England -- Description and travel; Wales -- Description and travel
Very interesting is the old priest-house at West Hoathly, the more
so because it is not bare, but supplied with ancient, though not the
original, furniture in keeping with the place, and with domestic
appliances that were used in days remote. On my return home I sought
for particulars of this house in two or three modern guide-books to
the county, but could find no mention of it, although the church
was briefly noticed, which shows that guide-book compilers miss
many interesting features by the way, to the discovery of which the
traveller must trust to his own devices; and do we not take a special
personal pride and a greater delight in the good things that we
discover for ourselves, than in those we first read of, or are told
about? Much of the charm of a journey lies in making these discoveries,
and in the delightful state of expectancy of mind knowing not what each
day, or even hour, may reveal.
CHAPTER V
"Great-upon-Little"--The woods of Sussex--A maze of lanes--Frensham
Pond--A holiday haunt--The legend of the shivering reeds--Rural
inns--Roughing it (?)--Waverley Abbey--The monks of old--The sites
of abbeys--Quiet country towns--Stocks and whipping-post--A curious
font--"A haven of rest."
About a mile from West Hoathly, on the way we took, we were told of a
local "lion" in the shape of a huge rock, firmly balanced on a very
small one, which together have earned the title of "Great-upon-Little."
The great top rock looks insecure enough, and as though a push of the
hand would almost send it over. This curious rock stands in a romantic
and deeply wooded glen some half a mile or so from the main road,
and many other strangely shaped rocks are to be found there; shapes
manifestly due to the erosion of the softer stone leaving the harder
portions to stand out more or less prominently. To one who has beheld
the wonderful rock formations of the Yellowstone Valley in America,
this "Great-upon-Little" may appear but a trivial thing; still, in
its way it is striking. But it was the rock-girt glen with its green
woods, a glen steeply winding down the rough hillside, that charmed me
infinitely more than this natural freak--a veritable fairies' glen
that would have made the fortune of any watering-place were it only
near to it. Cobbett in his _Rural Rides_ thus discourses about this
rock in his own peculiar way: "At this place there is a rock which they
call 'Big-upon-Little,' that is to say, a rock upon another, the top
one being longer and wider than the top of the one it lies on. This big
rock is no trifling concern, being as big, perhaps, as a not very small
house. How, then, came this big upon little? What lifted up the big? It
balances itself naturally enough, but what tossed it up? I do not like
to pay a parson for teaching me while I have God's own Word to teach
me; but if any parson will tell me how big came upon little, I do not
know that I shall grudge him a trifle. And if he cannot tell me this;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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