A Crack about Herdwick Sheep

The most remarkable characteristics of these Herdwick sheep are their homing instinct and their marvellous memories….  If a lamb, after being suckled on the mountain ‘heaf’ or place of pasture, is taken away from it after six or eight weeks, and carried miles away, it will never forget the place of its infancy, but will, as soon as the restless feeling of the next springtime calls it to the mountain tops, if it has opportunity, make its way through fair or foul over miles of country back again to its ‘heaf.’ (pp. 48-9)

This homing instinct also seems to combine with it a remarkable sense of proprietary right as well as locality.  The sheep appear to know their bounds almost to a yard upon the mountain-side, where they have the right to feed, and though there are no walls or a fence to prevent them straying beyond their pastures, they do not do this, or if they do kit, they are pushed back by the neighbour flock.  It is this power of guarding their own that obliges the farmers to keep up their flocks to a certain strength.  The flocks press against one another, and keep the peace as they keep their bounds, because their strength is equal. (pp. 50-1)

They are very weather-wise, these herdwicks.  If a storm comes on in winter-time, they will at once seek the tops, because they know the wind will not allow the snow to lie there….  Their agility is the result of their being always in training.  They never grow fat, in fact it may almost be said that no herdwick mutton, which is the sweetest of its kind in Great Britain, is ever obtained from the fellside.  They must be fattened for the market in valley pastures. (p. 51)

The management of the sheep is very much as follows: Towards the end of February, any sheep upon the fells are gathered for dipping, to guard them against the fly.  At the end of February to the beginning of March the ewes, big with young, of their own instinct, come down towards the mountain farms.  There is a general ‘raking’ of the fells by the shepherds, which commences in the Skiddaw neighbourhood on the 21st March, and after this for some weeks the fells are silent and lifeless.  Sometimes hay is given to the sheep in addition to the better grass of the valley enclosures for a week or fortnight previous to their becoming mothers (pp. 51-2)….

They drop their lambs at any date between April 14th and May 14th.  The mothers and their lambs are kept in the intakes until it is thought the lambs are strong enough to go up to the fells, and as they become strong enough, they are driven off, so that by the end of the second week of May they are all on the fellside.  It is the custom of the shepherds at once to take the sheep to that part of the ‘heaf’ that is furthest from home. (p. 52)

Before the lambs go up to the fells they are earmarked and ‘smit’ or ‘smitted’ (p. 52)…. Every lamb before it is allowed to go up to te fell is thus marked for life, and carries in its ear or ‘lug,’ and sometimes on its horns, as well as upon the wool upon its back, the lug-mark or law-mark by which its master can claim it wherever found.  There are shepherd gatherings once or twice in the year for various well-defined areas, and may lost sheep is brought to these gatherings and restored to its owner. (p. 55)

The sheep are left upon their ‘heafs,’ or feeding places, with their lambs until the first week of July (p. 55)…. 

At the beginning of July the shepherds go off to the fells to ‘lait’ the sheep for the shearing (p. 58)…. 

The sheep and lambs are brought down together from the high fells and given a good night’s rest in the farm intake.  Each farm has its own clipping day from time immemorial.  There are perhaps 600 to 1200 sheep to be clipped, and as the best hand at clipping cannot clip more than seventy or eighty in a day, and several hands are necessary, the neighbourliness of our dalesmen comes to the rescue.  They stream in from far and near, over hill and dale, with their clipping clothes and their shears in a bundle under their arms; they just pass the day to their host, sit down on the clipping-stools, and the work goes forward, silently except for the pleasant sound of the shears, until the farm girls come out to bid the men to the washtubs outside the kitchen door and the dinner that awaits them in the kitchen.  Then after a quarter of an hour for a ‘smeuk,’ back they go to the shadow of the great sycamores and work away till tea-time, and back again till sundown, and on through the long-lighted evening of July (pp. 60-1)….

On the following morning away go the sheep and lambs to the ‘heaf.’….  Except for the August dipping, the sheep remain ungathered on the fells till October. (p. 63)….

In October the ewes or ‘gimmers’ are brought down and drafted out for breeding purposes, and the ‘wethers’ or male sheep, are sent to be fattened for the market.  Sheep-shows are the order of the day in this month.  By the second week in November the sheep have been all gathered from the high fells.  The rams are put to the ewes in the breeding season about the 21st November.  As sheep-shows and dog-trials were the order of the day in September, ram-shows are the fixtures in the shepherd’s almanack for November. (p. 63)….

They are a fine race these Viking shepherds, as anyone may see who will go to a dog-trial in the Lake Country.  We have still amongst us the Michaels that Wordsworth knew and described.  And men of character they need to be.  They are called to face all storms upon the height.  They must find their way through blinding mist and over country that to the unexpert would mean death.  You may see them as they go to the ‘heaf,’ give a lift to the lambs that seem fatigued, one under each arm; you may watch them descending from the heights with a gull-grown ewe that has met with some accident over their shoulders, followers in their humble way of the Good Shepherd, Whom Isiah foresaw and of Whom he wrote: ‘He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom and shall gently lead those that are with young.’ (pp. 68-9)….

Men too they are who are as silent as the silent places wherein their work lies.  Even at a shepherds’ meeting they are monosyllabic till at the end of it they see the dogs start upon the hound trail, or join the hunters coming ‘home from the hill.’  Men of long sight they are, and of marvellous memory. (p. 69)

(By Fell and Dale at the English Lakes, pp. 47-72)

 

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A Day at the Meydoum Pyramid

But it was the bird life of Ra Hotep’s time that charmed me.  The great man’s three hawks were there, but these were of small account when compared with the interest of the wagtails drawn to life.  For the wagtail befriends every Nile traveller to-day, lights on the deck of his dahabeyah, comes into his cabin, and as they are, in colour and dress, to-day, so I gather from Ra Hotep’s tomb they were, in the days of Senefru; they have not changed a single feather of their dress, and they are the beloved bird of the family of those who dwell beside the Nile to-day as they were then.  It is a long time that separates us from that date.  The Pyramids of Gizeh had not been built when these wagtails were sculptured and painted.  Men used stone knives and horn-stone hatchets then—witness the sculptures on the walls—and yet, as the little figure of the fluted Doric pillar tells me, there, on the tomb chamber wall (p.277), at that time of day they hewed out pillars that were the forefathers of the glory of the Parthenon, and knew how to work in high relief their mural sculptures and hieroglyphics in style scarcely surpassed when Hatasu was Queen; while as to pigment, here was colour, if anywhere, that had stood the test of time. (p. 278)

Yes, and it has had to stand crueller tests of late years.  For an English “Khawaja” opened this tomb-chamber for his pleasure some five years ago, and heartlessly left it open.  He had his look, he was satisfied, and cared not one jot or tittle what should happen to this, the most remarkable monument of the third or fourth dynasty handicraft in the necropolis of Meydoum.  He did not even let the Egyptian authorities know of his visit, or it is possible that the Museum directors would have at once prevented harm by filling the chamber, as Mariette had filled it, with the conserving sand.  He came, he saw, he went away, and after him came Arabs, who saw, but did not go away, and the result is that the splendour of Ra Hotep’s tomb-chamber is a thing of the past; and as I left the great brown Mastaba heaps, and, turning my back upon the glorious Pyramid of Senefru, passed away among the green corn and blossoming beanfields towards the Nile, I did not think kindly of that English “Khawaja,” and thanked Heaven that the exploration of the Necropolis of Senefru was in such tender, careful hands as those of the patient worker it had been my very good luck to find at work therein [Flinders Petrie]. (p. 278) 

 (Gentleman’s Magazine, 271 (September 1891), 260-78)

 

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A Plea for the Birds

 Those who have realised what deep pleasures the appearance of a well-beloved migrant gives, as, punctual to his hour, he makes himself heard or flashes into sight, will feel something of the pain in knowing that, unless we can be more enlightened in our entertainment of these strangers, we shall each year entertain fewer angels unawares, and England will be immediately the poorer. (pp. 545-6)

For is it not a fact that England, in its weariness and its city banishment from sunshine and sweet country sounds, is becoming each year, by means of an educational process, more fully sensible of such joy as these wild bird presences can yield? (p. 546)

The rich man may find his pleasure in foreign travel, the poor man must find his in his native fields. (p. 546)

The pleasure that habits of natural history observation give, the happiness of being able to use one’s eyes, is a pleasure and happiness within the reach of the poorest of the poor, and we shall be wise in time if we take care that the joy that our bird-life, carefully studied, provides for the poorest of the people, is not sensibly or thoughtlessly diminished.  An Edwards, a Dick, a Jonathan Otley may not be found in every village yet, but the time may come when no boy shall leave his village school without knowing something of the ministry of the fowls of the air and something of the seasons in which to look for the visitors from across the sea, and of the sounds that proclaim their arrival. (p. 546)

It is certain that the education of the future will insist more and more on accurate use of hand and eye; if the Sloyd system or the industrial art school bench and tool is to help towards the former, how better can the latter, viz., accuracy of eye, be attained, than by educating it to habits of careful, accurate, and systematic observation? and what better field for the practice of these habits is to be found for the average English boy or girl than the field of natural history? (p. 546)

It is then a matter of serious concern not only from the cheap pleasure side of the question, but from the practical education side also, that the field for the observation of natural history objects be not narrowed in the British Isles.  The impetus given to habits of observation by our natural science books, our good elementary “school readers,” and our excellent museums, of late has awakened a dormant appetite for the pleasure and the education derivable therefrom.  Where one collector of plants and bird specimens existed ten years ago we have three to-day. Meanwhile the craze for possession of specimens outruns the discretion of observers, who are only beginning to learn the secrets of the naturalist. (p. 546)

In consequence of this revival of scientific interest we find plants and animals which were a real possession for the nation disappearing entirely from sight, and as real a national loss, beyond computation, is the result.  It is asked what can be our remedy? (p. 546)

We answer, public opinion so enlightened as to make it impossible for a collector to root up wholesale the last small patch of “Scheuchzeria palustris” in the bog (of whose destruction, by-the-bye, the poor black-backed gulls in the Scotch marsh are, it seems, blameless) or to shoot the last bittern that may boom in the fens. (p. 547)

We answer, knowledge more wide-spread and accurate of the actual habits of our feathered friends. (p. 547)

Surely, too, the time will come when the kite will be looked upon as chiefly the devourer of arts and snakes, the honey-buzzard and the hobby will be seen to be feeders on wasps, beetles, and cockchafers, and not on young pheasant chocks or grouse eggs.  We shall one day realise that the buzzard has made “mice and frogs and such small cheer” his simple food for many a year; that the kingfisher seeks as much for slugs and watersnails as he does for trout-spawn and minnows, and that that miracle of beauty, the wind-hover or kestrel, never stole a partridge’s egg in its life, and cares more for a plump field mouse than any other food the earth can give. (p. 547)

We who can now, thanks to telegraphy, know to a day the movements of the birds, need not be one whit less weatherwise than he.  What better news have we who live in villages of how the open country or the seashore fares than by noting the presence or absence of the birds in quest of food. The great flocks of winter migrants out in the open break up into serious village bands, and give up gipsying at the first real spell of hard weather. (pp. 547-548)

Moreover, the interchange of field and garden bird life, so admirably described for us by the author of “A Year with the Birds” has much to tell us of the actual temperature and fruitage of the year.  No agriculturist can neglect to use the message that the sensitive followers of the sun and seekers of their food bring with them from across the sea. (p. 548)

The mysterious appearance of rare visitors, such, for instance, as the recurrent flights of “crossbills,” if only we could read their riddle, doubtless would do much for us; but here at home the regular migrations of our well-known birds from south to north, from north to south, have many a lesson for the farmer. (p. 548)

If the actual utilitarian side of this question of the use of wild birds should seem to be likely to accomplish something, as a motor to their protection, we say that charity will accomplish more. (p. 548)

We look far forth to the time when humanity and “the love of being kind to such as needed kindness” will put down the cruel use of unnecessary snares or the prowling gun. (p. 548)

As I write, news is brought me that a tawny owl, which had just begun to make his interesting to-whoo echo of nights in our vale, was shot – because it was an owl.  A bittern, rarer visitor still, paid the penalty of appearing upon the margin of a neighbouring lake a few weeks since, and will never boom again. (p. 548)….

Those who have seen the havoc made by brutal sticks and cowardly sportsmen upon the weary-winged woodcock who have crossed far seas on the back of a nor’easter, and are hoping for short shelter and rest upon the moonlit banks of Lincolnshire; those who have watched the gathering of the cuckoo, in sad, diminished, anxious, voiceless bands upon the shores of the “Wash,” before they bid a land that loves them not adieu, will feel it needs small effort of imagination to conjure up a vision of inhospitality to the birds that add such beauty, and life, and wealth, and good to the land, which will make the most unthinking amongst us ask whether we deal fairly and honourably with our feathered friends. (p. 549)

But the process of forming an enlightened public opinion is a gradual one.  Knowledge of the habits and food of birds, and the power to distinguish friends from foes amongst them, spreads very slowly. (p. 549)

The tender loving-kindness of a poet’s heart for the people of the air cannot be expected to be the common possession of the people of the earth. (p. 549)

Yet there are signs not wanting that the hearts and the imagination of Englishwomen are being touched to pity our fair-winged friends.  The fact that the beautiful little crane, “ardea gracilis,” was becoming exterminated to provide the Parisian bonnet makers with egret-plumes a year or two ago did not much move the world of fashion; but as soon as it came out that the lovely feather was only worn by the bird in the season of love making, and that every egret-plume obtained meant the probable starving of a callow brood of helpless “ardeas,” the ladies of tender hearts and love in England felt compassion, and egret-plumes were less sought for. (p. 550)

Where is the kingfisher?  In Scotland nearly extinct, in England rarer every year.  Faber’s sonnet will remain, but only once in five years was the flashing emerald that inspired that sonnet seen at his task upon the Brathay shore.  Ten years ago five pairs were known of in Derwentwater district: only one pair is known of now.  In the English Lake District we are blessed with quite a remarkable number of rarer winter visitors – but the red-wing and tufted duck were not likely to be counted amongst them until the past few years.  Of summer visitors, the dotterel, whose flocks made glad Skiddaw and Helvellyn, and the red-backed shrike, were once common enough, but they are looked upon as scarce birds now. (pp. 550-551)

Of our Lake District native residents it is curious to observe that the linnet is scarcer grown – this is said to be owing to the burning or the doing away with the furze or whin-bushes.  The goldfinch, that prince of livery-men, is hardly ever seen, but then, says my friend, the local naturalist, the thistles are hardly ever seen either.  Where are the skylarks that used to be abundant? One seldom even hears their song now. (p. 551)

The owls, beyond the raise, are still fairly plentiful; Wansfell is well beloved of them, and they may be heard on the Furness fells pretty frequently, but round Derwentwater the tawny owl is infrequent, and the white owl positively rare; only one pair is known of in the Crosthwaite Valley. (p. 551)

The kite has ceased to exist with us also.  The last bird in the Keswick vale was shot in Lord William Gordon’s wood near Derwentwater by a man named John Pearson in 1832.  One pair of Peregrine falcons are all that remain.  Six years ago five pairs nested within a radius of twenty miles of Keswick.  Ravens are not much scarcer than they were.  Sparrow-hawks are seldom or never seen.  The fierce little merlins, common within the memory of man, are never seen on Lonscale or Bleaberry now, and the innocent buzzards may be looked for only in certain places and are almost countable.  Six nests, to use a colloquial term, “got flown” in the neighbourhood last season. (p. 552)

The kestrel alone enjoys his mouse-hunt in increasing numbers, but the gamekeeper’s eye is always on him.  Yet we in the Lake District have to be thankful to providence for an increase in some varieties of birds; the golden-crested wren, the pied flycatcher, and the redstart have of late multiplied, and whether we are to attribute that to some special increase of food in England, or decrease of it elsewhere, we cannot tell.  The provisions of the “Wild Birds’ Protection Act” is probably in part the reason. (p. 552)

It is generally believed that the increase of that large section of our British birds, the coast-fowl, is attributable directly to the beneficent working of that Act, but when ornithologists are pressed, they generally only point to the eider duck as being very largely on the increase among the sea birds that frequent our northern British shores, and they all speak as if the common skua needed protection still. (p. 552)

Doubtless, an island home of fishermen as we are, we shall be wise in time if we see to it that the fisherman’s friends do not diminish.  If the owl and the kestrel are needed by the harvestmen of the land, the gulls are needed as much by the harvesters of the sea.  They are not only the safest finders of the herring “schools,” but they are the surest scavengers in our fishery ports also.  Anyone has watched the gulls at work after the herring boats have come in at Whitby, or at low tide, has seen what excellent public service they do by the British quays, will realise that the “ocean at her task of pure ablution” round our “shores has, in the sea-gulls, a very competent and assiduous band of helpers. (pp. 552-553)

But has the “Wild Birds’ Protection Act” failed?  We answer, not entirely.  Mr. Dillwyn, M.P., has directly benefited our national life by his carefully considered Bill of 1880.  That Bill gave protection to all wild birds during the breeding season from the 1^st of March to the 1^st of August, and though it left in the hand of the owner and occupier power to destroy them on his own land, it scheduled certain rarer land birds and some sea-fowl as exceptions, and prevents even the owner or occupier destroying these during the close season. (p. 553)

But there was this flaw in the Bill: it did not touch the question of protecting the birds’ eggs.   And the bird-nester is to-day as free as ever to rob and destroy.  The hardship of this is seen when one considers that there are certain birds who make the British Isles their one and only nesting ground.  Professor Newton tells us that during the breeding season the area of our lesser British redpoll is confined to the British Isles.  Unless we protect its eggs, we in reality do a harm to other lands beside our own. (p. 553)

There are not wanting those who assert that Sir William Harcourt’s Act, passed in 1881, practically rendered useless the Act of 1880.  If we cannot get that Act appealed, at any rate why not attempt to get a longer closing time for our wild birds than at present exists?   February is a month when birds are in fullest beauty of plumage and seen in their lovemakings most easily to forget the gun of the destroyer. (p. 553)

Why should wild birds that are early breeders not have the protection accorded to game birds?  September sees many second broods still callow, but the poor wild birds have no aegis of the law thrown over them in September, and many sea-fowl perish piteously, starved in their nests by reason of the murder of their parents. (p. 553)

The egg-robber must be dealt with, and that vigorously.  Let us extend the protection of that Wild Birds’ Act to the eggs of certain of our feathered friends for a period of years.  Let us take a leaf out of the book of the islanders of Dominica, of our neighbours, the Manxmen, or, to come nearer home, out of our Statute Book of last Session, and provide a temporary but strict protection for such varieties of our British birds and their eggs as competent naturalists shall advise us are in sore need of such provision. (p. 554)….

As I write, there lies before me a list, compiled by one of our ablest ornithologists in the north, or rare birds that he would wish so protected—birds that each year endeavour to breed in Britain.  I will not give it in detail, or they will all be shot off in view of possible legislation, but the list contains twenty-nine varieties and he sends me a supplementary schedule of eighteen others.  The list is a striking one; it does not take into account such wanderers as the waxwings, or such come-and-go visitors as the crossbills, it does not provide for such rare birds as can take care of themselves, but if it be simple truth that there are forty-seven varieties of wild birds sorely needing the succour that a short Act of Parliament would accord to them, the sooner a Rare Birds’ Preservation Act for the United Kingdom is passed the better. (p. 555)

(Gentleman’s Magazine, 266 (June 1889), 545-58)

 

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A Service of Song in Duchess’ Park, on a May Morning

Tuned by the mellowest month of all the year,
The Linnet, Tit, and Finch in voice agree;
The Cuckoo to this twangling company
Lends his strange instrument, now far, now near
Their quick recurrent parts the Robins bear,
The Pigeon claps her cymbals, and the Bee
Swells with soft drum the woodland symphony!
Orchestral shades! what ravishment to hear!
His alto now the Blackbird trills alone;
Now Thrush and Blackbird in duet are one,
The Wren a wavering prelude ends, and, hush!
Sweet solo sings the prima donna Thrush;
Then in full chorus all the wood accords,
And, light as air, my heart supplies the words!

(A Book of Bristol Sonnets, p. 58)

 

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A wasted life is like a wreck that lies

A wasted life is like a wreck that lies
Half sunk in sands of fearful solitude
As ’twere the ribs of some huge shore-washed whale
That once plunged master of the mighty storm
But driven by that strange ocean river came
From realms Hyperborean and from seas
Rough with their steel blue mounds of hillocked ice
And sickening in these southern latitudes
And summer simmering seas forgot its strength
And helpless drove upon these sandy shoals
And lashing anger felt the cruel tide
Forsake its slimy sand-bespotted bulk,
And all the tortures of the high noon sun,
So gaping died the prey of pigmy men,
Who, soon as death had dimmed the giants’ eyes,
Clomb hand in hand the mountain of warm flesh,
And with mock bravery, piercing thro’ the depths
Of fatness, struck the mammoth’s purple heart,
And laughed to see the red tide flush the sand,
Or, doubting if the brute might still relax
The stiffening sinews of the death-wide jaws,
Bade their rough dames and wondering children walk
Into the mighty bone-fenced mouth, and take
Clusters of clinging tangle and sea shells
To deck their house shelves as memorials.

                                                                                                July 1872

(Unpublished poem. RR/1/7 – Catherine Rawnsley’s Commonplace Book)

 

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Ad Misericordiam

First, about the “murderous millinery.” [It is not only the barbarous cruelty involved that torments one] it is the unkindness to far generations, and the loss to posterity, that moves one.   The Ardea gracilis, the little white Florida heron that supplies the egret plume, is going the way of the Impeyan pheasant, and the glossy-winged African starling.  This murderous millinery is destroying them or it has already destroyed several varieties of our brightest-plumaged birds from off the face of the earth. (p. 5)

Now these birds are so many winged miracles of beauty to tell us of the glory of our God. They were sent into the world, each of them with a message from the Most High. (p. 5)….

Now may I ask your attention to the urgent matter of mercy in our cattle markets.  You know how difficult it is to drive the timid country cattle to the trucking or to the mart.  I daresay you also know that the cattle driver’s whip or goad rains merciless blows between the horns and on the flanks of these dumb-driven sacred beasts.  It is not an unknown matter that a beast’s eye is sometimes actually torn from its socket in the process…. [The solution, which has been adopted in many countries in Europe is] to train the calves to the use of the halter, and so get all grown cattle to follow a hand that leads, rather than fly from a stick that drives. (pp. 5-6)

Next, I am extremely anxious that we in Britain should lay to heart one of the lessons of this terrible war in South Africa.  Our losses in horse flesh have been enormous. More than 100,000 horses, I am assured, have perished.  One of the contributory causes was that vicious habit and cruel fashion of docking the horses’ tails.  It is mercifully forbidden in the army, and so the army horses proper could defend themselves from what is the chief scourge of an African campaign, the plague of flies….  Owing to the foolish fashion of horse docking, thousands of horses had to go to the war without their natural protection, and the agonies that were added to them for want of it may be imagined….  The custom is as useless as it is cruel, and, as this war has helped to prove, it is a dead loss to the nation. (p. 6)

This brings me to my concluding appeal for mercy to our dumb friends.  More than 100,000 horses have died for Great Britain and the Empire during this past year.  We shall have monuments to our brave soldiers who come not home again.  How shall we build to those brave horses….  We will build their monument and the monument of our debt to them by an appeal to the Geneva Convention.  It ought to be possible in future war to have, by some general agreement between the powers, a regular army corps of men to accompany an army on the march and battlefield, whose sole duty should be to care for the wounded and the dying horses and baggage animals, and see that the happy dispatch of a bullet behind the ear is accorded to those who fall.  The matter, I am told, is a complicated one. (pp. 6-7)

(Nature Notes, 1901, January, vol. XII, no. 133, pp. 4-7)

 

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After the Herrings, Whitby

They lie as they would never wake again,
        Those weary fisher-boats, in slumber sound;
But, as one sees at times a dreaming hound
Stir, and believe his phantom quarry slain,
Sudden they start, and soon the ocean plain
Is studded o’er with sails.  Away they bound!
Some keen sea-hawk the silver drove has found;
The wingèd huntsmen follow in her train.
With such an equal pace the swarthy keels,
Slipped from their moorings, hurry to the prey,
It seems as if the sky, the ocean, all
Move with their motion if they move at all;
And like a dream the quiet pageant steals,
To melt into the far horizon’s grey.

(Sonnets Round the Coast, p. 173)

 

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At Brig-End Sheep-Clipping

Very little was said; one heard the click, click of the shears, and sometimes the sigh of a pocket whetstone as the shearer sharpened his weapons; but occasionally it seemed as if all the dogs of the dale had gone mad; such barking! such fun!  For some sheep, after being let free from the shearing-bench and feeling his unwonted lightness of body, had gone off on a scamper, and must needs be brought back to the pen to wait for sauving or salving and straking or marking. (pp. 258-259)

The gravity of the whole business struck one.  It was solemn work of a very solemn order.  At least, so the men astride of the clipping benches seemed to feel.  I daresay they were right to be solemn, for I know that a “Herdwick” can kick and struggle with much spirit, till he is mastered.  The shears are sharp and very near the surface, and no man cares to wound his neighbour’s sheep.  But in addition these men were friends from a “lang time sen,” and one clipping bench was filled to-day by a new man; “T’ auld un hed gone down.  It was aw in course o’ natur,” said my friend, “so you cannot complain, but it natterly teks heart o’ yan for aw that, to see ald nebbors and good nebbors neah mair at clippin’ time; and it meks one think to onesel’ that it’s mebbe last time fer some on us an’ aw.” (p. 259)

But if there was a kind of dignified solemnity in the air as far as the clippers went, there was plenty of sparkle and life amongst the youngsters.  It seemed to be their privilege to catch the sheep as they were called for and hug them to the shearers’ benches.  They would hear the cry, “Bring us anudder—a good un this time, my lad!” and the boy dashed into the flock, and, while the dogs barked with excitement, seized and dragged them willy nilly to their fate. (p. 260)

At eleven o’clock a girl came from the farm saying, “Oor master bids you coom to lunch,” and in a moment the benches were deserted, and the men were busy washing their hands in the tin basins by the garden wall, and others went round “backside o’ the house, and cleaned up in the back kitchen.”  We sat down, no one spoke nor stirred finger, till the master of the feast, with a kindly smile, said: “Now my lads, reach till,” and we “reached till,” and took good oaten cake or haver-bread, and cheese with milk or ale or coffee to wash it down, as men minded. (p. 260)

It was astonishing to note how little was eaten, and in twenty minutes we were all out of the house and hard at the clipping again.  So the work went forward till dinner was served, and so the work went forward till tea came round; and the men took this at their clipping stools, for there was a deal yet to be done if the flock was to be finished off before night-time. (p. 260)

There was something for all to do; the little girls, home rom school, were soon busy carrying the fleeces which were folded and tie dup inside-out in a very clever way by a single turn of the wrist, to the barn; while the keenest amongst them took their share at catching and bringing the woolled ones to be shorn. (pp. 260-261)….

The light began to go for all that long after-glow of Cumberland clipping-nights, and still the shears clicked away, till the girl came with a summons to supper, and the work of the day was over. (p. 262)

“A reet doon good supper it was, an’ aw,” said one of the shearers afterwards, and he spoke but the honest truth.  It was the women-bodies’ turn to show what they could do to crown the clipping with success, and they certainly managed to make all the hungry shearers feel that a farm supper-table would be a very poor thing if it were not for the womenkind.  There was a bit o’ fiddling after supper, and a deal o’ good shepherds crack, and the following famous Herdwick shepherd’s song [‘The Sheep-Shearing Song] was sung by John Birkett to an old-fashioned country-side tune.  It was a song all seemed to know, and had been sung time out of mind at all the clippings under Helvellyn.  How they made the rafters ring with the chirus! (p, 263) 

(Life and Nature at the English Lakes, pp. 250-264)

 

---

At Skelton Old Church

We leave the church, where weekly prayer was
        said,
Ringed round with graves and fenced with elm and
    yew;
Praise in a fairer shrine shall men renew,
Vows at a nobler altar shall be made;
Unheeded now the mossy dial’s shade,
No preacher climbs three stories high to view
The village magnate in his musty pew,
And Georgian galleries to dust shall fade.
White gleams the tower beyond the village street,
And proud and loud ring out the lustier chimes;
But some heart-flowers, transplanted, ne’er can grow:
These old church grasses still shall feel the feet
Of those, who hear the bells of other times,
And seek the holiest spot on earth they know.

 

(Sonnets Round the Coast, p. 140)

 

---

 

Bede Memorial

 

The cross is to be erected in hail of Monkwearmouth, on Roker Point, where it will be seen by the vast holiday population of Wear and Tyne.  It was felt that, whatever were the natural claims of Jarrow and Durham, the church at one place and the tomb at the other were lasting monuments of the great Northumbrian we wish to honour, and that it was unwise either at Jarrow or Monkwearmouth to entrust such fine sculpture as is intended to the grime or the fume of the open air.  To place the cross under cover within a building at either place was impossible.  The committee, therefore, determined to erect it, by leave of the town council of Sunderland, in clear and clean air, on a headland which must have been familiar to Bede, and which is actually “in territorio monasterii,” given by Egfrid the King to Benedict Biscop, for the founding of the sister monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow.

 

The cross, 25ft. high, will be Anglian in form, as being germane to the district and contemporary with Bede’s time.  The shaft of the cross on the west side will be ornamented with scroll patterns from the Lindisfarne Gospel and from the stones at Jarrow, and will contain, with a twisted loop of the duck-billed serpent seen on the Monkwearmouth doorway, pictorial subjects from the life of Bede.  On the east side will be roman lettering, giving two extracts from Bede’s work—one from the Ecclesiastical History, one from his Life of St. Cuthbert—both extracts speaking of the accuracy and care with which he worked.  On the south side, within a vine scroll, will be carved in alto and bas relief the heads and busts of the friends and associates of Bede.  On the north side a scroll introducing birds and animals, spring from a harp, emblematic of his poetic gifts, will show Bede’s love of nature.

 

Beneath these four sculptured sides will run in a band the little verse written by Bede on his death-bed, beginning, “Fore there nedfarae,” in Latin, in rune, in minuscule, and in English.  And on the block out of which the cross rises will be carved a short inscription to the glory of God and in memory of His servant Bede. 

 

(Times, 21 April 1903, p. 5; Carlisle Journal, 28 April 1903, p. 5)

 

……………..

 

The Bitter Cry of Brer Rabbit

 

Pity a helpless prisoner’s woe,

Trembling in pain from head to toe!

Kill me outright—’twere better so

Than, cramped this cruel cage within,

Half starved and soaking to the skin!

Would I had fallen to the gun,

And never to the bolt-net run!

Would the fierce creature that I fled

Had sucked my life and left me dead,

So from my happy woodland home

I ne’er unto this hell had come!

For as they bore me yesterday

From that old burrow far away,

A rough hand dangled me in play

Before the dogs.  One leapt up high

And from its socket tore mine eye;

Half blind, wet, wounded, hear my cry,

Have mercy on me—let me die!

 

For I was once as free as air

To linger in mine earthen lair,

Or through the blue-bell copse to creep

When all the birds were still asleep.

I knew each hedgerow’s leafy door

Between the wood and open moor;

By bud and bramble I could trace

The way to the accustomed place

Where food and frolic and delight

Went forward through the summer night;

Could sit on haunches, and look over

The fragrant lines of blossoming clover,

And if there stirred a breath of fear

I saw the great hare drop an ear—

I heard the clanging of the jay—

Then smote the ground and slipped away,

And caught, as home to earth I ran,

The bark of dog, the cry of man.

 

Ah me! men slumber half their time:

I lived my life from late to prime;

The glories of the level light

From east, from west, were mine of right.

Oft ere the spider dared begin

To shoot a line, a web to spin—

Before the lark was well awake—

The meadow-way I loved to take,

There, where the gorgeous pheasant crew,

I washed my face in morning dew,

And lingered on, as loth to leave

The fairy rings at purple eve.

The singing lawns I used to know,

The shimmering miles of silent snow;

The shadow-dance beneath the moon

Was mine, and mine sweet rest at noon.

How glad it was when corn was green

To creep the fresh young shoots between!

Starved now and cold, I can remember

The golden days of soft September,

What joyaunce was it then to eat,

Safe-hidden in secure retreat,

The whiles the reapers cut the wheat!

And with what dalliance, with what stopping

To hear the heavy acorn dropping,

I stole through fern and yellowing leaves

To revel mid the oaten sheaves!

 

A prisoner now with bitter wound,

A wall of murder stretches round;

I hear the angry yap of hound,

The yelp of men who laugh in scorn

To see live limb from live limb torn,

And curse the mangled corpse that lies

Dead all too soon before their eyes.

There goes mine own child to its death!

I see the dogs with cruel breath

Leap at the prison-bars with cry.

Look at the terror in its eye!

See the poor wild-wood thing in swound

Crouch all bewildered on the ground,

Nor know which way for help to fly!

 

Oh, hearts! and can ye never feel?

Some giant bully lifts a heel,

That iron kick a dog would slay!

Half-stunned the creature starts away,

But ere ten paces feels the grip

Of Savage teeth in back and hip,

Then from the hound with anguish torn—

While all the murderers mock in scorn,

And none will pity the forlorn—

With entrails trailed upon the ground

The creature strains from man and hound,

And with a last sharp wail of pain

Feels the fierce agony again.

 

Pity a poor dumb prisoner’s woe,

Kill me outright, ’twere better so!

Half blind, wet, wounded, hear my cry,

Have mercy on me—let me die!

 

Oh, hearts by river, lawn, and lea,

Whose love shall set our England free

    From cowardice and crime,

Think of the gentleness and grace

That came from Heaven to bless the race

    At merry Christmas-time!

And hear the wild-wood creatures say

That who for cruel sport would slay,

Doth feed the devil in the blood,

But starves his God, puts off the day

When man by care of beast shall prove

The bond of brotherhood is Love.

 

(Cornhill Magazine, 18 (May 1892), 541-3)

 

……………………..

 

The Calls of Christian Brotherhood

 

We meet To-day in God’s House to remember that blessing of health, and wealth and well-being, which we have enjoyed during this past year, and to shew, as we render thanks to the Giver, that we are not unmindful of others whose lives are less fortunate.  And the very fact that To-day, throughout the Diocese, from all the pulpits, goes forth an appeal for help to the sick and suffering, testifies that we remember that the bodies of each one of us are holy unto the Lord, and that we believe it is God’s will that so long as the breath of life is within our nostrils we are bound to see that those bodies are healed of their rents and wounds, and that the living earthly temples of the Holy Ghost are kept in repair for Him whose glory fills those temples. (p. 1)….

 

To-day is Hospital Sunday, and very fitly do the Foresters, with their Rangers, their Wood-wards and other officers, come together to-day, when our hearts and our alms are asked for the great Hospital cause.  They seem, by their presence, to emphasise the fact that a working man’s wealth is a working man’s health; and, as we give our lams to-day, we are not only bid to think of the awful agonies we, by those alms, can allay, the weary sufferings we can gently bear to a close, the triumphs of the science of medicine to which we may minister, but of the thousand bread-winners we can help to give back to their wives and children, who need their bread to be won for them. (p. 5)

 

 If, as St. James said, “pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father” is “to visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction,” we can, by giving of our alms to the hospitals to-day, be purely religious, for how many women are widows, and how many children fatherless, while the winner of the bread for wife and children is on his bed of pain within the hospital wards? (p. 5)….

 

Go to any great metropolis of the old Pagan world, or look on the map at ancient Athens, Corinth, Rome, Rameses’ Heliopolis, you will see that all inside the walls has perished—all but the monuments that enshrined the great ideas of the souls or minds of the nation.  There is the temple, the ruined theatres, the race course, the arch of triumph, the public bath, the orator’s pillar, the hero’s bust, the poet’s shrine, the tomb—all these in ruins remain to tell us what the people thought worthy of monument, or worthy of mighty buildings or of public expenditure. (p. 7)

 

Now, imagine London, 2,000 years hence, in ruins.  What should we find?  All these monumental ruins; ay, and many others.  Besides St. Paul’s and the National Museum, here a home for the sightless, there a mighty asylum, here a great industrial school, there a vast workhouse or almshouse, here a large reformatory, there a huge orphanage, and last, in great numbers, noble remains—what of? Why, of homes for incurables and hospitals for the sick and wounded! (pp. 7-8)

 

Do you not see the difference?  Jesus Christ must have been in this ruined London.  He had not been in Rome or Athens—only with Him did pity enter into the world, and become a power among men. (p. 8)

 

If we wish to know what London would be to-day had the Church of Christ been silent and His Holy Spirit not been the continued Comforter to the English people for these 1,400 years past, we must turn all the maniacs out into the streets, let the blind lead the blind, that both may fall into the ditch; we must empty our almshouses of all their inmates, and cast out to be trampled underfoot, or only noticed by dogs, the poor, broken, wounded pieces of humanity that lie in the 10,000 beds of the London hospitals.  But Christ it is, Christ alone, and the power of His gospel, that has made this impossible for us to do.  We know on whom we have believed—we know we are members one of another, and that in bearing one another’s burdens we fulfil the law of Christ—and every penny that shall be given for the cause of the sick and suffering of our diocese to-day, can only be asked for because we are followers of Jesus Christ, and only blessedly and willingly given because we have determined to follow Him still. (p. 8)

 

(Sermon Preached in Crosthwaite Church on Hospital Sunday, 11th May 1884)

 

………………

 

The Chaffinch’s Nest

 

At Dunnabeck

 

There is a little cup of fate

Beside my trellised garden-gate,

A tiny cup most deftly made

With moss and lichen overlaid,

Wherein through all kits strands is wove

The golden innocence of love—

A little loving-cup of life

And joy for feathered man and wife.

And therein, while chaffinch sings,

A silent mother folds her wings,

Content to watch long hours apart

And [press her jewels to her heart—

Jewels one day to find a voice

And bid the Junetide earth rejoice.

She knows her treasure-house shall be

Filled with new life, new song, new glee,

And roofs with her brown back the home

Against all rain and winds that come.

Bravely she sits though men pass by,

Meets questioning gaze with fearless eye;

Unblenching though we giants stare,

Holds to her heaven-appointed care,

And shames us with a faith sublime

In life to be that keeps its time.

Far mightier powers than she has guessed

Bend like great angels o’er her nest:

The sun that rolls in royal state

Is with her watch confederate;

The punctual morn, the sequent eve,

Their spell about her casket weave,

Till sudden with a heart aglow

A mother’s triumph she shall know,

And life will fill the cup of fate

Beside my trellised garden-gate.

Ah! would to God with such a heart

Our English mothers bore their part,

With such self-sacrificing zest

Would guard the home and keep the nest!

 

(Poems at Home and Abroad, pp. 61-2)

 

…………………

 

The Chorus of the Dawn

 

How merrily with ceaseless tune

The chaffinch greets this first of June;

The warbler lifts a quavering voice

To bid the brotherhood rejoice;

The cushat coos, the cuckoo cries

Across the valley-paradise;

With soft insistence from afar

A lamb is bleating on Nab Scar;

Far off the kine their trumpets blow,

The cocks at dreamy distance crow;

The moor-hens in the reed-bed hear,

And sailing forth on Rydal mere,

Leave silver light in arrowy track

Upon its mirror ebon-black.

Filled with innumerable wings

The sycamore beside me sings,

Wherefrom a thrush perched high above

Sends down such ecstasy of love,

That even the beck that seeks the mere

With eddying pause must stay to hear.

I too, though voiceless, still may tune

My heart to greet the first of June,

And join on this high upland lawn

The choral greeting of the dawn.

 

(Poems at Home and Abroad, pp. 67-8)

 

…………………..

 

The Crusader’s Tomb

 

Furness Abbey

 

He lies among the gusty chancel leaves,

        The storms have marred his scutcheon, bruised

            his sword,

His arms are broke, his corslet folds are stored

With moss, and winds have eaten smooth his greaves;

His eyes, deep sunk beneath their battered eaves,

Are filled with tears the heedless rains have poured—

But, squire, or knight, or belted warrior-lord,

From passers-by due honour he receives.

His name is wiped from out the book of men,

But still his lips of stone give high command—

In stern crusade against the wrong we stand,

Our hearts the battle ground, our sword the pen,

While he went forth to win the Holy Land,

To clash in onset with the Saracen.

 

(Sonnets at the English Lakes, p. 89)

 

……………………

 

The Dane’s Dyke, Flamborough Head

 

I cannot climb this mighty rampire’s breast

        Without a thought of those fierce men of old,

Who steered adventurous galleys, and were bold

To scale the white cliff’s yet unconquered breast,

Smote down the hind, the shepherd dispossessed,

And few, against a multitude untold,

Planned out what little kingdom they could hold,

And built their wall against the whole wide west.

First of our land’s invaders—whether thirst

For wider acres or for wiser laws,

Or led by natural wish some way to win

Beyond the heaving grey that hedged them in—

Theirs was the glory of a desperate cause;

Others have followed after, these were first.

 

(Sonnets Round the Coast, p. 204)

 

……………………

 

Death Aboard our Transports

 

To All Whom It May Concern

 

Surely, beyond the nethermost pit of hell

    Some darker, deeper halls of doom await

    The rogues, who did for gain this deed of hate!

The slaves to Mammon’s lust who dared to sell

Death to the crews they catered for—so well!

    —So smilingly! then sent them to their fate

    Poisoned by garbage, while their horses ate

Mildew for hay, and sickened, starved, and fell.

 

Oh, England! has the madness of the mart

    So demonised thy merchants? can our land

        Nurse such dark traitors, rear such serpent

            brood—

As stings unseen, numbs brotherhood at the heart,

    Slays honour, and unnerves the soldier’s hand

        By sense of treacherous vile ingratitude?

 

(Ballads of the War, p. 27)

 

……………………

 

The Dying Charger

 

A plea for the extension of the benefits of the Geneva Convention to those relieving wounded horses on the battlefield.

 

Here long unhelped and helpless have I lain,

    In agony that quite forbids me swoon;

Thro’ the cold night’s intolerable pain,

    Thro’ thirst and torture of the burning noon.

 

Shot in the spine, I cannot move nor rise,

    Dumb, shattered jaws are filled with blood and sand,

And fettered by a girth that none unties,

    My poor swoll’n body feels the tightening band.

 

I have no God to pray to,—He, the man

    Who was to me as God, reeled back stone dead,

I fell when charging foremost in the van,

    My comrades past me like a whirlwind fled.

 

At early dawn a cock-crow from afar,   

    With momentary solace seemed to come;

For I remembered fields unplagued by war—

    Those pleasant pastures of my native home.

 

The cock-crow ceased, but voice to voice replied

    (Voices of unimaginable woe),

And here a brother raised his neck and cried,

    There pawed the pitiless earth in dying throe;

 

“I could not die.”  Ah, friends with tender heart,

    Think of the horse, that wounded and in fear,

Lies still undying in his long death smart,

    And only asks a ball behind the ear.

 

Shall not the Christ, Who came with Saviour hands

    To bid the travail of creation cease;

Send forth to fields of war His Red-Cross bands,

    And give the dying charger painless peace? 

   

(Ballads of the War, p. 184)

 

………………

 

The Eagle, at the Zoological Gardens, Clifton

 

Was Nature ever crueller undone!

Yon bird, whose eyes were fashioned for the light,

The crystal chambers of whose world of sight

Were framed for close communion with the sun,

Sits in eclipse, and evermore will shun

Man, and the friends of his first eagle flight;

A king brought down unto a captive’s plight!

And here he frets, his feathers all awry,

His wings unplumbed, his talons grey with dust,

The golden beak enscaled with idle rust,

His heart unmindful of his home and sky;

One friend he has, in all this world beneath,

To break his bonds, and end his being,—Death!

 

(A Book of Bristol Sonnets, p. 83)

 

…………………..

 

The Earthquake: Preached in Crosthwaite Church on the Sunday following the Earthquake in Calabria and Sicily

 

“With my spirit within me I will seek Thee early; for when Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” Isaiah XXVI, 9.

 

It needs a shock or break in all our easy taking of things for granted….  We have realised it in our own times.  A great disaster befalls us.  It may be the sudden loss of a great ship, the Birkenhead or the Eurydice, an awful mine accident like the accident at the Hartley coal pit, or in the Rhondda Valley or at Wigan, a fire in a theatre where hundreds of children perish in a few moments, the giving way of a vast bridge while a train is passing over as at the Tay Bridge, or a terrible reverse to British arms such as happened in the Boer War at Colenso, and then the nation begins to turn its mind inward, is pulled up sharp and made to think.  Always, at these times, a judgment throne is set and the books are opened and we feel that this life is not all, and that there are better things for the souls of all of us than complacency and self-satisfaction and a callous want of sympathy which has become second nature, because in our selfish taking of things for granted we have forgotten to exercise that diviner gift of thought for others day by day. (p. 21)….

 

This power of the earthquake to make men feel their helplessness and their need of a helper was known to Jesus Christ, or He never would have foretold that before the coming of the end the beginning of sorrows should be heralded by earthquakes in divers places, nor have suggested that as prelude to the appearance of the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, there should not be earthquake only, but heavenquake also, “the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.” (p. 21)….

 

One hundred thousand, some say one hundred and fifty thousand, men, women and children, quietly asleep and in their beds ten minutes ago, are suddenly buried alive or broken to fragments out of all human recognition by the earthquake, which is the angel of the Lord. And clear above all the horror, God has spoken, God has come near, and men see and know at such a moment, that awful as is the method, there is deep purpose in the power of calamity to make us hear the voice of the Almighty. What says the voice to us here to-day? It says, Learn sympathy with suffering all the world over. “By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one toward another.” It tells us that the brotherhood of men is a reality, and we must realise it; and that if one part of humanity suffer, the whole body corporate, for whom Christ died, must feel for it and share its sufferings. It tells us more. It speaks of the need of men to live a little more loosely than most of us habituate ourselves to do to this life; that “here we have no abiding city, but seek one to come”; that though we eat and drink, and marry, and are given in marriage, and build up cities to dwell in, and lay land to land, our true citizenship is in heaven; that all our hopes, if they are only centred on the earth, are as unstable as sand; that all those things perish in the using; but the Word of the Lord endureth for ever. It bids us set our affection on things above, not on the earth, not n money and possession, but on the heavenly treasures—love, joy, peace. And it calls upon us to see behind the calamity some deep purpose of the Divine, and to understand the words of the inspired writer: “With my spirit within me will I seek Thee early; for when Thy judgments are in the earth the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” (p. 22)

 

(Christian World Pulpit, 75 (13 January 1909), 20-22)

 

……………………

 

 

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