‘Looking cautiously about, I soon found traces of my quest: on that jutting rock it seemed that father raven had sat watching his mate sitting her couple of eggs. I carefully clambered forward to the splinter, and to my joy found the raven’s nest in sight. But in a moment my hopes were dashed. A deep narrow crack lay between me and my goal. Try as I would, the gulf could not be passed, and the old raven sitting there in security seemed to croak derision at me. However, by returning to my companions and being relowered from some more favourable spot, I hoped yet to turn the tables. So up I went, assisting my friends by rapid runs up any face of rock which gave a possible angle. In a moment I explained the situation and we were traversing the great cliff in the desired direction. When a platform for our rope-head was found, I made another descent; but, instead of the straight course I had fancied possible, a great rock overhanging the gully sent me dangling in mid-air, unable to reach foothold. However, it was possible to avoid the ugly cornice and then I climbed down the side of the gully. The old raven flapped off her nest with a wild croak as I came near, but she never went far away. More than once, with a whistling swoop, die came almost within arms’ length, and every time I prepared to parry some sudden attack with beak or wings. Probably, had her mate been within call they would not have hesitated to attack me, for in defence of its nest the raven is pretty vicious. As soon as they were within reach, I scooped up the eggs from the barrowful of filth—remains of rats and carrion lay on a bed of wool and sticks—and was rapidly drawn up to safety. One raven was shot shortly afterwards, at which the other left the neighbourhood. A good riddance for us shepherds, too!‘
II. Harvest-time on the Fells
As I wandered in solitary thought across the moor I heard voices in front of me. As the tones were in complete accord with my mood and with that region of cheerful silence, I was but mildly curious as to their origin. I lingered on the summit of a splintered outcrop of rock and looked around me. To my eye the scene was perfect. The heather was in full bloom; the air was resonant with the humming of bees, intent on petty plundering of the purple flowerets; around the heather-beds were here and there solid banklets of dainty crimson and white heatherbell, and next them the harebell’s large sky-blue corolla curtseying on its slender stalk to every swerve of the breeze. Beneath the domain of the hardy heather a waving green wilderness marked the haunt of the bracken, very rugged with fragments in its upper portion, from the crumbling hillside above, but lower down opening out an almost level ledge of the mountain.
Descending leisurely to this, I recognised some of my neighbours at work among the bracken. One was cutting the stout stems with a scythe, leaving a thick swath behind him, which another spread out so that the sun’s rays might dry it. Some two score yards away three other men were loading a sleigh with the dark-brown harvest cut some days ago, and now ready for the barn. This was a great contrast to the lowland hayfield of the farm. The ground, which from above looked so smooth and almost level, was in reality furrowed with innumerable watercourses and seamed with rocky places. One moment the sleigh timbers creaked as a sudden strain was put upon them by an unseen hollow; next the stout, handy horse drew it clear of this, and the runners were sliding with unpleasant grinding sound over a pavement of boulders. These men had been on the moors since soon after daybreak, and shortly they would have to return to their farms. I assisted to bind on the dusky load, and made down the hillside in their company. The path taken by the rude conveyance was, it seemed to me at first, a dried-up watercourse; it fell so steeply that at places our combined resistance alone prevented the sleigh from overrunning the sturdy little mare in front, while the unevenness kept us continually on the alert lest the load should, as the dalesmen put it, ‘keck ower’ at some particularly awkward point. But the cautious and sure-footed animal in the traces brought down the load with safety to the level of the mountain tarn, of which we had enjoyed almost a bird’s-eye view.
In our Lake Country dales it is impossible to grow enough straw for bedding purposes in winter, and the hayfield is often insufficient for forage; therefore the farmer turns to the uplands and draws thence the necessary supplies. Large areas of bracken are cut every year, and by primitive sleigh routes brought down to where carts can be used conveniently. The scythe used in cutting bracken is a much shorter contrivance than the ordinary one, but the work is more tiring. The ground is so covered with stones or otherwise uneven that but seldom can the labourer get two swinging strokes together, and the perpetual jerking to avoid the blade being damaged accounts for many a man’s dislike to the work.
A couple of gamekeepers as we came to the mereside were preparing a boat to row to the other end of the tarn, and, as I wished to ramble in that direction, I embarked with them. In the clear, peaty depths trout were lazily finning in and out among the gently-swaying water-weeds, and smaller fry disported nearer the surface. As we approached one point the keepers ceased rowing, in order that we might float over where a large pike lay in wait for its prey, and at a rocky islet ran ashore that I might inspect the trees where the recently shot vermin were gibbeted. The boat was forced through a fringe of blue irises to the mouth of a tiny beck, where I landed. Soon the faintly-rutted track I was following changed direction, and I struck across the heathy waste. Grouse rushed away with querulous cries, curlew and heron banished silence from the wilds, while from tussock and cevin small birds chirped and twittered. A lark high above was singing a joyous roundelay; suddenly his ringing notes were hushed, and down from his crazy height he rushed, for the raucous voice of a buzzard struck terror to the tiny winger. Wave after wave of moorland—a sameness which might almost become monotony. Each hollow, opening out its treasures, gave the same tiny stream, with myriad sphagnum bogs and stunted willows; every shallow glen was carpeted with bracken and heather. But now a change.
A great knot of fir-trees rose on the near horizon; and as I stepped up the stony ridge to which they anchored with huge cablelike roots, in front there appeared a series of distant blue mountains—the heights of Lakeland—while nearer at hand stretched outward a long triangular plateau, its apex touching the nearest fell, its base the ridge on which I stood. In about the middle of this expanse was a fairly large tarn. In about half an hour I was close to its shores. As the lower ground was reached, a score small tumuli met my eye, and on approach these proved to be of peat—miniature stacks loosely piled, so that the air circulated freely through them, and though built wet, their contents would soon become dry. At the tarn edge I spent some minutes in collecting the fine yellow water-lilies, which occur only in this tarn in our vicinity; then, espying a man at work in the distance, I made in his direction. The intervening space was swampy; sometimes by a series of grass banks I gained far, only to be stopped by a spongy bog too wide to leap. But here and there, retracing my steps, I gradually found a track across the maze; the man was mowing the reeds which in wide stretches favour such surroundings—not an easy task when the disproportion of sound land is considered. Of course, he only mowed the more accessible places; but even then he had to garner the cut stems on a hand sleigh, and draw them to a hillside where the tarn waters, if overpent after a thunder-storm, were little likely to reach. The reeds also were to be used for winter bedding; and so large a quantity is required in the dales abutting the plateau that half a dozen barns for their summer storage are in the immediate vicinity of the swamps.
Half a mile on—I was now facing eastward to reach one of the valleys—I came across a party of men digging peat. The heather tufts had been burnt away, and the thin veil of soil thrown aside to lay bare the deposits. Then, with a long narrow spade, cuts were made in the chocolate-coloured pile, so that an oblong mass was easily separated, and these were collected and wheeled aside to be piled into the loose erections previously mentioned. The dexterity of the spademan was pretty to watch; the blade of the tool was plied as freely and easily as a knife. Peat-digging on the flanks of the fells is easy compared with the same work on the lowlands, for here drainage is rapid and sufficient, and the deposits less dense and moist. Many of the dales farms still use little other fuel but peat and coppice-wood. As I stood near the labourers, I noticed a violet in bloom—a rare occurrence on such an exposed situation—and into my mind rushed an anecdote of Wonderful Walker, Vicar of the mountain parish of Seathwaite a century ago, whose life of industry and nobility of character claimed the admiration of William Wordsworth. Said he: ‘See you that violet?’—pointing to a little simple pansy that was bending its graceful flower close to the spot on which he stood. ‘Look at it, and think how it came there. Last autumn this spot was covered with bog-earth, which had probably rested on this bleak and barren moor ever since the Deluge. It was disturbed last year by the spade of the turf-getter, and now this beautiful flower has sprung up in this place! For ages and ages its seed must have remained embedded in this sour and barren bog; yet, once disturbed by the hand of man, it springs up fresh and lively, to show that God can keep alive what to the eye of man may seem to perish, and can deck with grace and beauty even the most unpromising spots of creation.’