It does not matter what the gathering is, agricultural show, sheep dog trial, or athletic sports, it is not complete without its hound trail. From the mining villages of Furness, from Ulverston, from Cleator, from Whitehaven, as well as from the mountain homes of Borrowdale, Sawrey, Ambleside, Threlkeld, and Grasmere, the dogs in their dog clothes and leashes may be seen heading to the trail ground at early dawn, and may hear the music of their discontent from somewhere in the crowded field long hours before the man with the aniseed drag has come back from his unsavoury laying of scent upon the neighbouring fellside breast. (pp. 153-154)

But if the breeders and trainers of trail dogs may be found in the littoral of Cumberland and Westmoreland, the races must be run on such ground as will give fair view to the spectators, and thus it comes to pass that the sport is essentially a Lake District sport.  Nowhere can it be seen to greater advantage than from the Vale of Grasmere or the heights of Applethwaite Fell about the Troutbeck Valley. (p. 154)

A few years ago many of the neighbouring gentry kept dogs; now it would seem that they are the possession for the most part of working men, who give a great deal of their time in training of the hounds to speed, and very jealously watch the strain and keep the pedigree of the dogs unbroken. (p. 154)

The hounds are foxhounds such as the mountain packs are composed of, low-bodied and light-bodied creatures that, compared with the weight and size of the Midland foxhounds, appear to be small, but they are dogs of wonderful staying power and wonderful feet, a mass of muscle with marvellous cat-like capacity to negotiate the huge stone dykes or walls that run up the breast of the fells, and divide pasture from pasture in the dale. (pp. 154-155)

They are to all intents the racehorses of the peasantry, and just as the gentry seem to think that a racehorse is impossible unless money is on it, so the working men of Westmoreland and Cumberland seem to think that a hound trail is no hound trail worth the name unless the odds are offered and taken freely; weeks before the Grasmere Sports or the Troutbeck Shepherd Dog Trials, the excitement in cottage homes far and near as to the favourite is great.  And great is the disaster and blank is the dismay if the favourite fails to win.  “Aw, So-and-so’s dog is tied to win, I suppose, to-day, there’s a great deal o’ money on him,” is the kind of remark that is passed round in confidential circles on the morning of the race.  Of all kinds are the methods by which the dogs are fettled up and prepared for the great occasion.  There is a rule that no trainer shall take his dog over the course or the supposed course, and no trainer is seen to do this; but if a full moon favours the time of the match, and a man take a moonlight walk with a dog in a leash, it is just possible that his walk may in a singular way coincide with the track which he believes the man with the aniseed drag will take on the day of the race. (p. 155)

There is in addition to most careful feeding a great deal of exercise and toilsome and tedious training over drag line done by the owners of these miniature mountain racehorses, and on the day of the trail various are the finishing touches to be given to the racers by way of improving their breathing or adding to their courage. (pp. 155-156)

But here we are at the Grasmere Sports, and suddenly above the music of the band and the shouting of the 9,000 spectators round the great ring is heard the baying or almost frenzied yelling of a pack of hounds.  The fact is that the old huntsman, Anthony Chapman, has just come in across the narrow bridge over the Rotha beck with the aniseed drag in his hands from his long eight miles’ tramp along the breast of the great amphitheatre of mountain ground that circles all the vale. (p. 156)….

Their owners or trainers have stripped them, have rubbed their chests and chafed their legs, and are in line waiting for the starter’s signal.  It is given, and like a flash of white light the whole of the twenty-six dogs has swept from the ring over the bridge and away across the valley, over walls, more like birds than beasts in their flight, and are seen again on the breast of Buthar side.  Now half-hid by the bracken, now visible like a bracelet of pearls, now appearing like a low-flying string of black and white winged creatures, they pass from crag to crag, from fold to fold of the hill-flanks, and vanish like a dream. (pp. 156-157)….

The air is filled with shrill whistlings, the owners of the hounds have each their own dog’s call, and their eyes, accustomed not only to sight of their hounds, but to the peculiar way of running of them, can tell at a distance incredible just what the dogs are about and what are the chances of a place at the final run in. (pp. 157-158)….

It had been an easy win too.  ‘Mountain’ and ‘Gambler’ were not in it as far as the race home from Chapel Green was concerned.  Whether knowledge of the ground had to do with this I cannot say.  Thirty-five minutes and forty-seven and four-fifths of a second was not a long time for such an eight miles of rough fellside ground to be traversed in; but Cracker was ‘sair deun,’ and as I watched its heaving ribs I wondered at the courage and endurance of the dog, whose limbs to-night, notwithstanding all care and all chafing, would possibly be as stiff as if they had been made of cast iron.  I have asked how soon a hound recovers the elasticity of its muscles after such a trail, and have been told that in two to three days it is fit for another race.  Marvellous as is the pluck of the dog that will thus run itself to the stiffness of iron, the thing that strikes one as more wonderful still is the keenness of scent that allows the dog to fly unerringly upon the trail, and though the wind be blowing the scent for forty yards or more, to follow the line without question and without fault. (pp. 158-159)

(Months at the Lakes, pp. 153-159)

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Better grey lakes, grey mountains, and grey skies,
        With song of water-brooks and sound of rain,
        Than that immeasurable Lombard plain—
For all its vines and corn and mulberries—
Sunburnt to silence: with what sweet surprise
        The mellow ouzel greets us once again!
        Clear and familiar from the springing grain,
With what a sense of home the corncrake cries!

But not the cry of crake, nor throstle’s tune,
    Nor daisied fields, nor plumy laurel-bowers
        That gleam snow-white at evening’s long-lit
            close,
So made me sure of Cumberland and June,
    As Crosthwaite lanes full-breathed of elder-flowers,
        And hedges broidered over with wild rose.

(Sonnets in Switzerland and Italy, p. 163)

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Could you but see the sunrise o’er Helvellyn,
    The lights that flush its fawn to amber gold,
    Could your brave eyes but momently behold
In the far gorge whence Derwent’s stream is
            welling,
    Could you but watch the daffodil unfold
    Or hear the voices that you loved of old
Where merle to merle her faith in spring is
            telling,
Then Borderers—bred in ancient Cumberland,
    Sons of the shining mountains and the mere,
        Men of the fellside and the milk-white farms,
        I know the hope of morningtide would arm
Your hearts, and firm as rock your feet would
            stand
    For that new dawn’s deliverance drawing
            near.

(The European War 1914-1915 Poems, p. 193)

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Sir Thomas Acland was from home, but he had kindly arranged that his agent should show us round the great property of 10,000 acres on Exmoor that with the concurrence of his heirs, he had leased as a gift to the National Trust for a period of 550 years.  On a cool June morning, bright after heavy rain, we found ourselves glad to escape from the tourist atmosphere of Minehead, and walking through crystal air, scented with honeysuckle, up the long incline that leads out of Minehead towards Porlock. (p. 100)….

“I think,” said the agent, “the best way to get a general idea of the property in this neighbourhood will be to take ponies and visit the North Hill first, then cross the valley by Allerford, and pass up the Horner vale to Cloutsham.  The roads are steep, and we shall probably not go at more than a walking pace, but we shall be able to do the round in four and a half hours.” (p. 102)

We gladly assented.  The ponies arrived, and away we went to Budleigh Hill.  Then turning from the main road due north, we ascended by a steep lane that allowed us sight of the most picturesque cottages we had seen, with their tall cylindrical chimneys, and their gable ends set at many angles, all marvellously thatched, snug and happy in their garden grounds.  We saw many houses that day upon the Holnicote estate, and not one of them, whether roofed with the  brown Bridgwater or Staffordshire tiling, or thatched with local straw, but made us feel that an artist had planned it and would wish to have the chance of drawing it. (p. 102)

It was clear that the Lord of the Manor cared not only for the lives of his tenants, but for the beauty of their surroundings.  We could not help thinking that the thatched roofing of his own Holnicote, which we saw later in the day, was but a sign of his sympathy with the dwellers in “huts where poor men lie.” (pp. 102-103)

On our right hand stood Selworthy church and vicarage, and close to the roadway the buttressed walls of an old fourteenth-century tithe-barn shut the view.  Upward we went towards the open moorland, saw the memorial hut in which Lady Acland delights to enjoy the mountain air, and above it the Bury Castle or earthwork of the aboriginal British times.  Away at the head of the Coombe, still black from the fire that took place there last year, we saw such a sight of foxglove multitude as we had never before beheld.  The grass had been burnt here, and the result of the fire was this magnificent display of foxglove beauty.  We went on through fern and heather till we reached the upper down, covered with broom and fescue-grass that shimmered in the wind.  Tough feeding this, and only the older sheep can tackle it.  Gulls wheeled overhead, and higher still we went northward toward the sea. (p. 103)

Going forward still farther, we came to the boundary of the National Trust estate, the East and West Myne farmland enclosures.  We did not descend to the cliff edge, which here falls precipitously to the sea, but we got a fine view of Bossington Ball, which is part of the National Trust property to the west, with the Countisbury foreland beyond.  Then turning backward, we made our way through moorland heather towards Selworthy Wood, getting a noble view of the Holnicote vale, with the green wooded Horner valley passing up into the folds of the hills beyond it, and Luccombe Hill, reaching up to Cloutsham Ball, beneath the top of Dunkery Beacon. (pp. 103-104)

The National Trust property, we knew, stopped short of the top of the Dunkery Beacon, which is the commanding feature to the south; but we knew also that whilst we were now on a stretch of National Trust property of North Hill, which extended to 1,500 acres, there on Luccombe Hill and Cloutsham was acreage which, including the Horner valley and stretching as far as Stoke Pero, must include something like 5,000 acres more. (p. 104)

We passed steeply down the Holnicote glen through Selworthy Forest, filled with silver fir, spruce, Douglas pine, and Scotch fir, chestnuts, and Wellingtonia, planted by the grandfather of the present owner, and apparently left almost untouched by the woodman’s axe ever since they were planted.  Carefully made grassy rides passed off left and right of the main track.  We were told that in this single wood alone these paths extended for a stretch of twenty-six miles, and when we saw their number we could well believe it.  What delightful wander-ground on a hot summer day would this cool woodland give to far-off generations! (pp. 104-105)

We dropped down a thousand feet to a little land bowered to heaven by hazels, and thence along to Allerford, and could hardly pass through the ford for the beauty of the cottage and its ample porch, under which access was given to the hump-backed narrow stone bridge beside the ford.  All the houses were covered with roses, and garden grounds were gay with stocks and snap-dragons.  We gained the elm-shaped main road to Porlock, then turned sharply to the left up the Horner land, which led us by picturesque cottages to the entrance of the Horner valley, and wound up this valley by the side of a stream for a mile. (p. 105)

We have seen many wooded valleys, but nothing more beautiful than this Horner vale.  The peculiar feature of the woodland seemed the walnut trees, and my friend pointed out to me the slits in the bark of these trees, made by the frost two winters ago, that must have gone near to killing them.  Fortunately they survived, and the scent of their foliage in the hot sunshine filled the air. (p. 105)

At the end of a mile or so we crossed the stream, and turning in the direction of Cloutsham began so steep an ascent that we were forced to dismount and lead our horses.  We gained the top of the ascent and looked down on Priest’s Wood and Priest’s Way, Parson’s Wood and East-water;  then, turning backward, saw the glorious woodland of the Horner valley streaming down from the far hills, and the Prickslade and Stoke Pero combes in flood of shadowy emerald.  At last we reached that famous hunting centre, the Cloutsham farm.  Burnt down two years ago, it has been rebuilt with admirable taste, and though we missed the old oak panelling, we found it panelled throughout with cedar and walnut from the estate, and still in the kitchen, with its huge open fire-place, stood the old settle and the Tudor table that had shown hospitality to the multitude of huntsmen who have rested here. (pp. 105-106)

(A Nation’s Heritage, pp. 100-108)

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