Rightfully borne; for Nature gives thee flowers
That have no rival among British bowers,
And thy bold rocks are worthy of their fame.”
It rises in the backbone of England, on the borders of Westmorland, in Yorkshire. We do not loiter in the long street of Kirkby Stephen, or dilate on the many antiquities of Appleby, though in its Westmorland course it flows by both places. On the Cumberland border it is joined by the Eamont, which rises nine miles off in romantic Ullswater—a lake renowned for the remarkable combination of savage and cultivated scenery on its borders. A mile or two further, and the Eden winds through a noble park, wherein stands Eden Hall. Here, since the time of Henry VI., have lived the “martial and warlike family of the Musgraves,” as Camden calls them. They acquired the estate by marriage from the heirs of one Robert Turpe, who had it under Henry III.; and how far back his ancestors go—why, ’twould gravel the College of Heralds themselves to tell! Thus Eden Hall has been held by the same race from time immemorial. Not this alone has made the family famous, but the possession of a famous goblet, called “The Luck of the Musgraves,” which they got, so the story goes, in this fashion. There stood in the garden St. Cuthbert’s Well, of the most exquisite spring water. Hither repaired the Seneschal (“butler” some prosaically dub him; but the other sounds much finer, and is at least as accurate) to replenish his vessels. ’Twas a fine summer evening, and he found the green crowded with fairies, dancing and flirting “and carrying on most outrageous,” quite forgetting they had left their magic glass on the brink of the well. The Seneschal promptly impounded it, as a waif and stray, for the benefit of the lord of the manor. The fairies implored and threatened in vain, and at length they vanished, uttering the prophecy—
“If that glass either break or fall,
Farewell the luck of Eden Hall.”
Photo: Frith & Co., Reigate.
EDEN HALL.