Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Wintering Hay
The human side of the history of Dartmoor-is a record of half-hearted endeavour, punctuated by the tremulous question, Is it possible? Never by the determined period, We will. On a bright day it seemed easy to tame the highland, remove the rocks, and marry the virgin soil to the ploughshare that the golden children of harvest might be born. A thousand times the venture was attempted, to end as often in defeat for the calm day was short before Nature arose, shrieking in midday darkness, bringing ice for rain, and wind to drive the workmen back ward, claiming her own again and those who had begun the fight had not courage to strike a second time and their sons went up to be beaten also. Each generation made one effort and no more. Rocks, fern, furze, heather might be done down in time but never their fierce guardian storm and that plague of hailstones.
Therefore Nature ruled and sang in the cleave as she had always done, and still on that Christmas Day seemed solitary because She hid so much in mist but the human growths were there, represented by the gentle thudding of those bells, so easily to be mistaken for the peal of water, also by the swinging open of a window and the presence of a face. The charm was dissolved. Out of the mist started things black enough to be seen as the white rocks would glimmer in the dark, so did these black things frown from the mist - brambles, lea?ess, with long ropes bending. At a glance it might have appeared as if the Nature of Wintering Hay was a Nature of thorns, since upon every side the brakes were high and rough, covering much ground and wasting good earth, sprawling over it, warning off man and beast, ruling the acres tyrannically; yet making no attack, for they, too, acted on the defensive, they formed merely a part of cleave and garden. And if they ever seemed the whole it was because they were black, while mist and house and water were all white.
They were not cruel, since they provided a nesting-place for birds, and on the lew side stood ponies when the wind was fierce, while in autumn they distributed their berries but they were dangerous trade, stuff to be avoided, because the wounds they gave were warlike and took long to heal.
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