During these wintery months, accordingly, there had been all the free, open-hearted hospitality of the day, displayed throughout the wide manors of Hawkshead, Coniston, and Yewdale, and in the neighboring demesnes of Rydal, and something more even than the wonted merriment and joviality of that sacred yet joyous season. Many of the grand baronial families of the vicinity, attracted as much, perhaps, by the singular and romantic interest attaching to the great events, which had filled all the north country with the rumor of their fame as with the blast of a martial trumpet, as by the ties of caste and kindred, had visited the castle palace of Sir Yvo de Taillebois, almost in the guise of bridal guests; for the approaching nuptials of the fair Guendolen with Aradas the Brave were openly announced, although the ceremonial was deferred until the balmy days of spring-time, and the genial month of May. The Cliffords of Barden, the Howards, from Naworth and Carlisle, the Percy, from his already famous strength of Alnwick, the Scropes, the Umfravilles, the Nevilles, from their almost royal principality of Middleham on the Ure, had all in turn tasted the Christmas cheer, and shared the older sports of Yule, in the wild recesses of Kendale; had congratulated the young and noble victor on his double conquest, scarce knowing which was most to be envied, that of the felon knight in the black lists of Lancaster, or that of the soft ladye in the sweetest valley of the lone lake country. But now, the wintery days had passed away, the snipe was heard drumming every where on vibrated pinions, as he soared and dived in mid-air over the deep morasses, in which he annually bred unmolested; the swallows had returned from their unknown pilgrimage to the spicy isles of ocean, or the central waters of untrodden Africa, and might be seen skimming with rapid wing, the blue mirror of Winandermere, and dimpling its surface in pursuit of their insect prey; the cuckoo had been heard in the birch-woods among the ghylls, and in the huge sycamores around the village garths; the heathcocks blew their clarion call of amorous defiance from every heath-clad knoll of the wide moorlands; the cushat had donned the iris hues which paint his swelling neck in the spring days of love and courtship; the meadows were alive with crocuses, brown-streaked and purple, white and golden; the snow-drops had raised their silvery bells, almost before the earth was clear of its winter covering; the primroses gemmed all the banks with their pale saffron blossoms, the air was redolent with the delicious perfume of the violets.