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Disability in Different Cultures
Reflections on Local Concepts
Disability in Different Cultures
Reflections on Local Concepts

edited by
Brigitte Holzer
Arthur Vreede
Gabriele Weigt
This book is a collection of contributions presented and discussed at
the symposium “Local Concepts and Beliefs of Disability in Different
Cultures” (21st to 24th May 1998), organized and coordinated by the
following NGOs:

Behinderung und Entwicklungszusammenarbeit e.V. Essen/Germany

Foundation Comparative Research, Amsterdam/The Netherlands
Institut für Theorie und Praxis der Subsistenz e.V. Bielefeld/Germany
Gustav-Stresemann-Institut e.V. Bonn/Germany

The book is supported by grants from:

Landesregierung Nordrhein-Westfalen
Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung
Bundesministerium für Gesundheit
Kirchlicher Entwicklungsdienst der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland
durch den ABP
Kindernothilfe e.V.
Medico International e.V.
Mensen in Nood/Caritas
Raad voor de Zending der Nederlands Hervormde Kerk
Studygroup on Transcultural Rehabilitation Medicine

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Die Deutsche Bibliothek – CIP-Einheitsaufnahme

Disability in different cultures : reflections on local concepts ; [presented

and discussed at the Symposium “Local Concepts and Beliefs of Disability in
Different Cultures” (21st to 24th May 1998)] / ed. by Brigitte Holzer ...
[Organized and coordinated by the following NGOs: Behinderung und
Entwicklungszusammenarbeit e. V. ...]. – Bielefeld : transcript Verl., 1999
ISBN 3–933127–40–8

© 1999 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

Translations: Pat Skorge, Dr. Mary Kenney
and Eva Schulte-Nölle
Editorial assistance: Pat Skorge
Typeset by: digitron GmbH, Bielefeld
Cover Layout: orange|rot, Bielefeld
Printed by: Digital Print, Witten
ISBN 3–933127–40–8
 5

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Brigitte Holzer, Arthur Vreede, Gabriele Weigt

Concepts and Beliefs about Disability

in Various Local Contexts

Stigma or Sacredness. Notes on Dealing with Disability

in an Andean Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Ina Rösing

Everyone Has Something to Give. Living with Disability

in Juchitán, Oaxaca, Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Brigitte Holzer

Defining the Role of Religion and Spirituality in the

Lives of Persons with Disability in the Fatick Region,
Senegal, and the Mono Region, Benin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Erick V.A. Gbodossou

Folklore Based Analysis for a Culture-Specific Concept

of Inclusive Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Joseph Kisanji

Blindness in South and East Asia:

Using History to Inform Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
M. Miles

Some Cultural Representations of Disability in Jordan:

Concepts and Beliefs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Majid Turmusani
6

Bio-Medical versus Indigenous Approaches to Disability . . . . . . 114

Sophie Kasonde-Ng’andou

The Use of Non-Western Approaches for Special Education

in the Western World. A Cross-Cultural Approach . . . . . . . . . 122
Friedrich Albrecht

Concepts of Disability with Regard to Migrants

Meanings of Disability for Culturally Diverse and

Immigrant Families of Children with Disabilities . . . . . . . . . . 135
Maya Kalyanpur

Social Welfare or Socio-Political Entitlement:

Disabled People Caught between the Poles of Their
Tunisian Origin and Acculturative Pressures . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Mustapha Ouertani

The Problem of Special-Educational Advancement of Children

from Migrant Families – Integrative Help in the Regular Schools
to Prevent Multiple Processes of Social Separation . . . . . . . . . . 154
Kerstin Merz-Atalik

Disability and Knowledge Transfer in the Field

of Development Cooperation

Local Knowledge and International Collaboration

in Disability Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Patrick J. Devlieger

Possibilities for Working with Cultural Knowledge in

the Rehabilitation of Mine Victims in Luena, Angola . . . . . . . . 178
Ulrich Tietze

Socio-Cultural Representation of Disability in Target

Groups of Rehabilitation Work: Examples from
Handicap International Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Francois DeKeersmaeker
 7

Incorporation of Knowledge of Social and Cultural

Factors in the Practice of Rehabilitation Projects . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Dee Burck

The Importance of Cultural Context in Training for CBR

and Other Community Disability Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Sheila Wirz

Western(ised) Personnel from the Practice of

Rehabilitation Projects versus Local Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Harry Finkenflügel

Differing Perceptions of the Principle of Parent

Participation: Implications for Asian Families
of Children with Disabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Maya Kalyanpur

Formal Handling Routines. Child Rearing Practices in

Jamaica and Their Relevance to Rehabilitation Work . . . . . . . . 242
Annette van der Putten

“Nothing about us without us.”

Case Studies of Self-Help Movements

Meeting Women’s Needs. Women and Girls with

Disabilities in the Practice of Rehabilitation Projects . . . . . . . . 251
Jenny Kern

“We don’t need to be cured first in order to live”:

Self-Help in Oaxaca, Mexico (An Account
of an Interviw with German Perez Cruz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Brigitte Holzer

The Pan-African Movement of People with Disabilities . . . . . . . 274

Joshua T. Malinga

Self-Determined Living in Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

Ottmar Miles-Paul
8

Towards New Approaches in the Study of

Disability in an Intercultural Framework

General Issues in Research on Local Concepts

and Beliefs about Disability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Nora Ellen Groce

Developing Local Concepts of Disability:

Cultural Theory and Research Prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Patrick J. Devlieger

Towards a Methodology for Dis-ability Research

among Ethno-Cultural Minorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Parin Dossa

Disability Research in Cultural Contexts:

Beyond Methods and Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
Kofi Marfo

Some Thoughts on Definitions and a Methodology

of Cross-Cultural Research Pertaining to Disability . . . . . . . . . 323
Arthur Vreede

Issues of Disability Assessment in War Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . 332

William Boyce, Seddiq Weera

The Participatory Rapid Appraisal Method of Research

on Cultural Representations of Disability in Jordan . . . . . . . . . 343
Majid Turmusani

Using Historical Anthropology to Think Disability . . . . . . . . . 352

Henri Jacques Stiker

Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
 9

Introduction

Brigitte Holzer, Arthur Vreede, Gabriele Weigt

There are at least three good reasons for publishing a reader on the topic
of Disability in Different Cultures. The first is of a practical nature: this
book is a collection of virtually all the contributions presented and
discussed at the symposium Local Concepts and Beliefs about Disability
in Different Cultures (21st to 24th May 1998 at the Gustav-Stresemann-
Institut e.V. in Bonn, Germany). Here, people with disabilities from
both North and South met with special education professionals, people
working in development cooperation organisations and students and
academics from different disciplines concerned with disability, and
started a dialogue which is, we trust, reflected in this reader. It is the
editors’ hope that this dialogue, which was at most merely initiated at the
symposium, can and will be continued in greater depth on the basis of
this collection. The reader has the further aim of carrying the dialogue
beyond the restricted circle of symposium participants and making it
accessible and comprehensible to a wider public.
The second reason for the publication of this book relates to the
experiences of many of those engaged in development cooperation and
working in NGOs, experiences which represented an important impetus
for organising the symposium and which, correspondingly, constituted
the central topic of both plenary sessions and working groups. Disability
and Culture is an essential issue in development cooperation. On the one
hand, disabilities, whether physical, mental or emotional, can be seen as
parameters for the structural disadvantaging and deficits of the countries
with so-called catching-up development. They are very frequently the
results of hunger, malnutrition and wars (cf. the contributions by Tietze,
DeKeersmaeker and Boyce/Weera in this volume). Thus NGOs are
confronted with the issue of disability, no matter what social and
economic areas they are concerned with. On the other hand project
planners – advisors, health educators and other socially engaged indivi-
duals – find again and again that their work cannot achieve the intended
10 Introduction

results, is unsuccessful, is avoided or even completely rejected by the

people affected, or that support for a particular person ends in personal
disaster, because the target group attributes different meanings to
disability from the planners. This can be illustrated by the example of the
Cambodian mine victim who was fitted with a prosthesis in an NGO aid
programme. Some days later, the man was seen begging at the roadside,
minus prosthesis. When asked why he was not wearing it, he replied:
Your prostheses can’t feed me (Tietze in this collection, see also the
contributions by Kalyanpur and Groce). One of the aims of the reader is,
therefore, to create an awareness of the gaps in our knowledge when it
comes to the framework of spiritual, cultural and socio-economic condi-
tions which affect the issue of disability in different societies, and at the
same time an awareness of how to reduce this gap, or rather, how difficult
it is to acquire the appropriate knowledge.
The third reason for addressing the issue of Disability and Culture is
the most wide-reaching, even if it is the least evident at first glance, and
relates to the emancipatory potential of the topic. In exploring the wide
variety of local concepts of and different ideas and beliefs about disabili-
ty, it becomes strikingly clear just how differently a disability may be
judged. In this light, disability can no longer be perceived as a physical,
psychological or mental characteristic which a person is born with or has
acquired in the course of her or his life. On the contrary, it becomes
evident to what a large degree the attitudes and the interactions with
others that are usual in the respective social context form and influence
the nature and extent of a disability and thereby determine the life of the
disabled person. This altered consciousness with regard to disabilities
makes it possible to perceive a condition formerly held to be natural –
where the disability was seen as an inborn physical state, entailing
consequences viewed as inevitable – as something which can be both
changed and shaped.
Over the last three decades, people who found themselves pushed to
the fringes of society (women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians,
disabled people) have stood up for equal rights on various political levels,
whilst also pressing for representation and a voice in academic writing
and research. This reader aspires to make a contribution to the discourse
both of and about people with disabilities and the contexts of their
experience. In addition, its intercultural nature is able to show with
particular clarity that a discussion of disability always also incorporates
non-disability, as well as the dominant concepts of normality. By looking
at different social constellations, it reveals how variously people create
normality, or conversely, make differentiations and draw borders. Each
 Local Concepts and Beliefs about Disability 11

conception of disability points to more comprehensive conceptions, to

comprehensive social meaning structures, on whose basis for example
incapacity, illness, invalidity, disfigurement, death and anomaly are
differently rated and judged. A confrontation with the structures that
regulate the social life of another society throws light upon the structures
of one’s own, which are otherwise often obscured (cf. Albrecht’s contri-
bution in this collection). Not only for people with disabilities does
examining these structures make sense.
Since the 17th century at the latest, the populations of the South have
been confronted with values and meaning structures alien to them, and
forced to mediate between these and their own. For people from the
North, this has hitherto not been necessary. The stream of exports of
development aid – know-how, expertise, assistance, (special) educational
concepts – flows from North to South. Conditions are attached to the
aid provided, and there are frequently deliberate interventions in the
social structures of the so-called beneficiaries.1 Often however this type
of influencing occurs subconsciously rather than on directly perceptible
levels. As long as the flow of aid continues to take this course, then, it is
important for the people of the South that those involved in development
cooperation take local concepts and beliefs seriously, are interested in
them, and occupy themselves with them. At the same time, such intercul-
tural work is able to draw attention to experiences and knowledge in the
field of disability which people are not (or are no longer) aware of. With
reference to area of South East Asia, Miles’ contribution in this collection
shows just how important the history of disability and rehabilitation in
one’s own region or else one’s own social and cultural reference group
can be in the search for adequate forms of rehabilitation (cf. also Miles
1999). In his article, Kisanji indicates the awareness-forming potential of
folk songs, proverbs and poems for school children in Tanzania, as
regards both people with disabilities and the pupils’ own traditions (cf.
also Devlieger, see pp. 169–177). In certain cases, this “archaelogy of
knowledge” (Foucault) brings to light thought structures related to
disability which have clear advantages over those shaped by dominant
world-wide biomedical Western attitudes (cf. Kasonde’s contribution);
these could be the way forward for both South and North.
So what is suddenly motivating those from the Centre to now do what
they neglected to do for years? The feasibility and success of projects,
both of which have to be documented for the benefit of funders, un-
doubtedly play a not insignificant role here. An interest in the doubly
unknown (Kemler 1988) – i.e. disability and (other) cultures – may also
express the wish to know more about oneself. When inhabitants of the
12 Introduction

North start becoming receptive to the concepts and beliefs of other

cultures, this is a sign that they are opening up. Part of being open to
other cultures inevitably entails being open to one’s own; that is, pre-
pared to puzzle over habits and things normally seen as self-evident,
inclined to inquire into their meanings, to question them, and finally, to
orientate oneself anew and arrive at an altered consciousness of one’s
own significance (self-consciousness in Mead’s sense).

Disability and Cultures: Some Remarks on the Concepts

How Does a Disability Come About?

If we assume that the significance of disabilities varies according to
cultural context, and that what is a disability in one context is not one in
another, then it would appear that the very foundations essential to
intercultural understanding have caved in under our feet. Since as early as
1980, the World Health Organisation has been trying with its three-
dimensional differentiation of disability to take into account the fact that
it is not sufficient to perceive disability merely as a physical or mental
characteristic. Instead, it has to be seen in relation to the expectations a
given society has of an individual. Thus a physical/organic and mental
abnormality and/or loss of function which can be demonstrably estab-
lished (impairment) is only the first dimension in this model (cf. WHO
1980: 27). A second dimension – known as disability – concerns “any
restriction or lack (resulting from an impairment) of ability to perform an
activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a
human being” (WHO 1980: 28). The third dimension, handicap, is the
“disadvantage for a given individual, resulting from an impairment or
disability, that limits or prevents the fulfilment of a role that is normal
(depending on age, sex, and social and cultural factors) for the indivi-
dual” (ibid.: 29). This three-dimensional definition avoids a question,
however, which always intrudes itself when encountering different
societies: does it make sense at all to perceive impairment, if a person is
socially integrated? In other words, why diagnose an impairment when
there is no handicap? Or putting it differently again, the question could
be posed as follows: for whom is it important to thematise impairment at
all?2 The answer could lie between two poles. On the one hand, it may be
an important issue for the individual with a disability seeking rehabilita-
tion measures that could remedy physical or mental irregularities and
reduce suffering. On the other hand, impairment is thematised by those
 Local Concepts and Beliefs about Disability 13

for whom abnormalities and irregularities are carriers of significance in

those symbolic structures that govern their respective societies. This is
not always the case in the same way. It is valid for countries of the
North, like for example the U.S.A., where the only “complete unblushing
male” is portrayed as a “young, married, white, urban, northern, hetero-
sexual Protestant father of college education, fully employed, of good
complexion, weight and height, and a recent record in sports” (Goffman
1963: 128). Against this background, damage of a physical, intellectual or
emotional nature always carries the message of not being successful and
not being capable of succeeding, of being condemned irrevocably to
leading a worthless existence. And virtually any deviation carries this
message of damage. Damage is also a carrier of significance in those
regions where an abnormality or irregularity is seen as a message from
another perceptual world, and may be interpreted either positively or
negatively (see the articles by Gbodossou and Rösing).
It is surely no coincidence that the people who distance themselves the
most from impairment, the individual defect, in their definition of
disability, are those affected themselves. Self-help movements from
different countries explicitly oppose the medical model, which concen-
trates on the disabled individual and aims at undoing an impairment as
far as possible, so as to make the individual submit to a concept of
normality which has no space for disabilities (see the contributions of
Kern, Perez Cruz, Malinga, Miles-Paul). These movements develop their
own way of seeing, in which disability becomes a variety of human needs
which a society has not adjusted to and is not in a position to satisfy. The
individual defect turns into the ability (or lack of it) of the society to
adjust (social model). In thinking this social definition of disability
through to its logical end, generally accepted value hierarchies are turned
on their heads. Rehabilitation and medical care take a completely dif-
ferent position on the scale of importance. They are no longer placed at
the beginning of social integration for people with disabilities, but
become self-evident accompanying factors (see Perez Cruz: “We don’t
need to be cured first in order to live”).
The self-help movements’ social definition of disability is undeniably
an umbrella, one under which people with disabilities from every
possible social context can take their place without any problem. Variety
thrives under this umbrella, and the fact that those affected are stringing
together a discourse in no way detracts from the power of that discourse.
Every discourse includes and excludes, legitimates and de-legitimates,
operates with strategies which are often more orientated towards testing
their power in the political and/or the academic arena, than towards
14 Introduction

those who are not participating in the discourse as subjects (cf. Hark
1998). Here we are faced with the second challenge that the contributions
in this book have posed, in very different ways. How do experts (of any
genre) acquit themselves in regard to the unique and particular life-
worlds of those they study, with whom they work, with whom they
live? How do they make themselves aware of their own ontological and
epistemological assumptions, which also inform every communication
(cf. Marfo’s contribution)? These questions concern the concept of cul-
ture.

A Concept of Culture

Let us assume that structures of interrelated meanings are what regulate

social life. These kinds of symbolic orders take shape in speech, in
religious beliefs, philosophies, family structures, gender arrangements,
the relationship between humankind and nature, in art and value sys-
tems, to name only a few of the elements which can be subsumed under
the generic term culture. These elements are almost always the result of a
long history of encounters, demarcations and combinations of symbolic
orders. Symbolic orders are at the same time essential orientations in
socialisation. To the extent that individuals stand in a relation to the
surrounding order and find ways of dealing with it, finding affirma-
tion in or else dissociating themselves from it, so they develop as con-
scious persons. Every culture receives a dynamic impulse from the fact
that the relationship between signs and symbolic content leaves room for
interpretation (take for example the word culture [=sign], whose sym-
bolic content has been defined again here for the x-thousandth time) (cf.
Sahlins 1994: 310ff.). When people whose socialisation has taken place
according to different orders meet, this cultural dynamic becomes
evident. Viewed on the level of interaction, its character (initially at least)
is one of communication difficulties. On the level of the individual, an
identity game results: for some it represents primarily an enrichment of
their everyday life and widening of their horizon of perceptions, for
others a drawing of boundaries and a struggle for power “which needs to
be fought anew in every social relationship” (Hofbauer 1995, our transla-
tion). People with disabilities develop their identity with reference to a
symbolic order which allocates them a special place. Devlieger argues in
his contribution that this place often lies in “no man’s land”. With a
disability, people are neither familiar nor unfamiliar, neither well nor ill,
 Local Concepts and Beliefs about Disability 15

both irresponsible and responsible. This place in-between is not the same
in all cultures; and what it means for a migrant with a disability to have
to orientate her or himself in different symbolic orders is shown by
Ouertani’s article.

What Can a Perspective of Intercultural Comparison Offer?

While it is not possible to engage in an exhaustive discussion of the
potential and limitations of intercultural communication here, the editors
consider it important to mention three points which ought to be in-
cluded in a discussion to which this book will hopefully bring a new
impetus. Firstly, intercultural communication presupposes a large degree
of self-reflection, relating both to one’s own position, and to the assump-
tions underlying one’s perceptions. In the North, the significance of the
self-reflexive discourse is being increasingly recognised – a necessity
resulting from the structural inequality between the participants when
people from North and South communicate. Inhabitants of the South as
well as migrants have been and are often forced to acquiesce to symbolic
orders which negate them as equal players on various social levels. The
task of developing an identity from this was and is left to them. In
comparison to the experiences of coercion or force which so often
accompany this search for identity, and have turned and continue to turn
it into a tightrope walk, people in the North are able to develop their
identities in ethnocentric, if not racist and xenophobic ways, with rela-
tively little interference, by discriminating against what is identified as
foreign (ibid.: 19). In response to excluding behaviour of this kind there
seems nevertheless to be one possible sanction, i.e. not to allow commu-
nication to take place. Secondly: if we see cultures as mixtures of symbo-
lic orders in a globalised world, coalitions may arise which run counter
to national, territorial and ethnic affiliations. In this book, Kofi Marfo
thematises the extent to which academics and researchers can be seen as
members of different cultures at all, if their professional socialisation
takes place within one and the same order, which structures their percep-
tions. It is by no means unthinkable that two sociologists from Mexico
and Germany are able to communicate with more immediacy with one
another than when the one communicates with her Zapotec relatives in
the highlands, and the other with her aunt and uncle in a Westphalian
village. The third point concerns the danger of seeing cultures as static,
self-contained structures – a viewpoint which often also involves consi-
dering foreign traditions as something that one has no right to interfere
with, and that should not be touched. What results is the opposite form
of behaviour to colonialism: where earlier other traditions – and these are
16 Introduction

also cultural concepts – either didn’t interest anyone or were else sup-
pressed and forcefully assimilated, now they are voyeuristically kept at a
distance, and are trotted out routinely as a reason why it is impossible to
find a common meeting-point. Traditions, though, are the result of
thousands of years of communication; or, in the words of Al Imfeld:
“Traditions are like geological layers going back at least 300,000 years”
(Imfeld 1999: 5, our translation). The dynamic of traditions often produ-
ced encounters which were not herrschaftsfrei, i.e., they entailed some
form of domination (for example wars [cf. Tietze’s contribution], slave-
ry, colonialism, assimilation). By no means all the forms and structures
established and strengthened in this process have to be treated with re-
spect and approval, simply because they bear the label traditional.
This applies for example in the case of barren women who are ostracised
and expelled from their social environments, as Erick Gbodossou
describes for the Fatick Region in Senegal and the Mono Region in Benin
(in this collection). Traditions have always changed, and can always
change further. Democratically oriented communication is able to play
an important role in this.

What Role Can Cultural Studies Analyses Play

in the Understanding of Disability?
As already mentioned, people with disabilities, in that they are people
with stigmas, abnormalities, irregularities, are very often themselves
carriers of significance, and “stand out”. Stiker, writing in this book,
thematises the issue that although “power, sexuality, religion, poverty,
gender” have been and continue to be analysed in relation to their
symbolic content in different cultures, infirmity (as a generic term for
illness and disability) is seldom addressed. In the social sciences, the
structural functionalist approach categorises people with disability as
being no less deviant than criminals or homosexuals (an “assignment to a
group” which Goffman’s sociology of everday life approach fails to
relativise); whereas the historical materialist disposition regards the status
of people as disabled in relation to economic usefulness. In politics,
disability is counted as a social problem; to solve it, acceptable solutions
are being sought (acceptable above all to the state coffers, that is). But
statutory measures are often ineffective. In Germany, for example, the
law lays down that enterprises above a certain size have to employ a
certain proportion of people with disabilities. Only too often do em-
ployers prefer to pay a monthly “fine” of DM 250, rather than take on a
person with a disability. The widespread view that having a disability
means incomplete or defective life may provide an explanation for this
 Local Concepts and Beliefs about Disability 17

behaviour (cf. Kern in this collection). Thus, analyses from the fields of
cultural anthropology and sociology of culture are able to contribute to a
more complete analysis, in that they register and include the differing
symbolic content of the phenomenon found in societies (cf. also Devlie-
ger, see pp. 297–303, and Dossa in this collection).

The Chapters and Individual Contributions

The meeting of symbolic orders is a theme running through all the

chapters and articles. The first chapter includes contributions which can
be seen as exemplary presentations of concepts and beliefs relating to
disability in different cultures. As such, they refer to various areas of
symbolic orders. Rösing and Holzer examine local contexts in South and
Middle America, and show how the cultural meaning of disabilities
determines the way those affected are treated, as well as their daily lives.
Both articles relate the ascription of meanings to the structuration of
economic and social life in the respective societies and by so doing,
expose their striking differences to postindustrial Western society. The
contributions of Gbodossou, Kisanji, Miles and Turmusani deal with
various areas of the symbolic order in local contexts. Gbodossou presents
the holistic religious and spiritual cosmovision in two regions in Senegal
and Benin respectively, in which disabilities cannot lead to exclusion
from social life (with the exception of barren women, see above). People
with disabilities frequently find their place in society as traditional
healers. Gbodossou gives some results of a wide-ranging survey of this
profession, people with disability and people caring for them in the
named regions. Kisanji shows the symbolic power of images in dealing
with disabilities, and how they occur in folk songs, proverbs and stories.
He demonstrates how these could be included in a concept of integrative
education, sensitising pupils to their own cultural context, and also to
people with disabilities and their many-sided and also positively-seen
roles. Using the example of the South East Asian context, Miles outlines
a way of obtaining knowledge of the history of disability and forms of
rehabilitation. By analysing ballads, for example, societies can gain
insights into the meanings of disability and thus free themselves of the
myths imposed on them from the outside. Turmusani analyses positive
and negative attitudes to people with disabilities in Jordan, and discusses
the extent to which these can be traced back to the Qur’an. The author
also thematises the changes in meaning in relation to disability that are
18 Introduction

being initiated by the work of NGOs and which reinforce certain

negative, individualising effects of the image found in the Qur’an.
The last two contributions in this chapter have as their focus the meet-
ing or else the comparison of concepts from North and South. Kasonde
contrasts bio-medical thinking with the everyday notions and know-
ledge of people in West Africa and indicates various social structures
which underlie these concepts. Albrecht discusses the extent to which
cultural comparisons can contribute to improvements in the practice of
special education in the North. With reference to a comparative study of
the role of the father in the upbringing of children with a disability, he
illustrates how comparative studies of culture can contribute to a better
understanding of the conditions and problems connected with one’s own
methods of child rearing.
Chapter II concerns three specific areas of experience related to the
vast topic of migration. Against the background of her experience as a
special educator, Kalyanpur examines four concepts used in the bio-
medical approach to disability, showing how and where these collide
with the cultural conceptions of migrants (disability as a physical
phenomenon, disability as a chronic illness, disability as an individual
phenomenon that can be fixed). On the basis of his personal experience
of migration, Ouertani thematises differences in the systems of social
security in Germany and Tunisia. From her point of view as a special
educator, Merz-Atalik discusses how the meaning attached to disability
is not so much culturally determined – if culture is related to national or
territorial affiliation – as dependent on the family or even on the indivi-
dual.
Chapter III deals, on various levels, with cultural encounters in devel-
opment cooperation. Devlieger views the current state of affairs in the
dialogue between North and South as characterised by a competition
between global and local knowledge systems. He sketches how this
competition could be overcome via cooperation between universities, the
political sphere, and (self-help) organisations. Tietze and DeKeersmaeker
both report from their NGO work in various Southern countries. Using
the example of Medico International’s work with landmine victims in
Angola, Tietze describes the difficulties that arise on the one hand in the
context of the “culture of poverty” (Lewis 1971) in war zones, and which
on the other may be encountered in the attempt to make systematic
assessments and estimations of disabilities. With reference to his ex-
periences in a number of projects run by Handicap International, De-
Keersmaeker discusses the relevance of cultural concepts. The following
three articles address the meeting of cultures on the level of project
 Local Concepts and Beliefs about Disability 19

planning. Burck thematises the significance and the difficulties of

obtaining local knowledge about disability and integrating it into project
praxis. Wirz examines the aspect of international training courses for
project planners and managers (in particular CBR projects3). She empha-
sises how important the different preconditions with regard to expecta-
tions of training, expectations of service and expectations of service
planning which the participants bring with them are for the success of
the course. Finkenflügel analyses the daily routine of CBR projects, in
which expatriate and local co-workers meet on various levels of project
organisation. The last two contributions in this chapter refer to the
cooperation between professionals and parents. Kalyanpur names three
cornerstone Western values – equity, choice and individualism – which
can lead to communication difficulties between special educators with a
training orientated towards Western knowledge systems, and parents
from Asiatic cultural milieux. Van der Putten presents the results of a
study of child rearing practices which Jamaican mothers routinely carry
out with their infants. These practices are a part of that knowledge which
is handed down from mother to daughter, and has the purpose of
encouraging growth and suppleness in the children. These are beneficial
rehabilitation methods when an impairment is present. They also enable
mothers to identify such impairments early on. The practices are an
example of local knowledge that it is both useful and necessary to take
into account in rehabilitation projects.
In the IVth chapter four authors who are active in the self-help
movement present their organisations. Kern, U.S.A., thematises the fact
that women with disabilities are particularly affected with regard to
rehabilitation, CBR and development projects in both North and South.
By the example of the international whirlwind networks, she demon-
strates the problems that arise because the specific situation of women
(with disabilities) is, again and again, not given sufficient attention in
project praxis. Women have drawn their own conclusions about this, and
in 1994 founded whirlwind women, a network that can now point to
experiences in many countries in both North and South. Perez Cruz,
Mexico, gives a portrait of a self-help group in Oaxaca City. He thema-
tises the priorities of the group’s work, as well as the concept of disabil-
ity and of an independent, autonomous life towards which the work is
oriented. Malinga, Zimbabwe, stresses the need for people with disabil-
ities to fight for equal rights, and rights in general. Miles-Paul, Germany,
states which central policy principles are embraced by the international
Independent Living Movement: equality and anti-discrimination laws;
the de-medicalisation of disability; no singling out or exclusion, and the
20 Introduction

greatest possible integration into the life of the community; the greatest
possible control over their own organisations and over the services for
the disabled by the disabled themselves; peer counselling and peer
support for the empowerment of people with disabilities (cf. “Basic
Principles of a Self-Determined Life” in Miles-Paul’s contribution, pp.
279–280).
The Vth and final chapter deals with methodological questions which
have arisen in the course of researching local concepts and beliefs about
disability in different cultures. Cultural concepts are not simply revealed
to strangers to a culture; a whole series of conditions and boundaries
which get drawn into the research, or else are inherent to it, have to be
considered as well. Ethnology and anthropology have a long tradition of
developing different methodologies and methods for tracking down
cultures and their development, and for reflecting at the same time on the
cultural assumptions that the researchers contribute themselves. Some
methodological approaches and methods are explained in the contribu-
tions to this chapter. Groce starts it off with some general ideas which
concern both the relevance of culture in looking at disability, and the
demands which should be made on the methodologies used to research
the phenomenon. In this, she places great emphasis on interdisciplinary
project designs that cross the borders of specific subjects and professio-
nal fields. Devlieger presents arguments for a “cultural theory of disabili-
ty”, to be developed trans-culturally while at the same time being able to
grasp the specificity of particular cultures. Disability can, universalistical-
ly, be termed an “interstitial category”, which “acknowledges that people
with disabilities are the same and different” (see page 299). The theory
becomes relativistic when cultural areas in one place at one time are
studied with regard to these kinds of interstices, like for example lan-
guage, art, rituals, religion, political discourses, etc. Dossa too sketches
methodological-theoretical guidelines for the study of disability, ethnici-
ty and gender. She stresses the significance of action-theory approaches
(for example, Giddens’ “structure and action” [1979]), in order not to see
culture as a static construct. Those affiliated to the culture are not only
products (=victims) of it but (re)produce structures themselves. By
means of three areas – live narratives, space and embodiment – subjective
and objective mechanisms can be identified, which produce stigmatised
differences like gender, ethnicity and disability, and confirm them again
and again. Marfo presents philosophical and methodological reflections,
relevant both to researching cultural concepts, and to research itself as an
“intrinsically cultural activity” (see page 317). As long as the epistemo-
logical (concerning the relation between the knower and the knowable)
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Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel
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Title: Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREY WETHERS:

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GREY WETHERS
By V. SACKVILLE-WEST

GREY WETHERS
THE HEIR AND OTHER STORIES
CHALLENGE
HERITAGE
KNOLE AND THE SACKVILLES

New York:
George H. Doran Company
GREY WETHERS
 A Romantic Novel

BY

V. SACKVILLE-WEST

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 GREY WETHERS. II
———
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 CLAIRE

Ces fantômes charmants que nous croyons à nous...

Ils sont là, près de nous, jouant sur notre route;

Ils ne dédaignent pas notre soleil obscur,
Et derrière eux, et sans que leur candeur s’en doute,
Leurs ailes font parfois de l’ombre sur le mur.

Ils ont ce grand dégout mystérieux de l’âme

Pour notre chair coupable et pour notre destin;
Ils ont, êtres rêveurs qu’un autre azur réclame,
Je ne sais quelle soif de mourir le matin.
Victor Hugo.

GREY WETHERS
 PART ONE

GREY WETHERS
Part One
More than half a century has now elapsed since the events which
added a new legend to the hard ancient hills lying about
Marlborough and King’s Avon. The last organised rustic Scouring of
the White Horse of King’s Avon,—from which occasion these events
may properly be said to date, although a believer in predestination
might be found to contend that they dated, indeed, from the very
births of Clare Warrener and Nicholas Lovel,—that last organised
Scouring took place more than half a century ago. The White Horse
remains, the same gaunt, hoary relic; King’s Avon remains, secluded,
tragic, rearing its great stones within the circle of its strange
earthwork; the Downs remain, and every winter, now as then,
shroud their secrets and the memory of their secrets beneath the
same mantle of snow away from the speculation of the curious. But
of Clare Warrener and Nicholas Lovel no trace remains, unless
indeed they have passed into the wind and become incorporate with
the intractable spaces and uncompromising heights. A great many
tales are locally told of them, all too fantastic to be set down in
print; the chalky soil, so unpropitious to other crops, grew at least a
rich crop of superstition, especially in an age and district when
stories of witches and burnings were curiously mingled in the minds
of the ignorant with the opening of barrows and the fable of British
princes. So it is not surprising that the disappearance of these two
persons should have given rise to a jabber of conjecture which
rapidly came to be explained away by a variety of legends following
the line of approved local tradition. It is not the business of print to
enter into these conjectures or their interpretation. It is the business
of print to set down, in as practical a manner as may be, the
circumstances leading up to the final catastrophe,—or fulfilment, call
it which you will, according to the point of view from which you
approach it,—and to leave the reader to carry on the narrative for
himself in the manner best suited to his own fancy and
requirements.

A peculiar silence reigned over the village; no children shouted, and

no young men or girls passed down the street with that exact air of
energy and enterprise that youth alone can produce. Somnolence
predominated; it seemed a village inhabited only by the aged, and
by those sparsely; a small gaggle of geese quacked and pried with
their flat beaks along the cobbles; but for them, the cats and the old
men had the place to themselves. The cats slumbered, curled round
in the corners of doorsteps, where the sun struck hot on the stone;
and on a bench outside the Waggon of Hay the four old men sat in a
row, leaning on their knobly sticks, and holding pewter mugs in their
hands. Brown old men, brown of hide and brown of garment, so that
it was difficult to tell where their clothes began or their hands and
faces left off. Eight boots of similar pattern set squarely side by side
on the stones; four heads of almost equal similarity nodded together
over the pewter, sagely and immemorially, for it would be safe to say
that those four old men of King’s Avon might have been at any
moment replaced by another set of four old men out of another
century, without a casual observer remarking on the difference. It
was the day out of half a score of years when they were left in
supreme sovereignty over the village. The Waggon of Hay became
then what they considered it always ought to be, and what they
chose to maintain it had been at that epoch of time called “when we
were young,” a place of meeting sober and stagnant, undisturbed by
the rude, hobnailed entrance of young men, calling for spirits in a
tap-room where they should have been content with beer or cider. It
was the day when they might sit at peace in their row on the bench,
sure that no lout of a blunderer would stumble over their toes. It
was the day when they might indulge themselves to their hearts’
content in gossip and politics, uninterrupted by the revolutionary
opinions of their juniors. They could go back to the time when no
railway disfigured the valley of the Frome, when the old horned
breed of true Wiltshire sheep wandered upon the heights, and when
no man dreamt of threshing his wheat save by flail, or of crushing
his apples in any but a wooden press. They could recall without
effort those days in the ’thirties, when, themselves but little older
than the century, they had gone in bands with rude weapons to
break up the new and hateful machinery in the farmers’ barns. They
could tell again the tales of superstition, and the sights which their
fathers’ generation had seen; and above all, most succulently, they
could recall how old Mother Lovel had been burnt on the top of
Silbury Hill for a witch, the bogey their mothers had used to frighten
them with; and, nodding together, the four heads coming closer,
whisper that Nicholas Lovel had all the black arts at his disposal, and
had in a fit of rage put a curse upon his own brother, so that the lad
no longer had his wits about him, but loitered around, the anxiety
and disgrace of the village.
They had the whole day to themselves, in which to say over and
over again the things they had said many times before, and, greedy,
would have liked to have the evening too, but far from it, the
evening of that day was worse than any other evening, for the
young men returned, already uproarious and in their numbers, full of
song and boastfulness, their boots white with the chalk of the
Downs, and their broad hats stuck round with the grasses and sorrel
that grew up there on those unfertile heights. The old men would
collect together in a corner, remotely grumbling, watching the young
men as they lounged against the bar, filling the tap-room with their
ribald good-humour and their tobacco smoke. The old men
disapproved of the young because they feared in them the jostle of
the oncoming generation, but the young men merely laughed
carelessly at the old, having from them no longer anything to fear.
The young men, on the evening of that particular day, would be
more than usually vainglorious, bragging of their exploits, growing
with every glass more direct in their modes of expression and more
hilarious in their laughter. It was the day when all prudery was
thrown aside, when each girl must look after herself as best she
could or would, when from the earliest hour of exodus from the
village along the road to the Downs the band of youths and girls fell
into two primitive groups of hunter and quarry, a scramble of catch-
who-catch-can, an escapade of wholesome license over the slopes of
the Downs. It is true that they started out armed with trowels and
rakes, but even these implements of homely design were soon
garlanded with vetch and campion torn from the hedgerows as the
party went along, nor were these, the ostensible justification of the
expedition, the true weapons of the day; the true weapons were the
muslin frocks, the black shoes and white stockings, the ribbons, the
sunbonnets, and the eyes and curls beneath the sunbonnets; and
the leather leggings of the young men, their strong brown hands,
their belted smocks, their insolent air. Impossible that a few wounds
should not result from the marshalling of such an armoury. And
while the girls on their return must needs carry away to their
bedrooms the secrets of the day, evading the inquisitive eye of their
mothers, who, not condescending to ask, although burning to know,
remembered with a sigh similar feasts of their own youth, the young
men might gather in the tap-room and between hints and guffaws
convey to all who cared to hear that they were fine young men
worthy of their sex and of a sound country tradition. It was perhaps
from an unacknowledged flicker of envy that the old men frowned
upon their honest coarseness, for occasionally one of them,
forgetting his attitude of rebuke, would let out a cackle of enjoyment
and appreciation, much to his own dismay, and much to the
amusement of the youths, who would cry, “Hey, gaffer, don’t you
wish you’d be with us? Don’t you, you old dog?”
But until this lusty return filled the tap-room with its uproar, the cats
and the ancients of the village were left undisturbed. Both in their
several ways made the most of their opportunity, the cats to sleep,
since little boys who threw stones had gone with the party, hangers-
on and peeping-Toms of the day, and the ancients to utter their sage
words, to echo approval of one another, and to bury their faces deep
in the pewter mugs, from which they emerged with beards dripping
foam. A suck of the lips, a wipe with the back of the hand, a long “A-
ah,” of contentment, and the mumble of anecdote flowed again
upon its course. Sitting there in the sun was favourable to such
occupations. Since the strenuousness of life’s work was over,—the
early winter rising, the trudges after a lost ewe across snow-swept
Downs, the unearthing of mangolds from the frosted ridge, the
hours of scything swathe by swathe under burning midday,—what
could remain better to do than to sit upon a bench in the sun, with
companions who in colour and outlook were the very spit of oneself,
to grumble against new-fangled notions, and to wet one’s gizzard
with a long pull of ale, which, at all events, however ignominious to
admit it, had not deteriorated in quality since one’s youth?
Amongst the four old men, he who carried perhaps most authority, if
any difference could be said to exist amongst the ancient cronies,
was John Sparrow, who out-topped them by a year or so of age. Not
that this fact in itself constituted so marked a superiority; it placed
the senior rather at a disadvantage, since there existed amongst the
four a tacit competition as to which should outlive the other, and
each within his own mind dwelt upon the day when a fresh mound
should be turned in the neighbouring church-yard, and a shrunken
row of three should sit upon the bench, and the new topic,
surprising by virtue of its very novelty, be introduced among them,
the topic of their missing member. Each probably knew his
companions well enough to hope for little charity at their hands. It
would be fine fun, to have John Sparrow, or Caleb Patch, or Timothy
Cutbush, or Eli Sheppard, lying there silent and unable to protest, to
pick to pieces at their leisure. No, the few additional years of John
Sparrow were not precisely the reason of his weight of word. But
Sparrow’s daughter Martha, called “my gal,” although she would
never again see sixty, was servant at the Manor House, where lived
the only gentry of the village, and consequently whenever Sparrow
began his phrase, “My gal says,” his utterance was awaited with a
certain degree of respect. The village was proud of its gentry; Mr.
Warrener was a scholar, and Miss Clare a lady. Although she went
everywhere alone, and rode her pony like a boy, her ladylikeness
could never be in question. Hence it came about that John Sparrow’s
quotations from Martha held a little flavour of high life, a very
remote echo of fashion; nothing more vicarious could well be
imagined, but to the fuddled minds of the other three it sufficed:
John Sparrow was in touch with elegance. He did not much look like
it, as he sat at the end of the row on the bench, the colour of a
hayseed, having now deposited his empty mug on the bench beside
him and drawn from his pocket a long clay pipe whose small bowl he
was very carefully ramming with tobacco. His daughter Martha was
altogether a different question; she wore a lilac print dress and an
apron over it; her grey hair was partly covered by a cap; she had a
sedate manner and shining old cheeks; she was clean and
respectful. She had entirely ceased to live at her father’s house,
having her own bare but immaculate attic bedroom at the Manor
House, and periodically she allowed her father to come there to tea
in the kitchen, where he sat very neat and intimidated and
impressed, enjoying most that part of his visit when he was boasting
about it to his cronies afterwards. Being without subtlety they
betrayed every corner of their envy and curiosity, to which John
Sparrow was not loth to pander. They had had a table-cloth, and
cups and saucers—china, not tin—and Martha had put flowers on
the table. After tea Martha had played the musical box, but in the
garden he had heard Miss Clare laughing as she strolled up and
down with her father. That young lady was getting to a marriageable
age; and here John Sparrow’s recital, which began with veracity, was
apt to go astray. He would make a feeble attempt to convey a sense
of his privity to secret counsels by pursing up his lips, nodding his
head, spreading out his hands, and suchlike indications, without
actually committing himself to the indiscretion of words; but
presently under the fire of questions, the “Come now, John, out with
it,” and the final shaft of scepticism to the effect that he knew no
more than they did themselves, he would invariably be led into
confidences which had no bearing whatsoever upon the truth.
Martha had whispered this, Martha had told him that, Miss Clare, he
doubted, was not in truth the daughter of Mr. Warrener; or, if so be
she was his daughter, then no daughter that he ought to own to, but
rather should pass her off as his niece or his ward.... The other three
accepted all such statements round-eyed, and the more they gaped
the more inventive he grew. Their credulity was his undoing.
And as they drowsed and maundered, they saw Miss Clare emerge
presently from the gates of the Manor House, with their glimpse of
garden, lawn, and cedars, riding astride upon her pony, whose little
hoofs came slipping and shambling over the cobbles, down the
street, past the old men, and took the road out towards the Downs.
The old men raised their heads at all this little clatter, and a greeting
passed between them and Miss Clare; they touched their hats, she
waved her whip to them and called out something which they were
too deaf to catch, but to which they responded with the “Ay, ay” and
the gesture of tolerant encouragement accorded by age towards
popular youth. There was a mumble amongst them after she had
passed, of unspecified vague approval, before the straggly old
beards drooped again upon the chests, and the street resumed the
quiet broken by that small disturbance.

It was not a very great wonder that the village should look upon its
gentry as so exclusively its own. Its situation was such, that
everything which took place within its enclosure was peculiarly
focussed and self-contained. In the first place, it was isolated far
from other villages, at the foot of the Downs, which loomed over it
on three sides like a huge natural rampart, and in the second place it
was entirely surrounded by an ancient earthwork in a complete and
perfect circle. This earthwork was broken only at two points, to allow
the road to enter the circle, and to leave it again on the opposite
side. Within this little enclosed ring of thirty acres lay the village,
complete with church, Manor House, and village street, incapable of
expansion in any direction, unless it overflowed its boundary, which
it had never done. A few outlying farms at a little distance were
included, properly speaking, in the parish, but they were either too
remote or too well screened by voluminous trees to distract the eye
from the compact symmetry of the little town within the circle.
Strangers to the country, coming unawares upon this singular
encampment, were at first amazed; but presently there crept into
their minds the sense that the whole country traversed by them had
been, in a way, but the natural preparation to precisely such a
mysterious and secluded patch of human habitation. They recalled
the straight white road driven across the Downs; the pits of poor
blanched chalk; the shaven clumps of beech, like giant ricks, upon
the skyline; mounds and barrows; the perfect cone of Silbury Hill,
which, rooted in its greater antiquity, had forced the Roman road to
deflect from its course; the loneliness of the magnificent Downs; the
primitive shapes surviving in the White Horses cut as landmarks
upon their flanks. Above all they would recall those strange
monuments of English paganism, the sarsen stones, hewn by Nature
and transported by man to be the instruments of his superstition,
left where they had fallen, singly or in rings, obscure in a fold of the
Downs, or reared to accord with the eternal procession of the
heavens in the gaunt majesty of Stonehenge.
The stranger would recall these stones as he followed the road
through the gap into the circle of King’s Avon, for there in an
ordinary field to the right of the road, just within the embankment,
he would see, standing upright to the height of ten or twelve feet, a
number of these stones, standing there with such apparent fixity and
permanence that it was disconcerting to observe, on a closer
inspection, an equal number of the stones fallen flat and half-buried
in the ground. Their impressiveness grew, as the beholder began to
realise from their symmetrical disposition that what he was
considering was no less than the ruins of a temple. The village lay
just beyond the field, and in the rough ground, near the field,—
partly ditch below the embankment, partly undergrowth,—many
more of the stones might be discovered, half-hidden by dead leaves
and mosses, or even by tins and rubbish, and in one or two cases
made prisoner, like some inarticulate Laocoon, by the serpenting
roots of a beech overhanging the scarp. And as the stranger, after
poking about among this tangle, proceeded along the lane towards
the village, he would come upon other isolated stones, either
embedded in the bank below the hedge, or used as a gate-post into
a paddock, standing there patiently enough, towering above the
gate and above the hedge, indifferent to the fate that had come
upon it; and one, by the roadside, had been made to do duty as a
milestone, and bore upon its face the distances to Bath and
Marlborough in eighteenth-century script and Roman numerals. But,
although the stones were now thus scattered and even totally
removed for purposes of quarrying material, a patient observer
might still piece together the design and dimension of the temple,
standing once like Stonehenge in rings, when no human dwellings
were there, in, as it were, a cup of the Downs, open to sun and rain.
But this imaginary stranger would probably dwell rather upon the
relationship between the stones of King’s Avon, and the stars that
they had known unaltered, and the barrows humped upon the
Downs, and the roughly-hewn flints turned up by the plough, the
bones and antlers, and the stray tokens left, with very little fame,
about the country, silent and enduring while religions perhaps
slightly more enlightened because more charitable passed with the
ages above their surfaces.
This paganism of England, he might have reflected as he made his
way slowly from stone to stone, pausing before each and finding in
each the same monotonous and uncommunicative austerity, this
early English paganism, how bleakly different it was from the
paganism of the South! Indeed, he might wonder whether to call his
forebear pagan, which had a rich full-blooded sound, or, stripping
him of garlands, to call him simply heathen. Here, in this flint
country of the small northern island, no flowers and fruit had
surrounded the sacrifice, no cymbals clashed, no grapes and plaited
maize wreathed the horns of the victim, no songs accompanied the
priest. A stone, a knife, and blood, red and grey, sufficed their ritual.
This was no country to see nymphs in the streams and oaks, to hear
the flute of a satyr in the beechwood. Yet there was a harsher
dignity, beside which the Southern paganism was soft and ample,
over-ripe with sweetness. It was a creed which would not concern
itself with the fruits of earth; Demeter was not for it, nor lecherous
Pan, nor a god clothed in the plumes of a swan. It would concern
itself with nothing lower than the most majestic of human
contemplations, the sun and the stars in their courses, so that after
the lapse of centuries the upright stones still aspired to celestial
communion when the gentle or the angry dawn broke over the
rounded Atlantean shoulders of the Downs.
Clare Warrener rode idly along the leafy lane, her pony’s hoofs
raising little grey puffs of dust. Nothing in particular occupied her
mind, beyond the sight which she was going to see, and which for
weeks now she had been anticipating. She had promised herself that
she would ride on this day up on to the Downs, cast her eye over
the festivity, and ride on again, with perhaps a slight resentment at
this invasion of the hills; a resentment she knew to be absurd, since
the rustic youths and girls at their celebrating had a better right to
the hills than she had herself, they who were the descendants of
shepherds and farmers, wresting for centuries a living from the poor
stony soil. She loved in the hills their spaciousness, and their refusal
to yield to tillage; at most they would grant pasture to the sheep
crawling on their slopes, but for the rest they remained eternally, in
the heart of an amenable and complacent island, the untamed spot
—they, and the moorlands, and the hills of Wales and the North.
The shady lane which she had been following soon ceased to be
bordered by trees and took an upward direction leading to the foot
of the Downs. It became a steep white road mounting straight up
the unboundaried slopes, with high banks on either side, and the
winter rain-runnels marked in little zig-zagging ruts and pebbles.
Some clumps of furze and a few thorn-trees grew on the lower
reaches, but presently even these ceased, and the short turf was the
only vegetation. Up here the air was pure and sharp; the grasses
waved as they were blown by the breeze; in some places fires had
left their blackened patches; a trail of smoke-coloured sheep moved
cropping in the dip of a valley. Larks rose continually, soaring
straight up into the air, impelled either by some impulse of their own
or else disturbed by the sound of the pony’s passage. Clare rode
with loose reins, letting the pony pick his own way among the
pebbles. The road began to wind; it curved round a shoulder of hill,
dipped into a hollow, rose steeply again, and all the time its direction
was hidden round the next corner. At moments it reached a high
point of vantage, whence Clare, looking down in the direction she
had come, could see the low fertile lands, the farms, and the clump
of trees pierced by the church-spire which was King’s Avon. But to
north, east, and west, nothing but Downs, the great back of the
south of England. She rode on. The pony climbed, his head down,
his withers high. She felt the muscles of his flank moving warm
beneath her leg; he climbed, strong and willing, and she put him at
short cuts which entailed mounting an almost perpendicular slope of
grass, for the pleasure of feeling him buckle to the effort.
Presently she heard voices and laughter borne to her on the wind.
Before long she reached a kind of plateau of grass, the highest point
of all, which commanded a wide view of both Downs and the
chessboard landscape far below, crossed by the white roads like
streamers from a Maypole; and at the further end of this plateau she
saw scattered in pairs over the grass, and assembled at one point as
a nucleus from which these couples had detached themselves, the
youth of the village of King’s Avon in holiday clothes with wild
flowers strung about them. She reined in her pony, not liking to
interrupt their fun by drawing too near or seeming to admire them
as a curiosity. She could recognise most of them at that distance;
she picked out the red head of Daisy Morland, the long limbs of
Peter Gorwyn, the sunbonnet of Phoebe Patch, the silly laugh of
young Baskett, the straw-coloured shock of hair belonging to Job
Lackland, the black strap-shoes and white stockings of Annabel
Blagdon, who was the belle of the village, and, finally, prowling on
the outskirts rather like a pariah dog, the indefinably misshapen
form of Olver Lovel. Near by the group were set down the wicker
baskets in which they had brought their meal, also the trowels,
spades, turf-cutters, and hoes, apparently forgotten. The occasion of
the expedition was rendered completely invisible by the sprawling of
the persons seated upon it. This was none other than one of the
famous White Horses, which on that day must be scoured, that is to
say, cleaned of ten years’ accumulation of weeds and grasses;
though it was said that less plantains were uprooted than matches
made that day, and that the true business of keeping the White
Horse duly scoured was performed by some sober shepherd with a
pocket-knife, idling away the hours while his sheep moved slowly
within his sight. Nevertheless the tradition must be maintained. Clare
felt a slight wistfulness that she might not join in with the party, but
she had been for so many years strictly forbidden to do this by an
indignant Martha Sparrow,—“’Twould not be befitting your station at
all, Miss Clare, indeed, to go with those rough louts of boys and
hoydens of girls,”—that she had come to accept this ban as a law of
nature, without question. She therefore sat her pony at a distance,
looking on enviously at the clumsy fun in progress, watching the
boys roll over and over down the slope and get up dusting
themselves and laughing, or wrestling with one another on the grass
and making a show of their superior strength before the girls, who
laughed and applauded. She felt especially envious when she saw
Job Lackland pick up his fiddle, settle it firm under his chin, and
begin to play, the notes of the old-fashioned tune reaching her as
clearly as notes struck on a bell, and she could see the sprigged
waistcoat and cut-away coat which Job always wore on feast-days
when he thought he might be called upon to play the fiddle. The
others scrambled to their feet and began a country-dance, a sort of
combination of a Morris dance and Sir Roger de Coverley, for they
fluttered their handkerchiefs as they danced, and at the same time
ran in couples up and down between two lines formed by the other
dancers.
The muslin dresses and coal-scuttle bonnets of the girls, and the
smocks of the young men, together with their fluttering
handkerchiefs and their hands gaily clasped high as they turned and
twisted beneath, made a coloured and merry patch on the top of the
hill, like a lot of butterflies.
Job fiddled with increasing energy, and as he fiddled he tried to beat
time for the dancers with his bow, so that every now and then he
would miss out a bar while he waved his bow to re-establish order in
the dance which threatened to become confused. At last they all fell
exhausted upon the grass, and cider was passed round, and the old
White Horse, who had been temporarily revealed during the dance,
was once more hidden from view by the spreading frocks and
sprawling limbs.
There were other preparations now in evidence, for to emulate the
scouring of the greater White Horse of Berkshire the youth of King’s
Avon indulged themselves in more or less organised games, which
again were but a cloak to their braggart vanity towards the girls. A
rude platform was erected on trestles on the flat summit of the hill,
and towards this the whole company surged, leaving the white scar
of the Horse once more exposed and placid upon the hillside. The
direction of the games was in the hands of young Gorwyn; he beat a
small drum to call his audience to order; he marshalled the
competitors; he posted tow-headed Lackland with his fiddle to strike
up a tune during the intervals.
The competitors stood in a group to one side, suddenly sheepish;
the audience, which by now consisted almost entirely of girls, ranged
themselves beneath the platform with the nudges and upturned
faces of anticipation. Clare could only see the crowns of their hats
and sunbonnets.
Half a dozen young men stood up on the platform, exposed to the
jokes and encouragements of their friends; in their embarrassment
they did not know what expression to assume; some scowled, some
tried to stare with an indifferent gaze out over the distance, some
sought the faces of their special friends among the audience and
grinned awkwardly. All were in the same predicament as to how to
dispose of their hands and feet; some stood stiff and erect, with
arms folded severely across their chests; others thrust their hands
down into the pockets of their breeches; others bent to fidget with a
bootlace.
Some were for wrestling, others for the races; the bolder spirits, and
the most admired, were for broadstick. Gorwyn himself, the
broadstick champion of the village, was, as the last and principal
event of the day, to challenge the winner.
Clare, growing interested, rode a little nearer; the young men
touched their foreheads to her, some of the girls dropped a curtsy;
her advance caused a little ripple in the crowd. Again she felt the
slight regret that she might not mingle freely and on an equal
footing with them; surely they were clean, English young men,
honest enough if a trifle crude, and the girls were healthy and fresh
in their muslins; but she was too simply a child to dream of
disobeying Martha’s mandate. She sat her pony at her distance,
looking on.
The first event was a bout of wrestling; not perhaps, a very scientific
exhibition, but the rivals went at it with a will, good-tempered and
full of zest, staggering about the platform, their fine, young-men’s
bodies knotted together like a piece of ever-changing sculpture in a
natural setting, not cooped into the dinginess of a studio or a gallery.
Clare saw the shock heads imprisoned under an arm, or going to
butt lowered like young rams; she could hear the deep breathing,
and the muffled shock as limbs and torsos closed anew together.
And the audience of girls cried out and applauded, or uttered little
screams when a fall seemed imminent; but the wrestlers themselves
were silent, save for their heavy breathing; and the feminine cries
and rustlings of admiration or dismay formed the natural
accompaniment to the masculine concentration.
The wrestling over, the wrestlers descended to mix in with the girls,
and the competition was eager and frank among the girls to get
possession of one of these heroes and to keep him by her side for
the rest of the afternoon. Only Annabel Blagdon, the belle, remained
unexcited and scornful; she affected to despise the mere wrestlers:
broadstick was the only game for her, as she had already advertised,
and her smiles were reserved for some broadstick champion with his
broken head. Therefore the wrestlers made for her all the more;
made awkward advances towards her, neglecting the blandishments
of the others which were lavished too cheaply upon them. But she
scarcely answered; she knew her power, she knew and savoured the
irritation of her sisters; she tapped her foot in its white stocking and
black strapped shoe, and scorned the wrestlers for their undamaged
skins, though secretly she could not help esteeming their broad
shoulders and their narrow loins.
Job Lackland meanwhile had struck up a tune on his crazy fiddle,
and made the air gay with his old jingling melody, until the tapping
of Gorwyn’s little drum announced a fresh event; this was a race
after a cheese down the steepest side of the hill, an all-but-
perpendicular bank, round which the ordinary pedestrian would have
skirted, but the lads started down it helter-skelter after the round
cheese which was bowling down, bumping and jumping, after its
send-off push. Some few of them kept their feet, others slithered
down on their backsides, like boys on an ice-slide, some in their
effort to keep upright tumbled head over heels; one, a wag, went
down, rolled round in a ball, hands locked under knees, in a series of
somersaults.
No one was hurt, and the girls peering after them over the top,
laughed and danced in delight as the medley of arms and legs and
bodies reached the bottom, and a scrum for the prize ensued. It was
finally carried off by Olver Lovel, who, it was averred, crept in
between the scrambling legs and fetched it away in a moment when
the object of the race was forgotten, and only the fun of the
scrimmage remembered.
No one quite knew in what spirit to take Olver’s success. It was too
unpopular for congratulations to ring genuine, so most of the party
turned aside and pretended to be busy with other things, sooner
than betray their disappointment,—for they were kindly folk,—and to
spare themselves the necessity of smiling to Olver. In fact, it was felt
that a slight chill had been cast over the afternoon by the simpleton
getting the better of the cheese.
As for Olver he was quite happy with his cheese, which was large
and round, and beside which he sat at a little distance on the grass,
occasionally patting it and stroking its smooth cool rotundity. Clare
let her interest stray from the platform, in order to observe him; like
most of the others he had put a wreath of sorrel and grasses round
his hat, but whereas the others acquired thereby merely a merry-
making, country appearance, Olver was made to look crazy and
erratic, and twice as simple as usual. He sat now on the grass
making a daisy-chain to go round the belly of his cheese; his legs
were stretched out childishly straight in front of him, and his shovel
hat with the waving wreath was bent down over his occupation.
Simple, thought Clare; but how quick and cunning were his fingers!
that was no unmixed simplicity.
He reached out his daisy-chain to measure against the cheese; he
was engrossed and took no notice of any one or of anything. She
wondered whether Nicholas Lovel knew that Olver was up here;
usually he kept his brother away from any gathering of the villagers,
lest he annoy them in any way. She had already noticed that
Nicholas was not of the party and smiled to imagine him as one of
that hearty gang. She even wondered the more, so aloof did he keep
himself from the rest of the village, that he allowed his brother to
join with them. But she remembered then that he made laws for
himself only, and did not expect others to keep them; he was too
indifferent, rather than too tolerant, for that.
Clare thought that she would wait to see the broadstick contest,
which apparently was about to take place, and that she would then
ride away, for she knew that as the afternoon advanced, and
especially as the discreet twilight arrived to throw its veil over the
passions aroused by the prowess of the games, the party would
become less rowdy, less athletic, and more sentimental, more
inclined to break up into couples and to dispose itself thus about the
grass, where no cover existed, but where privacy was guaranteed by
a tacit convention that all wore blinkers. Clare remembered then,—
what Martha Sparrow, gossiping, had told her,—that Olver Lovel
sometimes made himself very unpopular by creeping up noiselessly
behind some pair just as they were circling round the most critical
stages of their courtship, either to shout loudly in their ears or else
to tickle the backs of their necks with a straw, so that it had even
been discussed in the Waggon of Hay whether he should be
ostracised from the festival of the scouring. The threat of ostracism,
however, had not been carried out. They were all too much afraid of
Olver and of the tricks he might play in revenge on them, worse
than shouting in their ears, or tickling the backs of their necks, or
even than putting caterpillars up girl’s legs, which he had been
known to do; and in a less degree they were also afraid of his
brother Nicholas, not to mention the old mother, whom none of
them had ever seen, and for whose continued existence they had to
take Nicholas’ word for granted.
Perhaps this fear of the Lovels, and of the queer powers they were
reputed to possess, weighed even more with the ignorant village folk
than the rough, kindly pity they felt for Nicholas in the affliction put
upon him.
Clare was eager to watch the broadstick play, which she had never
seen; Martha had told her that those who had taken part were to be
seen going about for days afterwards with bandaged heads, and
even kept the bandage on for longer than they need, as a badge
that they practised the old sturdy sport, and that he who carried off
the honours was entitled to the respect of the men in the Waggon of
Hay, be they natives or strangers passing through, and that there
wasn’t a girl in the parish would refuse him her lips. Martha, quite