A Day With The Picts And Celts Of Cumberland

( Originally Published 1902 )

"It is the first glad day of March,
Each moment lovelier than before."

THE bees are busy in the crocus beds ; the village children, as busy as bees, are hunting along the hedgerows by the school for the first celandines and the earliest daisies. In the valley meadows I hear that never-to-be-forgotten voice of spring, the new lambkin's cry, and through the sunny air the rooks sail with their delightfully contented clamour that tells me winter is over and gone.

It is true there was a slight hoar-frost on the ground this morning, but it passed into the finest gossamer veil, and, after hanging like a spirit-film of fairy cloud for half an hour above the lake, vanished into blue sky, and left us far and near mountain, valley, and wood and water-flood one lustrous glory of tender sunshine.

On such a day as this one leaves the vale and climbs to mountain solitudes, for the valley is so full of life and industry that one can hardly have the heart to stop the man at the barrow or the shepherd at the feeding-trough to have what in Cumberland they call a ' crack' with him. And so, because one feels oneself a little bit ashamed of indolence and uselessness, one gets gone to where beyond these sweet accusing voices there is peace.

Not but what high up above the Armboth Fells the buzzard is crying, and the raven, that watch-dog of the air, barks his hoarse bark over the yellow back of the mighty Helvellyn.

We are bent to-day on a visit to prehistoric man, so we pass along beneath the hill whereon the Viking chieftains rest, " The Ridge of the Dead," Latrigg of our day, and wind through the woods of Brundholme high up above the gleaming Greta. " Great A ? " said Robert Southey, "it ought to be called 'Great S!' " and Bob Southey is right, for as one passes on eastward one sees the river twist and almost flow back upon itself, and, like a serpent, coil and uncoil as it races down to Keswick. Ah ! these Brundholme woods, fair today as when in 1792 Dorothy Wordsworth and her brother William delighted to walk and wonder at their beauty, how doubly fair ye seem to. the wanderer in your leafy wilderness, seeing that Coleridge and Calvert and Southey have here found rest of soul and inspiration. The rabbits scurry through the crackling fern, the blackbird bustles through the umber leafage, a jay scolds at us from the copse ; but except for these sounds there is absolute silence, save when in gentlest whisper the long-tailed titmice pass from larch to larch.

We leave the road and descend through the woodland, grey with the shining hazel, purple with the birch trees those fountains of life, so soon to fall in emerald rain, and, reaching the river, venture across by a railway viaduct, and so gain the southern bank. Thence up straight to the Druid Circle we go, gazing back not once or twice to take in the full glory of lemon light upon the larch tree woods on Latrigg and the yellow glow upon the winter-blanched back of Blencathra. Beautiful as is Lonscale's mountain side, with its bronze-coloured masses of heather, some of the beauty is marred by jet black patches from the Fire-god's hand. The shepherds know that there is nothing so tooth-some for their Herdwick sheep as the new sprouting undertufts of heather, and for this purpose early in March, if the weather has favoured them, they set the mountain side on fire and let the ling burn itself out. We passed on to the Druid Circle and thought of the times of the earlier Fire-god worshipped here. Thought of the great assemblies here on Mid-summer Eve in honour of the sun. Thought of how in later Viking times the people hither flocked to their doom or judgment ring, and, while the judge presided, the bowmen kept their arrows on the string ready to pierce to the heart any ' wolf of the holy place' who dared to approach the sanctuary, and, by approaching, to defile the ring of doom. Thence down towards the most interesting of prehistoric villages in this part of Cumberland. The old village of the Picts or Pixies at Threlkeld Knott at the back of the Threlkeld Quarry. We crossed the Bure, loved by Richardson the poet, and sung of by Sir Walter in his old love-making days, and, ascending by Hilltop farm, we paused for a draught of crystal clear at the finest fountain that Helvellyn knows.

The grey crags of ' Woden,' Wanthwaite of today, gleamed up above us half shadow and half sun, and on up that bewitching mountain road that leads across the waste and solitary moor to Dockwray and Ullswater we went. Suddenly, when we got abreast of the Quarry, we turned down hill to the left over the sloping fellside and found ourselves in the presence of prehistoric man. Here were the enclosure walls of their fortified village, there the remains of the foundations of their circular huts or wig-wams ; below, and to the eastward, lay the numberless graves of the shepherds of old time, and right in front, to the north, was plain to be seen the great common meadow, to which, in fear of the wolf from yonder wolf-crags on Helvellyn or the robber from the hills, these primeval settlers drove their flocks at eventide. The sun shone, the lilac haze lay again against the Crossfell range out eastward, soft the lustrous vapour bathed the blue hills to the west, and I felt that the joy in my blood made it possible for me to shake hands with those old shepherd ' Pixies ' of a prehistoric age, for they too had revelled in the spring sunshine, for them, though it came to them under another name, " the first glad day of March had been a reality."

I wandered thence with Scott's ballad of the Bridal of Triermain in my ears up the Vale of St. John, and climbed to an early encampment of the prehistoric men at the back of Castle Crag. Thence descending passed the Hill of Log, or Law-sayer, that the Vikings knew at Legburthwaite, and ascended the zig-zag by Raven Crag to the old treble-rampired fort of Buck Castle at the head of Shoulthwaite Ghyll. One could hardly believe, so calm, so peacefully at rest was all the scene about one, that the noise of war had ever sounded on this height, or scared the shepherds in the vale below, but Castle Crag frowned at one from Helvellyn's side, and this ramparted fortress on the cliff edge scowled back its answer. Then, walking through faded fern and bronze heather, I made my way across High Seat to Falcon Crag, and saw as I passed where in ancient days of warfare the prehistoric shepherds upon Blaeberry Fell kept watch and ward behind their stone dykes and village enclosures. I dropped down, with Robert Southey for my guide, down by the stream he so loved, Cat Ghyll, and felt one needed something of wild cat-life to enable one to gain in safety the Borrowdale road beyond those shales beside the sounding ghyll.

The sun had set, and a glorious afterglow lay upon the mountains, while coral-pink fleecy cloudlets streamed like 'flamingoes' to the zenith. As I wandered home to Keswick through the ' Great Wood,' the thrushes and blackbirds seemed to be singing their hearts out, and the first star shone above Grisedale Pike before they hushed their evening hymn. I felt that star and bird bade me shake hands with the prehistoric men of Cumberland. They too had seen the gathering of the stars and heard the blackbirds sing.