A Night in the Snow or, A Struggle for Life

Excerpt

A NIGHT IN THE SNOW.

The mountains of South-West Shropshire are less known to the lovers of fine scenery than their great beauty deserves, though they are familiar to most geologists as the typical region of the lowest fossil-bearing deposits.  Of this group of hills the highest is the Long Mynd, a mountain district of very remarkable character, and many miles in extent.  It is about ten miles long, and from three to four miles in breadth.  Its summit is a wide expanse of table land, the highest part of which is nearly seventeen hundred feet above the level of the sea.  The whole of this unenclosed moorland is covered with gorse and heather, making it extremely gay in the summer time; it is also tolerably abundant in grouse and black game, and so fruitful in bilberries, that from £400 to £500 worth are said to have been gathered on it in the course of a single season.  On first hearing it, this sounds an improbable statement; but any one who has been upon the mountain in a good “whinberry season” as it is called, will readily understand that this is no exaggeration.  To the poor people for miles around, the “whinberry picking” is the great event of the year.  The whole family betake themselves to the hill with the early morning, carrying with them their provisions for the day; and not unfrequently a kettle to prepare tea forms part of their load.  I know no more picturesque sight than that presented by the summit of the Long Mynd towards four o’clock on an August afternoon, when numerous fires are lit among the heather, and as many kettles steaming away on the top of them, while noisy, chattering groups of women and children are clustered round, glad to rest after a hard day’s work.  A family will pick many quarts of bilberries in the day, and as these are sold at prices varying from 3d. to 5d. a quart, it will be readily understood that it is by no means impossible that the large sum of £400 or £500 should thus be realised in a single season.

The appearance of this Long Mynd mountain on the northern side, looking towards Shrewsbury, presents no feature of striking interest, and the ascent is a gradual one, leading chiefly through cultivated ground; but the aspect of the south-eastern or Stretton side is wild in the extreme, the whole face of the mountain being broken up into deep ravines, with precipitous sides, where purple rocks project boldly through the turf, and in many places even the active sheep and mountain ponies can scarcely find a footing.  Down each of these ravines runs a small stream of exquisitely pure water, one of which, near the entrance of the valley, becomes considerable enough to turn a mill for carding wool.  This stream falls over rocks at the head of the ravine, in a small cascade of a considerable height called the Light Spout.

Many people have lost their lives among these hills at different times, and places here and there bear such suggestive names, as “Dead Man’s Beach,” “Dead Man’s Hollow,” &c.  The last fair, too, which is held at Church Stretton before Christmas is locally known as “Dead Man’s Fair,” several men have perished whilst attempting to return home after it across the hill in the dark November night.  No one, however, till this winter has been lost for many years.  Two drovers were the last persons who perished here, and they lost their lives near a place called “The Thresholds,” in a deep snow which fell in April thirty-seven years ago.

The western slope of the Long Mynd is less strikingly picturesque and more desolate, but the view from the top in this direction is the finest of any.  Almost unseen in a narrow valley at the foot of the mountain, stand the village and church of Ratlinghope, the centre of a parish numbering about three hundred souls only, but which stretches over miles of mountain country, embracing a portion of the wild mining district of the Stiper Stones.  Beyond these hills the eye passes to the Welsh mountains, and rests at last on the grand peaks of Cader Idris in one direction, and Snowdon in the other, which may be seen in clear weather sharply defined against a sunset sky.

Poor Ratlinghope was in sore need of some one to look after it when the living was offered to me in September 1856.  It had at that time been left for many Sundays together without a service, the late incumbent residing in Shrewsbury, twelve miles distant, and being frequently prevented by ill health from coming over.  There is no house in the parish where a clergyman could live, or even procure tolerable lodgings; and if there were, there is next to nothing, as one of the parishioners said to me the other day, “to find coals to warm it with.”  It is scarcely to be wondered at that under these circumstances, when the living became vacant in the summer of 1856, there was no suitable person to be found who was willing to accept so desirable a piece of preferment.  The parish of Wolstaston, of which I have the charge, and in which I reside, is situated on high ground on the eastern slope of the Long Mynd, i.e....