But to-day we are going back to times that antedate those mediaeval church days. We are on visit bent to Roman and Viking who dwelt in sight of Skiddaw--the cleft one, in the days, 'When never a wild-rose men would braid To honour St. George and the Virgin Maid.' We dash on by Dancing Gate, a farm beyond Scalebeck, with its quaint holly trees, whose sons have never forgotten the art of dancing, on by Mirehouse with its memories of James Spedding and Thomas Carlyle and Alfred Tennyson, on under Ullock slope, and by Ravenstone till we reach an old farmhouse, quaint with its Jacobaean door-pilasters. 'For Orthwaite Hall and Overwater,' said the coachman, 'we should turn off here to {97} the right and go up the Rake,' as he slackened his paces. There was an old Norse ring about that word 'rake,' for the Icelanders still talk of their sheep '_rachan_' just as our Cumberland shepherds do; when the sheep follow one after another along the mountain side, they are hereabouts said to be 'raking,' but though we were bent on a Norse chieftain's home we refused to ascend the Rake. It was very hot and sultry, and we preferred the shady woodland of Bassenthwaite 'parks,' and so drove forward. We passed the Vicarage house and the Bassenthwaite Church, crossed a small stream, and, turning sharply by a deserted chapel towards the village, drove by the village green, thence entering a kind of meadow road, were soon in shadow, and for more than a mile went, beneath bowery oak, and fragrant larch, and gleaming hazel, along this copse-lane sweet with wild woodruff and gay with lychnis, towards the hillside opposite the Dash, where stands Orthwaite or Overthwaite Hall. It is worth while turning for a backward gaze as we ascend the hill; Bassenthwaite and the fells that close round far Derwentwater look nowhere more beautiful than from here. {98} That little tarn on our left is not Overwater, but it has its history; one hundred sheep went on the ice one wintry day, broke through, and all were drowned. The current superstition is that the pike in that tarn are as large as donkeys; whether before or after the feast of plenty accorded by the mountain sheep is not told.