Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/76

 The Nineteenth Century crept nearer. Across the Channel, off the southwest coast, a great Gallic nation was in the throes of popular turmoil, social upheaval and political rebirth. England throbbed sympathetically: everywhere, throughout the land, patrols of scarlet-coated military were on view, passing to and fro, in and out of billets and barracks, as foreign campaigns swiftly followed one another. Hanoverian gaiety, in the person and the court of the Third George, invaded the seaside towns. Weymouth resounded with martial music and with sprightly, rippling dances whose echoes were sensed even in the quiet villages of the interior. But it was a liveliness impregnated with anxiety. The Ogre of Corsica, savage "Boney," threatened to land his thousands of devils from his fleet of flat-bottomed rafts; his name was coupled with the Evil One's; his image terrorized children into obedience. Beacons were prepared as signals of the dreaded landing, on the summits of the ancient Dorset barrows. Recruiting and impressing for Lord Nelson's navy affrighted the mothers and lovers of lusty youngsters.

The even flow of rural life was scarcely disturbed by the tumult, however. Foreign affairs, being invisible, even if real, were lumped together with all the other real but invisible things: with ogres and witches, with dragons and magic potions. The shepherds, pine-planters, ploughmen, furze-cutters, dairymen, went about their daily tasks just as they had for centuries. Ballads and folk-tales were still transmitted orally, substantially the same, in content and handling, as they had been in pre-Elizabethan days.