There is a passage in George Fox'sJournalthat brings one face to face with a brave man of God, reveals the spirit of true martyrdom, and makes one envious of his dazzling courage:
'Now were great threatenings given forth in Cumberland that if ever I came there again they would take away my life. When I heard it, I was drawn to go to Cumberland, and went to the same parish whence these threatenings came, but they had not power to touch me.'
It is a passage that attracts one to the apostle of the leathern-apron, and makes one desire to know the scenes of his life's travail. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that when one found oneself at Keswick in a neighbouring valley to Lorton, one should wish to visit one of the places ever associated with his memory, and see the spot whencethe echoes of the preacher's voice have never died.
Associated with this wish to follow the footsteps of George Fox, was the desire to see the Yew-tree, 'Pride of Lorton Vale,' which, on the day of Fox's sermon, provided seats for the listeners. For the famous yew-trees in the Lake District are becoming each year fewer. It is true that the great yew in Tilberthwaite is still standing, but that famous hollow trunk that kept alive the name of the mission preacher St. Patrick, in Patrick's Dale or Patterdale, has fallen; and the great winter storm of 1883 worked havoc upon Seathwaite's sacred brotherhood:
'Those fraternal four of Borrowdale,Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;Huge trunks!—and each particular trunk a growthOf intertwisted fibres serpentineUp-coiling and inveterately convolved—
are now a wreck,—one fell, the others were riven to pieces.
Here in the Lake District, by command of bluff King Hal, each estatesman was obliged to plant a yew-tree by his homestead, in order that he might never lack of wood for his bow when he was called—as he not unfrequently was called—to the Marches, in defence of theBorder. And in many places, long after the homestead has passed away, the solitary yew survives to tell us of the troublous times of old. It was not long since an estatesman sent down to the local museum of Keswick the old oaken bow-chest of his fathers, which, though it has been long used as a meal-ark, by its carving clearly shows it was intended for other use. The family name of Bowman is a common one in Cumberland, and still in our neighbourhood the field-names preserve a memory of the village bowman's prowess, and the 'butts' field is a word of common parlance.
But it is George Fox, the man of peace, that we were most interested in, as we crossed the Keswick Valley and climbed the long slope of Whinlatter to pay a visit to the brave man's preaching place, and it was mere coincidence that that preaching place should be associated with weapons of war.
THE LORTON YEW.THE LORTON YEW.
People do not realise how fair a view of the whole Skiddaw range is presented to them as they climb that pass, or they would climb it oftener. The higher one climbs, the higher does Skiddaw appear, and deep-bosomed mountain-side in all its massy grandeur of emerald green and lilac shade in spring, of puce and burnished bronze in autumn,impresses one with its calm and restfulness. The cloud, sure sign of fine weather, rests upon its utmost peak to-day, and irresistibly recalls the lines of Wordsworth's sonnet:
'Veiling itself in mid-Atlantic cloudsTo pour forth streams more sweet than Castaly,'
while the pleasant farms with the far-off interchange of happy cock-crowing, glitter at our feet, and, like an arm of some great ocean-loch, the white waters of Bassenthwaite come round the precipice of Barf, and sweep out of the shadow of Wythop woods into the September sunshine. On our left rises Grasmoor, haunt of the dottrel, and Hobcarton Crag, beloved of rare mountain flowers. So we crest the long slope and drop down into Lorton, with the hill-sides on our right, golden with gorse against the westering sun. Turning sharply to the left as soon as the village is reached, we pass a kind of pleasant rural street, if that may be called a street which has houses only on the one side of it, and just as we emerge into the country again, find ourself at a spot where the road forks, a portion of it going over a beck bridge into a farm enclosure by a picturesque old water-mill and byre, and a portion of it,—the main roadto Loweswater,—bending sharply to the right to go across the valley by the north side of the stream, which is here hidden from view by a long barn building. If we pause at this point we cannot help being struck by the sombre mass of a great yew-tree standing in a pleasant meadow close to the beck, where at one time there was doubtless a ford. This is what Wordsworth described as
'A yew-tree, Pride of Lorton Vale,Which to this day stands single, in the midstOf its own darkness, as it stood of yore,Not loth to furnish weapons for the bandsOf Umfraville or Percy ere they marchedTo Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the seaAnd drew their sounding bows at Azincour,Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.Of vast circumference and gloom profoundThis solitary tree!—a living thingProduced too slowly ever to decay;Of form and aspect too magnificentTo be destroyed.'
It is not to-day the noble tree it was when Fox was here, and the prophecy of the poet was only a few years since like to have been made utterly vain. For its form and aspect was so magnificent that its owner sold it to a Lorton wood merchant, and it was just about to be cut down when some memory of Fox'ssermon awoke in the breast of a faithful member of the Society of Friends in the neighbourhood, and the wood merchant good-naturedly went off his bargain.
It is true that it shows no signs of decay, but it has suffered loss. Two of its main stems were shattered years ago by a hurricane, and were sawn off at the bole. Let us go along the road to the farm buildings, and turn back down to what now serves for a watering-place for horses. It is thus we shall best get an idea of how 'it stands single, in the midst of its own darkness.'
The branches stretch their shadow over the stream, and the ripple of the sunny talkative beck contrasts strangely with the deep silence of the solemn tree. If we go up to Whinfell Hall and ask a keen observer of nature and plant life about this famous yew, Mr. Wilson Robinson will tell us that he once measured the trunk at its least circumference and found it 23 feet 10 inches, and that, about thirty years ago, a strong south-east gale came with hurricane force down Hope Ghyll, wrenched off one of the side limbs and carried away a third of the tree. Another limb has fallen since then, and yet, shattered and torn, what a magnificent ruin itis, how well worth climbing over Whinlatter Pass to visit.
After gazing up the beck towards the picturesque bridge from which we first surveyed the yew, towards the grand old farmstead and its cluster of sycamores as a background for the bridge, let us go back to the bridge and across into the meadow wherein the 'Pride of Lorton Vale' stands, and, gazing from under the tree towards the west and south, let us wonder at the beauty of faintly bronzed fern on Whiteside, the amethystine lilac of the Grasmoor mass, the far-off cones of Red Pike and High Stile blue above Mellbreak, and far to the west, Herdhouse ghostly grey; all seeming to join in shutting out the world and making the quiet emerald meadow in which we stand a sanctuary for thought and restfulness.
Then let us go back to that day in the year 1653 when George Fox, having narrowly escaped death by a boy's rapier thrust, and with his hand and wrist still smarting from the cruel blow of a rough fellow down at Bootle, where they mobbed him on the previous Sunday, pale and worn came hither to the ford and found already James Lancaster, one of his disciples, who had gone forwardas an avant-courier on the way to Cockermouth, busy haranguing the people.
The quiet meadow of to-day was on that day full of armed men. A detachment of Cromwell's soldiers had been told off from Cockermouth to keep the peace—it being known that Fox was on his way to Lorton; and Mr. Larkham, the Congregationalist minister of Cockermouth, and Priest Wilkinson, the Vicar of Brigham-cum-Mosser-cum-Lorton, were probably among the crowd that covered the field and stood by the banks of the stream. 'The people,' we read in Fox'sJournal, 'lay up and down in the open, like people at a leaguer.' Fox had seen something of camp life during the late civil war, and he doubtless felt that day that, man of peace though he was, the field of the Lorton yew would be indeed a field of battle for him.
But what interests us most as we gaze upon this venerable tree to-day in these pleasant pastures beside the waters of peace, is not so much the memory of the crowd of Cromwellian soldiers and members of the Church militant who came out that day to 'sorely withstand' George Fox, as the vision of the boughs of this sable and majestic yew-treefilled with the listening ears and eager eyes of those who heard that day the weary and way-worn prophet of the Lord, 'largely declare the word of Life' as he knew it, and 'open the everlasting Gospel to them.' Fox tells us that 'this tree was so full of people that I feared they would break it down.'
Look at it now, and think of it no longer as a broken yew-tree, sown here perchance by some far wandering bird centuries ago, but as a living witness to the power of men who have a living Gospel to declare to win the souls of their fellows, and lead them into communion with God who is a spirit. Men once heard the voice of Fox sound out here, above the babble of the beck and the hum of the multitude and the protests of the Lorton minister, and those who crowded on the yew-tree boughs felt light instead of darkness—sun instead of shadow, was their portion, and we read, 'Many hundreds were convinced that day, and received the Lord Jesus Christ and His free teaching with gladness.'
We are not Quakers, but at least our hearts beat in unison with the earnest teacher of the Truth he knew, to an age thatwas helped and is still helped by that Truth; and as we leave the field of the tree,
'Not loth to furnish weapons for the bandsOf Umfraville or Percy ere they marchedTo Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the seaAnd drew their sounding bows at Azincour,'
we rejoice to think that beneath its sable boughs, the preacher of the way of peace as better than war, once preached a sermon; and we trust, that for many a long year still, 'single in the midst of its own darkness as it stood of yore,' may stand the Lorton Yew.
Five days of continual tempest and five nights of storm-wind from the Atlantic had tried the nerves and tempers and tested the sleeping powers of all in the Keswick Vale. Nothing like wind to set folks 'fratching'; and that anybody was still on speaking terms with his neighbour argued well for the kindliness of the townsmen and villagers.
At last it would seem as if the wind had blown itself out, and at six o'clock of a grey February evening silence and calm fell upon the sodden, weary vale. But an ominous cloud-pack boiled up over the western hills, and the barometer went down two inches. The cattle were scarcely 'suppered up' for the night in the farmsteads and the shopmen had scarcely clanged down their last shutter, when the wind again awoke, and the hills thundered and the trees groaned, and weknew that America had sent us another cyclone. The hail-showers thrashed the panes, the windows rattled, the chimneys moaned and sighed, and though tired men and women went to bed, it was only to feel their house-walls shake as if an earthquake shock were passing underneath, and only to wonder which would be the first chimney-stack to fall. The wind grew to a hurricane, and people as they lay in sleepless fear upon their beds heard strange voices in the storm—cries of sailors in agony upon a bitter shore or perishing in the deep. Then the wind would be heard to try all round the house and see if perchance a window-frame would give an entrance and indoor havoc be possible; or a slate would whirl up with a crack and come down clattering on the roof and spin off into the darkness.
The dawn broke dimly, and the pastures of the middle vale lay like a wan sea with isles of emerald. Broken boughs hung gaunt and creaking upon the nearest trees, and the Irish yews curtsied and danced and split themselves into a hundred spires of nodding darkness against the angry sky. But the hurricane, however much it might make man cower and fear, had no power upon the thrush,who saw, behind the hurricane light of cheerless morn, the dawn of springtide and love and calm. No storm could
'Quell or disconcert her golden tongue,'
and there, while the wind fluffed her breast to twice its size, she fluted from the swaying holly tree her old familiar call to the slow to 'be quick! be quick!' to the drowsy, to 'pray, get up! get up!' and then to the sad to 'cheer up now! cheer up! cheer up!'
I answered her challenge and arose. The lake from end to end was ridded with foam, and great clouds of water, torn from the surface, were marching from west to east. Borrodale was black with storm. There was no snow on Skiddaw, though the sleet had in a night turned its fine old head grizzled grey, but over Grasmoor and over Grisedale it seemed as if some huge ocean wave had broken and left its froth behind it.
Nearer, however, than on Grasmoor and on Grisedale there was snow. Far down beyond the purpling 'Walla' woodland, lay, in a crevice of the hills between Gowder Crag and Shepherd's Crag, a mighty drift of seeming winter whiteness. That was no gift of winter; it was the gift of the past night'srain. Gazing at it through a good field-glass one could see that the white drift was a falling torrent, and as one gazed one almost, in fancy, heard
'the roarThat stuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodore.'
I knew that they only can see Lodore aright who will brave storm and tempest, for so swiftly does this splendid cataract pour itself away that an hour after the rains have ceased upon the Watendlath fells it dwindles to its natural size, loses its milk-white charm, and ceases to summon the wanderer to its presence. But this morning its spell was potent to touch all hearts, and that white winter wreath of snow and sound called us from far away. Down by the old monks' path we went, that the hoofs of sumpter-mules in the Middle Ages had worn deep into the soft soil;—it was to-day a torrent-bed of bubbling water. On by the village school, where, instead of the pattering of children's clogs upon the doorstep, to-day the Greta's water gushed and fell in miniature cascade. Over the bridge beneath Greta Hall, on which the pencil-makers hung in enforced idleness, for there was too much water to allow the use of the millwheel. 'Brig is pinched to belarge eneuf for t' watter to-day,' they cried; and so to the town. 'Dar bon! but thoo bed better keep to lee-side oop street—-slates is fleein' same as leaves i' winter,' said an old friend as he passed me. 'Well, Betty, what such a night have you had?' I said to another old friend at the street corner. 'Loavins me!' she answered, 'but it's been a capper. Cwoal cart was lifted up and clean turned ower befoar my eyes in oor back yard; and I've been up and dressed sin five this morn. What I thowt wi' mysel if anything's goin' to happen, it 'ull not dea fur usallto be naked, and sea I got intil my cleas!'
So up the main street—powdered with broken slates and plaster from the house fronts, and out into the Borrodale road we went. Trees were laid by their heels at the church gate, the holly berries gleamed in thousands by the roadside; the wind had done what in this open winter the birds had failed to do. Thence on to the Great Wood. Fine spruces lay across the road, and the roadmen and woodcutters were busy making passage possible for the cart traffic. Such a scent of Christmas trees they made as they hewed away at the spruce branchesone felt oneself a child again, and so with a child's heart forward. All through the purple woodland were white patches in top-most boughs, the wounds that the fierce wind had given them. Only one thing the tempest had been powerless to touch; these were the tender lichens and the velvet mosses on trunk and wall. How they gleamed and shone in the forest twilight! And whilst the boughs clashed and the wood was filled with groans and shrieks and cries, there, by the wall and on the ground and on the tree-stems, in quiet restfulness and silent beauty the fearless mosses grew.
But this was not all the gentle life that seemed to fear no storm, for quavering along from bough to bough a school of long-tailed titmice went in unalarmed pleasure. The wind that shook the oak seemed unable to touch them, and down beside me the tiny wren played his old happy game of hide-and-seek, as if, instead of being lashed by a cyclone, the woods were still as eventide in June.
Cat Ghyll, beloved of Southey, roared at us as we passed, and one heard the wind like a trumpet blowing from the steep of Falcon Crag.
Now clear view was gained of Derwentwater, and one noted that the lake lay in longpatches of many colours, here bright green, there slate blue, there brown, here white and wan, but ridged throughout with foam; and suddenly, as if it sprang upward from hidden depths, a water wraith would leap to sight and other spirits would join it, and the whole silver company of ghostlike vaporous forms would come dancing across from the further shore and lose themselves in cloud-like dust upon the land. Or here again would rise a tiny waterspout and spin and spin the water up into mid-air, then march and counter-march, lie down, and rise again. While all the time upon the shore beneath the roadway, waves broke and surge tumbled, with moaning of a troubled sea that might not rest. It was something in such a whirl of sound and hissing of such restless waters to feel far up on the other hand, above the russet grey-green draperies and the lilac shales, the calm of the storm-proof citadel of Falcon Crag. We gained Barrow, and heard the waterfall bellowing in the wood; but it was Lodore that we had set out to see, and Lodore shone white and clear upon its steep only half-a-mile away.
Full sight of Lodore had now been gained, but not before two other cataracts flashing to one channel from Gowder Crag had claimedour wonder, while we watched the water fall, as it seemed, out of heaven, down by the silver birches, down by the silver shale, and turn both to darkness by its white contrast. But what a magnificent rose-red glow those birch trees showed, and how with auburn glory the larches gleamed! how too in silken grey and delicate yellow the ash trees climbed the crags! We went forward, but not till we had noted that, while all the world towards Grange seemed one great grey water-flood, here right in front of the purple-brown cliff in whose cleft lay the white Lodore, stood up a little meadowy hill of verdure green as May—the first home-field of the wandering Viking who pushed his long ship ashore at Ravenglass and made his way over the Styhead Pass to ancient Borrodale. For in this green field still flows the spring where Ketel the Viking, who afterwards gave his name to the Wyke which we call Keswick to-day, drank in the olden time. Ketel's Well, as we gaze upon that emerald mound, takes us back to the ninth century and the first coming of the Norsemen to our dales; and what was it that bade the hardy Norse rover choose to pitch his camp by the spring on yonder hill but that same glorious cataract of Lodore, whosegleaming waters and whose voice of thunder speaks to our heart as it one time spoke to his. Nay, for that weary wanderer over sea, Lodore spoke sweeter things. As he listened to the torrent's voice, there came back memories of his own home-land and all the sound and sight of those fair 'fosses' and those shining 'ghylls' from which he was an outlawed exile.
LODORE AFTER A STORM.LODORE AFTER A STORM.
We pass on beyond the hollies, beyond the amber reed-bed, beyond the grey copse, and gain the gate to the Fall. We cross the meadow and enter the wood and stand upon the little platform whence the Fall in its fulness may be seen. What strikes one at once is the majesty of the high-towering crag of Gowder to the left of Lodore. What strikes one next, is the feeling of a certain lack of height in the fall. It does not come rushing over a sheer precipice; it is not cloud-born; one seems to know that somewhere not far off a valley stream is passing along through quiet meadows and woodland, and something of the fierce wildness of its fall is curbed and tamed by the thought. Yet as we gaze to-day so white is the heaven in the rift between the cliffs whence it surges into sight, that a very little imagination enables us to feel as if the whole of that white interspace were foam, andone's heart is stirred. Not in a rift, but from the topmost height we think we see and hear a visionary cataract fall and fall.
Up now through broken boulders, wet with perpetual mist, slippery with sodden leaf of russet gold, up till a double wych elm, or two elms bound in sisterly embrace—as if they had in fear clutched one another as they stood in awe upon the torrent's brink, is gained; there in shelter of a huge rock, emerald-coated, silver-shining with the spray, we shelter from the drenching water-dust and see another view of glorious Lodore. See and hear, for while the milk-white waters flash and swirl around the ebon boulders in mid-fall, we hear the tall upstanding cliffs make echo to their voice—such sound as he who hears can never quite forget. We climb again up by a slippery path only fit for a goat's foot, helped by impending branches, helped more by the thought that yonder one will gain not only the noblest view of the waterfall, but a far outlook over the wide-watered vale to grey-blue western hills, beyond which booms the sea that gave us, on the wings of the wind, all this majesty of sound and motion.
In this hurricane, the salt of that ocean is on one's lips, and if its actual murmurs andthe 'scents of the infinite sea' are denied us, at least by proxy they are ours. For as we slowly win our way upward the scent of Lodore fills the air, even as its sound fills our ears. Not the kind of paper-mill scent one knows so well within the locks or by the backwaters of the Thames, but scent born of mountain springs and fellside tarns and peaty meadows—scents as delicate as they are subtle.
We have gained our vantage point for sight and sound. The huge rocks appear like leviathans bobbing their noses through the foam. A tree trunk has fallen, and seems to have been caught and held by the mouth of some vast hippopotamus, who rejoices as the torrent dashes over his vast back. And the sound is not of bellowing behemoth or snorting river-horse. No; but such sound as seems to bring all worlds to unison. Shut your eyes, lean, and listen; you may hear a mighty army tramping by, you may hear the clashing of innumerable bells, you may hear the blare of trumpets, you may hear the shouting of a festal multitude, and ever beneath the deepest harmonies the tattoo of the thundering river-god, the drum-drum-drumming of Lodore.
One cannot wonder that hither in 1802came Charles Lamb, the lover of the city's roar, to listen and rejoice. Keats, too, in 1816 came hither and went, as Lamb went back, a sadder and a wetter man; but it is of Southey and his two children, his Edith May and his darling Herbert, we think to-day—he who in the autumn of 1809 heard the same stream saying the same things it says to us to-day, and who writing to his brother Tom on board theDreadnoughtunder date October 18, 1809, said:
'I hope you will approve of a description of the water of Lodore made originally for Edith and greatly admired by Herbert. In my mind it surpasses any that the tourists have yet printed. Thus it runs: "Tell the people how the water comes down at Lodore? Why, it comes thundering and floundering, and thumping and bumping, and jumping, and hissing and whizzing, and dripping and skipping, and grumbling and rumbling and tumbling and falling and brawling, and dashing and clashing and splashing and pouring and roaring, and whirling and curling, and leaping and creeping, and sounding and bounding, and chattering and clattering with a dreadful uproar—and that way the water comes down at Lodore."'
We turned for home; a patch of blue sky shone momentarily above the purple hollow of sound and foam. And though still 'the forest cracked, the waters curled,' a sunbeam showered radiance as it flew by moaning woodland and by silent crag. In the Great Wood all colours of purple, amber, rose, and amethyst leapt out at the passing of that gleam. One could not but compare the marvellous and changeful effects of light and colour to those that, in some enchanted land of mystery, the coloured fires of the wizard of the pantomime call forth, for our children's amazement.
Now all near was dark, while far ahead the witchery of the golden woodland grew. Now Walla Crag stood purple grey, now shone in lucent silver powdered with larch-tree gold, whilst ever on beyond the woody lane, Skiddaw, as blue as solid cobalt, rose calmly up into a wandering storm-white sky. And yet for all this witchery of colour, for all this magic transformation scene, one vision stayed—that far-off wreath of quiet snow,—snow that had turned on nearer view to scent and sound, to life and light and laughter, to power and impassioned loveliness, there in the resonant chasm of Lodore.
We shall never hear againOn the fell or in the plainJohn Crozier's 'Tally-ho!'Never see him through the rainAnd the sun, with might and mainFollow on from crag to crag, while the hounds give tongue below.
Dark the valley east and west,Clouds are on Blencathra's crest.The hunter home has gone:And the Squire they loved the bestNow is carried to his rest—Eighty years has Death the huntsman followed hard—thechase is done.
But I think I see him stand—Rough mountain-staff in hand,Fur cap and coat of grey—With a smile for all the handOf the sportsmen in the land,And a word for all the merry men who loved his 'Hark-away!'
Last hunter of your race!As we bear you to your place,We forget the hounds and horn,But the tears are on our face,For we mind your deeds of grace,Loving-kindness late and early shown to all the village-born.
'It's a dark daay for Threlkett is this un, hooiver! T'ald Squire's gone doon!—girtest Master of t' dogs i' Cummerland sin Jwohn Peel I'se warrant him—an' a gay tiff aid feller an' aw. Deeth has hoaled him at last; but what, he'd bin runnin' gaame fer mair nor eighty year noo. He's bin at Maister-o-hunt job langer nor ony man i' t' whoale counttry, I suppoase, has t' aid Squire. It's sixty-fowr year or mair sin he took t' horn. Eh, my! bit what a heart he hed! Kindest-hearted man i' these parts—niver wad let a nebbor-body want for owt if he thowt he cud dea good by lendin' a hand, and pertikler fond o' t' barns; school children was fit to be mad wid him on treat-daays. And why what, he gat scheul-hoose builded, and laid doon a hoondred poond fer Parish Room, let alean gevin site i' t' village. It's a dark day fer Threlkett, I'se telling ye, and dogs hes lost best friend and t' foxes t' warst enemy they've ivver hed here-aboot.'
We were standing by the Druid's Circle on Castrigg Fell, and as the old yeoman spoke to me I looked across the valley to the great buttressed height of Blencathra—blacker to-day beneath, by reason of the slight snow covering on its summit, and saw in its grove of larches the white house, half-farm, half-mansion, whence the oldest Master of the Hunt, in Britain, had gone for his far journey. Never again would the men who follow the hounds pass through the gate of the Riddings, with the fox and the hound carved in stone on either side of them, to be met and to be greeted by the cheery old Squire on hunting days; never again, after a long day's hunt, would they repair to the Farrier Inn or to the Salutation Inn, mid-village, to wait the coming of the Master 'ere they all 'howked in' to the 'tatie-pot' he had provided them.
There was a time when all the farmhouses for miles round, and every cottage home, was glad, because a Threlkeld man had come to his own again, and I could not help contrasting the gladness of that day, as told us by Wordsworth in hisFeast of Brougham Castle, andSong of the Shepherd Lord, with the sadness of this day for all the country side,now that another shepherd-lord had gone unto his own. That shepherd-lord we read
'Was honoured more and more,And ages after he was laid in earth"The good Lord Clifford" was the name he bore.'
They were very different men, that shepherd-lord and this our friend, the Master of the Blencathra Hunt, John Crozier: but both of them had been reared in the same quiet pastoral scene, and among the same fine race of shepherd gentlemen. Both had learned the lesson of this mountain side,—
'Love had they found in huts where poor men lie,Their daily teachers had been woods and hills,The silence that is in the starry sky,The sleep that is among the lonely hills.'
Both men had won the hearts of the simple people far and near, and ages after he is laid in earth, as he will be laid by the side of his beloved wife, in the Threlkeld Churchyard, men will speak of 't'ald Squire,' and enthusiastically tell of his hunting feats, and remember how he loved his native village.
The love of hunting which John Crozier inherited from his father, who lived at Gate Ghyll Farm on Blencathra's side, and whoturned over to his son the mastership of what were then spoken of as 'the Threlkeld dogs' in the year 1840, is a passion with our dales' folk which only those who live amongst them can understand.
The 'varmint' is the natural enemy of the shepherd, and this adds zest to the day's sport. In our churchwardens' accounts of old time there appears the item 'A fox head, 21s.,' and though in other chapelries 3s. 4d. appears to have been the price paid, such a scourge must Reynard have become that the churchwardens felt they were justified in giving a whole week's wage for the destruction of one fox. Down at Shoulthwaite and, for aught I know, in other dales a fox trap of masonry existed till of late years, built beehive fashion with a hole in the top. If Reynard ventured in to the bait, which was a fine fat hen, he was a prisoner; try to scale the walls how he might the artful one was foiled; but to trap a fox goes against the grain. There are certain things in which our hunt differs from others. Class distinctions are unknown in the field. The Master of the Hunt knows all by their Christian name. It is a social gathering from daylight to dark. The luxury of horses, too, is unknown. Thefield are all running huntsmen of the type of old Timothy, of whom Wordsworth wrote, in the year 1800—the childless Timothy who took up his staff, and with the thought of his last child's death heavy upon him could nevertheless not refuse the invitation of 'the horn and the hark! hark-away,' and 'went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.'
On that day when 'Skiddaw was glad with the cry of the hounds,' old Timothy's daughter Ellen had been dead five months or more, or he probably would not have followed the hunt, for there is a kind of etiquette that the hunters in the dales observe, and they would no more go a-hunting within a month after the death of their beloved, than they would miss going to church on the Sunday following the funeral. I remember once being asked by a widower, who was in great sorrow and could not get away from his thoughts, whether he should take what he knew to be the best physic—a day with the dogs. I asked, 'What would your wife have said?' His answer came quite straight: 'She wad hev clapped a bit o' lunch in my pocket, gi'en me ma staff, shut door upon me, and telt me not to show my feace until supper time.' I answered, 'That's enough,' and the man was a newbeing when he returned from the hunt, more able to wrestle with his sorrows.
The women folk are as keen as their husbands. They tell of a 'woman body' at Wythburn who, joining the hounds in full cry, and finding her skirts in the way, stopped, took a knife out of her pocket, and slit her petticoat in order that with a 'divided skirt' she might the surer be in at the kill. How keen the men are, is shown by the fact that beginning as youngsters to follow the drag, and carrying on a love of the sport through the prime of manhood, they may be still found from 75 to 80 and over, out with the hounds at the call of the horn. Nay, even when their sight fails them, they will follow, and it is on record that a veteran whose eyes were failing him and who had the rare good luck of a vantage ground to see the finish of the hunt, and was so maddened by the hurried and eager account from his companions of how the hunt was going, that he cried out 'Hang thur aid een o' mine! I wish that they wer nobbut out all togidder; I believe I wad see better through t' hooals!'
Fox hunting in the Lake Country tests the sportsman. None but a true lover of the chase would be content to breakfast and getaway with the stars (as in winter he oft-times has to do that he may get to the heights before the hounds are loosed)—and, facing all weathers, come back with the stars. He has to battle with storm and tempest. It may be fine in one valley and a roaring blizzard on the other side of the mountain. The old veteran, John Crozier, himself would tell of how he had to lie down on Skiddaw summit in a sudden and blinding snowstorm, and on more than one occasion he and all the hunt have suddenly been enveloped in a thick mist, which made movement almost impossible. And hunting not only tries the heart, it tries the head. A fox gets 'binked,' as they call it, or banked, and some one must go up on an almost inaccessible crag to put in the terrier; and a man must know the country, and the probable run of every fox that gets up in front of the hounds. There is no earth stopping; only the bields are known, and the cunning of Reynard is a secret, to be learnt not only by the huntsman and whip but by every single man in the field. As for the foxes, though the old greyhound breed that John Peel knew—20 lbs. to 29 lbs. in weight—have passed away, the little black-legged Irish fox can give a good accountof himself, and from three to five hours and from 25 to 40 miles have not been an uncommon experience of a run.
At the beginning of last century it was not an unusual thing for the hounds to be running 'on the tops' through the night, and the legends of the 'whish-hounds,' or 'spirit-packs' of Cornwall and Devon might very well have been reborn in Borrowdale.
In 1858 took place one of the record runs of the Blencathra pack. The dogs had had already a good morning's work when at noon a big Skiddaw fox jumped up in front of them. He tried to shake off his pursuers by the ordinary hill tactics, but, failing, took to the valley, went by Crosthwaite Church, through Portinscale and Brandelhow, right up Borrowdale, and over the Styhead into Westmoreland. The night fell, but the dogs were heard at Black Hill, marking the fox at an earth. Thence Reynard escaped in the direction of Lancashire, and next day the hounds and the fox were found, the latter dead and the former fast asleep under a crag in Coniston. They must have travelled not far short of sixty miles over the very roughest part of the Lake Country.
The hounds are trained carefully not to break up their foxes, just as they are trainedas carefully not to worry sheep; and this latter is done by the farmers walking the dogs in the summer time and taking them, along with their collies, when they go shepherding on the fells.
The packs are small, but every hound is true as steel. The Blencathra huntsman generally unkennels about 11 couples, and so keen are they at their work that three years ago they gave an account of 76 foxes, last year of 46, and this year, up to date, of 43. But the cost of keeping the pack is very small. £200 clears all expenses, and this is partly accounted for by the kindly interest farmers, who are all members of the hunt, take in it, for they walk the dogs free of charge, and some of them are, in addition, subscribers. Very anxious are these men, too, to do their best by the dogs. The hounds are made members of the family, and their tempers and individualities are studied. A farmer would take it very ill if he did not have the same hound sent him at the end of the hunting season. This reacts by making a bond of enthusiastic interest for members of the field in the running of every dog.
Nor can we omit to mention the sense of brotherhood which binds the hunt together.As there is no separation of class, so there is no separation of dress; no buttonholes and fine leather boots. The hunting kit is but a flannel shirt, a pair of trousers rolled up to the knee, over a pair of stout woollen hose, a Tam o' Shanter, and a rough alpenstock. The poorest can afford that, and the richest know no better.
Another bond that unites the members of the Blencathra Hunt is the home-made hunting songs which are sung at the end of the day. There is one written by a Patterdale yeoman, which has a good ring in it:
'Now who could help but follow when notes as sweet as theseAre sounding through the valley and borne upon the breeze?Of all the recreations by which our lives are blest,The chase among the mountains is the purest and the best.'
And there is another favourite written by Harper, one of the roadmen in the neighbourhood; while Woodcock Graves' immortal ditty, 'D'ye ken John Peel?' is never better sung than at the annual dinner of the Blencathra Hunt.
I am standing at the Druids' Circle and looking across at Naddle. In the hollow ofthe ridge is the school of S. John's-in-the-Vale. I remember that the old Squire, John Crozier, got his first learning at that school; and that some years after a poet of more than local fame, John Richardson, became its schoolmaster. He, too, immortalised the Blencathra Hunt, and one of his best songs will, for many years to come, echo the 'tally-ho!' of the late Master of the Hunt:
'The hunt is up, the hunt is up;Auld Tolly's in the drag;Hark to him, beauties, git away,He's gone for Skiddaw Crag.Rise fra ye'r beds, ye sleepy-heads,If ye wad plesser know;Ye'r hearts 't will cheer, if ye bit hearJohn Crozier's "Tally-ho!"'
That last line calls us back to the man who has carried on, to a century's ending, the Mastership of the pack his father gave him in charge.
A NORTH COUNTRY NIMROD.A NORTH COUNTRY NIMROD.
As a lad of 18, John Crozier was already well known as a keen sportsman, as good with his rod in the becks and rivers here about, as he was with his father's hounds, and fond of wrestling as he was of hunting. At that day the pack numbered only six couples. They were kept at the farms all through theyear, and were trained to meet at the sound of the Master's horn. The old Squire would often tell how he would stand on Kiln Hill, blow a blast, and watch the beauties racing across the meadows to his call. John Peel, in those days, was still hunting on the other side of Skiddaw, and John Crozier remembered the last time he saw him was under Wanthwaite Crags, where, after a long day's run, he invited the old veteran, who was on his white pony, to come home to supper. 'Nay, nay, John,' said Peel, 'I'se freetened o' gettin' neeted (benighted),' and so went back on his way to Ruthwaite supperless. 'But I'll see thee again,' he added—who knows they may again have met.
The first thing the young Master did was to improve the breed of his hounds, and this he accomplished by getting a strain from John Peel's kennels. How much of Ruby, 'Ranter, Royal, and Bellman, so true,' spoken of in the song, still runs in the blood of the Blencathra pack, I know not. Other strains since then have been introduced, but a hardier pack never breasted a mountain side, and there is not one of them who would not carry on the line himself, if his fellows failed, to the death.
John Crozier once received the following note: 'To J. Crozier, Esq., M.F.H., from Isaac and Edward Brownrigg, of Brownrigg. This hound (Darling) brought a splendid dog-fox, and after a very exciting hunt ultimately caught it in our house field. About an hour afterwards other five dogs came. After being fed they left, but this one would not leave. We intend having the fox preserved.' After carrying on the hounds at his own cost for 30 years, 'the Squire,' as he was always called, at the request of his neighbours, allowed them to become a subscription pack, in the year 1870. There was a general feeling in the dales that it was not fair to allow all the burden to be upon one man, and on the conditions that he would remain Master, and in case of the hunt ceasing, the hounds should be returned to him. A treasurer and secretary were appointed, and the Blencathra Hunt went on merrily as before.
The Master was fortunate in his huntsmen. Joseph Fearon, of honoured memory, was succeeded by Isaac Todhunter, who carried the horn for 25 years. Isaac Todhunter handed it on to John Porter, who for a like time kept up the best traditions of the pack, which Jem Dalton carries on to-day. The names ofthese past huntsmen, with other members of the hunt, are inscribed on the stone of memorial raised in the Threlkeld Churchyard at the charges of the Squire and a few friends; and that pillar in the King's dale—for of this dale John Crozier was truly king—if it does nothing else, goes to prove that the following of the foxes in the Lake District adds years, even as it adds cheer, to the lives of the dalesmen. Thus, for example, one sees that many of the hunters were fourscore years before they were run to earth; one was 89, another 91, another 95, and a fourth 98.
Up till the past two years the old Master of the hunt presided at the annual hunt dinner, but it was known that his health was failing, and though each week up to the end he kept in touch with all the doings of his pack, he did not leave his house. Still week by week members of the hunt would go up and have a 'crack' with him—always to be received with the same courteous inquiry, 'Well, how about your wives and families, are they well? That's right. Is any news stirring? What about the House last night?' He took the keenest interest in politics up to the end, and that came, not unexpectedly, at two o'clock on a quiet starlit morning, Thursday, 5th March, 1903.
I could not wonder that my old friend the yeoman had said it was a dark day for Threlkeld, for he had lived among his own people, and loved them to the end. How they loved him may be gathered from the fact that two days before he died, a casket containing a book in which every householder in the parish had entered his name, with an illuminated address, full of affection and gratitude, for the friendship towards them of a long life, was brought to the house. 'Ya kna,' said my friend, 'they knew t' aid Squire was house-fast, and they likely thowt 't wad cheer 'im up a laal bit.' He never saw it, for it was thought he was too ill to be 'fashed' with it, and he is beyond all earthly cheering now; 'the Hunter is home from the Hill.'
On the following Monday there was such a gathering together of the dalesmen from far and near as had never been seen in Threlkeld Church, or Threlkeld Churchyard. They sang one of the old Squire's favourite hymns. They bore the coffin to the grave with the veteran's hunting cap and crop and the brush of the last fox killed by his pack upon it, and before and after the service they talked of him kindly, as Cumberland folk ever do of the dead; they spoke of him, not only as theoldest Master of Foxhounds in the land, but as a man who entered into all the social enjoyments of the country-side, and whilst on terms of close intimacy, almost familiarity, with the companions, retained their regard, and in some things set them a good example.
For in an age when the gambling spirit was abroad, it will be remembered that John Crozier never bet a penny in his life. 'I did yance think o' betting a hawpeth o' snaps,' he once said in the vernacular; 'but I kind of considered it ower, and I didn't.' It will be remembered of him, too, that he was against the use of bad language in the field, and that he never would allow, if he could help it, a bit of scandal or 'ill gien gossip.' If he heard one man running down another or passing an unkind judgment, or setting an unkind tale 'agate,' he would jerk out, 'There, noo, thoo mun let that hare sit'—and it sat. 'Ay, ay,' said an old friend as he turned away from the graveyard, 'tho' he said nowt about it, he was a kind o' a religious man, was varra partial to certain hymns, and had his favourite psalms, that he wad gang off quietly to his bit summerhoose most mornings, and tek his prayer book with him. They say t' housekeeper, after her master's death, found t' aidbeuk laid open on summerhoose taable, I suppose.'
But as they left the churchyard they all in memory saw the old Master in his sealskin cap, with the lappets about his ears—squarely built and strong, with his alpenstock in hand, as the prefatory verse tells:
But I think I see him stand,Rough mountain staff in hand,Fur cap and coat of grey,With a smile for all the bandOf the sportsmen in the land,And a word for all the merry men who loved his 'Hark away!'
And as they thought of what he has been to them for the last 65 years in the Threlkeld vale, they admitted the truth of the following words:
Last hunter of your race!As we bear you to your place,We forget the hounds and horn,But the tears are on our face,For we mind your deeds of grace,Loving-kindness, late and early, unto all the village-born.
If November is the month for cloud effect, December certainly is the month for marvellous dawns and eventides. Then it would appear as if by some generous intent to give the minds of men unwonted tranquillity and to impress all the dwellers in the vales with the thought of perfect restfulness, the sun seems to prepare for his rising a heaven of cloudless silver washed with faintest gold. All the heavy ragged companies of the night-wrack seem withdrawn, and very slowly, while Helvellyn stands lilac-grey against the silver dawn, the sun rolls into sight, kindles the cones of Grisedale and Grasmoor, and bids the heavy dew upon the valley meadows rise up in finest lines of delicate gossamer lawn.
Yesterday, though we had little wind in the valley, one could hear the humming and theroaring of what seemed a tempest in middle heaven, but at night-time heaven and earth were still, and the seven stars in Orion and the Pleiads, 'like fireflies tangled in a silver braid,' shone clear, and we felt that the Frost King had come in earnest. There was no snow on the hills this morning; the leaves at one's feet tinkled as though they were made of iron; I met schoolboys with rosy faces and skates upon their shoulders going off to Tewfit Tarn—the little tarn upon the ridge dividing Naddle from St. John's in the Vale, that always gives our skaters in the Keswick neighbourhood their first winter happiness. Down to the lake I went, and standing at Friar's Crag, saw that part of it was burnished steel and part black ebon water. It was incredible that one night's frost should thus have partly sealed the lake from sight.
A WINTER'S DAY ON DERWENTWATER.A WINTER'S DAY ON DERWENTWATER.
I was bound for Brandelhow to meet the woodman to discuss the felling of certain timber, and through the ice pack, if it were possible, I must needs go. Coasting along round the island, I soon found myself in a narrow inlet of water that stretched half across the lake; tiny spikules of ice that seemed like floating straws were right and left of me in the still water; here and there little delicatefans of ice were passed. These miniature ice-islands were the nuclei round which the freezing mixture would crystallise. Forward across towards Lingholme I steered, and suddenly should have been brought up sharp had not the boat, with good way upon it, crashed right into the ice-floe and shown me how unsubstantial a thing this first ice-covering of the lake was. With every stroke of the oar the boat forged its way with marvellous sound of crash and gride, and one remembered how the Ancient Mariner had heard those 'noises in a swound,' and was able to summon up something of the roar with which the great ice-breakers or steam rams on the Neva crash their way up and down the river to keep the waterway clear for the Baltic shipping. But in a short time the difficulty of rowing became doubled, and if it had not been that one saw clear water ahead one would hardly have ventured forward. Meanwhile in the wake of one's boat one saw how swiftly the little ice-elves repaired the damage one had done by bringing back to its own place and rest each fragment one had displaced, and piecing over with exquisite exactness the breach that one had made.
Now the way was clear, for by somemysterious reason, known only to the water-gods, the shallower the water became as one went shoreward the freer it was of ice. It may have been mere fantasy, but it seemed as if the water so near to freezing was semi-fluid, viscous; always right and left of one swam by the little ice spikules, and the ice fans, with irridescent beauty, floated and shone hard by. Presently another crash was heard, and an ice-belt, only a yard wide, but stretching fifty or sixty yards along, was crashed through, another and another, and so, with alternate noise and silence, one made one's way to Victoria Point, and ran the boat ashore at Brandelhow.
Beautiful as that woodland is in early spring, it seemed that to-day there were more beauties still. The bracken was silver-dusted with frost and shone gold in the sunshine, and the green velvet of the mosses upon tree-trunk and ground only heightened by contrast the rich russet of the fern. I climbed to the russet seat on the rocky knoll above; there, sitting, I watched the gambolling of five squirrels and listened to the crackling as their sharp teeth made short work of the cones and fir-tufts. All these little merry feasters had put on their winter coats, and were much lessred of hue than when I watched them last in August. They had put on their winter tails also. I saw none of that curious white flaxen colour which the squirrel in September seems so proud of, as, with a wave of his brush, he dashes out of sight. There, as I watched these miracles of motion and alertness, I thought of Ruskin—how lovingly he had described them. Here was one leaping on to a twig that bent with just enough of swing in it to allow the little fellow to fly through the air to the next bough. Here was another, now running along the sturdier bough that bent not, now dropping five or six feet into a dark-green tuft, now sitting cosily in a forked branch to munch his midday meal, now racing for pure joy and mischief after his brother up a long tree-trunk, the tail sometimes bent in an arch above the tufted ears, again thrown out straight, and now bent and undulating—truly a balancing-pole, if ever one was needed by such expert gymnasts. Children of perfect knowledge of the woodland boughs, fearless as birds and swift as monkeys, the happy family rejoiced in the winter sunshine, as free of care as the cloudless sky above their heads. I moved, and the jay clanged and screamed from amongthe alders below me, and in a moment the happy family had vanished out of sight, and one saw what an intercommunion of alarm against strange comers birds and beasts must surely have. Dropping down from this happy mount—and truly it has been called Mons Beata—I made my way through crackling fern across the chattering little brooklet to the second rocky height further to the southward. Blencathra lilac-grey and Walla Wood purple-brown and High Seat tawny yellow were reflected with such fidelity in the flood below one that the beauty of two worlds seemed to be given me. The tranquillity of the far-away fells was brought right across the flood to one's feet, a couple of wild duck dashed into the water, and with the ripplings of their sudden descent they set the whole fellside trembling. Looking now towards Cat Bels, one marvelled at the extraordinary beauty of the colour. Never was such bronze and gold seen to make the sky so blue, as one gazed up to the hummock of Cat Bels; whilst, between our rustic seat and the high road, the woodland hollow was filled with colour of gradation from silver-grey to purple-brown, and here and there a beech tree full of leaf or a Scotch fir green and blue gaveemphasis to the general tone of softest harmony. Passing on through the larches upon the little height, I gained a third seat, and here the chief charm was the outlook up Borrodale. Immediately in the foreground were young Scotch fir; beyond them the lake glinted in silver through leafless birches. Away up Borrodale, with every variety of lilac melting into purple-grey, ridge beyond ridge, one saw the bossy outliers of the Borrodale ranges stand up in sunny calm; one felt the deep tranquillity of Glaramara and of nearer Honister, the only sound a distant cockcrow from the far-off Ashness farm and the quiet inland murmur of Lodore. The glory of the vale was the wonderful Castle Hill, with its echo of old Rome upon its head, that stood black-purple against the further lilac haze. But as one sat there in silent content a school of long-tailed tits came quavering by. They found abundant food, it would seem, in the Scotch firs close beside me, and what the squirrels had done before to open one's eyes to their miracle of movement these long-tailed titmice did again, for one here, as I sat and watched their happy quest for food. Such balancing, such joyousness, such fiery energy, such swiftness ofsight, such whispering of heart's content would have made the saddest man glad and the dullest marvel. As I rose from that seat, with a long look up Borrodale, I could not wonder that our Viking forefathers had called it the Vale of the Borg or Castle, for that Castle Hill in Borrodale must surely have seemed to them a giant's hold, the fittest place for some high fortress-camp, as it had seemed to the Romans of an older day.
If the first height one had ascended was rightly called 'Mons Beata,' and the seat one had last left was placed on a hill that might be called Mons Blencathrae, which gave such fair prospect of Blencathra, surely this fair mount might be called 'Mons Borgadalis,' or the Mount of Borrodale.
I heard a whistle, and to my answering hulloa came a shout. The forester was waiting for me away up there on the highest point of the woodland, not far from the main road and above the Brandelhow mines. Descending swiftly and making my way through the frosty undergrowth, with rabbits scuttling here and there and a soft-winged owl lazily fluttering from a bough above my head, I was suddenly aware by the scent that hung upon the fern that a fox had passed thatway. But it must have been in the early morning or 'Brer Rabbit' would not have been about and the jay would have been screaming, and, making the best of my way up to the forester, we soon forgot all about bird and beast in our honest efforts to let in light and give fair outlook to the wanderers who should hither come for rest and thought in succeeding summers.
It is not an easy matter to open up a woodland view—the branch of every tree must be questioned, the joy of 'part seen, imagined part' must be had in mind,—but the work was done at last. We sat down for rest on the woodland seat on the fourth rocky eminence on Brandelhow. It is a seat within only a few yards of the high road, yet so screened from it that it is hardly seen; but it is a hill with so fair a prospect that indeed I think angels might pass the little wicket in the wall and visit those who rest here unawares. There is no better name imaginable for this high resting-place than 'Mons Angelorum.' As I thought thus the great sun rolled beyond the hills and all the vale lay darkened. Cat Bels and Brandelhow went black and grey, while still across the lake Walla and Blencathra lay in fullsunshine; but at that moment, unthought of before, there rose a band of angels all along the riverside, and tiny cloudlets swam up into shadow, and again from shadow into sun. The Mount of the Angels was this height rightly called.
'It is likely getting late,' said the forester, 'and if you do not start soon you'll happen hardly get through the ice to-night.'
Down to the boat landing in Victoria Bay I went, and as I went the woodland filled with a mysterious light. I thought of St. Francis and the visions he had seen at Al Verna; the sun was beyond the hills, it had faded now even from Walla Crag, but the light from Brandelhow seemed to leap up from the ground, the larches so dim and dead before gleamed into gold; the red bracken at my feet burned like fire; it was an enchanted woodland; the magic after-glow was the enchanter.
MONS BEATA, BRANDELHOW.MONS BEATA, BRANDELHOW.
I pushed off from the shore, gained the ice-pack, crashed through it but not without difficulty, and won the dark, clear water beyond. The sun had sunk between Robinson and Grisedale, a dark cloud-bar had filled the heavenly interspace, but there in the gap it seemed as if beneath its heavy eyebrow theeye of God was keeping watch and ward above the quiet land. One had often seen at the seaside the sun sink and the slender pillar of golden light reach downward to the shore, but never had I seen such a magnificent golden roadway laid upon shining water for happy dreams of tired men to follow the flying day, as I saw that eventide upon the silver ice and the darkling flood of tranquil Derwentwater.