The English Lakes

Night fast closed round. Our last look back barely showed the curve of Borrowdale. Gillercombe, scored by tremendous ravines, presided over a scene of almost indescribable wildness. The wind roared and boomed above, the steady drift of fine rain was in our faces. Hoarsely down its rugged bed the beck sang in accord. Grey light and dashing water, with gloom intense above and a rain-sodden world below, our path uncertain, picked out by boulders. Bogs of sphagnum, sponged a foot high with water, runnels where in summer are hollows filled with wee splinters, the rills all shouting becks, and the becks flooding torrents. Our boots full of water, wet to the thigh, we still squelched on. In a while we came to a narrow footbridge, and crossed the chief torrent. “Where is the path?” I knew not, nor cared. Swinging bogs were all about; a grisly light crept through the clouds in front: that showed the pass-head, and was my guide. Now, we stood within twenty yards of Stye Head Tarn—what a scene! Half invisible, a patch of wind-spurned waters, dark mountains sweeping upward, cloven by black ghylls, whitish beards of cloud stealthily moving along and hiding the higher ground in ghostly embrace. The sounds—the tongues of many waters, and the night wind weirding among crags and crannies. Ten minutes more, our path in a long curve swept down the rock-shelves toward the dale. What a gulf of gloom, the waterfalls roaring and possessing the night! Take care, take care, the way is full of stumbling-blocks, of pitfalls; to the right is steep rock, to the left a precipice. Over it—crane your neck and see if foothold is visible beneath. Such is Stye Head Pass at night.

We reach the scree where the route is safer, but at the zig-zags more than once overshoot the path. The clouds apparently are densest near the mountains, for beyond the rock-girt valley some brighter clouds render darkness almost visible. There is a dream of a grey Wastwater, a mirage of something not chaos beyond. A spark of light shows where the hotel lies, but it is far away. Some twenty minutes from the pass-head we find grass beneath our feet. Looking backward, there is a walpurgis of grey shadow and black night. Now the path is easier and we walk more rapidly, though frequently stumbles remind us that the path is far from smooth. The light—from hospitable windows—is nearing perceptibly. Now, in front, is a darker mass—the yew-trees crowding round a tiny House of God, shielding it by their tough green limbs from the storms. We were walking quietly in the narrow lane thinking of the gloom on all things made, when a white shadow beyond that of the dale-church arrested us. What is it? Memory hasted back a week to that most terrible disaster in the annals of Lakeland rock-climbing—the accident on the Scawfell Pillar. Four fine young men were killed, and three are laid here. A heap of white flowers, like a pall of mountain snow, masks the grave. Sadly impressive is the scene; the white wilting flowers represent fitly the brief human span of life—to-day we are, to-morrow we are not, thus is the will of God: the dense green yew-trees symbolise death, the time-long end of man. But look higher, I felt—around. “O death, where is thy sting?” for, though the mists of night bewilder, great rock-ribs are rising upward, higher, ever higher, till earth and heaven meet. And the yew of death will moulder by the kirkgarth, but the mountains must stand fast to prove eternity—immeasurable, infinite.

Wastwater, its shores treeless and forlorn, its waters rippling against their shingly bays, with mountains beyond and around, curtains of rock and ribbons of scree. In the cool days of spring the mountains are delightful, but sometimes there is a sudden revulsion to winter. A shade sweeps from nor’east, and behold a squall plastering all with snow, a gale shrieking around, and the temperature tumbling to zero. Such mischances apart, the bracing air makes a new creature of one after the fogs of winter, and you simply stroll up the ascents. So much has been written of the mountain-climbing around Wastwater that to infuse romance, to say any new thing, is difficult. Steep ghylls there are to ascend, loose bands of scree to pass, bogs varying in depth according to weather. Here a rushing rivulet to ford, there, winding beneath crazy rock fragments, the path hangs on the brink of a deep ravine; collar work up five hundred feet of slippery grass, and splendid poising exercise over beds of boulders. When winter holds sway and a white garb hides the bloom of meadows and hillsides, Wastwater is a very home of loneliness. Its surface is no home for the wildfowl from northward: a wastewater it is to them and not worth a minute of the foody, oozy sands of Irt and Esk, seven miles away. Loneliness and silence. When the babel of the flock in the intakes ceases to the ear, the absence of all sound will depress the liveliest soul. The air, chill and cutting, goes soundlessly by; the lake broods in leaden, stirless gloom. There is no sound of tinkling rivulets; the raven’s croak, the curlew’s wild shriek, are no longer heard; the plover, the heron, and the birds of the hedgerow have flown to less sombre regions. When the stars are mirrored in the steely blue water and the moon throws shafts of glory across the mountain barrier, the silence is more crushing. One side the dale is in shadow; frost spangles give to the other an ethereal, unreal illume. Gable and the Scawfells are snowbound where on ledge and scree snow can lie; the rocks, through which, from the mountain’s heart, hidden springs are driven, are sheathed with ice. Day after day, the deadness of living nature seems to increase; day after day, the unknowable mysteries of the mountains seem to deepen. The loudest voice seems hushed; the most fervid imagination is consciously dwarfed. Then the weather changes; the air turns raw and damp, and day seemingly forgets Wastwater. Silent, implacable, falls the rain. Down almost to the water trail the ragged cloud-beards—they choke day from the low land. Up the mountains—he is a hardy wight who dares to be there. Half-molten snowdrifts, torrents roaring, cascading from unseen above to invisible below, gouts of water cleaving through the mistwreaths. But seldom does such a wanderer brave the elements long. Turgid torrents and close-enwrapping fogs charm no one. Indoors the fires burn bright; save for a brief space about noon, when a sickly lightening proclaims day’s climax and glory, the lamps are hardly out. To the gloom of the clouded sky is added the great shadows of close-hemming mountains; there are houses among the fells on which for three months of the year the sun never shines.

Wastwater, and the Screes. Three miles of buttresses crumbling down in fan-shaped beds of ruin. It is grand to pace the opposite shore and watch the play of light and shade on the rugged mountainside. Streaked with rich brown are some of the yawning gullies: up there are stores of ruddle or native iron. Soft and soluble as mud, the substance once had a value as providing an indelible mark for sheep. The shepherd lads from distant dales came here to collect it—for a premium of sixpence per pound from their masters. On the brink and halfway down the face of the shivery rocks are the little veins of ruddle found. A steady step and a firm nerve had the lads who dared such labour, for a misstep might split their foothold to pieces and throw them far down the ravines. We are told that many lives were lost in the pursuit of ruddle: compared with it, modern rock-climbing, with the skilfully used safeguards, is safe, though of course far more arduous. The climber of to-day chooses a sound crag for his work: the ruddle-gatherer could only work among the loosest, craziest ground.

The best way to see the Screes is to take a boat and row close to them. High above your head, a great rampart of rock, scored since the world began with the cabalistic record of frost and storm, hides the sky. Somewhere betwixt the crags and lake, following the smoothest route, is a rough path. In and out of parks of huge boulders (many, geologists say, still sliding downwards at speeds varying from slothful inches to a bustling six feet per annum), the track threads, affording a grand though tiring walk. After frost there is danger in approaching some of the crags. Huge breasts of stone are so finely hung that the ice wedging their crannies rends them as surely as gunpowder. There have been some tremendous rockfalls in the Screes. A century ago one of the sights of Wastwater was a lofty fragment to which an uncouth imagination gave the name of Wilson’s Horse. For long the vicinity had been shunned: pieces of rock were for ever disintegrating from the mass. Then, after a winter grim with frost and snow, came the final catastrophe. At dead of night was heard the roar of falling rock, and at daybreak the Horse had disappeared. Judging from the splintery gulf whence the Horse fell, “What a splash it must have made!” interjected one as we scrambled about the place. It is said that a twenty-foot wave passed north and south after the rock struck the water.

Wastwater, the home of many shepherds. As you scramble their flocks are ever around you. And from among desolate-looking rocks, between beds of lichened boulders, they obtain sustenance. There is a tuft of grass just by that patch of parsley fern; a little fringe of soft green nestles beneath that boulder; a skin of living verdure finds root where the scree lies fine as dust. For these wisps of grass the hardy Herdwicks assiduously search, and on such meagre fare they thrive. Our sheep are small in size compared with those of the lowlands but more robust, and so intelligent that no dweller in the mountain-land can understand that cant phrase “a silly sheep.” There are other animals with far less resource or real initiative when faced by danger. The life of the mountain shepherd possesses little of Arcadian joy and pastoral romance. The stress of winter when storm sweeps down from the Gable and the air is riotous with snow, the terrible “clash” at lambing-time when the weather turns wet for weeks, militate against such idylls as are fancied in brighter lands. So ruthless is fact in its war with poetic vapourings that even the glories of the shepherd’s summer do not remain. Instead of the shepherd piping and watching the sheep with lambs by their sides streaming over green swelling hills, in the English mountain-land it is the season of the detested maggot. This cruel pest burrows through wool and skin into the living flesh beneath and devours that. It is almost too sickening to recall the piteous scenes of visible spines and ribs from which the flesh has been denuded; of sheep still living in the most awful agony. Nearly the worst characteristic of this terrible visitation is that a sheep when attacked generally turns recluse and wanders as far as possible from its fellows. Thus, when the shepherd should theoretically be at ease, he is really, ointment pot in hand, climbing about the roughest parts of his holding. Once, when wandering near Wastwater, I met a shepherd.

“Been salving?” I queried.

“Nay, been trying to find some to salve. I’ve a mind they’re somewhere in these ghylls, but I can’t come at ’em.”

“How many do you reckon there’ll be?”

“Mappen sebben or eight. I’m going to try this beck course.”

“Yes, do,” I said: “I think there’s a few up above.”

Then I explained that from across the mere I had noticed a few white dots, and had entered into remarks thereon with one who through field glasses was scanning the great hillside. He could scarce believe that the small grey masses cluthering in the ghyll were sheep. “They’re far too still.” I admitted the mournful fact, also that they were much above the zone of grass, but added that they were “smitten by wicks.” The shepherd assured that this was the very ghyll, up we went. It was not long before we came to the lowest—I dare not say animal. So weak and emaciated was the living organism from ravages of the terrible maggot that the shepherd immediately kicked out its brain. “Can’t save it,” he muttered through set teeth. The next was not so far gone. The shepherd, with deft hands, cut away the clotted wool and speedily the cleansing ointment was at work. The plunging and baa-ing of the sheep showed that the cure was a “smarty” one. One by one the other sheep were found and remedies applied, so that the shepherd went back to the farm at rest.

Wastwater, haunt of the char and the botling, the latter a mysterious fish. Now and again he turned up, and his appearance spread dread through the country-side—what had not happened when last this hermit fish came ashore? Fever and agues were by some said to follow his occurrence, or trouble about heafage rights. But progressive science scared him from existence (the botling was ever a male) with his little hoard of lore. The fish was taken at the fall of the year in the little becks and among spawning trout. He was a powerful fellow, differing chiefly from his associates in greater size and thickness, and in the manner in which his under jaw turned up and was hooked. In weight the botling ranged from four to twelve pounds. One killed by leister, or fish spear, was so thick that its girth was in excess of its length by four inches. In colour and marking the botling resembled the ordinary lake trout, the brown spots on its back being only proportionately larger. Probably it was only a local variation of Salmo ferox (the great lake trout); it might possibly have been a hybrid fish. At any rate, here the argument must be left: for half a century the botling has not been heard of—his train of woe, however, has not been so considerate.

Like our other lakes, Wastwater is most fishable when a faint breeze ruffles its waters—for the benefit of the visitor-angler, the coch y bondhu and Broughton Point are the best general flies, with red hackle during the summer. There is little sport with the char: the lake-bed does not permit netting, and the fish are not present in sufficient numbers to encourage the use of the plumb-line. One of my old acquaintance was wont to walk from Langdale over the mountains to fish here, in the days of the now proscribed lath. Poor old Tom, it needs a vivid imagination to picture thy age-wrung frame climbing steep Rossett Ghyll, to think of thy dim old eyes as alert enough to seek out the path as in semi-darkness thou wandered among bogs and benks, screes and boulders. Still more difficult is it to see thee bending over the lead-weighted board with its twin lines and their droppers of gut, fly, and barb, keen to get the instrument on its journey. In one of the coves where purls down a rivulet, the lath is launched; the faint current carries it outward till the breeze ruffling the lake catches its upturned edge. Twenty yards out, where the lake sheers down to its great depth, fish are lying, taking what food air and stream drift to them. Slowly the lath sails outward, Tom unwinding further line as required. The board is now, thinks Tom, beyond the shoal, and the droppers should be presenting their temptations to the fish. Its movement is therefore checked, and the linesman waits for the fish to bite. Tom’s right hand after a while draws one end of the lath nearer, the breeze catches it and it floats sidewise. To the right is a few yards of water from which Tom has previously taken good fish. In an hour he rises from the shadows, and draws the board slowly to land. At first the lines come steadily enough, and are coiled neatly; then there is greater resistance. The right line jerks about in all directions: here comes a big trout. A faint ruffle breaks from a back fin just beneath the surface, there is a little wimple as the fish sinks down again. Gently, gently Tom draws in line. Now there is a brisk curl quite close to his feet near the rocks, a few splashes, and Tom is handling a half-pounder. So strong was the tackle used for lath-fishing that no delicate precision, little fine “play,” was requisite. Poor old Tom! Hadst thou then a taste for the picturesque, what lovely memories thou must be revelling in now when in age thine eye to outward things grows dim! Nights by lovely mountain tarns, when the northward light made the water glow like steel, when the great ribs of the mountains seemed in their nakedness to support the dome of night. Star-spangled skies, and the soft mists of summer by the lake-shore when everything droned to rest. The adventure Tom remembers best is of Wastwater. A keeper had suspected lathing on the western shore, and secreted himself to watch. Tom came over from Langdale, and near Yewbarrow made ready his lines. The board floating out attracted the keeper’s attention. He was mounted, and rode as fast as he could to cut off the poacher. Tom heard the thud of hooves on the soft grass, threw his lines into the mere, and made up the hillside as fast as he could run. A few score yards the horseman pursued, but the poacher managed to cross a deep but narrow gully which the keeper’s pony could not leap. Then, as Tom quaintly remarks, “He thought he hed hed enew on’t, and turned back to the lake. But I got my lines and board in spite of all. Aye, and there was about twenty pounds of fish on ’em.”

Wastwater—its memories are quite innumerable. On cycle the western shore is not difficult. The road undulates, but its surface is fair. It was a warm afternoon; rain had fallen during the previous night, but bright sunshine and sweeping breeze had dried up the exposed portions of the road, though under the trees it was still muddy. We started from Santon Bridge, a sweet hamlet in the gorge of the Irt, not usually found by those whose faces are toward Wastwater. For a couple of miles the road was up, up, and the hills were long; then down, down, down, and the descents were merry. And the Screes rose loftier in front, and looked more and more broken. Soon the level blue of Wastwater comes in sight over larch-tops. Then, as we pedal into a beech avenue, the full view is lost, but we see a succession of entrancing vistas: narrow shafts of meadow and woodland, of water and upspringing screes, framed in by dainty sprays of copper foliage. Through the tunnel of overhanging boughs is a glimpse of open moor and of distant fell. The road declines and our speed increases. To northward we see almost the full length of the mere; the faint breeze is urging the water to gayest laughter. The Screes, with their rainbow hues of native coal and iron, of green slate and brown conglomerate, are opposite. The afternoon sun is playing about their gullies: in some we see long, thin cascades, but between the cliffs fringing other ravines is a straight, heavy shadow. In there, unseen by the sun, the water jets and sprays in leaden glories; no rainbow dances in the soft white veils; dank, slimy cave-ferns grow in plenty.

Our road now passes into the wild moorland—terrace after terrace of hillocks we wind through, keeping near the lake’s level. The feature in this approach to Wastwater head is Yewbarrow. Seen from other points this seems rather tame, but from here it is impressive, commanding the whole view. The lake is still waving under the influence of the breeze; green, green and gold are the hillsides with grass and bracken. Among the stones the staghorn moss threads, sending up club-like spikes in profusion; every boulder is fringed with parsley fern. Yewbarrow, always changing shape, now appears as if cloven by a chasm from the great mass of mountains, and the name of the chasm is Bowderdale. There is heather by the roadside now, its tufts perfect masses of bloom, and the broom’s yellow glory is not wanting. In half a mile we leave the desolation of rock and grass—here are trees and even a few pieces of hedges, rowan and hawthorn, with a few scrubby oaks. The level plain of Wastdale head appears in front; we coast round guardian Yewbarrow, pass cottage and farm as far as the road serves, then push our machines to the church of the dale. Now the weather changes. The brilliant sunshine suddenly glooms and dies away. I look up to Great Gable, weather oracle of the glen—and am surprised. Half an hour ago a fluffy cloud seemed resting on it, but now a dark mass of vapour, distended with wind and bearded with unshed rain, has taken its place. And over the pass from Ennerdale on the left, and through the gully from Borrowdale on the right, the hosts of storm cloud are boiling. A contrary gust whispers a shrill warning; we seek shelter at once, but with a seething and a roar the storm is upon us, lashing rain-lines in our faces. Fifty yards away the vicar’s house offers shelter—we are not acquaintances, but—— In three minutes we are in his kitchen, looking out toward the glen of Mosedale. At first nothing more is visible than a grey mass of whirling rain, then, for a summer storm is but brief, again the flanks of the nearer fells come in sight. The pall passes rapidly, and the sunshine is pouring over the spine of Yewbarrow before the last rush of rain has streamed down the hospitable window. Ere long, the glen is again rejoicing in sunshine; the grass sparkles with fairy gems, the streaming crags are touched into shields of silver, the hoary crown of Gable seems to brighten as though the new spirit of life below made even it, the monarch, rejoice.

CHAPTER VIII
THE GLORY OF ENNERDALE

Lying beyond the pale of great mountains, and only connected by rugged passes with other sights of Lakeland, the lake of Ennerdale does not attract many tourists. The approach to it, otherwise than by mountain road, is circuitous; the traveller, coming by ordinary routes from the outside world, is carried across a great ironworking district, where every stream runs red mud, and where black smeltery smoke hangs low. Yet Ennerdale in its own peculiar fashion is beautiful.

In my early days the lake seemed connected, in my mind, with stories of pirates and privateers—Paul Jones hovered on the coast near by till a gale drove him and his cursing hordes out to sea—and as more intimate knowledge came to me I still found Ennerdale connected with illicit seafaring. Smugglers—and my ancestors are reputed to have been among the most active of these—landed cargoes in the coves about St. Bees Head. From there goods were sent northward by the coast to Carlisle and the Border, and eastward over the fells to Penrith, Kendal, and distant towns and villages of the Pennine. The first route was early closed, but that over the passes baffled the revenue officers for years. The head of Ennerdale was quite out of the world then. The smugglers built rough caches to store their loads in wild weather, and even engineered with skill a path over Great Gable in the direction of Borrowdale. To-day this green band is known as Moses’s Sledgate. Moses, however, was not a smuggler, but an illicit distiller who, after the decline of the finer art, reared his “worm” in the wilderness.

A long climb over grassy open common brings the cyclist from Egremont to Ennerdale bridge: that irregular knot of houses, with its moss-veiled church, was in the past a mountain metropolis. Wordsworth’s poem, “The Brothers,” centres in this churchyard of the dale. As the poet thought out his theme, through his mind there must have passed memories of that grand, encircling chain of mountains, rugged Revelin, precipiced Pillar, and scree-strewn Iron Crag, with many more. Only in one real particular was the licence poetic indulged, for there were gravestones here, modest indeed, flat among smothering grasses or fringing the boundary walls.

Perhaps not at Ennerdale, but in equally remote districts, the church was used by smugglers. Under the rush-laid floor, cellars were dug to contain kegs of liquor, the miserably paid parsons conniving, often acting as selling agents. Church attendance would doubtless arouse more enthusiasm among grown men in days when the spent bottle could be exchanged after service for a full one, and there were “lashings” to drink beside. In one place where the parson could not be brought to see his “duty,” the kirkgarth was often tenanted by most eerie “corpse lights,” and had to be shunned accordingly by all honest folks and preventive men. Those “in the know,” however—and they were many—knew that brandy and rum would be plentiful next day, for a new supply of liquor had been hid in a raised vault, from which the parish clerk drew it as need arose.

From Ennerdale bridge the road climbs a couple of miles to the lake: in fact it somewhat overclimbs, for when at last the mere is viewed the wanderer is about three hundred feet too high, and has to descend by a very steep route to the Anglers Inn. That first glimpse is splendid: for half a mile back the hedgerows have prevented the eyes from wandering far, then suddenly bursts the glory. The waters deep beneath follow the mood of the day; laugh and sparkle when the sun shines and a warm breeze whispers; well gloomy and leaden when a host of clouds presses the mountains and shadows the lake-basin; swoon tender and soft when evening’s purple vapour drifts through passes and over summits, to collect in a pool in the valley beneath; surge and heave in breakers when a gale sweeps through the air; brood silent and sombre and still as a slab of jet when winter clothes the sky with deepest blue and the steeps with majesty of white.

I prefer a boat for exploring the beauties of Ennerdale Water within and without, for the road to Gillerthwaite is rough, and the path by Anglers Crag not without some difficulty. Ennerdale within is represented by some fine trout and by an occasional char. On this lake the char in early autumn will come to the lure of a red ant. These insects at this season develop feeble wings; they haunt the sandy soil near the lake and are for ever essaying flights. A slight breeze is enough to sweep whole crowds of them over the water; they fly to the end of their strength, fall into the lake and are snapped up by the fish which lie in wait near the surface. In winter the char resort to the main stream entering the lake, for the purpose of spawning. For many years a certain part of the beck was known as the Char Dub, for in it, in numbers sufficient to render the bottom invisible, the shoals of fish lay. At the present day, however, the diminished char elect to spawn on a shingle further up the stream.

For its trout-fishing Ennerdale is justly noted: there can be little finer sport than trolling here, the boat moving slowly on, the waves lap-a-lap against its timbers. When the attention is taken from the water, what a fine panorama of steep and rocky mountains!

Maytime among the mountains—a day of soft creeping shadows and warm sunlight, the firmament white with lofty clouds, though here and there a wide rag of blue shows between. The boat welts away from the pier; clack, clack, fall the oars on to their pins, a moment later, to a rumble and a churn of water, the rower falls to work. Local men do not use the rowlock and the feathering oar; a rigid pin is fitted on the side of the boat upon which a perforation in the oarshaft slots. The contrivance has undoubted advantages to anglers, as the oars do not need to be lifted inboard when not in use; secure on their pins they can trail through the water. But why all lake boats should be so fitted is beyond comprehension, for the superiority of the rowlock and the feathering oar is palpable: a boat can be pulled faster and more easily, and in moments of danger—which on a day of sudden squalls are frequent—are not less reliable.

As our boat slips away, the upper lake, a field of splendid blue, comes in sight. In mid-lake a tuft of rock claims attention—the boat glides to it over the faint ripples. It proves indeed to be a cluster of loose fragments, pushed up from the lake-floor to be a resting-place for the birds of land and water. So piled are the stones that it seems impossible human hands have not been busy in the midst of this waste of waters. Anglers and others have proved by crude methods that the protrusion is the crest of a sheer column of rock, or rocks as the case may be. If the figures confidently given are approximately correct, when, if ever, Ennerdale runs dry, an inaccessible pinnacle will be found to puzzle our rock gymnasts. Herons alight here to meditate and digest their toll of troutlets; and swift warriors of the air, buzzard, peregrine, and more humble sparrow-hawk, hover down to the islet-rock to rest and plan anew their forays. When afloat on Ennerdale the mountains, with infinite variety of shadow and gleam, rock and grass and downpouring water, demand most of my attention. I seldom look to the lake’s outlet: it is a comparatively flat scene if your boat is past the rugged slopes of Revelin. A long larch-wood fringes the shore—its monotonous blob of green in strong contrast to the livelier fellside dabbed with creamy, blooming hawthorns. Next to it, over a knot of buildings, rises an unsightly shaft of brick, belonging to a long-disused thread mill. The effect of rectangular wood and cylindrical chimney is dreary, stupid; it apes a modernity which here, in God’s wilderness, is at least unpicturesque.

Our vigorous friend at the oars has meanwhile brought us close to Anglers Crag. The bottom of the lake remains invisible, though the boat’s nose grates against the sheering rock; looking over the side, through the clear water, the slabs drop lower and lower till gathering gloom hides them from sight. The “crag” above, though steep, is quite climbable; it is worth while going ashore to scramble for ten minutes. The boat accordingly turns into a narrow bay where we may land on a beach of shelving shingle. The bank above is plenteously strewed with slabs of rock, though the “crag” is to our right. Up the hillside we find our view rapidly extending to westward, though the mountains still hem us in on all other sides. Shortly the sea is visible beyond smoky West Cumberland. The forms of shipping can be made out, sailing the channels through the shoals of Solway. And farther away still, if the day be clear, the hills of Scotland rise in an undulating line of blue. St. Bees Head is the only feature in a comparatively regular shore: a mass of sandstone, it sheers up four hundred feet above the strand. Here, on its very crest, once was a monastery, the lands of which were won by a miracle. St. Bega and her zealots landed hereabouts and found the people worshippers of strange Norse gods, unwilling to hear the new gospel and impatient for the visitors to be gone.

“Your God is almighty!” sneered the chief, “I will give you all the land in my domain that to-morrow bears snow. Your God is almighty; and you need nothing from humans—ask Him, then, for snow.”

The morrow was Midsummer Day; at early morn the folks of the country rose to find a mantle of cold, glistering white covering nearly all the land betwixt mountain and sea. The chief’s jest was, so runs the tale, carried out in full, and through war and peace the monks held to their inheritance till smooth King Henry divided their lands to others.

Down we come to the lake edge again, to raid the haunt of coot and heron—both birds not rare on Ennerdale Lake, the quietude of which is just perfect. Our boat floats in as wild and savage a scene as is to be made by mere and fell. The Char Dub is visited, the huge mass of Pillar Crag noted at as near a point as possible. Now, coasting barren fields above which the skylarks are trilling, and by shores decked with star-primroses, we return from the wilderness to the forest lands of oak and ash and alder.

Ennerdale Lake, though less visited than the other waters, is in its way as beauteous as they.

CHAPTER IX
BY SOFT LOWESWATER

Close enfolded in the lap of mountains, Loweswater is seldom seen by the casual tourist. At Scale Hill, a rugged ravine with a white river dashing down, is pointed as the direction in which it lies. At the sight of that crag-set hillside the cyclist turns regretfully and, down the good Lorton road, speeds away for Cockermouth or Keswick. Yet if the writer were compelled to seek another home among the Lakes, after Rothay’s magic glen he would select Loweswater. And there are others who would do likewise, who year after year come to the little secluded lake for holiday. For tell it not loudly, its trouting is the best in the Lake Country. The angling is not public, but it is possible to obtain permission for a week’s pleasure. The trout rule large for our northern waters, fish of over three pounds being landed every season.

As mentioned already, the lake is hidden in the flank of Mellbreak, the front of which sheds scree and occasional boulders into Crummock. For ages the dell was a stronghold of the ’statesmen who lived on their own holdings, but as hard times came the mischievous jointure system caused one small estate after another to come into the market. Lucky the monied in that dark era: the farmers grew despondent as their obligations increased. After centuries of abstemity rum and whisky began to be relished, with dire results. Wool which for long had stood at a good price fell rapidly to almost a nominal figure. Desperate farmers did not market their “clips” for several seasons in the hope that times would mend. But old stock was finally sold at whatever price offered. The vast imports from the new Australian colonies in the middle of last century thus completed the destruction which the Repeal of the Corn Laws began. Some who do not wish to see a return to Protectionism point out patches cumbered with heather where wheat was cultivated in those days of inflated prices. To force up prices that such wastes might become profitable, they say, would not benefit the farmer, the shepherd, or the dalesman now, as it did not in the past. The opponents to this view point with equal confidence to the days when the ’statesman was firm on his own soil, living and working at profit enough to pay out the jointures placed on him in his father’s anxiety to “do fair by his own.” A change, they sigh, might bring back those happy days. I take no side, save to say that the highest tariff imaginable cannot bring back the worthy, faulty ’statesman families. They are gone for ever. Strangers dwell within their gates, and till their fields.

There are no great houses round Loweswater, no castle was ever built in this domain of peace. The ancient farms, with their guardian yews, speak of gone days. I never see the twin trees by a farmstead with the inevitable box edge from gate to door without thinking of the old custom of setting a bowl of box in the porch of the house where a corpse was lying. Every one who visited was expected to take a sprig. Box grows slowly—the hedge planted by a man is hardly seen at maturity by his great-grandson; the Cumbrian peasant custom must have been an effectual reminder to all of man’s narrow span on earth.

To me Loweswater is a great reminder of olden days. No glaring hotel, no road traversed by hooting motor-cars or rattling coaches. A man can sit far up the slope of Mellbreak, look down on placid water and quiet vale, and allow his mind to ramble back fifty or a hundred years. He can re-picture the old glen and its society. First the priest. His church was small, his stipend ditto. As he was the head of society, christening babies, marrying the grown, and burying the dead, so the schoolmaster was generally the opposite. He was ordinarily despised, whereas the parson sometimes was revered. During the week the vicar was a farmer among farmers; he had a tithe of wool, could have sheep free on the heafs above the enclosures, which his parishioners had to look after. He took tithe of the sheaves at harvest, and of every kind of produce. The greater part of the schoolmaster’s remuneration was in the shape of victuals: he went “whittle-gate” by turns to the home of his pupils, living a week here, a week there. He was scrivener and will-maker to the parish where the priest did not take that office. He taught but few subjects: reading, writing, little arithmetic. But sometimes there was Latin and Greek and Hebrew for the really studious, as behind ale-soaked clothes, and in a fuddled brain, a schoolmaster might possess real classical knowledge. On the other hand, men who had had accidents at other callings, or were too worthless for manual labour, drifted into the teaching profession. Knowing only the merest rudiments and careless of learning more, they could not benefit the children, and were often a fearful example for them.

One of the main amusements of old dales-life in winter was dancing, either at merry nights, or at what were called “dancing classes.” To provide the music for these lived a class of wandering minstrels. What lives they led! I well remember poor old Tim, the last of these to come within my sight. He came to our knot of houses just as dusk was falling. He carried his fiddle in a green bag, and as he neared, took out the instrument and tuned a single string. Then his old voice trolled out, “Home, sweet home,” in faltering accents as he walked back and forward. Ages ago minstrels played by the hearths of the great, and sang the legends of golden renown: here Tim, tottering, his fiddle almost in ruins, his voice quavering over the well-known words, trying to get from poor cottagers enough to buy drink, or a night’s lodging. Poor Tim! His story was sad. He had money left him when he was a hard-working shoemaker nearly thirty years of age. To that time his only solace had been in music. The legacy turned his head, and in a short six months he was ruined. The little shop where he had mended boots was in the hands of the bailiffs, his wife and children were on the road with him. For awhile they travelled together, then the children were rescued by relatives—the poor wife dragged along alone in the wake of the drunken fiddler. At last too she faded away, died by a snow-covered roadside, and Tim went down to the bed-rock of despair. “I want no money, give me ale.” Fiddling here, and singing there till his voice gave way, he wandered a score years. Many tried to rescue him; once his little shop was restored him and for a whole summer he stuck to his “last.” But with dark nights, music was required at the inn, and he was tempted again. He trailed himself across from one merrymaking to another. He lived as he might; he slept as he could. And the morning before I saw him a farmer walking on the top of his hay-mow stepped on something that cracked. “Dash thee! thoo’s brokken my fiddle, and I’ll hae to play at t’ Ploo to-neet.” As he felt old age and death creeping on him, he wandered away from the country-side which was his home, and put miles of flat country between him and the mountains before the final call.

Another person who knew much of the dale in the old time would be the dumb fortune-teller. Persons without the power of speech were always credited in Cumbria with divination. The fortune-tellers were the most respectable of vagabonds: they worked satisfactorily and were well paid. No gloomy forecast was ever to my knowledge delivered. I have seen many of their hieroglyphs, some in picture-writing, promising untold good to the person who had consulted them. But the gipsies were, and are, another matter. The pedlar, too, was a well-known figure; with his pack on back he would go from farm to farm, selling all sorts of little tempting things.

To come to the lake at last. It is one of our smaller meres, and the quietest. It lies in a land of meadows, but lofty hillsides rise above its glen. No boats are kept for public use, but a visitor can usually arrange a loan with some farmer. Loweswater is not a lake to exhaust in one afternoon: the cunning ones lodge by the week at the clean, comfortable farms, enjoying the plain fare of rural Cumberland with a delight bred of open air and keen exercise. The rod is hardly ever from the waters, except for a siesta at midday—and not then if the day be overcast, with a warm breeze kissing the water and enticing broods of new insects from the depths. There are no char in Loweswater, though attempts have been made at introduction: probably the water is hardly deep enough to suit it.

To row out on a warm summer night and to fish here from midnight to dawn is a splendid experience. Though along the northern ridges a pale night-glow glimmers and fades, and the stars like diamonds glitter in the light blue above, down on the level waters everything is gloom. The man resting on his oars is a dark shadow: your companion’s “kent” face, though he has turned toward the light, is a patch of featureless grey. To see your fly it must be held high enough to come between your eyes and the narrow swathe of light on the horizon. Your boat drifts through the prattling wavelets slowly, slowly. Then along the line comes the expected tremor: a fish at last. No use trying to play him—get him to the surface: your tackle is strong enough to take some risks. Your rod responds to its struggles, yet you cannot guess where the trout is. Perhaps it may rush to the top and set up a faint wimple that catches the night light. In a few minutes, however, the fish is tired out and you draw it alongside. The largest of trout are nocturnal feeders, and the angler is occasionally delighted by very heavy fish. Persons unaccustomed to night on the water assert that the silence is almost appalling: save for the ripples against the timbers there is no sound. To me, however, there is pleasure in that far-off whistle of an otter; in the churrs and twitters, hoots and shrieks, of night birds. There is a romance in gloom of which garish day knows nothing. The fairy world visits you again, and you witness gay revels in the starlight.

The lake to the angler, the hillside and the meadows to the wanderer, are the charms of the vale. He who is not satisfied with the softly trawling boat, the midge-worried hour of non-success, can ramble in the woods and fields, with their glories of sedge and iris and cloying meadow-sweet, and up the rivulets dancing down shadowy ghylls. Climb the shoulder of Mellbreak, sit down every five minutes and look around. By this method a full enjoyment of the peaceful vale will be obtained. Notice the nearest things—the rose beetles: your friend down below in the green old boat will be sighing for such a one as that just turned over; and that crushing mass of parsley fern which, though the whole hillside is open to it, sticks close by that grey, weathered stone. The lake is now quite small below, a mere dot shows you the lazily floating boat: think scornfully now of the angler and his petty work. Look beyond, the great moors rolling toward St. Bees, the hills fining down to the North Cumberland plain, the Derwent here and there gleaming between banks of living green. Criffel and the Dumfries-shire hills, across the Solway. A patch of smoke shows the cathedral city of Carlisle, and you feel a pity for the workers under that pall. They think they see the sun shine, but you in a purer air rejoice in a more life-giving light than that pale gleam they praise. The bracken too is here, unfolding its last tendrils, and away goes a single red grouse with a mighty whirr and a squauking “Go back!”

A sound of human and canine voices comes now to the ear; and turning an outstanding rock, we come immediately to a busy scene. It is a sheep-washing; to the clamour of dogs, and the whistling and shouting of shepherds, are added the bleatings of two thousand sheep. One drove is on the hillside above marshalled by a pair of collies, another is below, threading an almost unseen track toward some distant holding. A shepherd is in charge of these, his dogs scouting to right and left. No straggler can bolt into the confusion of sheep in the little glen. Here a dam has been built just below a rudely piled fold. The sheep are driven into an outer court, then drafted into a small inner space. From this they are thrown into the water, which has been collecting since yesterday (so meagre is the stream), where men standing waist deep catch them. Holding the sheep’s head above water these quickly pass hands back and forward over the fleece, raising it so that water penetrates to the under-wool. This done to satisfaction the sheep are allowed to swim out. When one flock has been washed, it is sent to the portion of unfenced hillside from which it came. The scene is one of bustle; the work is arduous too, some of the men have been collecting and driving down their flocks since early dawn. Shortly after the washing, comes the day of “clipping,” when the fleece is removed, but the days of great “clippings” are past. Wool becomes ripe at different periods; and instead of treating the flock on a certain day only, the shepherd now shears as fast as fleeces are ready.

Standing above the washing pool we look down on the little animated patch—the struggling ewes, the water turgid with “dip,” the skilful men in water and on land, the ’cute collies watching their master’s flock and allowing no stranger to enter it. Beyond the dry stones of the river-bed, in a vista bounded by the steep sides of the gully, we see the lake in all its beauty. Woods, fields, diminished with distance, yet seem but over the brink of the chasm there.

Now from heather and bracken we return to green pastures and to the little ivied farmhouse, with old-fashioned doorway and chimney, which is our temporary home. All is peace around: the rookery is hardly heard across the intervening fields; the raven, in the blue above, scarce in all its wheels and hovers sends down one menacing croak. The day is spent, and up the western sky spreads a suffuse of crimson, flecked with wisps of cloud; at last night draws on, softly, bluely, creeping into the hollows of the hills and into the deeper shadows; the radiant lake dies from crimson to grey, and then, to the clatter of rowlocks, our boat comes home to the grassy pier.