'I have read in his books,' said I, 'things that make me feel he was kind to dumb animals.'
'Naay, naay,' my friend broke in, 'Wrudsworth was nea dog fancier; and as for cats, he couldn't abide them; and he didn't care for sheep, or horses, a deal, but if he was fond of owt, it was of t'li'le ponies. He was a man of fancies, ye kna. It was a fancy of his. He was fond of li'le ponies, nivver rode a horse in his life, nivver.'
'But he went over a deal of ground in his time. Was he always on his feet?' I said.
'He went ower a deal mair ground nor ever he saw, for he went a deal by night, but he was a man as took notice, ye kna, nivver forgat what he saw, and he went slow.'
'But,' said I, 'how did he cover so much ground; was he never on wheels?'
'Ay, ay, wheels, to be sure, he druv a' times, ye kna, in t' cart. He, and Mrs. Wudsworth, and Dorothy and me, we went a deal by cart Penrith way, and Borradale and Keswick way, and Langdale way at times.'
'What sort of a cart?' I inquired.
'Dung cart, to be sure. Just a dung cart, wi' a seat-board in t' front, and bit of bracken in t' bottom, comfortable as owt. We cud ga that way for days, and far eneuf. Ye kna in them days tubs wasn't known. Low-wood was nobbut a cottage, and there was never abuv six or seven ponies for hiring at Ambleside. Tubs we ca' t' covered carriages, tubs wasn't known in these parts. But happen there was a tub or two at Kendal.'
'And you must have gone precious slowly,' I said.
'Ay, ay, slow eneuf, but that was Mr. Wudsworth's fancy, and he'd git in and go along, and then he git down into t' road and walk a bit, and mak a bit, and then he git oop and hum a bit to himsel, and then he'd stop and hev a leuk here and there for a while. He was a man as noticed a deal o' steans and trees, verra particler aboot t' trees, or a rock wi' ony character in it. When they cut down coppy woods in these parts they maistly left a bit of t' coppy just behint wall to hide it for him, he was a girt judge in sic things, and noticed a deal.'
'And would he,' I asked, 'tell you as you jogged along in the cart, which mountainhe was fondest off, or bid you look at the sunset?'
'Ay, ay, times he would say, "Now isn't that beautiful?" and times he would hum on to himself. But he wasn't a man as would give a judgment agean ony mountain. I've heard girt folks 'at com to t' Mount say, "Now, Mr. Wudsworth, we want to see finest mountain in t' country," and he would say, "Ivery mountain is finest." Ay, that's what he would say.'
'But I have been told that his voice was very deep,' I put in, in a happy-go-lucky way. 'Had he a loud laugh now?'
'I don't mind he iver laughed in his life, he'd smile times or two. Ay, ay, his voice was deep one; bit I mind at t' family prayers in t' morning he'd read a bit o'theScripture to us, and he was a verra articulate, particlar good reader, was Mr. Wudsworth, always hed family prayer in the morning, and went to church wi' prayer-book under his arm, verra regular yance upon the Sunday, he did.' My friend added, 'He was quite a serious-minded man, and a man of moods.'
Here ended my talk with the old retainer at the Mount. But I was not allowed to gooff until I had seen and handled the old-fashioned candle lattern by which, as my kind informant put it, the poet 'did a deal of his study aboot t' roads efter dark.'
And so must end my plain unvarnished tale. I leave my indulgent readers to form their own conclusions; merely suggesting that the collected evidence points to a simple plainness and homeliness of life such as remains indelibly impressed upon the men of Westmoreland, whose own lives are less simple in these latter days, when ostentation and vulgar pride of wealth in a class above them have climbed the hills and possessed the valleys.
The testimony of the witnesses I have been fortunate enough to bring before you seems to agree in depicting Wordsworth as he painted himself, a plain man, continually murmuring his undersong as he passed along by brook and woodland, pacing the ground with unuplifted eye, but so retired, that even the North country peasant, who does even yet recognise the social differences of class and caste that separate and divide 'the unknown little from the unknowing great,' was unable to feel at home with him. 'Not a very companionable man at the best of times' was their verdict. But I think all the whilethese dalesmen seem to have felt that if the poet was not of much count as a worldly-wise farm or shepherd authority, nor very convivial and free and easy as li'le Hartley was, nor very athletic and hearty as Professor Wilson, there was a something in the severe-faced, simply habited man 'as said nowt to neabody' that made him head and shoulders above the people, and bade them listen and remember when he spoke, if it was only on the lopping of a tree or the building of a chimney-stack. 'He was a man of a very practical eye, and seemed to see everything,' was the feeling.
And turning from the poet to his wife, whilst one can see how the household need of economy in early Town End days gave her to the last the practical power of household management that had almost passed into a proverb, one can see also how true was that picture of the
Being breathing thoughtful breath,* * * * *A perfect woman, nobly planned,To warn, to comfort, and command.
'He never knawed, they say, what he was wuth, nor what he hed i' t' house.' She did it all. Then, too, it is touching tonotice how deep and true the constant love between man and wife was seen to be, how truly companions for life they were, and that, too, in the eyes of a class of people who never saw that
Beauty born of murmuring soundHad passed into her face,
and half marvelled that the spirit wed with spirit was so marvellously closer than fleshly bond to flesh.
Upright, the soul of honour, and for that reason standing high with all; just to their servants; well meaning and quiet in their public life; full of affection in their simple home life; so it seems the poet and his wife lived and died. Thought a deal of for the fact that accounts were strictly met at the tradesmen's shops, they were thought more of because they were ever ready to hear the cry of the suffering, and to enter the doors of those ready to perish.
I do not think I have been able to tell the world anything new about the poet or his surroundings. But the man 'who hedn't a bit of fish in him, and was no mountaineer,' seems to have been in the eyes of the people always at his studies; 'and that because he couldn't help it, because it was his hobby,'for sheer love, and not for money. This astonished the industrious money-loving folk, who could not understand the doing work for 'nowt,' and perhaps held the poet's occupation in somewhat lighter esteem, just because it did not bring in 'a deal o' brass to the pocket.' I think it is very interesting, however, to notice how the woman part of the Rydal Mount family seemed to the simple neighbourhood to have the talent and mental ability; and there must have been, both about Dorothy Wordsworth and the poet's daughter Dora, a quite remarkable power of inspiring the minds of the poor with whom they came in contact, with a belief in their intellectual faculties and brightness and cleverness. If Hartley Coleridge was held by some to be Wordsworth's helper, it was to Dorothy he was supposed by all to turn if 'ivver he was puzzelt.' The women had 'the wits, or best part of 'em,'—this was proverbial among the peasantry, and, as having been an article of rural faith, it has been established out of the mouths of all the witnesses it has been my lot to call.
There is no part of the Cumberland coast so full of witchery and romance as the point where Muncaster Fell comes down to the sea. The rivers of Irt, Mite and Esk, with their memories of the pearl-fisheries of olden time, swirl down toward the ancient harbour of the mythic 'King Aveling's Town.' One cannot look across the pool at full tide without thought of how the Vikings pushed their ships ashore here, when they came from Mona's Isle to harry Cumberland.
But the sound of earlier civilisations is in our ears as one gazes across the Ravenglass sand-dunes; for here beside us is the great cavern of ancient oaken-logs and earth, wherein the Cymri buried their dead in prehistoric time, and there within a stone's throw still upstands the seaside residence of some great Romangeneral, who was determined apparently to enjoy a well-heated house, and to do honour to thegenius loci. No one who visits 'Walls' Castle, as it is called, but must be struck with the remains of the 'tepidarium,' and the little niche that held the statue of the tutelary god, or a bust of the presiding Cæsar, within the ample hall.
Away at our back rises the Muncaster Fell with its grey beacon-tower, its herd of deer, its wind-blown oaks, its primrose and bluebell haunted woods, that slope towards the Vale of Esk. Further inland, sheltered by its magnificent wall of forestry, stands rose-red one of the most interesting of our northern castles, with its long terrace-lawn of quite unequalled grace and loveliness. There in sheltered combe the rhododendrons bloom from earliest spring, and the air will to-day be honeysweet from laurel-flower far and wide.
But I was bent on seeing an older people than Cymri, Roman, Viking, or Castle-Lord, albeit the line of Pennington reached far into the past, and suited well his ancient castle hold. I had come in the last week of April, by courteous invitation, to renew acquaintance with that fast-growing colony of black-headed gulls that make the dunes of Ravenglass famous.
A boat was called, and leaving the pebbly beach that 'Stott of Oldham' so delights to paint, we rowed across the flooding tide of the Ravenglass harbour to the sand-dunes of happy quietude, where the oyster-catchers were sunning themselves, and where the sheldrake in her nesting season loves to hide. As one went forward over the dunes one felt back in the great desert of the Badiet-Tih, and expected to see Bedouins start from the ground, and camels come in single file with solemn sway round the sedge-tufted, wind-blown hillocks and hummocks of glaring sand.
Then suddenly the silence of the waste was broken by a marvellous sound, and a huge cloud of palpitating wings, that changed from black to white and hovered and trembled against the grey sea or the blue inland hills, swept by over-head. The black-headed gulls had heard of our approach, and mightily disapproved of our trespass upon their sand-blown solitude.
We sat down and the clamour died: the gulls had settled. Creeping warily to the crest of a great billow of sand, we peeped beyond. Below us lay a natural amphitheatre of grey-green grass that looked as if it were starred with white flowers innumerable. We showed our heads and the flowers all took wing, and the air wasfilled again with sound and intricate maze of innumerable wings.
We approached, and walking with care found the ground cup-marked with little baskets or basket-bottoms roughly woven of tussock grass or sea-bent. Each casket contained from two to three magnificent jewels. These were the eggs we had come so far to see. There they lay—deep brown blotched with purple, light bronze marked with brown, pale green dashed with umber, white shading into blue. All colours and all sizes; some as small as a pigeon's, others as large as a bantam's. Three seemed to be the general complement. In one nest I found four. The nests were so close to one another that I counted twenty-six within a radius of ten yards; and what struck one most was the way in which, instead of seeking shelter, the birds had evidently planned to nest on every bit of rising ground from which swift outlook over the gull-nursery could be obtained.
Who shall describe the uproar and anger with which one was greeted as one stood in the midst of the nests? The black-headed gull swept at one with open beak, and one found oneself involuntarily shading one's face and protecting one's eyes as the savage little sooty-brown heads swooped round one's head. Butwe were not the only foes they had had to battle with. The carrion crow had evidently been an intruder and a thief; and many an egg which was beginning to be hard set on, had been prey to the black robber's beak. One was being robbed as I stood there in the midst of the hubbub.
Away, for what seemed the best part of a mile, the 'gullery' stretched to the north in the direction of Seascale; and one felt that, thanks to the public-spirited owner of the seaboard, and the County Council of Cumberland, the black-headed gull was not likely to diminish in this generation.
Back to the boat we went with a feeling that we owed large apologies to the whole sea-gull race for giving this colony such alarm, and causing such apparent disquietude of heart, and large thanks to the lord of Muncaster for his ceaseless care of the wild sea-people whom each year he entertains upon his golden dunes.
That evening I went back in memory to the marvellous sight in the Gullery at Ravenglass. My thoughts took sonnet form as follows:
THE HOPE OF LIFE.
Sudden the lilies of each lonely moundSprang into voice and palpitating wing;I seemed a guilty and unwelcome thing;Ten thousand shadows round me and aroundPerplexed the air and danced along the ground;Each sooty head, in passion, dared to flingA world's defiance—and I felt the stingAnd arrows of that deprecating sound.
Then gazing downward at my feet I sawThe silent cause of all these sorrowful cries,—Large jewels, blotched and brown and green and blue,In simple caskets wove from rushy straw;I thanked high Heaven for hearts so good and true,And shared their hope for life that never dies.
They are a far-wandering nation these black-headed gulls. I had seen separate members of the tribe on the banks of the Neva, and later, on the banks of the Nile; for they are an adventurous race, and may be found as far north as Archangel and as far south as Nubia, but the next time that I saw them in any number they had changed not only their appearance but their manners. The black or, more properly speaking, brown head of the gull had become grey. It seems they only wear their black helmets or bonnets in summer time. Now it was winter, and they were as mild as doves—tamer birds could hardly be seen, and the history of their taming, as indeed of their presence so far inland as the Keswick valley, was very simple. There had been a very cruel wholesalepoisoning of the fish in the river Greta—the black-headed gulls had heard of it, and came up the Derwent in great numbers to the feast. It cannot have been all pleasure, and to judge by the looks of some of the greedier of the class colic abounded. Whether it was the abundance of the feast or the after pain, that made an impression on the gull, I know not, but from that day to this the black-headed gentry of the seaboard have had such affection for our vale that any storm at sea or any scarcity of food brings them in great numbers to our valley pastures.
We had a hard winter three years ago, and wherever the rooks were seen upon the ground, the black flock was dappled with the white sea gull, and the dolorous voice of the crow was drowned in the laughter of the black-headed gull.
Very grateful were we in those sad and sombre winter mornings to hear the gulls laughing round our house-roofs, and not the least enjoyable thought as we went to our breakfast-table was the knowledge that these wild sea-people had come to trust us, and were willing to be our almoners.
There was one house in the valley, set upon a grassy hill overlooking the lake, whichseemed especially to have charm for the bird visitors. Swift of ear, as of eye, the black-headed gulls noticed that the family went to breakfast at the sound of a gong. No sooner did that gong echo across the lawn, than the heaven became white with wings—a click at the gate was heard, and a maid with a large pancheon of food specially prepared—hot and tasty—was seen to come on to the grass and toss out the meal, in splotches, round about her. Then what had been a silent grey undulating cloud of wings broke up into a tangled mass of down-sweeping pink legs and up-sweeping white wings, and with the noise of laughter and talk unimaginable, the happy people fell to feeding.
I do not think that anything more dainty can be imagined than that swift balance of up-tilted wing and down-reaching rosy feet, unless it be the consummate care and nicety with which, before the black-headed gull put beak to food, it tucked those long sweeping slender wings close to its side.
Now and again as they fed, the whole flock would rise momentarily into air and float up as though blown from the earth by some invisible breath, and then, as silently and simultaneously, sink to earth again.
At times one noticed how, rising up, they seemed to move in exactly one position, moving their yellow rosy-stained beaks and grey heads from right to left as though they feared an enemy. Yet they had no need to fear, for it was quite clear that the rooks had been specially engaged by them to be their sentinels. There they sat each in solitary sable-hood, on the trees all round the lawn,—policemen on guard, and of such good manners, that until the visitors from the sea had eaten and were full, they did not think of claiming their share of the broken victual.
What astonished one most as these black-headed gulls came morning after morning to the sound of the gong, was their apparent determination to lose no time about their food. They sat down to table and rose up as one bird, but they were not more than ten minutes about their meal, and there was some reason for this. There were other breakfast tables spread for them on other lawns; the gong at Derwent Hill was after all but summons to a first course.
How mild, how gentle, with what dove-like tenderness did these grey-headed people of the sea appear as with merry laughter they sailed about my head, their feet tuckedup like coral pink jewels against their breast; how unlike those fierce black-headed guardians of their nests and young, who had dashed at one, with open beak and scolding voice and angry wing, upon the spring-tide dunes of Ravenglass.
What a wonderful people these Westmoreland folk are; we see them on the Wrestling Ground at Pavement end, and we think we never saw such 'playing.' We enter a Westmoreland dale farm, and we feel, if ever men and women were born to make two ends meet by the care of sheep or cattle, these are the people. We take lodgings in a Westmoreland village for a holiday season, and though it may be quite true that the landlady doesn't rave about the scenery, and is rather of the type of the good woman-body who had lived at Rydal Mount before she became lodging-house keeper, and who said to my friend, 'Yes, yes, I am a tidy good cook and a decentish housekeeper, but I don't know nowt about sunsets or sic like, and I don't need, they've never been in my line,' it is at the same time true that, for looking after one's creature wants and entering into the doingsof every day and making one feel part and parcel of the household, a Westmorland housekeeper is bad to beat.
But though I thought I knew the capacity of Westmoreland folk pretty well, a new surprise was in store for me as I took my seat in the temporary play-house at Grasmere and learned that Westmoreland folk can not only play in the Grasmere wrestling ring, but can play on the boards and before the footlights also. It is quite true that the Grasmere people have had nearly a generation of training in the dramatic art. A late rector, who was much interested in looking after the recreations of the village, had translated for them many a simple pastoral play from the French, and hardly a Christmas came round, but he and his family, one of whom was herself a talented writer of country plays, trained the villagers to give their neighbours a play, and the children in the Bands of Hope to act charades. Since his time another family who are much honoured at Grasmere, and who have the same kind of enthusiasm for the dramatic capacity of the village, had carried on the work, with the result that at a moment's notice, for any simple play the daughter of the house might write or adapt, she could count on having as her players seventeen or eighteen of thevillagers who would seem born for the parts she entrusted to them. There was no rivalry, no 'fratching' from house to house because this person or that person was not selected for this or that particular part; on the contrary, the village had such confidence in the conductor of the villagetroupethat if Miss S. thought that So-and-so was to take this part and So-and-so the other, that was enough, and not another word was to be said. Meanwhile the village had come to look upon the village play as part of its very life and soul. Grasmere in winter time would not be recognised by the average tourist. It is a village of peace absolute and tranquillity beyond words.
From the earliest times 'Cursmas' has been looked upon as a time when everybody in the dale should enjoy himself. In the old days, when the fiddlers went round from farm to farm between Christmas-day and New Year's Day, and when the Merry Night (or Murry Neet) was held from place to place, the Grasmere folk knew that, however hard they worked for the rest of the year, at least they would 'laike' until the Twelfth Night, and precious little work would go forward in the dales for the first fortnight of each glad new year. The desire for some simple and rational form ofamusement with the beginning of every year has never died out of their blood, so that a village play seems to fill a need which is part of their very nature. 'Why, we could not live without it,' said a Grasmere body to me; 'it's the brightest spot in our lives.' 'I can't tell you how dramatic it makes me feel,' said another. 'I am going thro' my dialogue at all times o' day.' My husband said, 'You've had company to-day then.' 'Ay, ay,' I replied, 'rare company. I was taking two or three parts in second Act, you see, and changing voices, that was all.'
'But where do you get your theatrical properties?' I said. 'Who manages the scene-shifting and all the rest of it?' 'Oh, as for scene-shifting, that is all managed by that great hairy-faced man that you saw going down the road just now; he is a grand stage manager and has been at it for twenty years or more.' I did not see him again until after the close of the performance, when I noticed him with his pocket-handkerchief in an unconventional way fanning out the footlights, and then going up on a ladder to puff out the oil lamps above the stage. 'And as for properties,' the good dame replied, 'if you mean by that the things we have on the stage, well everything is lent—there iscrockery from one house and chairs from another, and the dresses, why they are the old originals that were worn by our grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. We all know to what farm or to what house we must go for this or that particular dress, and it is lent very willingly.' 'And do you have large audiences?' I said. 'Large audiences, well, if th' room would hold double the number we could fill it, because folk of all maks and sizes come together. This year we are giving a special afternoon performance for the quality, but I am told that all reserved seats have been booked for weeks.'
It was growing dark as I stood by the cottage door. The omnibus, as it drove down from the Raise gap with folk from Keswick coming to see the play, was sending sparks out behind from its 'slipper,' as though it were making fireworks. And soon I saw the lamp-lighter lighting up the oil lamps in the quaintly intricate lanes of the village beside the Mere. Knots of people were gathered already at their door-ways talking of the play, and already folk were drawing towards the village hall near the Red Lion. I soon joined them, and passed up a break-neck stairway to a big barn-like room, theback part of which was filled with rough boards knocked up into temporary benches, and the forepart had wooden cottage chairs for reserved seats. The drop-scene was down—the lake and island with Helm Crag and Dunmail Raise, as seen from Loughrigg, on a summer evening.
A big moon shone in a solid sort of way in mid-heaven, and was repeated at intervals right down through the picture, as though the scene-painters would say: 'This is the moon, it is rising now, and there it is fully risen.' But I was assured that this was the result of some accident by fire that had taken place years ago in the said drop-scene, and that these moons were, after all, only the patches that repaired the beautiful picture. Three fiddlers and a piano were making lively music when the bell tinkled and the curtain went up. It was a very simple scene—the village carpenter sitting in his shop working away at a stool, but it was to the life; and the Jacob who was working there, with his red handkerchief round his throat, spoke and acted to the life, and well he might—he was a village carpenter. A tourist came upon the scene, and got very little change out of Jacob, and less still out of Jacob's mother, Mrs. Rawlinson,who (after a very amusing dialogue with the tourist) determined to allow him to be her lodger. She made him pay double the usual price because he asked for 'sec a new faddlement as a seven o'clock dinner.' Dolly, the maid, comes in with a handkerchief bound over her head, as is the fashion of the North-country maids when they are dusting or brushing up. They fall to talk:
Mrs. Rawlinson: 'I'se goin' to have mair nor sebben shillings a room this time, but I was forced to ask a good price, for he'll be wanting late dinners, and a' maks o' cooking and faddlements. What does ta think wawmlets'll be, Dolly?'
Dolly: 'Nay, I never heard tell o' sec a thing.'
Mrs. Rawlinson: 'And grilled bones to his breakfast; but I kna' what them'll be, just a marra bone served up hot in a napkin. I can mannish that finely. Then he talked about a dish o' curry; that'll certainly be some mak o' a French stew, made rare and hot wid pepper and an onion or two.'
Dolly: 'What, thou's goin' to be sadly tewed.'
Mrs. Rawlinson: 'Nay. I was nobbut a bit put about at first, but I mean to askBetty Braithwaite to lend me her beuk as larns yan to mak hundreds and hundreds of things 'at I never heard of, nor naebody else, I wud think.'
As long as I live I shall remember the delightful get-up of this said Mrs. Rawlinson, with her high black cap and flower in it, and her old-fashioned criss-cross shawl, and her spotless white 'brat'; and the way in which she pronounced the word 'omelette' as 'waumlett' convulsed the house.
The second scene in that first act was one that went home to the hearts of all, for if the Westmoreland folk love one thing more dearly than another it is 'a sale.' The sale is really the excitement of the winter time. I believe that if nobody was changing farms they would compel someone in the neighbourhood to pretend that he was, that a sale might be held. It is not the fierce excitement of bidding one against the other that causes the great gathering at the sale, but 'everybody's tied to go,' as they say—bound to go to the sale, just as everybody is bound to go when they are bid to a funeral. It would not be friendly not to do so, and high, low, rich and poor, one with another, meet at the sales, as De Quincey has reminded us, to seeone another and to hear how the world is stirring.
The Grasmere Players in this sale scene were all of the manner born, and a young mason played the part of 'Tom Mashiter' (auctioneer) with great delight to himself and to his audience.
'Here's t' fadther and muther and t' dowter he cried, as he put three teapots together. 2s. 6d. for the lot just to get us into the bidding! Here's a pair of copper scales; see how true they hang! Now I durst bet there's not above half a dozen among us as honest as them is. There's not, howiver; and I know who's yan o' the half-dozen; ye can settle the other five amang you. Three an' six. Three an nine. Come, be quick. Nay, I'll not wait. I'll tak some on ye in, ye'll see, if ye don't bid quicker——'
And the scales were knocked down 'mid roars of laughter.
'Here's another good jar, yan o' t' auld fashion, wid a pair o' good lugs to hod by. A penny for it I have bid; who'll say tuppence? Tuppence for you, Sarah. It's a real good un, yan o' t' rare auld-fashioned mak, like me an you, Sarah. I think there's nobbut us two left o' the auld lang-eared breed.'
Then there were quilts sold with a deal of very amusing talk to make them go off. One was in rags and tatters, but the auctioneer suggested that it might do for a sick horse or a sick cow. I was listening with great amusement, and I heard an old fellow beside me say, 'Well, but things is goin' ower cheap,' and in another moment jerked out, 'A penny—here,' and was not a little astonished that his bid was not taken. I only mention this to show you how to the life the whole thing was done, and with what deep interest the spectators gazed upon the play.
In the second act the plot thickens, and the interest centres in the two chief actors of the little play—Aaron Hartley, with his apparently rejected addresses to the statesman's daughter up at Hardcragg Farm, and Betty Braithwaite. Aaron comes into his mother's kitchen, and, as far as any Westmoreland man dare let himself go, allows her to see that things are all up between himself and Betty. He must go off to 'Lunnon,' for he cannot face living on in the dale now, and all the hay grass but one meadow has been got in.
'I think I must be going away, muther, for a bit. I don't see but that you'll mannishfinely without me. We've gitten a' the hay in but t' midder, and that'll not take so lang. It's nobbut a light crop, and then it'll be verra slack till bracken time, and what, Jonty's match to make a good start with that if I sudn't be back.'
Just then the farm servant Jonty enters. I believe that he was a coachman in the village, but he was a consummate actor, and his quaint, silent ways and the lifting up of his hand and scratching his head behind his ear when talking were quite admirable. He has had, from youth up, the wish to have something from London, and he tells Aaron that he's 'wonderin' whether he could mannish to bring him a "spead" fra Lunnon' when he comes back; 'but maybe the railway folk wad charge ower dear for carryin' on it.' Aaron chaffs him out of the idea that a 'spead' made in London is better than one made in Kendal, and suggests a nice silk handkerchief. 'I never thowt o' that,' says Jonty; 'that wad be as like as aught.' Libby, the pretty farm servant breaks in here, and says: 'I wish tha would think on it, and not be so ready with thy jacket sleeve.'
'Ye'll not can tell me (says honest Jonty) how much t' silk handkercher'll be until ye'vebought it, I doubt; but if ye'll send word I can just send ye the brass in a letter.'
And, saying, 'Well, I mun see all's reet afore goin' to bed,' the faithful farm servant leaves the cottage to go round the byre.
But the actress of the piece throughout is Aaron's mother, Mrs. Hartley. She sits there at her knitting, with her pretty crossover on her shoulders, sair troubled at heart by her son Aaron's love affair; she drops her stitches, for her eyes can hardly keep back the tears, but she seems to know intuitively how much and how little comfort she may give her son, and how far she may insist upon his confidences. The attempt on her part to make it appear as if it did not matter at all and that everything will come right in the end is very bravely done. Fewest words are best.
'Good night, mother,' says Aaron. 'You'll not mind a' I've said.'
'Nay, lad, not I. Good night.'
And so the curtain falls. The second scene in the second act brings Jonty and Mattha Newby (the village tailor) together. Mattha, as I heard, was the son of a village tailor. To-day, evidently from his boyhood's remembrances, he is able to play the tailor's part well. Jonty hasbeen 'wrestling with a dyke' and torn his jerkin, and Mattha volunteers to mend it. A song was introduced into this scene which I had written for the occasion. It ran as follows:
Come! sweet April, whom all men praise,Bring your daffodils up to the Raise,Bid the delicate warbler trill,Come with the cuckoo over the hillSprinkle the birch with sprays of green,Purple the copses all between;Bend the rainbow, and swell the brooks,Fill the air with the sound of rooks,Rubies lend, for the larch to wear,The lambs are bleating, and May is near.
August comes, and the speckled thrushSings no more in the lilac bush,Lambs in the meadow cease to bleat,The hills are dim with the noontide heat,From all her hedges the rose is fled,And only the harebell lifts her head;But green are the new-mown vales with grassAs if the Spring were again to pass,And children bring from the far-off fellThe rose-red heather—the bee loves well,
Comes October with breath more cold,She breathes, and the bracken turns to gold,The cherry blushes as red as blood,The rowan flames in the painted wood,The larch-tree tresses are amber bright,The birch is yellowing up on the height,{82}And over the valley and over the hillA deep hush broods and the sheep are still,But rainbow gossamers fill the air,Tho' the old earth rests, the world is fair.
Now are the mountains winter-white,Helvellyn shines in the clear moonlight;The carollers sing, and the Christmas bellsSend sweet messages up the fells;The old folk meet for their Christmas cheer,The young folk skate on the frozen mere;But Spring is coming, the shy buds peep,The snow-drop moves in her long, long sleep,The lemon-light shines on the leafless larch,And the wood grows purple to welcome March.
Fair, how fair, are the changing daysThat keep us happy beneath the Raise,We who, in honour of Oswald the King,Our 'bearings' still to the Old Church bring,We who here in the silent timeAct our part and carol our rhyme.Seasons change, and our hair grows grey,But merrily goes the Grasmere play,And two things stay with us all the year—Love of our valley, and heart of cheer.
It had been prettily set to music by a Grasmere lady, and the two bass voices chimed in with the two last lines in each verse, and Mattha the tailor and Jonty the farm servant gave great effect to the song by the sudden addition of their manly notes. Before the curtain falls on this scene, we learn that the tourist (to whomwe were introduced in the first scene), Mr. Augustus Mallister, who has heard that she is an heiress, is determined, if possible, to win the heart of Betty Braithwaite. He knows that Aaron's absence has made her heart grow fonder. He determines to write a letter, which shall be posted in London, purporting to come from Aaron, in which the absent lover declares that he has become engaged to an American girl; and so the curtain falls.
In the last act, and the first scene, there is a pretty passage, although it is a pathetic one, between Mrs. Hartley and the girl Betty Braithwaite, to whom Mrs. Hartley has given Aaron's letters to read—one of them the fatal letter. In the last scene Norman Braithwaite and his wife, an excellent make-up, come in to talk matters over, and the letter from London amongst other things. Jonty remembers how that, on a certain day in August, the tourist chap, 'the fine gentleman' as he called him, had been spouting out a letter about an Aaron getting wed to an American, and they at once seemed to see light and to feel that the letter Mrs. Hartley had received was a forgery. Just at that time Aaron and Betty enter, and one can tell by a glance at them that it doesn't matter how many forged letters have been written inLondon; they have quite made up their minds to make a match of it. As for Mallister, 'the fine gentleman,' Jonty breaks in:
'Is it Mallister you're talkin' on? We weant see any more o' yon ne'er-do-weel here. I met t' p'liceman going off wid him to Kendal.'
Norman: 'T' p'liceman! What for?'
Jonty: 'It seems he's been wanted for some time. He's been up to some forgery or summat o' that mak.'
Poor Mrs. Rawlinson, 'the fine gentleman's' landlady, enters greatly distressed that the good name of her house has been compromised by letting lodgings to a forger. 'Why,' says she, 'I thought he was a gentleman, wi' his wawmlets to his breakfast, and his late dinners and siclike.' And so with the assertion that there is nothing to wait for and the wedding shall take place at Martinmas, the curtain goes down, and all's well that ends well.
During the acting it was quite plain that the actors themselves were as much interested as those who witnessed the play. 'I was fairly shamed of myself,' I heard one saying, 'to meet with ye when I came off the last time, for the tears on my face, but if you had given me a five pound note I could not have helped it.' Ah, thought I, that was the secret ofyour acting so well. Now and again an actor in undress would pass down the room to have a look at the others as they performed their parts, and to report. They would come back with much encouragement to their fellow-players with such words as these: 'Eh, but it's a grand company now, and walls is beginning to stream now'; and in truth the heat of the room and the consequent vapour bath was a thing not to be easily forgotten. But if it had been twice as hot, and the hall had been twice as crammed, and the play had been twice as long, one could still have sat with real pleasure to see such perfect acting done with such simplicity and reality to the life. One wished that Will Shakspere could have come along; how he would have blessed these village folk for their truth and their simplicity. And how good a thing, thought I, it is, that there should be a dull time at the English Lakes, so that, without any temptations to extravagance in scenery or setting of the plays—that would inevitably come with a wider public,—these natural dale-folk can delight their fellow-villagers, by dramatic talent as real as it is remarkable.
The pattern life of a public-spirited country gentleman closed, when James Cropper of Ellergreen, with eye undimmed and natural force unabated, entered rest.
Come of an old Viking stock,—for his name is found in theLandnama Bok of Iceland,—he had inherited the best traditions of true philanthropy from his grandfather, who, with Zachary Macaulay, had worked for the emancipation of the slave. In him, too, ran something of the spirit of good old Quaker blood. Whole-hearted Churchman as he was, he loved as the Friends love, simplicity in form and directness in religious expression. In earliest days he had cared for social and industrial problems, and the sorrows of the labouring poor entered into his heart. It was his good fortune to be able, by becoming an employer of labour, in his paper mills atBurneside, to face these problems and to become, as he always wished to become, the father rather than the master of his workmen.
He lived to see Burneside become, under his fostering care, a model village. He lived to see some of his endeavours, notably his idea of Co-operative Stores for the people, find acceptance far and wide. The guardianship of the poor was a sacred trust to him. As Chairman of the Board of Guardians at Kendal for twenty-five years, and as Vice-President of the Northern Poor Law Congress, he both learned and taught wisdom. Almost the last thing he talked with me about was a scheme for caring for that most helpless class of our poorer friends, the pauper imbeciles of Cumberland and Westmoreland.
He was in early days a keen politician, and represented his neighbouring town of Kendal for five years in Parliament. Latterly he had felt that he could not be a partisan, or rather that partisanship dulled sympathies, and though it was a grief to him at the time to leave the House at the redistribution of seats, he found so much more of home politics to hand for him to do, that he ceased to regret it.
When the County Council in Westmorelandmet for its first time in 1888, they unanimously elected James Cropper to be their chairman, and to the day of his death his heart was in the work.
The Queen Anne's Bounty Board gave him the chance of helping the church of his love. The late Bishop of Carlisle, Harvey Goodwin, had no truer friend; and the present Bishop Bardsley testified to the constant help to church work in the diocese that this most earnest layman was always willing to bestow.
But it was the cause of education—elementary, secondary, public school, or university—that was nearest to his heart. As one of the Governors of Sedbergh, and Heversham and Kendal Grammar Schools, his counsel was constantly sought. As a believer in women's education, he founded a scholarship at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and a bursary at the Edinburgh Medical School for the training of native Indian women as doctors.
JAMES CROPPER OF ELLERGREEN.JAMES CROPPER OF ELLERGREEN.
He was Chairman of a Kendal Education Society which anticipated much of the present endeavour of the Code to secure better instruction for elementary teachers. He was never so happy as when he could gather the teachers on the lawn at Ellergreen, and hold counsel with them as to their future aims and their presentprogress. The idea of a pupil-teachers' centre at Kendal was his, and as Chairman of the County Council he was able to lend it substantial aid. When the Voluntary School Association came into being, he took up the idea warmly, and personally visited every school within his area, and made its wants and its difficulties his own.
There was not a day that this public benefactor did not do something to help his time. And if one asked oneself why it was he had the power to be a pillar of good in his generation, a kind of beacon and standard for higher and happier life in all classes of society round about him, the answer seemed to be that he had a heart which was for ever young, in a body that seemed as if age could not touch it—that his sympathies were not with the past, but with the present and the future; that his enthusiasm for the better time coming never failed him; that he believed that all things work together for good to them that fear God and keep His commandments.
The grace of this abundant hopefulness flowed out in all he did and said. 'Age could not stale his infinite variety,' because he never grew old. To see him with young men or little children was to see him at his best. Toknow him in his home life was a privilege for which to be thankful.
But deeper than all his spring of hope and sympathy with the young and the new lay the fountain of poetry at his heart. He did not, I think, write poetry, but the love of it was a continual presence. He had the poet's heart, and entered into the poet's mind. For him, the practical public county magistrate and councillor, the spirit of the innermost was the joy of the imagination. This was the secret of his swift sympathy with nature and with man.
We met by appointment in the Tapestry Room of the Spanish Palace at the Paris Exhibition on October 12th, 1900. He was as cheery as ever.
'I have had a delightful week,' he said, 'I wish all my friends could have seen this wonderful exhibition. Yesterday I was at Chartres Cathedral. I never knew what stained glass was before; pray visit Chartres. It is a revelation to one.' Then he turned to the Spanish tapestries and went with deepest pleasure through the historic scenes that the needles of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have left on deathless record. He seemed as young-hearted as a boy, and as fresh in his enthusiasm as if this ParisExhibition was the first he had ever seen, but he was seventy-seven and had seen more than falls to most of us to see, of all this world can show. I did not know as I shook hands and parted that Death already had shaken him by the hand.
That night the sharp pain of pneumonia was upon him. I saw him once again, at the bedside celebration of his last Holy Communion, and then I saw him dead. His beautiful lace without a wrinkle in it with all the look of youthfulness come back—but, alas, without the bloom, beneath that ample crown of snow-white hair which for years past had added such dignity to his refined and kindly presence. As I gazed, the one thought that came to me was this, did ever man pass so little weary, so full of keen interest and unabated enthusiasm after so long a pilgrimage, right up to the doors of that other world where, as we trust, all his fullest powers shall find full play, or enter these gates of life with so little pain?
He died in France and his body was borne across the sea and laid to rest in the valley he held most dear. It seemed as if all Westmoreland and Cumberland had come to Burneside to do him honour at the homegoing.
The coffin, covered with wreaths, was laid upon a simple wheeled bier in front of the doors of Ellergreen, and so taken by hand from the house to the church. It was his wish that no hearse should be used, and that this simpler method of carrying the body to its rest should be employed. Before the procession moved, many of those present came up to the coffin to see the beautiful photograph taken after death; and side by side of it the picture of his bride taken on her honeymoon. Beneath these two pictures were written the words from Christina Rossetti's poem:
'Think of our joy in ParadiseWhen we're together there,'
and beneath this a little note stating that these were the words which he had begged might be inscribed upon his tombstone.
Those who knew how ideal had been their wedded life, knew also how through all the long years of widowerhood and the grief of separation that lent its pathos to his fine face, there had been one sweet music to which he moved—the music of the hope of a sure reunion, that had surely come with joy at last.
The sunlight faded from the near fells, andsorrow filled the air. A single robin sang a note or two and was silent, and the leaves fell audibly to the ground. But all who gazed out east saw the blue Howgills and the further Pennine range shine out like burnished silver and gold, and thought of the glory of that far land to which our friend had gone.
The procession went up the drive and into the lane, and so down into the village, where every head seemed bowed and every home a house of mourning. The service, simple throughout, included his favourite hymn:
'Lord, it belongs not to my careWhether I live or die,'
and at the grave side a third hymn was sung which had been chosen by his daughter as expressive of the continuity of happy life in the world beyond. The bishop pronounced the benediction, the mourners placed their wreaths at the grave side; silently the vast crowd melted away, and left to its long rest the body of one of the most public-spirited servants of the common good that Westmoreland has known. He will be as sorely missed as he will be surely mourned.
It was burning June. The sun shone on lake and fell. Skiddaw was cloudless and lifted into the clear heaven its purple lilac shade powdered with the fresh fern and the emerald green of the bilberry. The corn-crake cried in the valley, the throstle whistled from the larch plantation; in and out of the elder-blossom the tireless bees went humming, and the haymakers could hardly get on with their work for gazing at the exquisite beauty of the wild roses on the hedge. In Cumberland, as Southey said, we miss the violet, but we make up for our loss in April and May by the blush roses of the June. They embroider the lanes, they dance upon the hedgerows, they flash against the grey blue waters of the lake, they flutter against the green fellside. Such roses! not faint incolour and scent as we see in the South, but red of heart and filled with fragrance, wonderful wild roses of Cumberland.
What a day of life and loveliness it is! On the old Millbeck Hall door stone up yonder are the words, 'Vivere mori, mori vivere,' but we feel that the living, the living are the hearts that praise, and death is, even by suggestion, out of place here.
To-day as we dash along under Skiddaw to see where Roman and Norseman once had home, we feel that the same beauty was beheld by earlier races, and the wild rose that gladdens our sight was very dear to eyes of far-off generations, and has been a perpetual garden of life and loveliness for all the passing years.
We are going to see the camps of the warriors of old, and we do well to gather and put in hat and buttonhole the emblem of England's warrior saint, the good St. George. As one thinks of the flower, one's mind does not only go back to Pisanello and his picture of St. George away there in the church of St. Anastasia in Verona, but to the hundred shrines wherein are seen that fair Madonna, the Rose of God, whose painters honoured the wilding rose for hersake, and gave it immortality on their canvases. To Roman Catholic and to Protestant alike, how significant and full of tender association is the wild dog-rose of Cumberland! How close it brings the church days of an older time back to the present dwellers in this country, seeing that both on Carlisle's city arms and Carlisle's bishop's coat of arms, the wild rose shines, memorial of the monastery that honoured the Rose of Heaven.
But to-day we are going back to times that antedate those mediaeval church days. We are on visit bent to Roman and Viking who dwelt in sight of Skiddaw—the cleft one, in the days,
'When never a wild-rose men would braidTo honour St. George and the Virgin Maid.'
We dash on by Dancing Gate, a farm beyond Scalebeck, with its quaint holly trees, whose sons have never forgotten the art of dancing, on by Mirehouse with its memories of James Spedding and Thomas Carlyle and Alfred Tennyson, on under Ullock slope, and by Ravenstone till we reach an old farmhouse, quaint with its Jacobaean door-pilasters.
'For Orthwaite Hall and Overwater,' said the coachman, 'we should turn off here tothe right and go up the Rake,' as he slackened his paces.
There was an old Norse ring about that word 'rake,' for the Icelanders still talk of their sheep 'rachan' just as our Cumberland shepherds do; when the sheep follow one after another along the mountain side, they are hereabouts said to be 'raking,' but though we were bent on a Norse chieftain's home we refused to ascend the Rake. It was very hot and sultry, and we preferred the shady woodland of Bassenthwaite 'parks,' and so drove forward. We passed the Vicarage house and the Bassenthwaite Church, crossed a small stream, and, turning sharply by a deserted chapel towards the village, drove by the village green, thence entering a kind of meadow road, were soon in shadow, and for more than a mile went, beneath bowery oak, and fragrant larch, and gleaming hazel, along this copse-lane sweet with wild woodruff and gay with lychnis, towards the hillside opposite the Dash, where stands Orthwaite or Overthwaite Hall. It is worth while turning for a backward gaze as we ascend the hill; Bassenthwaite and the fells that close round far Derwentwater look nowhere more beautiful than from here.
That little tarn on our left is not Overwater, but it has its history; one hundred sheep went on the ice one wintry day, broke through, and all were drowned. The current superstition is that the pike in that tarn are as large as donkeys; whether before or after the feast of plenty accorded by the mountain sheep is not told.
Here is Orthwaite or Allerthwaite Hall grim and grey, its little Elizabethan window mouldings, its diamond squares of glass, its quaint low-ceilinged dining room. There is a look of drear sadness and of pale sorrow about the quiet half-hall, half-farmstead, and there may well be, for its owner William George Browne, the traveller, went forth therefrom to explore Tartary and Bokhara in the year 1812, and being suspected by the Persian government of sinister design, was, under instruction from headquarters, taken captive beyond the Kizzil Ozan river, blindfolded and barbarously murdered. Poor Browne! he had better have stayed in sight of harmless Skiddaw, but his was the gipsy's mind, and though none knew quite why he journeyed, and his journeys in Africa, Egypt, and Syria show that he travelled more from love of wild roaming than for aught else, home for William George Browne hadno attraction in its sound. His was the restless wanderer's heart.
Now we leave the carriage, and while it goes round to pick us up at Whitefield Cottage on the Uldale and Ireby road, we descend into the meadows and find ourselves gazing on a large square entrenchment, at the angles of which were once raised mounds, lying to the south-west of Overwater. No Roman camp this, for Romans did not place their camps in the bottoms, unless they had a secure look-out above them, or a fortified camp on a height near by; and Romans did not when they dug an entrenchment round their camp, throw the earth out to right and left and make an embankment either side their fosse, as it is plain was the case here; besides there is but one entrance to the camp, and that was not the Roman way. No, the camp we are looking upon was probably the kraal or stockaded farmstead of a Norse chieftain, any time between 874 and 950 A.D.
Its owner probably came up the Derwent with Ketel, son of Orme, with Sweyn and Honig or Hundhr, what time they harried Cumberland under Ingolf or Thorolf the Dane. For aught we know, he may have been tempted hither by some sudden surprise-peep he gotof the Overwater tarn and neighbouring meadowland, from the heights of Skiddaw, the first time he clomb that double-fronted hill.
It is true that a Roman tripod kettle is said to have been discovered near, but the Romans were not the only nation on the earth that worked in bronze, and knew the advantage of putting legs to their kettles; and both in the museum of Copenhagen and Christiania such tripod kettles may be seen to-day that came from the hands of the Norsemen of old time.
As we gaze across the quiet meadow land to the north-east, we see the high raised hill, where it is more than probable that the Viking chieftains, who here had their steading, 'died into the ground,' as they expressed it, when the death hour came. At any rate that hill is called Latrigg, which may well mean the 'Hlad Rigg' or 'Ridge of the Dead,' and as at Keswick so here, the Vikings may have carried up their dead chieftains for their last long rest to yonder height. It is by some thought possible that the word Latrigg may come from Norse words that signify the 'Lair Ridge,' the ridge of the lair of wild beasts, and doubtless in those early days the farmer who built his stockade had cause to dread other wild beasts than such as now trouble the hen roostsbeneath Skiddaw. Now on still nights the shepherd of Underskiddaw may hear the fox of Skiddaw calling across the waters of Bassenthwaite to the red-coated vixen at Barf, and hear her shrill bark answer to his cry, but then the wolf howled and the wild boar prowled, and there was need of stockade not only against man but against the creatures of the wild woodland.
We leave the meadow with its Viking memories, walk on to join our carriage at Whitefield Cottage, thence, driving along towards Uldale and Ireby, see, far off, the common of Ulph the Norseman that was often waked by John Peel's 'horn in the morning,' and, instead of descending into the valley that separates us from that long moor that stretches to Caldbeck, we turn sharply to the left, pass a lonely house of some pretension, and drive by a narrow lane through hedges covered with wild-rose; away to the west, upon surmounting the ridge, we suddenly come in sight of the littoral plain—all peacock green and blue, the Solway flashing in the distance—and the grey hills of bonnie Scotland beyond. We descend the hill and pull up at a lodge gate. "Snittle Garth," says the driver. The very name has a Scandinavian ring about it; we enter thePark and pull up at a pleasant-looking country house.
By courtesy of the owner we pass in front of the garden, gay with its flowers, and full of the sense and sweetness of an English country house. We can hardly gaze at the camp we have come to see, so fair and beautiful is the vision outstretched before us of Bassenthwaite laid in gleaming whiteness beneath the dark hills of Wythop and the purple vastness of Skiddaw, so exquisite the shadowy foldings of the blue hills that take the eye far up beyond the gates of Borrodale to Gimmer Crag, to Great-End and far Sea-fell. But when we look at the camp we have come to see we find ourselves standing on a high plateau, sheltered on north and east and west by rising ground. The site of the camp is rectangular, eighty-three feet by thirty-one; isolated by a trench with regular scarp and counter-scarp. This trench is twelve feet broad at the bottom, twenty feet at the top; the scarp and counter-scarp are each nine feet, and the depth is five feet. The work, to all appearance, is freshly done, and but for the fact that no pottery has been revealed, might well be work of Roman engineers. As we wonder at the quaint oblong island of green carved inthe hill side, surrounded by its dry moat, we listen to what the sages say and archaeologists guess about its origin and intent.
'The remains of a mediaeval pleasaunce,' says one antiquarian.
'Not a bit of it,' says another, 'this was no sheet of water for ornament, with an island in its midst, this was a Roman sanitary camp. Hither sick and sorry came the poor fellows, whom the frosts of Cumberland had pinched, or the dews of Cumberland had rheumatised, or the malaria of the Derwent Vale had febrified, or the swords and clubs of the stubborn British had wounded, and here girt round by friendly fence of water, sheltered from the wind, uplifted in this quiet pastoral scene, they built their rough wattle hospital, and prayed to the goddess of health.'
'No, no,' says a third antiquarian, no authority he, and therefore likeliest to be right. 'This was a battle holme. Here in the olden time men met for holm-gauge or wager of battle; on that oval sward was decided, in the sight of the assembled multitude, the feud of families or the strife of tribes.'
We can, as we gaze, conjure up the whole scene, and hear the crash of battle hammer, and see the flame of the circling brand; but thepeace of the present subdues the passion of the past, and the sound of the quiet grass-cropping hard by of the unfearful sheep, the song of the thrush from the neighbour sycamore recalls us to such pastoral tranquillity as ill assorts with the stormy drama
'Of old far-off unhappy thingsAnd battles long ago.'
Now rejoining our carriage let us drive west, up hill, to the neighbouring Caermote. We shall feel all the time that the tribesmen, gathered at their battle holme, can follow us with their eyes, and wonder what on earth can possess us to leave them with their fierce axe play just going to begin, for the old deserted look-out camp on the slope a mile away. We leave the carriage to descend the hill to the south and await our arrival at the large square double camp of the Romans on the lower slope, and not without many pauses to wonder at fair scene of the seaward plain, we make our way up to the northern peak of Caermote Hill.
This, with its circular rampart, was probably the 'mons exploratorius' of the large double camp on the lower south-eastern slope, and a glorious look-out the Roman legionaries must have had, if on such a day of June they camewith their wild roses in their hands to see the sun come with its wild rose over Helvellyn, or move slowly to its setting and turn the whole grey Solway into gold.
Down now we go southward across the pleasant green sward, negotiate one or two rather awkward fences, and bearing a little to the left, towards the main road that runs to Bewaldeth, we soon find ourselves in the midst of ramparts of the quaint double Roman camp. It is a camp within a camp, the larger of the two being about 180 yards by 160 yards square. There is evidence that the cohort that first encamped here must have felt that it was a place of much strategic importance, for they made the road from 'old Carlisle' to Keswick run right through the middle of it. The continuation of this road, though it remains untraced, probably ran along the east side of Bassenthwaite up to the tiny Roman watch camp at the 'Gale,' and so by Guardhouse towards Penrith, and to Causeway Foot, on the road to Ambleside.
They appear also to have felt that they were in a dangerous country when first they rested beneath Caermote, for they circled themselves with a triple rampart and a double fosse.
But not for ever was there to be war at the gates, even in Roman times. The cohort gave way to a 'century,' and the centurion, who remained to keep the way from 'old Carlisle' to Keswick open, was content to trust his safety from attack to the guardianship of a single ditch and rampart; and yet the fierceness of fire and sword must in after times have been felt again at this place. Not many years ago the ruins of some buildings near the north gate of the large camp were discovered, that had once been roofed with lead, but the buildings had been set on fire, and the lead had poured itself away into the ground. There was nothing to suggest that these buildings had been of Roman workmanship, and though it is possible that this was a kind of half-way store-house for the lead miners of Caldbeck, who were sending their mineral booty to the sea, it is quite as probable that at some time or other a farmer had here his 'strength' or 'strong house,' and that 'rievers' from over the Border had made short work of him, and given his farm-stead to the flames.
We leave the Romans of Caermote, and are not surprised to think a sanatorium hard by was necessary for the cohort of old time, if there was as much water in the ground as there isto-day within and without the ramparts. Thence we drive by way of Bewaldeth and the inn by the Bassenthwaite cross-roads, to the shores of what Southey called 'westernmost Wythop.' Hardly are we able to get forward, for the cries of those who are with us in the carriage to draw up, that we may gaze at this or that wild-rose bush in all its tender fluttering beauty. But at last we win our goal—Castle How Inn, near Peelwyke; then scrambling up the hill we inspect the four trenches on the side of the hill looking towards Peelwyke, whence of old time gazed out the hardy Britons upon the Roman camp fires blazing at Caermote.
As we gaze we think not only of Roman times, but of the Viking times also; for down below us lies the wyke or harbour where the first Norsemen who ever came up Derwent from the sea ran their boats ashore.
Who, or whence the Norse ancestor of John Peel, who hewed the trees of the woodland at our feet into planks and built his 'Pride of the lake,' we cannot know, but he probably had friends, Ketel and Ormr, and Sweyn, and Honig and Walla, who would from time to time come across the Crosthwaite Vale and step aboard his galley, and sweep with flying sail or gleaming oar along by the woods of Mirehouseor the shadowy cliffs of Barf to his 'steading' here at Bassenthwaite; and it is more than probable that he and his family 'died into the ground' at Castle How, and there await the glory of the gods and the coming of Odin.
We, as we gaze out south from the How of the Viking, can see plainly to-day the burial ground of other Viking chieftains of the dale on the grey green Latrigg's height; and sadly enough, we think, must they have passed into the dark, if so fair a sun as this shone upon so fair a scene, and the roses and elders were as sweet for them as they are for us to-day.
On now through fragrant briar wood and odorous larch to Keswick, and the ghosts of Britain and Rome and Norway keep pace with our hearts as we go.