Dead Mans Plack and an Old Thorn

Dead Man's Plack and an Old
Thorn, by

William Henry Hudson This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere
at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,
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Title: Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn
Author: William Henry Hudson
Release Date: November 1, 2006 [EBook #19691]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: DEAD MAN'S PLACK.]

DEAD MAN'S PLACK

AND
AN OLD THORN
BY W. H. HUDSON
1920 LONDON & TORONTO J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. New York:
E. P. DUTTON & CO.

CONTENTS
DEAD MAN'S PLACK:
Preamble
Chapter
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.

XII.
AN OLD THORN:
Chapter
I.
II.
III.
POSTSCRIPT

ILLUSTRATIONS
DEAD MAN'S PLACK
HAWTHORN AND IVY, NEAR THE GREAT RIDGE WOOD

DEAD MAN'S PLACK

PREAMBLE
"The insect tribes of human kind" is a mode of expression we are
familiar with in the poets, moralists and other superior persons, or
beings, who viewing mankind from their own vast elevation see us all
more or less of one size and very, very small. No doubt the comparison
dates back to early, probably Pliocene, times, when some one climbed
to the summit of a very tall cliff, and looking down and seeing his
fellows so diminished in size as to resemble insects, not so gross as
beetles perhaps but rather like emmets, he laughed in the way they
laughed then at the enormous difference between his stature and theirs.
Hence the time-honoured and serviceable metaphor.

Now with me, in this particular instance, it was all the other way
about--from insect to man--seeing that it was when occupied in
watching the small comedies and tragedies of the insect world on its
stage that I stumbled by chance upon a compelling reminder of one of
the greatest tragedies in England's history--greatest, that is to say, in its
consequences. And this is how it happened.
One summer day, prowling in an extensive oak wood, in Hampshire,
known as Harewood Forest, I discovered that it counted among its
inhabitants no fewer than three species of insects of peculiar interest to
me, and from that time I haunted it, going there day after day to spend
long hours in pursuit of my small quarry. Not to kill and preserve their
diminutive corpses in a cabinet, but solely to witness the comedy of
their brilliant little lives. And as I used to take my luncheon in my
pocket I fell into the habit of going to a particular spot, some opening
in the dense wood with a big tree to lean against and give me shade,
where after refreshing myself with food and drink I could smoke my
pipe in solitude and peace. Eventually I came to prefer one spot for my
midday rest in the central part of the wood, where a stone cross, slender,
beautifully proportioned and about eighteen feet high, had been erected
some seventy or eighty years before by the lord of the manor. On one
side of the great stone block on which the cross stood there was an
inscription which told that it was placed there to mark the spot known
from of old as Dead Man's Plack; that, according to tradition, handed
from father to son, it was just here that King Edgar slew his friend and
favourite Earl Athelwold, when hunting in the forest.
I had sat there on many occasions, and had glanced from time to time at
the inscription cut on the stone, once actually reading it, without having
my attention drawn away from the insect world I was living in. It was
not the tradition of the Saxon king nor the beauty of the cross in that
green wilderness which drew me daily to the spot, but its solitariness
and the little open space where I could sit in the shade and have my
rest.
Then something happened. Some friends from town came down to me
at the hamlet I was staying at, and one of the party, the mother of most

of them, was not only older than the rest of us in years, but also in
knowledge and wisdom; and at the same time she was younger than the
youngest of us, since she had the curious mind, the undying interest in
everything on earth--the secret, in fact, of everlasting youth. Naturally,
being of this temperament, she wanted to know what I was doing and
all about what I had seen, even to the