Amelia Barr - All the Days of My Life - An Autobiography

This visit to Baildon Green was the last of my Shipley experiences. During it Mr. Greenwood told me that he would have “a handsome wife” when I came again, and that she would take me about a bit. I was not much pleased at the prospect. Men were always kinder to me than women, and not so fussy about my hair being in curl, and my frock clean. So I did not speak, and he asked, “Are you not pleased, Milly?”

“No,” I answered bluntly.

“But why?” he continued.

“Because I like you – all to myself.” Then he laughed and was much pleased, and I learned that day that you may wisely speak the truth, if it is complimentary.

The event of this visit was Baildon Feast, a great public rejoicing on the anniversary of the summer solstice. It had been observed beyond the memory of man, beyond historical notice, beyond even the traditions of the locality. There was no particular reason for its observance that I could ever learn; it was just Baildon Feast, and that was all anybody knew about it.

I was awakened very early on the first day of the feast by the bands “playing the sun up,” and before we had finished breakfast the procession was forming. Now Baildon Green is flat and grassy as a meadow, and when I was six years old it had a pond in the center, while from the northwest there rose high hills. Only a narrow winding path led to the top of these hills, and about half way up, there was a cave which tradition averred had been one of Robin Hood’s retreats – a very probable circumstance, as this whole country-side was doubtless pretty well covered with oak forests.

A numerous deputation from the village of Baildon, situated on the top of the hill, joined the procession which started from Baildon Green at an early hour. The sun was shining brightly, and I had on a clean white frock, pretty white sandals, a new blue sash, and a gypsy hat trimmed with blue ribbons. When the music approached it put a spirit into my feet and my heart kept time to the exciting melody. I had never walked to music before, and it was an enchanting experience.

The procession appeared to my childish apprehension a very great one. I think now it may have consisted of five hundred people, perhaps less, but the great point of interest was two fine young heifers garlanded with flowers, and ornamented with streaming ribbons of every color. Up the winding path they went, the cattle lowing, the bands playing, the people singing and shouting up to the high places on which the village of Baildon stood. There at a particular spot, hallowed by tradition, the cattle garlanded for sacrifice were slain. I do not know whether any particular method or forms were used. I was not permitted to see the ceremony attending their death, and I confess I was much disappointed.

“It isn’t fit for a little lass to see,” said my friend Jonathan, “and I promised thy father and mother I wouldn’t let thee see it, so there now! Nay, nay, I wouldn’t whimper about such a thing as that. Never!”

I said I wasn’t whimpering, and that I didn’t care at all about seeing the animals killed, but I did care, and Baildon Fair without its tragedy no longer interested me, yet I stayed to see the flesh distributed among all who asked for it. There was an understanding, however, that those who received a festival roast should entertain any stranger claiming their hospitality. This ancient rite over, the people gave themselves up to sports of all kinds.

But their Methodism kept them within the bounds of decency, for there were favorite preachers invited from all the towns around, and if the men and boys were busy in the cricket fields all day, they were sure to be in the chapel at night. There was also a chapel tea party the last afternoon of the feast, and after it a great missionary meeting at which Bishop Heber’s hymn, “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” was sung with such mighty fervor as made me thrill and tremble with an emotion I can yet recall. That night I solemnly determined to be a missionary. I would go to the darkest of all heathen lands, and be the first to tell the story of Jesus. I went home in a state of beatific surrender, and whenever I think of that night, I am aware of a Presence, and the face I wore when I was a little child turns to me. And I am troubled and silent before that little ghost with its eager eyes and loving enthusiasms, for I have done none of the things I promised to do, and an intangible clutch of memory gives me a spell of sadness keen and regretful.

This Baildon experience was one of those instances of learning in childhood things of no immediate use. I was hardly six years old then; I was seventy-six when it struck me, that I had perhaps taken part in a non-intentional sacrifice to the God Baal. For four years ago I was much interested in discovering that the Shetlanders, even to the close of the nineteenth century, kept the same feast at the summer solstice, and also made their children in some of the lonely islands pass through the Beltane fires, in fact paying the old God Bel or Baal the same services as the Hebrew prophets so often reproached the Israelites with performing. But I believe that wherever Druidical remains are found, relics of this worship may be traced either in names, superstitions, signs or traditions. In a letter I received from a Bradford lady dated September twenty-seventh, A.D. 1911, she says, “It was rather strange but we had a man at our house from Thornton the other day, and he was telling us how they paraded the cattle they were going to kill at the feast through the streets, and I thought of you, and what you remembered of it in Baildon.”

These details may seem to the reader trivial and futile; on the contrary, they were the very material from which life was building character. For all that surrounds a child, all that it sees, hears, feels or touches, helps to create its moral and intellectual nature. See then how fortunate were my first six years. My physical being was well cared for by loving parents in a sweet orderly home, and my mental life well fed by books stimulating the imagination. Through the “Arabian Nights” tales I touched the domestic life of the wonderful East, China, India, Persia and Arabia; and at the missionary meetings, and at my home, I met men who had been to these far away places, and brought back with them curious and beautiful things, even the very gods they worshipped. There had been hitherto in other respects a good deal of judicious neglect in my education. Books had never been anything but a source of wonder and delight to me. I had never heard of a grammar and an arithmetic, and had never been deprived of a visit or a holiday because if I did not go to school, I would miss a mark, or lose my place in a class.

Fortunately this desultory education was marbled all through with keen spiritual incidents and issues. For the spiritual sight of children turns more sharply upon the world within the breast, than they show, or that anyone imagines. They hold in their memories imperishable days which all others have forgotten, visions beautiful and fearful, dreams without name or meaning, and they have an undefined impression of the awful oldness of things. They see the world through doors very little ajar, and they know the walking of God through their dreaming sleep.

The happy and prosperous children are those, who had before all else the education that comes by reverence. This education is beyond all doubt the highest, the deepest, the widest and the most perfect of all the forms of education ever given to man. A child that has not been taught to reverence God, and all that represents God to man – honor, honesty, justice, mercy, truth, love, courage, self-sacrifice, is sent into the world like a boat sent out to sea, without rudder, ballast, compass or captain.

But the education by reverence must begin early. Children of very tender years may be taught to wander through those early ages of faith, when God took Enoch, and no one was astonished; when Abraham talked with God as friend with friend; when the marvelous ladder was let down by Jacob’s pillow; when Hagar carrying her dying child in the desert saw without surprise the angel of the Lord coming to help her. Nor is there any danger in permitting them to enter that dimmer world lying about childhood, to which Robinson Crusoe and Scheherazade hold the keys. The multiplication table can wait, until the child has been taught to reverence all that is holy, wise and good, and the imagination received its first impulse. So I do not call such events as I have chronicled trifling; indeed, I know that in the formation of my character, they had a wide and lasting influence.