Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/229

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and its Green Border-Land.
215

mow in the sunniest fields in England, with its sweetest singing-birds piping to him from the hedge.

I was struck with the vast amount of coal wasted in these immense barrows of the refuse of the pits. Mr. Tildeslcy, who was with me, admitted that one-sixth of the whole mass would burn well in the grate; and I thought much of the severe frost and of the cold hearths of the poor in Birmingham last winter, who were out of work and out of bread. I am sure there was coal enough in the long, narrow hill on which I stood to warm the house of every such man and woman in the town if it had been riddled out. I wish the authorities would try the experiment next winter, and set one hundred men, begging for work, at this employment to furnish coal for the destitute. I am confident that all these coal-pit hills of refuse will be utilized some day for agricultural or other purposes; that they will be pulverized and conveyed by canals to distant parts of the country to supply an element that certain soils require for fertile production.

Willenhall has a good Saxon accent and meaning to its name; and its history is rich with the legacy of centuries. Here the Saxons and Danes had one of their sanguinary battles for the mastery of England, and the latter were