Page:Over fen and wold; (IA overfenwold00hissiala).pdf/242

 Elizabethan red-brick mansions in the kingdom, became the stationmaster's home—happy stationmaster! So it was that until quite recently Bourn boasted the unique possession of a medieval railway station!

Passing Bourn church on the way back to our inn we observed a notice attached to the door, of a tax for Fen drainage and the maintenance of the dykes, a shilling an acre being levied for this purpose "and so on in rateable proportion for any less quantity." This called to our mind the ceaseless care that is needed to prevent these rich lands from flooding and becoming mere unprofitable marshes again, and the amount of the tax does not seem excessive for the security afforded thereby. On a tombstone in the graveyard here, we came upon, for the third time this journey, the often-quoted epitaph to a blacksmith, beginning:—

My sledge and hammer lie reclined, My bellows too have lost their wind, My fire's extinct, my forge decayed, And in the dust my vice is laid.

This familiar inscription has been stated by guide-*book compilers to be found in this churchyard and that; the lines, however, had a common origin, being first written by the poet Hayley for the epitaph of one William Steel, a Sussex blacksmith, and cut on his tombstone in the churchyard of Felpham near Bognor. The inscription at once became popular, and was freely copied all over England, like the ubiquitous and intensely irritating "Diseases sore