e" or the poems of the troubadours, fields
verdantly green, and starred with daisies and golden with
buttercups--the "enamelled meads" of Chaucer and the little illumined
pictures of the fourteenth-century manuscripts; and the hedges were
just such hedges, incredibly green, with here and there a break for the
misty silver of the blackthorn. Wherever flowers could bloom they
bloomed, in the gardens, in the hedges, by the roadside, in the
crannies of the walls.

Porlock village itself is a quiet, charming spot which, in spite of the
temptation of visitors who come here in considerable numbers in the
autumn, when stag-hunting on Exmoor is in season, keeps most of its
old-world simplicity, and has not much "modernized" itself. It is
rambling, calm, and whitewashed; the bank itself is a long, low, cream
building with a thatched roof, and a lovely note of colour from a
climbing japonica. The Ship Inn also is a pleasant old building, with
a dark, cool coffee-room and heavy, timbered roof. "Southey's corner,"
where he is said to have written his poem, "Porlock, thy verdant
vale . . .," on being detained at the Ship by the heavy moorland rain,
is by an old open fireplace, and has been cut off from a larger room by
thin partitioning walls. It is a pleasant homely place, with its sound
of horses from the stable-yard, and the clink of its old pewter pots
from the bar, with its low raftered ceiling and brick floor, and the
sunlight seen from its open doors.

Porlock Church has a square tower, with a heavy, octagonal, truncated
spire, which gives the little church an over-weighted appearance, but
very distinctive in this country, of tall Perpendicular towers. It is
dedicated to St. Dubricius, who is a Celtic saint of the sixth century,
who crowned and anointed Arthur of the Round Table; in the twelfth
century he became a very famous saint once more, after having been
nearly forgotten for several hundred years. Many miracles were worked
at his tomb, and churches were dedicated to him. The present church at
Porlock was built about the thirteenth century by Sir Simon Fitz-Roges,
who was a crusader, but I am inclined to think that the dedication to
St. Dubric belonged to the early simple church (probably a thatched and
whitewashed barn) which was there at the time of the Conquest, and
which, like the neighbouring churches of St. Culbone and St. Brendon,
harks back to Celtic Christianity of pre-Saxon times. The church was
alter