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but the said weather was so cold, that he would suffer much
needless pain: they then walked by the water-side till they
came to this rock, which she told him she thought it fit for
his purpose, as the water was deep enough at the edge to
drown him: He was the going to throw himself directly in,
but she told him he might hurt himself against the rock
before he reached the water, so that he had better take a
run and leap as far as he could: He followed her advice,
very calmly put off his coat and took his leap: she staid
till she saw him drowned, and then returned, fully satisfied
that she had done her duty in giving him the best advice she
could. This story she related to her neighbours, and I had
the curiosity (for she is still alive,) to ask it from her
own mouth.
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We now reach Wytheburn, a small manor belonging to
Sir Frederick Vane Fletcher, Baronet. The tenants are all
customary, except one, (viz.) the tenement at the
water-head, the owner of which is obliged to keep a
stallion, a bull, and a boar, for the service of the
tenants. The soil hereabouts is generally barren, and
produces very little corn or grass; but their extensive
common-right gives them an opportunity of keeping vast
numbers of sheep; these, by their fleeces, procure a
tolerable living for the inhabitants, who spin their wool
themselves, and are always sure of a ready market for it.
Wytheburn chapel is a perpetual curacy under Crossthwaite,
the ancient salary two pounds ten shillings; certified to
the governors of Queen Anne's bounty at three pounds six
shillings and fourpence, worth now thirty-one pounds a year.
The chapel is a very poor low building, and not consecrated;
their burying place is Crossthwaite.
I cannot say there is any thing very entertaining to a
traveller in this valley: the road lyes under more
tremendous mountains here than in any other place; they are
loaden with large loose stones, which seem ready to drop
from their sides on the smallest occasion; a sight of
sufficient terror to hasten the traveller from a scene of
such seemingly impending danger: an undaunted mind, indeed,
would be entertained after a flood with the numerous and
noble cascades that then may be seen. I was once stopped
near the chapel by a thunder shower; and the sun afterwards
shewing his face, I saw as grand a sight as eye ever beheld:
as they say in this country, after a flood, "Every road's a
sike, every sike's a beck, and every beck a river;" and so
it was now; this was joined with the awful sounds of water,
groaning for passage among the rocks, and obstructing
stones, so that all nature seemed to be convulsed, and from
the hidden cavities of the rocks shot forth sometimes a
clear stream of water, which in an instant was changed to
almost perfect red. This was caused by the removal of some
large stone or other, when the earth, moved thereby,
mingling with the water, gave it a blood colour. Those
scenes were on every side of me, the noise was astonishing,
and the water, which came down threatned to take away the
houses both of God and the devil, (viz.) the church and the
alehouse close by.
I got at a house near this place a buck's horn, which had
either belonged to a species of deer I am not acquainted
with, or had been a supernatural production. It was like the
horn of a fallow-buck, the beam and brow-antlet of the
common size, but the palm more than three times as large as
any I ever saw: by the ordinary way of counting the age of
the deer by their horns, it must have been near thirty years
of age; an age no fallow-deer ever lived to. It is now at
Crosthwaite's museum, Keswick; the people of the house could
not give me any information about it, further than it had
been there in their grandfather's time.
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It is a pleasant enough road thro' these openings of the
mountains, not being steep or troublesome, to
Rays-Gap, or Dunmail-Rays, as it is called in
all the old boundary rolls. Some will tell you that it had
its name from Dunmail King of Cumberland, who in conjunction
with Llewellyn King of South Wales, fought a battle with
Edmund our Saxon King, and Malcolm King of Scots at this
place; and that Edmund gained a com-
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