e Barlee hath, and Dunsbrook her to bring
From Exmore; when she hath scarcely found her course,
Then Creddy cometh in ...
... her sovereign to assist;
As Columb wins for Ex clear Wever and the Clist,
Contributing their streams their mistress' fame to raise.
As all assist the Ex, so Ex consumeth these;
Like some unthrifty youth, depending on the court,
To win an idle name, that keeps a needless port;
And raising his old rent, exacts his farmers' store
The landlord to enrich, the tenants wondrous poor:
Who having lent him theirs, he then consumes his own,
That with most vain expense upon the Prince is thrown:
So these, the lesser brooks unto the greater pay;
The greater, they again spend all upon the sea.'

DRAYTON: _Poly-olbion_.

The river Exe rises in a bog on Exmoor, beyond the borders of
Somersetshire. 'Be now therefore pleased as you stand upon Great
Vinnicombe top ... to cast your eye westward, and you may see the first
spring of the river Exe, which welleth forth in a valley between
Pinckerry and Woodborough,' says Westcote.

But our author has no feeling for the rolling hills, and noble lines,
and hazy blue distances of Exmoor, and without one word of praise
continues: 'Let us for your more ease, and the sooner to be quit of this
barren soil, cold air, uneven ways, and untrodden paths, swim with the
stream the better to hasten our speed.'

The first little town that the Exe comes to in Devonshire is Bampton,
nowadays best known, perhaps, for its pony-fairs, when (so runs one
account) 'Exmoor ponies throng the streets, flood the pavements,
overflow the houses, pervade the place. Wild as hawks, active and lissom
as goats, cajoled from the moors, and tactfully manoeuvred when
penned, these indigenous quadrupeds will leap or escalade lofty barriers
in a standing jump or a cat-like scramble.' Cattle and sheep are less
conspicuously for sale at this popular and crowded fair, held on the
last Thursday in October.

The first fact recorded of Bampton's history is of such ancient date
that it may be hoped the vastness of the achievement has been rounded
and filled out during the flight of time; for the historian, with
unconscious irony, blandly remarks that here 'Cynegils, first Christian
King of the West Saxons,' put twenty thousand (or maybe more) Britons to
the sword. He does not mention how Cynegils continued his propagation o