CHAPTER I.
Geographical Position—Etymology—Attractions—A String of Authorities—The Lake—Its Attributes—Statistic—Piscatorial—Commercial—Fatal, and Scenic.
Conistone, anciently Conyngstone and Cunyngstone, is situated in that isolated portion of Lancashire which, divided from the mother county by Morecambe Bay, bears the general designation of Lonsdale North of the Sands, and in the extensive sub-division of Lonsdale North called High Furness, which, the map will tell you, lies between Windermere and the Duddon, and between the Brathay, in Little Langdale, and Low Furness.
Of its name, different derivations are given by different authorities. Some give it a British origin, viz., “ton a town, con at the head of, is a lake.” Others say it is from the Saxon “Konyg'ston,” thereby inferring it to have been, some time or other, a residence or appanage of royalty. Others, less profound and less ambitious, derive its name from the facilities for hiding in “times of trouble” afforded by the intricate and inaccessible character of its cliffs, crags, and boulders, and call it Cunning Stone. The first describes its position—the second may flatter the loyal vanity of its residents, and the third accords with its natural character, its ancient orthography, and the A BAKER’S DOZEN OF PANEGYRISTSlocal pronunciation of its name; therefore take which best suits your taste, and allow me to tell you something about it as we find it now.
The beauties of Conistone have never been adequately described, neither has it received even “the shadow of justice” from any writer since the days of Gray, the poet, old West, the antiquary, and Mrs Anne Radcliffe, of romance-spinning celebrity, all of whom wrote of the scenery of Conistone in terms of quaintly eloquent eulogium. Indeed, the once popular, and still admired, fabricatrix of “Mysteries,” places it pre-eminent over all its neighbours in its diversity of beauty; and, since her day, many have spoken or written in praise of one or more of the items which go to make up the sum of its unparalleled attractions.
A lady of high rank and wealth informed me that the salubrity of its atmosphere is such that, when in very precarious health, and advised by an eminent court physician to proceed to Madeira as her only chance of recovery, a few weeks’ residence at Conistone restored her to robust and permanent health.
Professor Wilson says, that when “you come in sight of the Lake of Conistone, the prospect is at once beautiful and sublime,” and “you will acknowledge that Conistone can almost bear a comparison with Windermere.” And even he admits elsewhere, that it surpasses Windermere in the quality of its char!—perhaps, to most people, the highest praise he can give it.
Another equally experienced, though not equally eminent gastronome, declares its black-faced mutton to be incomparably the best ever boiled.
Professor Sedgwick, in his “Geology of the Lake District,” names Conistone thrice for any other locality once.
Experienced and successful mining adventurers class it A1., on account of its underground wealth.
A BOLD DEDUCEMENT
Dr Charles Mackay says that Conistone Water is “the most placid of all the lakes.”
Thomas de Quincey, the English opium-eater, speaking of the view of Conistone from the road near Tarn Hows, says—“to which, for a coup de theatre, I know nothing equal.”
A talented artist of indisputable taste says, that no other vicinity affords such an abundance of subjects for fine pictures.
The rain-gauge states, that scarcely one-half of the rain falls here that falls at Keswick, (where, by the bye, Lord Byron makes a devil say it usually rains).
Last and best, Miss Martineau says, the traveller “has probably never beheld a scene which conveyed a stronger impression of joyful charm; of fertility, prosperity, comfort, nestling in the bosom of the rarest beauty.”
And I, being neither bard, antiquary, romancist, moral philosopher, gourmand, natural philosopher, miner, bookmaker, opium-eater, painter, moist weather meter, nor philanthropist in particular, but the least in the world of them all, “in the abstract”—keeping its scenery, atmosphere, geology, mineralogy, fish, flesh, and fine weather all at once in view, and lumping, as is fair, the opinions of all these great and undeniable authorities together,—hold it to be matchless, not only in the Lake district of England, but in the world, at least in any part of it that I have seen.
In executing my agreeable task of pointing out some of the more prominent of the beauties and attributes of Conistone, I shall suppose you, my reader (should I gain one) to be a diffident, well-disposed young gentleman, located at the Water Head Inn, and just coming down stairs after a capital night’s rest. It is no matter, for our present purpose, how you contrived to get there without seeing anything I am going to shew you, but there you LENGTH, &c., OF CONISTONE LAKE.are, “with shining morning face,” praying complacently, as you trip down stairs, that you may never find yourself in worse quarters. You may present my compliments to Mrs. Atkinson, and request her to let you have breakfast in the parlour with the projecting window. If you be very hungry, you had better not look out yet; but, should there be any delay in the appearance of your breakfast, a thing not very likely, you may amuse yourself with the visitor’s book until it comes in; but don’t scribble any nonsense in it, as has been done by some youths who have been permitted by their mammas to leave home prematurely.
Breakfast being brought in, whilst you are eating, I may as well say a word or two on the statistics of the lake whose head lies within a few yards of your feet, and whose ancient name was Thurston Water. It is about six and a half miles long, therefore ranks next after Windermere and Ullswater in point of size, or, to speak very exactly, in point of longitude, for I should suppose the area of Bassenthwaite Water to be larger than the area of this lake, it (Bassenthwaite), though only four miles long, carrying a better breadth with it than Conistone Water, whose greatest width does not exceed a mile, many parts not half a mile, the average lying, perhaps, between them. Its greatest depth is stated in the Guide Books to be twenty-seven fathoms, but a map or chart of the lake in my possession, which was made from actual survey, many years ago, by a talented native of the dale, gives the depth of forty fathoms at about two-thirds of the distance down the lake, and twenty or thirty yards from the western shore. This places the depth of Conistone Lake second only to that of Wastwater, which is stated by some to be forty-five fathoms, by others to be unfathomable. Conistone Lake contains, in addition to some mere rocks, two islands. The uppermost, called Knott’s Island, after its ISLANDS, FISH, AND MERCHANDISE.proprietor, or more frequently, Fir Island, from its handsome covering of Scotch firs, becomes peninsular in very droughty weather; and the lower, called Peel Island—why, I don’t know—or Montagu Island, after the Dukes of Montagu, formerly Lords of the Manor, and succeeded by the Dukes of Buccleugh, or by the Aborigines, the “Gridiron,” the best name of the three, inasmuch as it pretty accurately describes its shape, it having a handle or shank of rocks projected in lengthened chain from its south-western side, is covered by natural wood of no great altitude; and its rocky sides are so high and precipitous, as to render landing upon it a matter of difficulty, if not of danger, but, for all that, pic-nic parties sometimes resort to it. There was also a floating island about twenty yards square, finely covered with young birches of decent stature, which used to move about the lower end of the lake, but unfortunately it was stranded amongst the reeds near Nibthwaite by a strong north-east wind which prevailed for a day or two in October, 1846, when the lake was unusually swollen by heavy rains. I shall, perhaps, point it out to you by and bye.
As to the lake’s vulgarly useful qualities, it contains the best char in the world, and quantities of unsurpassable trout of delicious flavour, and often of large size—for instance, there was one cut up at your present quarters, some time since, which weighed fourteen pounds. Of its pike, I need only say that one of them roasted or baked “with a pudding in its belly,” is, on certain occasions, worth all the scenery in the neighbourhood. It is also rich in eels and perch, more particularly the latter. It serves as a commodious highway towards the port of exportation for two hundred and fifty tons of copper ore every month, as well as for nobody knows how much slate, flags, birch brooms, and small timber. Conjointly with the circumjacent mountains and valleys, and the SOMETHING “OLD KIT” SAYS.copper mines, it brings, during each laking season, a goodly haul of fish to your host’s net, in the form of tourists and visitors. There has been only one person drowned in it within the memory of man, and he was a stupid, drunken fellow, who walked into it over the slate quay. Of course, under these circumstances, the most harmless water in the world could do nothing else but drown him.
Of its ornamental characteristics you shall judge for yourself, as soon as you finish eating.
Well, having despatched a few cups of coffee and a fair proportion of a most satisfactory array of etceteras, (for be it remarked, en parenthese, that a breakfast furnished by Mrs Atkinson does not yield even to that at Grasmere described by Christopher North, in terms sufficiently graphic, “to create an appetite under the ribs of death,”) you may take a look from the window. Your first impulse is an expression of gratitude to me for advising you to make a hearty breakfast before looking forth, for assuredly, say you, this would, if seen before, have effectually withdrawn your attention from the creature comforts before you, albeit first-rate.
The eminent Scotchman already twice mentioned, who is a high-caste laking authority, although his judgment is somewhat warped by his attachment to his own Windermere, says, somewhere, that a man sitting where you do now, might fancy himself looking from the cabin window of a ship at anchor in a beautiful land-locked bay of some island in the South Sea. You don’t know how far that flight may be correct; but you think that the Pacific bays must, in beauty, fall somewhat short of the scene before you. And you are nearer right than the great Christopher, who is out of his latitude in the South Seas, else he had never drawn the pretty-sounding comparison. Though many of the bays in those seas are lovely enough, yet few, RHYME AND A REASON FOR IT.as I am told, can come within a day’s sail of Conistone Water, so far as ordinary impressions of the beautiful may bear me out; and the beauties of Conistone, as they are manifold, so are they manifest even to the lowest order of taste, or talent, or whatever the principle may be that enables a common-place man, like myself, to distinguish beauty when he looks at it, and as they are apparent to all, so must they be appreciable by every one, and—but I am waxing enthusiastic, and shall, if I go on, become intolerably nonsensical, for, with me, there is not even the one step between the sublime and the ridiculous; therefore, as I prefer being absurd in verse to being ridiculous in prose, till I cool down a little—
“I'll have a shy
At Po—e—try.”
Conistone, fair Conistone, how vain it were to roam
Abroad in search of beauty, with such scenes as thine at home,
For, nowhere,—seek the frigid north, or sultry southern clime,
Are mingled so the beautiful, the sweet and the sublime.
Thy placid lake is beautiful—its winding shores are sweet—
Thine Old Man Mountain is sublime, whose top the white clouds greet,
As brother greeteth brother, with a hearty, close embrace,
And round whose rugged rock-bound sides the sportive cloudlets race.
Though other lakes be passing fair,—though fair be “green Grasmere;”
Though Rydal boast its herony, and Rydal Mount be near;
Though Ullswater be gorgeous, and Bassenthwaite be broad;
Though lovely be the lake that holds Saint Herbert’s old abode;
Though Crummock slumber pleasantly, 'neath high Scale Force’s roar,
“And Butter”-mere “is beautiful, but that you knew before;”
Though Wastwater and Ennerdale look sternly dark, but clear;
Though Eden-like the islets be of regal Windermere;
Though each hath its own beauties, yet amongst them is not one
Can boast of beauty varied so as thine, sweet Conistone!
Thy rivulets are bright as is air bell or crystal bead,
And high, and wild, and lone the Tarns those rivulets that feed.
Thy sunny sky is cloudless oft, and healthful are thy gales;
And sweet, in their secludedness, thy tributary vales;
And pleasant are thy homesteads snug beneath thy mountains dark,
And stately stands thine ancient Hall within its coppiced park.
And lofty are thy crags from whence the wakeful raven stoops,
And wildly are thy fells arranged in strange fantastic groups,
Uprearing their majestic heads in grandeur, gloom, and pride,
And none may tell what treasures vast their rugged bosoms hide.
And such are some attractions which in Conistone we find;
But Conistone! dear Conistone!! thy best remains behind,
For never elsewhere have I found, though I have wander’d far,
A dinner like thy mutton-chops preceded by thy char!
EASTERN SHORE.
There, there! you seem to have had enough of that, and I, having let off my superabundant steam, may now get on in a sedate, business-like manner. The placid lake and its winding shores you are now staring at, and tastefully, as you perceive, are its winding shores decorated with timber disposed in rich variety of thriving young plantations, clump, grove, coppice, hedge-row, solitary tree, avenue, and shrubbery, gracefully interblended here, and separated by fields and wide pastures of glorious verdure there, the whole finished off on the east, which we shall dispose of first, by miles and miles of heath purpled moorland. Along the lake on its said eastern side, are the finely-sheltered grounds of Tent Lodge, Bank Ground, Conistone Bank, Brantwood, and Water Park. The lake appears to terminate at about five miles distance—in fact, a little below “the Gridiron,” or a mile and a half from the lake foot—the water thereabout making a gentle sweep to the east. The southward prospect is bounded by the high-lying moor of Gawthwaite, from whence the green and cultivated slopes of Lowick and Blawith appear to descend in easy gradation to the water edge. Bringing the eye back along the western shore, your attention is next arrested by the brightly verdant, WESTERN SHORE.cultivated and conical height of Stable Harvey, standing out in fine contrast against the dark brown Beacon hill in Blawith, which considerably overtops it, and forms, with its broken outline, a highly picturesque background to the landscape in that direction. The landward edge of Stable Harvey is hidden from where you are, by the lengthened heath-clad summit, and coppiced and furze-clad side of Torver common, which rises steep from the margin of the lake to a considerable height. As you follow up the margin of the lake, you next descry the beautiful farm of Hawthwaite, with its rookery, plantations, and numerous single trees, occupying a fine situation under the northern shoulder of Torver common, and presenting one of the most eligible sites for a gentleman's seat, with extensive grounds, in the north of England. Nearer still, you see a promontory covered with bright verdure, and tipped, or fringed, with low spreading wood, running out, as it seems from the Water Head, into the very middle of the lake. It is the Hall Point; the grounds lying between it and Hawthwaite, and extending from the water side to the tops of the heights more than a mile to the westward, form the ancient deer-park, which possesses such a luxuriant and widely-extended covering of natural timber, as might gladden the hearts of those who affect to hold that any utilitarian interference with nature tends grievously to degrade or destroy the romantic characteristics of lake scenery. The Hall itself is concealed by the upper arm of the bay, with the trees and neat, but singular and high, steep-roofed edifice upon it. The said building is a boat-house belonging to “The Thwaite,” a handsome residence upon the southern declivity of the richly-wooded eminence to your right, over which you may note “The Old Man,” anciently, and more correctly, “Alt Maen” (British),
“Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,”
and looks, from this window, something like part of the back and head of a huge elephant, with his trunk slightly extended and a wart on his forehead.
GROUNDS, FELLS, AND VILLAGE.
You had better now take a boat and row a mile or two down the lake, and row yourself, or, if you are lazy, at least sit with your face to the stern, and fresh beauties will open upon your enraptured gaze at every stroke of the oars.
Beyond, or above, the inn you are leaving, is the residence of Mr James Garth Marshall, one of the princely manufacturers of that name in Leeds; it is surrounded by—excepting in some particulars Rydal Hall—decidedly the finest demesne in the Lake district, so far as the most beautiful combination of all the elements of natural and artificial loveliness can establish its superiority; for nowhere else have I seen wood and water, hill and valley, green sward and purple heather, rugged crag and velvet slope, grey rock and bright blossoming shrubs brought under the eye at once, in such magnificent contrast. Over the western side of the grounds, you may note the picturesquely rugged and jagged summit of Raven Crag, at the head of Yewdale, and nearer to you, but still more to the west, the wild, precipitous and lofty Yewdale crags. Over them the long ridge of Henn Crag, and higher still the broad summit of Weatherlam; and, as you row farther down the lake, the lofty undulating range connecting those with the Old Man, which last you may now contemplate in all his hoary grandeur and rugged magnificence. And, having just shewn you one of the finest demesnes and grandest mountain groups in the Lake district, I now shew you the most romantically situated village, parts nestled at the foot of the steep craggy hills, and parts stuck here and there upon the face of the adjacent declivity, every separate detachment, whether consisting of one or many houses, having its own separate designation, “TIME’S CHANGES.”but forming altogether the village of Church Conistone, and containing, by the last census, twelve hundred people. Its scattered appearance suggests the idea of something having, at some former period, flown across the country with a bagful of houses, and losing a number here in irregular lots through a hole in the sack. And here, close by in the apex, or, to speak nautically, the bight of the bay, between a row of lofty sycamores and the wide-spread woods of the old park, stands Conistone Hall, the ancient seat of the once warlike family of le Fleming, but now a farm house—with a considerable portion removed, and the banquet hall, wherein, of old, knightly revellers befuddled their brains in honour of high born ladies, converted into a barn, and a mighty commodious barn it makes; but how very applicable would be a quotation from Hamlet here, were it not hackneyed. The hall's most striking features now are its massive ivy-clad chimneys, though it is well worthy a closer inspection, and I shall perhaps tell you more about it at our next confabulation.
CHAPTER II.
Daylight versus Moonlight—Possible Results of Moonlight Laking or Love-Making—Conistone Hall—“The Hall Clipping”—Vale of Yewdale—Yewdale Crags—Old Yew Tree—Raven Crag—Hunting Incident.
Some harmless individuals who desiderate the reputation of a taste for the romantic, and fancy that such reputation is to be attained by affecting to think differently from the ordinary race of observers, maintain that this lake and the circumjacent landscape, like the ruins of Melrose, as described (unseen, except by daylight) by Sir Walter Scott, are seen to most advantage by moonlight. I don't agree with them! The beauties around you are so numerous, so diversified, such perfect realities, and the deformities or defects in the scenery are so few and so minute, that no softening or shadowing is required to enhance a reasonable man’s enjoyment of the loveliness of Conistone. The more extensively, and the more distinctly its features are developed, the more must it be admired. As with some rare specimens of human nature, “the more you see of it, the better you like it.” Therefore, be it mine to gaze upon, to exhibit and to dilate upon the attractions of this “our own fair vale,” just when the “sun of the morning” has mopped up the mists of the night,—when mountains and mere, crags and cottages, woods and waterfalls, fields and fell-sides, are fairly lighted up, and fully brought into view in all their proud proportions, and in all their contrasted colours. And, moreover, as Conistone is best seen under
MONITION.
“One unclouded blaze of living light,”
so will any susceptible young gentleman like yourself best consult his well-being by forswearing all loitering by moonlight, whether for laking or love-making purposes. I myself, in those days “when hope was high and life was young,” grievously deteriorated my mental quiet, as well as my physical comfort, by indulging in these too natural propensities, as may be evidenced by the following rhymes which, under the retrospect of wounded feelings and aching bones, I felt constrained to indite, and now offer to you by way of caution against yielding to the promptings of an excitable imagination; and, first, what say you to this?
Matter of Moonshine.
Where the hazels droop o'er a lake-laved slope,
Sat a sweet little maid and I,
And a chastened light lay softly bright
On water, wood, and sky;
For the lovely moon, in the “lift aboon,”
Was 'shrined on her azure throne,
And bright and clear in the slumbering mere
Her mirrored semblance shone.
We were silent both, and the evening moth
Was the only life that stirred,
And the far, faint roll of the waterfall
The only sound we heard;
Till soft and slow did a murmur low
Come on through the quivering trees,
And the boughs of the brake and the reeds of the lake
Were bent by a passing breeze.
And still did we lean on our couch so green—
That sweet little maid and I—
And we marked its course as, with lessening force,
The breeze swept ruffling by.
Whilst the lake rippled o'er from shore to shore,
And shattered the moonbeams bright,
Till that mirror broad o'er its surface showed
One shivering sheet of light.
But it passed away, and the waters lay
Once more in their holy sleep,
With the orb so fair still glittering there
In their bosom dark and deep;
When that sweet little maid glanced up and said,
With her smile so fond and free,
“I can tell you how what we've witnessed now
May apply to you and me:
If yon radiant light that adorns the night,
Seem the light of my love for you,
And her form beneath your answering faith
So perfect, deep, and true;
If that breeze appear any transient care
That may ruffle your bosom’s rest,
Then they shew that my love will the brighter prove,
When peace forsakes your breast.”
Long years have fled since that sweet little maid
Thus sweetly said to me,
And as seasons change, will the fancies range
Of maidens young as she.
And from hopes of bliss, in a life like this,
Will dreamers all awake—
And all that was said by that sweet little maid,
Was as moonshine on the lake.
So much for mental quiet; the next, as the show people say, will be for physical comfort, viz.:—
'Twas eve, and over Walna Scar the sun had sought the west,
And shades of night were settling thick o'er Thurston’s glassy breast,
But yet I lingered on the lake as loath to leave a scene
So lovely as, ere day’s decline, fair Conistone had been.
When over Hawkshead’s heights arose a mild and mellow light,
Announcing, with its silver sheen, the coming Queen of Night;
And now I lingered on the lake her advent high to see,
When stealing through the breezeless night came sounds of melody.
And from the mantling mist emerged a slowly gliding boat,
Which seemed in that imperfect light upon the mist to float;
And now I lingered on the lake a wild, sad song to hear,
And deemed it all too sweet for sound of this terrestrial sphere.
That seraph song to silence sank, the boat swept slowly past,
But soon another strain was heard as sweet as was the last;
And still I lingered on the lake in strange entrancement held,
Whilst through the calm mist-laden air the plaintive cadence swelled.
The moon rose fair above the fell, and fast her radiance cleared
The gloom away, and by her light another boat appeared;
And now I lingered on the lake to watch that lonely pair
Of tiny barks, propelled by hands of maidens young and fair.
Then soon as ceased the second song, the first-seen boat drew nigh,
And promptly did the first-heard voice in harmony reply;
And still I lingered on the lake unseen from either boat,
While Brantwood’s echoes multiplied each bosom-thrilling note.
As boat crossed boat—song after song did their fair crews repeat
Across the cool and glancing mere, in alternation sweet;
And still I lingered on the lake, and prayed they might prolong
Till day their strife of melody, alternate song and song.
And when they ceased, all nature seemed involved in sudden shade,
The lake its placid brightness lost, the moonlight seemed to fade;
No more I lingered on the lake—I felt the charm was fled,
And feeling, too, I’d caught a cold, went sneezing home to bed.
FARTHER WEST.
When I commenced this tedious, but, in your case, requisite digression, you were seated in a boat upon the lake, and staring with all your might at the turret-like, ivy-clad chimneys of Conistone Hall; concerning which hall West, the precise and industrious Furnesian Antiquary, who published his great work in 1774, says therein—“Conistone Hall appears upon the bank of the lake; it was for many ages the seat of the Flemings, and though now abandoned and in ruins, it has the air of grandeur and magnificence.” And again, in his history of the family who possess it, he says—“Sir Richard le Fleming, in the reign of Henry III., married Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Adam de Urswick, by which marriage he acquired MORE OF “THE HALL.”the manor of Conistone, and other considerable possessions in Furness;” and—“Upon the acquisition of the manor of Conistone, the family returned to Furness, the first seat of the Flemings. The Castle of Caernarvon was abandoned, then erased, and Conistone Hall was the family seat for seven generations. After the union of Lancaster with Le Fleming (temp. Hen. 4th), Rydal and Conistone vied with each other for seven generations more to fix the family in Westmorland or Lancashire. Sir Daniel le Fleming came and gave it against the latter; since that event (about 1650-60), the Hall of Conistone, pleasantly situated upon the banks of the lake of that name, has been deserted.”
If the Hall were in ruins seventy-four years ago, you may perceive that, though sufficiently venerable and time-shaken, there is nothing exactly like ruins about it now; but, as I said before, a great part of it has been removed, as is shewn by certain jambs and chimney-pieces which remain in the outer surface of what is now the outer wall, and have formed the fire-places of an extensive range of apartments which formerly occupied the space along the northern side of the present edifice. What remains of the Old Hall, I have also said, is converted into a farm-house and appurtenances, both of which are of a most commodious and substantial description; and, should your sojourn at Conistone happen to fall in the early part of July, let me exhort you to attend the Conistone Hall clipping, or sheep-shearing, where you will witness some “scenes of life and shades of character” not to be seen every day, nor in every locality; and, moreover, you will find the viands to accord in character with the building,—i. e. to be plentiful, substantial, and old-fashioned.
I say that the scene, or rather the series of scenes, presented by a sheep-shearing in the lake country, are of a description not to be passed by in these artificial days, when “touches of nature,” which “make the whole world kin,” are rare as they are rich;—therefore, supposing you to be at Conistone in the proper season, I shall, with your approval, of which I have little doubt, and with Mr Irving’s hospitable permission, of which I have still less, introduce you to that of Conistone Hall.
SHEEP-SHEARING.
The sheep, which are of the black-faced breed, are all gathered in from the fells on the previous day, or early in the morning, and are penned up in lots in a large detached barn through which you pass, and, in a yard behind which you are startled by a scene of animated and noisy bustle wonderfully at variance with the surrounding quiet. In two rows along the inner side of the semicircular yard wall, are seated the clippers, numbering from 25 to 30, each astride upon a stool, busily plying his shears upon a sheep laid bound on the stool before him; and you cannot help being surprised at the rapidity with which the animals are divested of their superabundant coverings; that tall man there in the blue linen jacket is one of the most expert, and can take the fleece from a mountain sheep in three minutes. I am told his father, a respectable yeoman in an adjacent vale, was still more dexterous, and that, for a wager, he, in one day, clipped—a number which, as I am anxious to maintain my character for veracity, I shall not here state. The average rate of clipping is, of course, lower than what I have mentioned; but, allowing it to be so, this number of shears incessantly at work for seven or eight hours, may give some idea of the number of sheep denuded each year on this and similar farms.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ AND DINNER.
In attendance upon the clippers are a much greater number of men and lads supplying them with unclipped sheep and removing those operated upon to another part of the yard, where, beside a turf-fire and a kettle of melted tar an active youth is stationed ready to stamp them with their owner’s initial, with another near at hand ycleped “the doctor,” carrying in his hand a pot of ointment to anoint the wounds, which, in such a hurried operation, many of his ovine patients receive. Multitudes of boys are skipping about on every side, collecting the cords as they are removed from the limbs of the clipped sheep, and carrying them to be applied to the feet of their successors upon the clipping stools. In a remote corner of the yard, a small party of sedate, business-like individuals are rolling up the fleeces upon a couple of small sloping platforms, and handing them over the wall to others who are building them upon carts, to be carried to the storing-house. One jolly-looking personage, with an aspect worthy of his office, is moving about and dispensing “clipping drink” to all and sundry. And “Woo' Geordie,” known elsewhere as “Mop George” (after his chief article of merchandise,) is poking about gathering up stray fragments of wool. These, with one or two groups of idle on-lookers waiting for, and wondering when it will be, dinner-time, and perhaps an artist sketching the various and ever-changing groups, constitute the dramatis personæ of the sheep-shearing, whilst nothing but work is going forward; but, now the last sheep shorn, the last fleece rolled up, and “Woo’ Geordie,” liberally informed that he may convert to his own proper use and emolument all the fragments of wool that remain on the ground (no inconsiderable prize to him,) adjourn we to the Hall where a banquet waits our attack, which is perfectly worthy of Conistone Hall in its best days, for gigantic rounds of beef, and legs of veal, ditto of mutton, and quarters of lamb, with every tempting and appropriate accompaniment, are arranged upon a table which accommodates thirty hungry people at once, and the first detachment, having stuffed to repletion with the above enumerated solids, topped off with sweets, “quæ nunc perscribere FUDDLING AND FUN.(or describere either) longum est,” are succeeded by a second troop equally sharp set, and those who were idlers before, are by no means the least industrious now. “Another and another (set) yet succeeds,” until the whole party, amounting to something above six score, are fed and satisfied. You may observe that the whole company does not partake of its generally pastoral and agricultural character, for the duties of one end of the table are probably discharged, to all the successive troops of eaters, by a practitioner of the law, and those of the other by a ditto of medicine, both of whom are glad to relieve, by a few hours’ mirth, untutored though it be, their daily routine of attention to the multifarious derangements to which the business and the bodies of “God’s humanity” are liable.
Dinner being at last fairly finished, “now comes the sweetest morsel of the night,” and strong ale and tobacco, as their legitimate successors, supersede beef and pudding, and all the guests being settled down in the capacious Hall, as many as can, round the long table, others on forms or benches arranged in rows, and others, more favoured, apart from the crowd, around a small table placed under a chimney large enough to be a dwelling-house for a family of moderate pretensions; pipes are filled and lighted, glasses are filled and tasted, and singing is commenced by John Kendal giving, in characteristic and peculiarly comic style, a quaint old ballad of the “down, derry down” genus, concerning a parson who “had a remarkable foible of loving good liquor much more than the Bible,” and of whom it was said “he was much less perplext in handling a tankard than handling a text,” and, once set a going, a stream of songs interspersed with “quips and cranks,” and no! not “wreathed smiles,” but wide grins and roars of laughter, with noisy joke and noisier repartee, carries rapidly away the remaining hours of the evening. The majority of the songs are CLOSE OF THE CLIPPING.of a stamp now to be met with only amongst the mountains, or in such other districts where primitive pastoral habits yet prevail, and are to be appreciated and enjoyed only by those who hold broad humour and natural spirit and freedom to be a sufficient compensation for rudeness of phraseology, and the absence of polish, refinement, and high sentiment; and you may notice, that, as might be expected, their subjects and sentiments become less and less refined, and their humour less and less restrained, in due proportion with the sinking of the potent clipping drink in the tilted barrels, till at length the very orderly part of the company think it time to depart.
I may be censured for introducing you to scenes like these, and the only excuse I have to offer is that I wish to give you a correct idea of life and manners amongst the primitive inhabitants of these our dales, and it is only by mixing freely amongst the people upon such occasions, that any true knowledge of their habits and customs is to be gained.
I was lately deluded into reading a book entitled, “Conistone Hall, or the Jacobites,” written by a dignitary of the English Church, “in order,” as he says, “to exhibit the tone of feeling and the disorders of Church and State, to which the ill-advised revolution of 1688 gave rise.” I was simple enough to hope to find matter of local interest in a book called “Conistone Hall,” but was grievously disappointed,—it might as well have been called “Lancaster Castle,”—and the subject-matter is quite worthy of the author’s object.
And now, having bored you, probably ad nauseam, about the Old Hall, it were well to return to your Inn; and, having allowed you what is requisite of rest and refreshment, I shall carry you off upon your longest excursion first; “and,” to quote The Professor thereanent, “if murmuring streams and dashing torrents, and silent pools, and shadow-haunted grass-fields, and star-studded meadows, and glimmering groves, and cliff-girdling coppice woods, and a hundred charcoal shellings, huts and cottages, and one Old Hall, and several hall-like barns, and a solitary chapel among its green graves, and glades, and dells, and glens without number, knolls, eminences, hillocks, hills, and mountains,—if these, and many other such sights as these, all so disposed that beauty breathes, whispers, moves, or hangs motionless over all, have power to charm your spirit,——away with the cavalcade into the heart of the expecting mountains.”
HORSE AND AWAY.
If, like myself, you prefer enjoying a long excursion upon four legs to enduring it upon two, your host can supply, at a satisfactory rate, ponies well accustomed to the roughest roads in the country. You declare for the equestrian mode of progression: well, say the word, and behold your steed at the door. Being safely and pleasantly mounted, you turn your pony’s tail to the lake, and canter up the road till you come to a group of ancient and picturesque cottages and farm-buildings, called High Waterhead (Conistone Water being bicipital), and then take the road to your left, which passes through amongst these houses, and by another old homestead called 'Boon (vulgo above) Crag, holding on along an occupation road which winds through a considerable portion of Mr Marshall's wooded parks; and, as you jog along, keep a sharp eye to the left,—“ride, as the Spaniard hath it, with your beard on your shoulder,”—and your vigilance will be rewarded with occasional glimpses of the lake and its shores, broken up into a series of lovely fragmentary pictures by the irregular intervention of the scattered or “clumped” timber. You soon begin to descend into the middle of the vale of Yewdale, which Mr Parkinson, the accomplished canon of Manchester and Principal of St. Bees, maintains to be the most beautiful in the lake district, and which is described by Green, the artist, as being “a grand valley lying at the feet of the high mountains on the north of Conistone Water.” As you approach it, you must, if you have eyes and soul, be struck with “the steep, frowning glories” of the mile-long range of lofty cliffs which bound Yewdale on the whole extent of its western side, the otherwise barren aspect of which is finely relieved by thick groves, comprising oak, larch, birch, holly, &c., stretching along the foot of the crags, and also by numerous and various trees flourishing here and there along the face of the steep, in situations “the most inaccessible by shepherds trod,” even up to the highest verge of the precipice, where it makes one giddy to imagine how they have been planted, for they ore not of spontaneous growth, but were all planted by the late Mr Knott.
REMARKABLE IN YEWDALE.
You cross the pellucid Beck of Yewdale by a ricketty wooden bridge, pass through the farm-yard of Low Yewdale, and immediately after gain the high road, which runs along the west side of the valley close under the crags. As you near the head of the vale, be pleased to observe, as you will doubtless be pleased in observing, the sweetly situated farm of High Yewdale, with its long rows of unmercifully clipt yews, looking like magnified chessmen, one of which was recently recommended to my notice by an observant fair friend, as presenting a ludicrous resemblance to a starched puritan of the time of the Commonwealth, attired in round beaver and “cloak of formal cut.” You must here diverge a little from your line of ramble to examine the aged tree which gives its name to the vale, and which some unscrupulous local chronologists stoutly maintain to have been coeval with the deluge. Without feeling myself called upon to establish that fact, I may safely enough assert that it must be of vast antiquity, and it is the largest yew that I have yet fallen in with, those immortalized by Wordsworth as “the pride of Lorton vale,” and the “fraternal four of Borrowdale,” not excepted. I, and two friends, girthed it one summer with three riding-whips knotted together, and found it, at five feet from the ground, to measure 29 feet in circumference. You see that it has an aperture in the northern side of its huge trunk, which, like Mercutio's wound, though “not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, 'twill serve” to let you go in and creep round between that centre pillar formed of the most internal layers of its wood and the surrounding wall formed of its external layers and bark, a large portion of the intermediate timber having, like the halls of Lord Byron’s fathers, “gone to decay.”
FUTILE FOX-CRAFT.
This wondrous feat being duly accomplished, for your future exaltation, retrace your steps as far as the Shepherds' Bridge, and then, holding to the right, you soon pass through a gate, and come out upon a somewhat stony road winding along between the beck and the foot of Raven Crag, which rises on your right, steep and rugged, to form its multi-peaked crown. That precipitous peak (or pike) immediately above you, was the scene of an event remarkable in the annals of mountain fox-hunting. A poor fox, after an unusually long chase, reached the summit of Raven Crag, closely pursued by only three hounds, the rest of the pack being distanced long before; as a last chance for life, he made directly for the edge of that precipice, purposing, doubtless, to swerve when close to the verge, and thus rid himself of his pursuers by throwing them over: this sagacious expedient was, however, unsuccessful, for, when he reached the edge, his three foes were too near to admit of his effecting the saving turn, and all four were projected from the brow of the cliff, and dashed, out of all semblance of caninity and vulpinity, on the stones not far above your present position.