The English Lakes :: CHAPTER IX BY SOFT LOWESWATER

CHAPTER IX 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.

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.

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.

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