60 



PART II. 



Original Papers communicated to the Societies during the Session 1 87 5-6, and 

 selected hy the Association Council for puhlication. 



OLD BORROWDALE. 



By J. FisHEE Ceosthwaite, (Keswick). 



[ Read in Borrowdale at a Field Meeting of the Four Societie.s of Whitehaven, 

 Workington, Cockerraouth, and Keswick, June 2nd, 1875], 



The object of this paper i.s to bring together a few facts rehiting to 

 the people who have inhabited Borrowdale, and the tenure by which the 

 Dalesmen hold their lands. Vie^ving the Borrowdale mountains from 

 Friar's Crag we used in our young days to take up the language of the 

 patriarch and speak of them as "the utmost bounds of the everlasting 

 hills." Many singular stories jjassed current among the juveniles as to 

 the doings over the wall beyond Watendlath, which was supposed to be 

 the world's end. The early writers on the Lake Country have made 

 common cause in speaking of Borrowdale and its people in the most 

 grotesque and exaggerated terms. One writer says the southern extremity 

 of Derwentwater "is a composition of all that is horrible." "An 

 immense chasm opens in the midst and is divided by a rude conical hill, 

 once kept by a castle, beyond a chain of crags patched with snow and 

 containing various minerals, overshadowing the dark winding deeps of 

 Borpowdale." Clark in his survey of the Lakes is grossly inaccurate in 

 his description of the people, but his stories have been repeated by nearly 

 all the guide writers who have succeeded him, till very recently. 



It is difficult to meet with any early records of so remote a place as 

 Borrowdale. There is no mention of our jjarish in Doomsday Book. The 

 manor on the western side of Borrc>wdale was given by one of the de 



