The Cobbledicks never had been civilised. They were autochthones. The oldest inhabitant of Nymet remembered them. They did not increase much, but they did not die out. Their congeners, named the Gubbins, lived in the Lydford glens in Charles the First's reign, when a poet thus described them:--
And near hereto's the Gubbins' cave, A people that no knowledge have Of law of God or men; Whom Cæsar never yet subdued, Who've lawless lived, of manners rude, All savage in their den.
By whom, if any pass that way, He dares not the least time to stay, For presently they howl; Upon which signal they do muster Their naked forces in a cluster, Led forth by Roger Howle.
One night a star fell from heaven and descended into the hovel of the Cobbledicks through the hole in the roof which allowed the smoke of the communal fire to ascend; and this spark sank into the heart of Old Grizzly--he was not Old Grizzly then. What his name was then in the clan never transpired.
That divine spark conveyed to this particular Cobbledick the idea of personal property. This idea, once conceived, becomes to the social body what a backbone is to the physical organism. There is all the difference in social conditions between those who have accepted personal property and those who have not arrived at it, that exists between vertebrate animals and invertebrate polypi.
Cobbledick rose from his lair by the fire where he had been snoring, caught up a female for whom he had long been sighing, stuffed a wisp of hay into her mouth to prevent her from alarming the sleepers, threw her over his shoulder, and strode out of the Cobbledick hovel.
The dispersion at Babel was caused by the discovery of the possessive pronouns.
After having carried his burden beyond earshot, Cobbledick set her down, pulled the plug out of her mouth, and said, 'If you holler, I'll smash your head. So hold thee gab and come along of I.'
The female was overawed into submission, and she paddled along at his side.
When day broke they found themselves on a shoulder of down in close proximity to Cosdon. Rambling over the moor, the woman hopping and squealing as she touched the gorse with her bare legs, they lighted on the grey cromlech, and the male, curling his tongue in his mouth, produced a loud cluck. The female, as an imitative animal, clucked responsive. 'Bags!' said Cobbledick male, and by this simple formula he had claimed the cromlech as personal property to himself, his heirs and assigns.