road passes a fir-wood, bright with golden-rod and ragwort and soft
blue scabious, and by-and-by turns eastward, and reaches the scattered
village of Brendon. Brendon 'church-town' is made up of church, school,
parsonage, and a few farms, and can scarcely be called a village. The
church stands high on the hill above the river; it is very small, and
has been rebuilt comparatively lately; its dedication is the most
interesting thing about it. All who ever rejoiced in 'The Water Babies'
should remember this Irish saint. 'Did you never hear of the blessed St
Brandan, how he preached to the wild Irish, on the wild, wild Kerry
coast; he, and five other hermits, till they were weary and longed to
rest?... So St Brandan went out to the point of Old Dunmore, and looked
over the tide-way roaring round the Blasquets, at the end of all the
world, and away into the ocean, and sighed, "Ah that I had wings as a
dove!" And far away, before the setting sun, he saw a blue fairy sea,
and golden fairy islands, and he said, "Those are the islands of the
blest!" Then he and his friends got into a hooker and sailed away and
away to the westward, and were never heard of more.'

A little higher up the little river (here known as Brendon Water) is a
very old bridge, now unused, and a wide modern bridge, which crosses the
two branches of the divided stream just below a little green island.
Bushes crowd and overlap each other on the banks, and it is very likely
a grey water-wagtail will dart from among the leaves and flit jauntily
upstream.

The road all this way follows the water--for some distance the boundary
between the counties--and here it is sunk between the barriers of the
County Wall separating Devonshire and Somersetshire. A great bare cliff,
covered only with short grass, and scanty tufts of heather and furze
growing thinly upon it, towers above the road; the other side of the
valley is lower, gentler, and wooded. Malmsmead Bridge crosses over the
Badgeworthy Water, as the stream--which seems to change its name nearly
every half-mile in the most perplexing manner--is here called, a little
higher than the point at which it is joined by its tributary, Oare
Water. Above the bridge the road becomes a rough track that leads up
into the very wild and beautiful valley of Badgeworthy Water, well known
by name to all lovers of 'Lorna Doone.' Some of the natives are apt to
mislead strangers by wrongly calling this glen the Doone Valley. Further