washed walls crouched sparsely upon the heath or pine lands,
while the smell of peat fires came pleasantly upon the breeze.
But all this soon changed : for in half an hour I was standing
on the high bridge over the Esk, near the point where it openii
into the Solway Firth, and I stood there long. Westward
towards the sea stretched a waste of blue water and golden
sands twinkling with the white wings of countless sea-fowl
and the white crests of breaking wavelets, those cruel tides
before which the "â– Laird of the Solway lake" with his young
nephew, the last of the Redgauntlets, rode that wild night race
for life. Eastward, a herd of cattle, standing knee-deep in the
river, still shallow and stony at the ebb tide, made up a fore-
ground that here at least was something more than conventional.
Away behind them lay broad marshy meadows, through which
the gleaming river twisted, and beyond and everywhere to the
north the green Dumfriesshire uplands. From here too, though
near thirty miles away, Skiddavv rose boldly up against the
southern sky, while the wide gap the Eden make: between the
Lakeland mountains and the Pennine xcnic marked that road to
England which for the Scottish raiders had such abiding
significance.
Before this bridge w-as built, some sixty years ago, the Esk
was crossed here by a ford only negotiable at certain periods of
the tide. Think of this further element of excitement and sus-
pense superadded to the mere question of pace-making when
the pursuit to Gretna after absconding or abducted maidens
was fast and hot ! The alternative then presented itself of
taking the road from Carlisle to Longtonn, crossing the bridge
there and swerving back through Solway Moss for Gretna.
294 GRETNA GREEN chap.
The course was four or five miles longer, and some cool
calculation and accurate knowledge of the tides was invaluable
to pursuers and pursued, or at least to their conductors. This
choice of roads added zest in every sense to these wild gallops
of honest lovers or shameless fortune-hunters, for the pursuers
were thus enabled at times to head off the chase by taking the
Longtown angle, while the truant couple stood chafing on the
wrong side of the fords of Esk, cut off completely by the
enemy fr.om the goal of thtir desires and Gretna Green.
This famous village is yet two miles on, across the " Debatable
land," and stands at the top of a gentle slope at whose foot rolls
the Sark, a trifling stream, though now the actual boundary of
the two kingdoms. Gretna (keen consists of a few old-
fashioned cottages of pleasant and leafy appearance clustering
round a four-cross road, a venerable looking kirk and a
small country house standing in its own grounds and known
as the Hall. It was at this last that very many of the
marriages were actually celebrated. Much legend has gathered
round a certain blacksmith, but as a matter of fact no creden-
tials nor experience of any kind were required of the officiating
functionary at a Gretna Green marriage, and almost any of its
limited inhabitants were available. Still certain people fell
naturally into the habit of being on the spot, and grew no
doubt a little glibber than others in the despatch and dignity
with which they united applicants and forwarded the necessary
documents to Edinburgh. The Hall was the place to which
couples of condition, if not pressed for time, would turn.
Pennant, however, in 1770 found an old fisherman in a blue
coat with a cjuid of tobacco in his mouth, the most active
matrimonial officer of that day. As fees were given, com-
petition was probably brisk, and in the humbler ranks, it is
said, a gill of whisky was occasionally considered adequate for
the amateur parson's compensation. An Act of Parliament in
1857, making a three weeks' residence necessary for all but
Scotsmen, knoclied the brisk matrimonial trade that (iretna
X A RELUCTANT HUSBAND 295
Green had conducted for about a hundred years completely on
the head, and left it high and dry with nothing but an im-
perishable sentimental interest to live upon. In the course of
a day spent in the neighbourhood, I found many people to
whom the memory of these times was of course fresh enough
and heard many stories whose narration would not be strictly
relevant here. One brief illustration from an eye witness,
however, to show that Gretna Green marriages were not
always incited by the sterner sex, may be given. My in-
formant was a Scotsman from Glasgow who had been bred at
Gretna, and he very well remembered, he told me, being
knocked up one morning by an uncle who among the rest
turned an honest penny by uniting runaway couples. He
was wanted as a second witness, and the amorous couple
proved to be a barmaid of the flashy and strong-minded type
and an elderly gentleman of education, and doubtless means,
but in a lamentable state of intoxication. The motive of the
marriage, money, was unblushingly obvious, and the more
backward party to the impending compact could not be
induced for some time to stand up, apparently because he
was unable. At last, however, the perpendicular condition
desirable for decency's, if not for form's, sake, was achieved
and the necessary question was put whether he took the
bespangled person beside him for his wife. " Wife ? " said the
happy but somewhat inarticulate bridegroom. " Oh, come, I
don't know about that ! "
" Oh yes, you do ! " said the lady, stamping her foot. " You
just do as you're told."
And he did, and my informant's uncle read a chapter of the
Bible over the blushing pair, a proceeding which was supposed
to give some semblance of decency to this monstrous abuse.
Leaving Gretna by the Longwood road, we are soon across
the Sark again and upon English ground. English now at least,
but of old that dark region which called no man lord and no
monarch king, and where no laws even professed to run — the
296 SOLWAY MOSS chap.
home of outlaws, thieves and bandits, who, finding refuge in this
" Debatable land " acquired the name of " Eatables " and were
abhorred and feared of all men. There was little enough, how-
ever, to indicate such sinister memories till the road dropped
down to Solway Moss, and there sure enough was the real thing.
Neither time nor change have touched those miles of rank
heather and quaking bog and sombre fir woods. My road ran
for a mile or so through the edge of it, raised above the peaty
ditches and shaded by the gloomy pines. As far as I could
see to the northward lay the pathless tract round which so
many centuries of strife and crime, such a wealth of legend,
song and story, have gathered. I crossed the Esk again at
Longtown, where with the rush of an inland salmon river it chafes
the arches of the stone bridge which leads into the border
town. I leaned for a few minutes against the parapet and
looked up the shining shallows of the river to the green hills
beyond which rise above the junction of the Liddel and the
Esk, and part the once turbulent dales they water. I gave a
thought of course to Dandie Dinmont and to young Brown
who passed up this way, to that memorable encounter with the
footpads, and to Kinmont Willie too, whose fetters were still
clanking on his feet and hands as the Buccleuch and his two
hundred men passed that misty morning through Longtown.
Hence to Carlisle, as I have already said, is a level run of some
eight or nine miles. I do not know that there is very much to
say about it, unless that in all likelihood it has been in days
gone by more trodden by the soldier and the war-horse than
any road in Britain. I had lunched near Gretna, and an old
copy of the Lay of the Last Minstrel was on the inn table. I
picked it up, and it fell open at the scene where Margaret, in
a love-sick dream on the walls of Branksome Castle, is startled
by the sudden lighting of the war beacons. As I rode
smoothly home to Carlisle through the gathering twilight and
the luiglish hills rose in grey masses ahead of me, the once
familiar stanza kept jingling in my ears with an insistency
X
"THE BEACON BLAZE OF WAR'
297
that in such a place and mood I felt but little disposition to
resist :
Is yon the star o'er Penchvyst Pen
That rises slowly to her ken,
And spreading broad its wavering light
Shakes its loose tresses on the night,
Is yon red glare the western star ?
Oh ! 'tis the beacon blaze of war.
Kendal.
CHAPTER XI
In the course of this concluding chapter I have to cover the
five-and forty miles that lies between Carlisle and Kendal.
This is not, however, quite such a formidable business as it
sounds, seeing that for the first stage of eighteen miles to
Penrith I shall leave the reader either to take the train or to
give himself over wholly to the material pleasures of a fast run
over a really fine and comparatively level road. As a matter
of fact, on this section of the Old North Road, there is not a
great deal to stop for, nor, if there were, should I venture to do
so, seeing how much more time I have already spent in the low
country than the title of this book may seem to justly warrant.
Still, though the route is outside the bounds I have had to set
myself, belonging as it does to the Pennine rather than the Lake-
land country, I would strongly recommend the traveller bound
for Penrith with time upon his hands to make the longer and
less comfortable journey up the Eden valley. The roads are
tortuous and not always good, but they lead through many
scenes that are beautiful and many places that are famed in
story, as any one may well believe who is not habitually asleep
as he passes over this section of the Midland Railway on the
CH. XI KIRKOSWALD 299
road to Scotland. At Armathwaite, for instance, nine miles from
Carlisle, the Eden ceases for a time from troubling, and spreads
a broad unruffled surface below crags and overhanging woods
where stands the ancient castle of the Skeltons. The Nunnery
too, a venerable manor house a few miles further up the valley, is
justly famous for the beauty of its walks and woods and water-
falls. Nature, of a truth, has here lent herself in a marvellous
way to art, and art has exercised a tasteful and rare restraint.
The ancient village of Kirkoswald, thick with memories of
border heroes, and Scottish raids, and rich in green foliage and
red freestone, lies just beyond, between the moorland and the
river. Featherstonhaughs have been here since the Reformation
at any rate, in an ancient and mellow manor house that springs
from a monastic college, and still bears its name. On the slope
above too are the scant remnants of one of the greatest of the
Dacre castles. Indeed it was probably the greatest, " one of the
fairest fabrics," says Sandford in 16 10, though even then falling
to ruin, " that ever eyes looked upon, the hall a hundred feet
long and the great portraiture of King Brute lying in the end of
the roof of the hall." A Dacre had won Kirkoswald by the
audacious abduction of its heiress — a Mutton - from Warwick
Castle in 1300, just as two centuries later another Dacre secured
the barony of (Ireystoke by precisely similar means. It was
from hence that the Dacre of Flodden notoriety marched to
that victorious field in which the men of the Eden valley took
so forward a part. A beautiful church too of three aisles stands
in the meadows at the village end beneath an old rookery,
while a venerable freestone bell-tower perches alone upon the
green ridge above and contains a bell of which Kirkoswald is
justly proud.
I stood one summer evening on the roof of this same bell-tower
in company with the ancient sexton whose care it is. Heavy
thunderstorms had cleared the air and filled the Eden, which
rolled its brimming waters near bank high through the grassy
vale beneath. \\'o looked over in the direction of Penrith and
3C3 A LOCAL PATRIOT chai-.
the Lakeland mountains, and even yet more particularly to the
green swell of the Pennines close at hand upon the east, and
watched the evening shadows crawling over the long smooth
shoulder of Crossfell.
My companion was a stout local patriot, and did not seem
to think much of Lakeland and its mountains. — "a Kirkos-
wald man born and bred, and proud of it," though a most
quizzical looking old gentleman of exceeding low stature for
this land of " lang-men " ; no " new-fangled scholard," but a
clerk and sexton of the good old sort, from the top of his
shiny head to the soles of his hob-nailed feet. " Now that's the
mountain for me," said he, looking at Crossfell, which I have
remarked elsewhere is for its height (2,800 feet) very much
the tamest hill in England, and lays against the sky like a
Hampshire down. " That's the mountain for me," he repeated
in a tone of unmistakable challenge to something I had let
drop about Skiddaw or Helvellyn.
" You can ride horseback or drive a waggon on to the top of
that mountain."
My thoughts were wandering. They had wandered in fact
across that very mountain to the scene of many youthful ram-
bles about the wild sources of the Tees and Wear.
" When the last Maister Featherstonhaugh," continued my
companion in a more emphatic key, " came of age he roasted a
bullock whole on top of yon mountain."
I could produce no such records as that to the credit of
Helvellyn and Skiddaw, so my guide put an end to any lingering
doubts I might be still supposed to have as to the supremacy
of Crossfell by a final clincher.
" Old Mr. Marshall used to light a bonfire and give two or
three thousand folks beer and bread and cheese on top of yon
mountain when his man got in at the ' lection.' "
Nothing further could be said after that, and I descended
the ladder from the belfry, feeling that my standards of com-
parison would have to be readjusted.
XI
"A METTLED MAX"
301
Just across the Eden too, on the way to I'eniith, is Lazonby,
once part of the great Inglewood Forest, hut which ('amden
tells us was " deparkt in Henry the Eighth's time, and one
Jack-a-Musgrave, a metled man, got a lease of a 100 years of it
and planted five of his sons at five several houses in it. This
Jack-a-Musgrave was so metled a man, as the country people
would say, that if they had a spirited boy he would just be a
Jack-a-Musgrave." And there was plenty of scope for heady
characters in the Eden valley in the days of Henry VHI,
Great Salkcld.
as a reference to the last chapter will show. But Great
Salkeld, a little further on towards Penrith, with its massive
fortified church tower and pretty village of red freestone,
produced greater men and more eligible patterns to youth than
even Jack-a-Musgrave. For no less a couple than Lord Ellen-
borough and Dick Whittington were born here. They went out
however to adorn other spheres, while Musgraves still flourish
at Eden Hall close by.
The Great North Road pushes straight through Penrith,
302
SIIAl'
CHAP.
where we may join it again, and passing through scenes dealt
with in the opening chapter of this book, chmbs steadily up to
Shap, which is 1 1 miles away and nearly 900 feet above the sea.
Not only the old coach road, but the London and North
Western Railway ascends this long pull to Shap, a place that
from many points of view deserves some special notice. Both
passengers and drivers in the coaching days knew Shap — or
rather the pass four miles to the southward and three hundred
feet hi2;hcr up which bears its name — nnlv too well, as the
''^.
->
77ie Road over Sha/> Fell.
wildest and coldest stage between London and Glasgow,
Regarded however as a village within the Lakeland district,
which it may just lay claim to be, Shap is a place to itself in
more senses than one and quite unique. Delightful otherwise
as are most places of sojourn in the Lake Country, they are all,
with scarcely an exception, set in a hole. No stretch of imag-
ination could maintain that any of them possessed in them-
selves a stimulating climate. For those who can get up on the
hills this is of little consequence. But such as who from age or
XI PRINCE CHART. TF;S HOTEL BILL 303
inactivity must remain more or less upon the level, may be happy
and even healthy, but in summer and autumn they can scarcely
attain that desirable condition commonly spoken of as braced
up. Now at Shap you are on the very roof of the world, and
might well wax vigorous without stirring beyond the garden
gate. This monopoly of so huge an advantage has stirred Shap
up in the last twenty years — or I should more rightly say has
stirred the Lake-going world up to its obvious advantages, for
it does not appear to me that the straggling moorland village
has greatly risen to the occasion or has yet realised its mani-
fest destiny. Its inns have some venerable traditions connected
with coaching days, which people of sentiment like to en-
courage in passing, to the extent of a bottle of beer and some
bread and cheese or a chop perhaps. But for anything more
durable the glamour of ancient history is not enough, and
Shap struck me as somewhat doggedly conservative in this
matter. Some traditions too are highly bad ones. When
Prince Charles Edward passed through here on his way south
for instance, I have read in a local handbook that he com-
plained of the charges made and put a black mark against
Shap in his household book to the effect that his landlady was
" a sad imposing wife." It was no doubt a coincidence, but in
taking a passing meal at a Shap inn a hundred and fifty-five
years afterwards I had occasion for the first time I think in the
Lake Country to observe that the accommodation, though
respectable of its kind, was not quite in proportion to the price
charged. A passing cyclist, who also thought himself injured,
made more forcible observations than I did, and unlike myself
derived no consolation whatever from the above mentioned
highly interesting fact, of which I placed him in possession.
For he remarked, and with much justice, that he was a member
of the C.T.C., while the Prince was not. The latter however, poor
fellow, had to walk on foot the whole twenty-seven miles from
Penrith to Kendal, a point in which we had very much the better
of him. But I should be sorry to take away Shap's character
3^4
A BRACINd ATMOSPHERE
CHAP.
on grounds so slight. I am told that in August it is full to
bursting, which is a good sign for its honesty. But a crowd
that would strain the accommodation of Shap would after all not
make much impress on the vast expanse of moor, fell and
mountain which sweeps away so delightfully from its homely
walls, and even in August solitude would not be far to seek.
What Cerrig y druidion is to North Wales so is Shap to the Lake
Country, save for the fact that it has a station at its door, which
Cerrig y druidion is very far from having. Like the latter, it is
Shap Abbey.
sometimes registered as bleak in guide-books. But in summer
time this often infers another and more attractive epithet.
For myself I think it must be delightful. There is a sense of
freshness and expansiveness about the outlook which has a
great charm to my thinking. Formerly Lakeland visitors did
not come on foot much east of the High Street range, and
Haweswater was the limit of the carriage folk. But from Shap
you may approach all this beautiful country just as readily and
start as well as sleep, upon a fine elevation. It stands, as it
were, upon a boundary, for the route of traffic from Penrith to
XI SIIAP ABBEY 305
Kendal may fairly be said to divide the outer fringe of Lake-
land from moorlands that belong in character, though not
geographically, to Yorkshire and Northumberland.
There is a market in Shap and a quaint old market cross,
now used as a parish room. There are several very old houses
and a church too of the twelfth century in a commanding
situation, and enfolded in summer time in a mantle of sycamore
leaves. Altogether, as becomes a place that is a dozen miles
from anywhere and so near the clouds, Shap has a character
and originality all its own. Still more, it has the remains of a
famous abbey, the only abbey in Westmorland ; founded in
the twelfth century by a son of that Gospatrick whom Rufus dis-
covered lording it over Cumbria and kicked out so unceremon-
iously when he made it English ground. It was occupied by
white canons of the Augustin order, was well endowed by
Viponts, Cliffords, Lowthers, Curwens and others, and waxed
wealthier as time went on. It must have had a great human-
ising influence ovtr this wild and stormy country. A large
block of the abbey church still stands amid the wreckage of
what time and predatory builders and wall-makers have left of
the main fabric. A mile from the village, poised in solitude
upon a slope above the infant Lowther, it yet remains a noble
relic of forgotten days, and gathers additional distinction from
the loneliness of its site.
Away down in the low country at the back of Shap,
eastward that is to say towards Appleby and the Eden, there
is a region rich in the relics of old times — in manor houses built
long since by Armigers, but now the abodes of farmers, and in
churches raised before the days of Bruce. Crosby-Ravensworth,
Strickland, the two Meaburns, Morland, Bolton, Kirkbythore,
and many another spot lies down here that antiquaries at any
rate hold in high regard, while the bright streams of the
Lyvenant, which water all this region, give a further charm to
many an unnoticed and old-world nook as they hurry by.
But it is to the wild and high country on the west that Shap
X
3o6
H AWES WATER
CHAP.
chiefly sets its face, to Kidsty Pike and the High Street, and
the eastern ridges of the great deer forest that rolls away to
UUswater and Patterdale. Swindale and Naddel, Mardale and
Haweswater are all within an easy walk ; the last named lake,
though comparatively little known, being among the most
beautiful of northern waters. Some three miles long and
a bare half mile broad, it lies in the trough of hills that rise in
height as they near the lake-head, where is a picture scarce
less imposing, if on a narrower scale, than that of UUswater.
4U.^. ';' ^'"*!,'W"-'»r
Ik:-.
11 1 yivatc?:
This is the best trouting lake too in the whole country, if one
is not over critical as to size ; and so it should be, seeing that
it is strictly preserved by Lord Lonsdale. But the trout here
are really free risers, an admirable quality which the strictest
preservation cannot always ensure. Memories of a soft and
breezy June day spent upon Haweswater, and of its sporting
little trout, will remain with me for a long time. Indeed they
kept me so busy that if this had been my only visit to
the lake I should have but a confused recollection of dark
XI THE KINGS OF MARDALE 307
wavelets rolling ceaselessly towards a wall of blowing wood-
land, and a vague vision on the other side of lofty fells and
the white gleam of a cataract breaking down them.
Mardale too, in the deep glen at the head of Haweswater,
is a hamlet unforgetable for the charm of its romantic beauty
and seclusion from the world. Here is a snug inn- — the Dun
Kull — and an ancient church set among yew trees and of a size
suitable to a valley that can scarcely contain a hundred souls
in all. But there were kings in Mardale, as there were kings in
Patterdale for all that, till some fifteen years agone, when the
last representative of the reigning flimily, Mr. Hugh Holme,
died, and with him the dynasty. The first Hugh Holme came
to Mardale in 1209, and his descendants held the estate he
then acquired in direct succession till the other day. And
their kingship has been long undisputed. This is not quite so
long as the Lloyds of Cwmbychan, near Harlech, dwelt in
their savage mountain fastness, and the Welsh family, though
Armigers, had no subjects to rule over ; but otherwise there is
something of a parallel. Near the foot of the lake too there
is Thornethwaite Hall, which recalls a novel that was very
famous when I was a boy, in which Anthony Trollope set
the whole novel-reading world asking each other whether they
could forgive a certain young lady or whether her folly was
unpardonable. Few novelists, I confess, appeal very strongly
to my topographical sentiment. Perhaps it is my fancy goes
out so strongly for the things that have been there, there is
no room left in the landscape for those that are creations of
the midnight oil, though, as Trollope wrote before breakfast
chiefly, the phrase is not a happy one. But as a staunch
admirer of Trollope's I yield myself wholly to him in a
AViltshire water meadow or on the slope of a Wiltshire down,