On another occasion, the same black retriever aroused the ire of the beachmen, who pelted her with stones and broke one of her fore-logs. Poor Widow —— went home that day with a broken arm! There was superstition in the air; life seemed charged with it at times, like a thunder-cloud, among the uneducated and even persons who felt themselves bound to “know better” had their queasy hours.
Among the earliest things that I can remember is the name of “Spring-heeled Jack,” a mythical Satanic incarnation who, in other places besides Hastings, was supposed to amuse himself by leaping over houses in the night. His existence was firmly believed in by the more credulous of the Hastings natives; and T can almost identify in my memory the houses upon the roofs of which he was said to have left his footprints in the snow. The lonelier places about the hills, and the elenge [an Old English, Chaucerian word that still lingered among us with the sense of uncannily lonely] parts of the woods, had more than a natural mystery about them.
The glory of the Cinque Ports, privateering — and piracy — had faded away and ended with the Napoleonic wars; and no legitimate outlet for the old Vikinger passion for the sea was left to the men of Hastings but their fishery and a vanishing coasting trade, Hence our people readily took to smuggling, which was both profitable and congenial. It combined the elements of danger, speculation, and good cash returns. The roughest of the smuggling days were over before my time, but I heard of them from eye-and-ear witnesses; and my early years were contemporary with a “free trade” that was scarcely less in amount if it was not so recklessly carried on. Severe repressive measures compelled the smugglers to be more crafty, but by no means stopped their illicit traffic. My elders used to tell of armed gangs of smugglers tyrannising over the villagers as they carried their barrels inland, “borrowing” farmers’ horses by night while the farmers lay prudently still in their beds knowing that they should find their horses in their places in the morning with a keg or two among the straw as payment for the “loan.”
But, even in my own time, few were ashamed of being known to smuggle or of using smuggled goods. Ono of our most distinguished medical men — a lending member of “society” — was called up one night to visit a smuggler who had been badly shot in an affray with the coastguard and had been dragged by his mates into a lonely cottage among the cliffs. The medical man gave out that he had been to attend upon a woman in childbirth.Some of our leading tradesmen were openly-avowed -On another occasion, the same black retriever aroused the ire of the beachmen, who pelted her with stones and broke one of her fore-logs. Poor Widow —— went home that day with a broken arm! ‘There was superstition in the air; life seemed charged with it at times, like a thunder-cloud, among the uneducated and even persons who felt themselves bound to “know better” had their queasy hours.
Among the earliest things that I can remember is the name of “Spring-heeled Jack,” a mythical Satanic incarnation who, in other places besides Hastings, was supposed to amuse himself by leaping over houses in the night. His existence was firmly believed in by the more credulous of the Hastings natives; and T can almost identify in my memory the houses upon the roofs of which he was said to have left his footprints in the snow. The lonelier places about the hills, and the elenge [an Old English, Chaucerian word that still lingered among us with the sense of uncannily lonely] parts of the woods, had more than a natural mystery about them.
The glory of the Cinque Ports, privateering — and piracy — had faded away and ended with the Napoleonic wars; and no legitimate outlet for the old Vikinger passion for the sea was left to the men of Hastings but their fishery and a vanishing coasting trade, Hence our people readily took to smuggling, which was both profitable and congenial. It combined the elements of danger, speculation, and good cash returns. The roughest of the smuggling days were over before my time, but I heard of them from eye-and-ear witnesses; and my early years were contemporary with a “free trade” that was scarcely less in amount if it was not so recklessly carried on. Severe repressive measures compelled the smugglers to be more crafty, but by no means stopped their illicit traffic. My elders used to tell of armed gangs of smugglers tyrannising over the villagers as they carried their barrels inland, “borrowing” farmers’ horses by night while the farmers lay prudently still in their beds knowing that they should find their horses in their places in the morning with a keg or two among the straw as payment for the “loan.”
But, even in my own time, few were ashamed of being known to smuggle or of using smuggled goods. Ono of our most distinguished medical men — a lending member of “society” — was called up one night to visit a smuggler who had been badly shot in an affray with the coastguard and had been dragged by his mates into a lonely cottage among the cliffs. The medical man gave out that he had been to attend upon a woman in childbirth.Some of our leading tradesmen were openly-avowed -
