QUAINT OLD LADY

Hokitika Guardian, 27 May 1929, Page 8

QUAINT OLD LADY

STORY OF BUTTER AND EGGS

Travellers on the road to Chippenham will see a lady sitting on a pillai on the top of Wick Hill. She has a stout walking stick in one hand aim a basket of eggs by her knee. She was a widow at Langley Burrell 500 yea is ago. Her name was Maud iioatn, auu two or three times each week sin tramped live miles into Chippenham selling butter and eggs. Jt was a terrible road. It, twisted and turned like a snake. It was ltd. of ruts, and in winter time it was 10L l l i 1 hut a Log, so, that the pat,!-, horses would often sink in and tin. silks they earned would he ruined. Often in winter, for a month at a

time Maud Heath would have n. money coming in because the road was too had for her to get to Chippenham. In spring it was worse si i i for the Avon Hooded then, and there might he a river two feet deep and a mile wide right across the track.

That road was one of the worst tilings in life to many folk living at Langley Burrell, and Maud Heath, sitting on the top of her pillar at Wick J 1 ill. look ms if she had often told the old road what she thiignt of it. It was she who changed tin* road. She was never wealthy, hilt when she died, in MM, she left all her goods to have the road made good lor travelling lolk in (lavs to come.

The authorities made a good raised causeway of (lagged stones with arches over the Av.,11, and they set up a pillar for Maud Heath; they put her sitting on the lop with her old bonnet, her walking stick, and her basket of eggs, looking down fiercely at the thought of the old road, and glad to see folk on the now one. They call it now “Maud Hen Ik’s Pathway,” and it is used every day.

There Maud sits, and she seems to say to every passer-by: “When yon co ne to a hit of road, or a quagmire, or a hill of trouble, or a nasty bend, straighten it. bridge it, and make it better or those who come after.”