By Violence by John Trevena

Once upon a time there was a village called Lew, and it was perched on the top of a hill 999 feet, 11 inches high. That is the way fairy-tales have to begin; they insist upon going back into the remote past; but unfortunately the village of Lew has come down to our own days, and so has the big hill on which it stands. If we start over again with, "Once upon a time there was a man of Lew who had fifteen daughters," we are confronted by exactly the same difficulty; for the man is still alive, and the fifteen daughters look as if they never would, nor could, belong to the period when little pixy maids were to be seen any night running round and round the furze-bushes. The only way out of the difficulty is to be courageous, to tell the truth, and say: At the top of a hill 999 feet, 11 inches high--some say it is 1,000 feet, but that is not true--stands the village of Lew, where dwells a man named Heathman, who has fifteen daughters and not a single son; and the daughters are all princesses, although it is not easy to say why; but as they are pretty, and this is a fairy-tale, they must be.

The little village lies within a kind of ring-fence of ash and sycamores, which shelter the cob houses from the furious gales which boom and bluster over the Dartmoor tors. The wind is always sighing and moaning. It is cool upon the hottest day in August, and probably that is why Lew imports weak-chested people in some quantity. A regular business is done with big, smoky Bristol. Lew says to Bristol in its own language, "Us ha' butiful air up over in Demshur, and us ha' a proper plenty o' cream and butter and suchlike, but us ain't got much golden money. If yew sends us sickly volk, they can buy our cream and butter, and us will send 'em back strong." Bristol sees the force of this argument, and packs up and sends off its weak-chested folk, who reason, quite sensibly, "What's the use of being ill when we can go to the top of Lew hill and get well?" There is a tariff, of course, for Lew does not believe in free imports. The weak-chested folk must buy cream and butter and suchlike in vast quantities, or they would be promptly deported under the local Aliens Act. As a matter of fact, they buy Lew produce without any grumbling; they do even more than they are wanted to, and are actually spoiling Lew--where tips are unknown and a man will do an extraordinary lot of work for two shillings--by raising the prices. They get absurdly grateful, these visitors, who enter Lew weak and thin, and are exported brown and fat and sleek, like porpoises.