"In the calm spacious days that seem so long ago," she wrote, a little before her death, "I loved to wander on the Troutbeck fell. Sometimes I had with me an old sheepdog, Nip, or Fly; more often I went alone. But never lonely. There was company of gentle sheep, and wild flowers and singing waters." Sometimes strange things happened in the solitary places. "Another time all by myself alone I watched a weird dance … It was far away in that lonely wilderness behind the table-land on Troutbeck Tongue. In the midst of this waste of yellow bent-grass and stones there is a patch of green grass and a stunted thorn."

"Round the tree - round and round in measured canter - went four of the wild fell ponies. Round and round, then checked and turned; round and round reversed; arched necks, tossing manes, tails streaming. I watched a while, crouching behind a boulder. Who had taught them? Who had learned them to "dance the heys" in that wilderness? Oftentimes I have seen managed horses cantering round the sawdust ring under a circus tent; but these half-wild youngsters had never been handled by man …"

Lane, Margaret. The Tale of Beatrix Potter: A Biography.
New York: Frederick Warne: & Co., 1946, p. 140.