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Dunmail is a legendary king of Cumbria associated with Dunmail Raise. According to tradition, Dunmail was the last king of Cumbria, and buried beneath the cairn at Dunmail Raise after having been slain by the English. Dunmail Raise, meaning "Dyfnwal's Cairn", may well be named after the historical Dyfnwal ab Owain, King of Strathclyde.
According to local legend, Dunmail, king of Cumbria, was attacked by the combined forces of Edmund and Malcolm and retreated into the heart of the Lake District. Dunmail met the kings in battle in the pass that divides Grasmere from Thirlmere but was defeated, was killed in the fight (it is said at the hands of Edmund himself) and his sons were subsequently blinded by the victors. Some of the surviving Cumbrians, taken prisoner by Edmund, were ordered to collect rocks to pile on Dunmail's body, forming a cairn that still exists to this day and gives the pass its modern name, Dunmail Raise. Others of Dunmail's warriors fled with the crown of Cumbria, climbing into the mountains to Grisedale Tarn below Helvellyn, where they threw it into the depths to be safe until some future time when Dunmail would come again to lead them. Every year the warriors are said to return to the tarn, recover the crown and carry it down to the cairn on Dunmail Raise. There they strike the cairn with their spears and a voice is heard from deep inside the stones, saying "Not yet, not yet; wait awhile, my warriors." [1]
Dunmail features as a character (and his death is described) in the classic story of the Vikings in Lakeland Thorstein of the Mere by W. G. Collingwood. He is mentioned briefly in Cue for Treason by Geoffrey Trease.
At an earlier date, the story was versified by William Wordsworth:
As far as written history is concerned, the name of the "Dumbalrase stones" is recorded in a map of the 1570s, [2] and the association of the cairn with the king is recorded as early as the seventeenth century, when John Ogilby wrote that "Dunmail-Raise-Stones" were erected by a Cumbrian ruler of that name to mark the frontier of his kingdom. [3] The specific association with the historic invasion of the Kingdom of the Cumbrians in 945 appears repeatedly in the 1700s, in the works of the antiquaries Thomas West, [4] Thomas Pennant. [5] and William Gilpin. [6] Joseph Nicolson and Richard Burn gave both versions of the story. [7]
William Wordsworth mentions the legend of Dunmail in Canto First of 'The Waggoner', ll. 209-14; composed 1805, published 1819. [8]
Cumbria is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders to the north, Northumberland and County Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south-east, Lancashire to the south, and the Irish Sea to the west. Its largest settlement is the city of Carlisle.
The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region and national park in North West England. It is primarily famous for its mountain, lake, and coastal scenery, and for its literary associations with William Wordsworth and other Lake Poets, Beatrix Potter, and John Ruskin.
Helvellyn is a mountain in the English Lake District, the highest point of the Helvellyn range, a north–south line of mountains to the north of Ambleside, between the lakes of Thirlmere and Ullswater.
Grasmere is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Lakes, in the Westmorland and Furness district of Cumbria, England, and situated in the centre of the Lake District and named after its adjacent lake. Grasmere lies within the historic county of Westmorland. The Ambleside and Grasmere ward had an estimated population of 4,592 in 2019. William and Dorothy Wordsworth, the 'Lake Poets', lived in Grasmere for 14 years and called it "the loveliest spot that man hath ever found."
Buttermere is a lake in the Lake District in North West England. It has a length of approximately 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) and a maximum width of 0.54 kilometres (0.34 mi), an area of 0.9 square kilometres (0.35 sq mi), a maximum depth of 28.6 metres (94 ft), and a surface elevation of 100.3 metres (329 ft) above sea level. Its primary outflow is Buttermere Dubs, a short stream which connects the lake to Crummock Water. From Crummock Water the River Cocker flows to Cockermouth, where it joins the River Derwent and finally enters the Irish Sea at Workington. The lake is in the unitary authority of Cumberland, and the ceremonial county of Cumbria.
Susanna Blamire was an English Romantic poet, sometimes known as 'The Muse of Cumberland' because many of her poems represent rural life in the county and, therefore, provide a valuable contradistinction to those amongst the poems of William Wordsworth that regard the same subject, in addition to those of the other Lake Poets, especially those of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and in addition to those of Lord Byron, on whose The Prisoner of Chillon her works may have had an influence. Blamire composed much of her poetry outside, sat beside a stream in her garden at Thackwood. She also played the guitar and the flageolet, both of which she used in the process of the composition of her poetry.
Long Meg and Her Daughters is a Neolithic stone circle situated north-east of Penrith near Little Salkeld in Cumbria, North West England. One of around 1,300 stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany, it was constructed as a part of a megalithic tradition that emerged during Neolithic, and continued into the Early Bronze Age. The stone circle is the third widest in England, behind Avebury in Wiltshire, and only slightly smaller than Stanton Drew in Somerset, consisting of 59 stones set in an east/west oval configuration measuring 340 ft on its long axis. There may originally have been as many as 70 stones. Long Meg herself is a 12 ft high monolith of red sandstone 80 ft to the southwest of the circle made by her Daughters. Long Meg is marked with examples of megalithic art including a cup and ring mark, a spiral, and rings of concentric circles.
The Duddon is a river of north-west England. It rises at a point 1,289 feet (393 m) above sea level near the Three Shire Stone at the highest point of Wrynose Pass. The river descends to the sea over a course of about 15 miles (24 km) before entering the Irish Sea at the Duddon Sands. In total, from source to the westernmost part of Duddon Sands, its length is 43 kilometres (27 mi). For its entire length the Duddon forms the boundary between the historic counties of Lancashire and Cumberland and since local government re-organisation in 1974 the Duddon has been in the ceremonial county of Cumbria.
The Rothay is a spate river of the Lake District in north-west England. Its name comes from Old Norse and translates literally as the red one. This has come to mean trout river. It rises close to Rough Crag above Dunmail Raise at a point about 1542 feet above sea level. Its catchment area covers Grasmere Common including Easedale Tarn, the southern flanks of Fairfield, and several of the fells to the east of Dunmail Raise, including Great Rigg, Rydal Fell, Scandale Fell and Heron Pike.
Black Combe is a fell in the south-west corner of the Lake District National Park, England, just 4 miles (6.4 km) from the Irish Sea. It lies near the west coast of Cumbria in the borough of Copeland and more specifically, in the ancient district of Millom. It is 1,970 ft (600 m) high and stands in isolation, some 10 mi (16 km) away from any higher ground; this factor offers an excellent all-round panoramic view of land and sea, weather permitting.
Cumbrian dialect or Cumberland dialect is a local dialect of Northern England in decline, spoken in Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire North of the Sands. Sounding similar and not to be confused with the area's extinct Celtic language, Cumbric. Some parts of Cumbria have a more North-East English sound to them. Whilst clearly spoken with a Northern English accent, the Cumbrian dialect shares much vocabulary with Scots. A Cumbrian Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore by William Rollinson exists, as well as a more contemporary and lighthearted Cumbrian Dictionary and Phrase Book.
Kentmere is a valley, village and civil parish in the Lake District National Park, a few miles from Kendal in the Westmorland and Furness district of Cumbria, England. Historically in Westmorland, at the 2011 census Kentmere had a population of 159.
Dyfnwal ab Owain was a tenth-century King of Strathclyde. He was a son of Owain ap Dyfnwal, King of Strathclyde, and seems to have been a member of the royal dynasty of Strathclyde. At some point in the ninth- or tenth century, the Kingdom of Strathclyde expanded substantially southwards. As a result of this extension far beyond the valley of the River Clyde, the realm became known as the Kingdom of Cumbria. By 927, the kingdom seems to have reached as far south as the River Eamont.
Dunmail Raise is the name of a large cairn in the English Lake District, which may have been an old boundary marker. It has given its name to the mountain pass of Dunmail Raise, on which it stands. This mountain pass forms part of the only low-level route through the mountains between the northern and southern sides of the Lake District. According to local tradition, the cairn marked the burial of a king named Dunmail who was slain by Saxons. The place name itself may well be derived from the name of the historical Dyfnwal ab Owain, King of Strathclyde.
The history of Cumbria as a county of England begins with the Local Government Act 1972. Its territory and constituent parts however have a long history under various other administrative and historic units of governance. Cumbria is an upland, coastal and rural area, with a history of invasions, migration and settlement, as well as battles and skirmishes between the English and the Scots.
Grisedale Tarn is a tarn in the Lake District of England between Fairfield and Dollywagon Pike.
Lodore Falls is a waterfall in Cumbria, England, close to Derwentwater and downstream from Watendlath. The falls are located on the beck that flows from Watendlath Tarn, and tumble more than 100 feet (30 m) over a steep cascade into the Borrowdale Valley. Although it is spectacular in the rainy season, it can dry to a trickle in the summer.
Robert Anderson (1770–1833), was an English labouring class poet from Carlisle. He was best known for his ballad-style poems in Cumbrian dialect.
Little Langdale is a valley in the Lake District, England, containing Little Langdale Tarn and a hamlet also called Little Langdale. A second tarn, Blea Tarn, is in a hanging valley between Little Langdale and the larger Great Langdale to the north. Little Langdale is flanked on the south and southwest by Wetherlam and Swirl How, and to the north and northwest by Lingmoor Fell and Pike of Blisco. The valley descends to join with Great Langdale above Elter Water.
The history of medieval Cumbria has several points of interest. The region's status as a borderland coping with 400 years of warfare is one. The attitude of the English central government, at once uninterested and deeply interested, is another. As a border region, of geopolitical importance, Cumbria changed hands between the Angles, Norse, Strathclyde Brythons, Picts, Normans, Scots and English; and the emergence of the modern county is also worthy of study.