Lew, who challenged Ashwater, Broadwood, S. Stephen's, and Callington. I give but the opening verse:—
One day in October,
Neither drunken nor sober,
O'er Broadbury Down I was wending my way,
When I heard of some ringing,
Some dancing and singing,
I ought to remember that Jubilee Day.
’Twas in Ashwater town,
The bells they did soun';
They rang for a belt and a hat laced with gold.
But the men of North Lew
Rang so steady and true,
That never were better in Devon, I hold.
On this song the late Rev. H. H. Sheppard remarked: "There is an indolent easy grace about this tune which is quite in keeping with the words and charmingly suggestive. The sunny valleys, the breezy downs, the sweet bell-music swelling and sinking on the soft autumn air, the old folk creeping out of their chimney-nooks to listen, and all employment in the little town suspended in the popular excitement at the contest for the hat laced with gold; all this, told in a few words and illustrated by a few notes, quite calls up a picture of life, and stamps the number as a genuine folk-song. The narrator is unhappily slightly intoxicated, but no one thinks the worse of him; stern morality on that or any other score will in vain be looked for in songs of the West."
Such a picture as this must have occurred again and yet again in young Kennicott's life whilst head of the ringers at Totnes.
Kennicott's sister was in service as lady's-maid to the Hon. Mrs. Elizabeth Courtney, of Painsford in Ashprington, near Totnes; and in 1743 that lady had a narrow escape from death, having eaten a poisonous
