A Railway Trip--More Land Reclamation--Hedon--Historical
Recollections--Burstwick--The Earls of Albemarle--Keyingham--
The Duke of York--Winestead--Andrew Marvell's Birthplace--A
Glimpse of the Patriot--Patrington--A Church to be proud of--
The Hildyard Arms--Feminine Paper-hangers--Walk to Spurn--Talk
with a Painter--Welwick--Yellow Ochre and Cleanliness--
Skeffling--Humber Bank--Miles of Mud--Kilnsea--Burstall Garth--
The Greedy Sea--The Sandbank--A Lost Town, Ravenser Odd--A
Reminiscence from Shakspeare--The Spurn Lighthouse--Withernsea
--Owthorne--Sister Churches--The Ghastly Churchyard--A Retort
for a Fool--A Word for Philologists.
By the first train on the morrow I started for Patrington. The windmills
on the outskirts of the town were soon left behind, and away we went
between the thick hedgerows and across the teeming fields, which,
intersected by broad deep drains, and grazed by sleek cattle, exhibit at
once to your eye the peculiarities of Holderness. All along between the
railway and the river there are thousands of acres, formerly called the
'out-marshes,' which have been reclaimed, and now yield wonderful crops
of oats. After the principal bank has been constructed, the tide is let
in under proper control to a depth of from three to five feet, and is
left undisturbed until all the mud held in suspension is deposited. The
impoverished flood is then discharged through the sluices, and in due
time, after the first has stiffened, a fresh flow is admitted. By this
process of 'warping,' as it is called, three or four feet of mud will be
thrown down in three years, covering the original coarse, sour surface
with one abounding in the elements of fertility. Far inland, even up the
Trent, and around the head of the Humber within reach of the tide, the
farmers have recourse to warping, and not unfrequently prefer a fresh
layer of mud to all other fertilisers.
About every two miles we stop at a station, and at each there is
something to be noted and remembered. Hedon, a dull decayed town, now
two miles from the river, once the commercial rival of Hull, has
something still to be proud of in its noble church, "the pride of
Holderness." Here, too, within a fence, stands the ancient cross, which,
after several removals, as the sea devoured its original site--a royal
adventurer's landing-place--found here a permanent station. At
Burstwick, two miles farther, lay the estates, the _caput baroniae_, of
the renowned Earls of Albemarle. A few minutes more and another stop
reminds us of Keyingham bridge, where a party of the men of Holderness
opposed the passage of Edward IV. with his three hundred Flemings, some
carrying strange fire-weapons, until he replied to their resolute
question that he had only come to claim his dukedom of York. A "dukedom
large enough" for a wise man. And, as tradition tells, Keyingham church
was the scene of a miracle in 1392, when all the doors were split by a
lightning-stroke, and the tomb of Master Philip Ingleberd, formerly
rector, sweated a sweetly-scented oil, perhaps out of gratitude to the
patron saint for the escape of thirteen men who fell all at once with
the ladder while seeking to put out the fire in the steeple, and came to
no harm. Then Winestead, which was, if the parish-register may be
believed, the birthplace of Andrew Marvell--not Hull, as is commonly
reported of the incorruptible Yorkshire man. His father was rector here,
but removed to Hull during the poet's infancy, which may account for the
error. The font in which he was christened having fallen into neglect,
was used as a horse-trough, until some good antiquary removed it into
the grounds of Mr. Owst, at Keyingham, where it remains safe among other
relics. Andrew represented Hull in parliament for twenty years, and was
the last member who, according to old usage, received payment for his
services. One's thought kindles in thinking of him here at this quiet
village, as a friend of Milton, like him using his gifts manfully and
successfully in defence of the Englishman's birthright. What a happy
little glimpse we get of him in the lines--
"Climb at court for me that will--
Tottering favour's pinnacle;
All I seek is to lie still,
Settled in some secret nest,
In calm leisure let me rest,
And far off the public stage,
Pass away my silent age.
Thus, when without noise, unknown,
I have lived out all my span,
I shall die without a groan,
An old honest countryman."
Then Patrington--erst Patrick's town--one of those simple-looking places
which contrast agreeably with towns sophisticated by the clamour and
bustle of trade; and although a few gas-lamps tell of innovation, a
market not more than once a fortnight upholds the authority of ancient
usage. You see nearly the whole of the town at once; a long, wide, quiet
street, terminated by a graceful spire, so graceful, indeed, that it
will allure you at once to the church from which it springs; and what a
feast for the eye awaits you! Truly the "pride of Holderness" is not
monopolised by Hedon. The style is that which prevailed in the reign of
Edward II., and is harmonious throughout, from weathercock to door-sill.
You will walk round it again and again, admiring the beauty of its
design and proportion, pausing oft to contemplate the curious carvings,
and the octagonal spire springing lightly from flying buttresses to a
height of one hundred and ninety feet. The gargoyles exhibit strange
conceits; chiselled to represent a fiddler--a bagpiper--a man holding a
pig--a fiend griping a terrified sinner--a lion thrusting his tongue
out--and others equally incongruous. How I wished the architect would
come to life for an hour to tell me what he meant by them, and by
certain full-length figures carved on the buttresses, which accord so
little with our modern sense of decency, much less with the character of
a religious house! Inside you find a corresponding lightness and
gracefulness, and similarly relieved by a sprinkling of monsters. The
east or 'Ladye aisle' contains three chantry chapels; the 'Easter
sepulchre' is a rare specimen of the sculptor's art, and the font hewn
from a single block of granite displays touches of a master hand. St.
Patrick's church at Patrington is an edifice to linger in; an example of
beauty in architecture in itself worth a journey to Yorkshire.
There are relics, too, of an earlier age: embankments discovered some
feet below the present surface, fragments of buildings, an altar, and
other objects of especial interest to the antiquary, for they mark
Patrington as the site of a Roman station. An important station, if the
supposition be correct that this was the Praetorium of Antoninus--the
place where some of the legions disembarked to subjugate the Brigantes.
To eat breakfast under the sign of the _Hildyard Arms_--a name, by the
way, which preserves in a modified form the old Saxon _Hildegarde_--seemed
like connecting one's-self with remote antiquity. The ancestors of the
Hildyards were here before the Conquest. One of the family, Sir
Christopher, is commemorated by a handsome monument in Winestead church.
The landlord, willing to entertain in more ways than one, talked of the
improvements that had taken place within his remembrance. The railway was
not one of them, for it took away trade from the town, and deadened the
market. Visitors were but few, and most of those who came wondered at
seeing so beautiful a church in such an out-of-the-way place. He could
show me a garden near the churchyard which was said to be the spot where
the building-stone was landed from boats; but the water had sunk away
hundreds of years ago. Patrington haven--a creek running up from the
Humber--had retreated from the town, and since the reclamation of Sunk
Island, required frequent dredging to clear it of mud. The farmers in the
neighbourhood were very well content with the harvests now yielded by the
land. In 1854 some of them reaped "most wonderful crops."
I had seen a woman painting her door-posts, and asked him whether that
was recognised as women's work in Patrington. "Sure," he answered, "all
over the country too. Women do the whitewashing, and painting, ay, and
the paper-hanging. Look at this room, now! My daughter put that up."
I did look, and saw that the pattern on the walls sloped two or three
inches from the perpendicular, whereby opposite sides of the room
appeared to be leaning in contrary directions. However, I said nothing
to disparage the damsel's merits.
From Patrington to Spurn the distance is thirteen miles. Hoping to walk
thither and back in the day, I snapped the thread of the landlord's
talk, and set out for the lighthouse. Presently I overtook a man, and we
had not walked half a mile together before I knew that he was a
master-painter in a small way at Patrington, now going to paper a room
at Skeffling, a village five miles off. To hear that he would get only
sixpence a piece for the hanging surprised me, for I thought that
nowhere out of London would any one be silly enough to hang paper for a
halfpenny a yard.
"You see," he rejoined, "there's three in the trade at Patrington, and
then 'tis only the bettermost rooms that we gets to do. The women does
all the rest, and the painting besides. That's where it is. But 'taint
such a very bad job as I be going to. They finds their own paste, and
there's nine pieces to hang: that'll give me four and sixpence; and
then I shall get my dinner, and my tea too, if I don't finish too soon.
So it'll be a pretty fair day's work." And yet the chances were that he
would have to wait six months for payment.
We passed through Welwick--place of wells--a small, clean village, with a
small, squat church, with carvings sadly mutilated on the outside, and
inside, a handsome tomb. At Plowland, near this, lived the Wrights,
confederates in the Gunpowder Plot. Nearly all the cottages are models of
cleanliness; the door-sill and step washed with yellow ochre, and here
and there you see through the open door that the walls of the room inside
are papered, and the little pictures and simple ornaments all in keeping.
You will take pleasure in these indications, and perhaps believe them to
be the result of an affection for cleanliness. The walls of some of the
houses and farm-yards are built of pebbles--'sea-cobbles,' as they are
called--placed zigzag-wise, with a novel and pretty effect: and the
examples multiply as we get nearer the sea, where they may be seen in the
walls of the churches.
At Skeffling the painter turned into a farm-house which looked
comfortably hospitable enough to put him at ease regarding his dinner,
and as if it had little need to take six months' credit for four and
sixpence, while I turned from the high-road into a track leading past
the church--which, by the way, has architectural features worthy
examination--to the coarse and swarthy flats where the distant view is
hidden by a great embankment that runs along their margin for miles.
Once on the top of this 'Humber-bank,' I met a lusty breeze sweeping in
from the sea, and had before me a singular prospect--the bank itself
stretching far as the eye can see in a straight line to the east and
west, covered with coarse grass and patches of gray, thistle-like,
sea-holly--_Eryngo maritima_. Its outer sloop is loose sand falling away
to the damp line left by the tide, beyond which all is mud--a great
brown expanse outspread for miles. The tide being at its lowest, only
the tops of the masts of small vessels are to be seen, moving, as it
seems, mysteriously: the river itself is hardly discernible. In places
the mud lies smooth and slimy; in others thickly rippled, or tossed into
billows, as if the water had stamped thereon an impression of all its
moods. Fishermen wade across it in huge boots from their boats to the
firm beach, and dig down through it two or three feet to find stiff
holding-ground for their anchors.
Yonder rises the lighthouse, surprisingly far, as it seems, to seaward,
at times half hidden by a thin, creeping haze. And from Spurn to Sunk
Island this whole northern shore is of the same brown, monotonous
aspect: a desert, where the only living things are a few sea-birds,
wheeling and darting rapidly, their white wings flashing by contrast
with the sad-coloured shore.
I walked along the top of the bank to Kilnsea, deceived continually in
my estimate of distance by the long dead level. Here and there a drain
pierces the bank, and reappears on the outer side as a raised sewer,
with its outlet beyond high-water mark; and these constructions, as well
as the waifs and strays--old baskets and dead seagulls--cheat the eye
strangely as to their magnitude when first seen. At times, after a
lashing storm has swept off a few acres of the mud, the soil beneath is
found to be a mixture of peat and gravel, in which animal and vegetable
remains and curious antiquities are imbedded. Now and then the relics
are washed out, and show by their character that they once belonged to
Burstall Priory, a religious house, despoiled by the sea before King
Harry began his Reformation. Burstall Garth, one of the pastures
traversed by the bank, preserves its name: the building itself has
utterly disappeared.
Suddenly a gap occurs in the bank, showing where the unruly tide has
broken through. For some reason the mischief was not repaired, but a new
bank was constructed of chalk and big pebbles, about a stone's throw to
the rear. A green, slimy pool still lies in a hollow between the two.
The entertainment at the _Crown and Anchor_ at Kilnsea by no means
equals the expectations of a stranger who reads the host's aristocratic
name--_Metforth Tennison_--over the door. I found the bread poor; the
cheese poorer; the beer poorest; yet was content therewith, knowing that
vicissitude is good for a man. The place itself has a special interest,
telling, so to speak, its own history--a history of desolation. The
wife, pointing to the road passing between the house and the beach, told
me she remembered Kilnsea church standing at the seaward end of the
village, with as broad a road between it and the edge of the cliff. But
year by year, as from time immemorial the sea advanced, the road,
fields, pastures, and cottages were undermined and melted away. Still
the church stood, and though it trembled as the roaring waves smote the
cliff beneath, and the wind howled around its unsheltered walls, service
was held within it up to 1823. In that year it began to yield, the walls
cracked, the floor sank, the windows broke; sea-birds flew in and out,
shrieking in the storm, until, in 1826, one-half of the edifice tumbled
into the sea, and the other half followed in 1831. The chief portion of
the village stands on and near the cliff, but as the waste appears to be
greater there than elsewhere, houses are abandoned year by year. In
1847, the _Blue Bell Inn_ was five hundred and thirty-four yards from
the shore; of this quantity forty-three yards were lost in the next six
years. Kilnsea exists, therefore, only as a diminished and diminishing
parish, and in the few scattered cottages near the bank of the Humber.
The old font was carried away from the church to Skeffling, where it is
preserved in the garden of the parsonage.
Her reminiscences ended, the good woman talked of the rough walking that
lay before me. It was a wild place out there, not often visited by
strangers; but sometimes "wagon loads o' coontra foak cam' to see t'
loights." At one time, as I have heard, a stage-coach used to do the
journey for the gratification of the curious.
A short distance beyond the _Crown and Anchor_ stands a small lone
cottage built of sea-cobbles, with a sandy garden and potato-plot in
front, and a sandy field, in which a thin, stunted crop of rye was
making believe to grow. Once past this cottage, and all is a wild waste
of sand, covered here and there with reedy grass, among which you now
and then see a dusty pink convolvulus, struggling, as it were, to keep
alive a speck of beauty amid the barrenness. Here, as old chronicles
tell, the king once had 'coningers,' or rabbit-warrens, and rabbits
still burrow in the hillocks. Presently, there is the wide open sea on
your left, and you can mark the waves rushing up on either side, hissing
and thundering against the low bank that keeps them apart.
"A broad long sand in the shape of a spoon," is the description given of
Spurn in a petition presented to parliament nearly two hundred years
ago; and, if we suppose the spoon turned upside down, it still answers.
It narrows and sinks as it projects from the main shore for about two
miles, and this part being the weakest and most easily shifted by the
rapid currents, is strengthened every few yards by rows of stakes
driven deeply in, and hurdle work. You see the effect in the smooth
drifts accumulated in the space between the barriers, which only require
to be planted with grass to become fixed. As it is, the walking is
laborious: you sink ankle-deep and slide back at every step, unless you
accept the alternative of walking within the wash of the advancing wave.
For a long while the lighthouse appears to be as far off as ever.
A little farther, and we are on a rugged embankment of chalk: the ground
is low on each side, and a large pond rests in the hollow between us and
the sea on the left, marking the spot where, a few years ago, the sea
broke through and made a clean sweep all across the bank. Every tide
washed it wider and deeper, until at last the fishing-vessels used it as
a short cut in entering or departing from the river. The effect of the
breach would, in time, had a low-water channel been established, have
seriously endangered the shore of the estuary, besides threatening
destruction to the site of the lighthouse. As speedily, therefore, as
wind and weather would permit, piles and stakes were driven in, and the
gap was filled up with big lumps of chalk brought from the quarry at
Barton, forming an embankment sloped on both sides, to render the shock
of the waves as harmless as possible. The trucks, rails, and sleepers
with which the work had been accomplished were still lying on the sand,
awaiting removal. Henceforth measures of precaution will be taken in
time, for a conservator of the river has been appointed.
The depth of the bay formed by the spoon appears to increase more and
more each time you look back. How vast is the curve between this bank of
chalk and the point where we struck the shore from Skeffling! The
far-spreading sands--or rather mud--are known as the Trinity Dry Sands.
At this moment they are disappearing beneath the rising tide, and you
can easily see what thousands of acres might be reclaimed were a barrier
erected to keep out the water. "Government have been talkin' o' doing it
for years," said a fisherman to whom I talked at Kilnsea, "but 'taint
begun yet."
Desolate as is now the scene, it was once enlivened by the dwellings of
men and the stir of commerce. Off the spot where we stand, there lay,
five hundred years ago, a low islet, accessible by a flat ridge of sand
and yellow pebbles, known as Ravenser Odd, or Ravensrode, as some write
it. "Situate at the entry to the sea," it was a port regarded with envy
and fear by the merchants of Grimsby and Hull, for its pilots were
skilful, and its traders enterprising. For a time it flourished; but
while the rival Roses wasted the realm, the sea crept nearer, and at
length, after an existence of a century and a half, distinctly traceable
in ancient records and old books, a high tide, enraged by a storm, ended
the history of Ravenser Odd with a fearful catastrophe. A gravelly bank,
running outwards, still discoverable by excavation, is believed to be
the foundation of the low, flat ridge of sand and yellow pebbles along
which the folk of the little town passed daily to and fro; among them at
times strange seamen and merchants from far-away lands, and cowled monks
and friars pacing meekly on errands of the Church.
And yonder, near the bottom of the curve, stood the town variously
described as Ravenser, Ravenspurne, and Ravenspurg--a town that sent
members to parliament in the reigns of the first two Edwards, and was
considered of sufficient importance to be invited to take part in the
great councils held in London, when the "kinge's majestie" desired to
know the naval forces of the kingdom. Now, twice a day, the tide rolls
in triumphantly over its site.
"The banish'd Bolingbroke repeals himself,
And with uplifted arms is safe arriv'd
At Ravenspurg,"
writes Shakspeare, perpetuating alike the name of the place and the
memory of the Duke of Lancaster's adventure,--an adventure brought
before us in an invective by the fiery Hotspur, which I may, perhaps, be
pardoned for introducing here:
"My father, my uncle, and myself,
Did give him that same royalty he wears:
And,--when he was not six and twenty strong,
Sick in the world's regard, wretched and low,
A poor unminded outlaw, sneaking home,--
My father gave him welcome to the shore:
And,--when he heard him swear a vow to God,
He came but to be Duke of Lancaster,
To sue his livery, and beg his peace;
With tears of innocency and terms of zeal,--
My father, in kind heart and pity mov'd,
Swore him assistance, and performed it too.
Now, when the lords and barons of the realm
Perceived Northumberland did lean to him,
The more and less came in with cap and knee;
Met him in boroughs, cities, villages;
Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes,
Laid gifts before him, proffered him their oaths,
Gave him their heirs; as pages follow'd him,
Even at the heels, in golden multitudes.
He presently,--as greatness knows itself,--
Steps me a little higher than his vow
Made to my father, while his blood was poor,
Upon the naked shore at Ravenspurg."
The cross set up to commemorate the landing was shifted from place to
place when endangered by the sea, and lastly to Hedon, where it still
remains, as already mentioned. It was at the same port that Edward IV.
landed, with an excuse plausible as that of the duke whose exploit he
imitated.
Though it be "naked" still, and toilsome to walk on, the shore is by no
means barren of interest. By-and-by we come to firm ground, mostly
covered with thickly-matted grass; a great irregular, oval mound, which
represents the bowl of the spoon reversed. Near its centre is a fenced
garden and a row of cottages--the residence of the life-boat crew. A
little farther, on the summit of the ridge, stands the lighthouse, built
by Smeaton, in 1776, and at the water's edge, on the inner side, the
lower light. The principal tower is ninety feet in height, and from the
gallery at the top you get an excellent bird's-eye view over sea and
land. Most remarkable is the tongue of sand along which we have walked,
now visible in its whole extent and outline. It is lowest where the
breach was made, and now that the tide has risen higher, the chalk
embankment seems scarcely above the level of the water. Beyond that it
broadens away to the shore of the estuary on one side, and the coast of
Holderness on the other--low, sweeping lines which your eye follows for
miles. By the waste of that coast the Spurn is maintained, and the
Trinity Sands are daily enlarged, and the meadows fattened along Ouse
and Trent. First the lighter particles of the falling cliffs drift round
by the set of the current, and gradually the heavier portions and
pebbles follow, and the supply being inexhaustible, a phenomenon is
produced similar to that of the Chesil Bank, on the coast of
Dorsetshire, except that here the pebbles are for the most part masked
by sand.
I looked northwards for Flamborough Head, but Dimlington Hill, which
lies between, though not half the height, hides it completely. Beyond
Dimlington lies Withernsea, a small watering-place, the terminus of the
Hull and Holderness Railway, to which the natives of the melancholy town
betake themselves for health and recreation, tempted by a quadrille band
and cheap season-tickets. Adjoining Withernsea is all that remains of
Owthorne, a village which has shared the doom of Kilnsea. The churches
at the two places were known as 'sister churches;' that at Withernsea
yet stands in ruins; but Owthorne church was swept into the sea within
the memory of persons now living. The story runs that two sisters living
there, each on her manor, in the good old times, began to build a church
for the glory of God and the good of their own souls, and the work went
on prosperously until a quarrel arose between them on the question of
spire or tower. Neither would yield. At length a holy monk suggested
that each sister should build a church on her own manor; the suggestion
was approved, and for long years the Sister Churches resounded with the
voice of prayer and praise, and offered a fair day-mark to the mariner.
But, as of old, the devouring sea rushed higher and higher upon the
land, and the cliff, sapped and undermined, fell, and with it the church
of Owthorne. In 1786, the edge of the burial-ground first began to fail;
the church itself was not touched till thirty years later. It was a
mournful sight to see the riven churchyard, and skeletons and broken
coffins sticking out from the new cliff, and bones, skulls, and
fragments of long-buried wood strewn on the beach. One of the coffins
washed out from a vault under the east end of the church contained an
embalmed corpse, the back of the scalp still bearing the gray hairs of
one who had been the village pastor. The eyes of the villagers were
shocked by these ghastly relics of mortality tossed rudely forth to the
light of day; and aged folk who tottered down to see the havoc, wept as
by some remembered token they recognised a relative or friend of bygone
years, whom they had followed to the grave--the resting place of the
dead, as they trusted, till the end of time. In some places bodies still
clad in naval attire, with bright-coloured silk kerchiefs round the
neck, were unearthed, as if the sea were eager to reclaim the
shipwrecked sailors whom it had in former time flung dead upon the
shore.
But, to return to the lighthouse. According to Smeaton's survey this
extremity of the spoon comprehends ninety-eight acres. It slopes gently
to the sea, and is somewhat altered in outline by every gale. At the
time of my visit, rows of piles were being driven in, and barriers of
chalk erected, to secure the ground on the outer side between the tower
and the sea; and a new row of cottages for the life-boat crew, built
nearer to the side where most wrecks occur than the old row, was nearly
finished. Beyond, towards the point, stands a public-house, in what
seems a dangerous situation, close to the water. There was once a garden
between it and the sea; now the spray dashes into the rear of the house;
for the wall and one-half of the hindermost room have disappeared along
with the garden, and the hostess contents herself with the rooms in
front, fondly hoping they will last her time. She has but few guests
now, and talks with regret of the change since the digging of ballast
was forbidden on the Spurn. Then trade was good, for the diggers were
numerous and thirsty. That ballast-digging should ever have been
permitted in so unstable a spot argues a great want of forethought
somewhere.
The paved enclosure around the tower is kept scrupulously clean, for the
rain which falls thereon and flows into the cistern beneath is the only
drinkable water to be had. "It never fails," said the keeper, "but in
some seasons acquires a stale flavour." He was formerly at Flamborough,
and although appointment to the Spurn was promotion, he did not like it
so well. It was so lonesome; the rough, trackless way between, made the
nearest village seem far off; now and then a boat came across with
visitors from Cleathorpes, a seven miles' trip; there had been one that
morning, but not often enough to break the monotony. And he could not
get much diversion in reading, for the Trinity Board, he knew not why,
had ceased to circulate the lighthouse library.
The lesser tower stands at the foot of the inner slope, where its base
is covered by every tide. Its height is fifty feet, and the entrance,
approached by a long wooden bridge, is far above reach of the water.
This is the third tower erected on the same spot; the two which preceded
it suffered so much damage from the sea that they had to be rebuilt.
About the time that ambitious Bolingbroke landed, a good hermit, moved
with pity by the number of wrecks, and the dangers that beset the mouth
of the estuary, set up a light somewhere near Ravenser. But finding
himself too poor to maintain it, he addressed a petition to the "wyse
Commons of Parliament," for succour, and not in vain. The mayor of Hull,
with other citizens, were empowered "to make a toure to be up on
daylight and a redy bekyn wheryn shall be light gevyng by nyght to alle
the vesselx that comyn into the seid ryver of Humbre."
In the seventeenth century, Mr. Justinian Angell, of London, obtained a
license to build a lighthouse on the Spurn. It was an octagonal tower of
brick, displaying an open coal fire on the top, which in stormy weather
was frequently blown quite out, when most wanted. Wrecks were
continually taking place; and it is only since Smeaton completed his
tower, and the floating-light was established in the offing, and the
channel was properly buoyed, that vessels can approach the Humber with
safety by night as well as by day.
It was full tide when I returned along the chalky embankment, and the
light spray from the breakers sprinkled my cheek, giving me a playful
intimation of what might be expected in a storm.
I was passing a tilery near Welwick, when a beery fellow, who sat in the
little office with a jug before him and a pipe in his mouth, threw up
the window and asked, in a gruff, insolent tone, "A say, guvner, did ye
meet Father Mathew?"
"Yes."
"What did he say to ye?"
"He told me I should see a fool at the tileworks."
Down went the window with a hearty slam, and before I was fifty yards
away, the same voice rushed into the road and challenged me to go back
and fight. And when the owner of the voice saw that the stranger took no
heed thereof, he cried, till hidden by a bend in the road, "Yer nothin'
but t' scram o' t' yerth!--yer nothin' but t' scram o' t' yerth!"
Thinking _scram_ might be the Yorkshire for _scum_, I made a note of it
for the benefit of philologists, and kept on to Patrington, where I
arrived in time for the last train to Hull, quite content with
six-and-twenty miles for my first day's walk.