The penalty for buying victuals before they arrived at the market was forfeiture, while it was further ordered that “no man or woman shall suffer any corn to be sold or measured in their houses upon pain of 6s. 8d., but that all corn shall be bargained, bought, and measured in open market only.”
An old native of the borough not long ago assured the writer that when he was a boy, in the old coaching days, the suspicion of “poaching” extended even to the lawyers, for, said he, “At the Assizes at Appleby the Bar had all to enter the borough together, or not before a certain hour, lest one individual might secure more than a fair share of the briefs.”
Market-bells are still rung at various places in the two counties. That in St. Andrew’s Church, Penrith, is sounded every Tuesday morning at ten o’clock, before which hour business is supposed to be forbidden. The same rule prevails at Appleby, where the bell hangs in a campanile over the Moot Hall. This, of course, is a survival of the days when forestalling was a very serious offence—and properly so. The archives of the Corporation of Carlisle contain documents bearing on the connection of the bells with trading. Mention of the market-bell appears in the bye-laws of 1561, thus: “Itm that noe outman shall sell any corn to any fore nor to such tym as the market bell be rounge on payn of forfitor.” Happily it is not possible to apply to all the saying used with reference to one old market in West Cumberland—that “it opens at twelve o’clock and closes at noon,” the meaning, of course, being that there is little or no market left. It was recorded by Mr. Green, the noted artist, that at Ambleside the market was crowded by small merchants, “who were called together by the tinkling of a small bell. Then all was bustle and animation; joy beamed in every countenance, for all the traffic was for ready money, and every individual lived upon the produce of his labour.”
Old-Time Home Life
There is a very great store of gossip and anecdote in existence which might be utilised to illustrate the picturesqueness of old-time life in Cumberland and Westmorland. Whether the lack of sanitary comforts, intellectual facilities, and of opportunities of seeing the world or of knowing of its doings, were counterbalanced by the freedom from care and the quiet humdrum lives, which were led by the majority of the people in the two counties, is an open question. An anecdote told in a book published well-nigh a century since, well illustrates the simplicity of life among Lakeland folk generations ago. A foreign physician, eminent in his profession, practiced in the neighbourhood of Keswick. He was one day asked by another medical man how he liked his position. “My situation,” he replied, “is a very eligible one as a gentleman; I can enjoy every species of country amusement in the greatest perfection; I can hunt, shoot, and fish among a profusion of game of every kind; the neighbouring gentlemen, too, seem to vie with each other in acts of politeness. But as a physician I cannot say that it is so alluring to me, for the natives have got the art of preserving their healths and prolonging their lives without boluses or electuaries, by a plaster taken inwardly, called thick poddish. This preserves them from the various diseases which shake the human fabric, and makes them slide into the grave without pain by the gradual decay of nature.”
As might be supposed, a people possessing so many primitive habits, and whose lives were so circumscribed, had numerous peculiar contrivances in their homes. Some of these have been so long out of use that their purpose has almost passed from memory. Before the days of mineral oils, the general means of illumination, both in mansion and cottage, was the rushlight. These candles were made of the pith of rushes, dipped in melted tallow. They were fixed for use in an arrangement known as a “Tom Candlestick,” which in the early years of this century were common objects in every village home. Mr. Anthony Whitehead, in the last edition of his Westmorland poems (1896), mentions a curious belief in this connection—that the rushes were not considered fit for use unless pulled at the full moon.
A love of finery has seldom been a failing with the residents in the country districts of Cumberland and Westmorland, and especially was this the case before travel became easy. In the days when at the most the ordinary folk only saw the shops of a town on “term day”—and in a vast number of instances that would only occur on a few occasions in a lifetime—dress was of the most homely and substantial sort. “Hodden grey” for the men and correspondingly good wear for the females—most of it home made—were the ordinary fabrics. Clogs were worn at one time by all classes, from parson down to the poorest labourer, and even on Sundays the wearing of boots or shoes was often an indication of the owner being a person of some local consequence. The housewives had a curious method of preserving the stocking heels, which was probably more efficacious than cleanly. They took care to “smear the heels of the family’s new stockings with melted pitch, and dipped them immediately in the ashes of turf. The glutinous mixture incorporated with the woollen, and altogether formed a compound both hard and flexible, which was well adapted to resist the united friction of wood and leather.” The utility of clogs for certain purposes is undoubted, but this useful kind of footgear is apparently losing its popularity.
There have been plenty of descriptions left—by old-time tourists and home historians—at various periods of the methods of life of the people, and they generally agree that the costumes, especially of the dales-folk, were picturesque. The homespun material was frequently undyed, black and white fleeces being mixed to save the expense of dyeing. This homely material, which is still made in some parts of Scotland and Ireland, has in recent years been pronounced by fashion to be superior, for country wear, to the most finished products of the steam loom; so that now the most elegant ladies do not disdain to wear dresses of the self-same homespun of which our ancestors made their “kelt coats.” These coats were ornamented with brass buttons, as were the waistcoats, which were made open in front for best, in order to show a frilled shirt breast. Knee breeches were the fashion for centuries. They were buttoned tight round the body above the haunches, so as to keep up without braces. Those used for best had a knot of ribbon and four or five bright buttons at the knee, and those who could afford it, had them made of buckskin. Their stockings, which were a conspicuous part of the dress, were also made from their own wool, the colour being generally blue or grey. On their feet they wore clogs on ordinary occasions, but when dressed in holiday costume, they had low shoes fastened with buckles which were sometimes of silver.