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Page 143:-
strangers ask whether Moloch is acknowledged there still. It
is said, in a certain Cumberland dale, that when a farmer
had driven all his other live property through, he proceeded
to drive his wife after the cows, saying he should then be
safe from all distempers. If a cock crows in the night,
horror and grief seize on the household:- some one is sure
to die. If people meet a black ram, they turn their money
for luck. They occupy their minds and waste their time in
the silliest superstitions which keep true knowledge out.
For the result, look at the productions of the region,- the
torn and dirty wool, the sapless and scentless hay, allowed
first to run to seed, and then to lie soaking and parching
for weeks in the field,- the flour, the meat, the butter,
the cheese,- look at any of these products in the more
retired vales, and say whether intercourse with the world
outside will not be a good thing for the fortunes of those
within. To take only the last,- the cheese. After coming
from the other grazing districts, and seeing how scientific
a matter the management of a dairy has become, and what the
best cheese is, the dairy management of Cumberland is
marvellous. Our readers cannot be expected to believe the
facts without good testimony: and we may refer them to such
local publications as the "Lonsdale Magazine," where, (in
Vol.ii. p.13.) we are told that the Cumberland cheese is
harder than buck-horn: and that in some places where the
husbandmen wear clogs shod with iron, it is no uncommon
thing to supply the absence of the iron with the crust of a
dry cheese. There is plenty of testimony to cheese striking
fire
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