Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/284

216 Stone, a menhir, spared as it constitutes a parish boundary.

In South Zeal is a little granite chapel, and before it is a very stately cross. The inn, the "Oxenham Arms," was formerly the mansion of the Burgoynes. I spent there an amusing evening a few winters ago. I had gone there with my friend Mr., now Dr., Bussell collecting folk-songs, for I remembered hearing many sung there when I was a boy some forty years before. I had worked the place for two or three days previously, visiting and "yarning" with some of the old singers, till shyness was broken down and good-fellowship established. Then I invited them to meet me at the "Oxenham Arms" in the evening.

But when the evening arrived the inn was crowded with men. The women—wives and daughters—were dense in the passage, and outside boys stood on each other's shoulders flattening their noses, so that they looked like dabs of putty, against the window-panes. Evidently a grand concert was expected, and the old men rose to the occasion, and stood up in order and sang—but only modern songs—to suit the audience.

However, the ice was broken, and during the next few days we had them in separately to sup with us, and after supper and a glass, over a roaring fire, they sang lustily some of the old songs drawn up from the bottom-most depths of their memory. There were "Lucky" Fewins, and old Charles Arscott, and lame Radmore, James Glanville, and Samuel Westaway, the cobbler. I remember one of them was stubborn; he would not allow me to take down the words of a song of his—not a very ancient one either—but