Our minor waters cannot claim much history: most of them are too far into the wilds to be mentioned in ancient story, except in a hazy and collective fashion. Several of our lakes have been served likewise. But that humanity knew of them in far-off ages is sure. By Whinfell tarn Britons of old lived; a canoe was some years ago dug out of the oozy peat there. And on the opposite side of the Country there are extensive ruins of a city within a mile of Devoke Water. Who built Barn Scar cannot be told with surety; for long legend put it down to Danes who peopled it with lads of Drigg and lasses of Beckermet.
But if legitimate history has failed, there is amplitude of legend. Most will have heard of the deathless fish who are said to live in the depths of Bowscale tarn; of the fairy chasm in the sunless deeps of Scales tarn under the frowning Edges of Saddleback. On the fells about them have been seen mysterious armies, coming, coming. Brothers Water has its story of gloom and death: how two pairs of brothers were drowned in it. Of Grisedale tarn, storehouse of King Dunmail’s crown, I have told the story. Gates Water, by Coniston Old Man, has a few weird stories, but they are entwined hopelessly almost. There are stories of pigmies and giants who lived in the wildernesses, of fairies and evil spirits who wail over shapeless mounds of rock, ruins of cities of uncouth days for aught we know.
DALEGARTH FORCE, ESKDALE
To see the heart of Lakeland, one should make the pilgrimage of the Mountain Tarns. It will not be an easy task: the highest fells will have to be crossed—it will need perseverance and strong boots. And even in these days of motor and cycle some humans can and will walk. Many a mile of breezy moorland will be found on such a pilgrimage; not weary when the heather’s purple bells are at their widest, when green grass clothes the ghylls, when the rowan flowers, and the white foam of hawthorn dapples the fellsides,—many a mile of rock and crag, rain-washed, frost-scored, scree-strewn, lichen-covered, many a mile of smooth upland where curlew and plover whistle and wail, where raven and hawk flight for carrion and live prey, where fox and otter, and even red deer, are to be discovered by the alert, nooks where grow our rarest ferns and mosses, waterfalls and rattling cascading becks.
Such a pilgrimage would commence outside the range of the fells. The pedestrian would strike north from the town of Kendal—a grey “burgh of ancient charter proud”—for Whinfell tarn. This is a tarn of the renascence, think the fell-wanderers; Nature having shed her grandest pearls in the gorges and on the rock-shelves to westward, came to bestow her final blessing in the low country. She sat beneath whin-patched Beacon and wept over the sweet scene she could not really decorate. But of all her plenishings she still had a trace, and well she bestowed them: the roach, forgotten when char were placed in Winander; a knot of curious weeds which soft currents sway in the peat-bottomed pools, and—a boat. This old punt so often went to the bottom that it was as muddy as a street on a wet day. Nature, those countless æons ago, endowed Whinfell tarn with it—it was long before emulous Britons fashioned that moss-buried canoe—and what better craft was there, said the contented folk who lived thereabout. But Nature has been superseded in these days, and a boat made by man floats near the reed beds where the angler seeks the pike.
Thence up “Robert Elsmere’s” dale to Greycrag tarn—a lonesome sheet of water under a towering fell-end. It has, say some, a store of amphibious fish; nine months of the year they rejoice in water, the remainder they spend in the depths of the moss. During hot weather the tarn is often quite invisible. I have never seen trace of a fish in Greycrag’s mere, but Old Bob, a veteran rodman of the glens, assures me that they exist.
“But,” I once protested, “they can’t.”
“Noo, luk sta here: when t’ watter’s lah, thoo can hear ’em as weel as see ’em. Yan warm day ah was walkin’ on t’ bog be t’ tarn edge, an’ aw on a sudden ah hard ’em. Yan said, ‘Say, Billy, it’s rare an’ warm to-day?’ ‘Aye, an’ ther’s less watter an’ aw. T’ lile crag’s a yerd oot.’ ‘Thoo nivver says sae! Well, well, hooivver. We’ll hae to git to wark an’ dig doon.’ T’ watter just afoor me turnt aw mucky, an’ ah couldn’t see t’ fish.” That’s corroboration with a vengeance.
Old Bob it was also who first gave me the story of the overland pike and eels which reside in Skeggles Water, a peaty pool on the waste between Longsleddale and Kentmere, visible as you climb up the steeps to Greycrag. These marvellous fish have the power o’ wet nights of leaving the tarn, and slithering their way across the grass patches to where the water runs down into Longsleddale. I have found a dozen men willing to swear they have seen the fish on their journey, but not one who has actually captured a specimen.