41   Widecombe-in-the-Moor

its church, the well-known "Cathedral of the Moor", and its Fair, and the Fair is famous not so much in itself as for the song associated with it, which, in spite of "Glorious Devon" and its splendid musical setting, is and always will be the Song of the Moor, and can almost claim to be the county anthem, for to its strains the Devons have often marched into action. It is the kind of "anthem" one can imagine Falstaff appreciating before he babbled of green fields. It tells the story of Tom Pearce's grey mare being borrowed by a friend- 

Tom Pearce, Tom Pearce, lend me thy grey mare,
All along, down along, out along, lee,
For I want for to go to Widecombe Fair,
Wi' Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy,
Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawk,
Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all
Chorus-Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all. 

The grey mare is lent, and its wonderful load - one of those marvellous loads that fairs and junketings and borrowed horses are a necessary combination for - and the roads, or the want of them, and the Fair, keep the party away so long that "Tom Pearce he got up to the top of the hill" and "seed his old mare down a-making her will" with the Brewer-y Company and "old Uncle Tom Cobleigh" as witnesses. Now, "when the wind whistles cold on the Moor of a night, Tom Pearce's old mare doth appear ghastly white"; while the concluding verse tells us that "all the long night be heard skirling and groans, from Tom Pearce's old mare in her rattling bones". The air is a fascinating one, and the chorus - well, Handel may have written better, but a true Devonian will be excused for doubting it.

 The Church is Perpendicular, and its wonderfully fine tower, 120 feet high, has earned for it "cathedral" fame, the rest of the building being in no way remarkable, although fairly capacious. Lydford has always been the parish church of the Moor, but so long ago as the middle of the thirteenth century, Bishop Bronescombe gave special permission to the dwellers on the

Previous page | Page 41 | Next page