The small but interesting market town of Keswick—highly celebrated at the present day, as the head quarters of numerous lake and mountain excursionists—likewise had its bull ring, to which, through a lengthened period of time, hundreds of unfortunate animals were tied and baited. No greater desecration can be imagined to one of the most attractive districts in Great Britain—revealing at every step scenes displaying vividly the sublime beauty and grandeur of God's choicest handiwork—than the mad uproar, the wild confusion, and gross brutality of a bull bait. The echoes of the surrounding hills were made to resound with the furious merriment of an excited multitude, in the full enjoyment of a cruel "sport." From the beautiful Vale of Saint John, from the lower slopes of Blencathra and Skiddaw, from the confines of the picturesque lake of Bassenthwaite, from the surroundings of the more imposing Derwentwater, from many scattered villages, like Borrowdale, crowds hastened to share in the gross enjoyment of a hideous outrage on humanity.
The bull ring at Keswick,—as well as at Carlisle, Penrith, Wigton, Kendal, and other places in the Lake country—was frequently the means of starting a combat between some pugnaciously inclined Tom Crib, and any one who, through intimidation, could be drawn into a fight. "Shaking the bull ring" was tantamount to a challenge from some foolhardy individual, to "hev it oot" with any one inclined to step forward; and it rarely happened at "statute fairs" but that at least some two or three pugilistic encounters followed the "shaking."
BADGERS AND BADGER BAITING.
Baiting the badger differed from bull baiting in one respect, inasmuch as the former was generally practised in some room or yard, mostly attached to a public house. It was often a private affair, got up by some sporting landlord, for the purpose of drawing customers to his hostelry, as well as to have an opportunity of seeing the badger drawn; while bull baiting, except on great state occasions, was always a public affair.
The badger, in former times called the "Grey," is a small animal, which at no remote period was, comparatively speaking, plentiful in Cumberland and Westmorland, and in various parts of the north of England. It abounded, too, in Scotland, and its cured skin was used in making the Highlander's hanging pouch. It measured about three feet from the snout to the end of the tail, and weighed from seventeen to thirty pounds. Few animals are better able to defend themselves, and fewer still of their own weight and size dare attack them, in their native haunts. When in good case, they are remarkably strong, fight with great resolution if brought to bay, can bite extremely hard, and inflict very severe wounds. It is strange that it should have been so persistently and ruthlessly hunted and destroyed, so as to lead to the almost entire extermination of the herd in this country.
In Reminiscences of West Cumberland, (printed for private circulation, in 1882,) William Dickinson gives the following account of the capture of some of these animals:—"On March 29, 1867, a badger was captured in a wood adjoining the river Derwent, by Mr. Stirling's gamekeeper. It was a full grown animal, in prime condition, and was secured without sustaining any injury. A few years before that a badger was caught near St. Bees. It was supposed to have escaped from captivity. Within my recollection, a badger was taken by a shepherd and his dogs, on Birker moor, and believed to be a wild one; and none had been known for many miles around by any one living. They are not now known to breed in Cumberland; but the late Mr. John Peel of Eskat, told me the brock or badger had a strong hold in Eskat woods, and that he once came so suddenly on a brock asleep, as it basked in the sun, that he struck it with his bill hook, and wounded it in the hind quarter. Its hole was so near that it crawled in and was lost. The place is still called the Brock-holes."
An interesting experiment has been tried on the Naworth Castle estate, the Border residence of Mr. George Howard, a dozen miles or so from Carlisle. About the year 1877 or 1878, four healthy and well developed badgers were let off, some two miles eastward from the castle, near the side of the river Irthing, which flows through a wide sweep of charmingly diversified scenery. The place occupied by them is a piece of rough, woodland, "banky" ground, quiet and secluded, the soil being of a dry sandy nature. The badgers, in the first instance, were lodged in an old fox earth "bield," part of which they have held in undisturbed possession ever since. They appeared to fall in naturally with their new quarters, and soon took to digging and making the hole, and its various ramifications, much larger and more capacious.