Daylight versus Moonlight—Possible Results of Moonlight Laking or Love-Making—Conistone Hall—“The Hall Clipping”—Vale of Yewdale—Yewdale Crags—Old Yew Tree—Raven Crag—Hunting Incident.

Some harmless individuals who desiderate the reputation of a taste for the romantic, and fancy that such reputation is to be attained by affecting to think differently from the ordinary race of observers, maintain that this lake and the circumjacent landscape, like the ruins of Melrose, as described (unseen, except by daylight) by Sir Walter Scott, are seen to most advantage by moonlight. I don't agree with them! The beauties around you are so numerous, so diversified, such perfect realities, and the deformities or defects in the scenery are so few and so minute, that no softening or shadowing is required to enhance a reasonable man’s enjoyment of the loveliness of Conistone. The more extensively, and the more distinctly its features are developed, the more must it be admired. As with some rare specimens of human nature, “the more you see of it, the better you like it.” Therefore, be it mine to gaze upon, to exhibit and to dilate upon the attractions of this “our own fair vale,” just when the “sun of the morning” has mopped up the mists of the night,—when mountains and mere, crags and cottages, woods and waterfalls, fields and fell-sides, are fairly lighted up, and fully brought into view in all their proud proportions, and in all their contrasted colours. And, moreover, as Conistone is best seen under

so will any susceptible young gentleman like yourself best consult his well-being by forswearing all loitering by moonlight, whether for laking or love-making purposes. I myself, in those days “when hope was high and life was young,” grievously deteriorated my mental quiet, as well as my physical comfort, by indulging in these too natural propensities, as may be evidenced by the following rhymes which, under the retrospect of wounded feelings and aching bones, I felt constrained to indite, and now offer to you by way of caution against yielding to the promptings of an excitable imagination; and, first, what say you to this?

Matter of Moonshine.

So much for mental quiet; the next, as the show people say, will be for physical comfort, viz.:—

When I commenced this tedious, but, in your case, requisite digression, you were seated in a boat upon the lake, and staring with all your might at the turret-like, ivy-clad chimneys of Conistone Hall; concerning which hall West, the precise and industrious Furnesian Antiquary, who published his great work in 1774, says therein—“Conistone Hall appears upon the bank of the lake; it was for many ages the seat of the Flemings, and though now abandoned and in ruins, it has the air of grandeur and magnificence.” And again, in his history of the family who possess it, he says—“Sir Richard le Fleming, in the reign of Henry III., married Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Adam de Urswick, by which marriage he acquired MORE OF “THE HALL.”the manor of Conistone, and other considerable possessions in Furness;” and—“Upon the acquisition of the manor of Conistone, the family returned to Furness, the first seat of the Flemings. The Castle of Caernarvon was abandoned, then erased, and Conistone Hall was the family seat for seven generations. After the union of Lancaster with Le Fleming (temp. Hen. 4th), Rydal and Conistone vied with each other for seven generations more to fix the family in Westmorland or Lancashire. Sir Daniel le Fleming came and gave it against the latter; since that event (about 1650-60), the Hall of Conistone, pleasantly situated upon the banks of the lake of that name, has been deserted.”

If the Hall were in ruins seventy-four years ago, you may perceive that, though sufficiently venerable and time-shaken, there is nothing exactly like ruins about it now; but, as I said before, a great part of it has been removed, as is shewn by certain jambs and chimney-pieces which remain in the outer surface of what is now the outer wall, and have formed the fire-places of an extensive range of apartments which formerly occupied the space along the northern side of the present edifice. What remains of the Old Hall, I have also said, is converted into a farm-house and appurtenances, both of which are of a most commodious and substantial description; and, should your sojourn at Conistone happen to fall in the early part of July, let me exhort you to attend the Conistone Hall clipping, or sheep-shearing, where you will witness some “scenes of life and shades of character” not to be seen every day, nor in every locality; and, moreover, you will find the viands to accord in character with the building,—i. e. to be plentiful, substantial, and old-fashioned.

I say that the scene, or rather the series of scenes, presented by a sheep-shearing in the lake country, are of a description not to be passed by in these artificial days, when “touches of nature,” which “make the whole world kin,” are rare as they are rich;—therefore, supposing you to be at Conistone in the proper season, I shall, with your approval, of which I have little doubt, and with Mr Irving’s hospitable permission, of which I have still less, introduce you to that of Conistone Hall.

The sheep, which are of the black-faced breed, are all gathered in from the fells on the previous day, or early in the morning, and are penned up in lots in a large detached barn through which you pass, and, in a yard behind which you are startled by a scene of animated and noisy bustle wonderfully at variance with the surrounding quiet. In two rows along the inner side of the semicircular yard wall, are seated the clippers, numbering from 25 to 30, each astride upon a stool, busily plying his shears upon a sheep laid bound on the stool before him; and you cannot help being surprised at the rapidity with which the animals are divested of their superabundant coverings; that tall man there in the blue linen jacket is one of the most expert, and can take the fleece from a mountain sheep in three minutes. I am told his father, a respectable yeoman in an adjacent vale, was still more dexterous, and that, for a wager, he, in one day, clipped—a number which, as I am anxious to maintain my character for veracity, I shall not here state. The average rate of clipping is, of course, lower than what I have mentioned; but, allowing it to be so, this number of shears incessantly at work for seven or eight hours, may give some idea of the number of sheep denuded each year on this and similar farms.

In attendance upon the clippers are a much greater number of men and lads supplying them with unclipped sheep and removing those operated upon to another part of the yard, where, beside a turf-fire and a kettle of melted tar an active youth is stationed ready to stamp them with their owner’s initial, with another near at hand ycleped “the doctor,” carrying in his hand a pot of ointment to anoint the wounds, which, in such a hurried operation, many of his ovine patients receive. Multitudes of boys are skipping about on every side, collecting the cords as they are removed from the limbs of the clipped sheep, and carrying them to be applied to the feet of their successors upon the clipping stools. In a remote corner of the yard, a small party of sedate, business-like individuals are rolling up the fleeces upon a couple of small sloping platforms, and handing them over the wall to others who are building them upon carts, to be carried to the storing-house. One jolly-looking personage, with an aspect worthy of his office, is moving about and dispensing “clipping drink” to all and sundry. And “Woo' Geordie,” known elsewhere as “Mop George” (after his chief article of merchandise,) is poking about gathering up stray fragments of wool. These, with one or two groups of idle on-lookers waiting for, and wondering when it will be, dinner-time, and perhaps an artist sketching the various and ever-changing groups, constitute the dramatis personÆ of the sheep-shearing, whilst nothing but work is going forward; but, now the last sheep shorn, the last fleece rolled up, and “Woo’ Geordie,” liberally informed that he may convert to his own proper use and emolument all the fragments of wool that remain on the ground (no inconsiderable prize to him,) adjourn we to the Hall where a banquet waits our attack, which is perfectly worthy of Conistone Hall in its best days, for gigantic rounds of beef, and legs of veal, ditto of mutton, and quarters of lamb, with every tempting and appropriate accompaniment, are arranged upon a table which accommodates thirty hungry people at once, and the first detachment, having stuffed to repletion with the above enumerated solids, topped off with sweets, “quÆ nunc perscribere FUDDLING AND FUN.(or describere either) longum est,” are succeeded by a second troop equally sharp set, and those who were idlers before, are by no means the least industrious now. “Another and another (set) yet succeeds,” until the whole party, amounting to something above six score, are fed and satisfied. You may observe that the whole company does not partake of its generally pastoral and agricultural character, for the duties of one end of the table are probably discharged, to all the successive troops of eaters, by a practitioner of the law, and those of the other by a ditto of medicine, both of whom are glad to relieve, by a few hours’ mirth, untutored though it be, their daily routine of attention to the multifarious derangements to which the business and the bodies of “God’s humanity” are liable.

Dinner being at last fairly finished, “now comes the sweetest morsel of the night,” and strong ale and tobacco, as their legitimate successors, supersede beef and pudding, and all the guests being settled down in the capacious Hall, as many as can, round the long table, others on forms or benches arranged in rows, and others, more favoured, apart from the crowd, around a small table placed under a chimney large enough to be a dwelling-house for a family of moderate pretensions; pipes are filled and lighted, glasses are filled and tasted, and singing is commenced by John Kendal giving, in characteristic and peculiarly comic style, a quaint old ballad of the “down, derry down” genus, concerning a parson who “had a remarkable foible of loving good liquor much more than the Bible,” and of whom it was said “he was much less perplext in handling a tankard than handling a text,” and, once set a going, a stream of songs interspersed with “quips and cranks,” and no! not “wreathed smiles,” but wide grins and roars of laughter, with noisy joke and noisier repartee, carries rapidly away the remaining hours of the evening. The majority of the songs are CLOSE OF THE CLIPPING.of a stamp now to be met with only amongst the mountains, or in such other districts where primitive pastoral habits yet prevail, and are to be appreciated and enjoyed only by those who hold broad humour and natural spirit and freedom to be a sufficient compensation for rudeness of phraseology, and the absence of polish, refinement, and high sentiment; and you may notice, that, as might be expected, their subjects and sentiments become less and less refined, and their humour less and less restrained, in due proportion with the sinking of the potent clipping drink in the tilted barrels, till at length the very orderly part of the company think it time to depart.

I may be censured for introducing you to scenes like these, and the only excuse I have to offer is that I wish to give you a correct idea of life and manners amongst the primitive inhabitants of these our dales, and it is only by mixing freely amongst the people upon such occasions, that any true knowledge of their habits and customs is to be gained.

I was lately deluded into reading a book entitled, “Conistone Hall, or the Jacobites,” written by a dignitary of the English Church, “in order,” as he says, “to exhibit the tone of feeling and the disorders of Church and State, to which the ill-advised revolution of 1688 gave rise.” I was simple enough to hope to find matter of local interest in a book called “Conistone Hall,” but was grievously disappointed,—it might as well have been called “Lancaster Castle,”—and the subject-matter is quite worthy of the author’s object.

And now, having bored you, probably ad nauseam, about the Old Hall, it were well to return to your Inn; and, having allowed you what is requisite of rest and refreshment, I shall carry you off upon your longest excursion first; “and,” to quote The Professor thereanent, “if murmuring streams and dashing torrents, and silent pools, and shadow-haunted grass-fields, and star-studded meadows, and glimmering groves, and cliff-girdling coppice woods, and a hundred charcoal shellings, huts and cottages, and one Old Hall, and several hall-like barns, and a solitary chapel among its green graves, and glades, and dells, and glens without number, knolls, eminences, hillocks, hills, and mountains,—if these, and many other such sights as these, all so disposed that beauty breathes, whispers, moves, or hangs motionless over all, have power to charm your spirit,——away with the cavalcade into the heart of the expecting mountains.”

If, like myself, you prefer enjoying a long excursion upon four legs to enduring it upon two, your host can supply, at a satisfactory rate, ponies well accustomed to the roughest roads in the country. You declare for the equestrian mode of progression: well, say the word, and behold your steed at the door. Being safely and pleasantly mounted, you turn your pony’s tail to the lake, and canter up the road till you come to a group of ancient and picturesque cottages and farm-buildings, called High Waterhead (Conistone Water being bicipital), and then take the road to your left, which passes through amongst these houses, and by another old homestead called 'Boon (vulgo above) Crag, holding on along an occupation road which winds through a considerable portion of Mr Marshall's wooded parks; and, as you jog along, keep a sharp eye to the left,—“ride, as the Spaniard hath it, with your beard on your shoulder,”—and your vigilance will be rewarded with occasional glimpses of the lake and its shores, broken up into a series of lovely fragmentary pictures by the irregular intervention of the scattered or “clumped” timber. You soon begin to descend into the middle of the vale of Yewdale, which Mr Parkinson, the accomplished canon of Manchester and Principal of St. Bees, maintains to be the most beautiful in the lake district, and which is described by Green, the artist, as being “a grand valley lying at the feet of the high mountains on the north of Conistone Water.” As you approach it, you must, if you have eyes and soul, be struck with “the steep, frowning glories” of the mile-long range of lofty cliffs which bound Yewdale on the whole extent of its western side, the otherwise barren aspect of which is finely relieved by thick groves, comprising oak, larch, birch, holly, &c., stretching along the foot of the crags, and also by numerous and various trees flourishing here and there along the face of the steep, in situations “the most inaccessible by shepherds trod,” even up to the highest verge of the precipice, where it makes one giddy to imagine how they have been planted, for they ore not of spontaneous growth, but were all planted by the late Mr Knott.

You cross the pellucid Beck of Yewdale by a ricketty wooden bridge, pass through the farm-yard of Low Yewdale, and immediately after gain the high road, which runs along the west side of the valley close under the crags. As you near the head of the vale, be pleased to observe, as you will doubtless be pleased in observing, the sweetly situated farm of High Yewdale, with its long rows of unmercifully clipt yews, looking like magnified chessmen, one of which was recently recommended to my notice by an observant fair friend, as presenting a ludicrous resemblance to a starched puritan of the time of the Commonwealth, attired in round beaver and “cloak of formal cut.” You must here diverge a little from your line of ramble to examine the aged tree which gives its name to the vale, and which some unscrupulous local chronologists stoutly maintain to have been coeval with the deluge. Without feeling myself called upon to establish that fact, I may safely enough assert that it must be of vast antiquity, and it is the largest yew that I have yet fallen in with, those immortalized by Wordsworth as “the pride of Lorton vale,” and the “fraternal four of Borrowdale,” not excepted. I, and two friends, girthed it one summer with three riding-whips knotted together, and found it, at five feet from the ground, to measure 29 feet in circumference. You see that it has an aperture in the northern side of its huge trunk, which, like Mercutio's wound, though “not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, 'twill serve” to let you go in and creep round between that centre pillar formed of the most internal layers of its wood and the surrounding wall formed of its external layers and bark, a large portion of the intermediate timber having, like the halls of Lord Byron’s fathers, “gone to decay.”

This wondrous feat being duly accomplished, for your future exaltation, retrace your steps as far as the Shepherds' Bridge, and then, holding to the right, you soon pass through a gate, and come out upon a somewhat stony road winding along between the beck and the foot of Raven Crag, which rises on your right, steep and rugged, to form its multi-peaked crown. That precipitous peak (or pike) immediately above you, was the scene of an event remarkable in the annals of mountain fox-hunting. A poor fox, after an unusually long chase, reached the summit of Raven Crag, closely pursued by only three hounds, the rest of the pack being distanced long before; as a last chance for life, he made directly for the edge of that precipice, purposing, doubtless, to swerve when close to the verge, and thus rid himself of his pursuers by throwing them over: this sagacious expedient was, however, unsuccessful, for, when he reached the edge, his three foes were too near to admit of his effecting the saving turn, and all four were projected from the brow of the cliff, and dashed, out of all semblance of caninity and vulpinity, on the stones not far above your present position.