This, no doubt is, as I have said, a very charming picture of humble house life in a lonely home; but the picture is drawn by a poet, and, in his words—certainly not in those of the worthy dame from whose lips they are made thus melodiously to flow.
I have conversed with many elderly people who knew this couple familiarly, and several have told me of the almost seraphic beauty of the old man’s features, lowered, as it was, by a lack of expression, denoting a weakness of mind and character, which, in the opinion of neighbours, perfectly justified Betty in maintaining full domestic supremacy and undisputed rule.
Of the manner in which she sometimes asserted that supremacy, and brought her husband back to his allegiance, when, as was rare, he happened to stray from it, an amusing instance was told to me by a respectable widow, who for many years occupied the farm of Oxenfell, a lonely spot, amid the wild craggy uplands on the Lancashire side of Little Langdale, and nearly opposite to Hackett, where the Yewdales resided. Were it only to show how differently great poets and ordinary people regard the same subject, this is worthy of preservation, and I give it, very nearly, in my informant’s own phraseology.
“Ther’ hed been a funeral fray about t’ Ho’garth, an’ varry nār o’ t’ men fooak about hed geean wi’ ’t till Cūnniston. Nixt fooarneeun, Betty Yewdale com’ through fray Hackett, an’ says she till me, ‘Hes yower meeaster gitten back fray t’ funeral?’ ‘Nay,’ says I, ‘he hesn’t!’ ‘An’ irrn’t ye gān ut lait him?’ says Betty. ‘Lait him!’ says I, ‘I wodn’t lait him if he didn’t cù heeam for a week.’ ‘Why, why!’ says she, ‘yee ma’ due as ye like, but I mun bring mine heeam, an’ I will!’ An’ off she set i’ t’ rooad till Cūnniston. On i’ t’ efterneeun, she co’ back, driving Jonathan afooer her wi’ a lang hezle stick—an’ he sartly was a sairy object. His Sūnda’ cleeas leeūk’t as if he’d been sleepin i’ them on t’ top of a durty fluer. T’ tye of his neckcloth hed wūrk’t round till belā’ t’ ya lug, an’ t’ lang ends on’t hung ooer ahint his shoulder. His hat hed gitten bulged in at t’ side, an’ t’ flipe on ’t was cock’t up beeath back an’ frūnt. O’ togidder, it wod ha’ been a queerly woman body ’at wod ha’ teean a fancy till Jonathan that day.
“Says I till Betty, ‘What, ye hev fūnd him than?’ ‘Fūnd him!’ says she, ‘ey, I’ fūnd him! I knā’t whār ut lait him! I fūnd him at t’ Black Bull, wi’ yower meeaster, an’ a lock meear o’ t’ seeam sooart. They wor just gān ut git the’r dinner, wi’ a girt pan o’ beef-steeaks set on t’ middle o’ t’ teeable. I meead t’ frying pan an’ t’ beef-steeaks flee gaily murrily out o’ t’ duer, an’ I set on an’ geh them o’ sike a blackin’ as they willn’t seeun forgit. Than I hail’t Jonathan out fray amang them; bit when I’d gitten him out wi’ mè, I shām’t ut be seen on t’ rooads wi’ him. Dud iver yè see sike a pictur’?’ ‘Why, nay! nit sa offen, indeed,’ says I. ‘Well,’ says Betty, ‘as I wodn’t be seen i’ t’ rooads wi’ him, we hed to teeak t’ fields for’t, an’, as it wosn’t seeaf ut let him climm t’ wo’s, I meead him creep t’ hog-hooals.[7] I meead him creep t’ hog-hooals,’ says Betty, ‘an’ when I gat him wi’ his heead in an’ his legs out, I dūd switch him.’”
This true story shows Wordsworth’s humble heroine in not quite so romantic a light as he throws round her in the passages I have quoted; but I don’t see that it need lower her in our esteem.
THE SKULLS OF CALGARTH.
A Reminiscence of Windermere.
(CHIEFLY IN THE DIALECT OF WESTMORLAND.)
