COUNTRY LIFE
First Nests
It was a great delight to record, on February uth, the first nests of the year : one a blackbird's already two-thirds built, the other a song-thrush's which was begun on the morning of that day. The thrushes began to build about eight o'clock, perhaps earlier, in the morning, and they went on indomitably all through a day that fade I from sun and frost to drizzle and misery in the early afternoon. They chose a crook in a hedge of macrocarpa, about breast height, and by noon they were entering and leaving at, roughly, intervals of one minute. It was curious to note how short their radius of excursion was ; not more than forty or fifty yards in any direction. But within that compass they worked with inspired vitality, foraging tirelessly in a winter-sodden landscape that gave them no help at all. By afternoon they had roughed in the skeleton shape of the nest with old grass and straw and dead shoots of viola and campanula. They wrestled once with a twig of willow that would have been ample burden for a rook, then dropped it, then gave it up, then came back for it, and finally triumphed. It was a display of passion and industry that set them apart from every other bird within sight, a fascinating and miraculous performance, doubly courageous and doubly beautiful for taking place against a background that had in it, that day, hardly a single perceptible and decent flicker of the light of spring. * * * *
Frumenty Who, nowadays, ever eats frumenty ? I remember my father begging my mother to make frumenty, and to make it properly, to boil it long and slow, so that the wheat would have just the right rich tender consistency. But she had to buy her wheat, and how could wheat bought in a shop, and probably grown in Canada, compare with that fat English grain gleaned by hand in September harvest fields ? Somehow our frumenty was never right, and my father resigned himself at length to a life without it. The word is from frumentwn, wheat, and is corrupted, in various districts, to furmenty, furmety, finnerty, fromenty, and fortuity, though the process of concoction is not varied much. Whole wheat grains are par-boiled in water, then stewed slowly in milk and flavoured at last with cinnamon, sugar and sultanas. It is a rich, satis- fying dish and it shared with pancakes, mincepies, figs, and simnel cakes especially, the honour of being eaten in country places on a particular day. Frumenty was always served on Mothering Sunday, which is Mid-Lent Sunday or Simnel Sunday, and in the West country it was sold in markets and, in some parts, eaten with a sauce of yoke of egg and brandy. It seems also to have been eaten on Ash Wednesday, but I have a feeling that this age of quotas and patent cereals knows it no longer.
* * * Fig Sunday Similarly I have a feeling that no one now, in country places, eats figs on Palm Sunday. • Once we would no more miss figi On Palm Sunday•than we would miss eggs at Easter. The custom was regularly and almost religiously kept in country homes of all classes, right down to and even after the War, in Buckinghamshire, Hertford, Bedford, Northamptonshire, Oxford and Wiltshire. At Kempton, in Hertfordshire, there was a pUblic assembling of villagers for fig eating and the drinking of healths. On Dunstable Downs large crowds gathered, and I believe still do gather, to eat figs and enjoy the view. Fig-pudding was a customary dish in Hertford- shire on that day. In Wiltshire villagers gathered to eat figs and drink cider. The custom seems inexplicable, since it was surely the leaves of date-palms and not of fig-trees that were strewn down for Christ's entry into Jerusalem.
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A Sad Tree How the sallow and the willow, traditionally trees of melan- choly, bedame so firmly established as emblems of rejoicing it is hard to say. Newton, in his Herball for the Bible, suggests it was because " at that time of the yeare all other trees, for the most part are not blowen or bloomed." But, oddly enough, yew and box, traditional for the dead; were also used in Palm Sunday procesSioni," and mezereon and diffodils, and the observance of it ali was strict : " He that hath not a palm in his hand on Palm Sunday must have his hand cut off."
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But how the sallow and willow became, in the first place, to be emblems of sadness is something which I find still harder to fathom. They have always seemed to me gay trees, true symbols of resurrection, of first light after the tomb of winter, They are, with the daffodil, the perfect spring emblems of rejoicing. Yet the willow has been held from time immemorial as " a sad tree, whereby such who have lost their love make their mourning garlands, and we know that exiles hang up their harps upon such dolefull supporters." It shared with the columbine, also, the distinction of being worn by lovers who had been forsaken.
A Splendid Salvia Salvia Sclarea vaticana has made its belated but welconic appearance in seed catalogues. It is a biennial and is one of those many plants said to have been taken away from the gardens of the Vatican,' at one time or another, in the folds of a professorial umbrella. History has not named this charming floromaniac who must have spent half his life popping in and out of the Vatican gardens with stolen plants, but I fancy he could only have been English. S. Sclarea vaticana is one of his best efforts. It forms a stout plant of large silvery red-veined leaves, rather like S. turkestanica, and throws up, from June to November, spikes of whitish- mauve flowers with large papery pink bracts. The whole plant is indomitable. Since the bracts are in reality leaves there is no fading, and the whole plant goes on until late autumn, sturdy but delicate, never fussing, always charming, seeding generously without ever being a nuisance. The leaves are also aromatic, with that rich pungency of sagc- odour which is half the charm of a vast family.
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The Exclusiveness of Chelsea Every year Chelsea seems to become more of a fashion parade, rivalling Ascot and Goodwood, than a flower-show. Exclusive, held on the most exclusive days of the week, it caters very little for the genuine flower-enthusiast who is tied hard to a job. For schoolmasters, office-workers and may others, a visit to Chelsea is about as rare as an eclipse of the sun. 'For such people Chelsea is only possible when Chelsea and Whitsun coincide. The Royal Horticultural Society is fully aware of this but pleads that, for a variety of reasons, it can do nothing. Actually, it seems to me, it needs to do very little. If Chelsea and Whitsun can be tolerated together one year they can, surely, be tolerated every year ? Alter- natively, why not open the show on Saturdays ? If this huge and expensive display of garden art is worth the bother of arranging for three days it is surely worth arranging for four ? I have a friend, who, proud of his thousand species of alpines, has not seen Chelsea, simply because he is a schoolmaster, for years. Chelsea should be his Mecca. He belongs far more rightly there than the lady who, looking like a millionairess, throws every nurseryman into despair and ends by buyin3 Primula wanda for sixpence.
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Postscript to Fungus
My note of February nth, on that small scarlet species of fungus that brightened January hedgerows like a child's strawberry bubt 1 e-pipe, brought a surprising shower of
enlightening correspondence. From Essex a gentleman writes that it seems likely to be what he, in that district, calls the Jew's Ear, which is about as inspired and exact description as I ever hope to see. He describes it as becoming rare. At Haslemcre a correspondent very kindly went to much trouble, bore my remarks into thc museum there and had the Jew's Ear properly identified as Geopyxis coccinea, or the Scarlet Elf Cup. He also describes it as rare. From Oxford came one of those letters which, like the peace of God, pass all understanding. After not addressing me, its writer identified the Jew's Ear as Geopyxis coccinea (formerly Peziza), herwisc Moss cups, Elf cups, Soldiers caps, and Jerusalem Stars, then asked me if I were serious and finally remained anonymous. Such a display of erudition and modesty defeats mc. My small strawberry bubble-pipe is, therefore, Geopyxis coccinea, formerly of the section peziza, fairly uncommon but delightful in any case, whether you have it as Jew or soldier, cup or cap,
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