That line of warriors from their ancient hold.
—Stranger they fled—their courage shrunk when tried
[462] Mr. J. Denton, quoted in Whellan's History and Topography, p. 410.
FOOTNOTE:
[GD] Sonnet No. XXVII. having been first published in The Waggoner and other poems (1819), was not reprinted in either of the editions of 1820. It was "taken from a tradition belonging to Rydal Hall," as is explained in the Fenwick note, p. 226.—Ed.
"Sonnets XXIV. to XXVII. appear to have been written in one spot,—some 'Nook—with woodbine hung and straggling weed.' If the poet has strictly retained in the sonnets the order in which the places lie upon the river-bank, this nook must be within a stone's throw of the pool mentioned in the preceding note, for the scenes of Sonnets XXIX. and XXXI. are close at hand. But, though there are plenty of such 'grottos' or 'arbours' here, some difficulty arises from the fact that the Old Hall and ruined keep cannot be seen from this part of the stream, nor, indeed, can they be seen from Ulpha itself, nor from any part of the high road. The height upon which the ruin stands is certainly a prominent feature in the landscape, but the ruin itself is completely hidden by a shoulder of the hill, neither can the hill by any stretch of the imagination be called a 'cliff.'
The only point of view from which the castle appears to stand upon a 'cliff' is reached by a footpath near some copper works, about half way up Holehouse Ghyll. Here you see the ruin at the end (or rather bend) of the Ghyll high above your head, the sides of the ravine rising steeply to its walls. Holehouse Ghyll is thickly wooded, so that this may very possibly be the poet's 'dim retreat,' the chief objection being that the Ghyll lies below Ulpha Kirk, and that the order of the sonnets would thus be broken.
But wherever the poet's 'nook' may have been, there can be little doubt that the fragment of masonry near the farmhouse called 'The Old Hall,' represents the 'embattled house' of Sonnet XXVII., for Broughton Tower, the only other fortified house in the valley, is still some miles away, and the rising ground upon which it stands is no cliff, but a mere undulation in the centre of the nether valley. Of the Castle at the head of Holehouse Ghyll there is little enough remaining—less, even, than in Wordsworth's day, for a woman living in a cottage close by it assured me that she could remember when there was much more of it standing than at the present time. The cause to which she assigned its rapid disappearance was not, however, the same as that assigned in the first two lines of the sonnet. According to her, natural decay had less to do with it than the destructive hands of the dalesmen, who pulled the stones down to mend the fell-walls with. A native of Ulpha added that a new barn was built for the adjoining farmhouse some little time since, and that a great part of the materials doubtless came from the old ruin.
A ragged piece of wall three to four feet in thickness, with three small square windows splayed inwards, and a fireplace about 6 feet long by 12 feet high, with a wide chimney, is all that now remains in situ, of this seat of the Lords of Ulpha.