sweet bells" can be "jangled out of tune" not only by the failure of mental power – as in the case of Hamlet – but by lack of balance and order in the moral sense.

CHAPTER VII.
The Village Inn

"I will take mine ease at mine inn!"

What an element of coziness, hospitality, picturesqueness is introduced into the village by the inn! There is another side – but that we will not consider.

I know some villages from which the squire has banished the hostelry, and poor, forlorn, half-hearted places they seem to me. If there be a side to the village inn that is undesirable, I venture to think that the advantage of having one surpasses the disadvantages. What the squire has done in closing the inn he hardly realizes. He has broken a tradition that is very ancient. He has snapped a tie with the past. In relation to quite another matter, Professor G. T. Stokes says: "History is all continuous. Just as the skilful geologist or palæontologist can reconstruct from an inspection of the strata of a quarry the animal and vegetable life of past ages, so can the historian reconstruct out of modern forms, rites, and ceremonies, often now but very shadowy and unreal, the essential and vigorous life of society as it existed ten centuries ago. History, I repeat, is continuous. The life of societies, of nations, and of churches is continuous, so that the life of the present, if rightly handled, must reveal to us much of the life of the past."⁵ So is it with the parish; and so the dear old village inn has its story of connection with the manor, and its reason for being, in remote antiquity.

I have gone to Iceland to illustrate the origin of the manor, I shall go to Tyrol to explain the beginnings of the village inn – that is to say the manorial inn with its heraldic sign, in contradistinction to the church house, with its ecclesiastical sign. Each has its history – and each derives from a separate institution.

What is the origin of signs? The earliest signs were certainly heraldic. We have still in many villages the "So-and-so Arms," with the shield of the lord of the manor emblazoned upon it with all its quarterings. Or we have the Red Lion, or the White Hart, or the Swan, all either crests or cognizances of a family, or of a sovereign or queen. The Swan sign is said to date from Anne of Cleves; the White Hart was the badge of Richard II., and inns with this sign probably were erected in that reign, and have retained this cognizance unchanged since. We know of inns under the name of the Rose, which there can be little question came into life as hostelries in the time of the Yorkists and Lancastrians. The Wheatsheaf was the Burleigh badge, the Elephant that of Beaumont, the Bull's Head was a Boleyn cognizance, the Blue Boar the badge of the De Veres, Earls of Oxford; the Green Dragon of the Earls of Pembroke, the Falcon of the Marquis of Winchester.

It does not, however, follow that the inns that have these signs date from the periods when, let us say, Anne Boleyn was queen, because they bear the token of the Bull's Head, or from the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when Burleigh was in power, because of the Wheatsheaf; for it will not infrequently be found that they take their titles and signs from a much more local origin, the coat or cognizance of the squire who holds the manor.

There was a reason for this: the inn was originally the place where the true landlord, i.e. the lord of the land, received his guests, and every traveller was his guest. In Iceland at the present day there is but one inn at Reykjavik, the capital, and that is kept by a Dane. The traveller in the island goes to any farmhouse or parsonage, and is taken in. Indeed, by law a traveller cannot be refused hospitality. When he leaves he makes a present either of money or of something else that will be valued, but this is a present, and not a payment. In many parts of Tyrol it is much the same. The excursionist is put up at the priest's house. The writer has been thus received, among other places, at Heiligkreutz, in the Oetz Thal. In the evening the room – the curé's parlour – was filled with peasants who asked for wine, and were supplied. When they left they put money in the hand of the pastor's sister, whilst he, smoking his pipe, looked out of the window. When the writer left next morning the same farce was enacted. Further up the same valley is Vent, where again the curé receives travellers, and his sister receives the payment, but there a definite charge is made; but at Heiligkreutz what was given was accepted as a present. The priests who entertain do not of course hang up signs over their doors. The pastor is supposed to be given to hospitality, and would give of his all freely and cheerfully if he could afford it; but of late years, as travellers have become more numerous, his pittance has become smaller, so that his hospitality can no longer be gratuitous.

In the old romances of chivalry we read of travellers always seeking the castle of some knight, and asking, almost demanding, lodging and entertainment.

Hospitality was a duty among the Germanic races. According to Burgundian law, the Roman who received a traveller was not allowed to do so gratis; the poorer Burgundian host was bound to pay the Roman for the keep of the traveller if he was unable to accommodate him in his own house. The honour of receiving a guest freely was too great to be conceded to a conquered people. When Theodoric with his Ostrogoths conquered Italy they were amazed at the Roman tavern system, and at the iniquity of the taverners, who had double measures, a just one for natives and an unjust one for foreigners. Why, the traveller should be treated freely, the Ostrogoth argued; and Cassiodorus, under the orders of the king, drew up laws to enforce at least honesty, if he could not bring about liberality, in the Latin osteria. We are inclined to be overhard in our judgment of the knights and barons of Germany in the Middle Ages, whose castles are perched on every commanding rock by every road and river, but we are scarcely just. It is true that there were robber knights, but so there are at all times rascals among a class, and we are wrong in supposing that every ruined keep was the nest of a robber knight. It was not so. The knights kept the roads in order, and supplied mules and horses to travellers; they also gave them free hospitality when they halted for the night. The travellers paid a small toll for the maintenance of the road, and also for the use of the horses and mules which carried them on to the next stage. On the navigable rivers the barons kept the tow-path and supplied the beasts which would drag the barges up the stream, and for this also they received, and very properly, a toll.

Here and there an ill-conditioned knight exacted more than was his due, but he was speedily reduced to order. It was to the interest of all the knights and barons along the highway to keep the communication open, and not to divert it into another channel; consequently when one member of the confraternity was exacting and troublesome the rest combined against him, or his over-lord reduced him to reason.

As the knights and barons had their castles on heights for purposes of defence, and these heights were considerable, it was not convenient for the wayfarers at the end of a toilsome journey to have to scramble up the side of a mountain to the castle of the lord to enjoy his hospitality. Accordingly they were entertained by him below in the village built on the highway. Moreover, he himself did not always inhabit the castle. It was irksome to him, and his wife and servants, to be perched on a rock like an eagle, consequently in time of peace he lived in his "town house," that is, his mansion at the foot of the hill, where he could get his provisions easily, and see the world as it flowed along the road. In an old German village there is accordingly to be found generally a somewhat stately mansion below as well as the castle above, with the same coat-of-arms carved over their doors, inhabited by the same family in past times, oscillating as circumstances required between the house and the castle.

When roads were maintained and the post-horses found by the knights and barons, they could charge for their toll enough to cover the expense of entertainment; but it is not improbable that the servant, the butler, received a present which he transmitted to his master, and which the traveller reckoned as a fair remuneration for the wine he had drunk and the meat and bread he had eaten.

The lords house could always be recognized by the shield with his arms hung up over his door, and to this day the signboard is in German "Schild." The sign was always armorial. In many a Tyrolean and in some old German inns may still be seen the coat-of-arms of the noble owner, now plain publican, carved in front of the inn, and the schild – the heraldic shield with lion, or eagle, or bear, or swan, or ape, or hare – hanging as well from a richly ornamented iron bar.

Nothing can be conceived more picturesque than the one long street of Sterzing on the Brenner Pass: the houses are old, gabled, and a considerable number of them have their stanchions of richly twisted ironwork painted and gilt, hanging out on each side over the narrow street, supporting large shields with armorial beasts. In the church may be seen the same shields on monuments, crowned with baronial coronets and knightly helmets, the tombstones of former owners and inhabitants of these houses, and also of former landlords.

As commerce increased, and the roads became better, it was impossible for the nobles to entertain freely. Moreover, the Thirty Years' War, again the Seven Years' War, and finally the Napoleonic wars, had so impoverished them that they were forced to charge for entertainment, and to derive a revenue from it.

From one cause or another they lost their land, and then sank to be mere innkeepers. This was rarely the case in Germany, but it was not uncommon in Tyrol, where to this day the hotel and tavern keepers represent the best blood in the land. They have well-attested pedigrees, of which they are proud; and they dispense hospitality, not now gratuitously, but with courtesy and kindliness, in the very houses in which their ancestors have lived for three or four hundred years, and under the sign which adorned the helmets and shields of their forefathers when they rode in tournament or battle.

At the Krone, the principal inn at Brunecken, in the Puster Thal, the staircase is adorned with the portraits of the family, containing among them prelates, and warriors, and stately ladies; and the homely Tyrolese girl in costume who attends you at table, and the quiet, simple old host and hostess are the lineal descendants of these grandees.