BORROWDALE AND SEATHWAITE
It was a lonely place where the four yew trees stood, though not far from the old black lead works which at one time produced the finest plumbago for lead pencils in the world. As the rain was falling heavily, we lit a fire under the largest of the four trees, which measured about twenty-one feet in circumference at four feet from the ground, and sheltered under its venerable shade for about an hour, watching a much-swollen streamlet as it rolled down the side of a mountain.
Near the yew trees there was a stream which we had to cross, as our next stage was over the fells to Grasmere; but when we came to its swollen waters, which we supposed came from "Glaramara's inmost Caves," they were not "murmuring" as Wordsworth described them, but coming with a rush and a roar, and to our dismay we found the bridge broken down and portions of it lying in the bed of the torrent. We thought of a stanza in a long-forgotten ballad:
London Bridge is broken down!
Derry derry down, derry derry down!
Luckily we found a footbridge lower down the stream. It was now necessary to inquire our way at one of the isolated farms in the neighbourhood of Borrowdale, where the people knew very little of what was going on in the world outside their own immediate environs. We heard a story relating to the middle of the eighteenth century, when in the absence of roads goods had to be carried on horseback. A rustic, who had been sent for a bag of lime, the properties of which were unknown in remote places, placed the bag on the back of his horse, and while he was returning up the hills the rain came on, soaking the bag so that the lime began to swell and smoke. The youth thought that it was on fire, so, jumping off his horse, he filled his hat with water from the stream and threw it on the bag. This only made matters worse, for the lime began smoking more than ever; so he lifted it from the horse's back and placed it in the water at the edge of the stream, where, in addition to smoking, it began to boil and to make a hissing sound, which so frightened the young man that he rode home in terror, feeling sure that it was the Devil who had sneaked inside the bag!
We made our way to a farmhouse which we could see in the distance, but the farmer advised us not to attempt to cross the fells, as it was misty and not likely to clear up that day. So we turned back, and in about two miles met a countryman, who told us we could get to Grasmere over what he called the "Green Nip," a mountain whose base he pointed out to us. We returned towards the hills, but we had anything but an easy walk, for we could find no proper road, and walked on for hours in a "go as you please" manner. Our whereabouts we did not know, since we could only see a few yards before us. We walked a long way up hill, and finally landed in some very boggy places, and when the shades of evening began to come on we became a little alarmed, and decided to follow the running water, as we had done on a very much worse occasion in the north of Scotland. Presently we heard the rippling of a small stream, which we followed, though with some difficulty, as it sometimes disappeared into the rocks, until just at nightfall we came to a gate at the foot of the fells, and through the open door of a cottage beheld the blaze of a tire burning brightly inside. We climbed over the gate, and saw standing in the garden a man who stared so hard at us, and with such a look of astonishment, that we could not have helped speaking to him in any case, even had he not been the first human being we had seen for many hours. When we told him where we had come from, he said we might think ourselves lucky in coming safely over the bogs on such a misty day, and told us a story of a gentleman from Bradford who had sunk so deeply in one of the bogs that only with the greatest difficulty had he been rescued.
He told us it was his custom each evening to come out of his cottage for a short time before retiring to rest, and that about a month before our visit he had been out one night as usual after his neighbours had gone to bed, and, standing at his cottage door, he thought he heard a faint cry. He listened again: yes, he could distinctly hear a cry for help. He woke up his neighbours, and they and his son, going in the direction from which the cries came, found a gentleman fast in the rocks. He had been on a visit to Grasmere, and had gone out for an afternoon's walk on the fells, when the mist came on and he lost his way. As night fell he tried to get between some rocks, when he slipped into a crevice and jammed himself fast between them—fortunately for himself as it afterwards proved, for when the rescuing party arrived, they found him in such a dangerous position that, if he had succeeded in getting through the rocks the way he intended, he would inevitably have fallen down the precipice and been killed.
After hearing these stories, we felt very thankful we were safely off the fells. Without knowing it, we had passed the scene of the Battle of Dunmail Raise, where Dunmail, the last King of Cumbria, an old British kingdom, was said to have been killed in 945 fighting against Edmund, King of England.
The place we had stumbled upon after reaching the foot of the fells was Wythburn, at the head of Thirlmere Lake, quite near Amboth Hall, with its strange legends and associations. The mansion was said to be haunted by supernatural visitors, midnight illuminations, and a nocturnal marriage with a murdered bride. The most remarkable feature of the story, however, was that of the two skulls from Calgarth Hall, near Windermere, which came and joined in these orgies at Amboth Hall. These skulls formerly occupied a niche in Calgarth Hall, from which it was found impossible to dislodge them. They were said to have been buried, burned, ground to powder, dispersed by the wind, sunk in a well, and thrown into the lake, but all to no purpose, for they invariably appeared again in their favourite niche until some one thought of walling them up, which proved effectual, and there they still remain.