Some are still living who can recollect the harmless idiot and all his singular accoutrements. He never appeared without six or eight whips in his hands: a little stick, with a piece of string attached to the end of it, would any time supply honest Joseph with an excellent whip. A piece of an old coat, tied to his body with a hayband, was his usual upper garment; his legs were usually covered with haybands, tier above tier; and a profusion of hemp strings, in his opinion, adorned his person. These simple ornaments were to Joseph as dear and as honourable as the red and blue ribbons which are so anxiously struggled for by his fellows in the higher walks of life. In his hat he wore a fox's brush and peacock feathers, thus aping the fancied splendour of eastern magnificence.
Jossy was a quiet, inoffensive being; and the farmers through all the south of Westmorland would as soon have thought of neglecting any of their just debts, as of refusing the accustomed donation made to him. An out-house was his usual place of lodging; and habit had rendered this so natural to him, that a bed never entered his circumscribed ideas.
After Joseph, like his intelligent fellow-mortals, had been consigned to his "narrow house," a young man, in the parish of Orton, composed the following elegy to his memory:—
"Beneath this lowly, grass-encircled spot,
Lie the remains of Joseph of the Knot.
Death, grisly tyrant, no distinction shows
'Twixt him who all, and him who nothing knows.
Yes, ye! ye mighty sons of boasted wit!
All—all, like Joseph, must to death submit.
Though on his fingers many a ring he bore,
And round his brow the gaudy honours wore,
For him his plumes although the peacock shed,
And reynard's brush graced Joseph's hoary head;
Though armed with whips he constantly appeared,
Death mocked his honours, nor his armour feared.
But ah! despise not Joseph's humble lot—
His life so mean—his death so soon forgot:
In the last day—that great decisive day,
When death shall yield his temporary prey—
By lords, by kings, his fate may be desired—
Where nothing's given, nothing is required."
[EMMA AND SIR EGLAMORE.]
A LEGEND OF ULLSWATER.
ABOUT a quarter of a mile from Lyulph's Tower, a hunting seat of the late Duke of Norfolk, on the banks of Ullswater, is a lonely brook, the Airey or Aira, which, at Aira Force, falls over the rocks a height of 80 feet, into a beautiful and deep glen, covered with luxuriant foliage of fern and sweet-scented hawthorns. A picturesque bridge unites the precipitous rocks down which the foaming torrent pursues its ceaseless course.
This beautiful waterfall is the scene of the touching legend of the "Somnambulist," which has been versified by Wordsworth. The tale is, that Emma, a beautiful lady, betrothed to one Sir Eglamore, was walking in her sleep on the banks of the fall; and that her lover, who had unexpectedly returned after a long absence—so long as to have affected her health—was struck with the apparition of the maid, who had become subject to night wanderings. He watched her for some time plucking the twigs from the trees, and casting them into the stream, uncertain whether she were a real object, or a mere phantom of his imagination. He touched her, and, suddenly breaking her slumber, the affrighted maid shrieked, and, starting back, fell down the rocks into the stream below. The knight plunged in after her, and rescued her; but, though consciousness returned for a short period, and she recognised him, she expired within a few minutes upon the bank. The heart-broken knight built a cell upon the edge of the fall, and lived there in solitude for several years, shunning all intercourse with the world.