The record-union., 1893-07-22
Especial Correspondence of the RECORD
UNION. Copyright 1881
.KEswruK. England. July 10, 1893.

Especial Correspondence of the RECORD
UNION. Copyright 1881
KEswTCK. England. July 10, 1893.
The first time I ever saw peasant of
the English Lake district-that splendid
portion of England strewn with mount
aims, scaws, fells and hills and gemmed
with countless lakes, comprising the
shires of Cumberland, Westmoreland and
the northern part of Lancashire-was in
company with a personal friend of John
Ruskin, A. NJ. Fraser of Scott street,
Amman, Scotland, who lives among his
friends and books not a stones throw
from where Jane Welsh Carlyle's youth
full ideal lover, the gentlest soul that Scot
land ever knew, noble, sanity Edward
Irving, was born.
1t was gray, grisly, grewsome day,
when the mountain mists, like gigantic
bellying sails, were pounding back and
forth between the mountains of Scotland
and Cumberland, now and then in their
Tapping conclusions hinging sheets of
slanting rain from their heavy folds,
which The wind instantly caught up and
swept sungingly against the bare-headed,
bare-breasted and bare-legged fishers OF
the leaden- colored Firth.
My friend had to do with the railway
service; took me to the Amman Station
yard, secured huge shunting engine
with stOker and driver for our use; we
were soon reeling and crashing across
the great Amman bridge, connecting scot
land with England, and our strange con-
Veyance for sightseeing among peas
antry at last halted with hoarse challenges
beneath the gray and echoing crags,
where, on the English side OF the SOlway,
tiny, stone built Bowness looks out upon
scotland and the Firth, just where nearly
700 years ago, the great wall of Ro-
man Serylus came TO an end because of
the unconquerable Gaelic hordes of the
wild, barbaric North.
Everything in and about this gray little
nest, upon the nights above the Solway,
seemed of everlasting stone. The rough
nalt-stalrs, halt-street leading up to and
through the hamlet, was of stone. The
few huddled structures were of stone
rude stone acknowledges, caves, gar
goyle, gutter-spouts and all. The little
chapel was like huge unshapen messy
mass OF stone prOtruding from a shape
less mass OF stones. Tho choked yard
surrounding it was inclosed by a stone
wall huge enough to have been left bv
Hadrian himself, and the huddled grave
stones seemed like jagged, halfdecayed
teeth of stone which. for centuries, had
CRASHED at and been CRASHED by ele-
ments as hard as stone. The sparse soil,
SNOW my DGLN cen Inc sIOn0 roadway and
the stone houses, and here and there
cropping up between house and byre or
paddock and wall, was thick and fiinty
with stone. And even the hard faces OF
the few old, old DANES now and then seen
peering at us from the tiny ingle-neuk
windows of stone were as set and fixed
and vacuous as uncarved stone.
At one window we saw the face of
hardy man, past middle age, and we
stralghtway knocked at his wide, low
door and were hidden to enter. Among
these humble folk the coming of strangers
ut any time or hour is not reck oned an
intrusion, but rather a pleasure, and
there are no bolts or locks upon the doors
of any PEASANTS habitatiOn in all this
English Alpine country. They are trust
Jul and simple and good in the face or all
friendly approaches, but hard and dread
Jul as their own mountain scaws and fells
where wrong is found beneath friendly
addresses.
We had come simply to see and talk.
but Ii mattered not what our coming was
Tor, ana the old man gave welcome as
Etatellly as lord. AS my friend engaged
MIN in conversation in dialect and topic
common to the region, l sat and studied
this old man and his picturesque enyi-
1onment, eager to more fully know, as
lime and many wandrings among the
lake district peasantry have since given
ample opportunity, OF the stuff and stock
of which such imposing human frames
are made, and the influence OF the cent
urles that have given to ignorant men
ana women, most remote from the ac-
Jlvities of other men and things, such
Il wondrous, lofty and almost indefinable
calm.
This man was universal type of the
lake district peasantry. He was much
more than six teet in hight, and as he
moved about The large, low room, his
head Just escaped the huge oazen beams
a 10 hoip H.
and bountitul, tiaXen where the silver
had not yet come, and, with his full fine
beard, suggested a strain of the old Morse
blood. His forehead .was high, wide,
white. His eyebrows were bushy, but
line and fiosay, above large ewes of lus-
Irous light blue, deep set, steady and al
most mournful in their gaze. The nose
was strongly cut, truly classic, and the
mouth was large, but characterize and
flrm. This sort OF head, set upon a huge
and perfect frame, stout as the timbers of
his centurles-old habitatiOn, gave a man
who looked straight at you and made
you, despite yourself. look straight at
him in return.
have found other such frames and
faces among the fishers of the English
west coast, at Coldingham, below the
tlrth OF forth, among the Highland
crotters, among the petty ''lairds'' of the
Shetland Islands, and not few among
the mountain peasantry of Inishowen
round about. Sieve Snaght, in the north
of Ireland, and l have wondered if their
endless communion with nature in her
dreadful moods, as well as their lives of
danger and deprivation, had not to do
with tempering the light of their kindly
eyes with the changeless look of mourn
1ul resignation which is set there as if
with craven seal upon them. But 7
have ever found humble men like these
sturdy, tender, grave and true
The interior OF this Cumbrian peasants
home was as characteristic and fine as the
appearance of its sturdy old possessor
The large room were we sat was the ,'fire.
house or hvlng-room of the habitation.
1t was fully eighteen feet wide and tI,teIl'
ty-five long. All the door and window
easements, the ceiling beams and the
tinbers about the fireplace had been