_HAWESWATER AND THE BIRDS_
In touring, extremes in conveyances and men meet--or perhaps, in these
days of petrol, avoid one another. As the motor begins to monopolise the
main roads, the true pedestrian is driven to the byways and field-paths.
Gone for us seems the pleasure of swinging steadily, easily, over the
hard turnpike; instead, we trudge in narrow, rutted lanes. Where, ten
years ago, we watched the great events of the dale--the funerals, the
weddings, the infants carried to church--now we must acquire a love for
the everyday repose of Nature, else the Cult of the Hobnail knows us no
more. Green hedges, grass-pitted roadways, ferns and flowers, birds and
beasts of the wilder sort, must afford us food for observation and
contemplation. Deeper and still deeper into the unknown countrysides
have we to pierce, to taste again the keen delights of old.
[Illustration: HAWESWATER]
It is a summer evening; the sky is packed with loose clouds; the sun's
rays, pouring through an archway left between two grey masses, merely
touch the mountain-tops and are reflected down into the hollow glen
about us. Not a sigh rustles the dense foliage; everything is dead calm
save for the tinkle of water in yonder dingle--and the birds! The lark,
the thrush, the whitethroat from its tuft of bosky grass; the sweet
trills of the hedge-sparrow and linnet in the hedges, the yellow-hammer
and the wagtail among the weatherbeaten outcrops. The stonechat too is
here in his sober livery--but the harsh "natching" calls we hear are not
all from its throat. There are three migrants hereabouts with almost
identical characteristics--the whinchat, the wheatear, and the
stonechat; but the last-named alone gives the call to perfection. There
he stands on a notch of mossy rock on the roadside, his body seesawing
as he gives forth the crisp, clear notes. That tuft of crimson feathers
on his alert head distinguishes him from the others. Extending from the
eye backward, they give the appearance of wearing a closely fitting
skull-cap.
The hillsides around are steep, small crags jut out of their sides.
Naddle Forest's northern flank is clothed with a garth of small oak,
through which in rides and patches the lovelier, livelier sward is seen.
As we top a short rise, our view opens further, and into the distance
stretches another narrow glen, its utmost limits invisible in a sea of
filmy blue mist. In front, against a patch of bright blue sky, Walla
Crag seems to mount to a tremendous height, its bare rocky facets
catching the wandering gleams. The chorus of evening rises to rhapsody;
then, as the light fades, the feathered choirs droop to silence and
repose. Like a sheet of dull steel, between banks of darkening green
Haweswater now appears. Its outlet is through the plain of rushes, tall
grass, and tangled underwood to the left. What an ideal spot for a
heron! and seldom will you visit Haweswater without seeing one, more
often a pair, here. The true wanderer will not deem half an hour ill
spent in watching this interesting bird. As we ramble on, the glassy
surface of the lake is ruffled by the rising evening breeze. The green
and black-grey shadow of Walla Crag--the clear water had carried it so
faithfully that I thought of Tennyson's undersea isle--
"Where the water is clearer than air:
Down we looked: what a garden! O bliss, what a Paradise there!
Bowers of a happier time, low down in a rainbow deep
Silent palaces, quiet fields of eternal sleep."
But now "the Paradise trembles away," the vivid detail is blurred, its
beauty marred.
To Measand we walk in silence. Ever darker, yet lovely in its gloom, is
the lake beside us. Against the grey skyline the Force, coming in
irregular foamy streaks down the crags, stands out finely. Where tall
hedgerows overhung the roadway, we met a lad carrying a rod. His fresh,
honest face, as fine in its lines as that of many a woman, attracted my
companion, and, as a fellow in Walton's craft, he asked what sport the
youngster had had. His pannier showed nine trout, two of fair size. The
lad had climbed over the fellsides to Cordale glen: after rain the
upland streams become torrents and the trout feed voraciously. With
these small brown fish life must indeed consist of a few feasts and
long, weary fasts. When asked what lure he had been using, the lad
replied that, though he had carried a bundle of worms, the sleugh was
more valuable. This, also called by the dalesmen the docking-grub, is a
small white maggot chiefly to be found under flat stones in wet places.
From angling, the chat turned to the native red deer. Yes, they were
often seen, two or three generally haunting the ridges just above. Last
winter one died there of starvation, and to-day, in Cordale glen, the
boy had found the skeleton of another.
The beck we have just crossed comes from Fordendale, a gully prized by
geologists as showing perfectly the course and action of a past British
glacier. A wood-owl now begins its long-drawn "hoot-hoo," from some glen
across the water. A ring-ouzel, the mountain blackbird of the natives,
though it wears a white crescent on its breast, next flies past. This is
one of the later migrants to arrive, and does not leave us so long as
berries remain on the rowan-trees by the ghylls. Now we are on the
lakeside again: a trout leaps and returns to the water with a heavy
"plunk." A swallow flits along the dark expanse, hawking the last of the
dayflies, and at the same time, with soft cuttering song, winging home.
The last light is almost dead over the western ridges, and the detail of
things by the roadside is uncertain. See, on that patch of dripping
moss, five flat yellowish leaves from the centre of which, on a slender
bending stem, rises a flower not unlike the woodland violet in shape. It
is the butterwort, most inaptly named, one of the three British
insectivorous plants. Unroll that curling leaf and you will find a store
of partly-digested flies. With us in Lakeland the butterwort is usually
found far from cultivation. A plant of the wilds it is, trusting to the
free air rather than to the thin, poor soil for sustenance. The owl in
Naddle Forest has now roused up a mate: their combined voices come
across distinctly. A faint whistle sounds up the mere: an otter is out
for its nightly raid. As I have observed him this creature is not an
arch-enemy of trout. In wanton sport he may mutilate numbers of fish,
but his chief diet is the freshwater crayfish. A casual examination of
an otter's hole will prove so much from the appearance of the excreta;
and, while you are at such close quarters, note the plenty of fish-life
in the pools near by. No further evidence is needed to correct much
misjudgment. In the water the otter is graceful; in the meadows he lopes
along at great speed when such is necessary. Overland he occasionally
crosses even mountain ranges: lying on Kentmere High Street one midnight
I heard the unmistakable calls of a pair close by, but the night was too
dark for me to see the creatures.
[Illustration: SHAP ABBEY]
Now the road leaves the waterside, and we soon come to the fell where,
in a recess of the rocks, Hugh Holme hid from his enemies in the days of
King John. Hugh was the first "King" of Mardale, and through a long line
his name held that peaceful post. The last direct male descendant died
less than twenty years ago--he held the ancestral home to the end, while
the Mounseys, "Kings" of warlike Patterdale, parted with their
birthright long ago. A curious faint whistling has been gradually
drawing my attention. With a wild cry, like "whisp" long drawn out, a
woodcock "flights" in the jerky manner peculiar to its kind at eventide.
The dale is now enveloped in midsummer darkness; the meadows, but for
their wreaths of white flowerets, would be invisible; the lake is hardly
to be seen for shadows.
The inn is now little over a mile away. Tramp, tramp,--there is a cheery
something to be felt rather than expressed in such an excursion. Moths
in quaker grey and white flicker close past; beneath the sycamores
night-beetles hum in busy flight. Now, on our right, a darker clump: the
famous yews of Mardale almost burying the tiny church in their green
sweep. Tramp, tramp. The yew-tree was favourite with our fighting
fathers: from it they tore staves for the longbow. The yeomen of Lord
Dacre, recruited from these dales, stood stern and immovable at Flodden,
and by their well-aimed shafts turned back the Scots in dire defeat.
Tradition says that Rudolphus Holme founded an oratory here in the
fourteenth century. The present little church dates back some two
hundred years; its graveyard was not consecrated till many years
afterward. Even yet old dalesfolk will point out where the corpse-road
crossed the fells to Bampton. According to such, there were two roads
into Mardale: the assize road, by which, almost as the crow flies,
juries went to the county town; and the road we have mentioned, used
almost exclusively for funerals. There were no bridges in the dale then,
and during winter, and even summer, the torrents were at times quite
impassable.
Just as we pass into the short lane to the inn, there is a chorus of
loud "cronks" above, and against the grey night pack we see six dots: a
family of carrion crows hastening home, belated, from some dingle where
perchance a dead sheep is lying. The carrion crow is larger and more
powerful than the rook (which in the dales is misnamed the crow); its
note is harsher and more jarring. It lacks the majesty of the raven's
croak, and stands apart from the not unmusical garrulity of the rook.
Now, within doors, lights are gleaming. The hotel looks a home in a land
which, in darkness, to jaded limbs would soon become weary. Our hostess,
with a quiet laugh, says:
"'Birds o' passage' ye call yerselves; 'here to-day and gone to-morrow.'
The hedges and woods are comfortable to the wee things that come with
the hawthorn--we'll try to make our inn as welcome for ye."