A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



and the annual steeplechases on a course now 

 marked out by posts in the fields to the north 

 of the parish church. 



In the eighteenth century hunt meetings 

 were often held at Penrith, Wigton, Egre- 

 mont, and elsewhere, the Hunters' Plate, 

 sometimes of the value of 50 guineas, given 

 by the gentlemen of the county, being a much 

 coveted prize. These meetings were always 

 enlivened by cockfights and concluded with a 

 ball. There is some vestige of the same 

 custom surviving at the present day in what 

 is called ' the point to point race ' at the end 

 of the hunting season, but it is a feeble affair, 



and creates little interest. It cannot be denied 

 that the sporting instinct of Cumberland has 

 undergone a great change within living 

 memory. With the exception of the com- 

 petition for the ' Burgh Barony Cup,' which 

 of course takes place only at long intervals, 

 there is little or no racing rivalry among 

 horse breeders in the county. The horses 

 entered annually on the Swifts at Carlisle or 

 at Burgh by Sands are supplied for the most 

 part by professional sportsmen from a distance. 

 Racing in Cumberland cannot be any longer 

 considered a county institution. The local 

 features are well nigh obliterated. 



WILDFOWLING 



There is probably no English county, not 

 even excepting Norfolk, in which the gun is 

 more generally used for killing wildfowl than 

 Cumberland. In earlier days the capture of 

 duck and wigeon was often effected by the 

 use of snares, still remembered in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the Solway Firth under the name 

 of ' wiles.' But a heavy muzzle-loader was 

 for many generations the favourite weapon of 

 the Cumbrian 'statesman' when he went 'on 

 t' moss to look for a brace of teal maybe or a 

 couple of snipe.' The progress of agriculture 

 has drained many of the marshy meadows 

 which formerly afforded ' smittle spots ' for 

 ' fowl,' but the enthusiasm for killing wild- 

 fowl is still very strong. Good shooting can 

 be obtained on many loughs and tarns inland 

 as well as on the better known lakes, but the 

 estuaries of the coast are naturally the chief 

 hunting grounds of our wildfowlers. The 

 marshes of the Duddon, of the Irt, Mite and 

 Esk are not without their attraction for wild- 

 fowl, but the most famous shooting quarters 

 of the wildfowler are to be found upon the 

 Solway Firth. Punt-gunners have exercised 

 their craft upon the tideways of this great 

 basin of brackish water for upwards of a 

 hundred years, Port Carlisle and its neigh- 

 bourhood having been their chief head- 

 quarters. It would be easy to dilate upon 

 the experiences of such veteran gunners of 

 the last generation as ' Bill the Shooter,' once 

 of Gretna, or the late Mr. Borrowdale of 

 Glasson ; but it may be better that I should 

 tell my own plain unvarnished tale of wild- 

 fowling just as I have followed it, year in and 

 year out, for upwards of thirty years without 

 a break. 



I was brought up on the Solway Firth 

 among a race of natural wildfowlers, who 

 had inherited a passionate love of this sport 



from their forefathers. There were no punt- 

 guns in our primitive hamlet, but never- 

 theless I very early cherished an ambition to 

 acquire one. The idea did not find favour 

 with my elders, and my youthful resources 

 being meagre I had to commence my sport- 

 ing career with a very doubtful outfit. The 

 first punt that I became the proud owner of 

 had been built for a man of fourteen stone, 

 and was far too heavy for a young slight lad 

 to handle easily. It had however the merit 

 of being a very safe craft. My gun, on the 

 other hand, was of slender calibre, and as I 

 was ignorant of the tricks which a light gun 

 is likely to play when too heavily loaded, I 

 not unfrequently ran some risk of losing her 

 overboard. The lock belonged to an old 

 musket brought back from the Crimean war ; 

 the trigger required a strong pull, an un- 

 satisfactory thing in any fowling-piece, but 

 especially in a punt-gun, the lanyard of which 

 the owner is accustomed to pull with his 

 teeth. Sometimes this weapon was too stiff 

 to be fired, and sometimes my teeth were 

 extracted by its vagaries, so that I was thank- 

 ful to exchange it for a safer and more trust- 

 worthy weapon. The first punt that I built 

 for myself proved a great success. I used her 

 for seventeen successive winters. She mea- 

 sured 1 7 feet in length and 2 feet 8 inches in 

 breadth. The punt that I now use is of the 

 same dimensions. This little craft enables me 

 to explore the waters of the Solway Firth 

 under a variety of circumstances, and though, 

 as a professional wildfowler, I am obliged to 

 shoot for the market, my greatest pleasure lies 

 in studying the habits of the birds that I find 

 swimming and diving in the tideway. A 

 thorough knowledge of the locality in which 

 he works is indispensable to the wildfowler. 

 Owing to the strong ebb and flow of the 



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