Ferocity often
breeds ferocity, and the inhabitants of the forest were for long a
dour and difficult race. The locality seemed destined to raise
gentlemen of the road, and in the seventeenth century and during the
next, the dim recesses of the woods were utilized for storing the vast
quantities of goods landed free of duty at Poole and elsewhere.
Wiltshire people say that the original "Moonrakers" were Wiltshire
folk of Cranborne Chase, and the story goes that a party of horsemen
crossing a stream saw some yokels drawing their rakes through the
water which reflected the harvest moon. On being questioned they
confessed that they were trying to rake "that cheese out of the
river:" with a shout of laughter at the simplicity of the rustics the
travellers proceeded on their way. The humour of the joke lies in the
fact that the "moonrakers" were smugglers retrieving kegs of rum and
brandy and that the horsemen were excise officials. But the folk-lore
origin of "Moonraker" is said by the Rev. J.E. Field to belong to a
very early period, probably before the day of the Saxon and to be
contemporaneous with the "Cuckoo Penners" of Somerset, who captured a
young cuckoo and built a high hedge round it; there they fed it until
its wings had grown, when it quietly flew away, much to the astonished
chagrin of the yokels.
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