The ghosts of two ill-fated lovers haunt Yewdale Beck, the victims in a centuries-old tale of abduction, murder, and revenge. The spirit of a Victorian smuggler disturbs a young family in 1960’s Skelwith; and Dow Crag is home to an ancient raven, condemned by a Druid to live for millennia.
Under Yewdale Bridge the beck burbles over a bed of smooth stone, its waters glossed with the warm patina of antique pewter, like the dull sheen of old tankards in a tavern, and with just as many stories to tell.
A little way up the lane, The Cumbria Way leaves Shepherd’s Bridge to shyly handrail Yewdale Beck through Blackguards Wood to Low Yewdale, where it forks right to the dappled shade of Tarn Hows Wood, and beyond to the tarns themselves.
On the way, the outstretched limbs of broadleaf trees escape their leafy boas to point bony fingers earthward as if betraying unseen secrets. And over the lush green canopy and carpet of summer bracken, something more imposing looms. The vicious crags of the Yewdale fells rise like chiselled fangs of volcanic fury. Holme Fell is a mauve castle of rugged towers and ramparts, a primeval stronghold keeping eternal watch over the leafy pastures below.
A shower of summer rain softens the light, and as beams of sun slowly re-emerge to spotlight the higher crags of Wetherlam Edge, a rainbow forms over the Tilberthwaite Fells, imparting an air of eerie mystery. And such a feeling is fitting, as the banks of Yewdale Beck are supposedly haunted by the victims of an old and murderous misdeed.
The Giant and the Bower Maiden
Writing in 1849, Dr Alexander Gibson recounts a tale told to him by a racy, terse and poetic “rustic informant”. By Gibson’s time, after a century of neglect, Coniston Hall with its “ivy clad turret-like chimneys” had been repurposed as a barn. Until around 1650, it was the family seat of the Le Fleming family, the Knights of Coniston. When occasion demanded, it was the knight’s duty to raise a small army of men-at-arms to repel marauding bands of Scots or Irish. According to the tale, one of the knights had his efforts galvanised by the arrival of incomer from Troutbeck. The new recruit was a giant of a man, who had recently built himself a hut and taken up residence in “the lonely dell of the tarns” (now Tarn Hows). Standing 9’6” in his stockinged feet, this robust fellow was known as Girt Will O’ The Tarns. When not employed as foot soldier, Will was prized locally as an agricultural labourer.
Now, Le Fleming had a daughter named, Eva who was greatly admired for “her beauty and gentleness, her high-bred dignity and her humble virtues”. Lady Eva, as she was known, had a romantic inclination and loved to row for hours on the lake or stroll through the woods surrounding it. On such excursions, she was invariably accompanied by her favourite bower maiden, Barbara. Eva loved Barbara like a sister, and Barbara herself was so fair, she was capable of turning as many heads as her mistress, but despite a string of local suitors, Barbara only had eyes for Le Fleming’s falconer, a man named (fittingly), Dick Hawksley.
One fine evening, following days of heavy rain, Eva summoned Barbara for a moonlit stroll along the lake shore. As they made their way through the coppiced woods at the head of the lake, Barbara recounted how, on several recent occasions, she had been accosted by Girt Will as she rode to Skelwith to visit her family. Indeed, the last time, he had gone so far as to try and snatch her horse’s rein and might have pulled her from her mount had she not reacted quickly and spurred her steed into a canter. Just as Lady Eva was expressing her shock and indignation at such impertinence, a rustle in bushes cut her short, and in an instant Girt Will appeared. He straightaway snatched up Barbara with the ease that any ordinary man might lift a child, then set off at full tilt into the trees. Barbara’s screams quickly roused Eva from her momentary stupefaction, and she rushed back to the hall to summon help. Dick Hawksley and a few others gave chase on foot, while Eva’s brothers fetched their swords and called for their horses to be saddled.
The pursuers cornered their quarry where Yewdale Beck forms a small pool, known as Cauldron Dub, near Far End cottages on the outskirts of Coniston. With Barbara now a burden and an impediment to fight or flight, Girt Will perpetrated an act of barbaric callousness and hurled his helpless victim into the beck. The beck was in spate after days of heavy rain, and the raging torrent swiftly swallowed Barbara. Dick Hawksley wasted no time in diving in after her. Fleetingly, he reappeared pulling Barbara towards the shore, but the current was too strong, and the entwined lovers were swept headlong downstream. The stunned onlookers quickly divided into two parties, some running along the bank in the hope of affecting a rescue, while the others set off in pursuit of a Girt Will, who had taken advantage of their distraction to hot foot it toward Yewdale.
Any hopes of dragging the lovers from the swollen beck were dashed when they reached Yewdale bridge. The constriction of the channel under the stone arch forced the turbulent waters into a much faster surge, and Dick and Barbara were quickly swept from view.
Meanwhile, their avengers caught up with Girt Will between Low and High Yewdale. Wielding their swords, they succeeded in dodging his swinging club long enough to inflict a myriad of mortal cuts upon his person. Indeed, it was said there was not sufficient skin left on his body to fashion a tobacco pouch. A twelve-foot mound near the path from High Yewdale to Tarn Hows Wood has ever since been known as the Giant’s Grave.
Barbara and Dick remained lost for several days until their drowned bodies washed up on the shore of the lake, still entwined in a lovers’ clinch. The tragic violence of their deaths did not afford a quiet passage to the grave, however, and their spirits are said to haunt the stretch of Yewdale Beck between Cauldron Dub and the bridge.
The Spirit of a Smuggler
Today, below a shifting procession of pregnant cloud and shafts of sun, the waters of Tarn Hows glisten with the steely polish of armour plate, feathered with pinnate patterns of over-hanging rowan leaves and dotted with bunches of blood-red berries.
Beyond the tarns, I leave the Cumbria Way to climb to one of the finest viewpoints in the region, the low summit of Black Crag. Windermere and Coniston Water stretch out towards the Irish Sea like languid slivers of fallen sky, but as clouds gather in the west, Wetherlam and Langdale Pikes fade to grey, the spectral impressions of fells. They mark the bounds of bootlegger country, and it is the ghost of a bootlegger that hijacks my thoughts now.
In 1853, local papers excitedly reported the arrest of local smuggler and illicit whiskey distiller, Lanty Slee. Lanty remains something of a Robin Hood figure in the popular imagination, famous for robbing the excise men of their liquor duties by selling cheap moonshine (known as Mountain Dew) to the poor. In 1853, the excise men uncovered one of Slee’s stills in a purpose-dug cave in a field border to the west of Black Crag.
While the newspapers reported Lanty as resident at High Arnside Farm at the time of this arrest, contemporary historians like H S Cowper placed him at neighbouring Low Arnside. It is possible, he rented both properties at different times, or even together. One person with a special reason for believing Lanty lived at Low Arnside is Gordon Fox. Gordon and his wife, Barbara moved into the Low Arnside Farm in the early sixties, and they would soon come to associate Lanty with a different kind of spirit.
When I posted an article about Lanty, earlier this year, Gordon got in touch to share his story. Here it is in his own words.
“As you know Low Arnside is a most beautiful but remote lakeland farmhouse on the high fells above the Coniston road and was featured in the film, “Miss Potter”.
“In November 1961, my eldest son was almost born in the house due to his early arrival, but we did just make it to Kendal in time.
In order to ‘modernise’ the house ‘slightly’ electricity had been installed and whilst channelling the walls for the wiring the workmen discovered a dagger and a couple of lead bullets which had been buried under the plaster.
“Because of odd happenings in the house, we decided to have a Ouija board session one night and raised a spirit which gave us some very interesting information. The séance comprised my wife Barbara, myself, our friends, Stephen Darbishire, the painter and his wife the poet, Kerry Darbishire. During the course of this session, we raised the spirit of someone called Lanty Slee who told us the house was his and ‘always would be’.
“After a few more answers, he suddenly said that he could say no more. We asked why and his final remark spelt out that it was because of the presence of a ‘pure being’! Naturally we all wondered if he meant one of us. But we named all four of us and each time our question was met with, ‘no’. Then Barbara asked if it was the two months old Matthew peacefully sleeping upstairs and he answered at once, ‘yes’!..at which point all contact ceased.
“All activity in the house also ceased after that, which had recently comprised of him being so delighted with the arrival of electricity that “he” would switch the lights on and off in the middle of the night, to our already tired annoyance as new parents. So, when that all stopped it was a blessing.
“I would add that up until that time none of us had ever heard the name Lanty Slee.”
The Druid and the Immortal Raven of Dow Crag
From Black Crag and Low Arnside, I return by the eastern shores of Tarn Hows, and the high Coniston Fells command my attention once more. Wetherlam and the Old Man each dominate their own portion of the skyline but contrive to hide the majestic rock face of Dow Crag that lies beyond. Writing in 1908, W T Palmer recounts an old legend which claims Dow Crag is home to an immortal raven. Its immortality is a curse rather than a blessing, however, condemned as it is to grow ever older, frailer, and more and more world-weary, while perpetually denied the release of death.
The curse was a punishment, metered out by a Druid, for the raven’s catastrophic dereliction of duty. The bird was the Druid’s familiar. He was charged with watching over Torver as a sentinel. His job was to croak a warning when he saw the Roman army advancing. But the Druid awoke to find the Britons’ camp in flames and legionaries marching forward victorious, the raven perched atop their standard. On returning to his master, the bird faced and angry rebuke for his treachery. But he pleaded that it was not treachery but a terrible mistake. He had swooped down to attack and kill the yellow bird the Romans held proudly before them, but as his talons locked in on their target, he realised it was not a bird at all but an effigy of burnished bronze. Only then did he realise to his horror, he was too late to return and sound the alarm.
“Venerable bird,” said the Druid. “Venerable as myself and as old, I had it in mind to condemn these to die, but instead that shalt live, live on the topmost crag of Dow, till another army sweep away the Roman, and the yellow bird is carried southward over sands”.
The Romans did eventually leave southward over the sands, but to the raven’s eternal woe, the last legion became mired in a swamp on Torver Moor, where the standard bearer and his yellow bird were swallowed up. It is said they lie there still. And unless they are ever exhumed and the bird carried south over Morecambe Bay, Dow Crag will ever echo with the hoarse croaks of its ancient raven.
