ravages of insect plagues; and in England, the gamekeepers are shown how they are ruining their neighbours’ crops and fences without saving their eggs, young birds, and leverets, which fall a prey to rats more than they would to weasels and hawks, and owls, if these latter were allowed to make war on the rats and mice.
We have, when all is said, to be thankful for a tolerable harvest which will preclude hardship, though we cannot consider it a rich one, fit to elate the spirits of the nation. We may congratulate ourselves on having made some progress towards obtaining future harvests, more ample amidst the chances and changes of weather than our fathers won from the most golden summers. We have surmounted the misfortunes of last year better than we could have expected: and its adversity has taught us to make ourselves more secure for the future. If the year between this harvest and the next is to be a season of national trial, it will not be from failure of the nation’s bread.
A PHASE OF THE PAPER QUESTION.
THE RAG MERCHANT IN BRITTANY.
There live amongst the mountains of Bretagne a peculiar sort of tradespeople, called by the natives “Pillavers.” The pillaver is a nomadic rag-merchant, leading in every respect the life of a gipsy, except that he does not, like him, drag his family with him, but leaves them in some cave in the mountains to await his return from his trips through the country, where he purchases quantities of rags to re-sell them to the paper manufacturers. He goes from farm to farm, cottage to cottage, and hut to hut, where he announces his arrival by the lugubrious cry—“Pillaver! Pillaver!” His favourite haunts are the most wretched and poor huts, where he is sure to find his commodity. He is a sort of notorious hobgoblin, who knocks at the doors of the unhappy, and reminds them of their poverty. He is, therefore, hated and possibly shunned, while in rich families his call is considered an insult, and his knock is usually answered by “Be off! there are no rags here for you.”
“Very well,” rejoins the pillaver, in an ominously ironical tone, “I will come by-and-by,” and moves on to a near cottage to find what he seeks.
But even in the huts where a few rags are sold to him he is received with contempt and abhorrence, and is seldom allowed to advance as far as the fire-place. The rags are brought to him to the threshold, where the bargain is made. His honesty is so distrusted that even the poorest of the poor fear his thieving craft; he is—as the song goes—without church and religion.
We will cite, in illustration, a few stanzas of the popular song about the pillaver:—
THE CINQUE PORTS AND THE BREDENSTONE AT DOVER.
Our ever youthful Premier has recently given éclat to an ancient ceremony which has been revived for the nonce out of the records of one of our most ancient and loyal institutions,—we allude to his inauguration as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of the Castle of Dover.
At the grand banquet given on that occasion in the “Maison Dieu,” Lord Palmerston expressed his conviction that “nothing tends to distinguish a man more than a respect for traditions, where the latter are harmless in their character, and do not interfere with social progress.” We may therefore be pardoned for carrying back our readers over a short retrospect of the past history of the Cinque Ports and the high dignity of their Lord Warden.
The Cinque Ports were originally five only, as their name implies,—Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, Romney, in Kent, and Hastings, in Sussex; and it is curious to note that when at a later period the two “ancient towns” of Winchilsea and Rye were added to their number, no change was made in their collective designation—they were the “Cinque Ports” still.
Attempts have been made by enthusiastic antiquaries to carry back the foundation of the Cinque Ports to Anglo Saxon times; but although it is probably true, as stated by Jeake,[1] that “the five ports were enfranchised in the time of Edward the Confessor” (for the fact stands recited in the first charter which they received from Edward I.), yet the organisation of the Cinque Ports as a body politic, such as it has existed during the last 800 years, is plainly to be traced to the policy of William the Conqueror in securing for England easy and constant communication with the continent, together with immunity from foreign attack; and the permanence of the Norman name of the seven towns collectively seems to warrant the same inference, in spite of the fact that all and each of the towns included under the collective name enjoyed some special privileges even before the Conquest.
It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader how, after the battle of Hastings, the southern and eastern coasts of Kent formed that portion of his newly acquired kingdom which William was most anxious to secure; how he made it his first object to reduce that tract of seaboard even before he- ↑ “Magna et Antiqua Charta Quinque Portuum.” Folio edition. 1728. With a comment by Mr. Jeake, long an inhabitant of one of the ports in question.
