Chapter II: The South Tyne

On the "Fiend's Fell"--Tyne Springs--Garrigill--Alston and the
Moors--Knaresdale Hall--The Ridleys--Haltwhistle--Allendale--Haydon
Bridge and John Martin--The Arthurian Legends.

We are in Cumberland, amid the wilds. How did St. Augustine contrive to penetrate to such a region as this? The land is desolate, bleak, solitary. A desert of heathery hills; here and there a reed-fringed stream; in front the wild and stern face of Cross Fell! A seldom-trodden height, this Cumberland mountain, seeming to stand sentinel over all the country round. On its lower slopes, the three great commercial rivers of the North have their rise. We have come here in search of the source of the South Tyne, but a short morning's wandering would lead us also to the sources of the Wear and the Tees. Cross Fell is 2,892 feet above the level of the sea, and to half that elevation we have ascended to reach these moors in which it seems to be set. The "Wizard Fell," some poet has called it. The "Fiend's Fell" it was called of old. To reach it from Alston one must trudge wearily afoot, or hire such vehicle as may be obtainable where travellers seldom come. The road winds about over windy uplands, ever rising nearer to the drifting clouds. A lead-miner's bothie stands beside it here and there, and one is constantly passing places where the miners have "prospected" for ore. All the roadside, indeed, has been explored and broken. The South Tyne is making music all the way, for it flows downward to one's right, and is constantly tumbling over rocks and forming cascades over little precipices. It becomes a hasty, tumultuous river almost immediately after its birth, increasing in volume with a celerity quite wonderful to see, and seemingly impetuous to lose the cold companionship of these bleak and barren hills, which, despite their sternness, are all aglow with colour, and pulsating with rapid waves of light.

To the right, brown ridges of high moorland; to the left, slopes more broken, strewn over, as it would seem, with masses of light-purple rock; beyond all, the dark ridge of Cross Fell closing-in the lonely valley. A streak of brighter and fresher green than any that is visible on the hillsides indicates where a hidden thread of water percolates the moss. Then there is a glint of silver here and there. Finally, the eye lights upon a sedgy pool, in the centre of which there is perceptible that throbbing movement which tells of the presence of a spring. This, then, is the source of the South Tyne. Before its waters have travelled far from here they will be crossed by a rude, ancient bridge, and swollen by many a little tributary from the hills.

From the summit of Cross Fell at certain seasons the mysterious and terrible "helm wind" blows. When no breeze disturbs the air, and when, over all the country round, there is a clear and bright sky, a line of strangely tortured and curving clouds will form itself along the ridge of the mountain. Then the shepherds will hie to where shelter may be found, for they know that a wind will soon be blowing before which no human creature can stand upright, and that may uproot trees, and unroof houses, and carry dismay into the valleys far below. It was the fiends holding revel, said the early inhabitants of these regions; wherefore St. Augustine erected a cross on the highest part of the fell, collecting his monks around him, and holding a religious service there, whereby if the fiends were made less harmful they were by no means dispossessed. The nearest inhabited place is Garrigill, which is a prominent object in the valley as one ascends the moor from Alston. A Cumberland village is a series of white gleaming spots against the hillside--a collection of whitewashed walls and grey-blue roofs of stone. This of Garrigill is like so many others, except as to the height at which it has been built, and its bright contrast with the gloom of its surroundings. There is a pleasant shadow of trees about its housetops. There is a village inn, and a village green, and a village well. The young river flows past quickly, merrily, with the music of numerous little falls. The people of these hill regions are miners for the most part. Lead was worked in these mountain sides at times so far back as the Roman occupation of Britain, and some of the miners, if they had kept a record of such things, might show a pedigree longer than that of those whose ancestors were engaged in Senlac fight. Their chief quarters are at Alston and at Allenheads, but their bothies are scattered about these moors. The town of Alston is four miles below Garrigill. It is a pretty, white-looking town, high up on the slope of the moors. Of its two principal streets one is parallel with the river Nent, and the other with the South Tyne, the two streams here joining to make a fairly considerable river. At Alston we are again on the track of St. Augustine's footsteps. He may even have founded a place of worship here, and it is in keeping with the tradition of his having Christianised Cumberland that the church should bear his name.

White Alston, with the wild brown moors beyond it, stands between the broad, open desolateness of the mountain region and a lovely district in which the South Tyne laughs under the threading branches of ancient woods, or broadens out by sunny haughs, as if to rest itself between strife and strife.

Just below Alston we once more set foot on Northumbrian soil. The Ayleburn and the Gildersdale waters flow from opposite directions along the county boundaries, the one from high moorlands, by the old manor-house of Randalholme, the other from the peaty morass where once flourished the great forest of Gildersdale. Henceforth the country assumes a more gentle aspect. The lead-mines have been left far behind; the river lies broad in the sunlight, or darkens under the shadow of trees; there are gentler undulations in the hills, and

"Long fields of barley and of rye
That clothe the wold and meet the sky."

The remains of Whitley Castle, which is the modern and inappropriate name of a Roman station, are to be seen shortly after the Gildersdale Burn has joined the Tyne, and here, also, one comes upon an ancient Roman road, the Maiden Way, along which it may have been that "a woman might walk scatheless in Eadwine's day." Hereabouts the river is pleasantly fringed, and cool, and full of shadows and deep reflections. At brief intervals it is joined by some new tributary, pouring noisily out of a little valley of its own. Of these one of the most interesting is the Knar, which comes down in a boisterous and scurrying manner from a region of wilderness and lofty fell, where the red deer lingered latest in these parts, and where the remains of ancient forests may be discovered in the soft and treacherous moss.

Very rich in interest and beauty are some of the glens through which these mountain rivulets flow, with sudden precipices, and narrow defiles, and rock-strewn gorges, and the charm of moss and fern and overhanging tree. Knaresdale Hall, which is no more than a farmhouse in these days, is some distance lower down the South Tyne than the spot at which the Knar Burn brings its contribution to the constantly broadening stream. It dates back to rough seventeenth century times, and was as strongly built as became the home of the doughty lairds of Knaresdale. But the noblest of South Tyne castles is that of Featherstone, or Featherstonehaugh. It stands in a fine park opposite to where the river is joined by Hartley Burn. When Lord Marmion was feasting full and high at the castle of Norham, on Tweedside--

"A northern harper rude
Chanted a rhyme of deadly feud;
How the fierce Thirlwalls, and Ridleys all,
Stout Willimondswick,
And Hardriding Dick,
And Hughie of Hawdon, and Will o' the Wall
Have set on Sir Albany Featherstonhaugh,
And taken his life at the Deadman's Shaw."

For "the rest of this old ballad" the notes to "Marmion" refer us to "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." But the ballad has not an old line in it. It is simply one of those sham antiques which it amused Surtees, of Mainsforth, to pass off upon one who trusted to his good faith and his familiarity with Border legend and story. The incident which it records is probably as imaginary as the old woman from whose recitation the words are declared to have been taken down.

Featherstone Castle is not built upon elevated ground, as is the case with most of the strong places of the Borders. It stands in a quiet vale amid wooded heights. The Featherstones claimed to have lived there for many centuries, the first of the family, according to tradition, being a Saxon chief of the eighth century. No pedigree can be safely and certainly traced back so far; yet, undoubtedly, the Featherstones were a very ancient race, and maintained their footing here through all the long troubles of the Borders. The nucleus around which the castle has grown was a square peel, of more elaborate ornamentation than was common. It has been declared, indeed, to be "the loveliest tower in the county." At this day it forms but one feature of a splendid group of castellated buildings, with many of the walls overgrown with ivy, and with a Gothic chapel as one of its main features. Near by is the lovely little glen of Pynkinscleugh, concerning which Mother Shipton predicted strange things, as yet unrealised. In Pynkinscleugh it was that Ridley of Hardriding endeavoured to carry off the daughter of the Lord of Featherstonehaugh on her wedding-day, and caused her death thereby, for she ran between the combatants' swords; and this she did so hastily and impetuously that she was slain.

The "Willimondswick" mentioned in the ballad of Surtees was one of the very numerous Ridleys of this district. Willimontswick disputes with Unthank Hall the honour of being the birthplace of Bishop Ridley the martyr. He was, in all probability, the only peaceful man of his family, for these Ridleys were through many generations a hard fighting, hard-riding, and turbulent race. From the record of scarcely any deed of violence on the Borders is the name of a Ridley absent. The ballads tell how--

"But an' John Ridley thrust his spear
Right through Sim o' the Cuthill's wame;"

and how--

"Alec Ridley he let flee
A clothyard shaft ahint the wa';
And struck Wat Armstrong in the ee."

To such men as these the good Bishop Ridley, about to yield his body to the flames, wrote that, "as God hath set you in our stock and kindred, not for any respect to your person, but of His abundant grace and goodness, to be, as it were, the bell-wether to order and conduct the rest, so, I pray you, continue and increase in the maintenance of truth, honesty, and all true godliness." Bell-wethers they were, indeed, these Ridleys, and to some rough purpose, too.

Unthank Hall, to the tenants of which the martyr also wrote letters of farewell, is a recently rebuilt mansion, the near neighbour of Willimontswick, and on the opposite side of the Tyne to the quiet little country town of Haltwhistle. We are here again within a brief distance of the Roman wall. Haltwhistle may have been garrisoned by some of the assailants of that stupendous rampart. There are ancient earthworks on the site of what is known as the Castle Hill, one side of which is defended by an artificial breastwork of precipitous appearance. The former "Castle of Hautwysill" is now no more than a tall barn-like building, with a loop-holed turret resting on corbels. The chancel of the church is a survival from the old rough-riding days, and dates back to the thirteenth century; but there was too much fighting in the little town for much that was ancient in it to have survived into the present century. Haltwhistle has now a growing population of 1,600, and is as sweetly situated as heart could desire.

This little town is made attractive not only by its neighbourhood to the Tyne, but through the wild and fantastic beauty of Haltwhistle Burn, which flows down from the desolate, dreary, and cruel-looking Northumberland lakes, where the winds that ruffle the surface of these forlorn waters

"Wither drearily on barren moors."

Yet there are fine sights enough above the ravine through which Haltwhistle Burn has ravaged and torn its way--wide views of fir-clad slopes, and wide-stretching farm-lands, and rolling moors, and dark precipices, and the ever-pleasant valley of the Tyne. Such another sight there is, with even a more extensive prospect, from the heights above the little hamlet of Bardon Mill. Southward lie Willimontswick, and the ancient chapel of Beltingham, and Ridley Hall, and the confluence of the Allen and the Tyne, and the grey, bright-looking village of Haydon Bridge; northward may be seen the important Roman stations of Vindolana and Borcovicus, and the far-reaching, dipping, and bending line of the Roman wall. Backwards, over the ground which we have traversed from Cross Fell, Saddleback and Skiddaw are in sight, and half the peaks, fells, and ridges of the great Cumbrian group.

A little below Bardon Mill the River Allen joins the South Tyne. What the Rede is to the northern, the Allen is to the southern branch of the river--the largest and longest of its affluents. It is formed by the joining of two streams which rise on the extreme southern borders of Northumberland, and which flow some three or four miles apart until they are within about five miles of their confluence with the Tyne. The Allen is one of the loveliest and most retired of streams, flowing between picturesque rocks, and sheltered and darkened by hanging woods. There are here

"Steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion."

Of all northern rivers this is the one which is most praised for the wild and yet tranquil variety of its scenery, for the charms which the quiet angler finds in the turns and windings of its rocky pass, and for the beauty and diversity of the foliage which clothes its steeply ascending vale.

At Haydon Bridge, when the water is low, there lies a great expanse of shingle, polished into whiteness by the floods. White are the houses also, with roofs of bluish stone; and there is an aspect of great quaintness about the little village, which seems to have been founded in Saxon times, and to have borrowed much of its older building material from the Roman wall. Of its former state there are still some small remainders in the chancel of an old chapel, and a cottage here and there on the height. It was at Haydon Bridge that John Martin, the painter of "The Last Judgment," and "The Plains of Heaven," and "Belshazzar's Feast," was born, and here, up to his twelfth birthday, he evoked the wonder of the simple folk with his rough drawings, a number of which, with the family eccentricity, he once exhibited upon his father's housetop.

From here it would be easy to make an excursion into King Arthur's country. Not, indeed, to

"The island-valley of Avilion,
Where falls not hail, nor rain, nor any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly."

Avilion is Glastonbury, it is said; but all about this ruder country there is store of Arthurian legend, mostly of that coarser sort to which belongs the story of the "bag pudding" which "the Queen next morning fried." The King and Queen Guinevere, the King's hounds, and the lords and ladies of his court, lie all together in an enchanted sleep in a great hall beneath the Castle of Sewingshields, near to the Roman wall; or so the legends say.

And now we are once more approaching Warden Mill. To the North and South Tyne we must henceforth bid adieu. From this point they will flow together in the same bed. One has come down from the Scottish borders, a holiday stream, for forty-three miles; the other, not without doing its share of work by the way, has hurried over thirty-nine miles from the Cumberland fells. Thirty-six miles more, over half of which extent the Tyne is a great labouring, work-a-day river, and we shall meet the breezes and the billows of the northern sea.

THE TYNE.