i6 
LAND & WATER 
Mountain Tarns 
By William T. Palmer 
September 21, 191G 
NO, one must decline to compare llyns, loclisand 
tarns. Cumbria, Scotland and Wales are each 
in their way distinct, and there are also the pools 
of the Pennine dales to be considered. No 
doubt a long wander through Donegal, Connemara and 
Kerry would only convince me that the Irish lough is 
ilifferent from every other, and impossible to compare. 
But that ramble must wait for peace days. Meantime, 
there are wonderful and distinctive features about our 
upland waters to consider. 
There are few natural meres among the Pennine hills : 
indeed, Semmer water in Wensleydale is, with Talkin 
Tarn in North Cumberland, practically the only one of 
importance. One has, however, a striking recollection 
of a pool on the shoulder of Wild Boar Fell in Westmor- 
land which, in a certain midnight hour, looked wild and 
romantic. A plover rose, wailing, from the little marsh, 
and the stony slope beyond appeared a very precipice 
towering to imtokl heights. Illusion of course, for next 
morning the black tarn had resolved into a tiny shallow 
with a great i^tretch of damp mud all round. 
There are one or two " wheels " on the upper Tecs 
which, in wild and lonely beauty, might almost be dubbed 
tarns, and of course, beyond the Roman Wall the North- 
umbrian finds " a lake district " — three small pools in 
disappointing surroundings, though one had a bold pre- 
. tence at a crag in its neighboiuhood. 
The Pearl of Pennine Meres 
North or south the pearl of Pennine meres is un- 
doubtedly Semmer Wajer, and here, at any rate, artificial 
banks are not evident, though the outflow "is tapped, both 
for water-supply and electric power. But to compare 
Semmer \\'ater with any Lake Country tarn is a perilous 
imdertaking. One has seen it from afar through the heat- 
haze of June, and been reminded of Elter Water, of Lowes 
Water, of Esthwaite, and at dawn one thought of 
Bassenthwaite from the slopes of Barf, yet consideration 
has failed to find any real grounds for such comparison. 
Semmer Water has, however, what few of the tarns 
further west can claim— a real standing in ancient rhyme 
and story. Wensleydale was full of towers and castles, 
of great deeds in peace and war, when the dales of Cumbria 
were still held by wild goat-herds and himters. 
Maybe it was the monks of Furness Abbey who first 
found the tarns of the Lake Country. They" were great 
. with the angle, had salmon weirs and eel-traps on every 
stream within their domain, claimed nets and boats 
on all lakes and estuaries. And local legend will have 
it that the char was introduced to the north by these 
cowled men, who settled it in every suitable lake, and 
• even in two mountain tarns— Goats Water, high up on 
, the shoulder of Coniston Old Man, and Seathwaite tarn 
which is beyond a 1,800 ft. hausc or pass, and which 
drains the back slopes of the Old Man into the Duddon 
valley. A similar monastic legend also attaches to the 
pink-fleshed trout of Devokc water, though not seemingly 
to fish of the same sort from Stickle Tarn , under Pavey Ark, 
or the skelly or gwyniad which has at curious intervals 
iiecn taken from Red Tarn, which lies beyond the brow 
of mighty Helvellyn. 
Perhaps the upper shelves of mountain about Ullswater 
was too far a cry for the monks, though a well is claimed 
for St. Patrick at the head of the lake. Anyway, the 
possessions of the abbeys of Shap or Furness or Calder 
did not extend in that particular direction. Furness, 
however, had dominion over Borrowdale, where Watend- 
lath and Blea Water would rouse their interest if not the 
bleaker Stye Head and the remote Sprinkling tarns, and if 
their journeys homeward were direct as tired men go, 
the monkish colony would certainly have some knowledge 
of Little Langdale and Blea tarns."^ 
What the monks of old had to do with a modern com- 
parison of mountain tarns may not be clear. They were 
the first lettered men to penetrate the lake coimtry. 
Their predecessors were hunters of the wild deer and goat, 
their successors the Bavarian and Tvrolean minincr 
prospectors, whose mined works defile many a bcautifu 
corner in the dales. Above the line of wood and en- 
closable pasture, the sober wishes of many generations 
seem not to have strayed. Even to-day, in the typical 
Cumbrian home, there is no ingrained love for the 
picturesque. It's not that " familiarity breedeth con- 
tempt," for outside his own parish the shepherds, the 
most travelled of dales folk, have neither knowledge 
nor interest. 
In the Lake Country 
How can one compare the tarns of the Lake Country ? 
There are the low-level meres, set far out from the 
mountains, such as Blelham tarn near the head of Winder- 
mere, and Urswick tarn, which falls an iris-edged de- 
pression in a flat valley between the Furness ore-lands 
and the sea. There is Elter Water, which is little higher 
in level, though great fells peep down on its marges, and 
Loughrigg tarn near by which nestles coyly into a cushion 
of larch and meadow and bracken with the Langdale 
Pikes and Wetherlam looming in the distance. There 
is Devoke Water, too, far away on a ledge of moorland 
behind Black Coombe, which should be a true mountain 
tarn yet smacks of the sea-breeze and the gulls. 
Brothers Water lies in a level of hay meadows, but 
just outside is Kirkstone pass with its m.odern coach road, 
with Red Screes like a tower on one side and Kirkstone 
Fell with its many names on the other. Through the 
next depression in the wall, between Red Screes and 
Hart Crag, came the more ancient road by which the 
squires of Hartsop visited the knights of Rydal, along 
which the le Flemings passed towards the King's Assize 
at Appleby or the Lowthers (who succeeded the Lan- 
casters at Hartsop Hall) came west to settle the Parlia- 
mentary representation of the counties of Westmorland 
and Cumberland. Yet look where one will Brothers 
Water, though apparently so mild, is in a basin of high 
mountains, for the Ooldrill curves away to the lake 
without sign of a pass, and Place F>11 blocks up the 
northern horizon. , 
Such tarns as Goats Water, Seathwaite, Blea (Little 
Langdale), Stickle, Easdale, Angle (Bowfell), Sprinkling, 
Stye Head, (Jrisedale, Red Tarns with Blea, Small and 
Hayes Waters on the High Street range occupy pretty 
definite rock-basins, and ha\e bold mountain scenery 
round about. The screes beneath the famous rock-climbers' 
haunts of Doe Crags and Pavey Ark fall direct into Goats 
Water and Stickle Tarn respectively, as also, to a less 
definite degree, do the screes of Great End (with its 
charming south-cast gull}', and its fine winter climbs of 
Central gully) into Sprinkling tarn. There is a rock- 
course, too, on Tarn Crag over Easedale, and two or three 
of the minor sort just round the face of Dolly waggon 
Pike from Grizcdale Tarn. Bleaberry tarn, on the breast 
of High Style, Biittermere, is a fine example with rock 
towers soaring up practically from its waters. 
Yet some of the highest tarns are comparatix ily 
uninteresting. There is a Blea Water on the Armbotli 
moors, and Angle Tarn in Hartsop : there is Codale tarn 
behind Pavey Ark, and Scoat Tarn beneath the Wast- 
water Steeple which certainly seem to lack charm, while 
F'loutern Tarn, between Buttermere and Ennerdale, is a 
thorough outcast — a weedy expanse in a district of bog, 
mud and rushes. But Red Tarn, Helvellyn, usually 
ranked as the highest of the lot, is perfect (except for its 
slight reservoir appearance), and Keppel Cove tarn, just 
over Catchedecam to the north, has also striking beauties 
(marred again by the needs of the greenside lead mines). 
But to most ramblers the glory of the Cumbrian tarn 
is typified in the two Mardale waters — Blea Water 
beneath the front of High Street, and Small Water, a 
mile or so to the south in the Nan Bield pass. They are 
to the east of the conventional Lake Country, and not 
being easy to get at are rarely visited, but no one can 
claim to Jbe a judge of the beautj' of the mountain tarn 
without their full knowledge. They are really wild in 
