The Scouring of the White Horse

“This is his tail,” said Joe. “Come on; look, they’re scouring him up above; we’re in luck – I thought they’d have done before this; and there’s the Squire too with ’em.”

So I looked up; and there, some way above, I saw a lot of men with shovels, and besoms, and barrows, cleaning away at the trench, which, now that I began to look at it, certainly came out more and more like a horse galloping; and there amongst them, working away as hard as any one, was a person in yellow leather gaiters, who I saw at once must be the Squire, though I had never seen a squire before. I own I had a great prejudice against a country squire when I went down into Berkshire; which was natural enough, you see, because I had never been farther from town than Twickenham (except by boat to Margate), and had belonged to a debating society near Farringdon-market ever since I left school, where we take in three liberal papers, and once a week have as good speaking as they get in the House of Commons. I haven’t been to the debates much lately, myself; but when I was an active member, we used to have a regular go in about once a quarter at the unpaid magistracy. How we did give it them! They were bloated aristocrats, who by the time they were thirty had drunk out all the little brains they ever had, and spent their time in preserving and killing game and foxes at the expense of the farmers, and sending every good man in their villages either to the Bastile (as we called the workhouse), as a pauper, or to the county jail as a poacher.

Joe and I very nearly quarrelled over one of those debates to which I took him, like a great gaby as I was, when he came up to see me at the time of a cattle-show. He would get up to speak, all I could do to stop him; and began, all red in the face, pitching into one of our best speakers who had just finished, calling him a cockney, and asking him what right he had to jaw about squires when he talked about a fox’s ears and tail, and didn’t know mangold-wurzel from swedes. And then all our fellows began to shout and hiss, and Joe began to swear, and wanted to take his coat off, and fight all who had spoken; “one down, and t’other come on,” as he said. I got him out and took him home; but his blood was up, and he would go on at our Society, and call us a set of quill-driving jackanapes. And I couldn’t stand that, so I began at the landed interest, and said all the bad of them I could think of, about the Poor-Laws, game preserving, and the Corn-laws. Joe was very near going off in a huff, but we shook hands over it at last, and agreed that we neither of us knew much about the sort of life the other led, and so had better not talk about it as if we did.

Well, this was the first squire I had ever seen, so I looked at him with all my eyes; and if all squires were like him, I don’t wonder at Joe’s getting in a passion at our talk in Farringdon-market. I should think he must be about forty-five years old, and stands not far short of six feet high; for when he came to stand by Joe, I could see he was the taller of the two; but he didn’t look so tall quite when he stood by himself – I suppose because his figure was so good. For you never saw such a clean made man; he was for all the world like a well-rounded wedge from his shoulders down, and his neck and head put on like a statue. He looked just as if he could have jumped the highest five-barred gate in the Vale, and then have carried it off on his shoulders, and run up the hill with it. And his face, which was well browned, was so manly and frank, and his voice so cheery, and he looked you so straight in the face, that you felt he wasn’t ashamed of any thing, or afraid of anybody; and so you looked him back and spoke out, and were twice as good a man at once yourself while you were talking to him.

Well, when the Squire saw Joe, he stopped working away with his shovel, and called out to him; and so Joe went up and shook hands with him, and began talking to him, and in another minute the Squire called for his coat – a gray tweed shooting-jacket it was – and put it on, and took up his riding-whip, and told the men to look alive and get their job done, and then to send up to the Castle for some beer and bread and cheese which he would order for them.

Then Joe and the Squire walked away along the hill-side talking, and I went and sat down on a little mound, just above the Horse’s ears, and watched the men working, and looked at the view. How I did enjoy myself! The turf was as soft as a feather bed, and as springy as horsehair; and it was all covered with thistle down, which came drifting along like snow with the south wind; and all down below the country looked so rich and peaceful, stretching out for miles and miles at my feet in the hazy sunshine, and the larks right up overhead sang so sweetly, that I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I should have liked to have had a turn at the besoms and shovels with the men, who seemed very good-tempered, only I was too shy, and I couldn’t make out half they said. So I took out my pipe and lighted it, and sat looking on at the work, and thinking of nothing.

Presently a gentleman whom I hadn’t noticed, but who was poking about the place, came and sat down near me. He was dressed in dark clothes, very quiet; I suppose he was a parson from some of the villages near. And we began talking about the weather, and what chance there was of having fine days for the pastime. He was a very grave, elderly man, but easy and pleasant, and had a keen look in his gray eyes, and a sort of twinkle about his mouth, which made me put my best leg foremost, and take care what I said.

Well, when we had done about the weather, thinks I, “This is just the sort of gentleman to tell me what I want to know about the White Horse and all the rest of it,” and you’ll see as you go on that I never made a better guess in my life. So I got my note-book out quietly, so that he shouldn’t take much notice of what I was about, and began, “I suppose, Sir,” said I, “that it’s all right about Alfred, and that he really did cut out this figure after winning a great battle up here?”

“Yes,” said he, “I think so myself, because there has always been a tradition in the country side that this was so. And where antiquaries differ, a tradition of this sort may always be pretty safely believed. Country folk hold on to such stories, and hand them down in a very curious manner; but you know, I dare say, that it is claimed by some as a Druidical, or at any rate a British monument, which would make it several hundred years older at least.”

I didn’t know any thing about it, but why should I tell him so. “I shouldn’t like to think so, Sir,” said I, “because one wouldn’t care so much about it if it wasn’t made by the Saxons and their great king. The Druids don’t seem akin to us somehow; and then one would lose all about the great battle, which was certainly fought up here, wasn’t it, Sir?”

“I have no doubt about it,” said he; “there are many signs of it – above all, graves enough to hold the harvest of many battles. You are lying on one.”

“No! am I really, though?” said I, sitting up and looking at the ground; “how do you know?”

“Well, it isn’t very hard when the eye gets used to them,” said he; “there’s another;” and he pointed to a small mound a few yards off, and just like the one I was sitting on. “That larger mound, too, down below, across the road, you were on it just now – ”

“Yes, Sir,” said I, interrupting him, and pointing at it, “Dragon’s Hill.”

“Exactly so,” said he; “that’s another burial-place; a larger and grander affair, you see, than these. Probably a king or other very noble person is buried there.”

“The people say, Sir, don’t they,” said I, “that St. George killed the Dragon there?”

“They do,” said he, “and that his blood made a pool on the top, and ran down the steps on the other side, where the grass has never grown since. This is another curious instance of the tenacity of tradition; but here I think our good folk in the Vale have held on to the name, or a part of it, and forgotten the meaning, just as they have in the case of another village over there in Oxfordshire, the name of which is Stanton Harcourt.”

“How was that, Sir?” said I, when he paused.

“Well,” said he, laughing, “an old man in that village told me that a battle was fought there, which the English were very near losing, when the general rode up to one of his captains, named Harcourt, who was in the thick of it, and called out, ‘Stan’ to un, Harcourt, stan’ to un, Harcourt;’ and that Harcourt won the battle, and the village has been called Stanton Harcourt ever since. Now, as to that mound, I believe it’s right name to be Pendragon’s Hill. Pendragon, you know, is only a name common to those of the kings of the ancient Britons, who were chosen leaders in the time of national distress, and means nothing more than ‘caput regum,’ ‘the chief of kings.’ According to some, ‘Arthur’ is the same or a like word, being ‘Ardh-reg’ or ‘Ard-heer,’ and meaning ‘summus Rex’ (whence the ‘Arviragus’ of Juvenal; but I lay no stress on this). Now we know of at least three Pendragons. There was Cassibelan, who was chosen Pendragon at the time of Julius Cæsar’s invasion, Uter Pendragon, and Arthur Pendragon; which Uter and Arthur were, without doubt, chosen to resist the Saxons, who had won already the eastern part of the island. And if Arthur and Pendragon are the same words, doubtless (as has been well supposed), there were many Arthurs at this time, one of whom was probably slain in battle and buried here.2 For in the Saxon annals we find that Cedric, founder of the West Saxon kingdom, slew Natan-leod and five thousand men in these parts, which Natan-leod (as is shown by Mr. Baxter) is ‘Naud-an-ludh,’ or ‘populi tutela,’ the people’s refuge; in fact, a kindred word to ‘Pendragon,’ or ‘Arthur.’ You see how probable this would be primâ facie?” said he, turning round to me.

My goodness! I couldn’t make out head or tail of his long words, and was staring at him with my mouth open; but when he turned round I shut it pretty quick, and looked as wise as I could. “Well, Sir,” said I, “I hardly know; but it doesn’t look unlikely, does it?”

“Of course not,” said he, quite pleased; “and as the Britons were not driven from these parts till the middle of the sixth century, I should put the throwing up of Dragon’s Hill in the beginning, say the first half, of that century. Now, in the year A.D. 520, according to Gildas and Bede, Arthur gained his twelfth victory at ‘Mons Badonicus,’ which might very well be Baydon Hill, which you see over there.” And he pointed to a hill three or four miles off.

“But then, Sir,” said I, “if he gained the victory, he wasn’t killed there, I suppose, and so he couldn’t be buried here.”

“But he was killed in battle at last,” said he; “and, as I told you, there must have been many Arthurs or Pendragons just at that time, and many battles fought between this and Bath – why, the Britons gained a battle at Wanborough, over there, as late as A.D. 581.”

“But, Sir,” said I, “if Pendragon was buried down there, wouldn’t they have been very likely to cut out the horse up here just above, as another monument, at the same time; and then what becomes of King Alfred and the Danes?”

“There is no instance of two such monuments over one chief,” answered he, quite positive; but I thought I saw him give a twinkle with his mouth, as if he felt I had been pretty near him. “Besides, as I said before, the tradition as to the White Horse is too strong to be upset by conjecture.”

“I didn’t mean to conjecture, I’m sure, Sir,” said I; and I thought, though I didn’t say so, it was he who had been conjecturing pretty freely, if it came to that. “The battle of Ashdown, Sir, was a very great battle then,” I went on, for I liked to hear him talk about those old times, though I didn’t quite understand all he said.

“The greatest battle probably in which Alfred ever was,” said he.

“Please, Sir,” said I, “I hope you won’t think me troublesome, but if you would only tell me about the battle I should be so much obliged to you.”

“Sir,” said he, looking at me rather surprised, “it is seldom that I can get any of the youth of this day to take an interest in these matters, the study of which would greatly benefit their manners and morals. I shall be pleased to do what you wish. Are you a good listener?”

“Yes, Sir,” said I, “you will get tired of talking long before I shall of listening. And you wouldn’t mind, I hope, my taking notes of the story?”

“By no means,” said he; “I see you are ready with your pen. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you so much about Pendragon and Natan-leod if I had seen that you were taking me down; but now I will be careful to give you nothing which is not to be found in the most trustworthy chroniclers. Are you ready?”

“Yes, Sir,” said I; and then he settled himself in the turf, and pulled a couple of old brown books out of his long coat-tail pockets, to which he sometimes referred, and looking out over the Vale, as if he were travelling in his mind far away from me and every thing about us on the hill-side, began as follows.

“As for old Bægseek, I should chuck him overboard at once, and assume that our friend Uter Pendragon’s remains had been originally deposited here, but that he had been disturbed in his repose by the decapitation of the barrow, which at some unknown time has undoubtedly taken place. It is unfortunate, however, that a Roman coin of the time of Constans turned up from among the débris, and the fragments of pottery also were chiefly of Roman manufacture, mixed with some of earlier date. It will therefore perhaps be difficult to reconcile these matters one with the other; but on turning them over in your mind, you will, I dare say, theorize with a very agreeable correctness!” What is a wretched compiler to do, who gets such letters from those who should be his aiders and abettors?