Montacute Priory, near the village, has a fine Perpendicular tower
and other picturesque remains. To see it at its best, one should visit
the village late in autumn, when the Virginia creeper, which covers
the ancient walls, has turned to brilliant red. Other buildings under
similar conditions may look as lovely, but we can recollect nothing to
equal this old farmstead in its clinging robes of gold and scarlet.
There are many interesting old inns in this part of Somersetshire,
notably in the town of Yeovil, where the "George" and "Angel" are vis-
à-vis, and can compare notes as to whose recollections go back the
farthest. The wide open fireplaces and mullioned windows of the
former are of the time of Elizabeth or earlier, but the stone Gothic
arched doorway and traceried windows of the latter can go a century
better. But important as they both have been in their day, neither has
had the luck or energy to keep pace with the times sufficiently to hold
younger generations of inns subservient. The old "Green Dragon" at
Combe St. Nicholas, near Ilminster, possessed a remarkable carved
oak settle in its bar-parlour. It was elaborately carved, the back being
lined with the graceful linen-fold panels. At the arm or corner were
two figures, one suspended over the other, the upper one
representing a bishop in the act of prea
[Pg 147]
ching. They were known as "the parson and clerk"; but when we saw
the settle the "parson" was missing, having mysteriously disappeared
some time before. The "clerk" was so worn out, having occupied his
post so for centuries, that his features were scarcely recognisable;
but who can wonder when he had been preached to for close upon
four hundred years! To be "overlooked" in remote parts of
Somersetshire means certain misfortune. Many a poor unoffending
old woman, suspected of "overlooking" people, has been knocked on
the head that her blood might be "drawn" to counteract the spell.
Probably the parson's attitude aroused suspicion, and he was quietly
put away; but as his head had not been broken neither had the spell,
and the last we heard of the "Green Dragon" was that it had been burnt down.
The old landlady we remember had a firm belief that the death of one
of her sons was foretold by a death's-head moth flying in at the
window and settling on his forehead when he was asleep in his
cradle. The child, a beautiful boy, then in perfect health, was doomed,
and her eldest son immediately set forth with his gun to shoot the first
bird he chanced to see, to break the spell. However, that night the
child died; and upon the wall in a glass case was the stuffed bird as
well as the moth, a melancholy memento of the tragedy of thirty years
ago.
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