Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood Part 34

{31} The above lists are, of course, only selections. Indeed, on the occasion to which the last list refers, one of the party produced a series of water-colour paintings of wild flowers which are found in the neighbourhood, beautifully executed by Dr. Burgess, of Spilsby, and numbering about 500.

{32} In speaking of the silene quinque vulneralis, on a previous page, I said that there was no absolute reason why it should not re-appear in the garden of the Victoria Hotel. The holy thistle is a case in point.

Several years ago seeing that it was being steadily exterminated, and that the end was inevitably near, the writer transplanted a root to his own garden. It flourished there through two seasons, but was eventually, by mistake, "improved" away, when the garden beds were being dug over.

To his surprise, some years after, a vigorous plant of it was found growing in his kitchen garden among the potatoes. Alas! That also has now gone the way of all thistle flesh.

{33} "Bage" is an old Lincolns.h.i.+re word meaning a sod. In the overseer's accounts of the neighbouring parish of Roughton occurs this entry twice in the year 1707: "2s. 6d. paid for one day's work of church moor bages"; _i.e._, peat cut for fuel.

{34a} The birch trees of the neighbourhood, with their silvery bark and light and elegant foliage have been very much reduced in numbers, as the wood is used for "clogs" in the manufacturing districts of Yorks.h.i.+re and elsewhere.

{34b} There is a "Pyewipe" Inn at Lincoln, and Pyewipe Hall, near Kirton-in-Lindsey.

{34c} This may seem to the ordinary uninitiated mind to be a stretch of the imagination; but if we are to believe Mr. Cornish, the old practised gunners on our coasts, who make the cries of our wild fowl a life-long study can almost understand them as well as human speech. See "Animals, their Life and Conversation," by C. J. Cornish.

{34d} They also frequented other moorlands in the north of the county, in the neighbourhood of Market Rasen and Caistor.

{35} The writer has enjoyed the privilege (often a welcome relief from hard literary, and other labours) of shooting over this ground for more than a quarter of a century, having known it for double that period. His father-in-law had it before him; a genuine sportsman of the old type, being one of a trio, who clung to the last, even far into the seventies, to the old flint gun-the late General Hall, of Sixmile Bottom, near Newmarket, being the second, and I believe the famous sportsman, Sir Richard Sutton, the third, two of whose guns became the property of my father-in-law. Only one man was left in the kingdom who made the flints.

A grand weapon was a genuine "flint" of old "Joe" Manton; with plenty of metal, a hard hitter, and often equally serviceable when converted into a breech-loader. Its only drawbacks were, that the exposure of the powder rendered it uncertain in damp weather; and the slowness of ignition; but this latter, to a sportsman who had known no other "arm of precision,"

was little hindrance, and naturally, entered into his calculations whenever he pulled trigger.

{36a} The writer, from one cause or another, has probably had a unique experience of shooting in the neighbourhood of Woodhall and elsewhere.

To say nothing of shooting in nine other counties, he at one time shot over the whole of the Kirkstead estate. During the absence from home of the late owner of the Woodhall estate, T. J. Stafford Hotchkin, Esq., when residing abroad, he, with a friend, shot over all Woodhall. Within the nineties, he, with two others, rented the greater part of the Woodhall shooting for three years. He has shot, at one time or another, in more than 50 parishes in the county. _Tempora Mutantur_. Probably hard times have had an astringent effect on the hospitality of the shooting fraternity.

{36b} I quote from a poem, long ago out of print, written by Richard Ellison, Esq. (of Boultham), ent.i.tled "Kirkstead, or the Pleasures of Shooting," and published in 1837; the proceeds of its sale to be given to the funds of a fancy fair held in aid of Lincoln County Hospital.

{38} Another anecdote of the said keeper may here be given, which is amusing. Soon after the above incident he gave notice to quit his place, in order (as he said) to better himself. He had often heard me descant on the charms of grouse shooting and deer-stalking, and he came to me to ask me to help him to a situation in Scotland. I got him the post of keeper on a large moor on the sh.o.r.es of Loch Ness. He was a man with a big head, a bulky body, and with rather weak bandy legs (not unlike many a sketch in "Punch"), and though a good English keeper, and able to stride along through the turnips, in a level country like our own, he was not adapted for mountaineering. One season in the Highlands cooled his ardour, and the very next year he called on me again, being out of place.

"Well," I asked my friend, "how is it you're here again"? "To tell you the truth, sir," he replied, "I could not stand those barelegged Highland gillies. [N.B.-He had, himself, no fine calves to show.] They were always a-laughing at me. And their gaelic was worse than Latin and Greek. You'll never catch me in Scotland again." We can picture to ourselves the bandy legs bearing the unwieldly body up a steep brae side; stumbling over loose stones, struggling through the tall heather, till breathless he would pause, while the agile gillies would, chuckling, leave him behind; pause and ponder with the conclusion not slowly arrived at, "What a fool I was to leave Woodhall for work like this." The Sa.s.senach was indeed out of his element on the Scotch hills. He took my advice; picked up a wife half his own age, and now keeps a country public-house, where he can recount his Scotch and other adventures at the bar.

{39} This is also confirmed by a writer in the "Naturalist," of 1895, p.

67. He says the bird "is very erratic in its nesting habits." He has found its egg in a pheasant's nest, and in two cases the egg laid on the bare ground. Only last season I myself found an egg lying without any nest.

{40} This peculiar protective property is not confined to the partridge, but seems to apply to game birds generally. The keeper on the Woodhall shooting reported to me, on one occasion, that a pheasant had nested close to a footpath, where she was certain to be disturbed, and asked permission to take the eggs to hatch under one of his hens. Mr. E. M.

Cole reports in the "Naturalist" of 1892, p. 182, _Phasia.n.u.s Colchicus_ nest of seven or eight eggs "found May 6th, on the road margin." Mr. J.

Watson, in his book "Sylvan Folk," says: "A party of ornithologists were trying to get a specimen of the ptarmigan in breeding plumage, but failed up to luncheon time. Sitting down, the lunch was unstrapped from a pony, and a strap fell on a ptarmigan, sitting, actually, under the pony. On another occasion a dog sat down upon the hen ptarmigan, which it had not discovered in the middle of the party."-"Sylvan Folk," p. 147, Fisher Unwin, 1889.

{42} The writer once witnessed a fight in the air between a kite and a heron. Hearing a confused sound of harsh cries overhead, he looked up, and soon caught sight of two large birds wheeling round and round, each apparently doing its utmost to get above the other. The two, however, were very evenly matched, for, whereas the kite had its strong beak and talons, deadly weapons for seizing and rending when at close quarters, and could make a powerful swoop at his prey-the heron, though an awkward bird in the air, and ungainly in its movements, had yet its long, sharp, bill, with which it could receive its enemy as it were "at point of bayonet," and even transfix him, should he make a reckless onset. Again and again, when the kite succeeded in getting uppermost, he would make a rapid downward swoop upon the heron; but as he neared the latter, he was forced swiftly to turn aside, to avoid being pierced through by the long bill. This went on for a considerable time, the two birds by turns surmounting each other, until they were lost to view in a cloud; and as to which ultimately gained the day, "witness deponeth not."

As Mary Howitt prettily says;-

Up, up into the skies, Thy strenuous pinions go; While shouts, and cries, and wondering eyes Still reach thee from below.

But higher and higher, like a spirit of fire, Still o'er thee hangs thy foe; Thy cruel foe, still seeking With one down-plunging aim To strike thy precious life For ever from thy frame; But doomed, perhaps, as down he darts, Swift as the rustling wind, Impaled upon thy upturned beak, To leave his own behind.

TO THE HERON

{44a} The writer, when the sport of hawking was revived some 40 years ago by the late Mr. Barr, witnessed several trials of his hawks, and himself tried hawking with the sparrow-hawk on a small scale. A great friend of his took up the sport at one time, and spent a good deal of money on it in securing good birds and well trained; but it almost invariably resulted in their getting away. Failing to kill his quarry, the bird would fly wildly about in search of it, thus getting beyond recall, and so would eventually go off and resume its wild habits. After losing a hawk for some days, the writer has caught sight of it again, called it, and swung his "lure" in the air to attract it. The hawk has come and fluttered about him, almost within arm's length, but carefully eluded being taken; and so, after a little playful dalliance, has flown away again.

{44b} Lord Lilford, the great naturalist, states that a pair of owls, with their adult progeny, will, in three months, rid the land of no less than 10,000 vermin; and Frank Buckland states that he found the remains of 20 dead rats in one owl's nest.

{45} Among his various pets the writer has tried to keep owls, but not with success. On one occasion he brought home two young birds, taken from a nest on the moor. They were put into an empty pigeon-cote. The next morning they were found dead, with their claws, in fatal embrace, buried deep in each other's eyes. At another time he reared a couple, and got them fairly tame. They were allowed to go out at night to forage for themselves. But on one occasion, for the delectation of some visitors, he turned them out in the afternoon before dusk, and (presumably), taking offence at the affront put upon them, they never returned to their quarters. For a time he heard them in the dusk, and when he called they would even hover about him, uttering a low kind of purr but keeping carefully out of his reach.

{46a} The writer on Jan. 7, 1899, walking along a footpath, saw a pedlar who was meeting him, suddenly stop, and poke out a sort of bundle from the hedge-bottom with is stick. On coming up to him he asked what he had got. The reply was "One of the varmints that kill the ducks"; _i.e._, hedgehog. On his saying that he did not believe that the creature did anything of the kind, the pedlar replied, rather indignantly, that he knew an instance where a hedgehog had killed 20 ducks in a night. While, however, claiming for the hedgehog, mainly an insect, or vegetable diet, we are aware that it is open to the soft impeachment, that it does not object, like some of its betters, to an occasional "poached egg," whether of duck, chicken, or partridge; and cases are on record of its being caught in flagrante delicto, as mentioned by Mr. E. L. Arnold, in his _Bird Life in England_.

{46b} The term "sewer" does not at all imply that this stream was ever used for sewerage purposes. It is a survival from old times, once meaning a drain or water course. Commissioners of sewers were appointed by Henry VIII. under the "Statute of Sewers." But the same bucolic mind which can see in the most graceful church tower in the kingdom "Boston _Stump_," gives the name of "Sewer" to a stream pellucid enough to be a fount of Castaly.

{47} There are several other birds occasionally about Woodhall, but they can hardly be counted among the regular denizens of the district. The curlew has recently been seen during a whole season, doubtless nesting somewhere in the neighbourhood, though the nest has not been found. The Green Sand-piper (_Tota.n.u.s Octaopus_) frequents some of our ponds, but only as a bird of pa.s.sage; the writer has occasionally shot them. The Razorbill (_Alca Torda_) is sometimes blown inland to us. A specimen was caught a few years ago, in an exhausted state, by some boys in Woodhall, and brought to the writer. A Little Auk (_Alca Arctica_) was caught under similar circ.u.mstances some years ago. A specimen of the Scoter, or Surf-Duck (_Oidemia perspicillata_), was brought to him, exhausted, but alive. He took care of it, and fed it. It recovered, and eventually regained its freedom, and was seen no more. Two stuffed specimens of that rare bird, the Ruff and Reeve, may be seen at the house of Mr.

Charles Fixter, farmer, within three fields of the Bathhouse, Woodhall.

They were shot by a Woodhall keeper, at Huttoft, near the sea coast.

{49} In connection with this decoy, it may be added that, in order to prevent the wild ducks being disturbed, no shooting was allowed anywhere near it. There was a large rabbit warren close by, where a peculiar kind of wild rabbit, black with silver hairs, bred in great numbers. These, as they could not be shot, were caught in large deep pits with trap doors. The skins were exported to Prussia, to make busbies for the soldiers, while the bodies were sent to Hull market. For the entertainment of sporting readers, it may be further mentioned that the relative and his son were "crack" shots. The old gentleman rode a shooting-pony, and fired from his thigh, instead of from the shoulder. A wager was, on one occasion, laid between father and son as to which would miss his game first. They each fired 18 shots before a miss occurred.

Which of the two was the defaulter, the writer "deponeth not"; but in either case it was not a bad score. Sir John Astley, in his autobiography, mentions that when he was invalided home from the Crimea, having been wounded in the neck, he, for some time, could not get his arm up, and shot from the thigh, and managed to kill his rabbits. In the case of my relative long practice had made perfect.

{53a} Mr. A. E. Pease, M.P., in his volume "Hunting Reminiscences, 1898," in a chapter on badger hunting, says: "In countries where mange in foxes has become a scourge, the preservation of badgers would do much to remove this plague, for they are wonderful cleansers of earths."

{53b} It is to be hoped that the cruel sport of badger baiting is no longer indulged in, although not many years ago (1888), there appeared in the columns of the "Exchange and Mart," the following advertis.e.m.e.nt: "Very fine large badger and baiting cage, in good condition; price 20s."

{54a} Badger hunting, a more legitimate sport, is still carried on in a few rare instances. A friend of the writer, for several years, kept badger hounds in Gloucesters.h.i.+re, where these animals, are still fairly numerous, and the writer still possesses the skin of a badger killed by his hounds. A variety of hounds are used for this sport. There is the "smell dog" to track the quarry by his trail left in the previous night; the pack of more ordinary dogs to hunt him, and the plucky, smaller dog, who "draws" him from his retreat. It takes a good dog to beard the badger.

{54b} "Nature Notes, vol. v., 1894, p. 98."

{55a} The late Mr. E. R. Alston, F.Z.S., Selbourne Magazine Vol. ii., p.

169.

{55b} Mr. W. Cartmell. Ibidem.

{55c} The Rev. E. Adrian Woodruffe-Peac.o.c.k, F.L.S., F.G.S., secretary of the Lincolns.h.i.+re Naturalists' Union, has a.s.sured me, that, seeing a pike lying dead on the river bank, with the shoulder eaten away in the above manner, he has watched it for two days, but the otter never returned.

And Mr. H. C. Hey, Derwent House, West Ayrton, York, mentions a similar case. ("The Naturalist," 1895, p. 106). While a writer in _The Globe_ (April 30, 1896) says that he has seen half-a-dozen bream dead on a river bank, from not one of which has the otter taken more than this one bite.

{55d} See again Nature Notes, quoted above.

{56} To shew that the writer is not "speaking without book" in calling this neighbourhood a stronghold of Reynard in former years, it is sufficient to quote two or three of the entries in the accounts of the Parish Overseer of Woodhall, still preserved in the chest at Woodhall Church.

s. d.

"1806, March 30.-Needham's boy for a 0 1 0 fox

"1806, April 6.-Paid for foxes 0 16 3

"1814, April 11.-Paid for foxes 1 12 2"

The slaughter of foxes, even in the 19th century, was thus remunerated at the rate of 1s. each; yet, in Woodhall, they would seem to have been so plentiful, that for such services, with other incidental expenses (such, probably, as traps, &c.), as much as 1 12s. 2d. was paid in one year.

Since those days, there has been a reaction in public sentiment. _Nous avons change tout cela_, and instead of putting a price on Reynard's _head_, we value his _brush_, and give him general protection.

{57} This is confirmed by the late Sir John Astley, who states that, as a boy, he often gave wood-pigeons, rabbits, and rats to a litter of fox cubs, kept by their keeper within a wire fence, and they almost invariably preferred the rat.-"Fifty Years of My Life," by Sir J. Astley.

Vol. i., p. 245.

{61} "Hinerarium," vol. vi., p. 58, 1710.

{62a} Part of the Glebe of Kirkby-on-Bain.