come on sir; here’s the place:—stand still.—how fearful
and dizzy ’tis, to cast one’s eyes so low!
the crows and choughs, that wing the midway air
show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down
hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!
methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
the fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
appear like mice; and yon tall anchoring bark,
diminish’d to her cock; her cock, a buoy
almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge
that on th’ unnumbered idle pebbles chafes,
cannot be heard so high:—i’ll look no more;
lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
topple down headlong.
king lear.
“you must prepare yourself,” continued the old man, to be somewhat surprised with what i am going to relate to you, if you have not (as i have) lived long enough in the world not to be much surprised at any thing. things are so mixed up in this world, and very trifling, or even absurd events so often lead to very serious consequences, that i can quite believe the stories one hears of the spilling of a cup of tea creating a war between two nations, or the boring of a rat-hole causing the inundation of holland.
“one very fine morning, at this period of my narrative, gawen braithwaite, a stout young man of rather more than my own age, the son of a neighbouring statesman, and myself, sallied forth on an excursion of a character not uncommon among the young men of that country in my early days, and probably still prevailing,—which combined the three great excitements to youth for any similar undertaking, viz. pleasure, danger, and sometimes profit. this was, the gathering ruddle in the screes of wastdale. this operation will require some explanation to make it p. 69intelligible to you. ruddle is a stone strongly mixed with iron, which, by wetting and rubbing, produces a deep red paint which hardly any exposure to the weather can wash away, especially when stained upon an oily substance like wool. now this ruddle the shepherds of the mountains use to mark their sheep with, that it may be known to whom they belong. as the sheep range over a wide and unenclosed extent of moor and fell, they often ramble far from home, and though each shepherd well knows every one of his own sheep by face, yet strangers could not know to whom a stray animal belonged, unless it bore some mark to point out its owner. hence the occupier of every sheep-farm has his own peculiar mark, which has been used on that farm time out of mind, by which his sheep are known all over the country-side; and at sheep-shearings, which are always times of great festivity and rejoicing, the shepherds assemble from all parts of the country, and choose out their own stray sheep from each flock as it is shorn, appealing to their well-known marks as proofs of ownership. these marks, as i said, are made by the mineral called ruddle, which, being very scarce, has a considerable value in the market, fetching as much as at least sixpence a pound. now sixpences are not very abundant in the pockets of country lads; and they are very glad to secure them, even though it be but by one at a time, at the expense of wasting many hours, which they value little, and at much risk of their necks, which they value less. it happens that this ruddle is principally to be found in the most dangerous place in all the lake country—a place which you must have seen, for it is visited by all tourists who wish to explore by far the finest part of all that beautiful district—the screes of wast-water. these screes are a long and lofty ridge of almost perpendicular rocks, running from scaw-fell towards the sea, along the whole southern side of the lake of wastdale, and are of so brittle and crumbling a nature, that almost the smallest pebble, set rolling from above, will gather a host of them as it goes, till a whole army of little stones rush pell-mell to p. 70the bottom of the rock and plunge headlong into the dark lake below, at least fifty fathoms deep! it is on the face and half way down the side of this shivery rock that the little veins of ruddle are to be found, and you may guess the steady step and firm nerve which are required to descend the surface of the steep and loose declivity, and avoid any disturbance of that rolling mass, which, once commencing its movements, would to a certainty hurl the bold adventurer to the bottom. many lives have been lost in this perilous pursuit. however, gawen braithwaite and i were not deterred by the danger, but rather impelled by it to encounter a risk which we had often before tried and escaped. up langdale, then, we sallied; and crossing stye-head, made our way to the left under the peaks of scaw-fell pikes, through the stormy gap of mickle-door, and descended the face of the screes with that boldness of heart and step, which is the best pledge of safety. we were on this day more than usually successful in the object of our search; and before the sun had descended between the double peaks of the isle of man, had filled our bags with the treasure which we so highly prized, and sat down on the top of the screes to eat our first meal since we left home, and watch at the same time the last rays of the sun tingeing the sea with gold, and the top of great gavel with a deep purple—his base being already lost in shadow. in the gaiety of our hearts we ended our repast by smearing our faces with the ruddle: and, having added a few dark lines to the portrait by the aid of some bastard coal which is there found, we were quite prepared to startle to our hearts’ content any rustic maiden that might have the misfortune to encounter us on our way home—a feat not very uncommon in a country where amusements are not so easily found as in towns like this. the lengthening shadows of the evening soon warned us of the approach of night; and we commenced our return with light hearts and heavy sacks of ruddle, keeping the high ground and the slopes of the hill-sides rather than descending into the valleys below, both because the ground p. 71was there more solid to the step, and because—the truth must be confessed—we thought we were less likely to meet with ghosts on the open plain, than in the dark lurking-places and shadowy recesses of the glens, which have been supposed, from time immemorial, their favourite habitations! yet, strange as it may appear, this very avoidance of ghostly haunts led us not only into their chosen dwelling places, but converted us into ghosts ourselves; as you shall hear. gawen braithwaite was somewhat in advance of me as we crossed the bold point of the crag which runs out between the vale of langdale and the dale that leads towards the foot of hardknot, when he suddenly disappeared among some close bushes of hazel, which here fringe the rock from the river below almost to the crown of the hill. conceiving that he had stumbled under his weight among the hidden stones (for it was now almost dark even on the hill tops) i hastened forward to his relief, when, to my great surprise, i found that he had disappeared altogether from view. i called aloud, and, receiving no answer, i became dreadfully alarmed, thinking that he, who, i soon recollected, had no right to poor gawen, had flown off with him bodily! at last i heard his voice from below feebly calling on me to help him, and then found that he had fallen into a deep and unsuspected cavern, and was unable to get out without my assistance. i descended carefully to the place where he was lying, and found him not at all hurt; but he trembled exceedingly, and putting his hand to his mouth as a signal for my silence, he pointed to an object below, which put me at once into as great a fright as himself. we could both see distinctly a faint glimmering of light, though far beneath us; and as we held our breaths from very terror, sometimes fancied we could hear the sound of human voices in the very bowels of the hills. at last our doubts were changed into certainty; and gathering courage by the assurance that the sounds which we heard were not inhuman, our curiosity began to get the better of our fears, and we quietly worked our way downwards among the rocks and closely-woven bushes, till the p. 72light grew brighter, and the sounds fell more distinctly on our ears. at last a sight burst upon us which astonished us both not a little. stepping quietly down upon a jutting projection of rock, we obtained the full view of a large cavern, evidently the old working of a slate-mine which had been long deserted, and the entrance to which (at the opposite end from where we stood) had been almost forgotten even by the natives. the hills thereabouts are, in fact, full of such old workings. there, round a large fire, which answered the purpose both of light and heat, we saw arranged a large circle of men, some standing, some leaning against the rocks, and some sitting round the fire, while one stood in the middle addressing them with great earnestness, and much and very graceful action. i immediately recognized the orator as one whom i had seen before, and much surprised and grieved was i to see him under such circumstances. have you any idea, sir, who he was?”
“not in the least,” said i.
“it was the handsome stranger, the lover and loved of my poor sister martha! the whole secret was now out; the mystery was now at an end. this man, whose appearance and occupations among our quiet mountains no one could account for, was, in fact, a champion of the french revolution, and a spreader of the pestilent doctrines of tom paine! whether he was employed by others, or whether he came impelled only by his own perverted zeal in this evil cause, was never known; but his object was to spread the principles of infidelity and revolution (and when were these principles ever separated?) among the miners of cumberland, and, through them, among the peaceful and pious inhabitants of the north! can you, sir, conceive a design more fiendish than this?—well worthy the exploits of his first ‘father’ in the garden of eden! there, however, in that old and forgotten mine, he had secretly assembled the workmen and others together, and was in the very midst of his exhortation when gawen braithwaite and i became so unexpectedly a portion of his auditory. as we recovered our p. 73self-possession, and found that we were completely screened from view by the shadows which filled the whole of the upper end of the cave, we could gradually trace out some faces that we knew; and amongst the rest one or two whose presence in such company caused us no little surprise. how little, sir, do we know the real opinions, even of our next neighbours! there we saw william tyson,—no relation of old tommy tyson, king of wastdale-head—for he is as honest a king as ever reigned, and, at the same time, as good a subject to the queen as ever lived.”
“honest king tommy,” said i, “is dead.”
“is he indeed?” said the old man, in a lower tone than he had been speaking in just before; “i grieve to hear it; but all men, even kings, must die; and i trust he has left a successor to his humble throne among his native hills, as worthy to reign as himself and his ancestors. william tyson was a neighbour of our own, and owner of a very neat homestead and large sheep-farm in the vale of tilberthwaite. one could see no possible reason why one so well to do in the world should feel any dissatisfaction either with church or state. but, sir, what has reason to do with follies like these? william was a man ‘wise in his own conceit,’ and i do not think solomon was far wrong when he said of such a one, that ‘there is more hope of a fool than of him.’ well, sir, gawen and i lent our ears most attentively to catch the substance of the handsome stranger’s address, and soon found that he was speaking of the equality of civil rights, to which, he said, all men were born by nature. ‘all men,’ cried he, ‘come into the world in precisely the same condition.’ ‘i do not see how that can well be,’ said a decrepid-looking wretch sitting close to the speaker, ‘when i came into the world with a withered arm and leg, which have hardly ever grown since, and jack strong there was born with the limbs of a giant, and the strength of a buffalo!’ ‘i speak not of natural, but of civil equality,’ said the stranger, somewhat puzzled by the objection; ‘i mean that one man has as much right to property as another.’ p. 74‘aye, aye,’ said william tyson, much pleased with this view of the subject, ‘i have long thought myself quite as much entitled to coniston hall as sir daniel le fleming himself, and should much like to have the guiding of it for the rest of my days.’
“i wus ye may get it,’ said peter hoggarth, one of william’s own shepherds, who was standing unexpectedly near his master; ‘i shall be satisfied with your bonny holmes of grey goosthwaite, which i think i can farm quite as well as my master!’
“william tyson was evidently by no means pleased with this intrusion of his own shepherd’s; for it was clear that he had no manner of intention of resigning grey goosthwaite to his herdsman when he took possession himself of the broad acres of coniston hall. so true is it, that all men would level up to those above them, none down to those below them!
“the speaker now turned to the religious part of his subject, on which he expressed himself with great fluency and plausibility. he stated that much, which was mistaken for religion, was in reality nothing more than early prejudice and weak superstition. he instanced this, by ridiculing the strange belief in ghosts and spirits which was once so prevalent in these valleys, but was now fast disappearing before the light of advancing knowledge and science. ‘the miner,’ said he, ‘used to hear the mysterious knocking, and the supernatural signals of the rock-demon, where he now only listens to the echoes of the strokes of his own pick-axe.’
“‘true,’ said a brawny miner, leaning upon his spade, ‘i used to be afraid of evil spirits in these dark holes of ours, and was driven to say my prayers in a morning before i came to work, to keep them away; but i am grown wiser now; and, for my part, i will never believe that there is a devil at all, until i see him.’
“‘you may see him now, then!’ exclaimed a voice from the lower end of the cave. ‘there are two of them!’ cried another; upon which the whole assembly rose in the utmost terror, and rushed out of the cave, p. 75tumbling one over another into the darkness without, and some not recovering their feet till they had rolled to the very bottom of the hill. the stranger was the last to lose his presence of mind; but even he, it seems, had some latent suspicions that there might be such a being as the devil, for he soon rushed after his audience towards the mouth of the cave, and was lost in the gloom. this absurd termination of the meeting is easily accounted for. the stone on which gawen braithwaite was standing had been gradually sinking under his weight, and at last gave way altogether, rolling half way down the upper part of the cave towards where the audience were assembled. gawen, of course, gave way with it, and in his fall dragged me after him. the sight of two human beings making their entrance into the cave with such a clatter in a place where no entrance was known to exist, and the fiendish-looking figures which we had made ourselves by besmearing our faces with the ruddle and coal, were too much for the nerves of the valorous audience, who suspected, from what they heard and saw, that the devil was really looking after his own; and so they disappeared like magic, relieving us from the terror which we felt at making so untimely an entrance into the assembly, as we had reason to expect a by no means civil reception had we been discovered. having quite forgotten the disguised state of our faces, it was not till we approached the light of their fire that we found out the cause of their sudden terror; and you can well imagine how we enjoyed the success of our very involuntary exploit. yet there was indeed much to grieve my own heart in what i had learned, for the first time, that night. my poor sister martha was, it now appeared, engaged, probably heart and hand, certainly in her young affections, to one who was an enemy to god and man, a disbeliever of the truth of the gospel, a disturber of the peace of his country! what course lay before me i knew not. i would not, for my poor sister’s sake, mention the sad truth to my father and mother; for i well knew that their indignation would know no bounds, and that they would p. 76probably at once expel her from her home, thus driving her directly into the arms of him, who would certainly be her ruin, both in body and soul. i shrunk from mentioning the subject to my sister herself, for i recollected that i was younger than she, and felt that i had no authority to control her will, if, after knowing the character of the stranger, she should still resolve to cling faithfully to his fortunes. at last, after a sleepless night, and much inward prayer for light to guide me, i determined to take the course which i am sure you will say was a wise one—i resolved to lay the whole case before my best friend and natural adviser, robert walker.”
