leet, said to have been instituted by King Alfred the Great. You may know a marshman—or a man of the "ma'shes," as he is locally termed-wherever you chance to come across him, by the way he grasps his stick. In his native marshes it was rather a pole than a stick that he carried-one about as thick as your wrist and pointed at its stoutest end. As a rule, a "ma'shbird” has a grave demeanour, and very deliberate he is in action. At the same time he is hot-tempered, and, if roused suddenly, becomes as quick of motion as one of his own dyke eels. Fifty years ago the dwellers in the marshlands were a distinct race, quite apart from the people of the inland towns, whom they always styled “furriners." That long monotonous belt of land just within the sea-wall would have ill suited people used to social gatherings. As a rule, a man's companions were his gun and fishing-net. Our longshore shooters had, many of them, to trudge three or four miles night and morning to get to their fishing or shooting grounds. A man living only a mile away was looked on as quite a near neighbour. Any active religious feeling amongst our folks was mostly of a gloomy character, or, at any rate, stern and uncompromising. Their surroundings and solitary occupations fostered this. They were very much in earnest; revival meetings were frequently held on our flats which would quite eclipse any of later days. True, they had no organ or harmonium, but the wild roaring of the wind and the fierce rush of the tide made a fitting accompaniment to the loud rude eloquence of our lay preachers, the sobs and groans of the penitent, and the noisy hallelujahs of demonstrative believers. When summer comes the longshore dwellers live for a time in the blessed sunlight. Marsh hay is mown or cut; the lush grass and other vegetation peculiar to the flats make fodder and litter for the stock in winter. After that follows reed-cutting; the beautiful tasselled reed is valuable for many purposes. The marshman has his gun with him. as well as his hook or stake. No matter where he may be, or how occupied, he never lets his gun go far from his hand: "Ye never knows what ye'r goin' to run aginst," he will tell you. It is a splendid sight, that of these flats covered with a luxuriant vegetation, when the afternoon sun lights all up, and a gentle breeze from off the water -just enough to make the rich grass sway a little— gives the wide expanse the appearance of a glorious inland sea of many colours, belted round in the distance by the woods at the foot of the uplands. One drawback there is to all this beauty: the bailiffs of marshland take heavy dues; ague and intermittent fever are rife. It is a sad sight to see a powerful man shaking like a leaf, and his teeth chattering in his head on the hottest days of midsummer. If our folks smuggled in those days, who could blame them? Brandy was often of vital importance; spirit in some shape or other all of them had, either in the house or outside it. Laudanum too, in considerable quantities what most people would consider most dangerous quantities. Now and again a few of the marshmen from the Essex side would come over to settle amongst us-a rare circumstance, and matter of conversation all over the flats. Still more rarely one would come from the fens of Lincoln, Cambridge, or Norfolk, with tales of marshes in comparison with which our own dwindled down into mere splashes. There was a foreign element in the people; the women showed it more frequently than the men. Their dark hair and eyes, together with warm olive complexions, told their own tale. Finer-looking men and women than some of these you could not find. Tough as pin-wire too; had their constitutions been. weak they could ill have stood the deadly cold of winter and the hot moist air of summer. Autumn seems a short season to longshore dwellers; early winter they may call it more fitly. They take notice of the wild-fowls' flight then. If these shift about and are restless, the marshman judges there will be unsettled weather, and he looks carefully at his reed-thatched house, if he lives in some nook or corner of the flats. He takes precautions that would seem strange to dwellers in towns, and prepares for the worst. His long duck-gun in hand he is a human wader, and he moves over the flats with the deliberation of one of his own Jack Her'ns. But like the heron's, his movements are quick enough when his time comes. See him after a winged curlew on the flats-not on the ooze-and you will wonder at his speed. Any one who has chased a curlew with just its wing |