A Month in Yorkshire

Now it was tea-time, and we had tea served after the Wensleydale manner—plain cakes and currant cakes, cakes hot and cold, and butter and cheese at discretion, with liberty to call for anything else that you like; and the more you eat and drink, the more will you rise in the esteem of your hospitable entertainers. And after that I went down to the hay-field, for it was a large field, and the farmer longed to get the hay all housed before sunset. They don’t carry hay in the dales, they ‘lead’ it; and the two boys from Oxfordshire were not a little proud in having the ‘leading’ assigned to them, seeing that they had nothing to do but ride the horse that drew the hay-sledge to and fro between the barn and the ‘wind-rows.’ Another difference is, that forks are not used except to pitch the hay from the sledge to the barn, all the rest—turning the swath, making into cocks—is done with the rake and by hand. So I took a rake, and beginning at one side of the field at the same time with an old hand, worked away so stoutly, that he had much ado to keep ahead of me. And so it went on, all hands working as if there were no such thing as weariness, load after load slipping away to the barn; and I unconsciously growing meritorious. “You’re the first cockney I ever saw,” said the stalwart farmer, “that knew how to handle a rake.” Had I stayed with him a week, he would have discovered other of my capabilities equally praiseworthy. We should have accomplished the task and cleared the field; but a black cloud rose in the west, and soon sent down a heavy shower, and compelled us to huddle up the remaining rows into cocks, and leave them till morning.

Must I confess it? Haymaking with the blithesome lasses in Ulrichsthal is a much more sprightly pastime than haymaking with the Quakers in Wensleydale.

The hay harvest is an exciting time in the dales, for grass is the only crop, and the cattle have to be fed all through the long months of winter, and sometimes far into the backward spring. Hence every thing depends on the hay being carried and housed in good condition; and many an anxious look is cast at passing clouds and distant hill-tops to learn the signs of the weather. The dalesmen are expert in the use of the scythe; and numbers of them, after their own haymaking is over, migrate into Holderness and other grain-growing districts, and mow down the crops, even the wheat-fields, with remarkable celerity.

Many a hand had I to shake the next morning, when the moment came to say farewell. The student would not let me depart alone; he would go with me a few miles, and show me remarkable things by the way; and what was more, he would carry my knapsack. “You will have quite enough of it,” he said, “before your travel is over.” So I had to let him. We soon diverged from the road and began the ascent of Addleborough (Edel-burg,) that noble hill which rises on the south-east of Bainbridge, rearing its rocky crest to a height of more than fifteen hundred feet. We took the shortest way, climbing the tall fences, struggling through heather, striding across bogs, and disturbing the birds. The curlews began their circling flights above our heads, and the grouse took wing with sudden flutter, eight or ten brace starting from a little patch that, to my inexperience, seemed too small to hide a couple of chickens.

My companion talked as only a dalesman can talk—as one whose whole heart is in his subject. None but a dalesman, he said, could read Wordsworth aright, or really love him. He could talk of the history of the dale, and of the ways of the people. His great-grandmother was the first in Bainbridge who ever had a teapot. When tea first began to be heard of in those parts, a bagman called on an old farmer, and fascinated him so by praising the virtues of the new leaf from China, that with his wife’s approval he ordered a ‘stean’ to begin with. The trader ventured to suggest that a stone of tea would be a costly experiment, and sent them only a pound. Some months afterwards he called again for “money and orders,” and asked how the worthy couple liked the tea. “Them was the nastiest greens we ever tasted,” was the answer. “The parcel cam’ one morning afore dinner, so the missus tied ’em up in a cloth and put ’em into t’ pot along wi’ t’ bacon. But we couldn’t abear ’em when they was done; and as for t’ broth, we couldn’t sup a drop on ’t.”

Having climbed the last steep slope, we sat down in a recess of the rocky frontlet which the hill bears proudly on its brow, and there, sheltered from the furious wind, surveyed the scene below. We could see across the opposite fells, in places, to the summits on the farther side of Swaledale, and down Wensleydale for miles, and away to the blue range of the Hambleton hills that look into the Vale of York. Bainbridge appears as quiet as if it were taking holiday; yonder, Askrigg twinkles under a thin white veil of smoke; and farther, Bolton Castle—once the prison of the unhappy Queen of Scots—shows its four square towers above a rising wood: all basking in the glorious sunshine. Yet shadows are not wanting. Many a dark shade marks where a glen breaks the hill-sides: some resemble crooked furrows, trimmed here and there with a dull green fringe, the tree-tops peeping out, and by these signs the beck we explored yesterday may be discerned on the opposite fell. Wherever that little patch of wood appears, there we may be sure a waterfall, though all unseen, is joining in the great universal chorus. Ure winds down the dale in many a shining curve, of which but one is visible between bright green meadow slopes, and belts, and clumps of wood, that broaden with the distance; and all the landscape is studded with the little white squares—the homes of the dalesmen.

Four miles below the stream rushes over great steps of limestone which traverse its bed at Aysgarth Force, and flows onwards past Penhill, the mountain of Wensleydale, overtopping Addleborough by three hundred feet; past Witton Fell and its spring, still known as Diana’s Bath; past Leyburn, and its high natural terrace—the Shawl, where the ‘Queen’s gap’ reminds the visitor once more of Mary riding through surrounded by a watchful escort; past Middleham, where the lordly castle of the King-maker now stands in hopeless ruin, recalling the names of Anne of Warwick, Isabella of Clarence, Edward IV., and his escape from the haughty baron’s snare; of Richard of Gloucester, and others who figure in our national history; past Coverdale, the birthplace of that Miles Coverdale whose translation of the Bible will keep his memory green through many a generation, and the site of Coverham Abbey, of which but a few arches now remain. It was built in 1214 for the Premonstratensians, or White Canons, who never wore linen. Where the Cover falls into the Ure, spreads the meadow Ulshaw, the place from which Oswin dismissed his army in 651. Tradition preserves the memory of Hugh de Moreville’s seat, though not of the exact site, and thus associates the neighbourhood with one of the slayers of Becket. And at East Witton, beyond Coverham, are the ruins of the Cistercian Abbey of Jervaux—Jarvis Abbey, as the country folk call it—a relic dating from 1156. Plunderers and the weather had their own way with it until 1805, when the Earl of Aylesbury, to whom the estate belongs, inspired by his steward’s discovery of a tesselated pavement, stayed the progress of dilapidation, and had the concealing heaps of grass-grown rubbish dug away. Old Jenkins, who died in 1670, remembered Jervaux as it stood in its prime: he had shared the dole given by the monks to poor wayfarers. He remembered, too, the mustering of the dalesmen under the banner of the good Lord Scroop of Bolton for the battle of Flodden, when

“With him did wend all WensleydaleFrom Morton unto Morsdale moor;All they that dwell by the banks of SwaleWith him were bent in harness stour.”

At Spennithorne, a village over against Coverham, were born John Hutchinson, the opponent of Newton, and Hatfield the crazy, who fired at George III. The philosopher—who was a yeoman’s son—made some stir in his day by publishing Moses’s Principia, in opposition to Sir Isaac’s, and by his collection of fossils, out of which he contrived arguments against geologists. This collection was bequeathed to Dr. Woodward, and eventually became part of the museum in the University of Cambridge.

Looking across the dale, somewhat to the right of Bainbridge, we see Nappa Hall, long the seat of the Metcalfes. In Queen Mary’s time, Sir Christopher Metcalfe was sheriff, and he met the judges at York at the head of three hundred horsemen, all dressed alike, and all of his own name and family. The name is still a common one in the North Riding, as you will soon discover on the front of public-houses, over the door at toll-bars, and on the sides of carts and wagons. The present Lord Metcalfe had a Guisborough man for his father. A Metcalfe, born at Coverhead, is said to have made Napoleon’s coffin at St. Helena. One of the fighting men who distinguished themselves at Agincourt was a Metcalfe. The Queen of Scots’ bedstead is still preserved at Nappa. Raleigh once visited the Hall, and brought with him—so the story goes—the first crayfish ever seen in the dale. Another visitor was that cruel pedant, Royal Jamie, who scrupled not to cut off Raleigh’s head—a far better one than his own—and concerning him we are told that he rode across the Ure on the back of one of the serving-men. Perhaps the poor serving-man felt proud all his life after.

If to dream about the Past by the side of a spring be one of your pleasures, you may enjoy it here in Wensleydale with many a change of scene. Besides Diana’s Bath, already mentioned, St. Simon’s Spring still bubbles up at Coverham, St. Alkelda’s at Middleham, and the Fairies’ Well at Hornby. To this last an old iron cup was chained, which a late local antiquary fondly thought might be one of those which King Edwin ordered to be fastened to running springs throughout his territories.

Celt and Northman have left their traces. The grandmothers of the children who now play in the village could remember the Beltane bonfires, and the wild dances around them. The Danes peopled the gloomy savage parts of the glen with their imaginary black alfs. An old couplet runs:

“Druid, Roman, ScandinaviaStone Raise, on Addleboro’.”

So we sat and talked, and afterwards scrambled up the rocks to the summit. Here is, or rather was, a Druid circle of flat stones: but my companion screamed with vexation on discovering that three or four of the largest stones had been taken away, and were nowhere to be seen. The removal must have been recent, for the places where they lay were sharply defined in the grass, and the maze of roots which had been covered for ages was still dense and blanched. And so an ancient monument must be destroyed either out of wanton mischief, or to be broken up for the repair of a fence! Whoever were the perpetrators, I say,

“Oh, be their tombs as lead to lead!”

We walked across the top to Stain-Ray, or Stone Raise, a great cromlech or cairn 360 feet in circumference. You would perhaps regard it as nothing more than a huge irregular mound of lumps of gritstone bleached by the weather, with ferns and moss growing in the interstices, but within there are to be seen the remains of three cysts, of which only one retains a definite form. It is said that a skeleton was discovered therein. Tradition tells of a giant who once travelling with a chest of gold on his back from Skipton Castle to Pendragon, felt weary while crossing Addleborough, and let his burden slip, but recovering himself, he cried,

“Spite of either God or man,To Pendragon castle thou shalt gang.”

when it fell from his shoulders, sank into the earth, and the stones rose over it. There the chest remained, and still remains, only to be recovered by the fortunate mortal to whom the fairy may appear in the form of a hen or an ape. He has then but to stretch forth his arm, seize the chest, and drag it out, in silence if he can, at all events without swearing, or he will fail, as did that unfortunate wight, who, uttering an oath in the moment of success, lost his hold of the treasure, and saw the fairy no more as long as he lived.

We descended into the hollow between Addleborough and Stake Fell, crossing on the way the natural terrace that runs along the southern and western sides of the hill, to look at a cluster of heaps of stone, and low, irregular walls or fences, the plan of which appears to show a series of enclosures opening one into the other. My friend had long made up his mind that these were the remains of an ancient British village. For my part, I could not believe that a village old as the Roman conquest would leave vestiges of such magnitude after the lapse of nearly two thousand years; whereupon, arguments, and learned ones, were adduced, until I half admitted the origin assigned. But a few days later I saw an enclosure in Wharfedale identical in form with any one of these, used as a sheepfold, and all my doubts came back with renewed force. In the ordnance maps, the description is “ancient enclosures;” and, to give an off-hand opinion, it appears to me probable that this outlying hollow may have been chosen as a safe place for the flocks in the troublous days of old.

Stake Fell is 1843 feet in height, rising proudly on our left. Beneath us, in the valley Ray or Roedale, a branch of Wensleydale, spreads Simmer Water, a lake of one hundred and five acres. Shut in by hills, and sprinkled with wood around its margin, it beautifies and enlivens the landscape. It abounds in trout, moreover, and bream and grayling, and any one who chooses may fish therein, as well as in the Ure, all the way down to Bainbridge, and farther. The river trout are considered far superior to those of the lake. We made haste down, after a pause to observe the view, for dinner awaited us in a pleasant villa overlooking the bright rippling expanse.

When we started anew, some two hours later, our hospitable entertainer would accompany us. We walked round the foot of the lake, and saw on the margin, near the break where the Bain flows out, two big stones which have lain in their present position ever since the devil and a giant pelted one another from hill to hill across the water. To corroborate the legend, there yet remain on the stones the marks—and prodigious ones they are—of the Evil One’s hands. To me the marks appeared more like the claws of an enormous bird, compared with which Dr. Mantell’s Dinornis would be but a chicken.

Long, long ago, while the Apostles still walked the earth, a poor old man wandered into Raydale, where a large city then stood, and besought alms from house to house. Every door was shut against him, save one, an humble cot without the city wall, where the inmates bade him welcome, and set oaten bread and milk cheese before him, and prepared him a pallet whereon to sleep. On the morrow the old man pronounced a blessing on the house and departed; but as he went forth, he turned, and looking on the city, thus spake:

“Semer Water rise, Semer Water sink,And swallow all the townSave this little houseWhere they gave me meat and drink.”

Whereupon followed the roar of an earthquake, and the rush of water; the city sank down and a broad lake rolled over its site; but the charitable couple who lodged the stranger were preserved, and soon by some miraculous means they found themselves rich, and a blessing rested on them and their posterity.

Besides the satanic missiles, there are stones somewhere on the brink of the lake known as the ‘Mermaid Stones,’ but not one of us knew where to look for them, so we set our faces towards Counterside, the hill on the northern side of the vale and trudged patiently up the steep ascent in the hot afternoon sun, repaid by the widening prospect. We could see where waterfalls were rushing in the little glens at the head of the dale, and the shadow of hills in the lake, and the remotest village, Stalling Busk, said to be a place of unusual thrift. Even in that remote nook, you would find the dalesmen’s maxim kept from rusting, as well in the villages lower down and nearer the world: it is—“I don’t want to chate, or to be chated; but if it must be one or t’other, why, then, I wouldn’t be chated.” It is no scandal to say that money-grubbing in the dale is proverbial. “Look at that man,” said my Quaker friend at Bainbridge, pointing out what looked like a labourer driving a cart; “that man is worth thousands.” I did not hear, however, that he made an offensive use of his talent, as certain money-grubbers do in the neighbourhood of large towns. “He’s got nought,” exclaimed a coarse, rich man near Hull, slapping his pocket, of a poor man who differed from him in opinion: “he’s got nought—what should he know about it?”

We went down on the other slope of Counterside with Hawes in sight, and Cam Fell, a long ridgy summit more than 1900 feet high. I preferred to double it rather than go over it, and having shifted the knapsack to my own shoulders, shook hands with my excellent friends, and choosing short cuts so as to avoid the town, came in about an hour to the steep lonely road which turns up into Widdale, beyond the farther end of Hawes.

We shall return to Wensleydale a few days hence; meanwhile, good-natured reader, Widdale stretches before us, the road rising with little interruption for miles. Two hours of brisk walking will carry us through it between great wild hill slopes, which are channeled here and there by the dry, stony bed of a torrent. The evening closes in heavy and lowering, and Cam Fell and Widdale Fell uprear their huge forms on the right and left in sullen gloom, and appear the more mountainous. Ere long thick mists overspread their summits, and send ragged wreaths down the hollows, and much of the landscape becomes dim, and we close our day with a view of Nature in one of her mysterious moods. We ascend into the bleak region, pass the bare little hamlet of Redshaw, catch a dull glimpse of Ingleborough, with its broad flat summit, and then at six miles from Hawes, come to the lonesome public-house at Newby Head.

Of such wild land as that we have traversed. Arthur Young once bought a large tract, having in view a grand scheme of reclamation, but was diverted therefrom by his appointment as Secretary to the Board of Agriculture. “What a change,” he says, “in the destination of a man’s life! Instead of entering the solitary lord of four thousand acres, in the keen atmosphere of lofty rocks and mountain torrents, with a little creation rising gradually around me, making the desert smile with cultivation, and grouse give way to industrious population, active and energetic, though remote and tranquil; and every instant of my existence, making two blades of grass to grow where not one was found before—behold me at a desk, in the smoke, the fog, the din of Whitehall!”

The public-house is a resort for cattle-dealers from Scotland, and head-quarters for shepherds and labourers. The fare is better than the lodging. Three kinds of cakes, eggs, and small pies of preserved bilberries, were set before me at tea; but the bed, though the sheets were clean, had a musty smell of damp straw.

CHAPTER XXI

About Gimmer Hogs—Gearstones—Source of the Ribble—Weathercote Cave—An Underground Waterfall—A Gem of a Cave—Jingle Pot—The Silly Ducks—Hurtle Pool—The Boggart—A Reminiscence of the Doctor—Chapel-le-Dale—Remarkable Scenery—Ingleborough—Ingleton—Craven—Young Daniel Dove, and Long Miles—Clapham—Ingleborough Cave—Stalactite and Stalagmite—Marvellous Spectacle—Pillar Hall—Weird Music—Treacherous Pools—The Abyss—How Stalactite forms—The Jockey Cap—Cross Arches—The Long Gallery—The Giant’s Hall—Mysterious Waterfall—A Trouty Beck—The Bar-Parlour—A Bradford Spinner.

On the way hither, I had noticed what was to me a novel mode of bill-sticking; that is, on the sharp spines of tall thistles by the wayside. The bills advertised Gimmer Hogs for sale, a species of animal that I had never before heard of, and I puzzled myself not a little in guessing what they could be. For although Gimmer is good honest Danish, signifying a ewe that has not yet lambed, the connexion between sheep and swine is not obvious to the uninitiated. However, it happened that I sat down to breakfast with a Scottish grazier who had arrived soon after daybreak, and he told me that sheep not more than one year old are called Gimmer Hogs; but why the word hogs should be used to describe ewes he could not tell.

The morning was dull and drizzly, and by the time I had crossed to Ingleton Fell, from the North to the West Riding, a swift, horizontal rain came on, laborious to walk against, and drove me for shelter into the Gearstones Inn. Of the two or three houses hereabouts, one is a school; and in this wild spot a Wednesday market is held. Ingleborough is in sight; the hills around form pleasing groups, and had we time to explore them, we should find many a rocky glen, and curious cave, Catknot Hole, Alum Pot, Long Churn, and Dicken Pot; and many a sounding ghyll, as the folk here call it—that is, a waterfall. Not far from the inn is Gale beck, the source of the Ribble; and as we proceed down the now continuous descent, so do the features of the landscape grow more romantic.

For more than an hour did the rain-storm sweep across the hills, holding me prisoner. At length faint gleams of sunshine broke through; I started afresh, and three miles farther was treading on classic ground—Chapel-le-Dale. Turn in at the second gate on the right beyond the public-house, and you will soon have speech with Mr. Metcalfe, who keeps the key of Weathercote cave. Standing on a sheltered valley slope, with a flower-garden in front and trees around, his house presents a favourable specimen of a yeoman’s residence. No lack of comfort here, I thought, on seeing the plenteous store of oaten bread on the racks in the kitchen. Nor is there any lack of attention to the visitor’s wishes on the part of Mr. Metcalfe. He unlocks a door, and leads the way down a steep, rude flight of steps into a rocky chasm, from which ascends the noise of falling water. A singularly striking scene awaits you. The rocks are thickly covered in places with ferns and mosses, and are broken up by crevices into a diversity of forms, rugged as chaos. A few feet down, and you see a beautiful crystalline spring in a cleft on the right, and the water turning the moss to stone as it trickles down. A few feet lower and you pass under a natural bridge formed by huge fallen blocks. The stair gets rougher, twisting among the big, damp lumps of limestone, when suddenly your guide points to the fall at the farther extremity of the chasm. The rocks are black, the place is gloomy, imparting thereby a surprising effect to the white rushing column of water. A beck running down the hill finds its way into a crevice in the cliffs, from which it leaps in one great fall of more than eighty feet, roaring loudly. Look up! the chasm is so narrow that the trees and bushes overhang and meet overhead; and what with the subdued light, and mixture of crags and verdure, and the impressive aspect of the place altogether, you will be lost in admiration.

To descend lower seems scarcely possible, but you do get down, scrambling over the big stones to the very bottom, into the swirling shower of spray. Here a deep recess, or chamber at one side, about eight feet in height, affords good standing ground, whence you may see that the water is swallowed up at once, and disappears in the heap of pebbles on which it falls. Conversation is difficult, for the roar is overpowering. After I had stood some minutes in contemplation, Mr. Metcalfe told me that it was possible to get behind the fall and look through it, taking care to run quickly across the strong blast that meets you on starting from the recess. I buttoned my overcoat to my chin, and rushed into the cavity, and looked upwards. I was in a pit 120 feet deep, covered by a tumultuous curtain of water, but had to make a speedy retreat, so furiously was I enveloped by blinding spray. To make observations from that spot one should wear a suit of waterproof.

Through the absence of sunshine I lost the sight of the rainbow which is seen for about two hours in the middle of the day from the front of the fall. It is a horizontal bow with the convex side towards the water, shifting its position higher or lower as you mount or descend.

Although it might now be properly described as a pit, the chasm gives you the impression of a cave of which the roof has fallen in. If this be so, the fall was once entirely underground, roaring day and night in grim darkness. It may still be regarded as an underground fall, for the throat from which it leaps is more than thirty feet below the surface. In the cleft above this throat a thick heavy slab is fixed in a singular position, just caught, as it seems, by two of its corners, so that you fancy it ready to tumble at any moment with the current that shoots so swiftly beneath it. As you pause often on returning to look back at the roaring stream, and up to the impending crags, you will heartily confirm Professor Sedgwick—who by the way is a Yorkshireman—in his opinion, that if Weathercote Cave be small, it is a very gem. Nor will you grudge the shilling fee for admission.