Cumberland Character

( Originally Published 1902 )

IT is impossible to understand or explain Cumberland character without remembering that national characteristics change very slowly, and that the geographical features of a country have something to do with the permanency of national features.

The Cumberland people of to-day are for the most part of Viking origin, and owing to the fact that the hills and dales of Cumberland have practically kept the dwellers in them very much to themselves, and to certain family strains of blood, and that until the middle of this century these dales-folk were shut off from the rest of the world, one is able to find the manner of the ancient Norseman still unchanged, and the Cumbrian character much as it was when the chieftain Thorolf or Ingolf ran his boats ashore at Ravenglass or Derwent-Muth in the ninth century, and made their way into our mountain fastnesses.

To understand Cumbrian character to-day, one must read the ancient Sagas. Therein one finds the prototype of the modern dalesman. What strikes one as one reads those sagas is that the men, though they are born farmers and only fighters when need be, yet nevertheless delight in war. That they are men with tremendous feeling for the honour of the spoken word ; a man's word is his bond. That they love their home life and their homestadhrs or farm-steadings with passionate love. That they are, whatever may be their lives before marriage, very true to the wedding contract. That they are men of few words, fond of listening to stories and the professional story-teller, but slow of speech. That they have a great sense of law and order the will of the Over-lord or the Log-sayer at the Thing being sacred. That they are hard workers, with a great idea of lightening the weeks of weary toil with a good feast and a merry-making. That, though sober and frugal at other times, they are, at their feast makings, considerable drinkers. That they are not passionate, not :easily roused to anger, but if roused, furious, fierce, and unforgiving, bearing grudges all through their days against those whom they deem have done them any wrong. That they are withal very hospitable to the far-farer or the stranger, and apparently have great concern to see that the guest, whoever he be, shall be rightly entreated. Money they have not ' mickle ' to give ; they will give in kind. They are superstitious seers of signs in Heaven and on earth, but not deeply religious ; at least I always think that with all their respect for Thor and Odin, they look upon the gods as very good fellows, a trifle better than themselves, and trust that in Valhalla all will be well with them, but I doubt if the fear of God was constantly before their eyes, and if the deep religious instinct that makes men into saints and martyrs was generally found among them.

Nevertheless their ethical code as regarded property and mutual trust was high. The law of ' meum and tuum ' was understood, and they were, if once they were fast friends, willing to serve one another to the death. Added to this they had the instincts of a gentleman. As one reads the Sagas, one feels one is moving amongst people who have a wonderful native courtesy, and who are at the same time full of simple dignity and self-reliance, not without some considerable power of boasting. As for humour, it seems rather to take the form of ` wise sayings,' asking of riddles ; their wit is dry and shrewd, more of pith than laughter about it. One notices also that they are great observers of personal characteristics, and get much fun out of the nicknames they give to one another, Hawk-neb, Red-beard, Long-foot, Fish-slayer, and the like.

Of bodily pain they are great endurers, stoical almost as North-West American Indians. Of death they seem to have little fear, it is with them the natural end, but they are very particular about the funeral rites, and the punctual and careful observance of the burial custom is a notable feature with all the Norse life we read of. Men may forget the 'steading' or the ' garth' where the Viking forefather dwelt, but they will not forget the 'How' or Heogh,' the ' High' place where, on the day of burial, he " died into the ground."

Now with this picture of the old Norsemen in mind let us come back to Cumberland of to-day, and see if the sons of the Vikings have much altered, or are in their characteristics Vikings still.

First, they are born farmers. I suppose there are few men who are so competent to make two ends meet in these days of agricultural depression as the hard-working Cumber-land farmer, and there are, for the size of the county, fewer farmers' sons who take to war as a profession than perhaps in any county in England. But they have the Viking love of adventure ; the men who in our time have made their fortunes in London by sheer pluck and honest industry show this ; nevertheless, go where they may, their love of home is very strong. They have a homing instinct like the heaf-born herdwick, and no matter to what part of the earth they go, or which of the seven seas they cross, the Cumbrian's heart is back among the blue hills of his native county.

Next about their word being their bond. I have come across men of the generation passing away, who in all their contracts never once used a piece of written paper. " Naay, naay," they would say, " he gev' me his word, and what, that's eneuf, or sud be eneuf fer any man."

It is this same feeling about the sanctity of the spoken word that makes a Cumbrian refuse to say he knows to any question, if he does not, and also refuses to allow him to speak ill of a neighbour except under great provocation.

As to moral life, I fear that parish registers and statistics point to Cumberland being in one matter Viking still. The Young Women's Friendly Societies have of late years done much to raise the tone of thought in this matter, and it is hoped that young men may in the next generation think more nobly of what is due to young women, and be more knightly and more self-restrained for Christ's sake. But like the Norsemen of old, if the man and woman once wed, they are true to the contract.

They are men of few words, the exact opposite of the voluble Celt still, but they will still listen for hours to those who will entertain them with stories. They appreciate a " dounreet good crack." I noted last year in camp that in most of the tents some one man was the story-teller, who was evidently deputed to give a bit of crack or sing his song before his mates went off to sleep.

As to law and order, where will you find men so manageable in a crowd as in Cumberland, so self-restrained. They have, side by side with their respect for order, great ideas of having their rights, perhaps almost a love of appeal to law and the judge. I think this is out of their high sense of the greatness and the majesty of law, but it is also partly the result of their willingness to abide by law.

The Cumbrian, too, of to-day is like his Viking ancestor in being willing to endure long spells of work if only he may have his Martinmas and his Christmas holiday. The old days of the Murry Neets' and junketings from farm to farm have faded away, but these were direct survivals of Viking times. Not-withstanding that we in Cumberland live under the rain-belt, as a county, men seem to me to be learning to be sober. I can see a great change for the better in the last fifteen years. But the Hirings on certain Christmas and New Year festivals seem still to waken Viking echoes, and the idea prevails that at such times the wassail horn should be lifted high. This, too, I believe to be a survival from Norse Festivals.

Men in Cumberland keep their tempers ; if they lose them they do not easily recover peace of mind, and the Cumbrian who thinks himself aggrieved or wronged seems to be unable to forgive and forget. I have come across in-stances of men who for some quite trifling reason have passed one another without a word for years. They would have been quite willing to make it up if that had not implied that one must confess to the other that he was in the wrong or had been mistaken, but this involved humility, and the old Viking spirit, as one sees it in the Sagas, does not believe in humility.

Turn next to the question of hospitality to the far-farer and the guest. We find the old Viking spirit still strong amongst the Cumberland folk in this matter. Indeed our Lake District is an ideal resting-place for visitors and strangers because of it. I do not believe there is any part of England where the guest, either as he passes through or comes to stay in the countryside, will find such natural hospitality, such grace of welcome, where the old idea of giving the chance-comer of one's best is so strong and quick among the country folk. They do not care a bit more than the Vikings of old to ' part with brass,' but they will part with goods in kind willingly.

As to religion, it is difficult to gauge it. There has been since Fox's time no religious revival in Cumberland. I think that part of his success with the dalesfolk was that he was being very badly treated by the magistracy, and the Cumbrian likes to see fairplay. The Cumbrian is naturally a man of few words, on religious matters of fewer. He dislikes all show or outward seeming, and is probably more religious than he would have you believe. But one thing he shares with his Viking fore-elders, the belief, that whatever happens is for the best. The sense of an over-ruling Providence, which in Viking times was a sense of over-mastering fate, is very strong with Cumberland folk. I have seen them in cases of grievous trouble, of loss of friends and loss of cattle and loss of health, accepting it all with the simple words " Well, it's likely aw for the best, and what yan cannot help, yan hes to bear."

Sometimes I have felt that with all this splendid patience, and longsuffering with unbroken trust in the Fatherhood of God, they seemed to think it was unmanly to give way to grief, and that it was the old Norseman's pride that prevented them giving way to sorrow.

As regards the ethics of ' meum and tuum,' the idea of taking what is not his never occurs to a thoroughbred Cumbrian. I have some-times said if bank notes were found upon the road, the dalesman who found them would just clap them on the top of the wall and put a stone on them to prevent them blowing away, and walk on as if he had no doubt the loser would come to ' laate ' them, and that at any rate they were no concern of his. One has only to go to a shepherds' meeting and to see how absolutely they may be relied upon to bring back and restore strayed herdwicks, and hand them over without a " Thank you," to realise how honesty is a matter of course with a real fell-sider. And the kindliness and help-fulness to one another, if they are real friends, is proverbial.

The Vikings of old were gentlemen, the Cumbrian of today is a gentleman. Ruskin said that round about his Brantwood home dwelt men with such manners as made him think of them as knights who might have fought at Agincourt. One of the secrets of the success in after life of Cumbrian lads who rise from the ranks is, that into what station they go they seem naturally to be able to accommodate themselves to it. I spoke with one of the masters of our new Dual School at Keswick the other day, and he said : "What strikes me about the scholars, after coming here from a public school in the Midlands, is the gentleness of the manners of both boys and girls. They seem to have no coarseness about them. They are all refined little gentlemen and ladies." It sounded high praise, but I answered : " They are the children of a Viking stock. Of course they are ladies and gentlemen."

Doubtless Cumbrians believe in Cumbria. There is often given by them to strangers the impression that " nowt varra good was ivver bworn oot o' Cummerland." The man of the South the stranger though he may be treated most kindly as a guest, is always made to feel that he is a far-comer and an alien. The old 'standards ' speak of people whose father and whose grandfather may have lived in Cumber-land, still as if they were foreigners. I suppose this, too, is an inheritance from Viking times and the clan life and family league of the olden day. The apparent boastfulness or strong belief in " canny awld Cumberland banging the whoal warld " may be a survival of the Norse-man's pride, in race and deeds of prowess.

As regards humour, there is much of it among the Cumbrians, but a large part of it is unconscious, and it takes the form rather of putting dry sayings in a striking way than of light humour. But the capacity to enjoy humour is considerable, as anyone may see who hears a good roomful laugh their hearts out at ' Bobby Banks' Bodderment' or ' Wil Rutson's law suit.' I think I can detect in their fondness for proverbial sayings a touch of the Viking strain. Certainly the- old Norse delight in the humour of nicknames survives. One cannot be at any meeting where the names of several people are mentioned without hearing from some part of the room a second name, the name by which the person is better known, being suggested in an undertone. We have our ' Lang Nebs,' and ' Hairy-faced,' and ' Fish Slayers,' and ' Hunter Bills,' and ' Wet Shods,' and ' One-eyes,' just as the Vikings had of old.

There is no resentment a boy at school gets a nickname, and he grows up with it quite naturally, and carries it with him to the grave.

There is one matter in which the modern Viking seems to have degenerated, which, as it is akin to humour, may be mentioned here. The modern Cumbrian is not imaginative the old Viking was. The modern Cumbrian is not a man of artistic idea ; the old Viking was. The modern Cumbrian has a soul for the most part turned away from poetry ; the old Viking, if he was not a poet himself, was a lover of the bard and the bardic song, delighted to run into rhyme and hear the singer declaim his verses.

I do not forget that we have had in the past century a number of writers of dialect poems. That Wilkinson of Yanwath and Richardson of St. John's in the Vale were true poets, and that Cumberland has produced a William Words-worth ; but if I have observed accurately, the average Cumbrian has not developed, or been encouraged to develop, the imaginative side of his nature. The more the pity. It is by the imagination that he becomes sympathetic, and gets the greatest good from " man and Nature, and from human life."

Last, in matters that pertain to death and the fear of death. One cannot be at many death-bed sides in Cumberland without noting how, as in the old Viking times so to-day, death is looked upon as a quite natural ending. There is no fear of it for the most part. It is accepted in fullest trust that all is for the best. Both the dying person and those around him often let fall words that make one feel that .in the presence of the death hour the Cumbrian is calmly resigned and calmly confident that the proper time has come, and that there should be no questioning, no complaint, and after death words of regret or sympathy, though they may be prized, seem unnecessary. ' It was all for the best.'

As to the power to endure suffering in sickness, I doubt if amongst any other people in England there can be such patient heroism, such stoical endurance to the end. This, too, is a Viking tradition.

But if men and women in Cumberland are true Norsemen and Norsewomen in their dying, they are true heirs of the Vikings also in their feeling for the manner of burial and the place of sepulture. It is true that some of the most remarkable Viking funeral customs are fading out, but the arval cake and the sprig of box may still be seen. The bidding of friends to the funeral is still carried out. The touching of the dead man's face before the coffin is sealed I have myself witnessed. All these are survivals from the days of our Viking fore-elders. And the place of burial is as jealously cared for now as in the days of old. It is true we have no ' heoghs ' or 'hows' for our dead friends to 'die into the ground' there, as in the olden time, but the wish of the Cumbrian still is strong to rest beside his forefathers, and I have known instances of people coming down to the graveyard week in week out, for years before they died, to gaze upon the sacred spot where they, too, one day hoped their bodies would rest. I remember how Ruskin once expressed astonishment on hearing how a woman at Coniston used to trudge on Sundays right over the hill to attend worship at Hawkhead Church, and heard in answer : ' Well, well, I cuddn't dea no other ; why muther ligs there, you kna'.' The attachment to the old burial-ground, so strong in the hearts of the Cumbrian dalesfolk, has its origin in the far-off time of Thorolf and of Ingolf, the Norse rovers, who, peopling our villages, gave us our ' thwaites,' and ' garths,' and 'ghylls,' and ' forces,' and 'bows,' and ' seats,' and ' sides,' and who brought with their tall, leish limbs, and their fine features, and their grey eyes, the power to mould the Cumbrian character for the next thousand years.