Lorna Doone; a romance of Exmoor ... Thirtieth edition

Preface

TO THREE VOLUME EDITION 1892 THE adventures of this book have been well-nigh as strange and manifold as those of its fair heroine. To tell them aright would have taxed the endurance, and rustic power, of John Ridd himself; though the staff of his pen were like a weaver's beam. Yet, the latest event, represented here, transcends imagination most of any, because it runs counter to the customs of the trade. Verily, whether it pays or not, here comes the book again, in triple volume ; as young as when it started thus, and blest with the courage which is not to be found in a youth that knows its value. No record shows that this has happened to any of the three volume race, till now. To my quiet self, lying humbly at the bottom, the success of this work is a paradox. Will a parable throw any light on it ?

A few days ago, I was ordered to get a nice doll for a little dear, who had earned it thoroughly — as everybody said — by almost learning her ABC. She held me by the last hair, when I wanted $rr£ate to Eijxte Œnlumc eftrttuw. more instruction ; and my painful doubts vanished with it. " Mind, it must be a pitty dolly, and a dolly that can 'peak." I hastened therefore to a mighty mart, a depot of all the leading features of the age, a perfect Sampson Low & Co. of dolls. " Please to step this way," said a smart young lady, after learning that I wanted a loquacious, or at any rate a vocal effigy ; " the talking dolls are not allowed to be among the others." That precaution seemed rational ; and I took my time, being in no great demand just now. And a long time it took — as an impresario is too well aware — to discover any candidate combining beauty with vocal powers.

At length we had a couple of sweet dolls, fit to hold conversation in the very finest novel ; and we laid them side by side across a lot of others, and then put our heads aside, to decide between them. " That is five shillings, sir ; and this a guinea," says the smart young lady, glancing at my hat, as who should have said — if etiquette permitted — " a crown is as much as you ought to spend." " But why ? " said I, being put upon my mettle, yet stroking with sincere affection the " wealth of hair " of the cheaper doll — for after all the lady was quite right, and (thanks to this blessed fruit growing fad) my pocket was chock-ful of holes alone — " why should there be all that difference ? The five-shilling one is as lovely to look at ; and preface tn Œftrrr SFnlttmr Œotttoit. what matters more for the wear and tear of life, every atom as good as her more expensive sister.

If it is not troubling you too much, why is one valued at five shillings, and the other at a guinea ? " " I see that you do not understand it, sir," said the lady, quenching me, because I had seemed so knowing. " ' Pa-pa ! ' ' Ma-ma ! ' Any doll with a valve in its back can say that. But they are worth a lot of money when they can say ' Brother ! ' "

PREFACE.

TO THE TWENTIETH EDITION. \ 1 7 HAT a lucky maid you are, my Lorna ! ' ' When first you came from the Western Moors, nobody cared to look at you ; the "lead ders of the public taste " led none of it to make test of you. Having struggled to the light of day, through obstruction and repulses, for a year and a half you shivered in the cold corner, with out a sunray. Your native land disdained your voice, and America answered " No child of mine ;" knowing how small your value was, you were glad to get your fare paid to any distant colony. Still a certain * brave man felt convinced that there was good in you, and standing by his con victions — as the English manner used to be — " She shall have another chance," he said ; " we have lost a lot of money by her ; I don't care if we lose some more. Accordingly forth you came, poor Lorna, in a simple pretty dress, small in compass, small in figure, smaller still in hope of life. 1 The late Mr. Sampson Low the younger. preface to tbe Œwcntfetb Edition.

But, oh but — let none of the many fairer ones, who fail, despond — a certain auspicious event occurred just then, and gave you golden wings. The literary public found your name akin to one which filled the air, and as graciously as royalty itself, endowed you with imaginary virtues. So grand is the luck of time and name ; failing which more solid beings melt into ob livion's depth. This you too must do, ere long ; meanwhile, be proud of success beyond merit, and rejoice yet more, that fortune showers fresh delights upon you. To shine with adornment, as a female should, to find your words made pictures of bright beauty — from pure love of you ' — and thus to venture forth, to those who will receive you kindly, through the force of habit and of nature. October, 1882. 1 This unwise lover is Mr. F. A. W. T. Armstrong of Bristol.

PREFACE.

. THIS work is called a " romance," because the incidents, characters, time, and scenery are alike romantic. And in shaping this old tale, the Writer neither dares, nor desires, to claim for it the dignity or cumber it with the difficulty of an historic novel. And yet he thinks that the outlines are filled in more carefully, and the situations (however simple) more warmly coloured and quickened, than a reader would expect to find in what is called a "legend." And he knows that any son of Exmoor, chancing on this volume, cannot fail to bring to mind the nurse-tales of his childhood — the savage deeds of the outlaw Doones in the depth of Bagworthy Forest, the beauty of the hapless maid brought up in the midst of them, the plain John Ridd's Herculean power, and (memory's too congenial food) the exploits of Tom Faggus. March, 1869. CONTENTS. PAGE

Chapter I. Elements Of Education

TF anybody cares to read a simple tale told * simply, I, John Ridd, of the parish of Oare, in the county of Somerset, yeoman and churchwarden, have seen and had a share in some doings of this neighbourhood, which I will try to set down in order, God sparing my life and memory. And they who light upon this book should bear in mind not only that I write for the clearing of our parish from ill-fame and calumny, but also a thing which will, I trow, appear too often in it, to wit — that I am nothing more than a plain, unlettered man, not read in foreign languages, as a gentleman might be, nor gifted with long words (even in mine own tongue), save what I may have won from the Bible or Master William Shakespeare, whom, in the face Xorna 2>oone. 2 of common opinion, I do value highly. In short, I am an ignoramus, but pretty well for a yeoman.

My father being of good substance, at least, as we reckon in Exmoor, and seized in his own right, from many generations, of one, and that the best and largest, of the three farms into which our parish is divided (or, rather, the cul tured part thereof), he, John Ridd the elder, churchwarden and overseer, being a great ad mirer of learning, and well able to write his name, sent me, his only son, to be schooled at Tiverton, in the county of Devon. For the chief boast of that ancient town (next to its woollen staple) is a worthy grammar-school, the largest in the West of England, founded and handsomely endowed in the year 1604 by Master Peter Blun dell, of that same place, clothier. Here, by the time I was twelve years old, I had risen into the upper school, and could make bold with Eutropius and Cæsar — by aid of an English version — and as much as six lines of Ovid.

Some even said that I might, before manhood, rise almost to the third form, being of a persevering nature ; albeit, by full consent of all (except my mother), thick-headed. But that would have been, as I now perceive, an ambition beyond a farmer's son ; for there is but one form above it, and that made of master ful scholars, entitled rightly " monitors." So it came to pass, by the grace of God, that I was called away from learning, whilst sitting at the Elements of Education. 3 desk of the junior first in the upper school, and beginning the Greek verb rimroo. My eldest grandson makes bold to say that I never could have learned cpikitso, ten pages further on, being all he himself could manage, with plenty of stripes to help him. I know that he hath more head than I — though never will he have such a body ; and am thankful to have stopped betimes, with a meek and wholesome head-piece.

But if you doubt of my having been there, because now I know so little, go and see my name, " John Ridd," graven on that very form. Forsooth, from the time I was strong enough to open a knife and to spell my name, I began to grave it in the oak, first, of the block whereon I sat, and then of the desk in front of it, according as I was promoted from one to other, of them : and there my grandson reads it now, at this present time of writing, and hath fought a boy for scoffing at it — " John Ridd his name " — and done again in "winkeys," a mischievous but cheerful device, in which we took great pleasure. This is the manner of a " winkey," which I here set down, lest child of mine, or grandchild, dare to make one on my premises ; if he does, I shall know the mark at once, and score it well upon him.

The scholar obtains, by prayer or price, a handful of salt-peter, and then with the knife, wherewith he should rather be trying to lorna Doone. 4 mend his pens, what does he do but scoop a hole where the desk is some three inches thick. This hole should be left with the middle exalted, and the circumfere dug more deeply. Then let him fill it with salt-peter, all save a little space in the midst, where the boss of the wood is. Upon that boss (and it will be the better if a splinter of timber rise upward) he sticks the end of his candle of tallow, or " rat's tail," as we called it, kindled and burning smoothly. Anon, as he reads by that light his lesson, lifting his eyes now and then it may be, the fire of candle lays hold of the peter with a spluttering noise and a leaping. Then should the pupil seize his pen, and, regardless of the nib, stir bravely, and he will see a glow as of burning mountains, and a rich smoke, and sparks going merrily ; nor will it cease, if he stir wisely, and there be good store of peter, until the wood is devoured through, like the sinking of a well-shaft.

Now well may it go with the head of a boy intent upon his primer, who betides to sit thereunder ! But, above all things, have good care to exercise this art before the master strides up to his desk, in the early grey of the morning. Other customs, no less worthy, abide in the school of Blundell, such as the singeing of night caps ; but though they have a pleasant savour, and refreshing to think of, I may not stop to note them, unless it be that goodly one at the incoming of a flood. The school-house stands Elements of Education. 5 beside a stream, not very large, called "Low man," which flows into the broad river of Exe, about a mile below. This Lowman stream, although it be not fond of brawl and violence (in the manner of our Lynn), yet is wont to flood into a mighty head of waters when the storms of rain provoke it ; and most of all when its little co-mate, called the " Taunton brook," — where I have plucked the very best cresses that ever man put salt on, — comes foaming down like a great roan horse, and rears at the leap of the hedge-rows.

Then are the grey stone walls of Blundell on every side encompassed, the vale is spread over with looping waters, and it is a hard thing for the day-boys to get home to their suppers. And in that time, the porter, old Cop (so called because he hath copper boots to keep the wet from his stomach, and a nose of copper also, in right of other waters), his place it is to stand at the gate, attending to the flood-boards grooved into one another, and so to watch the torrents rise, and not be washed away, if it please God he may help it. But long ere the flood hath attained this height, and while it is only waxing, certain boys of deputy will watch at the stoop of the drain-holes, and be apt to look outside the walls, when Cop is taking a cordial. And in the very front of the gate, just without the arch way, where the ground is paved most handsomely, you may see in copy-letters done a Xorna 2>oone. 6 great P. B. of white pebbles.

Now it is the custom and the law that when the invading waters, either fluxing along the wall from below the road-bridge, or pouring sharply across the meadows from a cut called " Owen's ditch," — and I myself have seen it come both ways, — upon the very instant when the waxing element lips though it be but a single pebble of the founder's letters, it is in the licence of any boy, soever small and undoctrined, to rush into the great school-rooms, where a score of masters sit heavily, and scream at the top of his voice, " P. B. ! " Then, with a yell, the boys leap up, or break away from their standing ; they toss their caps to the black-beamed roof, and haply the very books after them ; and the great boys vex no more the small ones, and the small boys stick up to the great ones. One with another, hard they go, to see the gain of the waters, and the tribulation of Cop, and are prone to kick the day-boys out, with words of scanty compliment.

Then the masters look at one another, having no class to look to, and (boys being no more left to watch) in a manner they put their mouths up. With a spirited bang they close their books, and make invitation the one to the other for pipes and foreign cordials, recommending the chance of the time, and the comfort away from cold water. But, lo ! I am dwelling on little things and an "Important Utem. 7 the pigeons' eggs of infancy, forgetting the bit ter and heavy life gone over me since then. If I am neither a hard man nor a very close one, God knows I have had no lack of rubbing and pounding to make stone of me. Yet can I not somehow believe that we ought to hate one another, to live far asunder, and block the mouth each of his little den; as do the wild beasts of the wood, and the hairy outangs now brought over, each with a chain upon him.

Let that matter be as it will. It is beyond me to unfold, and mayhap of my grandson's grandson. All I know is that wheat is better than when I began to sow it.

Chapter II. An Important Item

]\|OW the cause of my leaving Tiverton school, * * and the way of it, were as follows. On the 29th day of November, in the year of our Lord 1673, the very day when I was twelve years old, and had spent all my substance in sweetmeats, with which I made treat to the little boys, till the large boys ran in and took them, we came out of school at five o'clock, as the rule is upon Tuesdays. According to custom, we drove the day-boys in brave rout down the causeway from the school-porch even to the gate where Cop has his dwelling and duty. Little it recked us and Xorna ©oone. helped them less, that they were our founder's citizens, and haply his own grandnephews (for he left no direct descendants), neither did we much inquire what their lineage was. For it had long been fixed among us, who were of the house and chambers, that these same day-boys were all " caddes," as we had discovered to call it, because they paid no groat for their school ing, and brought their own commons with them.

In consumption of these we would help them, for our fare in hall-fed appetite ; and while we ate their victuals we allowed them freely to talk to us. Nevertheless, we could not feel, when all the victuals were gone, but that these boys required kicking from the premises of Blundell. And some of them were shopkeepers' sons, young grocers, fellmongers, and poulterers, and these, to their credit, seemed to know how righteous it was to kick them. But others were of high family, as any need be, in Devon — Ca rews, and Bouchiers, and Bastards, and some of these would turn sometimes, and strike the boy that kicked them. But to do them justice, even these knew that they must be kicked for not paying. After these " charity-boys " were gone, as in contumely we called them — " If you break my bag on my head," said one, " whence will you dine, to-morrow ?

" — and after old Cop with clang of iron had jammed the double gates in under the scruff-stone archway, whereupon are an important stem. 9 Latin verses, done in brass of small quality, some of us who were not hungry, and cared not for the supper-bell, having sucked much parlia ment and dumps at my only charges — not that I ever bore much wealth, but because I had been thrifting it for this time of my birth — we were leaning quite at dusk against the iron bars of the gate, some six, or it may be seven, of us, small boys all, and not conspicuous in the clos ing of the daylight and the fog that came at eventide, else Cop would have rated us up the green, for he was churly to little boys when his wife had taken their money. There was plenty of room for all of us, for the gate will hold nine boys close-packed, unless they be fed rankly, whereof is little danger ; and now we were looking out on the road and wishing we could get there ; hoping, moreover, to see a good string of pack-horses come by, with troopers to protect them.

For the day-boys had brought us word that some intending their way to the town had lain that morning at Sampford Peveril, and must be in ere nightfall, because Mr. Faggus was after them. Now Mr. Faggus was my first cousin, and an honour to the family, being a Northmolton man of great renown on the high way from Barum town even to London. There fore, of course, I hoped that he would catch the packmen, and the boys were asking my opinion, as of an oracle, about it. A certain boy leaning up against me would not allow my elbow room, and struck me very sadly in the stomach part, though his own was full of my parliament. And this I felt so un kindly, that I smote him straightway in the face without tarrying to consider it, or weighing the question duly. Upon this he put his head down, and presented it so vehemently at the middle of my waistcoat, that for a minute or more my breath seemed dropped, as it were, from my pockets, and my life seemed to stop from great want of ease.

Before I came to myself again it had been settled for us that we should move to the " Ironing-box," as the triangle of turf is called where the two causeways coming from the school-porch and the hall-porch meet, and our fights are mainly celebrated ; only we must wait until the convoy of horses had passed, and then make a ring by candlelight, and the other boys would like it. But suddenly there came round the post where the letters of our founder are, not from the way of Taunton, but from the side of Lowman bridge, a very small string of horses, only two indeed (counting for one the pony), and a red-faced man on the bigger nag. "Plaise ye, worshipful maisters," he said, being feared of the gateway, " cam 'e tull whur our Jan Ridd be ? " " Hyur a be, ees fai, Jan Ridd," answered a sharp little chap, making game of John Fry's language.

" Zhow un up, then," says John Fry, poking his whip through the bars at us ; " zhow un up, and putt un aowt." The other little chaps pointed at me, and some began to holla ; but I knew what I was about. " Oh, John, John," I cried, " what 's the use of your coming now, and Peggy over the moors, too, and it so cruel cold for her ? The holidays don't begin till Wednesday fortnight, John. To think of your not knowing that ! " John Fry leaned forward in the saddle, and turned his eyes away from me ; and then there was a noise in his throat like a snail crawling on a window-pane. " Oh, us knaws that wull enough, Maister Jan ; reckon every Oare-man knaw that without go to skoo-ull, like you doth. Your moother have kept arl the apples up, and old Betty toorned the black puddens, and none dare set trap for a blagbird.

Arl for thee, lad ; every bit of it now for thee ! " He checked himself suddenly, and frightened me. I knew that John Fry's way so well. " And father, and father — oh, how is father ? " I pushed the boys right and left as I said it. " John, is father up in town ? He always used to come for me, and leave nobody else to do it." " Vayther '11 be at the crooked post, t' other zide o' telling-house.* Her coodn't lave 'ouze * The "telling-houses" on the moor are rude cots where the shepherds meet to ' ' tell " their sheep at the end of the pasturing season. by raison of the Chirstmas bakkon comin' on, and zome o' the cider welted." He looked at the nag's ears as he said it ; and, being up to John Fry's ways, I knew that it was a lie. And my heart fell like a lump of lead, and I leaned back on the stay of the gate, and longed no more to fight any body.

A sort of dull power hung over me, like the cloud of a brooding tempest, and I feared to be told anything. I did not even care to stroke the nose of my pony Peggy, although she pushed it in through the rails, where a square of broader lattice is, and sniffed at me, and began to crop gently after my fingers. But whatever lives or dies, business must be attended to ; and the principal business of good Christians is, beyond all controversy, to fight with one another. " Come up, Jack," said one of the boys, lifting me under the chin ; " he hit you, and you hit him, you know." " Pay your debts before you go," said a mon itor, striding up to me, after hearing how the honour lay ; " Ridd, you must go through with it." " Fight, for the sake of the junior first," cried the little fellow in my ear, the clever one, the head of our class, who had mocked John Fry, and knew all about the aorists, and tried to make me know it ; but I never went more than three places up, and then it was an accident, and I came down after dinner.

The boys were urgent round me to fight, though my stomach was not up for it ; and being very slow of wit (which is not chargeable on me), I looked from one to other of them, seeking any cure for it. Not that I was afraid of fighting, for now I had been three years at Blundell's, and foughten, all that time, a fight at least once every week, till the boys began to know me ; only, that the load on my heart was not sprightly as of the hay-field. It is a very sad thing to dwell on ; but even now, in my time of wisdom, I doubt it is a fond thing to imagine, and a motherly to insist upon, that boys can do without fighting. Unless they be very good boys, and afraid of one another. " Nay," I said, with my back against the wrought-iron stay of the gate, which was sock eted into Cop's house-front ; " I will not fight thee now, Robin Snell, but wait till I come back again."

" Take coward's blow, Jack Ridd, then," cried half-a-dozen little boys, shoving Bob Snell for ward to do it ; because they all knew well enough, having striven with me ere now, and proved me to be their master — they knew, I say, that without great change I would never accept that contumely. But I took little heed of them, looking in dull wonderment at John Fry, and Smiler, and the blunderbuss, and Peggy. John Fry was scratching his head, I could see, and getting blue in the face, by the light from Cop's parlourwindow, and goin g to and fro upon Smiler, as if he were hard set with it. And all the time he was looking briskly from my eyes to the fist I was clinching, and methought he tried to wink at me in a covert manner ; and then Peggy whisked her tail. " Shall I fight, John ? " I said at last ; " I would an you had not come, John."

" Chraist's will be done ; I zim thee had bet ter faight, Jan," he answered, in a whisper, through the gridiron of the gate ; " there be a dale of faighting avore thee. Best wai to begin gude taime laike. Wull the geatman latt me in, to zee as thee hast vair plai, lad ?" He looked doubtfully down at the colour of his cowskin boots, and the mire upon the horses, for the sloughs were exceeding mucky. Peggy, indeed, my sorrel pony, being lighter of weight, was not crusted much over the shoulders ; but Smiler (our youngest sledder) had been well in over his withers, and none would have deemed him a piebald, save of red mire and black mire. The great blunderbuss, moreover, was choked with a dollop of slough-cake ; and John Fry's sad-coloured Sunday hat was indued with a plume of marish-weed. All this I saw while he was dismounting, heavily and wearily, lifting his leg from the saddle-cloth as if with a sore crick in his back.

By this time the question of fighting was gone quite out of our own discretion ; for sundry of the elder boys, grave and reverend signors, who had taken no small pleasure in teaching our hands to fight, to ward, to parry, to feign and counter, to lunge in the manner of sword-play, and the weaker child to drop on one knee when no cunning of fence might baffle the onset — these great masters of the art, who would far liefer see us little ones practice it than them selves engage, six or seven of them came running down the rounded causeway, having heard that there had arisen " a snug little mill " at the gate. Now whether that word hath origin in a Greek term meaning a conflict, as the best-read boys asseverated, or whether it is nothing more than a figure of similitude, from the beating arms of a mill — such as I have seen in counties where are no waterbrooks, but folk make bread with wind — it is not for a man devoid of scholarship to determine.

Enough that they who made the ring intituled the scene a " mill," while we who must be thumped inside it tried to rejoice in their pleasantry, till it turned upon the stomach. Moreover, I felt upon me now a certain re sponsibility, a dutiful need to maintain, in the presence of John Fry, the manliness of the Ridd family, and the honor of Exmoor. Hitherto none had worsted me, although in the three years of my schooling I had fought more than threescore battles, and bedewed with blood every plant of grass towards the middle of the Ironing-box. And this success I owed at first to no skill of my own, until I came to know better ; for up to twenty or thirty fights, I struck as nature guided me, no wiser than a father long-legs in the heat of a lantern ; but I had conquered, partly through my native strength, and the Exmoor toughness in me, and still more that I could not see when I had gotten my bellyful.