The Scouring of the White Horse

se,” according to immemorial custom, led the Committee of Management to think that our fellow-county-men at least, if not our countrymen generally, would be glad to have some little printed memorial,

the old monument, of which we west-c

ommittee whose way of life had led him into the perilous paths of literature;

bright gleam of history from the writings of old monks a thousand years ago; traditions and dim legends, which I and most Berkshire men have always faithfully believed from our youth up, and shall go on believing to our dying day, but which we could hardly put before general readers in serious narrative; a dry notice here and there by some old antiquary of the seventeenth or eighteenth century; stories floating in the memories of old men still living; small b

ow them altogether into the pot, stir them round and round with a great spoon, and trust that the look of the few great raisins, and the flavour of the allspice,[ix] may leaven the mass, and mak

d by the Committee and other kind friends, and I have done the milk and meal, and the stirring. The responsibility therefore rests with me, though the credit, whateve

n there long before the memory of the oldest man living, but that it has always been carefully preserved and kept fresh; and although there is no printed history of how it came there, yet that all neighbouring men, of whatever degree, associate it with the name of Charles Martel and his great victory over the Sara

old black e

ynim power

d, and storm

, the festival, and all traditions connected with them; and think he had fallen o

agans, and a festival which has been held at very short intervals ever since the ninth century. Rich as our land is in historical monuments, there is none more remarkable than the White Horse; and in this belief we put forth this li

ollected from a number of old chroniclers, whose names will be found in the foot-notes. But any fifth-form boy, with industry enough to read about 200 small pages of monkish Latin, may master the whole for himself in the originals in a week; and for those who cannot do this, there is the jubilee edition of the chroniclers, put forth by the Alfred Committee in 1852, where a t

life in us the feeling that we are a family, bound together to work out God’s purposes in this little island, and in the uttermost parts of the[xii] earth; to make clear to us the noble inheritance which we have in common; and to sink into their proper place the miserable trifles, and odds and ends, over which we are so apt to wrangle. We do hope that our example will lead Englishmen of other counties, to cherish every legend and story which hangs ro

friends, for the trouble they have taken in various ways to lighten my work. If this book at all fulfil

Esq., of Kin

Whitfield

rey of Kingsto

Secretary of the Soci

ey, of Hampste

ur “stir-about” to Englishmen in general, and