The Brighton road : the classic highway to the south . thelittle trees, the ribbon-like roads looking like daintymodels : the tiny trains moving out of Noahs Arkstations and vehicles crawling the highways likeobjects in a minature land of make-believe. Lookingsouthward, Brighton is seen—a pillar of smoke by day,a glowing, twinkling light at evening ; but for all it isso near, it has very little affected the old pastoralcountry life of the downland villages. The shepherds,carrying as of yore their Pyecombe crooks, still tendhuge flocks of sheep, and the dull and hollow musicof the sheep-bells r
The Brighton road : the classic highway to the south . thelittle trees, the ribbon-like roads looking like daintymodels : the tiny trains moving out of Noahs Arkstations and vehicles crawling the highways likeobjects in a minature land of make-believe. Lookingsouthward, Brighton is seen—a pillar of smoke by day,a glowing, twinkling light at evening ; but for all it isso near, it has very little affected the old pastoralcountry life of the downland villages. The shepherds,carrying as of yore their Pyecombe crooks, still tendhuge flocks of sheep, and the dull and hollow musicof the sheep-bells remains as ever the characteristicsound of the district. Next year the sheep will beshorn, just as they were when the Saxon churls workedfor their Norman masters, and, unless a cataclysm ofnature happens, they will continue so to be shorncenturies hence. But the shepherds have ceased to be vocal with thesheep-shearing songs of yore ; it seems that theirmodern accomplishment of being able to read hasstricken them dumb. Neither the words nor the airs. 234 THE BRIGHTON ROAD of the old shearing-songs will ever again awaken theechoes in the daytime, nor make the roomy interiorsof barns ring o nights, as they were wont to do lang-syne, when the convivial shearing supper was held,and the ale hummed in the cup, and, later in theevening, in the head also. But the Sussex peasant is by no means altogetherbereft of his ancient ways. He is, in the more secludeddistricts, still a South Saxon ; for the county, untilcomparatively recent times remote and difficult,plunged in its sloughs and isolated by reason of itsforests, has no manufactures, and the rural parts donot attract immigrants from the shires, to leaven hispeculiarities. The Sussex folk are still rooted firmlyin wrhat Drayton calls their queachy of Saxon origin are still the staple of the countrytalk ; folk-tales, told in times when the South Saxonkingdom was yet a power of the Heptarchy, exist inremote corners, curren
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjecthorses, bookyear1922
