COURTING CUSTOMS.
There is a little book bearing the odd title of “The Old Church Clock,” written by the Rev. Mr Parkinson, canon of Manchester, &c., which, possibly, you may have read. If you have, you may remark how strangely inaccurate the amiable author is in his local geography. To take one instance of many, he represents the sister of his hero to have the very reprehensible habit of slipping out of the paternal door, after bed-time, somewhere about the head of Yewdale, as near as I can fix it, and tripping it deftly over hill and dale, to meet her scamp of a sweetheart in this little dell. The said sweetheart must have been a very irresistible, as well as a very unreasonable personage, to entice a decent man’s daughter to enact the cart going to the horse, and give him the meeting so far from home—for the distance is little short of a round dozen of miles—and she is described as taking the rough, wild road that you have travelled over in this excursion. It is “rather of the ratherest,” and moreover, though this same custom of “meeting by night in the shady boreen” may suit a taste so romantic as that of the reverend author, it is not the custom of the daughters of these dales, who, with a careful regard for personal comfort and security from interruption, always have their wooers within the house after the family retire to rest; and I may quote Anderson, the Cumbrian bard, in support of the correctness of this statement, premising that the customs of this portion of Lancashire are, in all respects, similar to those in Cumberland and Westmorland. He says,—“A Cumbrian peasant pays his addresses to his sweetheart during the silence and solemnity of midnight, when every bosom is at rest, except those of love and sorrow. Anticipating her kindness, he will travel ten or twelve miles over hills, bogs, moors and mosses, undiscouraged by the length of the road, the darkness of the night, or the intemperature of the weather. On reaching her habitation, he gives a gentle tap at the window of her chamber, at which signal she immediately rises, dresses herself, and proceeds, with all possible silence, to the door, which she gently opens, lest a creeking hinge or a barking dog should awaken the family. * * Next the courtship commences, previously to which the fire is darkened or extinguished, lest its light should guide to the window some idle or licentious eye. In this dark and uncomfortable situation (at least uncomfortable to all but lovers), they remain till the advance of day,” and so on, concluding with some moralizing remarks upon this naughty custom, which I do not feel myself called upon to repeat. These “sittings,” which THE BALANCE OF MORALITY—WHERE? are in constant practice all over these northern counties, and which, after all, are not so bad as the Scotch and Welsh sweethearting customs, generally come off on the Saturday nights; and this practice, which involves the violation of the Sabbath, as well as the breach of decorum, is unnoticed, or rather winked at, by most writers who pretend to describe “life and manners” in the Lake country, such as Wilson, Wordsworth, De Quincey, and, lastly, Mr Parkinson. In fact, there appears a design amongst that tribe of writers to cry up the inhabitants of secluded districts such as these, at the expense of the inhabitants of towns. I am ready to do battle in this cause under the banner of Miss Martineau, who, in her triumphant answer to the arguments of those who opposed the introduction of railways into the Lake district, on the plea, amongst others equally absurd, that the morality of the people would suffer from contact with the denizens of towns, who, it was dreaded, would avail themselves in crowds of the increased facilities of transit, says—“As for the fear that the innocent rural population will be morally corrupted by intercourse with people from the towns, we have no apprehension of this, but are disposed to hope rather than fear certain consequences from the increased intercourse of the mountaineers with the people of large towns. We doubt at once the innocence of the one party, and the specific corruption of the other. Scarcely anything can be conceived more lifeless, unvaried, and unideal, than the existence of the dalesmen and their families; and where the intellect is left so idle and unimproved as among them, the sensual vices are sure to prevail. These vices rage in the villages and small towns; and probably no clergyman or justice of the peace will be ever heard speaking of the rural innocence of the region,—which is, indeed, to be found only in works of the imagination. The people have their virtues many and great.”—And so they have! but as to their morals being purer, or their lives and conversation more innocent than those of the parallel classes in towns, it is all nonsense. My life has been about equally divided between town and country, the nature of my occupation has given me much—I hope not wasted—opportunity in both of noting human nature en deshabille, and I tell you that good and evil in town and country, in crowded capital and lonely fell-dale, are “much of a muchness.” As a general rule, you may safely aver that the best educated community, is also the best behaved, and the standard of education amongst our mountaineers is by no means a high one.
RETROSPECT AND RIVULET.
But quitting this subject, on which one might prose till midnight, you had better commence the ascent of Walna Scar, and you’d also better gird up your loins, and make up your mind to encounter a labour of no ordinary magnitude; but as you rest and look back occasionally, the view rewards you well for your labour. Mr Wordsworth gives a very poetical and correct enumeration of the beauties of these prospects, but the passage has been quoted so often that you must have read it, and, therefore, though sorely tempted, I shall not give it here now. Part of Seathwaite beck comes leaping, frothing, and sparkling down a very rocky channel on your left. I think it is Captain Marryatt who describes an American river as forming “a staircase of waterfalls;” you have here this quaint fancy realized on a small scale for nearly half a mile along the side of your steep fell-road. On the farther side of this merry companion, is the extensive enclosure in which is situated Dan Birkett’s Town of “t'auld Ancient Britons.” The following instructions, furnished to me by a respected clerical friend, who is, in the ordinary pedestrian acceptation of the phrase, indisputably a “Wonderful Walker,” sufficed to enable me to find it out, and may serve your turn now. You will observe that he supposes the instructed party to be journeying from Conistone towards Seathwaite. “Follow the cart-road from Walna Scar to Seathwaite, till it meets the brook coming from the Peat-beds—turn to the right over the brook and wall, and march at right angles to your former course, upon some thorn trees distant about 500 yards. If the bogs are impassable, follow the Seathwaite road to the gate of the road leading to the Peat-beds, and there scramble over and among rocks to the above-mentioned thorn trees.”
THE RUINS OF WHAT?
I visited these remains with a member of the Archæological Association, and he expressed a decided opinion that they were a genuine antiquity, but thought they had formed a summer encampment, rather than a Town. On the other hand, a Seathwaite shepherd assured me that they were the ruins of a Peat-scale; that is, an erection for storing peats, until leisure serves to get them brought home. After a good hour’s climb, I must suppose you safely at the top of Walna Scar, and lost in admiration at the magnificent prospect you contemplate, when looking back to the north and west. The hill peering over the high ridge to your right, is Bowfell, then Great End, and next Scawfell Pikes and Scawfell, the highest hills in England. Those more distant, and seen over the western slope of Scawfell, are the Ennerdale hills, with the Pillar conspicuous amongst them, the scene of the fatal catastrophe in Wordsworth’s beautiful poem called “The Brothers.” Over the lower range of hills beyond Seathwaite, you may see the Isle of Man, the hills of Galloway, and Saint Bees Head, with the broad expanse of sea between them, glittering like ruddy gold in the red light of the declining sun. This huge arm of the mountains thrust out, as it seems, to shake hands with the sea, is Blackcombe, a well known land-mark for sailors. Under it, to the south, are extended the fertile fields of Millom, bounded again on the south by Duddon sands, over which LANDS, WATERS, AND ROCKS.the sea creeps up into the country, converting the bare sands twice every day into a broad area of water. The rich district of Low Furness divides the Duddon estuary from Morecambe Bay, which you may contemplate in all its vastness of extent and irregularity of shore. Stretching along the eastern horizon, are the hills of Yorkshire, the most conspicuous of which is Ingleborough. Nearer home, you behold the bright waters of Windermere, divided into three portions by intervening heights. And here nearer still, you have nearly the whole six miles of
“Our own dear lake
Beside the ancient Hall,”
with the beautiful valley of the Crake reaching from its foot to the sea at Greenodd.
