RAVEN DICK, THE POACHER;
OR,
"WHO SCRATCHED THE BULL?"
Kiah Dobson,—they always called him Kiah "for shortness sake," as we used to say in Lincolnshire; but his full name was Hezekiah,—Kiah Dobson was a hearty buck of a farmer, who ploughed about fifty acres, and fed sheep and bullocks on about fifty others. He was a tenant of good old Squire Anderson, the ancestor of the Yarboroughs, who are called Lords in these new-fashioned times. Lindsey and its largest landlord presented, it need scarcely be said, very different features sixty years ago to those they present now. Squire Anderson kept a coach, but he had not three or four, like his successor, the peer: he had one good house at Manby, but he had not that and a much grander one at Brocklesby, another at Appuldercome, in the Isle of Wight, and another in town.
The farmers of Lindsey kept each a good nag, for market service, and so forth; but it was a very, very scarce thing to find a blood horse in their stables; and when their dames went to market, it was on the pillion-seat, behind the farmer himself, and not in the modern kickshaw gig. There were none of your strongholds of starvation, which the famishing thousands call "Bastiles," in those days; and a horn of good humming ale, and a motherly slice of bread and cheese, awaited the acceptance of any poor man who happened to be journeying, and called either at the hall of the squire or at the cottages of any of the farmers on his extensive estates.
Kiah Dobson was nearing his cottage one November evening, a little before dusk, when a figure caught his eye, the sight of which roused his gall,—and yet Kiah was by no means a choleric or hasty-tempered man. It was Raven Dick, the poacher, that the farmer was so wroth to see; for Dick was beheld as the farmer had beheld him nearly fifty times before,—with a bundle of dead hares under his arm. The farmer turned to cross the home-close in another direction, willing, as it seemed, to give Dick another fair opportunity of getting safely away. But "the devil was in Dick for impudence," as Kiah used often to say,—"if you gave him an inch, he would be sure to take an ell!" Not content with imposing on farmer Dobson's good-nature forty-nine times in the course of his harum-scarum life, he must e'en "try it on" for the fiftieth, and so made the experiment just once too often.
"Farmer! how d'ye feel yoursen?" said Dick, striding up to Kiah Dobson, and looking him full in the face, as bold as a bull-dog.
"Better than thou'lt feel, scapegrace! when thou gets thy hempen collar on!" replied the farmer, snarling as angrily as a mastiff when he doesn't like you.
"May be the thread of it isn't spun yet," retorted Dick, mocking the farmer's angry tone.
"Surely, old Nick himself isn't more impudent than his children that wear his own colour!" exclaimed Kiah, darting a withering look at Dick's black face, for Dick's skin was even swarthier than a gypsy's; and I might as well say now as at any other time, that the sable shade of Dick's countenance, coupled with their knowledge of his wild way of life, were the emphatic reasons why his neighbours gave him the epithet of "Raven."
Now, above all things, Dick did not like these reflections on his unfair colour; so, with something in the shape of an oath, Dick turned his heel in dudgeon, and seemed, not at all to the farmer's displeasure, to be bent on making his way home.
Dame Dobson, who was a stout country-wife, and was labouring lustily at her churn, and scolding one of her maids, who had been idling, just as her husband entered the cottage, caught a sight of the well-known poacher with the hares under his arm ere the farmer could close the door, and, with the anger that her maid had kindled, was ill prepared to brook new provocation.
"Shame on thee, Kiah, for letting that rascal escape so often!" she exclaimed, screaming so loudly that Dick could hear her words distinctly, though nearly half way over the close; "it will come to the Squire's ears at long-last, thou may depend on't! and then thou knowst what will follow!"
"Hang the villain!" said Kiah, "he really deserves nabbing; and I've half a mind to go after him and collar him; for, confound him! he grows more brazenly impudent than a miller's horse! he's getting worse than come-out!"
"You'll ha' no need to do that," said the incorrigibly idle maiden, who had gone to the window to peep at the poacher, in spite of her mistress's fierce scolding, "he's turned again, and has been listening to you, and now he's coming hither as fast as shanks' horse can carry him!"
And so it was, for Dick had changed his intent; and, with a perverse will, now strode, at full stretch, towards the door of the farm house.
"Curse his gallows-neck!" exclaimed farmer Dobson, between his teeth, when he heard the maiden's words: "has he such a brass-face as that comes to? I'll nab him this time, or I'm a Dutchman else!"
Raven Dick's foot was on the grunsel almost before the farmer had finished this last sentence; and throwing himself on a chair in the kitchen, and the hares on the cottage floor, alike with the air and impudence of one who braves the gallows, he asked for a horn of ale and a lump of bread and cheese with as little ceremony as if he had been a squire in his own mansion. Dick's audacity, however, had now overstretched its mark. The farmer's strong fist was on Dick's frock collar in a moment; the next, the farmer had dragged him from his seat; and, in the third, Dick was prostrate on the cottage floor. Unluckily, Kiah Dobson's anger overbalanced his caution; and, with the impetuosity of his own force upon the poacher, Kiah brought himself, also, to the floor.
Dick had so long careered it over the farmer's fields, by day and by night, and had so often "snickled," or noosed the hares, as one may say, under the farmer's nose, and the farmer had all the while taken it so mildly, that the poacher was never more surprised in his life than at this portentous assault upon his person by mild, good-natured Kiah Dobson. Had it not been for his imaginary security of feeling, the poacher would not so easily have been overthrown. And, as it was, Dick was not disposed to believe that all was over with him; he speedily succeeded in wriggling his body from under the farmer's weight, and, in the course of a few minutes, had his knee upon Kiah's breast, and began to grab the farmer so tightly by the throat that he soon grew blacker than Dick himself. Luckily Dame Dobson's churn staff came to the rescue. She pommelled the hard head of the poacher so soundly, and her strokes came so thick and fast after each other, that he was compelled to loose his hold on the farmer's throat, in order to catch the churn-staff from the farmer's wife. The engagement, however, now became more furious. Poor Kiah lay gasping on the floor, for some moments, unable to rise, much less to aim a blow at the adversary; but the war was at its height between Raven Dick and the dame, and two stout maidens of her service. Mops, brooms, and brushes were successively impelled with no playful force towards the seasoned skull of the poacher, but were shivered with the rapidity of lightning, as he dexterously caught hold of them, and wrested them from the hands of his clamorous assailants. The din of female tongues was scarcely less than the noise of blows; and when the more effective ammunition was all expended, the discharge was confined, at last, to the small shot of epithets, poured in every imaginable shape, from the fair musketry of the three female belligerents' mouths.
The scene had now become as laughable as previously it had been serious. Raven Dick stood on a chair in the middle of the floor, drawing his face into the most whimsical forms and mocking the women, while they stood around him, each with hands on hip, and tearing their throats with the effort to abuse and irritate, or otherwise to shame him. The farmer, seeing what turn the war had taken, had seated himself on a chair, and forgetting his anger, was shaking his sides with laughter at the ludicrous and unwonted scene presented that night in his kitchen. The affray at length shrank into silence; the women's tongues were fairly wearied; they each sat down to rest; and so Dick sat down, likewise.
"Dang it Dick, thou'rt a good woolled 'un!" said the hearty farmer; "but thou art an idle rogue, after all."
"How so, Maister Kiah?" asked the saucy poacher; "why do you call me an idle rogue?"
"Because thou art fonder of stealing than working," quickly replied the farmer.
"Stealing, say you?" rejoined Dick, his brows knitting together; "I scorn your words, Kiah Dobson!—You lie in your throat!—What do I steal?"
"The 'squire's hares, by dozens, thou saucy varlet," answered Kiah.
"How come they to be the 'squire's hares?" asked Dick, fixing his eyes very keenly on the farmer.
"By feeding and breeding on his land," answered Kiah Dobson.
"But don't you plough the land, Farmer Dobson?"
"To be sure I do——"
"And don't you buy the seed to sow upon the land?"
"Sartainly I do——"
"And don't you sow the seed when you have bought it?"
"Ay, and I can sow a breadth with here and there a fellow in any——"
"Pshaw!—don't you watch the corn while it is growing, weed it, and attend to it till it is ripe? and do not you, with the sweat of your own brow, and the help of those you hire with your own purse, reap the corn, and gather it into the stack-yard?—and don't you, afterwards, pay many a shilling in wages for Roger Brown, and Tim Wilson, and others, to thrash your corn for you?—and don't you consider the corn yours when you are taking it to market?—and don't you think you have a right to receive the money for which you sell it?"
"Ay, and I would fain be knowing, Dick, who besides has so good a right to it as I have," replied the farmer, starting to his feet with warmth, and not apprehending the drift of Dick's queries.
"Then the corn which these poor hares have eaten during the summer," said Dick, pointing to the dead animals which lay on the floor, "was your corn, and not the 'squire's, for you pay him his rent, don't you, Kiah?"
"Zounds, ay! to the very day," instantly and proudly replied the farmer.
"And yet you durst not kill a hare, and be seen in doing it," said Dick, not permitting a moment's pause to take place.
"Me kill a hare!" exclaimed Kiah, scratching his head, and colouring very deeply; "Lord! you know, Dick, I've no licence; and, besides, the 'squire always reckons the hares his own, you know."
"Does he?" said Dick, with a peculiar sneer, "then he's a fool for so doing.—Why, Farmer Dobson, don't you remember how, last latter-end, three persons came from Lincoln, and went shooting like wild devils over the whole estate, murdering and bagging all they could see? And it's more than likely you'll have a greater number of the Lincoln Minster Jackdaws, as the 'squire called 'em, this month than you had last November; and will the 'squire be such a fool as to call the hares his own then, when the black thieves are packing off with them, think you?"
"Dang it! thou talks very odd, Dick!" said the farmer, sitting down very quietly, fixing his eyes on the floor, and scratching his head harder than before; "thou talks very odd, but what thou say'st is as true as the gospel, for all that."
"That it is, as sure as eggs are eggs," added the dame, into whose mind conviction had been entering a little more quickly than into that of her husband.
"There now!" exclaimed Dick, springing from his seat, and feeling proud of the power of his argumentation, when he saw both the farmer and his wife brought over so triumphantly to his side of the question. "There now, you see, Kiah Dobson, a man may be judged very wrongly, and be condemned for a thief and a rogue by many who are either—saving your presence, farmer—thorough fools or rogues themselves, and yet, all the while, he may be quite as honest as his neighbours. Now, don't you think it hard, Kiah, under all the circumstances, that you are not allowed to kill a hare when you like?"
"I'm not thinking so much about that," replied Farmer Dobson, his eyes still bent very thoughtfully downward—"I'm not thinking so much about that, as I am wondering how, in the name of Old Nick, these things came to be as they are. You see, Dick, it was the same in my father's time, though I've heard him say that my grandfather used to tell how, in the time of the great troubles, folks killed game when and where they liked; but that was only owing to the unsettled state of things, for these laws about the game were made before that time I take it, Dick."
"According to what I've learned about it," said Dick, looking still more proud than before, and feeling himself superior in information to the rest of the company, "these Game Laws, as they are called, began with William the Conqueror, the king that I dare say you've heard of, farmer, that came from beyond the sea, and got possession of this country, when——"
"Likely, likely," said the farmer, yawning, and growing wearied of Dick's learning; "I don't care two straws who first made such laws, Dick; but I'm sure of one thing—that it must be wrong, when one thinks on it, that the great folk should claim the wild creatures God Almighty makes himself as their own, when, all the while, they have no more right to 'em than other folk."
"To be sure it's wrong, farmer," said Dick. "What right could any man have, whether he were a king, or a 'squire, or a parson, to say to all the people of this country, or any other country, 'You shall none of you kill a stag, or a hare, or a pheasant, under pain of losing a hand, or going to prison?' The only wonder is, farmer, that people have submitted to these laws so long and so quietly."
"Why, you see, Dick," continued the farmer, whose common sense was of a more solid character than Dick's, though his perceptions were not quite so acute at the outset of an enquiry—"you see, Dick, this law is contrived, like most other laws, to draw a number of folk into the love and the liking of it: it isn't simply one man now, whatever it might have been formerly, that is interested in keeping up these Game Laws. Rich folks generally think they ought to do no other but uphold 'em. They say, that all the game would soon be destroyed if every body was allowed to kill hares and pheasants when and where they like. The 'squire, too, sends presents, you know, to his acquaintances the great folk in London, and elsewhere; and if hares and pheasants and partridges were as common with poor folk as with rich, why, the great folk would soon scorn to have 'em on their tables. 'There are wheels within wheels,' as the miller says, Dick. Rich folk are sure to hang together on their side of the wheat-sack; and that is the reason—more than their money, Dick, mind ye! more than their money—why they are so much more powerful than the poor. And for the self-same reason that they are so powerful, Dick," concluded the farmer, seeming determined to finish his speech in spite of the poacher's evident dislike to it, "I think it is far better for all who love peace and quietness, and a whole skin, to keep out of harm's way. You understand me, Dick! Come, dame, fill us a good jug of ale, and let us have a bit of bread and cheese, or a mouthful of bacon, and Dick and I will talk these things over a bit, just in a quiet and sensible way."
The dame hasted to set her hospitality before her spouse and the poacher; and it soon became hard to say which most excelled in the act of doing justice to it. The strong ale, however, was most freely partaken by the poacher, and, under its potency, Dick's tongue soon began to indulge itself with a tolerably large licence.
"I' faith, farmer," he said, "you gave me a roughish reception when I crossed your threshold; you must do things gentlier another time, when you're disposed for a cramp: it's only a fool-hardy sort of a thing to take a bull by the horns: it's ten times wiser, when he makes a butt at you, to scratch him a bit, and coax him, and smooth him down."
The farmer was a little nettled by Raven Dick's taunting tone and the devilry of his eye; but he thought one scuffle enough for a day, and so replied with a somewhat forced look of good humour, "I hardly think it's wisest at all times, Dick. I think, for my own part, the only way sometimes is to take a bull by the horns. And besides, Dick, whoever heard o' such a thing as scratching a bull? You may scratch an angry cur, you know, Dick," he concluded with a laugh, "but a bull!—no, no, Dick, scratching a bull won't do at all!"
"I know what I say, Farmer Dobson," cried Dick aloud, thumping one hand upon the table, and pouring the ale on the outside of the horn, instead of into it, with the other, "I know what I say,—and I say scratching!"
"Speak in the house, Dick!" retorted the farmer, colouring, "thou wilt not talk better sense for shouting. I tell thee that that bull's only a fool of a bull that will stand scratching! Wilt thou make me believe, think'st thou, that any body would be such a goose, for instance, as to try to scratch my old white bull in the second home close? Thou won't venture to scratch him, I'm pretty sartain, Dick, with all thy brag and bluster to boot!"
"Won't I?" cried Dick, fiercely; "why, what do ye fancy is to hinder me, eh! old clod-pate?"
"Dick, Dick!" said the farmer, cooling himself with the remembrance that the poacher was a much younger and inexperienced man than himself, and tapping the wild youth admonishingly on the shoulder, "it is far wiser for a man to go steadily about getting his bread, than either to scratch bulls, or to snickle hares, depend on't. I don't say but that you have as much right to practise one as t'other, if you feel inclined; only, you are almost sure to repent it in the end, in either case: you understand me, Dick?"
"'Od dang it!" hiccupped Dick, setting his ragged hat on one side, and looking at the farmer as if he intended him to understand he was no ordinary hero, "do ye think, Kiah Dobson, that I fear aught that may happen? I say I will scratch your bull; ay, and I'll tame him, too, as I've tamed you?"
"Better not," replied the farmer drily; "better go quietly home, Dick, and try to earn thy living honestly, like thy father and thy brother Ned."
"To Jericho with 'em both!" roared Raven Dick, bouncing up from his seat: "they're fools both of 'em! I don't intend to slave for ever, and never have any fun, like them. No, no! I'll have a hare when I like; ay, and I'll scratch a bull when I like, too!—so here goes!" and out sallied the intoxicated poacher, snatching up the dead hares as he went, and placing them under his arm as before. Farmer Dobson and the dame followed, for their curiosity was, naturally, too highly excited to permit their remaining behind.
Just as Dick vaulted over the first hedge, for he was in too heroic a vein to think of taking the stile, though it was close by, Dick met one who was no stranger to him. It was the squire's gamekeeper. The moon shone brightly, and the gamekeeper looked hard at Dick, and still harder at the hares under his arm. But although the gamekeeper had his gun with him as usual, he most likely felt unwilling to encounter one so strong, and withal so reckless as he knew Raven Dick to be, for he did not speak to him. Dick spoke to the gamekeeper, notwithstanding.
"Heigho!" said he, "brother poacher! how are you for fun? just stop and look at me, while I scratch Kiah Dobson's old bull, will ye?" and off he went along the hedge-row in quest of his new game, while the gamekeeper and the farmer and his wife stood gazing after him in astonishment.
Scarcely sooner said than done! Dick came up to the bull as he lay in the pasture, quietly and unsuspectingly chewing the cud, and Dick began to scratch the bull. It need hardly be said that if Dick thought this very funny, the horned beast's thoughts were of another complexion. The bull rose, blurred, and ran bang upon Dick, goring his ribs, throwing him up, and, bounding to the other side of the field, left the scratcher senseless upon the grass, and all before you could have found breath to say, "Jack Robinson!" had you been looking on, like the gamekeeper and farmer and dame Dobson.
Nothing in the wide world could have given the gamekeeper greater pleasure than Dick's overthrow. "Farmer Dobson," said he, "now is the time to nab the rascal: fetch your wheelbarrow, and we'll put him into it, and take him away to the next constable's, and he shall put him into the close-hole, till justice can be had upon him: it will do the Squire's heart good, I'm sure, to learn that we have noosed the Raven at last, after he has noosed so many score brace o' game."
Kiah Dobson's heart felt reluctant to assist in imprisoning Dick, 'scapegrace, although he knew him to be: but how could he refuse compliance with the request of the squire's gamekeeper, for there lay the hares by the poacher's side? Besides, as Kiah often used to say, when he related the story in after years, he reflected that although Dick was so good a logician on the evils of the Game Laws, yet he had become so outrageously daring in bidding defiance to danger, that he feared ill would come on it, if a timely check were not given to his course. So Kiah went and fetched the barrow, and he and the gamekeeper lifted Dick into it, and away they wheeled him to the next constable's house. A surgeon attended to Dick's wounds, when he had brought him to his senses a little; and, the next week, the squire himself, sitting in judicial state at the hall of Manby, committed Dick to the House of Correction for six months.
Dick found the labour of knocking hemp—the usual employ of prisoners in the gaols of North Lincolnshire at that period—to be but pitiful "fun." And when he reflected that he would be likely to come there again, or to some worse place, if he ever afterwards ventured to renew his practice of "snickling" hares, he steadily resolved to "work like his father and his brother Ned," as Farmer Dobson advised. Dick's views on the Game Laws never altered; but he felt, after this sorrowful experience, it would be worse than folly to dream of violating them with impunity, in a country where "the rich all hung together on their own side of the wheat sack," as Kiah Dobson had observed. Now and then, when he happened to have shaken hands too freely with his old acquaintance Sir John Barleycorn, even years after his imprisonment, Raven Dick would be liable to relapse into some shade of his old feeling, and putting on a "gallows-look," as the landlord of the Harrows and Plough, in Froddingham, used to call it, he would threaten to return to his old trade. But there was one saying which, when "passed about" on the long settle of the public-house, was always sure to raise a hearty chorus of laughter at Dick's expense, and to have the effect of dispelling, in a twinkling, all Dick's dreams of having more "fun:" it was—"Who scratched the Bull?"