Lake country sketches

by H. D. Rawnsley

There was a time when all the farmhouses for miles round, and every cottage home, was glad, because a Threlkeld man had come to his own again, and I could not help contrasting the gladness of that day, as told us by Wordsworth in his Feast of Brougham Castle, and Song of the Shepherd Lord, with the sadness of this day for all the country side, now that another shepherd-lord had gone unto his own. That shepherd-lord we read

'Was honoured more and more,
And ages after he was laid in earth
"The good Lord Clifford" was the name he bore.'

They were very different men, that shepherd-lord and this our friend, the Master of the Blencathra Hunt, John Crozier: but both of them had been reared in the same quiet pastoral scene, and among the same fine race of shepherd gentlemen. Both had learned the lesson of this mountain side,—

'Love had they found in huts where poor men lie,
Their daily teachers had been woods and hills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.'

Both men had won the hearts of the simple people far and near, and ages after he is laid in earth, as he will be laid by the side of his beloved wife, in the Threlkeld Churchyard, men will speak of 't'ald Squire,' and enthusiastically tell of his hunting feats, and remember how he loved his native village.

The love of hunting which John Crozier inherited from his father, who lived at Gate Ghyll Farm on Blencathra's side, and who turned over to his son the mastership of what were then spoken of as 'the Threlkeld dogs' in the year 1840, is a passion with our dales' folk which only those who live amongst them can understand.

The 'varmint' is the natural enemy of the shepherd, and this adds zest to the day's sport. In our churchwardens' accounts of old time there appears the item 'A fox head, 21s.,' and though in other chapelries 3s. 4d. appears to have been the price paid, such a scourge must Reynard have become that the churchwardens felt they were justified in giving a whole week's wage for the destruction of one fox. Down at Shoulthwaite and, for aught I know, in other dales a fox trap of masonry existed till of late years, built beehive fashion with a hole in the top. If Reynard ventured in to the bait, which was a fine fat hen, he was a prisoner; try to scale the walls how he might the artful one was foiled; but to trap a fox goes against the grain. There are certain things in which our hunt differs from others. Class distinctions are unknown in the field. The Master of the Hunt knows all by their Christian name. It is a social gathering from daylight to dark. The luxury of horses, too, is unknown. The field are all running huntsmen of the type of old Timothy, of whom Wordsworth wrote, in the year 1800—the childless Timothy who took up his staff, and with the thought of his last child's death heavy upon him could nevertheless not refuse the invitation of 'the horn and the hark! hark-away,' and 'went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.'

On that day when 'Skiddaw was glad with the cry of the hounds,' old Timothy's daughter Ellen had been dead five months or more, or he probably would not have followed the hunt, for there is a kind of etiquette that the hunters in the dales observe, and they would no more go a-hunting within a month after the death of their beloved, than they would miss going to church on the Sunday following the funeral. I remember once being asked by a widower, who was in great sorrow and could not get away from his thoughts, whether he should take what he knew to be the best physic—a day with the dogs. I asked, 'What would your wife have said?' His answer came quite straight: 'She wad hev clapped a bit o' lunch in my pocket, gi'en me ma staff, shut door upon me, and telt me not to show my feace until supper time.' I answered, 'That's enough,' and the man was a new being when he returned from the hunt, more able to wrestle with his sorrows.

The women folk are as keen as their husbands. They tell of a 'woman body' at Wythburn who, joining the hounds in full cry, and finding her skirts in the way, stopped, took a knife out of her pocket, and slit her petticoat in order that with a 'divided skirt' she might the surer be in at the kill. How keen the men are, is shown by the fact that beginning as youngsters to follow the drag, and carrying on a love of the sport through the prime of manhood, they may be still found from 75 to 80 and over, out with the hounds at the call of the horn. Nay, even when their sight fails them, they will follow, and it is on record that a veteran whose eyes were failing him and who had the rare good luck of a vantage ground to see the finish of the hunt, and was so maddened by the hurried and eager account from his companions of how the hunt was going, that he cried out 'Hang thur aid een o' mine! I wish that they wer nobbut out all togidder; I believe I wad see better through t' hooals!'

Fox hunting in the Lake Country tests the sportsman. None but a true lover of the chase would be content to breakfast and get away with the stars (as in winter he oft-times has to do that he may get to the heights before the hounds are loosed)—and, facing all weathers, come back with the stars. He has to battle with storm and tempest. It may be fine in one valley and a roaring blizzard on the other side of the mountain. The old veteran, John Crozier, himself would tell of how he had to lie down on Skiddaw summit in a sudden and blinding snowstorm, and on more than one occasion he and all the hunt have suddenly been enveloped in a thick mist, which made movement almost impossible. And hunting not only tries the heart, it tries the head. A fox gets 'binked,' as they call it, or banked, and some one must go up on an almost inaccessible crag to put in the terrier; and a man must know the country, and the probable run of every fox that gets up in front of the hounds. There is no earth stopping; only the bields are known, and the cunning of Reynard is a secret, to be learnt not only by the huntsman and whip but by every single man in the field. As for the foxes, though the old greyhound breed that John Peel knew—20 lbs. to 29 lbs. in weight—have passed away, the little black-legged Irish fox can give a good account of himself, and from three to five hours and from 25 to 40 miles have not been an uncommon experience of a run.