Book: The Roots of the Mountains

W >> William Morris >> The Roots of the Mountains



Transcribed from the 1896 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk




THE ROOTS OF THE MOUNTAINS WHEREIN IS TOLD SOMEWHAT OF THE LIVES OF
THE MEN OF BURGDALE THEIR FRIENDS THEIR NEIGHBOURS THEIR FOEMEN AND
THEIR FELLOWS IN ARMS
BY WILLIAM MORRIS




Whiles carried o'er the iron road,
We hurry by some fair abode;
The garden bright amidst the hay,
The yellow wain upon the way,
The dining men, the wind that sweeps
Light locks from off the sun-sweet heaps -
The gable grey, the hoary roof,
Here now--and now so far aloof.
How sorely then we long to stay
And midst its sweetness wear the day,
And 'neath its changing shadows sit,
And feel ourselves a part of it.
Such rest, such stay, I strove to win
With these same leaves that lie herein.



CHAPTER I. OF BURGSTEAD AND ITS FOLK AND ITS NEIGHBOURS



Once upon a time amidst the mountains and hills and falling streams
of a fair land there was a town or thorp in a certain valley. This
was well-nigh encompassed by a wall of sheer cliffs; toward the East
and the great mountains they drew together till they went near to
meet, and left but a narrow path on either side of a stony stream
that came rattling down into the Dale: toward the river at that end
the hills lowered somewhat, though they still ended in sheer rocks;
but up from it, and more especially on the north side, they swelled
into great shoulders of land, then dipped a little, and rose again
into the sides of huge fells clad with pine-woods, and cleft here and
there by deep ghylls: thence again they rose higher and steeper, and
ever higher till they drew dark and naked out of the woods to meet
the snow-fields and ice-rivers of the high mountains. But that was
far away from the pass by the little river into the valley; and the
said river was no drain from the snow-fields white and thick with the
grinding of the ice, but clear and bright were its waters that came
from wells amidst the bare rocky heaths.

The upper end of the valley, where it first began to open out from
the pass, was rugged and broken by rocks and ridges of water-borne
stones, but presently it smoothed itself into mere grassy swellings
and knolls, and at last into a fair and fertile plain swelling up
into a green wave, as it were, against the rock-wall which
encompassed it on all sides save where the river came gushing out of
the strait pass at the east end, and where at the west end it poured
itself out of the Dale toward the lowlands and the plain of the great
river.

Now the valley was some ten miles of our measure from that place of
the rocks and the stone-ridges, to where the faces of the hills drew
somewhat anigh to the river again at the west, and then fell aback
along the edge of the great plain; like as when ye fare a-sailing
past two nesses of a river-mouth, and the main-sea lieth open before
you.

Besides the river afore-mentioned, which men called the Weltering
Water, there were other waters in the Dale. Near the eastern pass,
entangled in the rocky ground was a deep tarn full of cold springs
and about two acres in measure, and therefrom ran a stream which fell
into the Weltering Water amidst the grassy knolls. Black seemed the
waters of that tarn which on one side washed the rocks-wall of the
Dale; ugly and aweful it seemed to men, and none knew what lay
beneath its waters save black mis-shapen trouts that few cared to
bring to net or angle: and it was called the Death-Tarn.

Other waters yet there were: here and there from the hills on both
sides, but especially from the south side, came trickles of water
that ran in pretty brooks down to the river; and some of these sprang
bubbling up amidst the foot-mounds of the sheer-rocks; some had cleft
a rugged and strait way through them, and came tumbling down into the
Dale at diverse heights from their faces. But on the north side
about halfway down the Dale, one stream somewhat bigger than the
others, and dealing with softer ground, had cleft for itself a wider
way; and the folk had laboured this way wider yet, till they had made
them a road running north along the west side of the stream. Sooth
to say, except for the strait pass along the river at the eastern
end, and the wider pass at the western, they had no other way (save
one of which a word anon) out of the Dale but such as mountain goats
and bold cragsmen might take; and even of these but few.

This midway stream was called the Wildlake, and the way along it
Wildlake's Way, because it came to them out of the wood, which on
that north side stretched away from nigh to the lip of the valley-
wall up to the pine woods and the high fells on the east and north,
and down to the plain country on the west and south.

Now when the Weltering Water came out of the rocky tangle near the
pass, it was turned aside by the ground till it swung right up to the
feet of the Southern crags; then it turned and slowly bent round
again northward, and at last fairly doubled back on itself before it
turned again to run westward; so that when, after its second double,
it had come to flowing softly westward under the northern crags, it
had cast two thirds of a girdle round about a space of land a little
below the grassy knolls and tofts aforesaid; and there in that fair
space between the folds of the Weltering Water stood the Thorp
whereof the tale hath told.

The men thereof had widened and deepened the Weltering Water about
them, and had bridged it over to the plain meads; and athwart the
throat of the space left clear by the water they had built them a
strong wall though not very high, with a gate amidst and a tower on
either side thereof. Moreover, on the face of the cliff which was
but a stone's throw from the gate they had made them stairs and
ladders to go up by; and on a knoll nigh the brow had built a watch-
tower of stone strong and great, lest war should come into the land
from over the hills. That tower was ancient, and therefrom the Thorp
had its name and the whole valley also; and it was called Burgstead
in Burgdale.

So long as the Weltering Water ran straight along by the northern
cliffs after it had left Burgstead, betwixt the water and the cliffs
was a wide flat way fashioned by man's hand. Thus was the water
again a good defence to the Thorp, for it ran slow and deep there,
and there was no other ground betwixt it and the cliffs save that
road, which was easy to bar across so that no foemen might pass
without battle, and this road was called the Portway. For a long
mile the river ran under the northern cliffs, and then turned into
the midst of the Dale, and went its way westward a broad stream
winding in gentle laps and folds here and there down to the out-gate
of the Dale. But the Portway held on still underneath the rock-wall,
till the sheer-rocks grew somewhat broken, and were cumbered with
certain screes, and at last the wayfarer came upon the break in them,
and the ghyll through which ran the Wildlake with Wildlake's Way
beside it, but the Portway still went on all down the Dale and away
to the Plain-country.

That road in the ghyll, which was neither wide nor smooth, the
wayfarer into the wood must follow, till it lifted itself out of the
ghyll, and left the Wildlake coming rattling down by many steps from
the east; and now the way went straight north through the woodland,
ever mounting higher, (because the whole set of the land was toward
the high fells,) but not in any cleft or ghyll. The wood itself
thereabout was thick, a blended growth of diverse kinds of trees, but
most of oak and ash; light and air enough came through their boughs
to suffer the holly and bramble and eglantine and other small wood to
grow together into thickets, which no man could pass without hewing a
way. But before it is told whereto Wildlake's Way led, it must be
said that on the east side of the ghyll, where it first began just
over the Portway, the hill's brow was clear of wood for a certain
space, and there, overlooking all the Dale, was the Mote-stead of the
Dalesmen, marked out by a great ring of stones, amidst of which was
the mound for the Judges and the Altar of the Gods before it. And
this was the holy place of the men of the Dale and of other folk
whereof the tale shall now tell.

For when Wildlake's Way had gone some three miles from the Mote-
stead, the trees began to thin, and presently afterwards was a
clearing and the dwellings of men, built of timber as may well be
thought. These houses were neither rich nor great, nor was the folk
a mighty folk, because they were but a few, albeit body by body they
were stout carles enough. They had not affinity with the Dalesmen,
and did not wed with them, yet it is to be deemed that they were
somewhat akin to them. To be short, though they were freemen, yet as
regards the Dalesmen were they well-nigh their servants; for they
were but poor in goods, and had to lean upon them somewhat. No
tillage they had among those high trees; and of beasts nought save
some flocks of goats and a few asses. Hunters they were, and
charcoal-burners, and therein the deftest of men, and they could
shoot well in the bow withal: so they trucked their charcoal and
their smoked venison and their peltries with the Dalesmen for wheat
and wine and weapons and weed; and the Dalesmen gave them main good
pennyworths, as men who had abundance wherewith to uphold their
kinsmen, though they were but far-away kin. Stout hands had these
Woodlanders and true hearts as any; but they were few-spoken and to
those that needed them not somewhat surly of speech and grim of
visage: brown-skinned they were, but light-haired; well-eyed, with
but little red in their cheeks: their women were not very fair, for
they toiled like the men, or more. They were thought to be wiser
than most men in foreseeing things to come. They were much given to
spells, and songs of wizardry, and were very mindful of the old
story-lays, wherein they were far more wordy than in their daily
speech. Much skill had they in runes, and were exceeding deft in
scoring them on treen bowls, and on staves, and door-posts and roof-
beams and standing-beds and such like things. Many a day when the
snow was drifting over their roofs, and hanging heavy on the tree-
boughs, and the wind was roaring through the trees aloft and rattling
about the close thicket, when the boughs were clattering in the wind,
and crashing down beneath the weight of the gathering freezing snow,
when all beasts and men lay close in their lairs, would they sit long
hours about the house-fire with the knife or the gouge in hand, with
the timber twixt their knees and the whetstone beside them,
hearkening to some tale of old times and the days when their banner
was abroad in the world; and they the while wheedling into growth out
of the tough wood knots and blossoms and leaves and the images of
beasts and warriors and women.

They were called nought save the Woodland-Carles in that day, though
time had been when they had borne a nobler name: and their abode was
called Carlstead. Shortly, for all they had and all they had not,
for all they were and all they were not, they were well-beloved by
their friends and feared by their foes.

Now when Wildlake's Way was gotten to Carlstead, there was an end of
it toward the north; though beyond it in a right line the wood was
thinner, because of the hewing of the Carles. But the road itself
turned west at once and went on through the wood, till some four
miles further it first thinned and then ceased altogether, the ground
going down-hill all the way: for this was the lower flank of the
first great upheaval toward the high mountains. But presently, after
the wood was ended, the land broke into swelling downs and winding
dales of no great height or depth, with a few scattered trees about
the hillsides, mostly thorns or scrubby oaks, gnarled and bent and
kept down by the western wind: here and there also were yew-trees,
and whiles the hillsides would be grown over with box-wood, but none
very great; and often juniper grew abundantly. This then was the
country of the Shepherds, who were friends both of the Dalesmen and
the Woodlanders. They dwelt not in any fenced town or thorp, but
their homesteads were scattered about as was handy for water and
shelter. Nevertheless they had their own stronghold; for amidmost of
their country, on the highest of a certain down above a bottom where
a willowy stream winded, was a great earthwork: the walls thereof
were high and clean and overlapping at the entering in, and amidst of
it was a deep well of water, so that it was a very defensible place:
and thereto would they drive their flocks and herds when war was in
the land, for nought but a very great host might win it; and this
stronghold they called Greenbury.

These Shepherd-Folk were strong and tall like the Woodlanders, for
they were partly of the same blood, but burnt they were both ruddy
and brown: they were of more words than the Woodlanders but yet not
many-worded. They knew well all those old story-lays, (and this
partly by the minstrelsy of the Woodlanders,) but they had scant
skill in wizardry, and would send for the Woodlanders, both men and
women, to do whatso they needed therein. They were very hale and
long-lived, whereas they dwelt in clear bright air, and they mostly
went light-clad even in the winter, so strong and merry were they.
They wedded with the Woodlanders and the Dalesmen both; at least
certain houses of them did so. They grew no corn; nought but a few
pot-herbs, but had their meal of the Dalesmen; and in the summer they
drave some of their milch-kine into the Dale for the abundance of
grass there; whereas their own hills and bents and winding valleys
were not plenteously watered, except here and there as in the bottom
under Greenbury. No swine they had, and but few horses, but of sheep
very many, and of the best both for their flesh and their wool. Yet
were they nought so deft craftsmen at the loom as were the Dalesmen,
and their women were not very eager at the weaving, though they
loathed not the spindle and rock. Shortly, they were merry folk
well-beloved of the Dalesmen, quick to wrath, though it abode not
long with them; not very curious in their houses and halls, which
were but little, and were decked mostly with the handiwork of the
Woodland-Carles their guests; who when they were abiding with them,
would oft stand long hours nose to beam, scoring and nicking and
hammering, answering no word spoken to them but with aye or no,
desiring nought save the endurance of the daylight. Moreover, this
shepherd-folk heeded not gay raiment over-much, but commonly went
clad in white woollen or sheep-brown weed.

But beyond this shepherd-folk were more downs and more, scantily
peopled, and that after a while by folk with whom they had no kinship
or affinity, and who were at whiles their foes. Yet was there no
enduring enmity between them; and ever after war and battle came
peace; and all blood-wites were duly paid and no long feud followed:
nor were the Dalesmen and the Woodlanders always in these wars,
though at whiles they were. Thus then it fared with these people.

But now that we have told of the folks with whom the Dalesmen had
kinship, affinity, and friendship, tell we of their chief abode,
Burgstead to wit, and of its fashion. As hath been told, it lay upon
the land made nigh into an isle by the folds of the Weltering Water
towards the uppermost end of the Dale; and it was warded by the deep
water, and by the wall aforesaid with its towers. Now the Dale at
its widest, to wit where Wildlake fell into it, was but nine furlongs
over, but at Burgstead it was far narrower; so that betwixt the wall
and the wandering stream there was but a space of fifty acres, and
therein lay Burgstead in a space of the shape of a sword-pommel: and
the houses of the kinships lay about it, amidst of gardens and
orchards, but little ordered into streets and lanes, save that a way
went clean through everything from the tower-warded gate to the
bridge over the Water, which was warded by two other towers on its
hither side.

As to the houses, they were some bigger, some smaller, as the
housemates needed. Some were old, but not very old, save two only,
and some quite new, but of these there were not many: they were all
built fairly of stone and lime, with much fair and curious carved
work of knots and beasts and men round about the doors; or whiles a
wale of such-like work all along the house-front. For as deft as
were the Woodlanders with knife and gouge on the oaken beams, even so
deft were the Dalesmen with mallet and chisel on the face of the hewn
stone; and this was a great pastime about the Thorp. Within these
houses had but a hall and solar, with shut-beds out from the hall on
one side or two, with whatso of kitchen and buttery and out-bower men
deemed handy. Many men dwelt in each house, either kinsfolk, or such
as were joined to the kindred.

Near to the gate of Burgstead in that street aforesaid and facing
east was the biggest house of the Thorp; it was one of the two
abovesaid which were older than any other. Its door-posts and the
lintel of the door were carved with knots and twining stems fairer
than other houses of that stead; and on the wall beside the door
carved over many stones was an image wrought in the likeness of a man
with a wide face, which was terrible to behold, although it smiled:
he bore a bent bow in his hand with an arrow fitted to its string,
and about the head of him was a ring of rays like the beams of the
sun, and at his feet was a dragon, which had crept, as it were, from
amidst of the blossomed knots of the door-post wherewith the tail of
him was yet entwined. And this head with the ring of rays about it
was wrought into the adornment of that house, both within and
without, in many other places, but on never another house of the
Dale; and it was called the House of the Face. Thereof hath the tale
much to tell hereafter, but as now it goeth on to tell of the ways of
life of the Dalesmen.

In Burgstead was no Mote-hall or Town-house or Church, such as we wot
of in these days; and their market-place was wheresoever any might
choose to pitch a booth: but for the most part this was done in the
wide street betwixt the gate and the bridge. As to a meeting-place,
were there any small matters between man and man, these would the
Alderman or one of the Wardens deal with, sitting in Court with the
neighbours on the wide space just outside the Gate: but if it were
to do with greater matters, such as great manslayings and blood-
wites, or the making of war or ending of it, or the choosing of the
Alderman and the Wardens, such matters must be put off to the Folk-
mote, which could but be held in the place aforesaid where was the
Doom-ring and the Altar of the Gods; and at that Folk-mote both the
Shepherd-Folk and the Woodland-Carles foregathered with the Dalesmen,
and duly said their say. There also they held their great casts and
made offerings to the Gods for the Fruitfulness of the Year, the
ingathering of the increase, and in Memory of their Forefathers.
Natheless at Yule-tide also they feasted from house to house to be
glad with the rest of Midwinter, and many a cup drank at those feasts
to the memory of the fathers, and the days when the world was wider
to them, and their banners fared far afield.

But besides these dwellings of men in the field between the wall and
the water, there were homesteads up and down the Dale whereso men
found it easy and pleasant to dwell: their halls were built of much
the same fashion as those within the Thorp; but many had a high
garth-wall cast about them, so that they might make a stout defence
in their own houses if war came into the Dale.

As to their work afield; in many places the Dale was fair with growth
of trees, and especially were there long groves of sweet chestnut
standing on the grass, of the fruit whereof the folk had much gain.
Also on the south side nigh to the western end was a wood or two of
yew-trees very great and old, whence they gat them bow-staves, for
the Dalesmen also shot well in the bow. Much wheat and rye they
raised in the Dale, and especially at the nether end thereof. Apples
and pears and cherries and plums they had in plenty; of which trees,
some grew about the borders of the acres, some in the gardens of the
Thorp and the homesteads. On the slopes that had grown from the
breaking down here and there of the Northern cliffs, and which faced
the South and the Sun's burning, were rows of goodly vines, whereof
the folk made them enough and to spare of strong wine both white and
red.

As to their beasts; swine they had a many, but not many sheep, since
herein they trusted to their trucking with their friends the
Shepherds; they had horses, and yet but a few, for they were stout in
going afoot; and, had they a journey to make with women big with
babes, or with children or outworn elders, they would yoke their oxen
to their wains, and go fair and softly whither they would. But the
said oxen and all their neat were exceeding big and fair, far other
than the little beasts of the Shepherd-Folk; they were either dun of
colour, or white with black horns (and those very great) and black
tail-tufts and ear-tips. Asses they had, and mules for the paths of
the mountains to the east; geese and hens enough, and dogs not a few,
great hounds stronger than wolves, sharp-nosed, long-jawed, dun of
colour, shag-haired.

As to their wares; they were very deft weavers of wool and flax, and
made a shift to dye the thrums in fair colours; since both woad and
madder came to them good cheap by means of the merchants of the plain
country, and of greening weeds was abundance at hand. Good smiths
they were in all the metals: they washed somewhat of gold out of the
sands of the Weltering Water, and copper and tin they fetched from
the rocks of the eastern mountains; but of silver they saw little,
and iron they must buy of the merchants of the plain, who came to
them twice in the year, to wit in the spring and the late autumn just
before the snows. Their wares they bought with wool spun and in the
fleece, and fine cloth, and skins of wine and young neat both steers
and heifers, and wrought copper bowls, and gold and copper by weight,
for they had no stamped money. And they guested these merchants
well, for they loved them, because of the tales they told them of the
Plain and its cities, and the manslayings therein, and the fall of
Kings and Dukes, and the uprising of Captains.

Thus then lived this folk in much plenty and ease of life, though not
delicately nor desiring things out of measure. They wrought with
their hands and wearied themselves; and they rested from their toil
and feasted and were merry: to-morrow was not a burden to them, nor
yesterday a thing which they would fain forget: life shamed them
not, nor did death make them afraid.

As for the Dale wherein they dwelt, it was indeed most fair and
lovely, and they deemed it the Blessing of the Earth, and they trod
its flowery grass beside its rippled streams amidst its green tree-
boughs proudly and joyfully with goodly bodies and merry hearts.



CHAPTER II. OF FACE-OF-GOD AND HIS KINDRED



Tells the tale, that on an evening of late autumn when the weather
was fair, calm, and sunny, there came a man out of the wood hard by
the Mote-stead aforesaid, who sat him down at the roots of the
Speech-mound, casting down before him a roe-buck which he had just
slain in the wood. He was a young man of three and twenty summers;
he was so clad that he had on him a sheep-brown kirtle and leggings
of like stuff bound about with white leather thongs; he bore a short-
sword in his girdle and a little axe withal; the sword with fair
wrought gilded hilts and a dew-shoe of like fashion to its sheath.
He had his quiver at his back and bare in his hand his bow unstrung.
He was tall and strong, very fair of fashion both of limbs and face,
white-skinned, but for the sun's tanning, and ruddy-cheeked: his
beard was little and fine, his hair yellow and curling, cut somewhat
close, but for its length so plenteous, and so thick, that none could
fail to note it. He had no hat nor hood upon his head, nought but a
fillet of golden beads.

As he sat down he glanced at the dale below him with a well-pleased
look, and then cast his eyes down to the grass at his feet, as though
to hold a little longer all unchanged the image of the fair place he
had just seen. The sun was low in the heavens, and his slant beams
fell yellow all up the dale, gilding the chestnut groves grown dusk
and grey with autumn, and the black masses of the elm-boughs, and
gleaming back here and there from the pools of the Weltering Water.
Down in the midmost meadows the long-horned dun kine were moving
slowly as they fed along the edges of the stream, and a dog was
bounding about with exceeding swiftness here and there among them.
At a sharply curved bight of the river the man could see a little
vermilion flame flickering about, and above it a thin blue veil of
smoke hanging in the air, and clinging to the boughs of the willows
anear; about it were a dozen menfolk clear to see, some sitting, some
standing, some walking to and fro, but all in company together: four
of were brown-clad and short-skirted like himself, and from above the
hand of one came a flash of light as the sun smote upon the steel of
his spear. The others were long-skirted and clad gayer, and amongst
them were red and blue and green and white garments, and they were
clear to be seen for women. Just as the young man looked up again,
those of them who were sitting down rose up, and those that were
strolling drew nigh, and they joined hands together, and fell to
dancing on the grass, and the dog and another one with him came up to
the dancers and raced about and betwixt them; and so clear to see
were they all and so little, being far away, that they looked like
dainty well-wrought puppets.

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