Kitabı oku: «Lays and Legends of the English Lake Country», sayfa 11

THE ARMBOTH BANQUET

 
To Calgarth Hall in the midnight cold
Two headless skeletons cross'd the fold,
Undid the bars, unlatched the door,
And over the step pass'd down the floor
Where the jolly round porter sat sleeping.
 
 
With a patter their feet on the pavement fall;
And they traverse the stairs to that window'd wall,
Where out of a niche, at the witch-hour dark,
Each lifts a skull all grinning and stark,
And fits it on with a creaking.
 
 
Then forth they go with a ghostly march;
And bending low at the portal arch,
Through Calgarth woods, o'er Rydal braes,
And over the Pass by Dunmail-Raise
The Two their course are keeping.
 
 
Now Wytheburn's lowly pile in sight
Gleams faintly beneath the new-moon's light;
And farther along dim forms appear,
All hurrying down to the darksome Mere,
The drunken ferryman seeking.
 
 
From old Helvellyn's domain they come,
A spectral band demure and dumb;
By twos, and threes, and fours, and more,
They beckon the man to ferry them o'er,
To where yon lights are breaking.
 
 
And thither the twain are wending fast;
For there from many a casement cast,
The festal blaze is burning high
In Armboth Hall; the hills thereby
In uttermost darkness sleeping.
 
 
In Wytheburn City there wakes not one
To see those dim forms hastening on;
But at Wytheburn Ferry may travellers wait,
For busy with guests for Armboth gate,
The boatman's sinews are aching.
 
 
They've reached the shore, they've cross'd the sward
To where the old portal stands unbarr'd.
With courteous steps and bearing high
They pass the hollow-eyed porter by,
With his torch high over him sweeping.
 
 
Then might the owls that move by night
Have seen thin shadows flit through the light,
Where the windows glared along the wall
In every chamber of Armboth Hall,
And the guests high revel were keeping.
 
 
Then too from cold and weary ways
A traveller's eyes had caught the rays:
And wandering on to the silent door
He knocked aloud—he knew no more;
But the lights went out like winking.
 
 
A wreath of mist rushed over the Mere,
And reached Helvellyn as dawn grew near;
And two thin streaks went down the wind
O'er Dunmail-Raise with a storm behind,
The leaves in Grasmere raking.
 
 
On Rydal isles the herons awoke;
A pattering cloud by Wansfell broke;
And the grey cock stretched his neck to crow
In Calgarth roost, that ghosts might know
It was time for maids to be waking.
 
 
The skeletons two rushed through the yard,
They pushed the door they left unbarr'd,
Laid by their skulls in the niched wall,
And flew like wind from Calgarth Hall
Where still the round porter sat sleeping.
 
 
As out they rattled, the wind rushed in
And slamm'd the doors with a terrible din;
The grey cock crew; the dogs were raised;
And the old porter rubb'd his eyes amazed
At the dawn so coldly breaking.
 
 
And lying at morn by Armboth gate
Was found the form that knocked so late;
A traveller footworn, mired, and grey,
Who, led by marsh lights lost his way,
And coldly in death was sleeping.
 

NOTES TO "THE ARMBOTH BANQUET."

The Old Hall of Calgarth, whose history, it has been said, belongs to the world of shadows, but whose remains still form an object of interest from their picturesqueness and antiquity, is situated within a short distance of the water, upon the narrowest part of a small and pleasant plain on the eastern shore of Windermere. The house has been so much injured and curtailed of its original proportions, that it is impossible to make out what has been its precise form: many parts having gone entirely to decay, and others being much out of repair; the materials having been used in the erection of offices and outbuildings, for the accommodation of farmers, in whose occupation it has been for a long period. Its original character has been quite lost in the additions and alterations of later days. It is however said to have been constructed much after the style of those venerable Westmorland mansions, the Halls of Sizergh and Levens. But there are few traces of the "fair old building," which even so late as the year 1774, Dr. Burn described it to be; and the destruction of this ancient home of the Philipsons has well nigh been complete. What is now called the kitchen, and the room over it, are the only portions of the interior remaining, from which a judgment may be formed of the care and finish that have been applied to its internal decoration. In the former, which appears to have been one of the principal apartments, though now divided, and appropriated to humble uses, the armorial achievements of the Philipsons, crested with the five ostrich plumes of their house, and surmounted by their motto, "Fide non fraude," together with the bearings of Wyvill impaling Carus, into which families the owners of Calgarth intermarried, are coarsely represented in stucco over the hearth, and still serve to connect their name with the house. The large old open fireplace has been filled up by an insignificant modern invention. The window still retains some fragments of its former display of heraldic honours; the arms of the early owners, impaling those of Wyvill, and the device of Briggs, another Westmorland family, with whom the Philipsons were also matrimonially connected, yet appear in their proper blazon. And in the same window, underneath the emblazonry, is this legend, likewise in painted glass:—

Robart. Phillison

and. Jennet. Laibor

ne. his. wife. he. die

d. in. anno. 1539

the. ZZ. Dece

mbar 1579

The old dining table of black oak, reduced in its dimensions, occupies one side of this apartment. The room over the kitchen, to which a steep stair rises from the threshold of the porch, and which looks over the lake, has been nobly ornamented after the fashion of the day, by cunning artists, and it still retains in its dilapidated oak work, and richly adorned ceiling, choice, though rude remnants of its former splendour. It has a dark polished oak floor, and is wainscotted on three sides, with the same tough wood, which, bleached with age, is elaborately carved in regular intersecting panels, inlaid with scroll-work and tracery, enriched by pilasters, and surmounted by an embattled cornice. In this wainscot two or three doors indicate the entrances to other rooms, whose approaches are walled up, the rooms themselves having been long since destroyed. The ceiling is flat, and formed into compartments by heavy square intersecting moulded ribs, the intermediate spaces of which are excessively adorned with cumbrous ornamental work of the most grotesque figures and designs imaginable, amidst which festoons of flowers, fruits, and other products of the earth, mingled with heraldic achievements, moulded in stucco, yet exist, to tell how many times the fruitage and the leaves outside have come and gone, have ripened and decayed, whilst they endure unchanged.

In the window of the staircase leading to this chamber tradition has localized the famous legend of the skulls of Old Calgarth. The dilapidated, and somewhat melancholy appearance of the dwelling, in concurrence with the superstitious notions which have ever been common in country places, have probably given rise to a report, which has long prevailed, that the house is haunted. Many stories are current of the frightful visions and mischievous deeds, which the goblins of the place are said to have performed, to terrify and distress the harmless neighbourhood; and these fables are not yet entirely disbelieved. Spectres yet are occasionally to be seen within its precincts. And the two human skulls, whose history and reputed properties are too singular not to have contributed greatly to the story of the house being haunted, are, although out of sight, still within it, and as indestructible as ever.

These were wont to occupy a niche beneath the window of the staircase: and in 1775, when Mr. West visited the Hall, they still remained in the place where they had lain from time immemorial. All attempts, it is said, to dispossess them of the station they had chosen to occupy, have invariably proved fruitless. As the report goes, they have been buried, burnt, reduced to powder and dispersed in the wind, sunk in the well, and thrown into the lake, several times, to no purpose as to their permanent removal or destruction. Till at length, so persistent was found to be their attachment to the niche which they had selected for their abiding place, they are said to have been, as a last resource to keep them out of sight, walled up within it; and there they remain. Of course, many persons now living in the neighbourhood can bear testimony to the fact that the skulls did really occupy the place assigned to them by tradition.

A popular tale of immemorial standing relates that the skulls were those of an aged man and his wife, who lived on their own property adjoining the lands of the Philipsons, whose head regarded it with a covetous eye, and had long desired to number it among his extensive domains. The owners however not being willing to part with it, he determined in evil hour to have it at any cost.

The old people, as the story runs, were in the habit of going frequently to the Hall, to share in the viands which fell from the lord's table, for he was a bounteous man to the poor; and it happened once that a pie was given to them, into which had been put some articles of plate. After their return home, the valuables were missed, and the cottage being searched, the things were found therein. The result was as the author of the mischief had plotted. They were accused of theft, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be executed, and their persecutor ultimately got their inheritance. When brought up for execution, the condemned persons requested the chaplain in attendance to read the 109th psalm; for under their circumstances, there was an awful significance in the imprecatory verses, which denounced the conduct of evil doers like Philipson; and in the solemn malison prophesied against the cruel, they pronounced a curse upon the owners of Calgarth, which the gossips of the neighbourhood say has ever since cast its blight upon the proprietorship of the estate; and that, notwithstanding whatever authentic records may prove to the contrary, the traditionary malediction has been regularly fulfilled down to the present time. After the death of his victims, the oppressor was greatly tormented; for, as if to perpetuate the memory of such injustice, and as a memento of their innocence, their skulls came and took up a position in the window of one of the rooms in the Hall, from whence they could not by any means be effectually removed, the common belief being that they were for that end indestructible, and it was stoutly asserted that to whatever place they were taken, or however used, they invariably reappeared in their old station by the window.

The property of Calgarth came by purchase into the possession of the late Dr. Watson, Lord Bishop of Llandaff, who built a mansion upon the estate, where he passed much of the later period of his life: and who lies buried in the neighbouring churchyard of Bowness. The Bishop's grandson, Richard Luther Watson, Esquire, is the present possessor.

It is believed that anciently a burial ground was attached to the buildings of Old Calgarth; as when the ground has been trenched thereabouts, quantities of human bones have frequently been turned over and re-buried. There are now in the dairy of the Old Hall two flat tombstones, with the name of Philipson inscribed upon them, which not very many years ago were dug up in the garden near the house; their present use being a desecration quite in accordance with the associations which hang around the place. This circumstance may afford a clue to the re-appearance of the skulls so frequently, after every art of destruction had been tried upon them, in the mysterious chambers of Old Calgarth Hall.

The old house at Armboth, on Thirlmere, has also the reputation of being occasionally at midnight supernaturally lighted up for the reception of spectres, which cross the lake from Helvellyn for some mysterious purpose within its walls. The long low white edifice lying close under the fells which rise abruptly behind it, with the black waters of the lake in front, has something very gloomy and weird-like about its aspect, which does not ill accord with those superstitious ideas with which it is sometimes associated. As Miss Martineau has said, "there is really something remarkable, and like witchery, about the house. On a bright moonlight night, the spectator who looks towards it from a distance of two or three miles, sees the light reflected from its windows into the lake; and when a slight fog gives a reddish hue to the light, the whole might easily be taken for an illumination of a great mansion. And this mansion seems to vanish as you approach,—being no mansion, but a small house lying in a nook, and overshadowed by a hill."

The City of Wytheburn is the name given to a few houses, some of them graced by native trees, and others by grotesquely cut yew trees, distant about half a mile from the head of Thirlmere.

BRITTA IN THE TEMPLE OF DRUIDS.
(THE LAST HUMAN SACRIFICE.)

 
Blencathra from his loftiest peak
Had often heard the victims' shriek,
When lapp'd by wreathing fire,
Their limbs in wicker bondage caged,
Dying, the draught and plague assuaged,
And calmed the Immortals' ire.
 
 
There came a Rumour,⁷ strayed from far.
Helvellyn's bale-fire paled its star:
Hoarse Glenderaterra moaned.
The dark destroying angel fled:
And from Blencathra's topmost head
Old demons shrunk dethroned.
 
 
He saw beneath his rugged brow
The temple on the plain below,
By sacred Druids trod:
Mountains on mountains piled around;
Forests of oak with acorns crowned:
And distant, man's abode.
 
 
Where men had hewn by stream and dell
An opening in the woods to dwell,
The pestilence by night
Had fallen amidst their little throng;
Had changed, and stricken down the strong;
And put the weak to flight.
 
 
Who may the angry god appease?—
The oracle that all things sees,
And knows all laws divine,
Spake from the awful forest bower—
"A maiden in her virgin flower
Must her young life resign."—
 
 
Fallen is the lot on thee, so late
Betrothed to love, and now to fate.
Sweet Britta!—Forth she fares,
Led by the Druids to her doom,
Within that circle's ample room,
For which the rite prepares.
 
 
Fire cleanses: she must cleanse by fire.
With oaken garland, white attire,
Bearing the mistletoe,
Beside the wicker hut her feet
Pause—till her eyes her lover greet,
And cheer him as they go.
 
 
These two had heard of what had been
In Judah—of the Nazarene—
And talked of new things born
To them, that in their fathers' place
They might not speak of to their race,
But thought on eve and morn.
 
 
Now when the sound is given to pile
The branches each one—friends-erewhile,
Strangers, yea sisters, sire,
And brethren—all from far and near,—
Must furnish for the victim's bier;
His they in vain require.
 
 
No might of Druid, lord, or king,
Could move that hand one leaf to bring—
No, though they throng to slay.
Calmly beyond the crowd he stood,
Holding on high two staves of wood
Cross'd—till she turned away.
 
 
Then hoary Chief, Arch Druid, came
Thy hands to minister the flame,
Wrought from the quick-rubb'd pine.
It touch'd: it leapt: the branches blazed!
When to the hills they looked amazed,
And owned the wrath divine.
 
 
Bellowed the mountains, and cast forth
Their waters, east, south, west, and north.
Rivers and mighty streams
Down from their raging sides out-poured
Their cataracts, and in thunders roared
Along earth's opening seams.
 
 
They rolled o'er all the temple's bound,
Quenching the angry fire around
The hut unscathed by flame:
Then backward to their source retired.
While like a seraph's form inspired
The white-robed maiden came.
 
 
Upon her fair head garlanded
No brightest leaflet withered—
No berry from her hand
Dropt, of the branching mistletoe—
With crossing palms and paces slow
She mov'd across the land.
 
 
Then loud the hoary Druid cried,
"The god we serve is satisfied!
His are the unbidden powers.
A human sacrifice no more
He needs, our dwellings to restore,
And devastated bowers.
 
 
For thee, a maiden fair and pure,
Thou hast a treasure made secure
In heaven: depart in peace.
Earth's voices witness of a faith
In thee serene and sure, that saith
Here we too soon must cease."
 

NOTES TO "BRITTA IN THE TEMPLE OF THE DRUIDS."

Traces of the Celts are clearly distinguishable in the names of some of the more prominent mountains within a few miles of Keswick, Skiddaw, Blencathra, Glaramara, Cat-Bells, Helvellyn. The first is derived from the name of the solar god, Ska-da, one of the appellations of the chief deity of Celtic Britain, to whom Skiddaw was consecrated. The second has been supposed to be a corruption of blen-y-cathern, the "peak of witches"; the fourth to signify "the groves of Baal"; and the last El-Velin, "the hill of Baal or Veli." The worship of the Assyrian deity was celebrated amongst the Celtic inhabitants of our island with the greatest importance and solemnity. The stone circles are still remaining in many places where the bloody sacrifices to his honour were performed: and one of the most important of these is near Keswick. In the immediate vicinity is also a gloomy valley, Glenderaterra, the name of which is sufficiently indicative of the purpose for which, like Tophet of old, it was ordained; Glyn-dera taran signifying in Celtic, "the valley of the angel or demon of execution."

It is a curious fact that till the last few years, a trace also of the ancient worship still lingered around two temples in this county, where it was once habitually performed. Both at Keswick, and at Cumwhitton where there is a similar druidical circle, the festival of the Beltein, or the fire of Baal, was till very recently celebrated on the first of May. As the Jews had by their "prophets of the groves," made their children "pass through the fire to Baal"; so the Britons, taught by their Druids, were accustomed once a year to drive their flocks and herds through the fire, to preserve them from evil during the remainder of the year. Indeed the custom still prevails. If the cows are distempered, it is actually a practice in many of the dales to light "the Need-fire"; notice being given throughout the neighbouring valleys, that the charm may be sent for if wanted. "Need-fire" is said to mean cattle-fire, and to be derived from the Danish nod, whence also is the northern word nolt or nowte. The Need-fire is produced by rubbing two slicks together. A great pile of combustible stuff is prepared, to give as much smoke as possible. When lighted, the neighbours snatch some of the fire, hurry home with it, and light their respective piles; and the cattle, diseased and sound, are then driven through the flame. Mr. Gibson says, that in 1841, when the cattle-murrain prevailed in Cumberland, he had many opportunities of witnessing the application of this charm to animals both diseased and sound. And he tells us, that to ensure its efficacy it was necessary to observe certain conditions. The fire had to be produced at first by friction, the domestic fires in the neighbourhood being all previously extinguished; then it had to be brought spontaneously to each farm by some neighbour unsolicited: and neither the fire so brought, nor any part of the fuel used, must ever have been under a roof. These conditions being observed, a great fire was made, and the cattle driven to and fro in the smoke. One honest farmer who had an ailing wife and delicate children passed them through this ordeal, as was averred with most beneficial effect. Another inadvertently carried the fire just brought to him into his house to save it from extinction by a sudden shower: and it was declared that in his case the need-fire would be inoperative. "It is interesting," says Mr. Ferguson, "to see how men cling to the performance of ancient religious rites, when the significance of the ceremony has long been forgotten; and what a hold must that worship have held over the minds of men, which Thor and Odin have not supplanted, nor the Christianity of a thousand years."

The tribe of ancient Britons who occupied Cumberland previous to the Roman conquest, the Brigantes, who were as wild and uncultivated as their native hills, subsisting principally by hunting and the spontaneous fruits of the earth; wearing for their clothing the skins of animals, and dwelling in habitations formed by the pillars of the forest rooted in the earth, and enclosed by interwoven branches, or in caves; have left one undoubted specimen of their race behind them. In the parish of Scaleby, in Cumberland, the land on the north end is barren, and large quantities of peat are cut and sent to Carlisle and other places for sale. At the depth of nine feet in this peat moss, has been found the skeleton of an ancient Briton, enclosed in the skin of some wild animal, and carefully bound up with thongs of tanned leather. It is conjectured that the body must have lain in the moss since the invasion of Julius Cæsar, and from the position in which the skeleton was found, grasping a stick about three feet long and twelve inches in circumference, it is supposed he must have perished accidentally on the spot. The remains were not long ago in the possession of the rector and Dr. Graham of Netherhouse.

In this part of the island the Britons were not in the worst state of mental darkness; these were not ignorant of a Deity, and they were not idolators. Their druids and bards possessed all the learning of the age. And it is believed that some of the Chief Druids had their station in Cumberland, where many of their monuments still remain, and of these one of the most noble and extensive of any in the island is the circle near Keswick. It stands on an eminence, about a mile and a half on the old road to Penrith, in a field on the right hand. The spot is the most commanding which could be chosen in that part of the country, without climbing a mountain. Derwentwater and the vale of Keswick are not seen from it, only the mountains that enclose them on the south and west. Latrigg and the huge side of Skiddaw are on the north: to the east is the open country towards Penrith, with Mell fell in the distance, where it rises alone like a huge tumulus on the right, and Blencathra on the left, rent into deep ravines. On the south east is the range of Helvellyn, from its termination at Wanthwaite Craggs to its loftiest summits, and to Dunmail Raise. The lower range of Nathdale Fells lies nearer in a line parallel with Helvellyn. The heights above Leathes Water, with the Borrowdale mountains complete the panorama.

This circle is formed of stones of various forms, natural and unhewn, of a species of granite; of a kind, according to Clarke, not to be found within many miles of this place. The largest is nearly eight feet high, and fifteen feet in circumference; most of them are still erect, but some are fallen. They are set in a form not exactly circular; the diameter being thirty paces from east to west, and thirty-two from north to south. At the eastern end a small enclosure is formed within the circle by ten stones, making an oblong square in conjunction with the stones on that side of the circle, seven paces in length, and three in width within. At the opposite side a single square stone is placed at the distance of three paces from the circle.

Concerning this, like all similar monuments in great Britain, the popular superstition prevails, that no two persons can number the stones alike, and that no person will ever find a second count confirm the first. This notion is curiously illustrated by the various writers who have described it. According to Gough, Stukely states the number to be forty; Gray says they are fifty; Hutchinson makes them fifty; Clarke made them out to be fifty-two; others, more correctly, forty-eight. Southey says, the number of stones which compose the circle is thirty-eight, and besides these there are ten which form three sides of a little square within, on the eastern side, three stones of the circle itself forming the fourth; this being evidently the place where the Druids who presided had their station; or where the more sacred and important part of the rites and ceremonies (whatever they may have been) were performed.

The singularity noticed in this monument, and what distinguishes it from all other druidical remains of this nature, is the recess on the eastern side of the area. Mr. Pennant supposes it to have been allotted for the Druids, the priests of the place, as a peculiar sanctuary, a sort of holy of holies, where they met, separated from the vulgar, to perform their rites, their divinations, or to sit in council to determine on controversies, to compromise all differences about limits of land, or about inheritances, or for the trial of greater criminals. The cause that this recess was on the east side, seems to arise from the respect paid by the ancient Britons to Baal or the Sun; not originally an idolatrous respect, but merely as a symbol of the Creator.

The rude workmanship, or rather arrangement, of these structures, for it cannot be called architecture, indicates the great barbarity of the times of the Druids; and furnishes strong proof of the savage nature of these heathen priests. Within this magical circle we may conceive any incantations to have been performed, and any rites of superstition to have been celebrated; their human executions, their imposing sacrifices; and their inhuman method of offering up their victims, by enclosing them in a gigantic figure of Hercules (the emblem of human virtue) made of wicker work, and burning them alive in sacrifice to the divine attribute of Justice.

This impressive monument of former times (the Keswick circle) is carefully preserved: the soil within the enclosure is not broken; a path from the road is left, and a stepping style has been placed, to accommodate visitors with an easy access to it. The old legend about the last human sacrifice of the Druids belongs to this monument. Gilpin says, "a romantic place seldom wants a romantic story to adorn it." And here certainly, amidst unmistakeable evidences of the worship of Baal: within sight of the vale (St. John's) which reveals the isolated rock, once the enchanted fortress of the powerful Merlin: within sound of the Greta, "the mourner," "the loud lamenter," in whose torrents are heard voices complaining among the stones: within range of Souter Fell with its shadowy armies and spectres marching in military array, why and whence and whither we know not; here, if anywhere, the very realm of mystery and superstition is made manifest to us, with almost awful significance; overlying the fairest scenes of nature, and investing them with all the charms of a region of romance.

The neighbourhood of this temple, too, is not without a certain notoriety on account of the violent floods with which it has been visited even in modern times. Hutchinson speaks of a remarkable one caused by impetuous rains, which happened on the twenty-second of August, 1749, in the vale of St. John's. "The clouds discharged their torrents like a waterspout; the streams from the mountains uniting, at length became so powerful a body, as to rend up the soil, gravel, and stones to a prodigious depth, and bear with them mighty fragments of rocks; several cottages were swept away from the declivities where they had stood in safety for a century; the vale was deluged, and many of the inhabitants with their cattle were lost. A singular providence protected many lives, a little school, where all the youths of the neighbourhood were educated, at the instant crowded with its flock, stood in the very line of one of these torrents, but the hand of God, in a miraculous manner, stayed a rolling rock, in the midst of its dreadful course, which would have crushed the whole tenement with its innocents; and by its stand, the floods divided, and passed on this hand and on that, insulating the school-house, and leaving the pupils with their master, trembling at once for the dangers escaped and as spectators of the horrid havock in the valley, and the tremendous floods which encompassed them on every side." He received this account from one of the people then at school: and also gives the following description of that inundation, which he had met with. "It began with most terrible thunder and incessant lightning, the preceding day having been extremely hot and sultry; the inhabitants for two hours before the breaking of the cloud, heard a strange noise, like the wind blowing in the tops of high trees. It is thought to have been a spout or a large body of water, by which the lightning incessantly rarifying the air, broke at once on the tops of the mountains, and descended upon the valley below, which is about three miles long, half a mile broad, and lies nearly east and west, being closed on the south and north sides with prodigious high, steep, and rocky mountains. Legbert Fells on the north side, received almost the whole cataract, for the spout did not extend above a mile in length; it chiefly swelled four small brooks, but to so amazing a degree, that the largest of them, called Catchertz Ghyll, swept away a mill and other edifices in five minutes, leaving the place where they stood covered with fragments of rocks and rubbish three or four yards deep, insomuch that one of the mill stones could not be found. During the violence of the storm, the fragments of rock which rolled down the mountain, choked up the old course of this brook; but the water forcing its way through a shivery rock, formed a chasm four yards wide and about eight or nine deep. The brooks lodged such quantities of gravel and sand on the meadows, that they were irrecoverably lost. Many large pieces of rocks were carried a considerable way into the fields; some larger than a team of ten horses could move, and one of them measuring nineteen yards about." Clarke says, "Many falsehoods are related of this inundation: for instance, the insulation of the school-house with its assembled master and scholars, which, though commonly told and believed, is not supported by any tradition of the kind preserved in the neighbourhood." No doubt, the circumstances are exaggerated: but even his own narrative shows it to have been one of the most dreadful and destructive inundations ever remembered in this country. He relates that "all the evening of that 22nd day of August, horrid, tumultuous noises were heard in the air; sometimes a puff of wind would blow with great violence, then in a moment all was calm again. The inhabitants, used to bosom-winds, whirlwinds, and the howling of distant tempests among the rocks, went to bed as usual, and from the fatigues of the day were in a sound sleep when the inundation awoke them. About one in the morning the rain began to fall, and before four such a quantity fell as covered the whole face of the country below with a sheet of water many feet deep; several houses were filled with sand to the first story, many more driven down; and among the rest Legberthwaite mill, of which not one stone was left upon another; even the heavy millstones were washed away; one was found at a considerable distance, but the other was never discovered. Several persons were obliged to climb to the tops of the houses, to escape instantaneous death; and there many were obliged to remain, in a situation of the most dreadful suspense, till the waters abated. Mr. Mounsey of Wallthwaite says, that when he came down stairs in the morning, the first sight he saw was a gander belonging to one of his neighbours, and several planks and kitchen utensils, which were floating about his lower apartments, the violence of the waters having forced open the doors on both sides of the house. The most dreadful vestiges of this inundation, or waterspout, are at a place called Lob-Wath, a little above Wallthwaite; here thousands of prodigious stones are piled upon each other, to the height of eleven yards; many of these stones are upwards of twenty tons weight each, and are thrown together in such a manner as to be at once the object of curiosity and horror.