A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS STORIES (FOLK-SPEECH)
DR. ALEXANDER CRAIG GIBSON
'If you are ill at this season, there is no occasion to send for the doctor—only stop eating. Indeed, upon general principles, it seems to me to be a mistake for people, every time there is a little thing the matter with them, to be running in such haste for the "doctor," because, if you are going to die, a doctor can't help you, and if you are not, there is no occasion for him.'—Hone's Table Book.
THERE are three paragraphs about him—appreciative ones—in Mr. Bradley's 'Highways and Byways in the Lake District,' and the first of the three shall furnish me with my own introductory one. 'And who may Craig Gibson be? Ninety-nine out of a hundred readers will most assuredly demand to be told. His portrait figures in no shop windows, nor can his biography in concentrated form be purchased for a penny at the local stationer's, nor is the house he occupied an item in the round of the enterprising char-a-banc. Poor Gibson, in short, is not reckoned among the immortals of the Lake Country, by outsiders at any rate; but, unlike any of these except Wordsworth, he was a native of it and a product of the soil. Gibson was, in fact, a country doctor, whose practice carried him far and wide through hill and dale, among all classes of people. He had a wonderful knowledge of the country folk, among whom he laboured until he was forty, and a vast fund of sympathy and humour, which endeared him to all. With this he combined a passion for dialect studies, and some genius for writing poems, both of a humorous and pathetic nature. No man who ever lived had such a mastery of the varying dialects of Cumberland and Westmorland, or better knew the inner character and the humour of their rugged people.'
The only sketch of his life I have been able to find is Mr. Nicholson's in the 'National Dictionary of Biography,' and that gives no clue to anything fuller. From this it appears he was born in 1813 at Harrington, Cumberland, now a town of some 3,000 inhabitants on the London and North-Western Railway, and on the seashore between Whitehaven and Workington. An old coloured engraving of it about contemporary with Gibson's youth shows it as a harbour nearly land-locked by hilly promontories, and possessing a small stone-built pier. The village, more ancient than the harbour, was half a mile inland. Gibson's father was named James, and his mother was Mary Stuart Craig, a member of a Moffat family. His early education was probably quite local, at any rate we find that he got his first knowledge of medicine by serving his time with a practitioner at Whitehaven, and from thence he went to Edinburgh University to study and to take his diploma, commencing on his own account at Branthwaite and Ullock, near Cockermouth, when twenty-eight years of age. He did not remain there long, but in 1843 removed to Coniston, and married Miss Sarah Bowman of Lamplough the following year. He remained at Coniston for six years, and then removed to Hawkshead, where he dwelt for another eight, and then, finding the country practice, with long rides and exposure to all kinds of mountain weather, becoming too hard and too heavy for him, he removed to Bebington in Cheshire, where he remained for fifteen years more, and when failing health and three score years of life compelled it, lived there retired until his death in 1874. He is interred in the churchyard of that village in the neighbourhood of Birkenhead. This is practically all that is known, and, indeed, is all that need concern us of his outward biography. His inner is indicated by his books. From them we gather that he was a pleasant and genial man, who readily found his way to the hearts of the 'statesmen' and peasantry among whom his professional calling carried him every day of his life, and with whom he would hold colloquies in the vernacular, and from whose fireside talks he would gather the stories and legends he afterwards put together in prose or verse, to illustrate both the Scandinavian dialects and the folklore of the north-western shires, as William Barnes has in later times done for the Saxon speech and thought-modes of the Dorsetshire people. We are sure, too, that wherever he rode he was a keen observer and investigator of natural objects among the rocks, and birds, and flowers, as well as of castles, churches, mansions, schools, and ancient earthworks. He was a learned geologist, and if you want to be assured of this you have but to procure a copy of Harriet Martineau's 'Guide to the Lakes,' and you will find the chapters on geology and mineralogy were his compilation, though there is no further acknowledgment of the fact than the presence of his initials, A. C. G., at the end. It is not the hand of a mere scientific smatterer that can condense with ability into some dozen or thirteen pages the earth treasures and stratification of such a mountain-land as ours, respecting which he says, 'As no district of similar extent displays such a variety of natural beauties in its external aspect, so does no district present within equally limited bounds such diversity of geological formation and arrangement, or a like variety of mineral productions.' He was an excellent botanist, writing upon the flora of Cumberland, though possibly his knowledge of ornithology would be little more than that of any intelligent, nature-loving country doctor almost always in the open. An antiquarian he certainly was of no mean standing, being a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries—a society that asks, unlike many other 'learned' associations, 'what has he done?' before receiving a member—and he was a frequent contributor to the 'Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.' A good example of the quality of his contributions is that on 'Hawkshead Town, Church, and School.' It is interesting, and in a small space very enlightening. He tells us that this is one of the smallest market towns in the kingdom, and he describes it in a couplet of his own, a 'pattering' rhyme:
'A quaint old town is Hawkshead, and an ancient look it bears,
Its church, its school, its dwellings, its streets, its lands, its squares,
Are all irregularities—all angles, twists, and crooks,
With penthouses and gables over archways, wents, and nooks.'
It really has two small 'squares' and one street 'of varying contour, and width frequently and awkwardly encroached upon by gabled shops standing at right angles to the roadway and houses by aggressive corners and low upper stories projected far beyond the foundation-line of the buildings.' Altogether an eccentric town. Then, after speaking of its lake, he points out to us the old glacier moraines, and its green water-meadows, and next branches off into the story of the 'Pilgrimage of Grace' in 1537, and the tale of the Plague in 1577, and of the opening of the Quaker cemetery on the picturesque hillside in 1658, and the founding and upkeep of the parish church with its peal of six bells, each with its inscription, from which we can transcribe only the first:
'Awake, arise, the day's restored,
Awake, arise, to praise the Lord,
Regard, look to, the peal I lead.
1765.'
He has, too, many sage remarks to make about 'Drunken Barnaby's' visit, of which, perhaps, I shall say more in another article.