button to main menu  Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, 1787

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Page 75:-
which several prodigious large stones have fallen down, and now lie on each side of the road, and several more appear ready to follow their example.
Till within these few years this place was scarcely passable for a horse; but now the road quite round this lake is very good, even for carriages, and has been made purposely by the inhabitants for the accommodation of travellers; so that at present a journey into Borrowdale may be performed with both ease and pleasure.
  Borrowdale
Borrowdale, till within these last thirty years, was hardly in a state even of civilization; the surface of the ground was very little cultivated, for agriculture was not understood there, and the inhabitants were a proverb, even among their unpolished neighbours, for ignorance. A thousand absurd and improbable stories are related concerning their stupidity; so many, indeed, that one would almost have been tempted to parody the old Jewish sarcasm of, "Out of Galilee cometh no prophet;" into a more modern form; out of "Borrowdale cometh no common sense."
  Borrowdale tales
Not above twenty years ago, a cart or any kind of wheel-carriage, was totally unknown in Borrowdale; in carrying home their hay (for they make no stacks,) they lay it upon their horses in bundles, one on each side; yet, strange to tell, so bigotted are the inhabitants, even of the more civilized parts, that they obstinately adhere to this absurd custom: the traveller may even see hay carried in this manner through the streets of Keswick; and if he asks the reason, he will meet with no other answer, than that it is an old custom:

"Custom that mankind into slav'ry brings,
The dull excuse for doing silly things."
Their manure they carried in the same manner, putting it in wicker baskets; in the same manner they carried the smaller wood for firing, the larger logs they trailed. Their food in Summer consisted of fish and small mutton of a particular kind; in Winter they lived upon bacon and hung mutton. Nor was their manner of drying their muttons less rude; they hung the sheep up by the hinder legs, and took away nothing but the head and entrails. In this situation I myself have seen seven sheep hanging in one chimney, and have been told of much greater numbers.
One story, that shews the uncommon ignorance which prevailed in this vale, I cannot help relating, as I know it to be strictly true. It happened, indeed, within my own memory, and was communicated to me by a man who that a party concerned. One of the shepherds being upon the mountains, saw a red deer, an animal with which he was totally unacquainted. He instantly run and told his neighbours that he had seen an horned horse, and begged their assistance to catch him. His neighbours immediately provided ropes, thinking to take him by the same means as they did their horses when wild, viz.; by running them into a strait, and then tripping them up with a cord. Accordingly a considerable number of them set off to take this strange animal. The chace, we may very naturally suppose, was fruitless; they followed the deer for several hours, and at last returned, all of them heartily tired, and most of them thoroughly convinced they had been chacing a witch.
The people of Borrowdale have been, on account of the old commonplace-joke of walling in the cuckow, called Borrowdale Gowks; the word gowk being the Scottish name for a cuckow. Their dialect is likewise very different from the general dialect of the county; in all their words they leave out the letter h, and have many names for things different from their neighbours. An heron they call Joan-na-ma-cronk; a glead, or kite, they call Jack-eslop, with many others of the same species. The following letter, written by a young traveller in ridicule of his former acquaintance, will be the best specimen both of their words and ideas.
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gazetteer links
button -- "Borrowdale" -- Borrowdale
button -- "Borrowdale" -- (Borrowdale (CL13inc)2)
button -- Borrowdale and Buttermere
button -- "Great Inin" -- Shepherds Crag
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