120 BORROWDALE. 



Grange. The plan did not answer ; but that was, 

 according to the popular belief from generation 

 to generation, because the wall was not built one 

 course higher. It is simply for want of a top- 

 course in that wall that eternal spring does not 

 reign in Borrowdale. Another anecdote shows, 

 however, that a bright wit did occasionally show 

 himself among them. A "statesman" (an "estates- 

 man/' or small proprietor) went one day to a 

 distant fair, or sale, and brought home what neither 

 he nor his neighbours had ever seen before — a pair 

 of stirrups. Home he came jogging, with his feet 

 in his stirrups; but, by the time he reached his 

 own door, he had jammed his feet in so fast that 

 they would not come out. There was great alarm 

 and lamentation; but as it could not be helped 

 now, the good man patiently sat his horse in the 

 pasture for a day or two, his family bringing him 

 food, till the eldest son, vexed to see the horse 

 suffering by exposure, proposed to bring them both 

 into the stable. This was done ; and there sat 

 the farmer for several days, — his food being 

 brought to him as before. At length it struck 

 the second son that it was a pity not to make his 

 father uscfid, and release the horse ; so he proposed 

 to carry him, on the saddle, into the house. By 

 immense exertion it was done; the horse being 

 taken alongside the midden in the yard, to ease the 

 fall : and the good man found himself under his 

 own roof again, — spinning wool in a corner of the 

 kitchen. There the mounted man sat spinning, 

 through the cleverness of his second son, till the 

 lucky hour arrived of the youngest son's return,-: — 

 he being a scholar, — a learned student from St. 





