Читать книгу Lays and Legends of the English Lake Country - John Pagen White - Страница 4

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The English Lake District may be said, in general terms, to extend from Cross-Fell and the Solway Firth, on the east and north, to the waters of Morecambe and the Irish Sea; or, more accurately, to be comprised within an irregular circle, varying from forty to fifty miles in diameter, of which the centre is the mountain Helvellyn, and within which are included a great portion of Cumberland and Westmorland and the northern extremity of Lancashire.

After the conquest of England by the Normans, the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, the ancient inheritance of the Scottish Kings, as well as the county of Northumberland, were placed by William under the English crown. But the regions thus alienated were not allowed to remain in the undisturbed possession of the strangers. For a long period they were disquieted by the attempts which from time to time were made by successive kings of Scotland to re-establish their supremacy over them. Supporting their pretensions by force of arms, they carried war into the disputed territory, and conducted it with a rancour and cruelty which spared neither age or sex. The two nations maintained their cause, just or unjust, with unfaltering resolution; or if they seemed to hesitate for a moment, and a period of settlement to be at hand, their frequent compromises only ended in a renewal of their differences. Thus these northern counties continued to pass alternately under the rule of both the contending nations, until the Scottish dominion over them was finally terminated by agreement in the year 1237; Alexander of Scotland accepting in lieu lands of a certain yearly value, to be holden of the King of England by the annual render of a falcon to the Constable of the Castle of Carlisle, on the Festival of the Assumption.

The resumption, at no distant period, of the manors which had been granted to Alexander, renewed in all their strength the feelings of animosity with which the Scots had been accustomed to regard their southern neighbours, and the feuds between the two kingdoms continued with unabated violence for more than three centuries longer. The dwellers in the unsettled districts lying along the English and Scottish borders, being originally derived from the same Celtic stock, had been gradually and progressively influenced as a race by the admixture of Saxon and Danish blood into the population; and although much of the Celtic character was thereby lost, they seem to have retained in their mountains and forests much of the spirit, and many of the laws and manners, of the ancient Britons. They continued to form themselves into various septs, or clans, according to the Celtic custom; sometimes banded together for the attainment of a common end; and as often at feud, one clan with another, when some act of personal wrong had to be revenged upon a neighbouring community. Thus a state of continual restlessness, springing out of mutual hatred and jealousies, existed among the borderers of either nation. The same feelings of enmity were fostered, and the same system of petty warfare was carried on, between the borderers of the two kingdoms. Cumberland and Westmorland, from their position, were subject to the frequent inroads of the Scots; by whom great outrages were committed upon the inhabitants. They drove their cattle, burned their dwellings, plundered their monasteries, and even destroyed whole towns and villages. A barbarous system of vengeance and retaliation ensued. Every act of violence and bloodshed was perpetrated; whilst the most nefarious practices of free-booting became the common occupation of the marauding clans; and a raid into a neighbouring district had for them the same sort of charm and excitement which their descendants find in a modern fox chase. Even after the union of the two kingdoms under one sovereign, when the term "Borders" had been changed to "Middle Shires," as being more suitable to a locality which was now nearly in the centre of his dominions, the long cherished distinctions and prejudices of the inhabitants were maintained in all their vigour; and it required a long period of conflict with these to be persevered in, before the extinction of the border feuds could be completely effected. These distractions have now been at an end for more than two centuries. The mountains look down upon a peaceful domain; the valleys, everywhere the abode of quiet and security, yield their rich pasturage to the herds, or their corn-fields redden, though coyly, to the harvest; and the population, much of it rooted in the soil, and attached by hereditary ties to the same plots of ancestral ground in many instances for six or seven hundred years, is independent, prosperous, and happy.

Some evidences of the old troublous times remain, in the dismantled Border Towers, and moated or fortified houses called Peles, which lie on the more exposed parts of the district; in the ruins of the conventual retreats; and in the crumbling strongholds of the chiefs, which still retain something of a past existence in the names which even yet cling about their walls, as if the spirits of their former possessors were reluctant to depart entirely from them. Whilst a few traditions and recollections survive of those stirring periods which have left their mark upon the nation's history, and are associated for ever with images of those illustrious persons whose familiar haunts were within the shadows of the hills.

But the great charm of this region, which is not without attractions also of a superstitious and romantic character, lies in the variety of the aspects of nature which it presents; exhibiting, on a diminutive scale, combinations of the choicest features of the scenery of all those lands which have a name and fame for beauty and magnificence. Mr. West, a Roman Catholic clergyman, long resident in the district, and the author of one of the earliest Guides to the Lakes, thus expresses himself: "They who intend to make the continental tour should begin here; as it will give in miniature, an idea of what they are to meet with there, in traversing the Alps and Appenines: to which our northern mountains are not inferior in beauty of line, or variety of summit, number of lakes, and transparency of water; not in colouring of rock or softness of turf; but in height and extent only. The mountains here are all accessible to the summit, and furnish prospects no less surprising, and with more variety than the Alps themselves." Wordsworth also, who could well judge of this fact, and none better; he who for fifty years

"Murmured near these running brooks A music sweeter than their own,"

and looked on all their changing phases with a superstitious eye of love; after he had become acquainted with the mountain scenery of Wales, Scotland, Switzerland, and Italy, gave his judgment that, as a whole, the English Lake District within its narrow limits is preeminent above them all. He thus speaks: "A happy proportion of component parts is indeed noticeable among the landscapes of the North of England; and, in this characteristic essential to a perfect picture, they surpass the scenes of Scotland, and, in a still greater degree, those of Switzerland. … On the score even of sublimity, the superiority of the Alps is by no means so great as might hastily be inferred; and, as to the beauty of the lower regions of the Swiss mountains, their surface has nothing of the mellow tone and variety of hues by which our mountain turf is distinguished. … The Lakes are much more interesting than those of the Alps; first, as is implied above by being more happily proportioned to the other features of the landscape; and next, as being infinitely more pellucid, and less subject to agitation from the winds." And again, "The water of the English Lakes being of a crystalline clearness, the reflections of the surrounding hills are frequently so lively, that it is scarcely possible to distinguish the point where the real object terminates, and its unsubstantial duplicate begins."

It is therefore not to be wondered at, that during the greater part of a century, where the old Border raids of violence have ceased, excursions of a very different character should have taken their place. Every summer brings down upon the valleys clouds of visitors from every corner of our island, and from many countries of Europe and America, eager to enjoy their freshness and beauty, and breathe a new life in the companionship of the lakes and hills. And if in a spirit somewhat more akin to the moss-trooping Borderer of an earlier time, an occasional intruder has scoured the vales in search of their traditions; and in the pursuit of these has ransacked their annals, plundered their guides, and levied a sort of black-mail upon even casual and anonymous contributors to their history; it may in some degree extenuate the offence to remember that such literary free-booting makes no one poorer for what it takes away; and that the opima spolia of the adventurer are only so much gathered to be distributed again. More especially to the Notes which constitute so large a portion of the present Volume may this remark be applied. Scenery long outlasts all traditional and historical associations. To revive these among their ancient haunts, and to awaken yet another interest in this land of beauty, has been the aim and end of this modern Raid into the valleys of the North, and the regions that own the sovereignty of the "mighty Helvellyn."