There is no one in the county of Westmoreland to-day who would care to take their children when plagued with the kink-cough up to Cartmel-fell, on chance of clipping a hair from the cross on an ass's back and then tying it round the bairn's neck as a sovereign remedy for the troublesome whoop. But if it had not been for William Pearson I doubt if we should have known that the Winster dalesfolk, notwithstanding that the Cross was set here in the clearing so many centuries ago, were actually fire-worshippers and carrying on the rites of Baal with their Beltane-fires as late as the year of Our Lord 1840. Pearson tells us he talked with a farmer who had actually been present at the sacrifice by fire of a calf in this neighbourhood, and that there were two places within the memory of men then living, Fell Side in Crosthwaite and Hodge Hill on Cartmel-fell, where, to prevent the death of calves after birth, large fires were kindled in the open air near to the farm house and a living calf laid upon them and burnt to death. As for the reality of this superstitious relic of sun-worship, in the year 1840, William Pearson actually witnessed it here in Crosthwaite, and, with a quotation from his paper {148} upon this point, I will close this notice of his life and work: 'The Need Fire has again made its appearance. There is at present a rumour of a dreadful epidemic among cattle, which has shown itself in different places in this part of our country, to which it has been coming slowly up from the South, where it prevailed last summer. On Sunday afternoon, the 15th of last November, returning from Kendal by way of Brigsteer, when I reached the brow of the hill that overlooks that pleasant village, and from whence there is a glorious prospect, I was somewhat surprised to see, in Crosthwaite, two or three large masses of white smoke "rising up like the smoke of a furnace." I thought it was lime-burning, from some kilns that are not usually occupied. But when I reached Crosthwaite, I found myself in the immediate neighbourhood of one of these "smokes," which was rising very thickly below the Church Tower. I enquired of a young woman standing in the road what was the meaning of all this smoke. "Oh," said she, "it is the Need Fire." Well, thought I, much as I have heard of it, I have never seen the Need Fire. I will not miss this opportunity of having ocular evidence of all its {149} mysteries. On reaching che spot, I found the fire burning in the narrow lane called Kirk Lane, within about twenty yards of the Kirk Tower, and about half a dozen cattle huddled together and kept close to the fire, and amongst the smoke, by a number of men and boys standing on each side of them, in that narrow lane. Sometimes they drove them through the fire, and such was the thickness of the smoke that I could scarcely perceive the actors in this strange ceremony--men and cattle. "So," said I, "you are giving them a smoke." "Yes," replied the owner of