No More Learning

ii. p. 1831. )--Ed. ]


[Footnote F: There is a slight inconsistency here. The conversation is
represented as taking place in the evening (see l. 227). --Ed. ]


[Footnote G: It may be proper to inform some readers, that a sheep-fold
in these mountains is an unroofed building of stone walls, with
different divisions. It is generally placed by the side of a brook, for
the convenience of washing the sheep; but it is also useful as a shelter
for them, and as a place to drive them into, to enable the shepherds
conveniently to single out one or more for any particular purpose. --W.
W. 1800. ]



From the Fenwick note it will be seen that Michael's sheep-fold, in
Green-head Ghyll, existed--at least the remains of it--in 1843. Its
site, however, is now very difficult to identify.
There is a sheep-fold
above Boon Beck, which one passes immediately on entering the common,
going up Green-head Ghyll. It is now "finished," and used when required.
There are remains of walling, much higher up the ghyll; but these are
probably the work of miners, formerly engaged there. Michael's cottage
had been destroyed when the poem was written, in 1800. It stood where
the coach-house and stables of "the Hollins" now stand. But one who
visits Green-head Ghyll, and wishes to realize Michael in his old
age--as described in this poem--should ascend the ghyll till it almost
reaches the top of Fairfield; where the old man, during eighty years,

'had learned the meaning of all winds,
Of blasts of every tone,'

and where he

'had been alone,
Amid the heart of many thousand mists,
That came to him, and left him, on the heights. '

By so doing he will be better able to realize the spirit of the poem,
than by trying to identify the site either of the "unfinished
sheep-fold," or of the house named the "Evening Star. " What Wordsworth
said to the Hon. Mr. Justice Coleridge in reference to 'The Brothers'
has been quoted in the note to that poem, p. 203. On the same occasion
he remarked, in reference to 'Michael':

"'Michael' was founded on the son of an old couple having become
dissolute, and run away from his parents; and on an old shepherd
having been seven years in building up a sheep-fold in a solitary
valley. "

('Memoirs of Wordsworth', by the late Bishop of Lincoln, vol. ii. p.
305.