A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



his work with that of the modern gunner on 

 the Solway. We see that a man may spend 

 a long life in punting and make his chief 

 bags of a bird which others, on apparently 

 similar waters, hardly ever come across. 

 According to Mr. Nichol ' barnacle geese 

 are the birds that offer the best night shoot- 

 ing upon the Solway Firth.' In fifty years 

 Colonel Hawker only killed three of this 

 species of geese. 1 Mr. Chapman, speaking 

 of the Northumberland coast and the same 

 bird, writes : ' I have never met with them ; 

 though numerous on the Solway and west 

 coast they are practically unknown on the 

 east.' * 



The Cumberland puntsman ' can only re- 

 call a single occasion when he met with a 

 large flock of brent.' Hawker killed i,327- 3 



In the Outer Hebrides, next to barnacle, 

 grey lags are the most common of all the 

 geese. During thirty years the Solway gun- 

 ner has only once been afforded sport by the 

 latter. 4 



On most coasts wigeon greatly outnumber 

 mallard ; the comparative scarcity of the 

 latter, which Mr. Nichol mentions, and the 

 lack of brent are certainly due to the absence 

 of the seaweed Zostera marina, the favourite 

 food of both. 6 



There is a curious statement in Demon's 

 account of Cumberland as to the derivation 

 of the name ' Rotington,' a village near 

 Whitehaven. ' Rotington villa ad prata Ro- 

 tinge, so called because it was usually haunted 

 with barnacles, rotgeese and wildfowl, before 

 it was inhabited.' 6 No doubt rotgeese is 

 rootgeese, and refers to the habits of the 

 brent. 7 



Mr. NichoPs bag of thirty-eight barnacle 

 at a shot is probably a record for Great 

 Britain for this species of geese ; forty were 

 killed in 1890 on the coast of Holland ; fifty- 

 two and ninety-six are the British records 

 for brent and wigeon. 8 



Racing in Cumberland is now carried on 

 after a less primitive fashion than used for- 

 merly to be the case. For many years there 

 was flat racing on Harras Moor near White- 

 haven, and also an annual steeplechase meet- 

 ing. The old grand stand may still be seen 

 on the moor. In 1852 it was even thought 

 worth while to publish an elaborate coloured 

 lithograph of the finish of a race opposite this 

 stand. Later a company was formed to carry 

 on the steeplechasing, and part of the course 

 was enclosed, but for some reason its efforts 

 were not successful, and racing in the west ol 

 the county has now altogether died out. 



FOX HUNTING 5 



That Cumberland is essentially a sporting 

 county I think few will deny. No doubt the 

 casual observer who flies through the country 

 in an express train, or who spends a fortnight 

 among the mountains in the Lake District, 

 will smile incredulously when we talk of 

 hunting in Cumberland, and express serious 

 doubts as to the practicability of it. But yet 

 I venture to state that Cumberland has long 

 held, and does still hold its own as regards 

 hunting; and few are aware that we have 

 between the mountains and the Solway a 

 large stretch of country which is a surprise to 

 the stranger and a delight to those who ride 

 across it a grass country of which Cum- 

 brians are justly proud. 



As a matter of fact the foxes bred in the 



1 The Diary of Colonel Peter Hawker, with Intro- 

 duction by Sir Ralf Payne-Gallwey, ii. 357 

 (London, 1893). 



* Bird Life on the Border, by Abel Chapman 

 (1889), p. 199. 



3 Diary, ii. 357. 



* If islands or suitable shores are wanting, grey 

 lag, feeding on grass and not on mud, can seldom 

 be approached in a punt. 



6 Fauna of Lakeland, p. 244.. 



low country rarely take to the hills except a.t 

 the end of a long run. It is sometimes the 

 case that hounds come upon a travelling fox 

 or a hill-bred fox, and then the result is 

 generally a finish on the mountains with a 

 disappointed field left at the bottom ; equally 

 the fell hounds I have met running in the 

 low country have brought their fox from the 

 hills ; but these occurrences are rare. 



Of regular fox hunting, as we would term 

 it now, there is little record up to last cen- 

 tury. There were hounds which hunted the 

 fox, but not exclusively, and it was a common 

 occurrence in the early days of hunting for 

 each sportsman to come to the trysting-place 

 with his own hound ; this curious medley 

 joined, and together hunted what came first 

 to scent ; but the records show us that the 



8 An accompt of the most considerable estates and 

 families in the county of Cumberland, etc., by John 

 Denton of Cardew (Cumberland and Westmorland 

 Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, 1 8 87), p. 2 5 . 



7 fauna of Lakeland, p. 245-6. 



8 Encyclopaedia of Sport, ii. 1678. 



9 Some of these notes I have, by the courtesy 

 of the editor of the Badminton Magazine, been al- 

 lowed to republish. 



422 



