If you estimate the importance of a place by its size you would never bestow a second glance at Mawm, even if the beam of bigness in your eye permitted you to see it, for the hamlet is a mere mote among the mountains; a speck of grey upon the moors. If you doze for twenty seconds you may pass through it in your car and find when you rouse yourself no hint of its existence; and you will have missed—what people with beams in their eyes must often miss—a pleasing picture in shotted green and grey that you might have carried away with you, and that would have enriched your gallery of memories through all the years. Like a humble lodge at the entrance gate of the park which holds some lordly dwelling-house, Mawm stands at the junction of three roads one of which brings the traveller from the amenities of the railway, five miles distant, whilst the others transport him at once to the heart of the moors and the deep cold shadows of the Pennines. From those wild heights the winter gales sweep down upon the hamlet, lashing it with whips of ice and half burying it in snow, bracing and hardening men of Viking blood, and sending to their rest beneath the graveyard sod at Kirkby Mawm, lower down the valley, those of softer breed. In summer it is still wind-swept; but the breezes are kindlier (though still rough and sharp-toothed), and they load themselves with the fragrant spices of the moors—the sweetness of heather and mountain berries and peaty-bog. And at all seasons of the year the air is pure as purity itself. But Mawm is a guardian of other and rarer treasures than these. Beyond the village, but only a few strides away, great inland cliffs that are the wonder of all who see them rear their giant forms; and in the Cove and Scar you will find rock scenery whose like few countries can produce and which is unmatched in all Britain. With these gifts of air and earth and earth’s convulsions for their heritage the men of Mawm are a strong race and fortunate, though not all are conscious of their good fortune.