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MUNCASTER CASTLE
It is a far journey to Calder Abbey, but the visitor to the Cumbrian coast will be well repaid if he thither turn his way, for he will be able, in one and the same day, to see Ravenglass and Walls Castle, and the ancient harbour of the legendary King Aveling's town. By public-spirited leave of Lord Muncaster, the present representative of the Pennington family, who have held the Pele since the thirteenth century, he will see the fairest castle terrace view in the North- the sea on the one side, the Esk coiling in silver down the vale beneath, and Scawfell in grandeur at the head of the valley, with the great Roman camp at Hardknott in sight. He will note the little chapel on the fell, which commemorates the fact that Henry VI, after the battle of Hexham, 15th May, 1464, flying for his life to the sea coast with chance of escape by shipboard, was found here by shepherds and conducted to the castle, and given refuge and hospitality. The celebrated green glass and enamelled bowl, "the Luck of Muncaster," was given as a record of the visit. The portrait of Tom Skelton, the fool of Muncaster, is preserved on the hall staircase.
On leaving Muncaster the visitor will make his way by train to St. Bees... |
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IN A CUMBRIAN GULLERY
It was a real May Day. There was no doubt of it one heard it in the voice of the thrush, "May-Day! May-Day! May-Day!" and another voice made doubly sure, for that quaint stammerer from over-sea who never feels quite so happy as when he is calling to his mate in an echoing valley, or against a resonant hill, was crying cuckoo on the slopes of Skiddaw as I took train for Ravenglass and Muncaster.
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| | It was a day of gold, and as the train swept on from St. Bega's headland towards the haunts of the Viking seafarers of old- Seascale of to-day, more gold glimmered and glinted at our side, for all the railway banks were peopled with cowslips, and the sight of them still gladdened the 'inward eye,' that cannot forget such splendours when one comes from a land where no cowslips are into their gentle company. The train pulled up at the Ravenglass station, and we knew we were near the sea-birds' happy nesting ground.
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| | All along in the fallows and the fields for the past three miles white wings and black heads had been waving and tossing as they searched for food. Quartering their hunting ground as a hawk quarters it, they were sailing backwards and forwards, and one guessed by their keenness that somewhere in the yellow sand-dunes across the estuary there were young hungry mouths that needed food.
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| | We passed down the single street by the little village that must once have been, by reason of its land-locked water basin, one of the most important harbours of the Cumberland coast. Hither in "good King Aveling's time," came Roman galleys to guard the road-makers and to bring stores of hypocaust tiles for the general's house, whose ruin still stands in the pleasant fields hard by. Hither in after days the beaked ships of the Norse rovers flew from Mona's Isle, for harrying of the Cumberland farms and flocks. Hither sailed in later days the fisher merchants bent on quest for pearls, for indeed as late as the time of Elizabeth the Irt and the Mite have been famous for this fresh-water jewelry.
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| | But to-day the only seekers of merchandise from the shore are the two or three women who stagger up the beach with a sack full of limpets, to be despatched for those at Manchester who have a little vinegar and pepper and a pin, and a love of such delicacies as Ravenglass can supply.
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| | As one passes down the street one is brought face to face with the land of Egypt, for one notes that the man who makes boots and shoes bears the title of the Egyptian kings. "Pharaoh" sounds a little strange, till one surmises that is a modern way of spelling the Norse name "Faroe," and that here we have a descendant of the flock master who, for all we know, helped to bring hither the Herdwick sheep long centuries ago. On emerging from the village street to the pebbly mussel-covered shore, the vision of Egypt that the bootmaker's name brought before our eyes is not dispelled, for nowhere on the coast does the sand-blown rushy billowing of the shore take the traveller so surely back to the sandy ramparts of the desert of Egypt between Nugdol and Pihahiroth on the Red Sea borders as here. We are armed with a permit from the kindly Lord of Muncaster.
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| | The boatman rows us across the harbour estuary, and bidding us make for a certain opening in the sandy rampire, returns, but not to leave the world to solitude and me. For scarce have I gained the sandy portal when all the air is darkened with bird watchers, who had spied the intruder and come out to question his intent.
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| | A short "chuck, chuck," succeeded by a cry that sounds like a harsh squeal, salutes one on every side, and here and there between the cries one hears the mewing sound of a cat in the air above one.
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| | The keeper is waiting, and before we show ourselves at the actual nesting ground we have a talk about the black-headed gulls.
"Well you see, Sir, they come up here in February, I think from the south. Nesting begins at the end of March or beginning of April. They lay two or three eggs, rarely four. Eggs all of a different colour, from deep brown to light olive green. They sit for twenty-one days, and begin to hatch out about May 5th. This year it was May 6th that I found the first chick. The young are very helpless for six or eight weeks, and take a deal of doing for."
"And what about the terns?"
"We have three terns that nest here. Big, little, and Sandwich tern."
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| | He did not appear to know that it was one of the only two breeding places of the last-mentioned beautiful bird on the west coast of England, but he did know that his lordship was very careful of them, and "like enough they should be scarce, you know Sir, for they many of them only lay one egg, and they're that jealous of one another that they break a many of them their own selves, and take no trouble about their nests. They lay later than the black-headed gull, who will often begin laying on the 18th or 19th of April, and, later than the Sandwich tern, comes the oyster catcher. I have not found more than one egg yet, though I expect they will be laying any day now."
"And where do the oyster catchers lay?"
"Oh anywhere down there on the flat," said the keeper, pointing to a great samphire-covered meadow red with the dwarf sorrel, "but you must always look at the rabbit holes, or places where the sheep have scratched up the sand to the surface. They like bare sand and not samphire for nesting on."
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| | As he spoke, what seemed like two-legged dark or black plumaged birds fluttered into whiteness, and the shrill cry of "Keep-Keep," made me know that these were the oyster catchers one had wished to find at home. I could not get a glimpse of the orange yellow colour of their beaks, but one realised from that magpie quick~change effect why it was that the fisher folk called the bird "sea-pie," and why our forefathers corrupted the Dutch word for magpie "ackster" into "catcher," and instead of calling it oyster~magpie, speak of it as the oyster catcher to-day.
"We will show ourselves now," said the keeper, "but go quietly," and creeping up the warm sand, I found myself on the edge of a miniature crater, whose edges were sand hills and tussock grass, filled with white lily flowers, and whose floor seemed to be tapestried or carpeted with purple and green. The green I found on nearer view to be young nettles, the purple, thousands upon tens of thousands of wild pansies.
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| | In a moment the white lilies became a multitude of wings, and in another moment one involuntarily put one's hand up to protect one's head and eyes, so furiously, and with such a scream of savagery, did the blackheads sweep at one. The whole air quivered, and while the words that the gulls close beside me were saying seemed to be distinctly a shrill "ge-et away! ge-et away!" that was half hiss and scream, the sound of the distant flock of fearful creatures could only be compared to the angry sound of steam an express engine makes when it comes to a sudden standstill beneath a resonant station roof.
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| | I could not wonder. Here at my feet lay tiny fluffy things of golden tabby colour, there in a heap of tussock grass three olive brown eggs. Just beyond two squabs four days old had left their nest and hid in the grass, and here another ten days old, with the blue quill feathers showing, who had changed from tabby to grey, went scuttling away till it fell head foremost, picked itself up, and fell again in its haste to be off.
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| | Down on the sandy slope, another looking as one might suppose a fleet-footed dromedary would look among the sand dunes of the Arabian desert, if one were high up in a balloon, was running for dear life, and Egypt came once again to mind. If one had but known black-headed gull language, one might have appealed to them to recognise the likeness, for many of these birds had probably wintered on the banks of Nile.
The nests were here, there, and everywhere.
It was with real difficulty one avoided treading upon nest or tabby chicks as one followed one's guide, but what struck one was the way in which there on the edge of the crater, at its most exposed part, the birds had nested, preferring the chance of quick look-out to shelter from the wind.
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| | The variety, both of egg size and egg colour, was astonishing. Three was the usual number of eggs. Four were rarely seen in one nest. The nests varied much in size and shape. Here one builder had taken much trouble to arrange her bunch of tussock, here again close by a more careless mother had been content with the work of a few hours in preparing its cradle. We passed quickly along to a dune, where the nests seemed to be fewer in number, and then ceased. Suddenly my eyes caught sight of what looked in the distance like lumps of chalk on the bare sand. Lying singly or in pairs, a near view showed that the chalk lumps were beautifully mottled with black and brown, larger they seemed in size than the olive green jewels we had seen in the caskets of the black-headed gulls.
"Here," said the keeper, "are the Sandwich tern's eggs, and as I told you, see what a number they have broken: it's a curious thing, and no one, I think, can explain it. It isn't the 'jacks,' that I am sure of; though they are the greatest thieves the black-heads have to contend with."
"No," said I, "the jackdaws are not to blame; it is, I think, the casual habit the bird has of laying its single egg in another nest that is to blame; at least that is a possible explanation."
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| | All this while the cloud of wings thickened above us. The black-headed gulls had seemed to come to the relief of the handful of these graceful associates, and as fork-tailed mothers swung back and forward overhead, clear above the hissing scream and the chuck, chuck of the gull, came the shrill "Kirhitt! Kirhitt! Kirhitt!" of the Sandwich tern.
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| | Back through the purple violas, and the red dwarf sorrel; back by the golden sand dunes and the blue shining mussel-covered beach we came, and still the gulls tossed and screamed in heaven, and though our hands were clean and our conscience untroubled by intent to harm, we felt verily guilty concerning our brother gull and sister tern, for all the needless anxieties we had caused them by being in the shape of man.
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