_BY SOFT LOWESWATER_
Close enfolded in the lap of mountains, Loweswater is seldom seen by the
casual tourist. At Scale Hill, a rugged ravine with a white river
dashing down, is pointed as the direction in which it lies. At the sight
of that crag-set hillside the cyclist turns regretfully and, down the
good Lorton road, speeds away for Cockermouth or Keswick. Yet if the
writer were compelled to seek another home among the Lakes, after
Rothay's magic glen he would select Loweswater. And there are others who
would do likewise, who year after year come to the little secluded lake
for holiday. For tell it not loudly, its trouting is the best in the
Lake Country. The angling is not public, but it is possible to obtain
permission for a week's pleasure. The trout rule large for our northern
waters, fish of over three pounds being landed every season.
[Illustration: LOWESWATER]
As mentioned already, the lake is hidden in the flank of Mellbreak, the
front of which sheds scree and occasional boulders into Crummock. For
ages the dell was a stronghold of the 'statesmen who lived on their own
holdings, but as hard times came the mischievous jointure system caused
one small estate after another to come into the market. Lucky the monied
in that dark era: the farmers grew despondent as their obligations
increased. After centuries of abstemity rum and whisky began to be
relished, with dire results. Wool which for long had stood at a good
price fell rapidly to almost a nominal figure. Desperate farmers did not
market their "clips" for several seasons in the hope that times would
mend. But old stock was finally sold at whatever price offered. The vast
imports from the new Australian colonies in the middle of last century
thus completed the destruction which the Repeal of the Corn Laws began.
Some who do not wish to see a return to Protectionism point out patches
cumbered with heather where wheat was cultivated in those days of
inflated prices. To force up prices that such wastes might become
profitable, they say, would not benefit the farmer, the shepherd, or the
dalesman now, as it did not in the past. The opponents to this view
point with equal confidence to the days when the 'statesman was firm on
his own soil, living and working at profit enough to pay out the
jointures placed on him in his father's anxiety to "do fair by his own."
A change, they sigh, might bring back those happy days. I take no side,
save to say that the highest tariff imaginable cannot bring back the
worthy, faulty 'statesman families. They are gone for ever. Strangers
dwell within their gates, and till their fields.
There are no great houses round Loweswater, no castle was ever built in
this domain of peace. The ancient farms, with their guardian yews, speak
of gone days. I never see the twin trees by a farmstead with the
inevitable box edge from gate to door without thinking of the old custom
of setting a bowl of box in the porch of the house where a corpse was
lying. Every one who visited was expected to take a sprig. Box grows
slowly--the hedge planted by a man is hardly seen at maturity by his
great-grandson; the Cumbrian peasant custom must have been an effectual
reminder to all of man's narrow span on earth.
To me Loweswater is a great reminder of olden days. No glaring hotel, no
road traversed by hooting motor-cars or rattling coaches. A man can sit
far up the slope of Mellbreak, look down on placid water and quiet vale,
and allow his mind to ramble back fifty or a hundred years. He can
re-picture the old glen and its society. First the priest. His church
was small, his stipend ditto. As he was the head of society, christening
babies, marrying the grown, and burying the dead, so the schoolmaster
was generally the opposite. He was ordinarily despised, whereas the
parson sometimes was revered. During the week the vicar was a farmer
among farmers; he had a tithe of wool, could have sheep free on the
heafs above the enclosures, which his parishioners had to look after. He
took tithe of the sheaves at harvest, and of every kind of produce. The
greater part of the schoolmaster's remuneration was in the shape of
victuals: he went "whittle-gate" by turns to the home of his pupils,
living a week here, a week there. He was scrivener and will-maker to the
parish where the priest did not take that office. He taught but few
subjects: reading, writing, little arithmetic. But sometimes there was
Latin and Greek and Hebrew for the really studious, as behind ale-soaked
clothes, and in a fuddled brain, a schoolmaster might possess real
classical knowledge. On the other hand, men who had had accidents at
other callings, or were too worthless for manual labour, drifted into
the teaching profession. Knowing only the merest rudiments and careless
of learning more, they could not benefit the children, and were often a
fearful example for them.
[Illustration: THE OLD POST OFFICE, LOWESWATER]
One of the main amusements of old dales-life in winter was dancing,
either at merry nights, or at what were called "dancing classes." To
provide the music for these lived a class of wandering minstrels. What
lives they led! I well remember poor old Tim, the last of these to come
within my sight. He came to our knot of houses just as dusk was falling.
He carried his fiddle in a green bag, and as he neared, took out the
instrument and tuned a single string. Then his old voice trolled out,
"Home, sweet home," in faltering accents as he walked back and forward.
Ages ago minstrels played by the hearths of the great, and sang the
legends of golden renown: here Tim, tottering, his fiddle almost in
ruins, his voice quavering over the well-known words, trying to get from
poor cottagers enough to buy drink, or a night's lodging. Poor Tim! His
story was sad. He had money left him when he was a hard-working
shoemaker nearly thirty years of age. To that time his only solace had
been in music. The legacy turned his head, and in a short six months he
was ruined. The little shop where he had mended boots was in the hands
of the bailiffs, his wife and children were on the road with him. For
awhile they travelled together, then the children were rescued by
relatives--the poor wife dragged along alone in the wake of the drunken
fiddler. At last too she faded away, died by a snow-covered roadside,
and Tim went down to the bed-rock of despair. "I want no money, give me
ale." Fiddling here, and singing there till his voice gave way, he
wandered a score years. Many tried to rescue him; once his little shop
was restored him and for a whole summer he stuck to his "last." But with
dark nights, music was required at the inn, and he was tempted again. He
trailed himself across from one merrymaking to another. He lived as he
might; he slept as he could. And the morning before I saw him a farmer
walking on the top of his hay-mow stepped on something that cracked.
"Dash thee! thoo's brokken my fiddle, and I'll hae to play at t' Ploo
to-neet." As he felt old age and death creeping on him, he wandered away
from the country-side which was his home, and put miles of flat country
between him and the mountains before the final call.
Another person who knew much of the dale in the old time would be the
dumb fortune-teller. Persons without the power of speech were always
credited in Cumbria with divination. The fortune-tellers were the most
respectable of vagabonds: they worked satisfactorily and were well paid.
No gloomy forecast was ever to my knowledge delivered. I have seen many
of their hieroglyphs, some in picture-writing, promising untold good to
the person who had consulted them. But the gipsies were, and are,
another matter. The pedlar, too, was a well-known figure; with his pack
on back he would go from farm to farm, selling all sorts of little
tempting things.
To come to the lake at last. It is one of our smaller meres, and the
quietest. It lies in a land of meadows, but lofty hillsides rise above
its glen. No boats are kept for public use, but a visitor can usually
arrange a loan with some farmer. Loweswater is not a lake to exhaust in
one afternoon: the cunning ones lodge by the week at the clean,
comfortable farms, enjoying the plain fare of rural Cumberland with a
delight bred of open air and keen exercise. The rod is hardly ever from
the waters, except for a siesta at midday--and not then if the day be
overcast, with a warm breeze kissing the water and enticing broods of
new insects from the depths. There are no char in Loweswater, though
attempts have been made at introduction: probably the water is hardly
deep enough to suit it.
To row out on a warm summer night and to fish here from midnight to dawn
is a splendid experience. Though along the northern ridges a pale
night-glow glimmers and fades, and the stars like diamonds glitter in
the light blue above, down on the level waters everything is gloom. The
man resting on his oars is a dark shadow: your companion's "kent" face,
though he has turned toward the light, is a patch of featureless grey.
To see your fly it must be held high enough to come between your eyes
and the narrow swathe of light on the horizon. Your boat drifts through
the prattling wavelets slowly, slowly. Then along the line comes the
expected tremor: a fish at last. No use trying to play him--get him to
the surface: your tackle is strong enough to take some risks. Your rod
responds to its struggles, yet you cannot guess where the trout is.
Perhaps it may rush to the top and set up a faint wimple that catches
the night light. In a few minutes, however, the fish is tired out and
you draw it alongside. The largest of trout are nocturnal feeders, and
the angler is occasionally delighted by very heavy fish. Persons
unaccustomed to night on the water assert that the silence is almost
appalling: save for the ripples against the timbers there is no sound.
To me, however, there is pleasure in that far-off whistle of an otter;
in the churrs and twitters, hoots and shrieks, of night birds. There is
a romance in gloom of which garish day knows nothing. The fairy world
visits you again, and you witness gay revels in the starlight.
The lake to the angler, the hillside and the meadows to the wanderer,
are the charms of the vale. He who is not satisfied with the softly
trawling boat, the midge-worried hour of non-success, can ramble in the
woods and fields, with their glories of sedge and iris and cloying
meadow-sweet, and up the rivulets dancing down shadowy ghylls. Climb the
shoulder of Mellbreak, sit down every five minutes and look around. By
this method a full enjoyment of the peaceful vale will be obtained.
Notice the nearest things--the rose beetles: your friend down below in
the green old boat will be sighing for such a one as that just turned
over; and that crushing mass of parsley fern which, though the whole
hillside is open to it, sticks close by that grey, weathered stone. The
lake is now quite small below, a mere dot shows you the lazily floating
boat: think scornfully now of the angler and his petty work. Look
beyond, the great moors rolling toward St. Bees, the hills fining down
to the North Cumberland plain, the Derwent here and there gleaming
between banks of living green. Criffel and the Dumfries-shire hills,
across the Solway. A patch of smoke shows the cathedral city of
Carlisle, and you feel a pity for the workers under that pall. They
think they see the sun shine, but you in a purer air rejoice in a more
life-giving light than that pale gleam they praise. The bracken too is
here, unfolding its last tendrils, and away goes a single red grouse
with a mighty whirr and a squauking "Go back!"
A sound of human and canine voices comes now to the ear; and turning an
outstanding rock, we come immediately to a busy scene. It is a
sheep-washing; to the clamour of dogs, and the whistling and shouting of
shepherds, are added the bleatings of two thousand sheep. One drove is
on the hillside above marshalled by a pair of collies, another is below,
threading an almost unseen track toward some distant holding. A shepherd
is in charge of these, his dogs scouting to right and left. No straggler
can bolt into the confusion of sheep in the little glen. Here a dam has
been built just below a rudely piled fold. The sheep are driven into an
outer court, then drafted into a small inner space. From this they are
thrown into the water, which has been collecting since yesterday (so
meagre is the stream), where men standing waist deep catch them. Holding
the sheep's head above water these quickly pass hands back and forward
over the fleece, raising it so that water penetrates to the under-wool.
This done to satisfaction the sheep are allowed to swim out. When one
flock has been washed, it is sent to the portion of unfenced hillside
from which it came. The scene is one of bustle; the work is arduous too,
some of the men have been collecting and driving down their flocks since
early dawn. Shortly after the washing, comes the day of "clipping," when
the fleece is removed, but the days of great "clippings" are past. Wool
becomes ripe at different periods; and instead of treating the flock on
a certain day only, the shepherd now shears as fast as fleeces are
ready.
Standing above the washing pool we look down on the little animated
patch--the struggling ewes, the water turgid with "dip," the skilful men
in water and on land, the 'cute collies watching their master's flock
and allowing no stranger to enter it. Beyond the dry stones of the
river-bed, in a vista bounded by the steep sides of the gully, we see
the lake in all its beauty. Woods, fields, diminished with distance, yet
seem but over the brink of the chasm there.
Now from heather and bracken we return to green pastures and to the
little ivied farmhouse, with old-fashioned doorway and chimney, which is
our temporary home. All is peace around: the rookery is hardly heard
across the intervening fields; the raven, in the blue above, scarce in
all its wheels and hovers sends down one menacing croak. The day is
spent, and up the western sky spreads a suffuse of crimson, flecked with
wisps of cloud; at last night draws on, softly, bluely, creeping into
the hollows of the hills and into the deeper shadows; the radiant lake
dies from crimson to grey, and then, to the clatter of rowlocks, our
boat comes home to the grassy pier.