first surveyed the yew, towards the grand old farmstead and its
cluster of sycamores as a background for the bridge, let us go back
to the bridge and across into the meadow wherein the 'Pride of Lorton
Vale' stands, and, gazing from under the tree towards the west and
south, let us wonder at the beauty of faintly bronzed fern on
Whiteside, the amethystine lilac of the Grasmoor mass, the far-off
cones of Red Pike and High Stile blue above Mellbreak, and far to the
west, Herdhouse ghostly grey; all seeming to join in shutting out the
world and making the quiet emerald meadow in which we stand a
sanctuary for thought and restfulness.
Then let us go back to that day in the year 1653 when George Fox,
having narrowly escaped death by a boy's rapier thrust, and with his
hand and wrist still smarting from the cruel blow of a rough fellow
down at Bootle, where they mobbed him on the previous Sunday, pale
and worn came hither to the ford and found already James Lancaster,
one of his disciples, who had gone forward {173} as an avant-courier
on the way to Cockermouth, busy haranguing the people.
The quiet meadow of to-day was on that day full of armed men. A
detachment of Cromwell's soldiers had been told off from Cockermouth
to keep the peace--it being known that Fox was on his way to Lorton;
and Mr. Larkham, the Congregationalist minister of Cockermouth, and
Priest Wilkinson, the Vicar of Brigham-cum-Mosser-cum-Lorton, were
probably among the crowd that covered the field and stood by the
banks of the stream. 'The people,' we read in Fox's _Journal_, 'lay
up and down in the open, like people at a leaguer.' Fox had seen
something of camp life during the late civil war, and he doubtless
felt that day that, man of peace though he was, the field of the
Lorton yew would be indeed a field of battle for him.
But what interests us most as we gaze upon this venerable tree to-day
in these pleasant pastures beside the waters of peace, is not so much
the memory of the crowd of Cromwellian soldiers and members of the
Church militant who came out that day to 'sorely withstand' George
Fox, as the vision of the boughs of this sable and majestic yew-tree
{174} filled with the listening ears and eager eyes of those who
heard that day the weary and way-worn prophet of the Lord, 'largely
declare the word of Life' as he knew it, and 'open the everlasting
Gospel to them.' Fox tells us that 'this tree was so full of people
that I feared they would break it down.'
Look at it now, and think of it no longer as a broken yew-tree, sown
here perchance by some far wandering bird centuries ago, but as a
living witness to the power of men who have a living Gospel to
declare to win the souls of their fellows, and lead them into
communion with God who is a spirit. Men once heard the voice of Fox
sound out here, above the babble of the beck and the hum of the
multitude and the protests of the Lorton minister, and those who
crowded on the yew-tree boughs felt light instead of darkness--sun
instead of shadow, was their portion, and we read, 'Many hundreds
were convinced that day, and received the Lord Jesus Christ and His
free teaching with gladness.'
We are not Quakers, but at least our hearts beat in unison with the
earnest teacher of the Truth he knew, to an age that {175} was helped
and is still helped by that Truth; and as we leave the field of the
tree,
'Not loth to furnish weapons for the bands
Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched
To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea
And drew their sounding bows at Azincour,'
we rejoice to think that beneath its sable boughs, the preacher of
the way of peace as better than war, once preached a sermon; and we
trust, that for many a long year still, 'single in the midst of its
own darkness as it stood of yore,' may stand the Lorton Yew.
{176}
LODORE AFTER STORM.
Five days of continual tempest and five nights of storm-wind from the
Atlantic had tried the nerves and tempers and tested the sleeping
powers of all in the Keswick Vale. Nothing like wind to set folks
'fratching'; and that anybody was still on speaking terms with his
neighbour argued well for the kindliness of the townsmen and
villagers.
At last it would seem as if the wind had blown itself out, and at six
o'clock of a grey February evening silence and calm fell upon the
sodden, weary vale. But an ominous cloud-pack boiled up over the
western hills, and the barometer went down two inches. The cattle
were scarcely 'suppered up' for the night in the farmsteads and the
shopmen had scarcely clanged down their last shutter, when the wind
again awoke, and the hills thundered and the trees groaned, and we
{177} knew that America had sent us another cyclone. The
hail-showers thrashed the panes, the windows rattled, the chimneys
moaned and sighed, and though tired men and women went to bed, it was
only to feel their house-walls shake as if an earthquake shock were
passing underneath, and only to wonder which would be the first
chimney-stack to fall. The wind grew to a hurricane, and people as
they lay in sleepless fear upon their beds heard strange voices in
the storm--cries of sailors in agony upon a bitter shore or perishing
in the deep. Then the wind would be heard to try all round the house
and see if perchance a window-frame would give an entrance and indoor
havoc be possible; or a slate would whirl up with a crack and come
down clattering on the roof and spin off into the darkness.
The dawn broke dimly, and the pastures of the middle vale lay like a
wan sea with isles of emerald. Broken boughs hung gaunt and creaking
upon the nearest trees, and the Irish yews curtsied and danced and
split themselves into a hundred spires of nodding darkness against
the angry sky. But the hurricane, however much it might make man
cower and fear, had no power upon the thrush, {178} who saw, behind
the hurricane light of cheerless morn, the dawn of springtide and
love and calm. No storm could
'Quell or disconcert her golden tongue,'
and there, while the wind fluffed her breast to twice its size, she
fluted from the swaying holly tree her old familiar call to the slow
to 'be quick! be quick!' to the drowsy, to 'pray, get up! get up!'
and then to the sad to 'cheer up now! cheer up! cheer up!'
I answered her challenge and arose. The lake from end to end was
ridded with foam, and great clouds of water, torn from the surface,
were marching from west to east. Borrodale was black with storm.
There was no snow on Skiddaw, though the sleet had in a night turned
its fine old head grizzled grey, but over Grasmoor and over Grisedale
it seemed as if some huge ocean wave had broken and left its froth
behind it.
Nearer, however, than on Grasmoor and on Grisedale there was snow.
Far down beyond the purpling 'Walla' woodland, lay, in a crevice of
the hills between Gowder Crag and Shepherd's Crag, a mighty drift of
seeming winter whiteness. That was no gift of winter; it was the
gift of the past night's {179} rain. Gazing at it through a good
field-glass one could see that the white drift was a falling torrent,
and as one gazed one almost, in fancy, heard
'the roar
That stuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodore.'
I knew that they only can see Lodore aright who will brave storm and
tempest, for so swiftly does this splendid cataract pour itself away
that an hour after the rains have ceased upon the Watendlath fells it
dwindles to its natural size, loses its milk-white charm, and ceases
to summon the wanderer to its presence. But this morning its spell
was potent to touch all hearts, and that white winter wreath of snow
and sound called us from far away. Down by the old monks' path we
went, that the hoofs of sumpter-mules in the Middle Ages had worn
deep into the soft soil;--it was to-day a torrent-bed of bubbling
water. On by the village school, where, instead of the pattering of
children's clogs upon the doorstep, to-day the Greta's water gushed
and fell in miniature cascade. Over the bridge beneath Greta Hall,
on which the pencil-makers hung in enforced idleness, for there was
too much water to allow the use of the millwheel. 'Brig is pinched
to be {180} large eneuf for t' watter to-day,' they cried; and so to
the town. 'Dar bon! but thoo bed better keep to lee-side oop
street---slates is fleein' same as leaves i' winter,' said an old
friend as he passed me. 'Well, Betty, what such a night have you
had?' I said to another old friend at the street corner. 'Loavins
me!' she answered, 'but it's been a capper. Cwoal cart was lifted up
and clean turned ower befoar my eyes in oor back yard; and I've been
up and dressed sin five this morn. What I thowt wi' mysel if
anything's goin' to happen, it 'ull not dea fur us _all_ to be naked,
and sea I got intil my cleas!'
So up the main street--powdered with broken slates and plaster from
the house fronts, and out into the Borrodale road we went. Trees
were laid by their heels at the church gate, the holly berries
gleamed in thousands by the roadside; the wind had done what in this
open winter the birds had failed to do. Thence on to the Great Wood.
Fine spruces lay across the road, and the roadmen and woodcutters
were busy making passage possible for the cart traffic. Such a scent
of Christmas trees they made as they hewed away at the spruce
branches {181} one felt oneself a child again, and so with a child's
heart forward. All through the purple woodland were white patches in
top-most boughs, the wounds that the fierce wind had given them.
Only one thing the tempest had been powerless to touch; these were
the tender lichens and the velvet mosses on trunk and wall. How they
gleamed and shone in the forest twilight! And whilst the boughs
clashed and the wood was filled with groans and shrieks and cries,
there, by the wall and on the ground and on the tree-stems, in quiet
restfulness and silent beauty the fearless mosses grew.
But this was not all the gentle life that seemed to fear no storm,
for quavering along from bough to bough a school of long-tailed
titmice went in unalarmed pleasure. The wind that shook the oak
seemed unable to touch them, and down beside me the tiny wren played
his old happy game of hide-and-seek, as if, instead of being lashed
by a cyclone, the woods were still as eventide in June.
Cat Ghyll, beloved of Southey, roared at us as we passed, and one
heard the wind like a trumpet blowing from the steep of Falcon Crag.
Now clear view was gained of Derwentwater, and one noted that the
lake lay in long {182} patches of many colours, here bright green,
there slate blue, there brown, here white and wan, but ridged
throughout with foam; and suddenly, as if it sprang upward from
hidden depths, a water wraith would leap to sight and other spirits
would join it, and the whole silver company of ghostlike vaporous
forms would come dancing across from the further shore and lose
themselves in cloud-like dust upon the land. Or here again would
rise a tiny waterspout and spin and spin the water up into mid-air,
then march and counter-march, lie down, and rise again. While all
the time upon the shore beneath the roadway, waves broke and surge
tumbled, with moaning of a troubled sea that might not rest. It was
something in such a whirl of sound and hissing of such restless
waters to feel far up on the other hand, above the russet grey-green
draperies and the lilac shales, the calm of the storm-proof citadel
of Falcon Crag. We gained Barrow, and heard the waterfall bellowing
in the wood; but it was Lodore that we had set out to see, and Lodore
shone white and clear upon its steep only half-a-mile away.
Full sight of Lodore had now been gained, but not before two other
cataracts flashing to one channel from Gowder Crag had claimed {183}
our wonder, while we watched the water fall, as it seemed, out of
heaven, down by the silver birches, down by the silver shale, and
turn both to darkness by its white contrast. But what a magnificent
rose-red glow those birch trees showed, and how with auburn glory the
larches gleamed! how too in silken grey and delicate yellow the ash
trees climbed the crags! We went forward, but not till we had noted
that, while all the world towards Grange seemed one great grey
water-flood, here right in front of the purple-brown cliff in whose
cleft lay the white Lodore, stood up a little meadowy hill of verdure
green as May--the first home-field of the wandering Viking who pushed
his long ship ashore at Ravenglass and made his way over the Styhead
Pass to ancient Borrodale. For in this green field still flows the
spring where Ketel the Viking, who afterwards gave his name to the
Wyke which we call Keswick to-day, drank in the olden time. Ketel's
Well, as we gaze upon that emerald mound, takes us back to the ninth
century and the first coming of the Norsemen to our dales; and what
was it that bade the hardy Norse rover choose to pitch his camp by
the spring on yonder hill but that same glorious cataract of Lodore,
whose {184} gleaming waters and whose voice of thunder speaks to our
heart as it one time spoke to his. Nay, for that weary wanderer over
sea, Lodore spoke sweeter things. As he listened to the torrent's
voice, there came back memories of his own home-land and all the
sound and sight of those fair 'fosses' and those shining 'ghylls'
from which he was an outlawed exile.
[Illustration: LODORE AFTER A STORM.]
We pass on beyond the hollies, beyond the amber reed-bed, beyond the
grey copse, and gain the gate to the Fall. We cross the meadow and
enter the wood and stand upon the little platform whence the Fall in
its fulness may be seen. What strikes one at once is the majesty of
the high-towering crag of Gowder to the left of Lodore. What strikes
one next, is the feeling of a certain lack of height in the fall. It
does not come rushing over a sheer precipice; it is not cloud-born;
one seems to know that somewhere not far off a valley stream is
passing along through quiet meadows and woodland, and something of
the fierce wildness of its fall is curbed and tamed by the thought.
Yet as we gaze to-day so white is the heaven in the rift between the
cliffs whence it surges into sight, that a very little imagination
enables us to feel as if the whole of that white interspace were
foam, and {185} one's heart is stirred. Not in a rift, but from the
topmost height we think we see and hear a visionary cataract fall and
fall.
Up now through broken boulders, wet with perpetual mist, slippery
with sodden leaf of russet gold, up till a double wych elm, or two
elms bound in sisterly embrace--as if they had in fear clutched one
another as they stood in awe upon the torrent's brink, is gained;
there in shelter of a huge rock, emerald-coated, silver-shining with
the spray, we shelter from the drenching water-dust and see another
view of glorious Lodore. See and hear, for while the milk-white
waters flash and swirl around the ebon boulders in mid-fall, we hear
the tall upstanding cliffs make echo to their voice--such sound as he
who hears can never quite forget. We climb again up by a slippery
path only fit for a goat's foot, helped by impending branches, helped
more by the thought that yonder one will gain not only the noblest
view of the waterfall, but a far outlook over the wide-watered vale
to grey-blue western hills, beyond which booms the sea that gave us,
on the wings of the wind, all this majesty of sound and motion.
In this hurricane, the salt of that ocean is on one's lips, and if
its actual murmurs and {186} the 'scents of the infinite sea' are
denied us, at least by proxy they are ours. For as we slowly win our
way upward the scent of Lodore fills the air, even as its sound fills
our ears. Not the kind of paper-mill scent one knows so well within
the locks or by the backwaters of the Thames, but scent born of
mountain springs and fellside tarns and peaty meadows--scents as
delicate as they are subtle.
We have gained our vantage point for sight and sound. The huge rocks
appear like leviathans bobbing their noses through the foam. A tree
trunk has fallen, and seems to have been caught and held by the mouth
of some vast hippopotamus, who rejoices as the torrent dashes over
his vast back. And the sound is not of bellowing behemoth or
snorting river-horse. No; but such sound as seems to bring all
worlds to unison. Shut your eyes, lean, and listen; you may hear a
mighty army tramping by, you may hear the clashing of innumerable
bells, you may hear the blare of trumpets, you may hear the shouting
of a festal multitude, and ever beneath the deepest harmonies the
tattoo of the thundering river-god, the drum-drum-drumming of Lodore.
One cannot wonder that hither in 1802 {187} came Charles Lamb, the
lover of the city's roar, to listen and rejoice. Keats, too, in 1816
came hither and went, as Lamb went back, a sadder and a wetter man;
but it is of Southey and his two children, his Edith May and his
darling Herbert, we think to-day--he who in the autumn of 1809 heard
the same stream saying the same things it says to us to-day, and who
writing to his brother Tom on board the _Dreadnought_ under date
October 18, 1809, said:
'I hope you will approve of a description of the water of Lodore made
originally for Edith and greatly admired by Herbert. In my mind it
surpasses any that the tourists have yet printed. Thus it runs:
"Tell the people how the water comes down at Lodore? Why, it comes
thundering and floundering, and thumping and bumping, and jumping,
and hissing and whizzing, and dripping and skipping, and grumbling
and rumbling and tumbling and falling and brawling, and dashing and
clashing and splashing and pouring and roaring, and whirling and
curling, and leaping and creeping, and sounding and bounding, and
chattering and clattering with a dreadful uproar--and that way the
water comes down at Lodore."'
{188}
We turned for home; a patch of blue sky shone momentarily above the
purple hollow of sound and foam. And though still 'the forest
cracked, the waters curled,' a sunbeam showered radiance as it flew
by moaning woodland and by silent crag. In the Great Wood all
colours of purple, amber, rose, and amethyst leapt out at the passing
of that gleam. One could not but compare the marvellous and
changeful effects of light and colour to those that, in some
enchanted land of mystery, the coloured fires of the wizard of the
pantomime call forth, for our children's amazement.
Now all near was dark, while far ahead the witchery of the golden
woodland grew. Now Walla Crag stood purple grey, now shone in lucent
silver powdered with larch-tree gold, whilst ever on beyond the woody
lane, Skiddaw, as blue as solid cobalt, rose calmly up into a
wandering storm-white sky. And yet for all this witchery of colour,
for all this magic transformation scene, one vision stayed--that
far-off wreath of quiet snow,--snow that had turned on nearer view to
scent and sound, to life and light and laughter, to power and
impassioned loveliness, there in the resonant chasm of Lodore.
{189}
A NORTH COUNTRY NIMROD.
We shall never hear again
On the fell or in the plain
John Crozier's 'Tally-ho!'
Never see him through the rain
And the sun, with might and main
Follow on from crag to crag, while the hounds give tongue below.
Dark the valley east and west,
Clouds are on Blencathra's crest.
The hunter home has gone:
And the Squire they loved the best
Now is carried to his rest--
Eighty years has Death the huntsman followed hard--the
chase is done.
But I think I see him stand--
Rough mountain-staff in hand,
Fur cap and coat of grey--
With a smile for all the hand
Of the sportsmen in the land,
And a word for all the merry men who loved his 'Hark-away!'
{190}
Last hunter of your race!
As we bear you to your place,
We forget the hounds and horn,
But the tears are on our face,
For we mind your deeds of grace,
Loving-kindness late and early shown to all the village-born.
'It's a dark daay for Threlkett is this un, hooiver! T'ald Squire's
gone doon!--girtest Master of t' dogs i' Cummerland sin Jwohn Peel
I'se warrant him--an' a gay tiff aid feller an' aw. Deeth has hoaled
him at last; but what, he'd bin runnin' gaame fer mair nor eighty
year noo. He's bin at Maister-o-hunt job langer nor ony man i' t'
whoale counttry, I suppoase, has t' aid Squire. It's sixty-fowr year
or mair sin he took t' horn. Eh, my! bit what a heart he hed!
Kindest-hearted man i' these parts--niver wad let a nebbor-body want
for owt if he thowt he cud dea good by lendin' a hand, and pertikler
fond o' t' barns; school children was fit to be mad wid him on
treat-daays. And why what, he gat scheul-hoose builded, and laid
doon a hoondred poond fer Parish Room, let alean gevin site i' t'
village. It's a dark day fer Threlkett, I'se telling ye, and dogs
hes lost best friend and t' foxes t' warst enemy they've ivver hed
here-aboot.'
{191}
We were standing by the Druid's Circle on Castrigg Fell, and as the
old yeoman spoke to me I looked across the valley to the great
buttressed height of Blencathra--blacker to-day beneath, by reason of
the slight snow covering on its summit, and saw in its grove of
larches the white house, half-farm, half-mansion, whence the oldest
Master of the Hunt, in Britain, had gone for his far journey. Never
again would the men who follow the hounds pass through the gate of
the Riddings, with the fox and the hound carved in stone on either
side of them, to be met and to be greeted by the cheery old Squire on
hunting days; never again, after a long day's hunt, would they repair
to the Farrier Inn or to the Salutation Inn, mid-village, to wait the
coming of the Master 'ere they all 'howked in' to the 'tatie-pot' he
had provided them.
There was a time when all the farmhouses for miles round, and every
cottage home, was glad, because a Threlkeld man had come to his own
again, and I could not help contrasting the gladness of that day, as
told us by Wordsworth in his _Feast of Brougham Castle_, and _Song of
the Shepherd Lord_, with the sadness of this day for all the country
side, {192} now that another shepherd-lord had gone unto his own.
That shepherd-lord we read
'Was honoured more and more,
And ages after he was laid in earth
"The good Lord Clifford" was the name he bore.'
They were very different men, that shepherd-lord and this our friend,
the Master of the Blencathra Hunt, John Crozier: but both of them had
been reared in the same quiet pastoral scene, and among the same fine
race of shepherd gentlemen. Both had learned the lesson of this
mountain side,--
'Love had they found in huts where poor men lie,
Their daily teachers had been woods and hills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.'
Both men had won the hearts of the simple people far and near, and
ages after he is laid in earth, as he will be laid by the side of his
beloved wife, in the Threlkeld Churchyard, men will speak of 't'ald
Squire,' and enthusiastically tell of his hunting feats, and remember
how he loved his native village.
The love of hunting which John Crozier inherited from his father, who
lived at Gate Ghyll Farm on Blencathra's side, and who {193} turned
over to his son the mastership of what were then spoken of as 'the
Threlkeld dogs' in the year 1840, is a passion with our dales' folk
which only those who live amongst them can understand.
The 'varmint' is the natural enemy of the shepherd, and this adds
zest to the day's sport. In our churchwardens' accounts of old time
there appears the item 'A fox head, 21s.,' and though in other
chapelries 3s. 4d. appears to have been the price paid, such a
scourge must Reynard have become that the churchwardens felt they
were justified in giving a whole week's wage for the destruction of
one fox. Down at Shoulthwaite and, for aught I know, in other dales
a fox trap of masonry existed till of late years, built beehive
fashion with a hole in the top. If Reynard ventured in to the bait,
which was a fine fat hen, he was a prisoner; try to scale the walls
how he might the artful one was foiled; but to trap a fox goes
against the grain. There are certain things in which our hunt
differs from others. Class distinctions are unknown in the field.
The Master of the Hunt knows all by their Christian name. It is a
social gathering from daylight to dark. The luxury of horses, too,
is unknown. The {194} field are all running huntsmen of the type of
old Timothy, of whom Wordsworth wrote, in the year 1800--the
childless Timothy who took up his staff, and with the thought of his
last child's death heavy upon him could nevertheless not refuse the
invitation of 'the horn and the hark! hark-away,' and 'went to the
chase with a tear on his cheek.'