VII
Page 82
THE COMING OF THE RAILWAY. MAY DAY
MUMMERS AND THE BULL. VILLAGE
HOUSES
THE opening of The Somerset and Dorset Railway in 1863 was a great event for Shillingstone.1
1 How the elder generation looked upon railway travelling may be illustrated by a few verses in the vernacular from a long poem on the subject by Robert Young (Rabin Hill), of Sturminster Newton.
" My eye! zed he' "now don't he go !
This hoss mus' be uncommon strong.
Jus' hark how he do pank and blow:
He mus' gie out avore be long."
But on he went, yet vaster still;
Rabin gied Varmer Styles a nudge :
I think," zed he, " this pace 'll do,
Once we git safe across this brudge "
"Odd bless the man, the brudge is cross'd,
An we be vlee'n past King's Mill
In Sta'bridge Common we be now "
'The deuce we be," zed Rabin Hill.
The engine gied another scream,
The speed began to slacken now.
"T'is strange to I," zed Rabin Hill,
This hoss should kick up such a row.
"If my old 'ooman did but know
That I had gone so vur from home,
that I had ventured in the train,
I warn't she'd kept I zafe at home."
Before that year the three Okefords were almost as remote from the great world as they were in Roman times The great coach roads ran north and south of them, and probably few of the inhabitants had seen the sea or travelled further from their village than the nearest market town. The great families of Hanford and Ranston and Fontmell Parva travelled further afield in their own coaches, and it was these county magnates dazzled by the railway fever of the forties and fifties, who projected a scheme which was to make the fortunes of all of them. What their dreams were we gather from private letters and traditions of the period , perhaps they saw thriving factories and a crowded, population in their quiet valleys a great boom in agricultural produce, and an enormous enhancement of their means and comforts. They invested their money and lost it but though the Stour Valley continued to be a dairy country as it had always been, the railway remained despite the gibes of those that declared that " S and D " stood for "Slow and Doubtful." There were those who feared that prosperity was to be bought at the price of village morals if a crowd of navvies1 was to be drafted into the district, but these fears proved to be ground-less; the navvies' as a whole, were respectable men who gave no trouble; some of them settled permanently in the village and brought fresh blood into the community. The opening of the line was the occasion for a general holiday in the village, and the Rector and his wife entertained a large number of the villagers at tea in the rectory barn It was a tight squeeze for the guests when they were all seated, and a still tighter one for those who served the tables. Crinolines were still in fashion and the Rector's wife, who acted as head waitress, found it so impossible to force her way between the rows of tables that she had to go back to the rectory and divest herself of her hoops before she could continue with her duties.
I Navvy is an abbreviation of Navigator-the name given to the men who dug the canals at the close of the
eighteenth century for " Inland Navigation "
Naturally the railway station soon become a centre of life and business, not only for Shillingstone; but for all the villages around it, and no doubt the mental horizon of the neighbourhood generally was considerably widened by excursions to London, Bournemouth, and the West. There was however, in those early days no sort of bustle or hustle about the actual railway service, which was dilatory and dawdling to an exasperating degree. Shillingstone has been fortunate in its station-masters; they have almost invariably been courteous and obliging, as well as competent and trustworthy. One of the early ones had a decided turn for sport, more particularly as regards "the noble art of self-defence," as the sporting papers of those days used to call it.
Often in the long intervals between the trains the Rector's sons and pupils used to repair to the station booking office to box, the station-|master himself taking a lively part in the encounters. No doubt the great event of the year for Shillingstone from time immemorial was " May -Day," held on the 9th June, which, under the Old Style of reckoning, would be the 20th May, or (" Oak Apple Day.") Sprigs of oak, with gold tinsel paper stuck on the leaves, were distributed, and the morning was spent in preparing the garlands, flowers being liberally supplied by all who had them. In the meantime a band, usually chartered for the day from a neighbouring parish, perambulated the village, playing at various points. The base of the old stone cross, with the Maypole
alongside, was the rallying-point for a mild sort of fair. Booths laden with toys and sweet-stuffs for the small fry, and shooting galleries and coconut shies for the young men and maidens did a roaring trade. Needless to say, the tooting of tin trumpets and shrill squealing of penny whistles, mingled with the crack of rifles and the shouting of cheap-jacks, made a deafening din, in marked contrast to the normal peaceful-ness of the village.
Early in the afternoon nearly the whole population of Shillingstone, and many people from the other two Okefords, and even from Blandford, assembled on the rectory lawn and danced vigorously for about two hours; Then a procession, headed by the Rector in Full canonicals; marched to the Maypole with beating of drums and waving of banners, and the garlands having been hung, amid much cheering of the populace, men, women, and children joined hands, and forming an enormous ring- careered round the Maypole. That was not the end of the dancing. Enthusiasts returned to the rectory barn and danced till dark to the trains of a fiddle, supported perhaps by a flute; and then they retired To the Ox Inn and danced with unabated energy until daylight of the following morning.
For many years old "Vanner" of Fifehead Neville, fiddled for the dancing, and right well he did it; if provided with the necessary refreshment he seemed able to play with unflagging zeal for an indefinite number of hours, and he was rightly regarded as an indispensable factor in the May Day celebrations.
Originally the garlands were merely hung on the maypole, but on one occasion some young bloods from Childe Okeford, irritated perhaps by the arrogant airs which Shillingstonians were apt to assume as possessors of the highest Maypole in England, stole the garlands at night, to the great indignation of the parish, The garlands were secured by a chain and padlock ever after, and this incident is said to have kept alive a jealousy between the two villages which still persists.
Some of the old country dances, such as "The Triumph" and "The Steamboat" were not so simple as might be supposed, and a novice soon got bewildered. The writer vividly remembers his first venture as a dancer on the rectory lawn, when a shy child of about eight. A good-natured young woman kindly but rashly undertook to steer him through the intricacies of the "Triumph." The result was anything but triumphant. In about two minutes he lost his partner and wandered hopelessly about amongst the dancers, bumping against the legs of the men and barging into the skirts of the women, until at last a friendly young man, having grasped the situation, also grasped the writer, held him aloft and, shouting out, " Here's a pretty' sort of dancer for you ! " deposited him safely outside the whirlpool of prancing legs and flying skirts from which he had vainly tried to escape.
The May Day celebrations were no doubt a survival from very ancient times, and it seems sad, though perhaps inevitable, that they. Should have gone the way of so many old customs. There was another old Shillingstone institution which died out long before the " Maying," to wit, the Mummers. -In the middle fifties of the last century, that is, about the time of the Crimean War, the Mummers still came round at Christmas-time and acted their curious plays. Wearing tight-fitting garments of red and white, and high mitre-like headdresses, they stood stiffly in a row and slew one another like marionettes with their white wands. Their heroic declarations delivered in the broadest Dorset, would not have been wellnigh to anyone not familiar with the local vernacular of the mystery-plays -formal, undramatic, incredibly dull: to revive the Mummers would now be futile. We have become too exacting in our amusements; they would be as incapable of stirring any emotion in us as a collection of stuffed animals.
THE BULL
Not so the Bull. There is no reason why the Bull should no longer break in upon our Christmas festivities as he did forty years ago. At that time, the private life of the Bull, or rather, both Bulls, for there were two: one who one who was sober at every stage of the festivities, and on who was an increasing anxiety to his keeper and the guests as the night wore on - was passed in Childe Okeford. There was a time when the Bull came to the feast uninvited, and the party was always in a state of nervous anticipation until he appeared, but at the period I speak of, private arrangements were made by Mrs. Ker-Seymer, of Hanford, and the tenants danced unsuspectingly until the fatal moment when the bull rushed in. He was entirely covered with a bull's shaggy hide. His horns were long and sharp, and his eyes were of grey-blue glass, very unearthly and fearsome. A sort of valance hid his legs. The cross-stick that carried his head could be turned from side to side in realistic fashion. As he was blind a keeper led him from one to another of the shrieking damsels, and when he had one of them pinned into a corner it was small wonder that she went into hysterics. The Bull had the privilege of every room in the house—even the nursery—and on one of the children, awaked out of her sleep by the irruption, he made an indelible impression. He became so lively after supper that his keeper had all his work cut out to keep him from goring his fellow-revellers.
The oldest cottage in the village is certainly Tudor. It has been in the Bown family for more than 200 years, and it was roomy and comfortable. At this period, and even later, people built their own cottages of wattle and daub, lime, chalk, and timber squared on the spot. The chalk cottages, of which few now remain, were damp and not very healthy, though their white walls and thatched roofs are pleasanter to look upon than the modern erections of red brick and slate. The Manor House is Jacobean, built probably at the beginning of the seventeenth century; it was purchased by Major Forbes from the Jacob family in 1879. Other houses in the village are Culverhayes, built by Major Forbes in 1880; Shillingstone Grange, built by Mrs. Kyrle Chapman in 1904; and The Croft, built by Mr. Dayman, but enlarged by its present owner, Mr. Amherst Webber.