Barrow Ash

Barrow Ash is a valley village of the tithe country about Oxford, one of the villages under the blessing where each parish knows its Lady and feeds her. It is the seat of the Lady of Barrow Ash, and the present holder, Mother Cecily, is the best known of the High South's wise-women; the Concord of Saint Winnow took down her sayings in 4595. She was fetched to the work at nineteen by a woman of eighty who explained nothing, and in 4621 she serves four parishes, respected in three and nearer to feared in the last, for reasons its valley keeps to itself.

The village's other fame is older than any Lady now living. The Grey Nun walks its meadow, a frost-bright figure tied in valley memory to epidemics, and Barrow Ash feeds her with bread rather than praying to her, much as it might keep a ditch clear. The belt teaches with her as its pattern of how such a thing is kept, and the chapter has spent about three centuries neither blessing the practice nor forbidding it. In 4583, at the dean's suggestion, the vestry carried the loaf up on a Tuesday instead of the Monday. Churchwarden Peter Lathbury entered the result: the tower stair, which has a haunt of its own, took no notice; the meadow did, and the village was back to Monday inside a week.

Its inn, the White Hart, is neutral ground by habit rather than charter. It takes sealed parcels, keeps them unopened, and enters in its book who left each, who fetched it and under what mark; companies with a load they would prefer to set down for a while choose it over any other house. No law protects the custom; too many people of consequence rely on it for anyone to disturb it. The village has a sadder line in the record as well: a Barrow Ash family torn apart in 4609 at the Oxford ring was traced and made whole in Sarrum in 4612, after eleven months' work by a company serving Frideswide House.

If you need the Lady, ask a village woman, not the incumbent, and take a refusal with grace. Do not move, skip or change the bread on the meadow, and do not mistake the tower stair's haunt for the meadow's power.