The Aldbourne Dabchick

There was a strange bird in the village pond! What could it be? First it was there and then it seemed to disappear – as if by magic! Soon a crowd had gathered. They watched the little bird bob up and down in the water. Was it bird? Or … something else? From the Devil perhaps. They fetched Old Will, who’d not left his house in 20 years, but was older by those 20 years than anyone else in the village. Down they brought him to the pond. He was wheeled round and round it, staring at the little bird – until at last he pronounced it a ‘dabchick’ – what we today know as a ‘little grebe’. How the folks of next door Ramsbury laughed. Fancy not knowing what a dabchick was! Aldbourne folks were known as ‘dabchicks’ from then on. Ramsbury folk were known as ‘bulldogs’ – but that’s another story.