The following additional extract from a letter of Mr. Rawnsley’s (Christmas, 1882) casts light, both on the Hawkshead beck and fountain, and on the stone seat in the market square, referred to in the fourth book of ‘The Prelude’.

“Postlethwaite of the Sun Inn at Hawkshead, has a father aged 82, who can remember that there was a stone bench, not called old Betty’s, but Old Jane’s Stone, on which she used to spread nuts and cakes for the scholars of the Grammar School, but that it did not stand where the Market Hall now is, and no one ever remembers a stone or stone-bench standing there.  This stone or stone-bench stood about opposite the Red Lion inn, in front of the little row of houses that run east and west, just as you pass out of the village in a northerly direction by the Red Lion.  This stone or stone-bench is not associated with dark pine trees, but they may have passed away root and branch in an earlier generation.

Next and most interesting, I think, as showing that I was right in the matter of the famous fountain, or spring in the garden, behind Betty Braithwaite’s house.  There exists in Hawkshead near this house a covered-in place or shed, to which all the village repair for their drinking-water, and always have done so.  It is known by the name of the Spout House, and the water—­which flows all the year from a longish spout, with an overflow one by its side—­comes direct from the little drop well in Betty B.’s garden, after having its voice stripped and boxed therein; and, falling out of the spout into a deep stone basin and culvert, runs through the town to join the Town Beck.

So wedded are the Hawkshead folk to this, their familiar fountainhead, that though water is supplied in stand-pipes now from a Reservoir, the folks won’t have it, and come here to this spout-house, bucket and jug in hand, morn, noon and night.  I have never seen anything so like a continental scene at the gathering at Hawkshead spout-house.

Lastly, there is a very aged thorn-tree in the churchyard—­blown over but propped up—­in which the forefathers of the hamlet used to sit as boys (in the thorn, that is, not the churchyard), and which has been worn smooth by many Hawkshead generations.  The tradition is, that Wordsworth used to sit a deal in it when at school.”

Ed.

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NOTE III.—­THE HAWKSHEAD MORNING WALK:  SUMMER VACATION

(See p. 197, ‘The Prelude’, book iv. ll. 323-38)