"Friendly Brook". It is collected in:
The theme

Over the centuries from Roman times to the present day, a Sussex field has changed hands many times. But all the while the local people, who work the land, are its true masters:

For whoever pays the taxes old Mus' Hobden owns the land.
Background

In 1902 The Kiplings had settled at Bateman's in Burwash, in the once densely forested Sussex Weald, which became his home for the rest of his life. As Donald Mackenzie notes, in his Introduction to the 'Puck' stories, he swiftly became fascinated by the long and ancient history of his valley, and the evidence everywhere of the people who had lived and worked there over the years.

As Andrew Lycett(p. 436) explains, 'Hobden' was not a figure of Kipling's imagination:

The surname was a local one and the fictional character was based on William Isted, Rudyard's main local source about country lore. In his seventies when the Kiplings first came to Bateman's, he not only was an excellent hedger (when not the worse for drink) but also knew all about poaching, from the days when it was possible to pick up a fallow deer in Lord Ashburnham's woods towards Battle. After ten years his wife began to open up and tell Rudyard her recollections of magic in Sussex in the mid-ninteenth century, when a black cock would be killed and the local `wise woman' divined the future.
Some critical comments

Angus Wilson(p. 285), writes in 1977 of Kipling's response to the world he found in Sussex:

I think, perhaps, that Kipling has found some equivalent of the Indian peasants who formed so vital a background to his early stories, with the additional advantage that he is nearer in sympathy and understanding to the Sussex peasantry. If only he could have treated the gentry as fiercely and as tenderly as he treated the white sahibs of India, he might have made a Sussex world akin to the world he created out of India.

But, if we know now that his Punjab was a threatened world, bound to disappear, its guise for him in the eighties was that of an advanced outpost, not a disappearing relict. His Sussex was so evidently disappearing rapidly under his eyes with the invasion of commuterdom and growing towns. It simply could not function even in his imagination as a world on its own:
Farewell to the Downs and the Marshes
And the Weald and the forest known
Before there were Very Many People
And the Old Gods had gone!
[from "Very Many People" - 1926]
The historical approach that Kipling adopts stops at his own day, or soon after.
See also "An Habitation Enforced", in which a wealthy young American couple, the Chapins, settle on a Sussex estate. They adapt themselves happily to a new way of life, but when a bridge is to be built across a stream, soon after their first child is born, George Chapin is surprised to find his foreman has brought down some massive oak timbers. In America half a dozen two by four bits of softwood would be ample (Chapin has ordered larch). But when he protests he is firmly put in his place:

'All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp'ry job of it; and by the time the young master's married it'll have to be done again. Now, I've brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we've ever drawed. You put 'em in an' it's off your mind for good an' all. T'other way—I don't say it ain't right, I'm only just sayin' what I think—but t'other way, he'll no sooner be married than we'll 'ave it all to do again. You've no call to regard my words, but you can't get out of that.'

'No,' said George after a pause. 'I've been realising that for some time. Make it oak then; we can't get out of it.'


Notes on the text


[Verse 1]

Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald We have been unable to trace the position of Sub-Prefect of the Weald, much less a particular holder of the office. Roman Prefects were usually military officers, and by AD 300 the south of England had long been pacified. However the Romans did have a special interest in the Weald because of the iron mines there.

Diocletian Roman Emperor AD 285-305

Hobdenius giving his name a Latin termination

A Briton of the Clay a native inhabitant of the Weald, which has clay soil. Kipling may also mean indigenous, sprung from the local soil.

[Verse 2]

dreenin’ Sussex pronunciation of 'draining'. See Verse 3 line 1: “So they drained it?.

neeglect Sussex pronunciation of 'neglect'.

jest Sussex pronunciation of 'just'.

Have it jest as you’ve a mind to 'Do as you like (but I wouldn't recommend it)'. See
Hal o’ the Draft(Puck of Pook’s Hillp. 250 line 10):

They could hear old Hobden’s deep tones. “Have it as you’ve a mind to,? he was saying.
[Verse 3]

when the bones of meadows showan interesting early reference to the use of crop markings to reveal buried archaeology.

[Verse 4]

Ogier the DaneA historical Ogier was a vassal of Charlemagne, King of the Franks AD 771-814, but there is no evidence that he ever came to England.

[Verse 7]

wainsheavy waggons, carts.

Lewestown below the Sussex Downs, the nearest source of chalk.

we find a flintnodules of flint occur in chalk, though not in the local clay. The flints had come with the chalk that they spread on the land.

[Verse 8]

another pirateWilliam the Conqueror, who defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, a few miles from the site of Bateman's. The local Saxons may well have seen William as a pirate, but - unlike earlier Viking raiders - he did not come to burn and destroy, but to conquer a kingdom that he had a claim to.

William of Warenne(also spelt 'Warrenne') A Norman lord who fought for William the Conqueror at Hastings and was rewarded with lands around Lewes. See “Below the Mill Dam?(Traffics and Discoveriesp. 372 line 25): 'They tried the case at Lewes, but he got no change out of William de Warrenne on the bench.'

[Verse 10]

sileSussex pronunciation of 'soil'.

spileSussex dialect for 'pile': protect the bank by driving heavy posts vertically into the bed of the Brook.

[Verse 11]

oaken kneestimber cut to the natural bend where a branch springs from the trunk. Usually a shipbuilding term. See Something of Myself"chapter VIII, where Kipling talks of his ambition to write a major novel:
...Yet I dreamed for many years of building a veritable three-decker out of chosen and long-stored timber - teak, green-heart, and ten-year-old oak knees.
[Verse 12]

Georgii Quinti Anno SextoLegal Latin: 'In the sixth year of (the reign of) George the Fifth' (who came to the throne in May 1910).

title-deedsdocuments proving ownership of the land

assignsappointed agents

executorspersons appointed to see that his Will is carried out after hus death.

heirsthose who will inherit the property.

[Verse 13]

chase and warrenthe right to fish and to hunt game, such as rabbits and (verse 14 line 2) pheasants.

ticklescatches fish (particularly trout) with his bare hands, tickling them gently with moving fingers until he can scoop them out of the water.

wirescatches rabbits in wire snares. See "Hal o’ the Draft" (Puck of Pook’s Hillp. 250 line 10), where Una recalls how Hobden had advised the children's father not to fell an oak:

“Why, the oak is the regular bridge for all the rabbits between the Three Acre and our meadow. The best place for wires on the farm, Hobden says.?
swappedSussex dialect: 'trimmed'. A highly skilled task. See the opening passage of "Friendly Brook" in A Diversity of Creatures.

[Verse 14]

his evening faggot under which my conies ran.See "The Tree of Justice" (Rewards and Fairies) p. 312 line 25: “He [Hobden] puts his rabbits into the faggots he’s allowed to take home.?conyis an old word for 'rabbit'.

summons him to judgementTaking fish, rabbits and pheasants without permission is poaching and punishable by law.

PanThe Greek god of woods and pastures

[Verse 16]

flagrantly a poachersee note on verse 14 above

tain’t for me to interfereQuoting the second Hobden in the first line of verse 6.

[Verse 17]

“Hev it jest as you’ve a mind to?“Have it just as you like? Quoting the original Hobdenius in the second line of verse 2.


[P.H./J.R.]

©Philip Holberton and John Radcliffe 2011 All rights reserved


top of the page
version for printing


the poem
"The Land"

 (1917)


notes by Philip Holberton
and John Radcliffe
[December 12th 2011]

Publication history

This poem (ORG no. 1043) was first published in the A Diversity of Creatures with the story