Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End by Edric Holmes
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page 16 of 191 (08%)
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without them will find his wants supplied within but a few miles at any
of the numerous Londons by the Sea; but that will not be Sussex pure and undefiled, and if simplicity and cleanliness, enough to eat and drink, and a genuine welcome are all that is required, he will find these in our Downland inns. It is in the more remote of these hostelries that the inquisitive stranger will hear the South Saxon dialect in its purity and the slow wit of the Sussex peasant at its best. The old Downland shepherd with embroidered smock and Pyecombe crook is vanishing fast, and with him will disappear a good deal of the character which made the Sussex native essentially different from his cousins of Essex and Wessex. [Illustration: LAMB INN, EASTBOURNE.] One of the most delightful records of rustic life ever printed is that study in the "Wealden Formation of Human Nature" by the former rector of Burwash, John Cocker Egerton, entitled _Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways_. True, the book is mainly about Wealden men and we are more concerned with the hill tribes, but the shrewd wit and quaint conceits of the South Saxon portrayed therein will be readily recognized by the leisurely traveller who has the gift of making himself at home with strangers. It is to be hoped that in the great and epoch-making changes that are upon us in this twentieth century some at least of the individual characteristics of the English peasantry will remain. It is the divergent and opposite traits of the tribes which make up the English folk that have helped to make us great. May we long be preserved from a Wellsian uniformity! A brief description of the geological history of the range may not be |
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