The Beacons and Their Story page 2

For the beacon was lighted in the evening, and by the next morning nearly all the volunteers of the southern counties of Scotland were mustered and under arms. Some of them rode sixty miles to the muster. One party, which on the evening of the alarm had happened to be gathered at what is described as a "licensed toll house," at Ancrum Bridge, Roxburghshire, suddenly beheld the signal fire burn up on the Eildon Hills and rushed to duty. So quickly did these gallant Scotsmen respond to the nation's call that they had no time to pay their score with the landlord. But (or so it is said) on the anniversary these companions met for another good evening at the same place and put the matter right. And what must it have been like to be at the firing of a beacon? We can learn if we turn the pages of Thomas Hardy's "Return of the Native." There he describes the building and kindling of a fire on the great hill of Creechbarrow, which he calls "Rainbarrow." This hill is the highest of the double range of the Purbeck Hills, and it looks over that wonderful tract of country which he calls Egdon Heath - wonderful because it appears almost the same to-day as it did to those men who, four thousand years ago, perhaps, dug the trench and raised the barrow which we find on the summit. To the east run the hills which hide Corfe Castle. To the north-east is the great expanse of Poole Harbour, and directly north the view stretches into the blue haze of infinity until the eye is drugged with the distance.

This is how Hardy saw the Dorset men of Egdon light their beacon one fifth of November in the middle of the nineteenth century; less, as he points out, because it was Guy Fawkes' Day than because it was an excuse to build such a fire here as their ancestors had always done.

"The loads were all laid together, and a pyramid of furze thirty feet in circumference now occupied the crown of the tumulus, which was known as Rain-barrow for many miles round. Some made themselves busy with matches, and in selecting the driest tufts of furze, others in loosening the bramble bonds which held the faggots together. Others, again, while this was in progress, lifted their eyes and swept the vast expanse of country commanded by their position, now lying nearly obliterated by shade...

"While the men and lads were building the pile, a change took place in the mass of shade which denoted the distant landscape. Red suns and tufts of fire one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country round. They were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were engaged in the same sort of commemoration... Perhaps as many as thirty bonfires could be counted within the whole bounds of the district; and as the hour may be told on a clockface when the figures themselves are invisible, so did the men recognize the locality of each fire by its angle and direction, though nothing of the scenery could be viewed.

"The first tall flame from Rainbarrow sprang into the sky, attracting all eyes that had been fixed on the distant conflagrations back to their own attempt in the same kind..."

And here, on the top of Creechbarrow, we can very well take leave of our subject by the gradually failing light of this fire that died so long ago.