A violent, but unexplained, local antipathy to lawyers was formerly manifested at Worle, by the contumelious drumming out of any member of the legal profession who chanced to be discovered in the village. Some embittered page of local history is no doubt concerned in this now obsolete custom, but this is probably almost as far removed in the annals of the place as those distant ages when Worle was by way of being a seaport. Where the flat meadows now spread, maplike below the village, and where the Great Western Railway runs, ships in dim bygone æons rode at anchor. Proof of that forgotten fact was accidentally discovered of recent years, when, in digging the foundation of a new brewery, an ancient anchor was unearthed from the sandy subsoil. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER X STEEP HOLM—FLAT HOLM—UPHILL—BREAN DOWN IF one might dare so greatly as to make one prominent comparison to the disadvantage of Brighton and the advantage of Weston, it would be this: that the seascape off Brighton beach is a mere empty waste of waters. What shipping there is to be occasionally seen is observed going far away out in the Channel; there so broad that it might be, for all the evidence there is to the contrary, the wide ocean itself. Here at Weston, on the other hand, where the Bristol Channel is so narrow that the coast of South Wales is easily to be seen, a constant passage of shipping enlivens the outlook. Here also are those picturesque islets, Steep Holm and Flat Holm, that have so companionable and cheerful a presence. The two Holms that stand forth so picturesquely midway in the Channel deserve some detailed description, for they not only form prominent objects in every view from Weston, but have a curious history. Both are favourite places for excursions by sailing skiffs or motorboats, and if there be those persons who cannot obtain a sufficiency of sea-bathing on Weston shores, Flat Holm affords plenty. The name, “Holm” is Norse for “island,” and remains evidence of the Danish descent upon these coasts in A.D. 882. The Saxon names for the isles, as given in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, were “Stepanreolice”; and “Bradanreolice”; _i.e._ “Steep Reel Island,” and “Broad Reel Island”: the word “reel” being probably an allusion to their supposedly reel-like shape; Steep Holm a long and narrow rock, rising abruptly, with steep and jagged limestone cliffs, to a height of 256 feet above the sea; and Flat Holm presenting a broad, flat, egg-like form. It was on Steep Holm that Gildas, the bitter and melancholy monkish Celtic chronicler of the woes that befel Britain after the death of King Arthur, wrote his Latin complaint, _Liber Querulus de Excidio Britanniæ_, telling how the country was overrun by the Saxon hordes in the fifth and sixth centuries.