The Lone Wolf

(See page [61])

Days Before History

UNIFORM WITH THIS BOOK

In Nature’s School

By LILIAN GASK

With Sixteen exquisite Full-page Illustrations and a Title-page Design

By DOROTHY HARDY

THIS STORY details the experiences of a sensitive boy who, in a moment of revolt, flees from the oppression of some cruel schoolfellows into the woods, where he meets Nature, who takes him round the world and shows to him her kingdom of fur and feather. The child is introduced to all manner of beasts and birds, and learns valuable lessons of kindness and toleration, while at the same time the facts of natural history are not distorted to serve the purpose of a story. Everything is true to facts, so far as they are known from observation and from the best authorities.

The Illustrations are of quite unusual merit, and will establish the claims of this talented artist to a place amongst the best English interpreters of animal life.

DAYS BEFORE
HISTORY

BY
H·R·HALL

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
A·M·RANDALL

George·G·Harrap·&·Co

15 York Street·Covent Garden

London

FIRST EDITION
November 1906, 5000; December 1907, 5000.

SECOND EDITION
Revised, Enlarged, and Newly Illustrated, September 1908, 3000.

Letchworth; At the Arden Press

Preface to the New Edition

IN a book of this kind nothing more will be expected than an outline sketch of some phases of the life lived by the prehistoric dwellers in our land. The known facts are few; yet there must have been, even in those far-away times, well-defined differences of habit and custom due to local circumstances; so that details more or less true of one tribe or group would possibly be quite untrue of others.

But, for all that, there are various conclusions upon which the learned may be considered to be in agreement; and, working from these and from the descriptions of primitive life in our own times, there is brought within our reach the possibility of constructing a picture of man in early Britain which, without leaving the lines of reasonable conjecture, need be neither meagre nor misleading.

An attempt has been made here to introduce only descriptions which can in some degree be vouched for; and as much of such authenticated detail as possible has been included. Some licence has been taken in bringing together events which in nature were, no doubt, separated by long intervals of time and space; in suggesting, for instance, that a man of the newer stone age might have heard some vague tradition of the makers of the old stone weapons, and yet, in his lifetime, have witnessed the incoming of the first weapons of bronze: yet, for the sake of picturesqueness, such licence may be considered to be not only permissible but, in a book with the purpose of this, actually desirable.

When first it was suggested to the writer that he should undertake this task, there was only one detail of the necessary equipment which he could feel to be his own—a childhood’s interest in the subject, never forgotten. There was the recollection of a chapter in an old lesson-book, much pored over, with its two or three simple woodcuts showing the skin-clad “ancient Briton” hollowing out his log canoe, or shooting at the deer in the forest. There was the memory of a reputed “British village,” with its pits and mounds, situated on a distant hill in the neighbourhood of his old home, often talked about, but too remote to be visited. There were recollections of a village philosopher, an amateur bird-stuffer and collector of fossils and antiquities, who carried in his purse and would show a treasure beyond gold, a barbed flint arrow-head. One he was who did not resent the companionship of an inquisitive little boy, but took him fishing and taught him something of the old country lore.

The road into fairyland lay open before that boy in his childhood. With home-made bow and arrows he stalked the deer on the open hill-side, or, armed with the deadly besom-stake for spear, tracked the wild boar to his lair among the whins. A running stream bounding the distant fields was for him a river to be forded with caution; the woodland pool was a forest lake, deep and mysterious; the grove of oaks on the hill-side was a woodland, and the more distant woods a forest vast and impenetrable.

And the skin-clad hunters of the bygone time peopled those hills and woods. The rabbits became red-deer, the hovering kestrel a flapping eagle, a chance fox galloping over the hill a ravening wolf, and the shy badger (only that one could never get more than the hearsay of him) a fierce old wild-boar. Then there were huts to be built, fires kindled, and weapons fashioned, marksmanship to be practised, hunting expeditions to be carried out, and ruthless warfare waged with unfriendly tribes.

Thus when the writer began the welcome task of setting down something about the life of a time so remote that only the indestructible fragments of its framework are now to be recovered, he had for his guidance these memories of childish games and wonderings; games that were never played out, and wonderings that have never been satisfied. And it was his hope that others, whether or not situated as fortunately as he once was, might perhaps catch a hint of the joy of playing the old games and following the old ways of life out-of-doors, as our forefathers followed them in the days before history. We have not all forgotten them yet.

A glance at the Contents will show that the chapters fall into two groups; those headed The Story of Tig, which are meant to be a story and nothing more; and those headed Dick and his Friends, which aim at explaining parts of the story and giving further details and comments from the standpoint of a later time. For anyone who finds these chapters dull, nothing is easier than to skip them.

A longish list might be made of the various books which have been read or consulted in the preparation of these chapters. They are all well-known standard books, such as would be readily found by anyone who might wish to follow the subject further. This edition includes six chapters that are new—numbers six, nine, and fifteen to eighteen—besides various paragraphs and oddments scattered throughout the book; the chapter-headings have been altered in most instances, and the illustrations are nearly all new.

The author wishes to offer his sincere thanks to Professor W. Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S., who generously consented to look over the proofs of the original book; and to Professor J. J. Findlay and Miss Maria E. Findlay for their invaluable help and kindly encouragement.

The Contents of Chapters

List of Illustrations

DAYS BEFORE HISTORY

Chapter the First

How Dick and his Friends heard a Story

I KNOW a boy called Dick. He is nine, and he lives near London. Last spring Dick’s father and mother moved house. All their furniture and things were taken in the vans, and Dick and his father and mother went in a cab.

When they got to the house, Dick ran in at once to explore. It was not really a new house, because people had lived in it before; but Dick was disappointed to find it very much the same as the house they had just left. There was the drawing-room on one side of the hall and the dining-room on the other, and all the rooms upstairs, and the bath-room, and the box-room, just the same as in their other house; and there was a garden with walls round the three sides, very like their last one. And Dick was sorry that there was nothing new to see. So he said to his father that he did not like the new house because it was just like the old one. But his father said: “You must not grumble at that. Lots of houses are very much alike, of course. There are so many people in these days who want the same sort of house built for them.”

That summer Dick went to pay a visit to his uncle, a long way off in the country. Dick’s uncle lived in a very old house; part of it was more than four hundred years old, and Dick had never been in such an old house in his life. His uncle took him all round it, and showed him many strange things. The oldest part of the house was a square tower with very thick walls and long, very narrow windows. Dick’s uncle told him that the windows were made like slits so that the men inside the tower could shoot their arrows out at their enemies; while the enemies would find it very hard to shoot their arrows in and hit the men inside. And he said, also, that in the old days before people could make glass for windows, it was better to have little windows than big ones in very cold weather.

And Dick’s uncle took him to the top of the tower and showed him the remains of an open fireplace, in which the men of the tower used to light a beacon fire to give the alarm to people in the villages and towns when enemies were coming.

And outside the tower he showed him part of a deep ditch, and told him that once this ditch went right round the house and was called a moat, only that now it was nearly all filled up with earth and stones. But at one time it was always full of water, so that no one could get at the tower without crossing the moat. And the people in the tower used to let down a bridge, called the drawbridge, because it was drawn up and down by means of chains. So that when they or their friends wanted to go out or come in, the drawbridge used to be let down for them, and pulled up afterwards.

And Dick’s uncle told him that all these things used to be done to make houses safe to live in, because once upon a time long ago there were a great many thieves and robbers in the land, and there were no policemen to keep them in order; also that the people used to fight among themselves a great deal; and his uncle showed him some old pieces of armour, and a helmet and a battle-axe and some swords, such as the knights and men-at-arms used in battle long ago.

Dick’s uncle’s name was Uncle John. He was very much pleased to see that Dick liked his old house and his old swords and armour; but he said: “I know where there are the remains of some houses a very great deal older than mine. If you would like to see them, we will go for a walk to-morrow and try to find them.”

The next day they set out for their walk—Dick and his uncle John and a collie and two terriers—and Uncle John said: “We will call for Joe first.”

“Is Joe a dog?” Dick asked.

“No,” said his uncle; “Joe is a boy. He is nine, like you, and he lives in the house with the green gate.”

But Joe said he was afraid he could not come for a walk, because his cousin David had come to spend the holidays with him, and they had made a plan to go fishing. So Uncle John invited David, too, and they all set off together.

After they had gone about a mile along the lane, they came to a heath. It was a large open heath on the top of a hill, looking down a slope into a valley. The slope of the hill was covered with bushes, and there were trees in little groups here and there. The hills beyond were mostly covered with woods, and there was a stream in the valley down below. Uncle John led the way until they came to a flattish place on the hill-side. Then he said:

“Now close to us here is a place where people lived long ago, before ever they could build towers or houses at all. Who can find where these old-time people lived?”

And the boys all searched round among the bushes and the rocks; and after a while Joe called out: “Was it here?”

Uncle John went to look, and he laughed at Joe. For what he had found was a little rough shed that the rabbit-catchers had put up.

Then Dick called out. He had gone further down the hill, and had come upon an old limekiln with a little opening, like a doorway, at the bottom of it.

But Uncle John said: “No, I don’t think that the limekiln is even half as old as my house. What we are looking for is something not built with stones and without walls of any sort.”

Then David ran away, and he shouted out; and when they went to where he was, they found him standing in a sort of pit dug in the ground, about the depth that David could stand in up to his shoulders, and about twice as wide across as Uncle John’s walking-stick could measure.

And Uncle John said: “Yes, that is one place; but, if you look about, you will find several more.”

So the boys hunted about, and they found nine or ten more of the pits; and then they came back to where Uncle John was sitting and asked him to tell them about these old dwellings. But he said they must wait a little while, because he had something else for them to see first.

As they walked homeward over the heath, they came to a place where the cart-tracks went down to the sand-pits, and the way was bare and rough. And Uncle John said: “Now which of you boys has got eyes in his head? Within a dozen yards of where we are standing I have dropped something which once belonged to one of the men of the pit-dwellings. Sixpence for the boy who finds it!”

Then they all began to hunt round, but no one could find anything. So Uncle John said: “It is something made of flint-stone. The man to whom it belonged used to shoot with it.” And he kept on saying, while they were looking about: “Dick is hot” or “Joe is warm,” just as if they were playing at Hide the Thimble.

At last Joe called out, “I’ve got it!” and he came running up with an arrow-head chipped out of grey flint; and the others crowded round to look at it. And Uncle John showed them how carefully it had been chipped, and how sharp the point and edges were, although it was hundreds and hundreds of years old.

And he cut a strong little shoot off a hazel tree, and shortened it, and split it at the end, and showed them how he supposed the man who made the arrow all that long time ago had fixed it to its shaft.

Then he took out sixpence, and said to Joe, “If you might choose, which would you rather have? The sixpence or the arrow-head?”

And Joe said, “The arrow-head, ever so much rather!”

But Uncle John said, “You mayn’t choose now, so take your sixpence. But I’ll tell you what: if you three boys would like to know more about the pit-dwelling people, and about their houses, and how they hunted and all that, I have a book at home in which there is a lot about these things; and I think it would be a good way of filling up some of your spare time these holidays if we were to have some reading out of the book now and then. You might try your hands at building a hut, to see if you could do it as well as the pit-dwelling people did. And you might make some bows and arrows, and even have a try at chipping out flint arrow-heads. We might have a shooting match with the bows and arrows, with another sixpence for the prize. Or, better still, we might have for a prize this flint arrow-head of mine that Joe is so fond of; and give it to the boy who knows most about what we have been reading, when we come to the end of the holidays.”

They all agreed that that would be rather a good way of amusing themselves, if the book were interesting. But by the time they got home it was too late to begin; so the reading had to be put off until the next day.

On the next day Joe and David went up to Uncle John’s house. As it was a wet afternoon they sat indoors. On the table there was a large brown book; and as soon as they had settled themselves, Uncle John took up the book and began to read.

Chapter the Second

THE STORY OF TIG: Tig’s Birthday and his Home

ONCE upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a boy called Tig. When the story begins, Tig was only a baby; he was four, or nearly four. To tell the truth, he did not quite know when his birthday was. He did not have a proper birthday every year. Nobody kept birthdays when Tig was little, because people had not any names for the months, as we have now.

They talked about the hot-time and the cold-time, two times instead of four seasons; and if you could have spoken their language, and had asked Gofa, Tig’s mother, when Tig’s birthday was, she would have said, “One day in the cold-time.”

When Tig was born, he lived first of all in a little house which had only one room in it. It was rather like a cellar, because it was dug out of the ground.

There were no windows in the house. There was only one doorway, and it was a hole, like the mouth of a burrow; and Tig’s father and mother, and any of their friends who came to visit them, had to crawl in and out on all-fours. At night, when the family were all inside, Tig’s father used to set up a big stone against the entrance-hole. He used to say in fun that this was to keep out the wolves and the bears. But neither bears nor wolves had much chance to get in, because there was a high paling of posts that surrounded all the huts. The big door-stone was always kept inside the hut, so that it was handy if ever they wanted to block the doorway against anybody during the daytime.

The fireplace was in the middle of the floor, and there was a hole in the roof to let the smoke out. In the daytime the hole in the roof made a kind of window. The roof was made of branches of trees. These were supported on the ground by a foundation of thick flat stones and pieces of turf, and were overlaid with smaller branches and turves and a rough thatch of reeds.

Here Tig’s father, who was called Garff, and Gofa, Tig’s mother, lived nice and snug in the cold-time. They had no bedsteads nor tables nor chairs nor chests of drawers. But they had plenty of skins of wild horses and cows and deer, and wolf-skins and bear-skins, instead of beds and chairs; and Tig’s own sleeping-cot was a skin of a little bear that Garff had killed on purpose for him. Their other belongings were of a useful sort, not large and heavy like furniture, but such things as cooking pots, the mealing-stone for crushing corn, and the big wooden mortar in which grain or acorns could be pounded into flour.

In summer-time they used to find the dug-out hut too hot to live in, and besides, they had to take their cattle out to fresh pastures. So they, and their friends who lived in the other huts close by, used to pack up their skin rugs and all their other belongings, and travel to another part of the hill country. Some of the men used to march on in front, with their spears and bows and arrows ready, in case they were to meet any wild beasts. Then came the rest of the men and the boys with the dogs, driving the cattle along; and after them the old men and the women and children, with more armed men to bring up the rear. The women carried the skins and the cooking pots and the food; and almost every one had a baby bound on to her back. The food was carried in baskets, and the bigger children helped to carry the baskets. The smaller children had no loads to carry, except their dolls and playthings which they hugged in their arms as they walked along beside their mothers.

The people left the huts and marched down the hill. Then they crossed the river, wading into the water at a shallow place. But the little children had to be carried over; and Tig was carried over by his mother every time until after he was seven.

The tribe used to take a whole day in travelling to the camping-place; and when they got there at last, they used to make a new fire, and light bonfires in the open, and cook their supper, and sleep in tents and booths about the fires.

Up on the hill-side, at the edge of the forest, where the ground had been partly cleared, was the place of the first summer camp. The summer huts were built above ground, of branches of trees, wattled with withies and twigs, and daubed with clay. Sometimes a man had only to repair the hut that he had lived in the summer before. But even if he had to build a new one, it was not such hard work as to build a winter hut. Before a man began to build his summer hut, he picked out a tree with a straight trunk to act as the main support of his hut. He used the tree as a centre pillar to hold up his roof-beams. If he built his summer hut in the open, away from the trees, he set up a pole for a roof-tree. We still talk of living under our own roof-tree, just as those people did long ago.

The fireplaces were made out-of-doors. If they had been indoors, the huts would often have been burned down. Probably they often were burned down even then. So whatever cooking Tig’s mother wanted to do in the summer camps she did at a big fire outside the huts.

The winter village of dug-out huts was high up on the hillside at the upper end of a sheltered valley, and the summer camps were set up at different places upon the hills, as the people moved about with their cattle; and wherever they were, they always put up a stockade of posts around the huts, to keep themselves and their cattle safe from wolves and bears.

But besides their dwelling-places, the people had a fort, which was meant to be used only in time of war for the tribe to retire to, if their enemies should attack them. It was built at the top of a high hill, in the form of a ring, with a mound of earth and stones, and a stockade all round, and a deep ditch outside. The fort was big enough to take in all the people and their cattle in case of necessity; but when Tig was a baby, it had not been used for a long time and nobody lived in it.

Chapter the Third

Tig’s Mother, and the Lessons that she taught him

TIG’S mother was called Gofa. She was the mistress of the house and the housekeeper. She did not keep any servants, but did the work herself; she minded Tig and his little brothers and sisters, and cooked their meals and made clothes for Garff and all the family. Their clothes were mostly made of skins, and Gofa always prepared the skins for the clothes with her own hands. To make a suit out of a deerskin was a long business. The hide had to be dried in the open air, and then scraped all over with flint scrapers until all the hair was taken off. Then it was smeared with the animal’s brains and fat, and allowed to dry again; and then thoroughly washed in wooden tubs and tanned with the bark of oak-trees. When at last it was cured and dried, it was cut into pieces and the pieces sewn together with sinews. Gofa’s needles were made of bone, and they were not very sharp: she used to pierce holes in the leather with a little bodkin made of flint stone before she could put in the stitches. But once the stitches were made, they held firmer than any that are sewn with thread.

Whenever a deer was brought home or a cow killed, Gofa always kept the big sinews from the legs and dried them in the sun or under the roof of the hut indoors.

Then she took a flint knife and scraped the sinew and shredded it into threads, and drew the threads separately through her fingers, and put them away in a pouch made of deer-skin. This was her store of thread.

Dressing a Skin

The suit that most people wore was a sark; it was a sort of shirt which came down to the knees, and was girded with a belt at the waist. This was generally made of dressed hide; but almost every one had besides a thicker dress for cold weather, with the hair left on; and the richer people had these trimmed with different sorts of fur. Some wore cloaks besides, and caps made of skin with the hair on.

When the men went hunting they wore shoes made of hide, and leather bands wrapped round their legs for leggings. The people let their hair grow long; and they often used to spend much time combing and dressing it.

Most people, unless they were very poor, had also finer garments of cloth, which the women span and wove. But cloth was much scarcer than skins, besides being more easily worn out; and so the clothes for everyday wear were always of dressed hides. Men who spent a great part of their time hunting and creeping about in the thickets of the forest, wanted a suit which would turn the wet and not tear easily among the thorns and briars.

Tig had his first little sark and belt when he was seven years old—it was made of deer-skin; but he had neither cap nor leggings; for, like all the other children, he used to run about barefoot and bareheaded.

Gofa taught her children many things, but she did not teach them to read or to write: she could neither read nor write herself, nor could any of her neighbours.

People had no books and no writing in those times. Tig did not learn to do sums or to say the Multiplication Table; but he did learn to count, by saying the numbers on his fingers. However, as it is such a long time since he lived, and as no one ever wrote down exactly how people counted in those days, Tig’s names for the figures are not known for certain. But it is very likely that they were something like this. On the fingers of one hand, instead of One, Two, Three, Four, Five, he said what sounded like

Ahn, Da, Tree, Kethra, Kweeg:

and then on the fingers of the other hand,

Say, Sect, Oct, Noi, Dec,

for Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten; and that was as far as he got in the way of counting at first.

But there were many things that Tig learned from his mother out-of-doors; for Gofa used to do a great deal of work with the other women, preparing the ground for corn and reaping the crops at harvest time; and Tig used to go with his mother to the fields, or to the river when she went to cut osiers for making baskets, or into the woods to gather firewood. He learned to be always on the look-out; always to listen for every sound—even so little a noise as the snapping of a twig; and always to bear in mind what he was going to do in case of sudden danger, and where he should run to for safety if he had to flee from a wild beast. Tig did not know many things that most boys and girls know in these times; but he could do one thing that hardly any boy or girl can do nowadays—he could move his ears backward and forward just as he wished, when he was listening very carefully to any slight sound in the woods.

Tig liked the summer-time best. It was much better fun playing in the forest near the huts and lying basking in the hot sun than crawling about in the dark, smoky winter pit-hut. He used to climb about in the trees, even when he was quite little. While his mother was busy with her work out-of-doors, she used to put him up into a tree and let him play about among the branches by himself; and sometimes she even made a sort of little crib for him with bands of hide, and left him to sleep safe and sound in a big oak tree. This was to keep him out of danger from wild animals. For in those days it was dangerous for children to be out in the open or in the woods away from the huts, because there were often wolves or other savage beasts prowling about.

But round Tig’s home there was less danger, because the wild beasts had learned to fear men and their weapons and their fires. But still, wolves and bears were seen sometimes close to the village; so the children were safer playing up in the trees than on the ground; and they all learned to be very good climbers.

From the boys with whom he played, when he grew older, Tig learned many other useful things. He learned to swing himself down from one branch of a tree to a lower branch, and catch hold with his feet; to dive without splashing, and swim under water right across to the opposite bank of the river; to save his breath when running, so as to last out on a long race. He and the other boys practised shooting with bows and arrows, which their fathers helped them to make. And they had stone-throwing matches, too; and no one was considered to be any good unless he could throw hard and straight with both hands. Tig and his friends all longed to become hunters, and their favourite game was to play at hunting; and as they grew older, they used to go out in parties into the woods to hunt and fish. But they did not often bring home any game.

Flint Scrapers

Chapter the Fourth

DICK AND HIS FRIENDS: The Hut that the Boys built

AS soon as Uncle John had finished reading, he asked the boys if any of them could guess why Tig’s father’s winter hut was partly dug out of the ground.

Dick thought because of wild beasts; and Joe said: “Because it would be warmer underground.”

Uncle John said that those were very good reasons, but he thought the chief reason was that in those early times people could not build walls. They had no tools such as masons and carpenters have nowadays. They had no iron to make pickaxes and saws and planes with; they had only stone axes that were not much use for splitting or shaping beams. And so they had to live in houses not much better than foxes’ dens or rabbit-burrows.

They went to the heath next day, and looked at the pits again. Dick and Joe were talking about the pit-dwellings. Dick said they must have been very damp places to live in; but Joe said no—rabbits and foxes and badgers live in burrows underground, and their fur is always dry. They asked Uncle John’s opinion. He said that he thought in very wet weather the huts would be damp, because the rain would soak in through the roof. But as the village was on the top of the hill, no water would lie about the ground; and, anyway, the men probably dug trenches to carry off the water down the hill.

David said he thought the huts must have been very small; he wondered how the people managed to live in them.

“Yes,” said Uncle John, “they must have been small. But you see, the people who lived in them had no furniture, and they did not mind crowding. It is very likely, too, that they did not lie down full-length when they went to sleep. There was no room for that in the winter huts. They slept sitting, with their hands clasped over their feet and their chins on their knees. We should not find this a comfortable position to sleep in; but it was the way they were used to. And besides, if a man had tried lying at full length in one of these huts, he would soon have found his toes in the fire.

“Before the people learned how to build huts they lived in caves. Why was it better to live in huts than in caves?”

None of the boys could think of the answer, so Uncle John said:—“If a man could find a cave that was roomy and dry, it would be a pleasanter place to live in than a dug-out hut with a leaky roof. But if he wanted to live in a cave, he would have to go where the cave was; though if he could build a hut, he might live wherever he pleased. In the whole of a countryside there might not be more than two or three caves fit to live in, so that relations and friends could not live near to each other. But once men had learned to build huts, whole families could live together, and, what is more, they could build a wall or a stockade round the huts, as we have read. There is safety in numbers too, and in many ways it was much more comfortable for them than living scattered over the country in caves.”

The boys wished very much to build a hut. But as it was summer-time, they thought they had better try to build a summer hut. Besides, it would have been too big a piece of work to dig down four or five feet into the ground. They were a long time before they could find a place for their hut, because, as they said, they must pretend that it was not one hut that they were going to build, but a whole village of huts. They talked over with Uncle John the things that the people had in mind when choosing a site for a village. They decided that, no doubt, it must be on high ground, with a clear view of the country round about on every side, so that the dwellers in the village could see if their enemies were coming to attack them. Then they would be better able to defend themselves if they stood above their enemies, than if their enemies stood above them.

There was another reason for having the village up on the hill rather than down in the valley, and it was this. The valleys were thick with forests, in which were bears and wolves, so they were dangerous for men and cattle. But on the open hill-sides the cattle could be driven out to feed every day in safety; and if wolves came out of the forest, the men could see them in the open and keep them in check.

Joe said they must have water for the village, so they must be sure of being close to a stream or a spring.

Uncle John said that water was very necessary, of course; but that if you went to live on the top of a hill for safety you could not expect to have water in abundance, for there are no streams about the tops of hills, and not often springs. However, he said, the people managed to overcome this difficulty, as the book would tell.

David wanted to know about firewood; wouldn’t they need to be near the forest for that?

They certainly would want firewood, Uncle John said, and they must always depend on having to make many journeys to the forest to get wood. But the ground must be cleared and kept open round about the village, so that there might be pasture for the cattle and ground for growing corn and other crops.

At last the boys found a very good place. It was high up, beyond a grove of oak trees, and there was a little spring close by: they called the grove of oak trees the forest. They had not very good tools to work with. David had a big clasp-knife with a spring at the back, to prevent it shutting up on his hand, and Joe had a little hatchet that was not very sharp. But Dick wrote to his mother in London, and his father sent him a little axe like an Indian’s tomahawk.

It took them three days to build the hut. Although the trees were Uncle John’s, he could not let them cut down branches. But he let the woodman bring them some cut boughs from the wood-yard.

This was how they built the hut. They chose a young tree with a straight trunk. Around this they fixed the longest and straightest of their boughs upright in the ground. Then they cut smaller pieces of willow and birch and hazel, and laced them in and out of the uprights, until they had got a wattled wall all round, except between two of the uprights, where they left a space for the door-way. The roof they made by tying sticks across from the uprights to the centre tree, and lacing these with twigs and brushwood. Then they plastered the outside with clay and earth. They made a door, with two light poles for the sides and two shorter ones for the ends, tied cross-wise at the corners, and the whole interlaced, like the walls, with hazel shoots and willows.

When the hut was finished, they brought Uncle John to see it. The boys could all get inside quite comfortably by squeezing a little; but there was not room for Uncle John. So, as it was a very hot afternoon, they all sat outside under an oak tree, and read the next chapter from the brown book.

Chapter the Fifth

THE STORY OF TIG: The Food Supplies

TIG’S father, Garff, was one of the chief men of the village. He was very strong and a clever hunter, and the people used to look to him to take the lead in the big hunting expeditions. He was a rich man, too; but that does not mean that he had much money, because he had no money at all. Nobody had money in those times: they had cattle instead, and if a man had to pay a great deal to another man, he gave a cow or a bullock; but if he had to pay only a little, he gave a joint of meat, perhaps, or a skin or part of a skin, or a basket of nuts, or a jar of corn, or a piece of honeycomb.

Garff had a herd of about twenty small shaggy cows like Welsh cattle. They used to be driven out to feed on the pasture grounds on the hills in the daytime with other people’s cows, and some of the old men and boys with the dogs used to look after them. But at sunset the cowherds drove the cattle inside the stockade of the village for the night, to keep them safe from wild beasts; and then the women used to come out to milk the cows.

Garff used to spend most of his time hunting in the forest. Sometimes he went alone, and sometimes two or three of his neighbours went with him. They were not often away from home for more than a day or two. But now and then it happened that they had to follow the game far afield, and then they were absent for a longer time. They hunted the deer mostly; but sometimes they killed the great wild cattle and wild horses and boars. They shot birds, too, of all kinds, and caught fish in the lakes and streams. They used to bring home anything they could catch that would serve for food. Sometimes it happened that all the hunters were unlucky for many days, and meat became scarce. Then the killing of a bison or a wild horse was a great event. Everybody in the village came for a share of the meat, and either carried it home or made a fire and cooked it on the spot. The meat was eaten up to the very last morsel, and the people used even to smash the bones with pieces of stone to get the marrow.

The Stags

When Tig was a boy, the flesh of wild game was the favourite food of most people, and it was generally the commonest and the most plentiful. But it is easy for us to understand that, as the people multiplied and spread about over the country, all kinds of wild game became scarcer. The more the animals were hunted, the more difficult it became to get them. So it was well that there were other things for food. In the autumn the people used to gather all the wild fruits they could get, and store them up for use in the winter—nuts and acorns and wild apples. There were other things, too, that could not be stored, such as pignuts and blackberries and other sorts of berries.

But the best food of all was corn, of which two kinds, wheat and barley, were grown. Corn was nicer and more wholesome than acorns, and much more useful, because, with care and good management, the stock could be increased; but of the wild fruits and nuts men could gather only what natural supply there might be.

Of their corn, the people made porridge and flat cakes of bread, first pouring the grain upon a flat stone and rubbing and grinding it with a long bar-shaped piece of stone, to make it mealy. Also they pounded their corn and acorns and nuts in mortars of wood or stone. This was the women’s work: and it might be said that the women were the millers and bakers, and even the butchers to the households in those days; for whenever the men brought home a deer or any other game, the women always came out to skin it and cut it up and to dress the meat for cooking.

The people used not always to have regular times for meals, as we have nowadays. They generally had a morning and an evening meal, but otherwise, while there was food, they ate when they were hungry, and only at the feast times did they eat together in company. Gofa generally used to make a bowl of porridge for breakfast, and for supper she cooked whatever game Garff had brought home with him; for Garff, as we have said, was a clever hunter, and could generally provide better food than roots and acorns for his family.

There were times, of course, when everybody had to go short. In some years, when the crops had been scanty, food became very scarce before the end of winter, and then the people used to suffer greatly from hunger. At such times, men used to hunt longer and more keenly than during the summer and autumn months; and if a boy could snare a hare or catch a hedgehog, or creep up along the bank of a pool where the wild ducks rested, and fling a couple of stones hard among them as they rose, he would be warmly welcomed at home when he took in his game.

Of course, when food became very scarce indeed, men killed their own cattle. But they did not do this so long as there was wild game to be got. Some men were not such skilful hunters as others; and so it sometimes happened that a man would have to kill all his cows, one after another, for food during the cold time, and a long winter would make many men poor. The women and children suffered terribly, and everybody got very thin. We sometimes say nowadays that the spring is a trying time to live through; but it was very much harder when there were no shops where food could be bought, all the year round alike.

The dogs had a bad time, too: and they used to scratch up buried bones and gnaw them over again, till they had gnawed away all the softer parts. Everybody longed for the summer and the time of plenty again; and there were always great rejoicings when the crops were ripe, and the time came to get in the harvest.

Before he was seven years old, Tig had learned in many ways to be useful to his mother. He used to go with her to the field and pull weeds out of the corn, or to the woods and help her to gather dry sticks and fir cones for fuel; and when she went to milk the cows, Tig went too and carried one of the milk jars; so he always earned his supper.

There was one thing Tig never tasted: he never had any kind of sweets. Of course he used to have honey at home, and he used to pick and eat all kinds of wild fruit, wild strawberries and raspberries and blackberries, but he never had sweets. There were not such things in those days. Nobody had sugar because it was not made then. Even salt, which is so common with us that you can buy as much as you can carry for sixpence, was very scarce among Tig’s people. The Medicine Men of the tribe always had some which they got from some other Medicine Men, who got it from some other Medicine Men who lived by the sea-shore. But they were not willing to part with it except in little pieces; and for a handful of salt a man would have to give something valuable in exchange.

Chapter the Sixth

How Gofa sold some Meal to a Hungry Man

ONE night, after the cold-time was over, Gofa and Tig and his little brother Ban and his little sister Fearna and Sona the baby were in the hut waiting for Garff to come home from hunting. Gofa was making porridge for supper, and Tig and Fearna and Ban were waiting to have theirs, for they were hungry. By this time Gofa’s store of corn was low, and she used to put a handful or two of pounded-up acorns with the corn-meal when she made porridge or bread.

Gofa was stirring the porridge when she heard a noise outside the hut. She jumped up and snatched a club and stood ready to strike if there should be an enemy at the door. Then she called out:

“Who is there?”

Gofa Alarmed

“It is I, Tosgy,” said a voice outside. So Gofa laid down the club and pushed aside the stone at the doorway, and then Tosgy crept into the hut. Tosgy was not a strong man like Garff. He had had his feet frost-bitten in the cold-time, and he could not run and so he could not hunt. The people called him Tosgy because he had big teeth.

“See,” he said, “I have brought you a beautiful fox-skin—a fine one, a rare, fine one; and I beg you give me some meal for it, a little meal for my children. It is now five days, nay, six days since we have eaten bread. We have had naught to eat but the green buds and leaves that we have plucked from the trees and boiled—and oh, but they are poor stuff! There is no goodness in such food, and my little ones are ailing. I beg you take the skin and give me meal.”

Gofa took the skin and looked at it; and she said:

“My man brings me many skins as good as this one; but you shall have the meal for the little ones—mixed meal, look you, such as we have to eat ourselves. We have no better.”

Then she went to a jar that was standing beside the fire and took out a handful of baked corn and gave it to Tosgy and said:

“Munch that, while I put up the meal—it is hard fare, but thy teeth be good.”

“Ay, ay,” said Tosgy, “my teeth be good! would that my feet were as sound!” So he munched the parched corn.

Then Gofa threw some more meal into the porridge pot, and told Tig to go on stirring the porridge. And she took Tosgy’s jar which he had brought and filled it up to the brim with meal; and then she took a smaller pot and filled it up with porridge from the pot beside the fire; and gave it to Tosgy to take home to his children. And Tosgy thanked her many times and made haste to go home with the provender. As he crept out at the doorway, Gofa shouted after him:

“Mind how thou goest! Spill none, and see that my bowls are brought safe back when they are empty—which they soon will be methinks with all those hungry mouths to fill!”

Very soon after this visitor had gone, Garff came home. Gofa did not pick up a club to brain him with. She knew who was coming before he got to the hut, for she heard his whistle; and Flann his dog came to the door and whined and scratched outside. Then Garff crept in and threw down on the floor the game that he had brought home—a squirrel and two water-rats.

“Poof!” he said, “I am tired! Up hill and down dale all day long and never a sight of game. As for the deer, there is no getting near them, and what we shall do if this goes on I cannot tell. But the wolves! why, they be as bold now as ever they were in the cold-time. There were five at least prowling about a bowshot from the gate.”

“Ah!” said Gofa, “and thou all alone!”

“Nay, I was not alone,” said Garff. “Darach was with me and he let fly at one and shot it through the body—a rare long shot—and the rest, as their way is, fell upon it and pulled it down and tore it to pieces. We went round to see that the cattle be all safe within walls. I never knew the wolves so fierce save when there was snow on the ground. But the cattle be safe; that’s one good thing; the cattle be safe. Give me some of that porridge, I am hungry.”

So Gofa brought him some porridge and a bowl of milk, and he sat by the fire and ate his supper, and afterwards ate some parched corn, munching a few grains at a time, while Gofa set to work to strip the fur from the squirrel and the water-rats to make them ready for cooking the next day.

By this time Tig and the other children had gone to lie down to sleep in the part of the hut where they slept. Then Gofa told Garff about Tosgy and how he came to ask for meal.

“I fear there will be many hungry mouths among our folk,” said Garff, “before the fruits are ripe and the harvest fit to be gathered in; and with game getting so hard to kill too! I am glad thou couldst spare some meal.”

“But I shall give him back his fox-skin,” said Gofa, “for they are very poor. See now, I will tell his wife to send one of the children for it next time she is making a coat!”

Chapter the Seventh

The Harvest of the Fields and of the Woods

ALTHOUGH the people had learned how to grow corn, they could not raise large crops. They tilled the ground only in patches, and they had no ploughs or harrows, nor had they any horses to work the land with. All the work was done by hand, and mostly by the women, although sometimes the old men and the boys helped them. They cleared the ground beyond the edge of the forest, and turned up the soil with their hoes.

When a woman wanted to make a hoe, she chose a bough of a tree that had a bend in it. Then she cut and trimmed this to the shape of the letter L, and, last of all, bound a flint, which had been chipped to a broad point, to the shorter limb of the bough with strips of hide; and so she had a useful tool for tilling her plot of ground.

Going to the Fields

In the spring the people sowed their corn. They worked in parties, and as they moved across the field plying their hoes, they used to sing songs to keep in time with one another, one singing the verses and the rest all joining in the chorus. They were fond of singing, whether they were at work or at play; they had songs and choruses for the different occupations, marching songs and harvest songs and songs about hunting the deer; and at the feast-times they sang these songs and the choruses over and over again.

When the time came to gather in the corn, the people often found their crops very short, for pigeons and rooks and other birds came and ate the corn, and the wild deer sometimes broke through the fences and trampled down even more than they ate.

But for all that, the harvest was always a busy time. The women cut off the heads of the corn with their flint knives and carried it home in baskets. They stored it up in the store-houses in the winter village, and when the last of the crops had been gathered in, the people went back to the village for the winter. Then for many days they kept the feast of the harvest. There was plenty to eat and drink, and everybody ate and drank a great deal; and they sang and danced and offered sacrifices, and gave thanks to their gods for the crops that they had gathered in.

The pit-hut, which was Gofa’s store-house for her corn, was near the hut in which she and Garff lived. Like her neighbours she stored up the ears of the corn, and only rubbed out the grain when she wanted a supply for making cakes or porridge.

Besides the harvest of the fields there was the harvest of the woods to be gathered in. Tig used to enjoy more than anything else the days when they gathered the acorns. The women used to go in large parties, with some of the children and some of the young men, all singing and shouting. Then, if a savage old wild boar was routing about among the fern, and munching the fallen acorns, he would listen to the noise of the party coming up, and grunt angrily at being disturbed, and move away into the deep forest; for he feared men, and never attacked them unless they chased him and brought him to bay.

It was splendid for Tig and the other boys—climbing into the oak trees, and getting as far out as they could upon the branches to shake down the ripe acorns. Sometimes they gathered a handful of fine ones and threw them at one another or pelted the women who were gathering underneath; and then Gofa, or some one else’s mother, would look up and say: “Have done now, little badling! or surely we will leave thee in the forest here to-night, and Arthas the She-bear will catch thee and carry thee to her den to make a supper morsel for her little ones!”

And they gathered blackberries and nuts and wild strawberries, and sat down all together to eat the fruit with the corn-cakes that they had brought; and those who had not had enough to eat, nibbled at the acorns. But nobody ate many of these, because they were meant to be carried home for storing, and not to be eaten raw at any time. They were to be dried beside the fire in jars, and then pounded up and mixed with corn-meal to make it go further.

At sunset the people all joined into a company again to go home. Every one had a load. There were big baskets that took two to carry, and smaller baskets for one, and little baskets for the children: and some of the lads and women had wallets made of deer-hide slung over their shoulders.

The Wild Boar

And so they carried home the harvest of the woods, day by day until all the trees were bare—and you may be sure that the squirrels had to be astir very early in the morning to get a share of acorns and nuts for their own winter stores.

Chapter the Eighth

How Crubach became a Sower of Corn

IN Garff’s village there lived an old man named Crubach. The people called him Crubach, the Lame One, because when he was a young man he had had a dreadful fight with a bear, and had been nearly torn in pieces. The bear clawed his face all down one side and tore his arm, and would speedily have killed him, but that two or three brave men dashed in with blazing firebrands and thrust them in the bear’s face; and among them they killed the bear and saved poor Crubach. In time he recovered; but he was never able to hunt again, because he was lame and could not hold either a bow or a spear. But he was strong and clever, and he did not mean to have to beg his daily bread. So he became a grower of corn; and in time he was the greatest grower of corn in the village. He tilled his plot of land more carefully than the women, and always saved his best corn for seed; and his seed was so much better than other people’s that they used to go to him at the time of sowing, and take meat or skins or firewood to exchange for seed-corn.

Then the men began to see that after all Crubach had done well, even though he was not a hunter; and in course of time, some of them took to working among the crops and laying up more corn for the winter store.

Besides his crops of barley and wheat, Crubach grew flax, of which the fibres were dressed and spun into thread. He used to keep a supply of sticks trimmed and ready for making bows and arrow shafts and spear-shafts; he also made wooden cups and bowls and wooden tubs. And he used to gather wild plants of different sorts and use them for medicine; and it was said in the village that nobody except the Medicine Men knew more about plants than Crubach.

When Tig grew big enough to run about by himself, he became great friends with Crubach. The old man was generally to be found working on his piece of land, or sitting to scare away the birds from his crops. He used to teach Tig the names of the animals and birds, and tell him things about them—such as why Broc the badger never walks out except at night; why Graineag the hedgehog wears a prickly jacket; where Gobhlan the swallow goes in the cold-time; why Seabhac the kestrel hawk hangs in the air beating her wings; and who it is that haunts the reedy marshes, crying: “Boom-boom!” And when Crubach gathered in his harvest, he bound a little sheaf of corn for Tig, and gave it to him, and said: “This did I promise thee on the day when we were in the field together scaring the birds.”

Chapter the Ninth

The Story of the Wolf that hunted alone

THIS is one of the stories that Crubach told to Tig. No one now could tell it exactly as Crubach told it, but it was something like this:

Once upon a time there was a wolf that hunted alone. Why did he hunt alone? Now listen, and I will tell thee.

One night he went out with his brother wolves; and they found the trail of a stag and hunted him in the forest. And the stag stood at bay in a rocky place and thrust with his antlers and killed three wolves, and another he killed by leaping upon it suddenly, with his feet altogether, and breaking its neck. So this wolf, who was a coward, said: “I have no mind to be killed. I will not hunt stags.” So he went home to his den and got no supper that night.

On the next night he went out again with the pack, and they found the trail of a wild bull and hunted him in the forest. And the wild bull stood at bay in a thicket, and tossed four wolves and trampled them underfoot and gored them with his horns. So this wolf said: “I have no mind to be tossed by a wild bull. I will not hunt wild bulls.” And he went home to his den and got no supper that night.

So on the next night he went out to hunt alone. By and by he saw Sinnach, the old fox, trotting home with a wild duck that he had caught, slung across his shoulders. So he called out:

“Ho, there! Deliver up that duck!”

But Sinnach was not afraid when he saw that the wolf was alone, and he ran to his den, which was in the rocks close by, and he dropped the duck inside, and then he came to the door and called out to the wolf: “Ho, there, friend! Go and catch a duck for thyself!” And then he went back into his den.

And the wolf went on, and soon he came to the village of the Beavers. The village of the Beavers was in a pond; but the pond was frozen over, because it was the cold-time; and the wolf walked on the ice and came to the hut where the grandfather beaver lived. The grandfather beaver was at home with his family, all sitting snug in the house; and the wolf knew that all the beavers were at home because he could smell them. So he came up close outside, and he called out to the grandfather beaver and said:

“Let me in! Let me in!”

The grandfather beaver knew the wolf’s voice, and he answered:

“Where are thy manners, friend? Come to the door!”

Now the door of a beaver’s hut is under the water; and the water was frozen over with thick ice; and the grandfather beaver knew that the wolf could not dig through the ice, so he laughed, and the other beavers laughed too.

When the wolf heard the beavers laugh, he was very angry, and he snapped out and said:

“I am coming in through the roof!”

So he began to scratch and dig with his paws at the roof of the beavers’ hut. But the roof of the beavers’ hut was made of boughs well laid in and plastered with mud and gravel, and it was all frozen as hard as the ice on the pond. So when the wolf scratched, he only hurt his claws and made his pads very sore; so after a while he had to leave off and go home, limping on his sore pads. And when the beavers heard him leave off and go away, they laughed again, down in their snug house.

So the wolf went home to his den, and he got no supper that night.

The Wolf at the Beaver’s Hut

The next night he went out again and hunted by himself. And he was so hungry that he sat on his tail and howled at the moon.

Gearrag, the young hare, heard him, and she peeped at him from behind a tuft of grass; but she was not afraid of a wolf that hunted alone, and she ran off to feed.

And Mulcha the owl heard him; she perched in the fir tree overhead and cried out: “Whoo-whoo-whoo! Who heeds a wolf that runs by himself? Whoo-whoo-oo!”

And Broc the badger heard him. He came up out of his burrow at the roots of a big oak tree to go on his midnight prowl; he went on his way, grunting to himself: “I always go out without a mate, for that is the way of us badger-folk, but it is not the way for him; it is not the way of his folk. No, no!”

By and by the wolf went on again; and he hunted all the night and found no trail. But towards morning he smelt the scent of dead game. And he nosed about and presently he found in a thicket the body of a hind that had been caught in a trap by its foot. A man had set the trap, but he was at home lame with frost-bite in his feet, and he could not go to his trap. The hind was dead, and Bran the raven had found it; Bran was sitting aloft on a bare branch, calling out “Kroagh, kroagh, kroagh!”

When the wolf found the dead hind in the trap, he was very glad. He said to himself: “Now I will have a feast all to myself. It is a good thing to hunt alone!”

But Arthas the she-bear was near. She too had smelled out the dead hind, and she meant to make a meal of it. She saw the wolf, but she was not afraid of a wolf that hunted alone. So she came up very quietly behind him and said:

“Humpff!”

The wolf jumped, for he was very frightened. But he snarled and showed his teeth. Then he said:

“Go away! This is mine.”

But Arthas said, “Nay, friend, it is mine!”

And the wolf said, “It is mine, for I killed it!”

But Arthas answered: “If thou didst kill it, what is this thing upon its foot, and what meaneth Bran yonder, crying carrion? Thou art a liar and I shall cuff thee!”

So Arthas lifted her great paw and cuffed the wolf over the head, and he fell down dead. And Arthas took the body of the hind and dragged it home to her den for breakfast for her little ones. But as for the carcase of the wolf, she saw that it was nothing but skin and bone; so she left it there in the thicket for Bran the raven, who sat in the tree crying carrion, and for Feannog the crow, who will eat anything. And that is the end of the story of the wolf that hunted alone.

Chapter the Tenth

DICK AND HIS FRIENDS: A Talk about Cattle and Crops

WHEN the chapter was finished, the boys talked about the plan for making a dug-out hut, if they could all be together in the next winter holidays. Uncle John said he would not stop them, but he thought they would find it too hard a task when they came to dig down into the ground, unless they could find a place where the soil was deep and sandy.

Dick wanted to know what tools the people of the old time used when they dug out their winter huts.

Uncle John took down another book, and showed them a picture of an old pick-axe made out of a deer’s antler. But, he said, he did not know what the men used to do for shovels; perhaps they scooped up the soil in their hands, and carried it up to the top of the pit in baskets.

Anyway the boys thought that with their spades they would be able to dig down fairly deep; and then, if they were to lay the soil around the top as they dug it out, they would make the walls higher.

Joe said it would be great fun to have a real fire and collect acorns and roast them to see how they tasted. But Uncle John said they would not find many acorns in the Christmas holidays: the rooks and the squirrels would have taken care of that. But David said they could have some chestnuts from home and pretend they were acorns. He said he thought they would be nicer to eat than acorns, anyway. “Acorns are so bitter,” said he, “I wonder anyone could eat them at all.”

“Yes,” said Uncle John. “But if they were pounded up and put into a vessel with water, the water would take out much of the bitter taste; and then the water could be poured off and the acorn meal dried and mixed with corn meal, as we read, for either corn-cakes or porridge.”

Then David asked why the people didn’t keep larger herds of cattle, so that in the long winter, when there was no other food, they could be sure of having beef in plenty.

“Well,” said Uncle John, “now that’s a question—who can think of an answer?”

Dick said that wolves would come and kill the cattle; and Joe said that enemies would come and steal them.

“Those are both likely answers,” said Uncle John, “for, of course, it is harder to guard a large herd than a small one—but, can’t some one think of a better?”

David said he expected it was hard to keep cattle in the winter, if the people had no byres for them, and no hay to feed them with.

“That is a good notion,” said Uncle John, “the people couldn’t take a cow down the passage into a pit-hut, though no doubt they built cowsheds of some sort inside the wall of the village. But cows can’t live on nothing but fresh air, any more than human beings can; and it must have been a difficult matter to collect winter forage for even a small herd in days when nobody made hay. And then, I daresay, it was not easy to rear large herds, for the cattle which the people had were only partly tamed; and some would be apt to stray away into the forests; and the more a man had, the more he would lose, both in this way and from the attacks of wild animals, as Dick says.

“It is more likely that most men had only a few cattle at first. Then they naturally tried to keep for use and for breeding those that were the tamest and the best; and you may be sure that a man would not kill a cow that was gentle and gave good milk, unless he were driven by starvation.

“But, of course, as time went on, men became more skilful in rearing cattle and sheep, just as they became more skilful in growing corn. And so it came to pass that people had always food at home, without needing to hunt the wild deer, except for amusement; but that was not for a very long while after the time we have been reading about.”

Then Dick wanted to know about the corn that Crubach sowed. Where did it come from? Was it wild corn? Uncle John said that was a hard question, and one that even learned men had never been able to answer completely. There is no wild corn in this country, he said, and the original stock of the corn that Crubach and his neighbours had must have been brought from some other country a great many years before Crubach lived.

“What are pig-nuts like?” Dick asked.

“You dig them up in fields, with an old knife,” said Joe, “a white flower grows up from them, earlier in the summer than this. They don’t have a shell; they are like little potatoes, and taste like a nut but are rather tough.”

“Yes,” said Uncle John, “I don’t suppose the people thought much of pig-nuts, which probably were not very plentiful in times when there were fewer meadows; and not easy to get, besides being rather poor things when you get them, as Joe says. But the wild fruit that they gathered in the autumn—we have read of acorns, nuts and blackberries—what other kinds can you think of?”

“Wild strawberries,” said Dick.

“And raspberries,” said Joe.

“Cranberries,” said David, “and blaeberries.”