Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/37



the pastoral mountains of Cumberland dwells an unmingled and patriarchal race of people, who live in a primitive manner, and retain many peculiar usages different from their neighbours of the valley and the town. They are imagined by antiquarians to be descended from a colony of Saxon herdsmen and warriors, who, establishing themselves among the mountainous wastes, quitted conquest and spoliation for the peaceful vocation of tending their flocks, and managing the barter of their rustic wealth for the luxuries fabricated by their more ingenious neighbours. In the cultivation of corn they are unskilful or uninstructed; but in all that regards sheep and cattle they display a knowledge and a tact which is the envy of all who live by the fleece and shears. Their patriarchal wealth enables them to be hospitable, and dispense an unstinted boon among all such people as chance, curiosity, or barter scatter over their inheritance.

It happened on a fine summer afternoon that I found myself engaged in the pursuit of an old fox which annually preyed on our lambs, and eluded the vigilance of the most