Devonshire Characters and Strange Events. Baring-Gould Sabine

Arscott had, as already related, an enormous tame toad that came out on the doorstep to be fed every morning, and went by the name of “Old Dawty.” The country people thought that it was John Arscott’s “familiar.” When he whistled, the creature would hop up to him, and leap to his hand or to his knee. One day a visitor with his stick killed it; but seeing this Black John flew at him and knocked him down and belaboured him soundly. John Arscott came out, and when he heard what the visitor had done, turned on his heel, and when the gentleman had picked himself up and drew near, slammed the house door in his face.

      This is Mr. Hawker’s version of the story of the end of the pet toad, which is at variance with that related by the Rev. P. W. Molesworth, whose authority is more trustworthy than that of Mr. Hawker, a gentleman given to romancing.

      “Black John’s lair was a rude hut, which he had wattled for a snug abode close to the kennels. He loved to retire to it, and sleep near his chosen companions, the hounds. When they were unkennelled he accompanied and ran with them on foot, and so sinewy and so swift was his stunted form that he was very often in their midst at the death.”

      John Arscott had another follower called Dogget. “My son Simon” or simply “Simon” he was wont to call him. He also ran after the foxhounds.

      There exists a fine ballad on the “Hunting of Arscott, of Tetcott,” in which Simon is mentioned. Mr. Frank Abbott, gamekeeper at Pencarrow, but born at Tetcott, informed me, concerning Dogget: —

      “Once they unkennelled in the immediate neighbourhood of Tetcott, and killed at Hatherleigh. This runner was in at the death, as was his wont. John Arscott ordered him a bed at Hatherleigh, but to his astonishment, when he returned to Tetcott, his ‘wife’ told him all the particulars of the run. ‘Then,’ said Arscott, ‘this must be the doing of none other than Dogget: where be he?’”

      Dogget was soon found in the servants’ hall, drinking ale, having outstripped his master and run all the way home.

      The ballad above mentioned begins as follows: —

      In the month of November, in the year fifty-two,

      Three jolly Fox-hunters, all sons of the Blue,

      Came o’er from Pencarrow, not fearing a wet coat,

      To take their diversion with Arscott of Tetcott.

      Sing fol-de-rol, lol-de-rol, etc.

      The daylight was dawning, right radiant the morn

      When Arscott of Tetcott he winded his horn;

      He blew such a flourish, so loud in the hall,

      The rafters resounded, and danced to the call.

      Sing fol-de-rol, etc.

      In the kitchen the servants, in kennel the hounds,

      In the stable the horses were roused by the sounds,

      On Black-Bird in saddle sat Arscott, “To-day

      I will show you good sport; lads, hark, follow, away!”

      Sing fol-de-rol, etc.

      To return to Black John. His wonted couch when he could not get back to Tetcott at night was a bed among the reeds or fern of some sheltering brake or wood, and he slept, as he himself used to express it, “rolled up, as warm as a hedge-boar, round his own nose.” One day he was covered with snow, and found to all appearance dead. He was conveyed to Tetcott and put in a coffin. But as he was about to be buried, and whilst the service was proceeding, a loud thumping noise was heard within the coffin. The lid was removed, and he sat up. He had been in a long trance, but the funeral ride and jolting had revived him, and, said he, “When I heard the pa’sson say ‘Earth to earth and dust to dust,’ I thought it high time to bumpy.”

      After that he had no love for parsons of the Church or indeed ministers of any denomination, for every one of them, he said, would bury him alive, if they could. Once an itinerant Methodist preacher came across him and asked his way. Black John volunteered to show him a short cut across the park, and led him to a paddock, in which his master kept a favourite bull. He thrust the preacher into it and fastened the gate. What ensued is matter of guess-work. A yell and a bellow were heard, and some object was seen projected into the air over the hedge. Soon after Black John appeared at the Hall with a white tie in his hands, which he gave to his master, and said, “This be the vag-ends of the minister – all I could recover.”

      “When gout and old age had imprisoned Mr. Arscott in his easy chair, Black John nuzzled among the ashes of the vast wood fires of the hearth, or lay coiled upon his rug like some faithful mastiff watching every look and gesture of his master; starting up to fill the pipe or tankard of old ale, and then crouching again. At the squire’s death and funeral, the agony of the misshapen retainer was unappeasable. He had to be removed by force from the door of the vault, and then he utterly refused to depart from the neighbourhood of the grave. He made himself another lair, near the churchyard wall, and there he sobbed away the brief remnant of his days.”

      The story goes that on one long and tremendous chase, Dogget running by his master’s horse —

      “How far do you make it?” said Simon the son.

      “The day that’s declining will shortly be done.”

      “We’ll follow till Doomsday,” quoth Arscott, – before

      They hear the Atlantic with menacing roar.

      On this occasion the chase continued to Penkenner.

      Through Whitstone, and Poundstock, St. Genny’s they run,

      Like a fire-ball, red, in the sea set the sun.

      Then out on Penkenner – a leap, and they go,

      Full five hundred feet to the ocean below.

      In this memorable run, the fox went over the cliffs and the hounds after him; but Arscott and the rest of the hunters drew up, and though he lost his hounds, he did not lose his life. Penkenner is a magnificent and sheer cliff, west of St. Genny’s Church. A deep cleft is on one side, and Crackington Cove on the other. There was no possible escape for the fox. As to the “sons of the Blue” who were in this memorable run with Arscott, of Tetcott, opinions differ.

      The versions of the ballad vary greatly. I have had a copy, written in 1820, with explanatory notes. The date of the song is sometimes set down as 1752, sometimes as 1772. The “sons of the Blue” are taken to have been Sir John Molesworth, of Pencarrow, Bart., William Morshead, of Blisland, and Braddon Clode, of Skisdon. But neither Sir John Molesworth nor Mr. Morshead was, as it happens, a naval man. If the date were either 1652 or 1672, it would fit an earlier John Arscott, of Tetcott, who died in 1708; and Sir John Molesworth of the period was Vice-Admiral of Cornwall; and the sons of the blue were his sons, Hender, Sparke, and John. The second John Molesworth married Jane, daughter of the elder John Arscott, in 1704. It seems probable, accordingly, that the ballad belonged originally to the earlier John Arscott, and that it was adapted a century later to the last John Arscott. The melody to which it is still sung at the rent-audit of the Molesworth estate at Tetcott is a very ancient one, which was employed by Tom D’Urfey, in his Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1719, for a song entitled “Dear Catholic Brother.” I have given it in my Songs of the West.

      Since the death of Arscott, he still hunts.

      When the full moon is shining as clear as the day,

      John Arscott still hunteth the country, they say;

      You may see him on Black-Bird, and hear in full cry,

      The pack from Pencarrow to Dazzard go by.

      When the tempest is howling, his horn you may hear,

      And the bay of his hounds in their headlong career;

      For Arscott of Tetcott loves hunting so well,

      That he breaks for the pastime from Heaven or Hell.

      The belief that he is to be heard winding his horn and in full gallop in chase through the park