It was not the first time the phenomenon had been
seen within historic times, on the same fell-side, and at the same time
of year. Canon Rawnsley writes to me,

"I have an idea that the fact that it took place at midsummer eve
(June 27), the eve of the Feast of St. John, upon which occasion the
shepherds hereabout used to light bonfires on the hills (no doubt a
relic of the custom of the Beltane fires of old Norse days, perhaps of
earlier sun-worship festivals of British times), may have had
something to do with the naming of the mountain Blencathara of which
Southen-fell (or Shepherd's-fell, as the name implies) is part.
Blencathara, we are told, may mean the Hill of Demons, or the haunted
hill. My suggestion is that the old sun-worshippers, who met in
midsummer eve on Castrigg at the Druid circle or Donn-ring, saw just
the same phenomenon as Strichet and Lancaster saw upon Southen-fell,
and hence the name. Nay, perhaps the Druid circle was built where it
is, because it was well in view of the Demon Hill."

Ed.]

[Footnote R: This is a fact of which I have been an eye-witness.--W. W.
1793.]

[Footnote S: The quotation is from Collins' 'The Passions', l. 60.
Compare 'Personal Talk', l. 26.--Ed.]

[Footnote T: Alluding to this passage of Spenser:

... Her angel face
As the great eye of Heaven shined bright,
And made a sunshine in that shady place. W. W. 1793.

This passage is in 'The Fairy Queen', book I. canto iii. stanza 4.--Ed.]

[Footnote U: Compare Dr. John Brown:

But the soft murmur of swift-gushing rills,
Forth issuing from the mountain's distant steep
(Unheard till now, and now scarce heard), proclaim'd
All things at rest.

This Dr. John Brown--a singularly versatile English divine
(1717-1766)--was one of the first, as Wordsworth pointed put, to lead
the way to a true estimate of the English Lakes. His description of the
Vale of Keswick, in a letter to a friend, is as fine as anything in
Gray's 'Journal'. Wordsworth himself quotes the lines given in this
footnote in the first section of his 'Guide through the District of the
Lakes'.--Ed.]

* * * * *

LINES WRITTEN WHILE SAILING IN A BOAT AT EVENING

Composed 1789.--Published 1798

[This title is scarcely correct. It was during a solitary walk on the
banks of the Cam that I was first struck with this appearance, and
applied it to my o