A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



shooting and is willing to live laborious clays 

 and nights without expecting a great reward, 

 and who would be prouder of six or eight 

 mallard or wigeon, killed in the dusk of a 

 stormy winter evening, than of a share in a 

 thousand tame wild ducks let loose out of a 

 cover. Bit by bit the wet places loved by 

 duck and snipe get fewer. The process of 

 drying them began long ago, and is ever going 

 on, but there are great mosses here, one called 

 Wedholm Flow, the largest in Cumberland, 

 and fine feeding grounds on the Solway and 

 in the estuary formed by the Wampool and 

 Waver. In hard and stormy winters, geese, 

 both barnacle and grey, are to be found here, 

 and many wigeon and mallard, with now and 

 then a rarity such as a tufted duck or pintail. 

 Mr. Grainger, to whom we are indebted for 

 most of our information about this very inter- 

 esting country, says that, before the drainage 

 scheme of the Waver and Crummock rivers 

 about 1850, the mosses stretching from 

 Abbey to Dubmill afforded splendid duck 

 shooting. 



A somewhat novel sport was once carried 

 on in Holmcultram. In an old tithe suit 

 of 1586 occurs the following: 'That the 

 defendant Mandeville agreed with John 

 Hending for 4<D/- to kill the doves in Holme 

 Cultram church ; he ripped up the lead to go 

 in and shoot at them, and did often shoot at 

 them during divine service, and put the people 

 to great fear.' 



In an old news-sheet of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, there is mentioned what seems to be a 

 claim on the part of the Crown to the game 

 in Holmcultram. ' The statutes of King 

 Henry VIII. doth give liberty to shoot to any 

 dwelling within v. miles of the sea, or with- 

 in xii. miles of the borders of Scotland, and 

 that it shall be lawful for the sayd inhabitants 

 to use exercyses, and have their gunns, etc.' 

 In the minutes of Quarter Sessions held at 

 Cockermouth in 1701, it is stated that com- 

 plaints have been made that persons not 

 qualified by law possessed ' in her maties 

 manor of Holme Cultram gunns, greyhounds, 

 and other doggs, ferretts, coney dogs, hare- 

 pipes, snares and other engines for the taking 

 and killing of coneys, haires, pheasants, par- 

 tridge.' It was ordered that search be made 

 for all these and that they be destroyed. 

 So that the modern flight shooter in the 

 Abbey Holme is carrying on his sport in a 

 district where it has been from very ancient 

 times a care to kings and great people and to 

 the law. 



Mention has already been made of the 

 lack of old game books at places where shoot- 

 has been carried on for many years ; Lowther 



is in the same category, but most of Lowther 

 is in Westmorland, and will no doubt be 

 treated of under that county. The White- 

 haven Castle estates are also barren of details, 

 and Dovenby and Irton. At nearly all the 

 places mentioned here and elsewhere there is 

 good shooting of various kinds ; at Grey- 

 southcn, where Mr. Harris has killed 173 

 brace of partridges in two days, and Cal- 

 thwaite where he got 92 brace, each time with 

 four guns ; at Gilgarran ; at Castlesteads, 

 where the kindly red soil in that country ad- 

 joining the Roman Wall encourages and keeps 

 together wild pheasants ; at Armathwaite on 

 Bassenthwaite, 1 where Mr. Hartley gets in 

 good winters many wildfowl with, now and 

 then, such a rarity as a white-fronted goose 

 amongst them ; at Ennim, Dalemain, Skir- 

 with and Barrock ; at Holm Hill and Castle- 

 rigg and Isel and Irton and Bray ton, and these 

 by no means exhaust the list. Twenty-four 

 woodcocks have been killed in a day at Isel 

 (January, 1885). A hundred acres of poor 

 land near Ennerdale lake was planted by the 

 late Mr. Ainsworth some thirty years ago, 

 and the wood now stands out as a huge oasis 

 in that sparsely timbered district, and holds a 

 great many pheasants. 



' Becking ' is a means of capturing grouse 

 in what Mr. Macpherson, in his natural his- 

 tory of that bird, 3 calls ' a dubious but not 

 necessarily illegal fashion.' Any one who 

 has fired at grouse on the ground when he 

 himself was perfectly concealed, especially in 

 thick misty weather, knows that the first shot 

 will not always put them up or the second or 

 the third ; we have known as many as seven 

 shots fired at a covey of twelve before one 

 rose. This indeed was with a small rifle, but 

 if they are in the right humour they will take 

 no heed of the louder report of a gun. Such 

 a way of killing grouse is of course not con- 

 fined to Cumberland, and probably the ' beck- 

 ing ' itself may be carried on in other parts 

 under another name ; we have never heard of 

 it in Scotland. It consists of imitating the 

 note of the hen bird and so calling the cocks 

 within shot, and Mr. Macpherson gives an in- 

 stance of a man calling ten birds to him and 

 shooting them all, one by one, with an old 

 muzzle-loader. The man who practises 

 ' becking,' gets up early, goes to a part of the 



1 There are a great many goldeneye ducks on 

 Bassenthwaite which do much harm to the salmon 

 fishing on the Derwent. As many as five and 

 twenty may sometimes be seen just above Ouse- 

 bridge, diving for spawn. 



2 The Grouse, p. 65 (1894), ' Fur, Feather and 

 Fin ' Series. 



438 



