Cūm! gi’ ’s a kiss o’ t’ heead on ’t,
An’ meeak na meear ut du;
My hand ’s here, wi’ my heart in ’t,
Tak’ them beeath—thou s’ niver rue!
OXENFELL DOBBY.
A Reminiscence of Langdale.
CCOMPANIED by the holder of a small farm in the dales, I was once riding up Yewdale sometime beyond the middle of a winter night. The fields on our right and the slopes and ledges of the screes and fells to the left and in front were shrouded in a vestment of frozen snow, which glared under the starlight with a brilliancy of reflection that rendered the absence of the moon unnoticed and uncared for. But the scattered groves and coppices to the eastern side, and the perpendicular craggs elsewhere, on neither of which the snow could rest as it fell, stood out black and dismal—blotches sable on a field argent—(queer heraldry this, but fair description) —with an intensity of gloom, a weird dreariness of aspect, which may hardly be realized by those who have looked upon Yewdale only when arrayed in the light verdure of spring, the matured leafiness of summer, or the marvellous variegation of autumn, under any one of which conditions that fair vale may fairly claim pre-eminence in beauty over all other minor dales of the Lake country.
On the occasion I tell of, the solemn desolation of the scenery, and the oppressive silence, broken only by the quick tramp of our ponies’ feet on the crisp snow, combined to discourage all thought of conversation or remark; and we traversed the whole length of the vale without the interchange of sentence or word. When, however, we had reached the point where the road to Tilberthwaite and Langdale Head diverges from that to Skelwith, and I was about to follow the latter, my companion laid his hand upon my rein, and said, in a rather peremptory tone, “We s’ teeak t’ tudder rooad, if yee pleease;” and on my objecting to quit the smoother and shorter road for the longer and rougher, he persisted—“It may bee as yee say, beeath t’ better an’ t’ bainer, bit nowte wad hire me to teeak t’ rooad ooer Oxenfell at this hour o’ t’ neet, an’ that’s o’ about it.” “But why?” I remonstrated, disinclined to yield in a matter of such importance to reasoning like this. “I s’ tell yee why,” he replied, “when we’s seeaf at my awn fireside, if ye sud ha’e time ut lissen.” “Is it a story?” I asked with some interest. “It’s nowte mitch of a stooary,” said he, “bit what ther’s on’t ’s true, an’ that’s meear ner can be said for many a better stooary. Bit cūm on, an’ ye s’ happen hear.” I resisted no longer, and we pursued our journey through Tilberthwaite, where the piebald dreariness of the scenery was even more marked and more depressing than in Yewdale. We reached our destination without disaster, but not without danger. The broad, deep ford in the stream, which there divides the two counties, and which we had to cross, was edged on either bank by a high, abrupt shelf of strong ice, very dangerous to slidder off and very difficult to scramble up on. Indeed, my fellow traveller, with his rough, clumsy little steed, more accustomed to the stangs of muck-cart or peat sledge than to saddle work, had a roll on the farther side—luckily rolling towards the land, and not into the water. But my sagacious old “Targus,” who, as I was wont in those days to boast, could carry me over any ground on which a mountain goat or a Herdwick sheep could find a foot-hold, after testing the strength of each slippery ledge by a heavy paw or two, traversed the dangerous passage with the same steadiness with which I had known him pace over others where a slip or a stumble would have had much more serious results.