84 



powerful fellows, is said to have been the last man to shake the 

 bull ring in Keswick. 



Hunting and hound-trailing may be mentioned, with the latter of 

 which we are all familiar. Our dalesman have always been keen 

 hunters; but the mountains among which they lived have impressed 

 their sport with a peculiar character of wildness and unconvention- 

 ality, rendering fox-hunting among the fells quite a distinct sport 

 from fox-hunting as it is understood in Leicestershire. One 

 distinctive feature of fell-hunting is, that the hounds can only be 

 followed on foot; but another modifying circumstance, not less 

 important, is, that among the fells, most of the hunters are also 

 shepherds, who look upon the fox as their natural enemy, whose 

 death is to be compassed by any means and at all seasons. Until 

 quite a recent period, a few couples of hounds were kept in every 

 dale, and at least as many terriers ; and when the presence of a 

 fox in the neighbourhood was betrayed by a missing lamb, or an 

 old wife's hen-roost being robbed, all the dogs, and nearly all the 

 men, in the parish commenced — no matter what the time of year 

 — a pursuit, which generally ended in the death of the offending 

 fox, unless he had the luck to escape into some "borrant" or other 

 stronghold. But even then the pursuit was not always abandoned. 

 About twelve years ago, a fox escaped from the hunters into the 

 inaccessible crevice of a rock near Stickle Tarn. For three weeks 

 a party of from thirty to seventy Langdale men staid by him night 

 and day, blasting the rock by day, and placing a stone before the 

 crevice to prevent his escape by night. At last a wet night drove 

 them down to the valley, and when some of them returned next 

 morning, the stone placed before the crevice was gone, and so was 

 the fox. Gone ! beyond even the reach of John Peel's view hallo ! 

 The mystery of his escape has never been solved ; but the prevailing 

 idea has always been, that "some Gursmer chap mud ha' done it!" 



Though our dalesfolk do not seem to have been at any time so 

 much the slaves of superstition as were many more refined and 

 educated communities, still many superstitious customs — though 

 few of them strictly local— prevailed among them in olden times. 

 Of these I shall only furnish one instance — that of the "needfire" 



