_Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes!_
Happy may one be in the fairies of our own country. Happy, even yet, are they who can find the Oreads of the hill, Dryads of the wood, nymphs of river, marsh, plough-land, pasture, and heath. Now, leaving to Greece the things that are Greek, here for an apologue follows a plain recital of facts within the knowledge of every man of the Cheviots.
There is in that country, not far from Otterburn--between Otterburn and the Scottish border--a remote hamlet consisting of a few white cottages, farm buildings and a shingle-spired church. It is called Dryhope, and lies in a close valley, which is watered by a beck or burn, known as the Dryhope Burn. It is deeply buried in the hills. Spurs of the Cheviots as these are, they rise to a considerable elevation, but are pasturable nearly to the top. There, however, where the heather begins, peat-hags and morasses make dangerous provision, from which the flocks are carefully guarded. It is the practice of the country for the shepherds to be within touch of them all night, lest some, feeding upward (as sheep always do) should reach the summits and be lost or mired inextricably. These upland stretches, consequently, are among the most desolate spots to be found in our islands. I have walked over them myself within recent years and met not a human soul, nor beast of man's taming. Ravens, curlews, peewits, a lagging fox or limping hare; such, with the unsensed Spirits of the Earth, will be your company. In particular I traversed (in 1902) the great upland called Limmer Fell, and saw the tarn--Silent Water--and the trees called The Seven Sisters. They are silver birches of remarkable size and beauty. One of them is fallen. Standing there, looking north-west, the Knapp may be seen easily, some five miles away; and the extent of the forest with which it is covered can be estimated. A great and solemn wood that is, which no borderer will ever enter if he can help it.
There was--and may be still--a family of shepherds living in Dryhope of the name of King. When these things occurred there were alive George King, a patriarch of seventy-five years, Miranda King, his daughter-in-law, widow of his son, who was supposed to be a middle-aged woman, and a young man, Andrew King, her only son. That was the family; and there was a girl, Bessie Prawle, daughter of a neighbour, very much in and out of the house, and held by common report to be betrothed to Andrew. She used to help the widow in domestic matters, see to the poultry, milk the cow, churn the butter, press the cheeses. The Kings were independent people, like the dalesmen of Cumberland, and stood, as the saying is, upon their own foot-soles. Old King had a tenant-right upon the fell, and owed no man anything.