Traces of the Celts are clearly distinguishable in the names of
some of the more prominent mountains within a few miles of Keswick,
Skiddaw, Blencathra, Glaramara, Cat-Bells, Helvellyn. The first
is derived from the name of the solar god, Ska-da, one of the
appellations of the chief deity of Celtic Britain, to whom Skiddaw
was consecrated. The second has been supposed to be a corruption
of blen-y-cathern, the "peak of witches"; the fourth to signify
"the groves of Baal"; and the last El-Velin, "the hill of Baal or
Veli." The worship of the Assyrian deity was celebrated amongst the
Celtic inhabitants of our island with the greatest importance and
solemnity. The stone circles are still remaining in many places
where the bloody sacrifices to his honour were performed: and one
of the most important of these is near Keswick. In the immediate
vicinity is also a gloomy valley, Glenderaterra, the name of which
is sufficiently indicative of the purpose for which, like Tophet of
old, it was ordained; Glyn-dera taran signifying in Celtic, "the
valley of the angel or demon of execution."
It is a curious fact that till the last few years, a trace also
of the ancient worship still lingered around two temples in this
county, where it was once habitually performed. Both at Keswick,
and at Cumwhitton where there is a similar druidical circle,
the festival of the Beltein, or the fire of Baal, was till very
recently celebrated on the first of May. As the Jews had by their
"prophets of the groves," made their children "pass through the
fire to Baal"; so the Britons, taught by their Druids, were
accustomed once a year to drive their flocks and herds through the
fire, to preserve them from evil during the remainder of the year.
Indeed the custom still prevails. If the cows are distempered,
it is actually a practice in many of the dales to light "the
Need-fire"; notice being given throughout the neighbouring valleys,
that the charm may be sent for if wanted. "Need-fire" is said to
mean cattle-fire, and to be derived from the Danish _nod_, whence
also is the northern word nolt or nowte. The Need-fire is produced
by rubbing two slicks together. A great pile of combustible stuff
is prepared, to give as much smoke as possible. When lighted,
the neighbours snatch some of the fire, hurry home with it,
and light their respective piles; and the cattle, diseased and
sound, are then driven through the flame. Mr. Gibson says, that
in 1841, when the cattle-murrain prevailed in Cumberland, he had
many opportunities of witnessing the application of this charm to
animals both diseased and sound. And he tells us, that to ensure
its efficacy it was necessary to observe certain conditions. The
fire had to be produced at first by friction, the domestic fires
in the neighbourhood being all previously extinguished; then it
had to be brought spontaneously to each farm by some neighbour
unsolicited: and neither the fire so brought, nor any part of the
fuel used, must ever have been under a roof. These conditions being
observed, a great fire was made, and the cattle driven to and fro
in the smoke. One honest farmer who had an ailing wife and delicate
children passed _them_ through this ordeal, as was averred with
most beneficial effect. Another inadvertently carried the fire
just brought to him into his house to save it from extinction by a
sudden shower: and it was declared that in his case the need-fire
would be inoperative. "It is interesting," says Mr. Ferguson, "to
see how men cling to the performance of ancient religious rites,
when the significance of the ceremony has long been forgotten; and
what a hold must that worship have held over the minds of men,
which Thor and Odin have not supplanted, nor the Christianity of a
thousand years."
The tribe of ancient Britons who occupied Cumberland previous
to the Roman conquest, the Brigantes, who were as wild and
uncultivated as their native hills, subsisting principally by
hunting and the spontaneous fruits of the earth; wearing for their
clothing the skins of animals, and dwelling in habitations formed
by the pillars of the forest rooted in the earth, and enclosed by
interwoven branches, or in caves; have left one undoubted specimen
of their race behind them. In the parish of Scaleby, in Cumberland,
the land on the north end is barren, and large quantities of peat
are cut and sent to Carlisle and other places for sale. At the
depth of nine feet in this peat moss, has been found the skeleton
of an ancient Briton, enclosed in the skin of some wild animal, and
carefully bound up with thongs of tanned leather. It is conjectured
that the body must have lain in the moss since the invasion of
Julius Cæsar, and from the position in which the skeleton was
found, grasping a stick about three feet long and twelve inches in
circumference, it is supposed he must have perished accidentally on
the spot. The remains were not long ago in the possession of the
rector and Dr. Graham of Netherhouse.
In this part of the island the Britons were not in the worst
state of mental darkness; these were not ignorant of a Deity,
and they were not idolators. Their druids and bards possessed
all the learning of the age. And it is believed that some of the
Chief Druids had their station in Cumberland, where many of their
monuments still remain, and of these one of the most noble and
extensive of any in the island is the circle near Keswick. It
stands on an eminence, about a mile and a half on the old road
to Penrith, in a field on the right hand. The spot is the most
commanding which could be chosen in that part of the country,
without climbing a mountain. Derwentwater and the vale of Keswick
are not seen from it, only the mountains that enclose them on the
south and west. Latrigg and the huge side of Skiddaw are on the
north: to the east is the open country towards Penrith, with Mell
fell in the distance, where it rises alone like a huge tumulus on
the right, and Blencathra on the left, rent into deep ravines. On
the south east is the range of Helvellyn, from its termination
at Wanthwaite Craggs to its loftiest summits, and to Dunmail
Raise. The lower range of Nathdale Fells lies nearer in a line
parallel with Helvellyn. The heights above Leathes Water, with the
Borrowdale mountains complete the panorama.
This circle is formed of stones of various forms, natural and
unhewn, of a species of granite; of a kind, according to Clarke,
not to be found within many miles of this place. The largest is
nearly eight feet high, and fifteen feet in circumference; most of
them are still erect, but some are fallen. They are set in a form
not exactly circular; the diameter being thirty paces from east
to west, and thirty-two from north to south. At the eastern end a
small enclosure is formed within the circle by ten stones, making
an oblong square in conjunction with the stones on that side of the
circle, seven paces in length, and three in width within. At the
opposite side a single square stone is placed at the distance of
three paces from the circle.
Concerning this, like all similar monuments in great Britain, the
popular superstition prevails, that no two persons can number the
stones alike, and that no person will ever find a second count
confirm the first. This notion is curiously illustrated by the
various writers who have described it. According to Gough, Stukely
states the number to be forty; Gray says they are fifty; Hutchinson
makes them fifty; Clarke made them out to be fifty-two; others,
more correctly, forty-eight. Southey says, the number of stones
which compose the circle is thirty-eight, and besides these there
are ten which form three sides of a little square within, on the
eastern side, three stones of the circle itself forming the fourth;
this being evidently the place where the Druids who presided had
their station; or where the more sacred and important part of the
rites and ceremonies (whatever they may have been) were performed.
The singularity noticed in this monument, and what distinguishes it
from all other druidical remains of this nature, is the recess on
the eastern side of the area. Mr. Pennant supposes it to have been
allotted for the Druids, the priests of the place, as a peculiar
sanctuary, a sort of holy of holies, where they met, separated
from the vulgar, to perform their rites, their divinations, or to
sit in council to determine on controversies, to compromise all
differences about limits of land, or about inheritances, or for
the trial of greater criminals. The cause that this recess was on
the east side, seems to arise from the respect paid by the ancient
Britons to Baal or the Sun; not originally an idolatrous respect,
but merely as a symbol of the Creator.
The rude workmanship, or rather arrangement, of these structures,
for it cannot be called architecture, indicates the great barbarity
of the times of the Druids; and furnishes strong proof of the
savage nature of these heathen priests. Within this magical circle
we may conceive any incantations to have been performed, and
any rites of superstition to have been celebrated; their human
executions, their imposing sacrifices; and their inhuman method of
offering up their victims, by enclosing them in a gigantic figure
of Hercules (the emblem of human virtue) made of wicker work, and
burning them alive in sacrifice to the divine attribute of Justice.
This impressive monument of former times (the Keswick circle) is
carefully preserved: the soil within the enclosure is not broken; a
path from the road is left, and a stepping style has been placed,
to accommodate visitors with an easy access to it. The old legend
about the last human sacrifice of the Druids belongs to this
monument. Gilpin says, "a romantic place seldom wants a romantic
story to adorn it." And here certainly, amidst unmistakeable
evidences of the worship of Baal: within sight of the vale (St.
John's) which reveals the isolated rock, once the enchanted
fortress of the powerful Merlin: within sound of the Greta, "the
mourner," "the loud lamenter," in whose torrents are heard voices
complaining among the stones: within range of Souter Fell with its
shadowy armies and spectres marching in military array, why and
whence and whither we know not; here, if anywhere, the very realm
of mystery and superstition is made manifest to us, with almost
awful significance; overlying the fairest scenes of nature, and
investing them with all the charms of a region of romance.
The neighbourhood of this temple, too, is not without a certain
notoriety on account of the violent floods with which it has been
visited even in modern times. Hutchinson speaks of a remarkable
one caused by impetuous rains, which happened on the twenty-second
of August, 1749, in the vale of St. John's. "The clouds discharged
their torrents like a waterspout; the streams from the mountains
uniting, at length became so powerful a body, as to rend up the
soil, gravel, and stones to a prodigious depth, and bear with them
mighty fragments of rocks; several cottages were swept away from
the declivities where they had stood in safety for a century; the
vale was deluged, and many of the inhabitants with their cattle
were lost. A singular providence protected many lives, a little
school, where all the youths of the neighbourhood were educated,
at the instant crowded with its flock, stood in the very line of
one of these torrents, but the hand of God, in a miraculous manner,
stayed a rolling rock, in the midst of its dreadful course, which
would have crushed the whole tenement with its innocents; and by
its stand, the floods divided, and passed on this hand and on
that, insulating the school-house, and leaving the pupils with
their master, trembling at once for the dangers escaped and as
spectators of the horrid havock in the valley, and the tremendous
floods which encompassed them on every side." He received this
account from one of the people then at school: and also gives the
following description of that inundation, which he had met with.
"It began with most terrible thunder and incessant lightning, the
preceding day having been extremely hot and sultry; the inhabitants
for two hours before the breaking of the cloud, heard a strange
noise, like the wind blowing in the tops of high trees. It is
thought to have been a spout or a large body of water, by which
the lightning incessantly rarifying the air, broke at once on the
tops of the mountains, and descended upon the valley below, which
is about three miles long, half a mile broad, and lies nearly east
and west, being closed on the south and north sides with prodigious
high, steep, and rocky mountains. Legbert Fells on the north side,
received almost the whole cataract, for the spout did not extend
above a mile in length; it chiefly swelled four small brooks, but
to so amazing a degree, that the largest of them, called Catchertz
Ghyll, swept away a mill and other edifices in five minutes,
leaving the place where they stood covered with fragments of rocks
and rubbish three or four yards deep, insomuch that one of the mill
stones could not be found. During the violence of the storm, the
fragments of rock which rolled down the mountain, choked up the
old course of this brook; but the water forcing its way through a
shivery rock, formed a chasm four yards wide and about eight or
nine deep. The brooks lodged such quantities of gravel and sand
on the meadows, that they were irrecoverably lost. Many large
pieces of rocks were carried a considerable way into the fields;
some larger than a team of ten horses could move, and one of them
measuring nineteen yards about." Clarke says, "Many falsehoods are
related of this inundation: for instance, the insulation of the
school-house with its assembled master and scholars, which, though
commonly told and believed, is not supported by any tradition
of the kind preserved in the neighbourhood." No doubt, the
circumstances are exaggerated: but even his own narrative shows it
to have been one of the most dreadful and destructive inundations
ever remembered in this country. He relates that "all the evening
of that 22nd day of August, horrid, tumultuous noises were heard in
the air; sometimes a puff of wind would blow with great violence,
then in a moment all was calm again. The inhabitants, used to
bosom-winds, whirlwinds, and the howling of distant tempests among
the rocks, went to bed as usual, and from the fatigues of the day
were in a sound sleep when the inundation awoke them. About one
in the morning the rain began to fall, and before four such a
quantity fell as covered the whole face of the country below with
a sheet of water many feet deep; several houses were filled with
sand to the first story, many more driven down; and among the rest
Legberthwaite mill, of which not one stone was left upon another;
even the heavy millstones were washed away; one was found at a
considerable distance, but the other was never discovered. Several
persons were obliged to climb to the tops of the houses, to escape
instantaneous death; and there many were obliged to remain, in a
situation of the most dreadful suspense, till the waters abated.
Mr. Mounsey of Wallthwaite says, that when he came down stairs in
the morning, the first sight he saw was a gander belonging to one
of his neighbours, and several planks and kitchen utensils, which
were floating about his lower apartments, the violence of the
waters having forced open the doors on both sides of the house. The
most dreadful vestiges of this inundation, or waterspout, are at a
place called Lob-Wath, a little above Wallthwaite; here thousands
of prodigious stones are piled upon each other, to the height of
eleven yards; many of these stones are upwards of twenty tons
weight each, and are thrown together in such a manner as to be at
once the object of curiosity and horror.
"The quantity of water which had fallen here is truly astonishing;
more particularly considering the small space it had to collect
in. The distance from Lob-Wath to Wolf-Crag, is not more than a
mile and a half, and there could none collect much above Wolf-Crag;
nor did the rain extend more than eight miles in any direction. At
Melfell only three miles distant, the farmers were leading corn all
night (as is customary when they fear ill weather,) and no rain
fell there; yet such was the fury of the descending torrent, that
the fields at Fornside exhibited nothing but devastation. Here a
large tree broken in two, there one torn up by the root, and the
ground everywhere covered with sand and stones." The rivulet called
Mosedale Beck, which has its source between the mountains Dodd and
Wolf-Crag, was by its sudden and continuous overflow the chief
contributory of the inundation.