Two well-known writers were describing
the sound of the guns in France, as they heard them from the top of the South
Downs. One likened it to ‘the hammer
stroke of fate’; the other heard in it ‘the pulse of Destiny’.
More prosaically, it sounds like the beating of gigantic carpets by
gigantic women, at a distance. You may
almost see them holding the carpets in their strong arms by the four corners,
tossing them into the air, and bringing them down with a thud while the dust
rises in a cloud above their heads. All
walks on the Downs this summer are accompanied by the sinister sound of
far-off beating which is sometimes as faint as the ghost of an echo, and sometimes
rises almost from the next fold of grey land. . . . Often walking alone, with neither man nor animal in sight, you
turn sharply to see who it is that gallops behind you. But there is no one. The phantom horseman dashes by with a thunder
of hoofs, and suddenly his ride is over and the sound lapses, and you only hear
the grasshoppers and the larks in the sky.
More prosaically, it sounds like the beating of gigantic carpets by
gigantic women, at a distance. You may
almost see them holding the carpets in their strong arms by the four corners,
tossing them into the air, and bringing them down with a thud while the dust
rises in a cloud above their heads. All
walks on the Downs this summer are accompanied by the sinister sound of
far-off beating which is sometimes as faint as the ghost of an echo, and sometimes
rises almost from the next fold of grey land. . . . Often walking alone, with neither man nor animal in sight, you
turn sharply to see who it is that gallops behind you. But there is no one. The phantom horseman dashes by with a thunder
of hoofs, and suddenly his ride is over and the sound lapses, and you only hear
the grasshoppers and the larks in the sky.
“Heard on the Downs” published July 15, 1916
(E2 40)
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