20 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE RED DEER 



gracing the meet' ('The Cumberland Foxhounds,' 

 pp. 8-9). 



The Duke of Wharton used to hunt in Martin- 

 dale, driving to the meet in a coach and six, 

 preceded by a running footman dressed in white. 

 The stags of Martin dale must often have wandered 

 across the western fells to Ennerdale, where another 

 herd long existed. The shepherds used to say that 

 old stags sometimes ejected sheep from the Pillar 

 Stone by forking them over the side. It was on the 

 south side of Ennerdale Lake that the deer used to 

 harbour chiefly, on what is called * The Side,' a spot 

 which was then thickly wooded. The depredations 

 which the Ennerdale deer wrought in the crops of 

 the farmers at Gillerthwaite at the top of the lake, 

 and also on Mireside Farm on the east side, were so 

 great that it became necessary to set old scythes and 

 pitchforks in the gaps and open places in the fences 

 to keep them out of the crops. The Side Wood 

 joined Coupland (also an ancient forest), and ran up 

 to Wasdale Fell, also called Wastall, which in 1671 

 was ' a large forest or wast ground replenished with Red 

 Deer.' Scawfell was the home of a few deer in the last 

 century. One of these animals was chased into Wast- 

 water Lake, in which it was drowned. The Martindale 

 deer alone have escaped the fate of extermination meted 



