"Lofts, Norah - How Far To Bethlehem" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lofts Norah)

House, 57-59 Uxbridge Road, Baling, London, W.5.

Made and Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press),
Ltd." Bungay, Suffolk This book is dedicated with admiration and
gratitude to

EDWARD WAGENKNECHT


who suggested the theme ONE NAZARETH 90 miles At some time, too long
ago for even the oldest people to remember, the well in the village had
failed. The heaviest rains in winter could not replenish it, so it was
abandoned, and for at least three generations water had been fetched
from a spring which broke out from the rocks on the other side of the
hill. This meant that the water-carriers, always women and children,
must walk for half a mile, uphill, then down, with empty jars, and half
a mile, uphill and down, with full ones.

Women, practical and short of time, had soon found a way to shorten and
to ease that journey. Avoiding the road and the hill they cut through
the fields that girdled the base of the rising ground, and over the
years had trodden a path which halved the length of the journey and was
all on the level. In the rainy season the path was muddy and the daily
procession of feet churned the mud until it was as sticky as porridge;
and for that, too, the women had found a remedy. Certain days in
Spring and again in Autumn were marked as stone-carrying days when
everyone using the path in either direction brought a stone, dropped it
and trod it in. This custom was older than any memory, but it was
still faithfully observed, with the result that between his humble
village and its water supply ran a path as hard and firm and flat as
the new roads that the Romans were beginning to lay to link city with
city.

The solidity of the path had served the women in another way--and not
so long ago. Former owners of the land had respected the path as an
established right-of-way, one of those ancient things protected by
tradition. Seven or eight years ago the field had changed hands and
the new owner had questioned the right of people to use part of his
land as a public footpath. He intended, he said, to plough up the path

and sow corn right up to the base of the hill. The stones, layer upon
layer of them, dropped by hands long dead, had defied the ploughshare
and the straining oxen. He had then, in a fury, declared that he would
fence the path off at both ends. But before he had time to do so his
wife had been brought to bed with a child, and several of the village
women, pitying her because she was a stranger-and married to such a
churl!--had shown her small kindnesses. And apparently even a churl
could feel gratitude for nothing more was said about closing the path;
indeed the right-of-way was tacitly acknowledged by the placing of
large boulders, smeared with ochre, at intervals between the path and