Timothy's daughter Ellen had been dead five months or more, or he
probably would not have followed the hunt, for there is a kind of
etiquette that the hunters in the dales observe, and they would no
more go a-hunting within a month after the death of their beloved,
than they would miss going to church on the Sunday following the
funeral. I remember once being asked by a widower, who was in great
sorrow and could not get away from his thoughts, whether he should
take what he knew to be the best physic--a day with the dogs. I
asked, 'What would your wife have said?' His answer came quite
straight: 'She wad hev clapped a bit o' lunch in my pocket, gi'en me
ma staff, shut door upon me, and telt me not to show my feace until
supper time.' I answered, 'That's enough,' and the man was a new
{195} being when he returned from the hunt, more able to wrestle with
his sorrows.
The women folk are as keen as their husbands. They tell of a 'woman
body' at Wythburn who, joining the hounds in full cry, and finding
her skirts in the way, stopped, took a knife out of her pocket, and
slit her petticoat in order that with a 'divided skirt' she might the
surer be in at the kill. How keen the men are, is shown by the fact
that beginning as youngsters to follow the drag, and carrying on a
love of the sport through the prime of manhood, they may be still
found from 75 to 80 and over, out with the hounds at the call of the
horn. Nay, even when their sight fails them, they will follow, and
it is on record that a veteran whose eyes were failing him and who
had the rare good luck of a vantage ground to see the finish of the
hunt, and was so maddened by the hurried and eager account from his
companions of how the hunt was going, that he cried out 'Hang thur
aid een o' mine! I wish that they wer nobbut out all togidder; I
believe I wad see better through t' hooals!'
Fox hunting in the Lake Country tests the sportsman. None but a true
lover of the chase would be content to breakfast and get {196} away
with the stars (as in winter he oft-times has to do that he may get
to the heights before the hounds are loosed)--and, facing all
weathers, come back with the stars. He has to battle with storm and
tempest. It may be fine in one valley and a roaring blizzard on the
other side of the mountain. The old veteran, John Crozier, himself
would tell of how he had to lie down on Skiddaw summit in a sudden
and blinding snowstorm, and on more than one occasion he and all the
hunt have suddenly been enveloped in a thick mist, which made
movement almost impossible. And hunting not only tries the heart, it
tries the head. A fox gets 'binked,' as they call it, or banked, and
some one must go up on an almost inaccessible crag to put in the
terrier; and a man must know the country, and the probable run of
every fox that gets up in front of the hounds. There is no earth
stopping; only the bields are known, and the cunning of Reynard is a
secret, to be learnt not only by the huntsman and whip but by every
single man in the field. As for the foxes, though the old greyhound
breed that John Peel knew--20 lbs. to 29 lbs. in weight--have passed
away, the little black-legged Irish fox can give a good account {197}
of himself, and from three to five hours and from 25 to 40 miles have
not been an uncommon experience of a run.
At the beginning of last century it was not an unusual thing for the
hounds to be running 'on the tops' through the night, and the legends
of the 'whish-hounds,' or 'spirit-packs' of Cornwall and Devon might
very well have been reborn in Borrowdale.
In 1858 took place one of the record runs of the Blencathra pack.
The dogs had had already a good morning's work when at noon a big
Skiddaw fox jumped up in front of them. He tried to shake off his
pursuers by the ordinary hill tactics, but, failing, took to the
valley, went by Crosthwaite Church, through Portinscale and
Brandelhow, right up Borrowdale, and over the Styhead into
Westmoreland. The night fell, but the dogs were heard at Black Hill,
marking the fox at an earth. Thence Reynard escaped in the direction
of Lancashire, and next day the hounds and the fox were found, the
latter dead and the former fast asleep under a crag in Coniston.
They must have travelled not far short of sixty miles over the very
roughest part of the Lake Country.
The hounds are trained carefully not to break up their foxes, just as
they are trained {198} as carefully not to worry sheep; and this
latter is done by the farmers walking the dogs in the summer time and
taking them, along with their collies, when they go shepherding on
the fells.
The packs are small, but every hound is true as steel. The
Blencathra huntsman generally unkennels about 11 couples, and so keen
are they at their work that three years ago they gave an account of
76 foxes, last year of 46, and this year, up to date, of 43. But the
cost of keeping the pack is very small. £200 clears all expenses,
and this is partly accounted for by the kindly interest farmers, who
are all members of the hunt, take in it, for they walk the dogs free
of charge, and some of them are, in addition, subscribers. Very
anxious are these men, too, to do their best by the dogs. The hounds
are made members of the family, and their tempers and individualities
are studied. A farmer would take it very ill if he did not have the
same hound sent him at the end of the hunting season. This reacts by
making a bond of enthusiastic interest for members of the field in
the running of every dog.
Nor can we omit to mention the sense of brotherhood which binds the
hunt together. {199} As there is no separation of class, so there is
no separation of dress; no buttonholes and fine leather boots. The
hunting kit is but a flannel shirt, a pair of trousers rolled up to
the knee, over a pair of stout woollen hose, a Tam o' Shanter, and a
rough alpenstock. The poorest can afford that, and the richest know
no better.
Another bond that unites the members of the Blencathra Hunt is the
home-made hunting songs which are sung at the end of the day. There
is one written by a Patterdale yeoman, which has a good ring in it:
'Now who could help but follow when notes as sweet as these
Are sounding through the valley and borne upon the breeze?
Of all the recreations by which our lives are blest,
The chase among the mountains is the purest and the best.'
And there is another favourite written by Harper, one of the roadmen
in the neighbourhood; while Woodcock Graves' immortal ditty, 'D'ye
ken John Peel?' is never better sung than at the annual dinner of the
Blencathra Hunt.
I am standing at the Druids' Circle and looking across at Naddle. In
the hollow of {200} the ridge is the school of S. John's-in-the-Vale.
I remember that the old Squire, John Crozier, got his first learning
at that school; and that some years after a poet of more than local
fame, John Richardson, became its schoolmaster. He, too,
immortalised the Blencathra Hunt, and one of his best songs will, for
many years to come, echo the 'tally-ho!' of the late Master of the
Hunt:
'The hunt is up, the hunt is up;
Auld Tolly's in the drag;
Hark to him, beauties, git away,
He's gone for Skiddaw Crag.
Rise fra ye'r beds, ye sleepy-heads,
If ye wad plesser know;
Ye'r hearts 't will cheer, if ye bit hear
John Crozier's "Tally-ho!"'
That last line calls us back to the man who has carried on, to a
century's ending, the Mastership of the pack his father gave him in
charge.
[Illustration: A NORTH COUNTRY NIMROD.]
As a lad of 18, John Crozier was already well known as a keen
sportsman, as good with his rod in the becks and rivers here about,
as he was with his father's hounds, and fond of wrestling as he was
of hunting. At that day the pack numbered only six couples. They
were kept at the farms all through the {201} year, and were trained
to meet at the sound of the Master's horn. The old Squire would
often tell how he would stand on Kiln Hill, blow a blast, and watch
the beauties racing across the meadows to his call. John Peel, in
those days, was still hunting on the other side of Skiddaw, and John
Crozier remembered the last time he saw him was under Wanthwaite
Crags, where, after a long day's run, he invited the old veteran, who
was on his white pony, to come home to supper. 'Nay, nay, John,'
said Peel, 'I'se freetened o' gettin' neeted (benighted),' and so
went back on his way to Ruthwaite supperless. 'But I'll see thee
again,' he added--who knows they may again have met.
The first thing the young Master did was to improve the breed of his
hounds, and this he accomplished by getting a strain from John Peel's
kennels. How much of Ruby, 'Ranter, Royal, and Bellman, so true,'
spoken of in the song, still runs in the blood of the Blencathra
pack, I know not. Other strains since then have been introduced, but
a hardier pack never breasted a mountain side, and there is not one
of them who would not carry on the line himself, if his fellows
failed, to the death.
{202}
John Crozier once received the following note: 'To J. Crozier, Esq.,
M.F.H., from Isaac and Edward Brownrigg, of Brownrigg. This hound
(Darling) brought a splendid dog-fox, and after a very exciting hunt
ultimately caught it in our house field. About an hour afterwards
other five dogs came. After being fed they left, but this one would
not leave. We intend having the fox preserved.' After carrying on
the hounds at his own cost for 30 years, 'the Squire,' as he was
always called, at the request of his neighbours, allowed them to
become a subscription pack, in the year 1870. There was a general
feeling in the dales that it was not fair to allow all the burden to
be upon one man, and on the conditions that he would remain Master,
and in case of the hunt ceasing, the hounds should be returned to
him. A treasurer and secretary were appointed, and the Blencathra
Hunt went on merrily as before.
The Master was fortunate in his huntsmen. Joseph Fearon, of honoured
memory, was succeeded by Isaac Todhunter, who carried the horn for 25
years. Isaac Todhunter handed it on to John Porter, who for a like
time kept up the best traditions of the pack, which Jem Dalton
carries on to-day. The names of {203} these past huntsmen, with
other members of the hunt, are inscribed on the stone of memorial
raised in the Threlkeld Churchyard at the charges of the Squire and a
few friends; and that pillar in the King's dale--for of this dale
John Crozier was truly king--if it does nothing else, goes to prove
that the following of the foxes in the Lake District adds years, even
as it adds cheer, to the lives of the dalesmen. Thus, for example,
one sees that many of the hunters were fourscore years before they
were run to earth; one was 89, another 91, another 95, and a fourth
98.
Up till the past two years the old Master of the hunt presided at the
annual hunt dinner, but it was known that his health was failing, and
though each week up to the end he kept in touch with all the doings
of his pack, he did not leave his house. Still week by week members
of the hunt would go up and have a 'crack' with him--always to be
received with the same courteous inquiry, 'Well, how about your wives
and families, are they well? That's right. Is any news stirring?
What about the House last night?' He took the keenest interest in
politics up to the end, and that came, not unexpectedly, at two
o'clock on a quiet starlit morning, Thursday, 5th March, 1903.
{204}
I could not wonder that my old friend the yeoman had said it was a
dark day for Threlkeld, for he had lived among his own people, and
loved them to the end. How they loved him may be gathered from the
fact that two days before he died, a casket containing a book in
which every householder in the parish had entered his name, with an
illuminated address, full of affection and gratitude, for the
friendship towards them of a long life, was brought to the house.
'Ya kna,' said my friend, 'they knew t' aid Squire was house-fast,
and they likely thowt 't wad cheer 'im up a laal bit.' He never saw
it, for it was thought he was too ill to be 'fashed' with it, and he
is beyond all earthly cheering now; 'the Hunter is home from the
Hill.'
On the following Monday there was such a gathering together of the
dalesmen from far and near as had never been seen in Threlkeld
Church, or Threlkeld Churchyard. They sang one of the old Squire's
favourite hymns. They bore the coffin to the grave with the
veteran's hunting cap and crop and the brush of the last fox killed
by his pack upon it, and before and after the service they talked of
him kindly, as Cumberland folk ever do of the dead; they spoke of
him, not only as the {205} oldest Master of Foxhounds in the land,
but as a man who entered into all the social enjoyments of the
country-side, and whilst on terms of close intimacy, almost
familiarity, with the companions, retained their regard, and in some
things set them a good example.
For in an age when the gambling spirit was abroad, it will be
remembered that John Crozier never bet a penny in his life. 'I did
yance think o' betting a hawpeth o' snaps,' he once said in the
vernacular; 'but I kind of considered it ower, and I didn't.' It
will be remembered of him, too, that he was against the use of bad
language in the field, and that he never would allow, if he could
help it, a bit of scandal or 'ill gien gossip.' If he heard one man
running down another or passing an unkind judgment, or setting an
unkind tale 'agate,' he would jerk out, 'There, noo, thoo mun let
that hare sit'--and it sat. 'Ay, ay,' said an old friend as he
turned away from the graveyard, 'tho' he said nowt about it, he was a
kind o' a religious man, was varra partial to certain hymns, and had
his favourite psalms, that he wad gang off quietly to his bit
summerhoose most mornings, and tek his prayer book with him. They
say t' housekeeper, after her master's death, found t' aid {206} beuk
laid open on summerhoose taable, I suppose.'
But as they left the churchyard they all in memory saw the old Master
in his sealskin cap, with the lappets about his ears--squarely built
and strong, with his alpenstock in hand, as the prefatory verse tells:
But I think I see him stand,
Rough mountain staff in hand,
Fur cap and coat of grey,
With a smile for all the band
Of the sportsmen in the land,
And a word for all the merry men who loved his 'Hark away!'
And as they thought of what he has been to them for the last 65 years
in the Threlkeld vale, they admitted the truth of the following words:
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, unto all the village-born.
{207}
A WINTER-DAY ON DERWENTWATER.
If November is the month for cloud effect, December certainly is the
month for marvellous dawns and eventides. Then it would appear as if
by some generous intent to give the minds of men unwonted
tranquillity and to impress all the dwellers in the vales with the
thought of perfect restfulness, the sun seems to prepare for his
rising a heaven of cloudless silver washed with faintest gold. All
the heavy ragged companies of the night-wrack seem withdrawn, and
very slowly, while Helvellyn stands lilac-grey against the silver
dawn, the sun rolls into sight, kindles the cones of Grisedale and
Grasmoor, and bids the heavy dew upon the valley meadows rise up in
finest lines of delicate gossamer lawn.
Yesterday, though we had little wind in the valley, one could hear
the humming and the {208} roaring of what seemed a tempest in middle
heaven, but at night-time heaven and earth were still, and the seven
stars in Orion and the Pleiads, 'like fireflies tangled in a silver
braid,' shone clear, and we felt that the Frost King had come in
earnest. There was no snow on the hills this morning; the leaves at
one's feet tinkled as though they were made of iron; I met schoolboys
with rosy faces and skates upon their shoulders going off to Tewfit
Tarn--the little tarn upon the ridge dividing Naddle from St. John's
in the Vale, that always gives our skaters in the Keswick
neighbourhood their first winter happiness. Down to the lake I went,
and standing at Friar's Crag, saw that part of it was burnished steel
and part black ebon water. It was incredible that one night's frost
should thus have partly sealed the lake from sight.
[Illustration: A WINTER'S DAY ON DERWENTWATER.]
I was bound for Brandelhow to meet the woodman to discuss the felling
of certain timber, and through the ice pack, if it were possible, I
must needs go. Coasting along round the island, I soon found myself
in a narrow inlet of water that stretched half across the lake; tiny
spikules of ice that seemed like floating straws were right and left
of me in the still water; here and there little delicate {209} fans
of ice were passed. These miniature ice-islands were the nuclei
round which the freezing mixture would crystallise. Forward across
towards Lingholme I steered, and suddenly should have been brought up
sharp had not the boat, with good way upon it, crashed right into the
ice-floe and shown me how unsubstantial a thing this first
ice-covering of the lake was. With every stroke of the oar the boat
forged its way with marvellous sound of crash and gride, and one
remembered how the Ancient Mariner had heard those 'noises in a
swound,' and was able to summon up something of the roar with which
the great ice-breakers or steam rams on the Neva crash their way up
and down the river to keep the waterway clear for the Baltic
shipping. But in a short time the difficulty of rowing became
doubled, and if it had not been that one saw clear water ahead one
would hardly have ventured forward. Meanwhile in the wake of one's
boat one saw how swiftly the little ice-elves repaired the damage one
had done by bringing back to its own place and rest each fragment one
had displaced, and piecing over with exquisite exactness the breach
that one had made.
Now the way was clear, for by some {210} mysterious reason, known
only to the water-gods, the shallower the water became as one went
shoreward the freer it was of ice. It may have been mere fantasy,
but it seemed as if the water so near to freezing was semi-fluid,
viscous; always right and left of one swam by the little ice
spikules, and the ice fans, with irridescent beauty, floated and
shone hard by. Presently another crash was heard, and an ice-belt,
only a yard wide, but stretching fifty or sixty yards along, was
crashed through, another and another, and so, with alternate noise
and silence, one made one's way to Victoria Point, and ran the boat
ashore at Brandelhow.
Beautiful as that woodland is in early spring, it seemed that to-day
there were more beauties still. The bracken was silver-dusted with
frost and shone gold in the sunshine, and the green velvet of the
mosses upon tree-trunk and ground only heightened by contrast the
rich russet of the fern. I climbed to the russet seat on the rocky
knoll above; there, sitting, I watched the gambolling of five
squirrels and listened to the crackling as their sharp teeth made
short work of the cones and fir-tufts. All these little merry
feasters had put on their winter coats, and were much less {211} red
of hue than when I watched them last in August. They had put on
their winter tails also. I saw none of that curious white flaxen
colour which the squirrel in September seems so proud of, as, with a
wave of his brush, he dashes out of sight. There, as I watched these
miracles of motion and alertness, I thought of Ruskin--how lovingly
he had described them. Here was one leaping on to a twig that bent
with just enough of swing in it to allow the little fellow to fly
through the air to the next bough. Here was another, now running
along the sturdier bough that bent not, now dropping five or six feet
into a dark-green tuft, now sitting cosily in a forked branch to
munch his midday meal, now racing for pure joy and mischief after his
brother up a long tree-trunk, the tail sometimes bent in an arch
above the tufted ears, again thrown out straight, and now bent and
undulating--truly a balancing-pole, if ever one was needed by such
expert gymnasts. Children of perfect knowledge of the woodland
boughs, fearless as birds and swift as monkeys, the happy family
rejoiced in the winter sunshine, as free of care as the cloudless sky
above their heads. I moved, and the jay clanged and screamed from
among {212} the alders below me, and in a moment the happy family had
vanished out of sight, and one saw what an intercommunion of alarm
against strange comers birds and beasts must surely have. Dropping
down from this happy mount--and truly it has been called Mons
Beata--I made my way through crackling fern across the chattering
little brooklet to the second rocky height further to the southward.
Blencathra lilac-grey and Walla Wood purple-brown and High Seat tawny
yellow were reflected with such fidelity in the flood below one that
the beauty of two worlds seemed to be given me. The tranquillity of
the far-away fells was brought right across the flood to one's feet,
a couple of wild duck dashed into the water, and with the ripplings
of their sudden descent they set the whole fellside trembling.
Looking now towards Cat Bels, one marvelled at the extraordinary
beauty of the colour. Never was such bronze and gold seen to make
the sky so blue, as one gazed up to the hummock of Cat Bels; whilst,
between our rustic seat and the high road, the woodland hollow was
filled with colour of gradation from silver-grey to purple-brown, and
here and there a beech tree full of leaf or a Scotch fir green and
blue gave {213} emphasis to the general tone of softest harmony.
Passing on through the larches upon the little height, I gained a
third seat, and here the chief charm was the outlook up Borrodale.
Immediately in the foreground were young Scotch fir; beyond them the
lake glinted in silver through leafless birches. Away up Borrodale,
with every variety of lilac melting into purple-grey, ridge beyond
ridge, one saw the bossy outliers of the Borrodale ranges stand up in
sunny calm; one felt the deep tranquillity of Glaramara and of nearer
Honister, the only sound a distant cockcrow from the far-off Ashness
farm and the quiet inland murmur of Lodore. The glory of the vale
was the wonderful Castle Hill, with its echo of old Rome upon its
head, that stood black-purple against the further lilac haze. But as
one sat there in silent content a school of long-tailed tits came
quavering by. They found abundant food, it would seem, in the Scotch
firs close beside me, and what the squirrels had done before to open
one's eyes to their miracle of movement these long-tailed titmice did
again, for one here, as I sat and watched their happy quest for food.
Such balancing, such joyousness, such fiery energy, such swiftness of
{214} sight, such whispering of heart's content would have made the
saddest man glad and the dullest marvel. As I rose from that seat,
with a long look up Borrodale, I could not wonder that our Viking
forefathers had called it the Vale of the Borg or Castle, for that
Castle Hill in Borrodale must surely have seemed to them a giant's
hold, the fittest place for some high fortress-camp, as it had seemed
to the Romans of an older day.
If the first height one had ascended was rightly called 'Mons Beata,'
and the seat one had last left was placed on a hill that might be
called Mons Blencathrae, which gave such fair prospect of Blencathra,
surely this fair mount might be called 'Mons Borgadalis,' or the
Mount of Borrodale.
I heard a whistle, and to my answering hulloa came a shout. The
forester was waiting for me away up there on the highest point of the
woodland, not far from the main road and above the Brandelhow mines.
Descending swiftly and making my way through the frosty undergrowth,
with rabbits scuttling here and there and a soft-winged owl lazily
fluttering from a bough above my head, I was suddenly aware by the
scent that hung upon the fern that a fox had passed that {215} way.
But it must have been in the early morning or 'Brer Rabbit' would not
have been about and the jay would have been screaming, and, making
the best of my way up to the forester, we soon forgot all about bird
and beast in our honest efforts to let in light and give fair outlook
to the wanderers who should hither come for rest and thought in
succeeding summers.