Читать книгу Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations онлайн

41 страница из 97

From the open tableland on which it appears in the engraving, the great tree probably stood on the summit of the Heath, where the road now runs past Jack Straw’s Castle. On the same broadside on which the engraving appears are certain descriptive verses. This broadside seems to have been given away to the visitors, and the circumstance of its having been folded for putting in the pocket, and so worn out, accounts for the few copies of it in existence.

‘The Great Hollow Elm at Hampstead’ (as the broad sheet describes it) does not appear to have long survived its singular treatment. No subsequent records that I have met with mention it; but that it must have been the object of many a summer’s day pilgrimage to the Heath is evident, even in Puritan times, when Robert Codrington addressed his verses to it. In them he mentions the

‘beauteous ladies that have been

These twice three summers in its turret seen.’

In the same year (1647) a poetical stationer, commonly known as Michael Spark, but who, in moments of aspiration, fancifully called himself ‘Scintilla,’ tells us of a very curious use to which this sylvan upper chamber was put.