For besides King Arthur, and Lancelot du lake,

ST. GEORGE FOR ENGLAND.

 THE FIRST PART. I 

(Tills ballad is given from an old black-letter copy in the Pepys collection.] | 

W h y doe you boast o f Arthur and his knightes, 

Knowing ‘ well ’ how many men have endured fightes ? 

For besides King Arthur, and Lancelot du lake, I 

)r Sir Tristram de Lionel, that fought for ladies sake;

 It cad in old histories, and there you shall see I low St. George,

 St. George the dragon made to flee, hi, George he was for England;

 St. Dennis was for France j

 Sing, IToni soit qui mat y pense. 

Mark our father Abraham, when first he resckued Lot I inely with his household, what conquest there he got:

 I hivid was elected a prophet and a king, I le slew the great Goliah, with a stone within a sling :

 Vet these were not knightes of the table round; I Nor St. George, St. George, who the dragon did confound. Ill, George he was for England ; St. Dennis was for France ; 

Sing, Honi soit qui mal y pense. 

.biphthah and Gideon did lead their men to fight,

 I hey conquered the Amorites, and put them all to flight I (ercules his labours ‘ were ’ on the plaines of Basse;

 J And Sampson slew a thousand with the jawbone of an asse,

 * Suffer.

4000 years

(1)

Dartmoor is an area unequalled in Southern Britain for its collection of visible remains of human occupation covering some 4000 years.

The preservation of these remains has been due to their existence in a large area of high moorland, but little disturbed by later agricultural or other activities, that involve the breaking of the soil.

The nearest comparable collection is on the western slopes of the mountain mass of Merioneth in North Wales.

But Dartmoor, which lies nearer to the Continent from which successive groups of settlers came, is likely to yield the more valuable information.

Scientific study requires that the area be considered as a whole.

Irreparable damage has already been done in the part farther north, including the Tavy Valley, and it is therefore the more necessary to preserve what remains. (2) The Plym valley is one of the richest areas in the whole of Dartmoor in respect of antiquities. Detailed evidence is being Submitted on behalf of the Council of British Archaeology and the Devon Archaeological Exploration Society.

Their schedule and map list over 60 sites of pre-Roman date.

one willing to murder flowers and behead wild rosebuds

Trippers ready to believe that their name denotes: a rider in bangs, a litter distributor, one willing to murder flowers and behead wild rosebuds with paper streamers: not “one who walks nimbly, or dances with light feet.” Motor horns seem to be “The passing bell, also called the soul bell, ” sounding the knell of better days. 

Country Contentments 
STO LEN goods are sweetest when a title is needed for extracts from the “ Cunynge Curiosities” of 10th- to 18th-century writers; books “wherein, thou o Reader (if thou canst but read) art sure to finde abundance and plenty of matters most dainty.” Gervase Markham, the author of 16th-century Country Contentments, writes, like Sir Hugh Platt in The Garden of Eden, “to the pleasuring of others,” and title thief though I am, I can not feel that kindly Master Markham grudges me my stolen heading. “ I shall not blush to tell you I had some ambition to publish this book” for the “ pleasing” of “ all Gentlemen and Ladies and others delighting in God’s vegetable creatures.” 
“When the greate books at large are not to be had but at greate price,” or after hours of search in ancient libraries, many modern readers must be denied access to the “Truths and Mysteries” early writers deemed all important, and occasionally, as Platt says, “rolled up in the most cloudy and darksome speech” after having“wrung them from the earth by the painfull hand of experience for your good entertainment.” Surely in a world which pessimists insist is being given over to the devil all should hear of a reliable Anglo-Saxon Salve against “Temptations of the Fiend”? A famous politician begged for the inclusion of a “Leechdom against a man full of elfin tricks,” and suggested that certain citizens of the U.S.A. would welcome “A lithe soft drink against a devil and dementedness,” and might not Scotland Yard consider the possibilities of a prescription said to be infallible “If any evil tempting occur to a man” ? Such simple remedies, brewed, pounded or devised from garden herbes— “honest wortes,” mingled with Holy water, prayers, and flowers whose very names bring healing:— Love o’ the ground, All healand True Love, 
Mothers wort and Queen of the Meadows. As for a salve wherewith to anoint the forehead against visits from “Elf or goblin night visitors,” our nurseries still need it, while an ointment inducing Elves to return and restore our lost childish faith in them would be of even greater value to some of us. 2


Miss Rohde in her exquisite Garden of Herbs quotes a 16th-century receipt 

“ To enable one to see the fairies,” 
a charm I never saw written down, 
though one very similar was told me over thirty years ago by an old woman in the West Country.
 As in Miss Rohde’s version,
 Rosewater and Marigold water, herbs and flowers gathered to the East, played their part, but first in importance
           — or perhaps first in my memory— was, thyme and grass from a fairy ring.
 I often wanted to test its magical properties, but never succeeded in waking at dawn. 

According to my informer, dawn, or just before set of full moon, was the correct hour at which to make one’s first bow to the little unseen folk. 

At that time of my life the inner wonder of her beliefs and friendship with the fairies— which none of her neighbours seemed to doubt— was just as it should be, and nothing much out of the ordinary. 

Now, when I could better appreciate it and have no unsympathetic nursemaid to scoff at pleadings to be allowed a hedgehog in bed to keep me awake on important business, the old lady sleeps forever, and the wood where she said the fairies could be found was cut down in 1916. 
To have missed collecting all the details for preparing such a truly content-giving charm still makes me “monstrous melancholy” ; old adjectives, “prodigious,” “vastly,” and their like, express better than modern words the seriousness of such a loss.
 The loss of enjoyment and belief in ancient charms and customs, not to mention courtesies, has spread like a pest amongst country-folk since Trippers “boomswisshed” into their midst, 

Trippers ready to believe that their name denotes: a rider in bangs, a litter distributor, one willing to murder flowers and behead wild rosebuds with paper streamers: not “one who walks nimbly, or dances with light feet.” Motor horns seem to be “The passing bell, also called the soul bell, ” sounding the knell of better days. 
The above paragraph was gently censored by one with a knowledge of “ Gardens and their Godly treasure to be found therein” that ranks him kin to Thomas Hill, who wrote as finale to The Profitable Art of Gardening, “The favour of God be with thee always.”
 At his suggestion I add a quotation from Grose: 4
“ The passing Bell was antiently rung for two purposes, one to bespeak the Prayers of all good Christians for a Soul just departing; the other to drive away evil Spirits who stood at the Bed’s foot, and about the House, ready to seize their prey, or at least to molest and terrify the Soul in its passage: but by the ringing of that Bell (for Durandus informs us Evil Spirits are much afraid of Bells) they were kept aloof and the Soul like a hunted Hare gained the start or what is by Sportsmen called Law.” Even if many of the old Contentments are gone beyond recall, we can, as he says, loudly “ring the funerall peale” over such fiendish customs as the games of “Mumble Sparrow” and “Cat in Bottle”— inflicting intense suffering on helpless animals.
 The charm and sheer word magic of most of the old writers incline one to forget that the Country Contentments of our ancestors generally were balanced by discontentments.


 The New Art and Mystery of Gossiping and early issues of The Tatler and Spectator hint that 17th- and 18th-century Housewives were faced with difficulties similar to the troubles of a Maisonette wife or Flat-wife of to-day. 5