394 GEORGE CRABBE Who, only skilled to take the finny tribe, The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe, Wait on the shore, and as the waves run high, On the tossed vessel bend their eager eye, Which to their coast directs its venturous way, CHAP. The poet here suggests that the Aldborough beach folk, if not wreckers, were more disposed to let ships run ashore than to try and aid them; but I doubt whether in that respect they were worse than those of the other towns and hamlets along the coast. Among such a crew, however, a lad of Crabbe's disposition could hardly have been happy, in fact he grew morose and melancholy. Still, although remarkable for his gentleness, he was a stranger to fear. In proof of this a story is told. In the days when fortune began to smile on him he obtained possession of some property at Parham. There it came to his knowledge that his bailiff was in league with a gang of smugglers. On being charged with the fact, and told that his conduct was roguish, the man became enraged, grasped a knife, and exclaimed, "No man shall call me a rogue!" Unmoved by his anger and threatening attitude, Crabbe quietly remarked, "Now, Robert, you are too much for mc; put down that knife and then we can talk on equal terms." As the bailiff hesitated, Crabbe added loudly: "Get out of the house, you scoundrel!" And the man promptly got out. What sort of reputation the Aldborough beachman possessed in Crabbe's day does not much matter now; but their living descendants are well known to be as brave as any of the sea warriors of the East Anglian coast. And brave they need be to man the lifeboat which puts to sea from Aldborough beach whenever a ship in distress is sighted; for the sandbanks off the coast have a bad name among seamen, and to launch a boat from the beach in stormy weather is hard and dangerous work. But the men are never faint-hearted, and their record is a XIV "A SIGN FROM HEAVEN" 395 splendid one. Some of them have sacrificed their lives in the cause of humanity. When last I saw Aldborough the town was lamenting the loss of eight of its bravest sons, who had been drowned through the capsizing of a lifeboat. Apart from its connection with Crabbe's early life the town, from a tourist's point of view, has little interest; but there is a curious old tract in the British Museum which relates to it. It is entitled "A Signe from Heaven, or a Fearful and Terrible Noise heard in the Ayre at Aldborow in the County of Suffolke, on Thursday, the 4th day of August, at 5 of the clocke in the afternoone-wherein was heard the beating of Drums, the discharging of Muskets and great Ordnance, for the space of an houre or more, as will be attested by many men of good worth, and exhibited to some chief Members of the Honourable House of Commons: with a stone that fell from the sky in that storme or noise farther, which is here to be seen in Towne, being of a great weight." This tract, printed in London in 1642, eight days after the occurrence of the "terrible signe," seems to indicate that thunderstorms were not very prevalent on the East Coast during the seventeenth century. How a thunderstorm could subsequently be "exhibited to some chief members of the Honourable House of Commons" is a bit of a puzzle even to us who live in an age of meteorological marvels. A few miles south of Aldborough, from which it is often more easily reached by water than by land, is Orford, an ancient decayed town possessing an early Norman castle of unknown origin. Apparently this castle was built for purposes of coast defence; but nothing is known of its history previous to the reign of Henry I. when the manor of Orford was granted to a certain Peter de Valoines. All that is left of this seaboard stronghold is its massive keep, surmounting a lofty mound surrounded by deep ditches and ruined ramparts which supplied ballast to many a "light" coaster in the days when the town had a harbour of its own. The legend of the "Wild 396 "THE WILD MAN OF ORFORD" CHAP. Man of Orford" still lingers in the neighbourhood. That "wild man was a wonderful sea monster which, according to Ralph, a thirteenth century abbot of Coggeshall, was caught one day in the Orford fishermen's nets. In size and shape it resembled a man ; the crown of its head was hairless; but it had a long ragged beard. It was given to the governor of the castle, whose servants, though they fed it on fish and flesh, which it would eat either raw or cooked, tormented it cruelly in trying to make it speak. However, unlike many of the "monsters dire" which ment. it was a very patient creature and did not resent ill treatWhen the fishermen one day took it out to sea and, having first spread their nets to prevent its escape, allowed it to enter the water, it had no difficulty in diving under the nets, beyond which it appeared, and by its grimaces seemed to deride its captors; but it made no effort to escape, followed the fishermen back to shore, and submitted to be re-imprisoned in the castle. There it remained for some time; but eventually becoming weary, it is said, of living without the companionship of other creatures of its kind it eluded its gaolers, vanished into the sea, and was heard of no more. Monastic remains of any importance are not to be found in south-eastern Suffolk ; but about five miles from Orford are the scanty ruins of Butley Priory, founded by Ranulph de Glanville in 1171. The gateway of this priory, which has been converted into a farm house, is surmounted by five rows of shields of arms, including those of several famous East Anglian nobles. Curiously enough, very few of those nobles are known to have been benefactors of the priory. On a breezy morning early in August I start on the last day's journey of this tour through East Anglia. I leave Ipswich by the London road, which before I turn into the XIV SUFFOLK IN AUGUST 397 by-road to East Bergholt and Manningtree, takes me through Copdock, Washbrook, and Pentley. Harvest, already nearly over in Essex, has in Suffolk only just begun, and no sooner am I out of Ipswich than I am in the midst of half-reaped fields of yellow corn. The sky is full of flying clouds whose shadows sweep in quick succession over the waving corn; on either side of the road the hedges are draped and weighed down by dense masses of traveller's joy, just now in fullest flower. Autumn has come to the hedge banks while the copses and the trees on the field borders are still wearing their summer green only dingy purple horehound, wide-branching hedge mustard, gold-tipped tansy, and a few bright yellow hawkweeds are blooming where a little while ago there was a wealth of pink and white wild roses. But in some of the pastures, where recent rains have almost produced a second hay crop, there is a glorious blaze of colour, the ragwort being all aflame there, and almost as beautiful as mid-April gorse. I miss the outbursts of bird-music which cheered my earlier journeyings; but now and again a feeble trill tells me that the warblers have not yet started on their southward flight; and the house martins are still busy around the cottage eaves. On the hazels the green-sheathed nut clusters have formed, and small acorns are to be seen on the pollard oaks. Here and there the blackberries are reddening; but most of them are as yet green. On a high bank near Copdock school-house white campions are still in bloom; there, too, the air is filled with the mingled fragrance of tansy and peppermint, two strong scents which remind me of old-fashioned country gardens. An intermittent rattle of reaping-machines is heard instead of birds' songs. A week or two ago, when day after day the clouds discharged torrents of rain upon the cornfields, the Suffolk farmers pulled long faces; the crops, they said, would be beaten down; the reaping-machines would be useless; all the corn would have to be cut, at considerable extra expense, with the scythes. But apparently their dismal forecasts were the 398 IN THE CORN FIELDS CHAP. offspring of the hours of gloom, destined to die and be forgotten in the sunlight; for the red-painted, loud-rattling reapers are merrily at work in the fields. Their metallic murmuring reminds me of another harvest scene I witnessed in Suffolk several years ago, when I was a temporary inmate of an ancient farmhouse far away from railways and main roads. Day after day I had listened to the rattle of the reapers until it almost seemed to me the natural voice of the sun-ripened cornfields. One day I wandered into a field where the standing corn con sisted of a gradually lessening square, along the borders of which a reaping machine moved in a manner which somehow suggested one of the scythe-armed chariots of the Iceni. Around this square the harvestmen, clutching stout sticks, stood like sentries on point duty; and presently I learnt that they were watching for rabbits, many of which had sought shelter in the shrinking square. From time to time one of the rabbits would break from its scanty covert, and then there would be a wild chase until it was run down and knocked on the head, or escaped beyond the borders of the field. When only a few square yards of |