"And tell me an old story," thus I further spoke, "John Long,
Some mournful tale or legend, of the far departed time;
The scene is all too solemn here for lightsome lay or song,
So tell, and, in your plain strong words, I'll weave it into rhyme."
Then old John Long revolved his quid, and gaunt he look'd and grim—
For darker still athwart the lake spread Latterbarrow's shade—
And pointing o'er the waters broad to fields and woodlands dim,
He soberly and slowly spake, and this was what he said, &c.
John Long died at the little hostelry on Kirkstone Pass, the highest inhabited house in England, about the year 1848.
TOM NICHOLSON
OF THRELKELD.
Among the distinguished athletes of a byegone period, not one in the long list has conferred a more enduring celebrity on the wrestlings of the north, than the Threlkeld champion, Tom Nicholson. He owed this high position not to overpowering strength and weight, but to what lends its principal charm to back-hold wrestling—science and activity. These, added to entire confidence and fearlessness, rendered him a match for any of the big ones of his day.
In youth he was a wild, harum-scarum sort of a fellow, hardly ever out of one scrape before he was floundering into another. A fight or a fray seemed always welcome. "He cared for nowte." A Jem Belcher of the wrestling ring and the pugilistic ring, too, of the north; one who never feared the face of man, and had so much confidence in his own powers, that whoever he chanced to meet in the ring, whether as "big as a hoose side," or "strang as a yak tree," he felt confident he could throw him.
He stood close upon six feet; lean, muscular, with broad and powerful shoulders; had remarkably long arms, reaching—when at full length, and standing perfectly upright—down to his knees; his weight never exceeding thirteen stones; without an ounce of superflous flesh. He generally commenced the attack by striking the back of his opponent's heel with the right foot.