the baker's. An hour or two later the carriage was ordered out again,
the coachman remounted the box, the footman took his stand behind, and
the lady drove to the bakehouse to fetch her pie, which she carried back
thus to her house. "Now," said she to the coachman, "you have kept your
place, which is to drive; and you," turning to the footman, "have kept
yours, which is to wait; and now we shall all have some of the pie."
Mistress Wharton had a visiting acquaintance with a lady, a clergyman's
wife, in York. On the death of her husband, the widow retired with her
four daughters to Thirsk, and she invited Peg Pennyworth to visit her.
To her dismay, one day up drove Mistress Wharton in her carriage, with
coachman, footman, and lady's maid. The widow, whose means were not very
ample, endured having all these people quartered on her for a month, but
at the expiration of that time she was obliged to hint to the nephew of
her guest that "the pressure on her means was rather greater than she
could bear."
"Let my aunt have her way," said Mr. Wharton. "I will pay you two
hundred a year during her life, and one hundred during your own, should
you survive her."
Mistress Margaret Wharton never left the house of the widow, but died
there after some years, in the one hundred and third year of her age, in
1791. The annuity was regularly paid to the widow lady to the day of her
death.
PETER BARKER,
THE BLIND JOINER OF HAMPSWAITE.
Peter Barker was born on July 10th, 1808. At the age of four he was
deprived of sight by an inflammation of the eyes, and ever afterwards he
was--
"dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrevocably dark; total eclipse,
Without all hope of day."
The loss of his sight caused Peter from an early age to cultivate music,
and he became a skilful performer on the violin; and as he grew up to
manhood he frequented the village feasts, dances, and merry-makings all
round the country, as a performer on that instrument. This led him into
habits of intemperance. But he had a strong will, a tender conscience,
and seeing that he was sinking in his own respect and in that of others,
he determined to abandon his musical profession.
But he must earn his livelihood; and he determined to become a joiner.
He fell to work to make a chair, succeeded in the first attempt, and for
the rest of his life followed carpentering as his profession. He handled
his tools with all the dexterity of a practised workman; his shop was
always in order, the tools in their proper position in the rack, or in
his hands. The only peculiarity about his instruments was in the
foot-rule he used for making his measurements, the lines on which were
marked by small pins, of different numbers, to indicate the different
feet on the rule. The idea of having his rule thus marked was suggested
by a lady who interested herself in his welfare. She wrote to a
manufacturer of carpenters' rules in London, to inquire if such a thing
could be had as a rule with raised lines and figures; the answer was
that no such rules were made. Failing to procure an article of this
kind, she suggested the making of the measurements on it with pins; and
this was carried into effect.
The articles made by this blind workman were firm and substantial, the
joints even and close, and the polish smooth. It is said that a
cabinet-maker at Leeds, having heard reports of the blind joiner's
skill, procured a chair he had made, and showed it to the workmen in his
shop, asking them their opinion of the chair. After examining it, they
said that they thought there was nothing particular about the chair,
only it was a thoroughly well-made, serviceable one. "So it is," said
the master; "but--will you believe it?--the man who made it never saw
it: he was blind from a child." Their indifference was at once turned
into amazement.
The writer of a memoir of Peter Barker[10] says:--
"We have frequently seen him at work, and were it not from the more
frequent handling of the articles operated on, and the nearness of his
fingers to the edge of the chisel or saw, there was nothing apparently
to distinguish his manner from that of an ordinary workman. In 1868 we
found him at work in the church, repairing the seats, and watched him
for some time before he was conscious of the presence of any one. He
showed us what he had done--lowered the fronts of both the pulpit and
reading-desk, the one twenty inches, the other a foot: brought forward a
pew some three feet, and refronted it with panels of old carved oak,
which he asserted was very difficult to work over again; showed us a
piece of carving which he, in conjunction with the churchwarden, had
only discovered the day before, and which was upwards of 200 years old;
led the way into the belfry, giving a word of advice to be careful in
ascending the old rickety stairs; showed the clock, which he had under
his care to keep clean and in going order. At this point, while seated
on a bench, he gave us a narrative of his first acquaintance with the
clock, which we give in his own words as nearly as we can
remember:--[11] "You see, our clock is yan o' these and fashion'd
handmade 'uns, not made exact and true by machinery as they are now, but
ivvery wheel cut an' filed by hand. Aud Snow, a notified clock-makker
'at lived up aboon abit here, had the managing of her a lang time, at so
much a year. He used to come just at t' time when his year was up, give
t' aud clock a fether full o' oil, tak his brass, and there was no mair
on him till t' next year. At last she gat as she wadn't gang at all; she
wad naither turn pointers nor strike. T' foaks i' t' toon were sadly
dissatisfied; they neither knew when to get up nor gang to bed, as they
had done afore, when t' clock was all reet. T' church-maister sent for
t' clock-maker, and he come an' come ageean, an' fizzled an faff'd aboot
her, but nivver did her a farthing's worth o' good. At last he was
forced to give her up as a bad job; she was fairly worn out, an' she wad
nivver be no better till she was mended with a new un; and that's aboon
twenty year sin, an' t' aud clock's here yet. Then Johnny Gill, another
clever fellow, took her under hands, and she lick'd him as fairly as
she'd deean aud Snow. I was i' t' church by mysel one day, I hardly know
what aboot, when it com' into my heead 'at I would try my hand at her;
I nivver had deean nowt o' t' sort; but if ye nivver try, ye nivver can
dea (do) nowt. So t' first thing I did was to give her a reet good
feelin' all ower her; an' then, heving settled all her parts fairly i'
my mind, I fell to work and took her to pieces, bit by bit, got all t'
works out of her, and cleaned her all ower reet soundly, particularly t'
pivots, and then gav 'em all a sup o' nice oil; then I put her together
ageean; efter a few trials I got her all reet, got her started--she
strake an' kept time like a good un. Efter I finish'd I com' doon, an'
into th' church garth, and wha did I meet there but Mr. Shann, our vicar
at that time, and just as I was meeting him t' clock strake ageean.
'What's that, Peter?' he says. I says, 'It's t' clock, sir!' He says
ageean, 'What does this mean, Peter?' I says, 'It meeans t' time o' day
when t' clock strikes.' He began o' laughing, and said, 'You're a queer
fellow, Peter. I mean who made the clock strike?' 'Oh,' I says, 'I've
deean that mysel, sir. I've been at her a goodish bit to-day, an' I
think I've gotten her put all reet at last.' 'Well done, Peter, you're a
clever fellow,' he says. 'But you sha'n't do all this for nothing. I
shall let the churchwardens know what you have done. You must have some
reward.' 'Varry weel, sir,' I says, and so we parted. And he was as good
as his word. When t' churchmaisters met, he tell'd 'em all aboot it, and
they allowed me four shillings for my job; and I was to have ten
shillings a year for keeping her ganning ivvery year efter."
In the month of July, 1865, the clock did not strike correctly. As Peter
told the tale himself:--"I was i' t' shop when I heard her at it, two or
three times. I stood it as lang as I could; at last I banged down my
teeals (tools), and says to mysel', 'I'll mak thee either strake reet,
or I'll mak thee as that thou'll nivver strike ageean.' Away I went,
spent an hour over her, gat her reet, and she's kept reet ever sin'."
His biographer says:--"Once on a visit to Peter's cottage, we found a
window had been recently inserted, according to his statement, to make
the fireside more lightsome--Peter having been mason, joiner, and
glazier himself. In short, he appeared to be able to do any kind of work
that he had the desire or the will to do. He was an expert in the art of
netting--fabricating articles in that line from the common cabbage net
to the curtains which adorn the windows of the stately drawing-room. As
a vocalist he sang bass in the church on Sundays. He was also one of the
bell-ringers; and during the winter months the curfew bell is rung at
Hampswaite at eight o'clock every evening. When it was Peter's turn to
ring he took a lighted lanthorn with him--not for the purpose of seeing
others, but that others might see him.
"He always fattened a pig in the winter season, and had a method of
measurement of his own for ascertaining how much weight the pig had
gained every week; and to such measurement and calculation the pig was
weekly subjected until he attained the proper bulk and weight. Peter
generally bought his pig himself, and for that purpose attended the
market at Knaresborough, where the bargain was cause of much amusement
to the onlookers. When the pig was pointed out which was thought likely,
the seller had to seize the same, and hold it still as possible, until
Peter had felt it over and ascertained its _points_, and passed his
judgment on its feeding qualities."
Peter learned to read with his fingers in 1853, and was given a New
Testament with embossed letters.
He was very fond of children, and would play tunes to them on his fiddle
at his shop door of a summer evening, whilst they danced and sang. He
had made this fiddle himself, as well as the case in which he kept it.
So delicate was Peter's touch that he was able to tell the hour on a
watch by opening the case and running his fingers lightly over the face.
Peter in his youth had a romantic courtship, and married a wife. She
presented him with a son, born in 1846; and died on June 3rd, 1862. The
boy, who was his father's constant companion and delight, died the
following year, on Jan. 19th, 1863, leaving the poor blind joiner's
house completely desolate.
After a few weeks' illness, Peter died in his cottage, near the
churchyard gate, on February 18th, 1873, at the age of sixty-five.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Published by T. Thorpe, Pately Bridge, 1873.
[11] The strong provincial dialect is somewhat modified in this, or it
would be unintelligible except to Yorkshire readers.
THE WHITE HOUSE.
On the road between Raskelfe and Easingwold stood in 1623, and stands
still, a lonely inn called "The White House."
The wide, brown, heathery moor called Pill-Moor then extended to the
roots of the Hambledon hills; on a slight rising ground above the
marshes stood here and there a farm or cottage; and here and there a
portion of the soil had been enclosed. To this day a large portion of
the moor remains untilled, and is a favourite resort of botanists, who
find there several varieties of gentian and orchis, rare elsewhere.
Originally it stretched from Borough Bridge to the Hambledons,
intersected by the streams flowing into the Ouse, patched here and there
with pools of water.
In the White House lived a man called Ralph Raynard, and his sister.
Ralph paid his addresses to a fine-looking young woman, dark-eyed,
dark-haired, who lived at Thornton Bridge, at the Red House, where the
road from Brafferton or Tollerton crossed the Ouse to Topcliffe and
Ripon. The old house, lonely, surrounded by trees, with traces of a moat
or pond, in spring full of yellow flags, stands to this day, almost
deserted. The girl was poor, and a good match was of the first advantage
to her; she was at the time in service at the Red House, and thither
Ralph came to visit her.
But, for some cause unknown, they quarrelled, an estrangement ensued,
and Ralph came no more across Thornton Bridge.
At the same time a yeoman named Fletcher, living at Moor House, in the
parish of Raskelfe, had cast his eyes on the comely young woman, and he
took advantage of the rupture between the lovers to step in and offer
his hand to the damsel. He was at once accepted, in a fit of resentment
against Ralph Raynard, and the marriage rapidly followed; so that she
soon found herself the wife of a man whom she did not love, and some
miles nearer the White House, where lived Ralph, whom she did love, than
when she had resided at Thornton Bridge.
The resentment she had felt died away; an explanation followed when too
late. There was a scene--despair on both sides, and resentment
entertained by both Ralph Raynard and Mrs. Fletcher against the
unfortunate yeoman who stood between them and perfect union and
happiness.
On market-day, when Mrs. Fletcher ambled on her nag into Easingwold, she
invariably halted at the White House, when the hostler, one Mark Dunn, a
beetle-browed, uncouth fellow from Huby, received and held her horse as
she dismounted and entered the inn. Ralph, the host, was always there,
and received Mrs. Fletcher with an affection which dissatisfied his
sister, a woman of sense, who saw that this cherishing of an old passion
could lead to no good. When Mark Dunn disappeared for hours at a time,
she shrewdly suspected that he was sent on messages to Raskelfe.
More than once she interfered and rebuked Ralph, her brother, warning
him of the dangerous consequences of thus encouraging the attachment of
a woman now bound to another man by the most sacred ties. With an oath
he bade her mind her own business, and not interfere with him.
Fletcher could not but be aware that his wife did not love him; whispers
reached him that she met her old sweetheart when he was from home; that
her nag was seen standing an unreasonable time outside the door of the
White House. He caught Mark Dunn one evening prowling in his orchard,
and he fell on him with a stick. The ungainly fellow howled with pain,
and swore revenge.
Fletcher became gloomy, neglected his affairs, and began to fall into
difficulties. He had been sincerely, passionately attached to the
dark-eyed, handsome girl he had brought to his home. He had done his
utmost to render her happy, and now she was making his home miserable,
destroying the former serenity of his spirits.
He was obliged to go one day on business to Easingwold. He would not
return till late. His wife knew it. Something troubled his mind. A
presentiment of evil which he could not shake off hung over him, and he
wrote on a sheet of paper--
"If I should be missing, or suddenly wanted be,
Mark Ralph Raynard, Mark Dunn, and mark my wife for me,"
directed it to his sister, and on reaching Easingwold, posted it.
No sooner was he gone than Mrs. Fletcher mounted her horse and rode to
the White House. She asked to see Raynard, and he walked by her side
some way back to Raskelfe. There they parted; and Raynard was next
observed in close conversation with his hostler, Mark Dunn.
It was May-Day. In the sweet spring evening Fletcher was returning on
foot from Easingwold, when he came to Daunay Bridge, where at that time
a road branched off from the highway from the North to York, and
traversing the Lund, led to Raskelfe. As he crossed the bridge he stood
still for a moment, and looked up at the stars, just appearing. Next
moment Raynard and Dunn were upon him; they had sprung from behind the
bridge, and he was flung over it into the water. The stream is narrow
and not deep, so that, once recovered from the shock, he could have
easily crawled out. But the murderers leaped into the water after him.
Mrs. Fletcher, with a long sack over her shoulder, ran out from the
shadow of a bush where she had been concealed, and they held the farmer
under water, the two men grasping his throat, his wife retaining his
feet in the sack, into which she thrust them, till his struggles ceased,
and he was, or was supposed to be, dead.
The body was then thrust into the sack which Mrs. Fletcher had brought
for the purpose, and the three guilty ones assisted in carrying or
dragging the body along the road towards the White House. They were
alarmed once; the clatter of a horse's hoofs was heard, and they
concealed themselves by the road-side. The horseman passed, they emerged
from their place of hiding, and continued their course.
As they drew near to the inn a streak of light from the inn-door showed
that it was open. They heard voices. The horseman had called for
something to drink, and it was brought to him without his dismounting.
Then Miss Raynard was heard calling, "Ralph! Ralph!" She wondered,
perhaps, at his long absence, or wanted him for some purpose in the
house.
No answer was returned. Raynard, Dunn, and Mrs. Fletcher lifted the body
over the low hedge into Raynard's croft or garden, and buried it in a
place where the ground had been disturbed that day by his having stubbed
up an old root. They carefully covered the body with earth, and Raynard
sowed mustard-seed over the place.
It was thought prudent that Mrs. Fletcher and Raynard should not meet
after this.
People wondered what had become of Fletcher; but knowing that he was
somewhat embarrassed in his circumstances, they readily accepted the
statement of his wife--that he had gone out of the way to avoid having
a writ served on him.
Thus matters stood till the 7th July, when Ralph Raynard rode to
Topcliffe fair. It was a bright sunny day. He passed the Moor House, but
did not stay there; crossed Thornton Bridge, went before the Red House,
where he had so often visited and spent such happy hours with the woman
who was now his accomplice in crime, along by Cundall to Topcliffe.
He dismounted at the inn there--the Angel, an old-fashioned house near
the dilapidated market-cross. He led his horse out of the yard into the
stable. The sun glared without; within it was dark. As he was removing
the bridle from his horse, suddenly he saw standing before him the
spirit of Fletcher, pale, with a phosphoric light playing about him,
pointing to him, and saying, "O Ralph, Ralph! repent. Vengeance is at
hand!" In an agony of horror he fled out of the stable. In the daylight
without he recovered composure, and endeavoured to believe that he had
been a victim to delusion. He thought he must buy some present for the
woman, love for whom had led him to the commission of murder. He went to
one of the stalls to buy some trinket--a chain of imitation coral beads.
"How does it look on the neck?" he asked, extending it to the keeper of
the stall. Then he looked up and saw a ghastly figure opposite--the dead
man with the coral round his neck, knotted under his ear, and his head
on one side, the eyes wide open, with a blaze in the eyes, and heard him
say: "How like you a red streak round the neck such as this? I will put
one round the throat of my wife; and you shall wear one too!"
Sick and faint, he hastened back to the inn, and called for beer.
Towards evening he rode home. He saw as he came towards the Carr, where
there is a dense clump of trees, a figure looking at him. It was
deliberately getting out of a sack, and shaking and wringing water out
of its clothes. With a scream of terror Raynard plunged his spurs into
the horse's flanks, and galloped past Cundall, home. As he crossed
Thornton Bridge he closed his eyes, but when he opened them again he saw
the well-known figure of the dead man walking before him so fast that
his horse could not catch him up. The ghost trailed the sack after it,
and left a luminous track on the road. When it reached a point at a
little distance from the White House--the very spot where Raynard, Mrs.
Fletcher, and Mark Dunn had turned aside with the body--the spectre
strode across the heather, leaped the low hedge, and melted, apparently,
into the ground, where now a rich, green crop of mustard was growing.
"You're back earlier than I thought," said the sister of Ralph Raynard.
"I reckon thou'st not been stopping this time at Moor House?"
Raynard said nothing, except "I'm ill."
"Ah," said his sister, "I've gotten thee a nice bit o' supper ready,
with a beautiful dish o' salad."
And she laid the cloth, and placed upon it a plate of fresh-cut
_mustard_!
Raynard's face grew rigid and white.
"What is the matter?" asked his sister.
Opposite him, on the settle, sat the dead man, pointing to the salad.
Ralph sprang up, drew his sister away, and told her all.
She, poor woman, horror-struck, ran off at once to Sir William
Sheffield, a justice of peace, residing at Raskelfe Park. The three
guilty parties were apprehended and taken to York, where, on July 28th,
1623, all three were hung.
When they had been cut down, the bodies were removed and conveyed in a
waggon to the White House, the hangman seated by the driver in front.
There is a little rise not far from the inn, commanding the spot where
the murder was committed, and the green mustard-bed where the body of
Fletcher had been hidden, but which had been removed and buried in
Raskelfe churchyard. On this hill a gibbet had been erected, and there
the three bodies were hung, with their faces towards the dismal flat and
the gurgling stream where the murdered man had been drowned. There they
hung, blown about by the autumn storms, screeched over by the ravens and
magpies, baked by the summer sun, their bare scalps capped with cakes of
snow in the cold winter, till they dropped upon the ground, and then the
bones were buried and the gallows cut down.
About eighty years ago the plough was drawn over Gallows Hill, when a
quantity of bones were unearthed by the share. They were the bones of
Raynard, Dunn, and Mrs. Fletcher. The hill to this day bears its
ill-omened name, and people mutter about Raskelfe the doggerel lines--
"A wooden church, a wooden steeple,
Rascally church, and rascally[12] people."
FOOTNOTE:
[12] Raskelfe is commonly called Rascall.
JEMMY HIRST;
AN ODDITY.[13]
Jemmy was born at Rawcliffe, in the West Riding, on October 12th, 1738.
His father was a respectable substantial farmer, without great
brilliancy of parts, but with the usual Yorkshire shrewdness.
The boy soon began to exhibit originality; mischievousness was mistaken
by a fond mother for genius, and he was destined for the Church. He was
sent accordingly to a boarding-school, to a clergyman, at the age of
eight, to acquire the rudiments of the necessary education.
But at school Jemmy's genius took an altogether perverse turn. He was
always first in the playground and last in class; a leader in mischief,
a laggard in study. Finding his master's spectacles on the desk one day,
Jemmy unscrewed them, and removed the glasses. When the Principal came
in, he gravely took up the spectacles and put them on. Finding them dim,
he removed them. When he was seen demurely to wipe where the glasses had
been, and then, with his fingers through the rims, to hold them up to
his eyes to see what was the matter, the whole school burst out
laughing. The pedagogue demanded the name of the culprit. Jemmy had not
the honesty or courage to proclaim himself the author of the trick, and
the whole school was whipped accordingly. On the morning of the 1st
April, early, a big boy in his dormitory sent Jemmy to the master,
expecting that he would knock at his bedroom door, wake him, and get a
thrashing for his pains. Jemmy turned out of bed and went outside the
door, waited a minute, and then came into the dormitory again. "Ah! Tom,
thou'rt in for it. Thou mun go at once to Lovell for having made an
April fool of him and me." The boy, believing this, went to the master's
door, knocked him up, and got well thrashed for his pains. "You will
know in future what is meant by the biter being bit," said Jemmy, when
the boy returned, crying. "There's an old fable about the viper biting
the file and breaking his teeth. Perhaps you can understand the moral of
it now."
The Principal kept an old sow. Jemmy used to get on her back, tie a
piece of twine--"band" a Yorkshire boy would call it--to the ring in her
snout, run a nail through the heel of his boot to act as spur, and
gallop the old sow round the yard. This was often performed with
impunity, but not always. The master saw him from his window one morning
as he was shaving, and rushed down with a horse-whip in his hand. Jemmy
was careering joyously round and round the yard when a crack of the lash
across his back dislodged him. He was fed next day on bread and water as
a punishment.