SHAP ABBEY
Now the road leaves the waterside, and we soon come to the fell where, in a recess of the rocks, Hugh Holme hid from his enemies in the days of King John. Hugh was the first “King” of Mardale, and through a long line his name held that peaceful post. The last direct male descendant died less than twenty years ago—he held the ancestral home to the end, while the Mounseys, “Kings” of warlike Patterdale, parted with their birthright long ago. A curious faint whistling has been gradually drawing my attention. With a wild cry, like “whisp” long drawn out, a woodcock “flights” in the jerky manner peculiar to its kind at eventide. The dale is now enveloped in midsummer darkness; the meadows, but for their wreaths of white flowerets, would be invisible; the lake is hardly to be seen for shadows.
The inn is now little over a mile away. Tramp, tramp,—there is a cheery something to be felt rather than expressed in such an excursion. Moths in quaker grey and white flicker close past; beneath the sycamores night-beetles hum in busy flight. Now, on our right, a darker clump: the famous yews of Mardale almost burying the tiny church in their green sweep. Tramp, tramp. The yew-tree was favourite with our fighting fathers: from it they tore staves for the longbow. The yeomen of Lord Dacre, recruited from these dales, stood stern and immovable at Flodden, and by their well-aimed shafts turned back the Scots in dire defeat. Tradition says that Rudolphus Holme founded an oratory here in the fourteenth century. The present little church dates back some two hundred years; its graveyard was not consecrated till many years afterward. Even yet old dalesfolk will point out where the corpse-road crossed the fells to Bampton. According to such, there were two roads into Mardale: the assize road, by which, almost as the crow flies, juries went to the county town; and the road we have mentioned, used almost exclusively for funerals. There were no bridges in the dale then, and during winter, and even summer, the torrents were at times quite impassable.
Just as we pass into the short lane to the inn, there is a chorus of loud “cronks” above, and against the grey night pack we see six dots: a family of carrion crows hastening home, belated, from some dingle where perchance a dead sheep is lying. The carrion crow is larger and more powerful than the rook (which in the dales is misnamed the crow); its note is harsher and more jarring. It lacks the majesty of the raven’s croak, and stands apart from the not unmusical garrulity of the rook. Now, within doors, lights are gleaming. The hotel looks a home in a land which, in darkness, to jaded limbs would soon become weary. Our hostess, with a quiet laugh, says:
“‘Birds o’ passage’ ye call yerselves; ‘here to-day and gone to-morrow.’ The hedges and woods are comfortable to the wee things that come with the hawthorn—we’ll try to make our inn as welcome for ye.”
CHAPTER XVI
ULLSWATER, HOME OF BEAUTY
To see Ullswater is to love it, and to love a scene is to often travel that way. I often travelled there even when so to do meant an eighteen miles’ tramp there and an eighteen miles’ tramp back again. I have walked there to go fox-hunting, and some rare chases I have enjoyed—crags of Fairfield and Helvellyn, yes! (I have tramped back, too, with shins bumped and skinned through scrambling among the rocks, and oh, so weary and footsore.) But we are not fox-hunters always in the land of the fells, whatever our detractors say. We do not see beauty in the same places as they. The “splendidly rugged” hillside of the rambler is only “bad ground” to the shepherd kind; and the waterfall thundering in the gloomy dell, so admired by the emotional, arouses little interest with those who in wild winter have to wrestle with torrents as foamy and rock-tortured as the finest peep of Aira or Lodore. We see beauty in the small things of our everyday life—in our wee birds and springing flowers (when the flock does not make us too busy to notice them). I have seen—I almost said I know, but that is too big a boast for even those who dwell there—Ullswater under almost all conditions. My first view was from far-off Kentmere High Street. Only a small portion was visible, still that much was Ullswater. The next time I saw its long stream from Helvellyn, but the time was not ripe for going down. My feet were toward Thirlmere, and the other lake had to wait awhile.
Shortly, however, I had opportunity—I started ere sunrise, and met the light on the top of High Street. I was still a novice at fellscraft, and knew but little of the lay of the land. Still, with face set so sure toward Ullswater, neither map nor guide-book was required to keep direction. It is wonderfully deceptive, that descent of Fusedale. From the ridge it seems that ten easy minutes down the slope would bring one there, but an hour passed and I had not reached Howtown bay. On the way I had a distant glimpse of some deer. On the fells hereabouts a herd of native red deer roam in a wild state. Sometimes outlyers go far south, and more than once they have been chased miles by hounds. A forester looks after the herd—no light matter when there is no keep on the uplands and the half-starved animals break into the turnip fields, or drive the sheep away from the hay thrown out for their benefit. The forester also regulates the constitution of the herd: occasionally there is a day of thinning out redundant stags or hinds. The red deer was till comparatively recent times known on several of our wilder fells. At Ennerdale a piece of rugged fell known as the Side was a rallying point for them, and from this they ranged the mountains to Buttermere and Wastdale, where some few homed about craggy Scawfell. There was a wild herd on the Rydal fells for long, and within the memory of persons not long dead deer used to wander occasionally on the moorland between Duddon and Esk. Stories of how their fathers fought the deer in winter from the stackyards are often told by the dwellers on Ullswater farms. Hereabouts, too, nested the golden eagle long after it was extinct in less stern parts. The last was recorded as shot on the Martindale fells by a local named Sisson, about seventy years ago. The bird had been unknown since 1790, when a mature specimen was shot or trapped in the wilds near Buttermere. The birds and beasts of Ullswater at that period would make an interesting list indeed: kites, eagles, bittern; martens, badgers, wild cats, and the like. I don’t believe there are any wild cats now, but the sweetmart is not yet extinct, and latterly there has been a recrudescence of the badger. The foumart is a noisome beast, and capable of doing great damage in a poultry roost. Dogs will hunt it with glee, but are content to corner it, not to bowl it over.
