The Great Drain--The Carrs--Submerged Forest--River Hull--
Tickton--Routh--Tippling Rustics--A Cooler for Combatants--The
Blind Fiddler--The Improvised Song--The Donkey Races--Specimens
of Yorkshiremen--Good Wages--A Peep at Cottage Life--Ways and
Means--A Paragraph for Bachelors--Hornsea Mere--The Abbots'
Duel--Hornsea Church--The Marine Hotel.
About a mile from the town on the road to Hornsea, you cross one of the
great Holderness drains, broad and deep enough for a canal, which,
traversing the levels, falls into the sea at Barmston. It crosses the
hollow lands known as 'the Carrs,' once an insalubrious region of swamp
and water covering the remains of an ancient forest. So deep was the
water, that boats went from Beverley to Frothingham, and some of the
farmers found more profit in navigating to and fro with smuggled
merchandise concealed under loads of hay and barley than in cultivating
their farms. For years a large swannery existed among the islands, and
the "king's swanner" used to come down and hold his periodical courts.
The number of submerged trees was almost incredible: pines sixty feet in
length, intermingled with yew, alder, and other kinds, some standing as
they grew, but the most leaning in all directions, or lying flat. Six
hundred trees were taken from one field, and the labourers made good
wages in digging them out at twopence a piece. Some of the wood was so
sound that a speculator cut it up into walking sticks. Generally, the
upper layer consists of about two feet of peat, and beneath this the
trees were found densely packed to a depth of twenty feet, and below
these traces were met with in places of a former surface: the bottom of
the hollow formed by the slope from the coast on one side, from the
wolds on the other, to which Holderness owes its name. The completion of
the drainage works in 1835 produced a surprising change in the
landscape; green fields succeeded to stagnant water; and the islands are
now only discoverable by the 'holm' which terminates the name of some of
the farms.
A little farther, and there is the river Hull, flowing clean and
cheerful to the muddy Humber. Then comes Tickton, where, looking back
from the swell in the road, you see a good sylvan picture--the towers of
the minster rising grand and massy from what appears to be a great wood,
backed by the dark undulations of the wolds.
In the public-house at Routh, where I stayed to dine on
bread-and-cheese, the only fare procurable, I found a dozen rustics
anticipating their tippling hours with noisy revelry. The one next whom
I sat became immediately communicative and confidential, and, telling me
they had had to turn out a quarrelsome companion, asked what was the
best cure "for a lad as couldn't get a sup o' ale without wanting to
fight." I replied, that a pail of cold water poured down the back was a
certain remedy; which so tickled his fancy that he rose and made it
known to the others, with uproarious applause. For his own part he burst
every minute into a wild laugh, repeating, with a chuckle, "A bucket o'
water!"
There was one, however, of thoughtful and somewhat melancholy
countenance, who only smiled quietly, and sat looking apparently on the
floor. "What's the matter, Massey?" cried my neighbour.
"Nought. He's a fool that's no melancholy yance a day," came the reply,
in the words of a Yorkshire proverb.
"That's you, Tom! Play us a tune, and I'll dance."
"Some folk never get the cradle straws off their breech," came the ready
retort with another proverb.
"Just like 'n," said the other to me. "He's the wittiest man you ever
see: always ready to answer, be 't squire or t' parson, as soon as look
at 'n. He gave a taste to Sir Clifford hisself not long ago. He can make
songs and sing 'em just whenever he likes. I shouldn't wunner if he's
making one now. He's blind, ye see, and that makes 'n witty. We calls 'n
Massey, but his name's Mercer--Tom Mercer. Sing us a song, Tom!"
True enough. Nature having denied sight to him of the melancholy visage,
made it up with a rough and ready wit, and ability to improvise a song
apt to the occasion. He took his fiddle from the bag and attempted to
replace a broken string; but the knot having slipped two or three times,
three or four of his companions offered their aid. The operation was,
however, too delicate for clumsy fingers swollen with beer and rum, and
as they all failed, I stepped forward, took the fiddle in hand, and soon
gave it back to the minstrel, who, after a few preliminary flourishes,
interrupted by cries of "Now for 't!" struck up a song. With a voice not
unmusical, rhythm good, and rhyme passable, he rattled out a lively
ditty on the incidents of the hour, introducing all his acquaintances by
name, and with stinging comments on their peculiarities and weaknesses.
The effect was heightened by his own grave demeanour, and the fixed grim
smile on his face, while the others were kicking up their heels, and
rolling off their seats with frantic laughter.
"Didn't I tell ye so!" broke in my neighbour, as he winced a little
under a shaft unusually keen from the singer's quiver.
I was quite ready to praise the song, which, indeed, was remarkable. The
cleverest 'Ethiopian minstrel' could not chant his ditty more fluently
than that blind fiddler caught up all the telling points of the hour. He
touched upon the one who had been turned out, and on my hydropathic
prescription, and sundry circumstances which could only be understood by
one on the spot. Without pause or hesitation, he produced a dozen
stanzas, of which the last two may serve as a specimen:
"Rebecca sits a shellin' peas, ye all may hear 'em pop:
She knows who's comin' with a cart: he won't forget to stop:
And Frank, and Jem, and lazy Mat, got past the time to think,
With ginger-beer and rum have gone and muddled all their drink.
With a fol lol, riddle, liddle, lol, lol, lol!
"Here's a genelman fro' Lunnon; 'tis well that he cam' doun;
If he'd no coom ye rantin' lads would happen had no tune:
Ye fumbled at the fiddle-strings; he screwed 'em tight and strong;
Success to Lunnon then I say, and so here ends my song.
With a fol lol, riddle, liddle, lol, lol, lol!"
Lusty acclamations and a drink from every man's jug rewarded the
fiddler, and a vigorous cry was set up for "The Donkey Races," another
of his songs, which, as lazy Mat told me, "had been printed and sold by
hundreds." The blind man, nothing loth, rattled off a lively prelude,
and sang his song with telling effect. The race was supposed to be run
by donkeys from all the towns and villages of the neighbourhood: from
Patrington, Hedon, Hull, Driffield, Beverley, and others, each possessed
of a certain local peculiarity, the mention of which threw the company
into ecstacies of merriment. And when the "donkey from York" was
introduced along with his "sire Gravelcart" and his "dam Work," two of
the guests flumped from their chairs to laugh more at ease on the floor.
The fiddler seemed to enjoy the effect of his music; but his grim smile
took no relief; the twinkle of the eye was wanting. He was now sure of
his game, for the afternoon at least.
While looking round on the party, I had little difficulty in discerning
among them the three principal varieties of Yorkshiremen. There was the
tall, broad-shouldered rustic, whose stalwart limbs, light gray or blue
eyes, yellowish hair, and open features indicate the Saxon; there was
the Scandinavian, less tall and big, with eyes, hair, and complexion
dark, and an intention in the expression not perceptible in the Saxon
face; and last, the Celt, short, swarthy, and Irish looking. The first
two appeared to me most numerous in the East and North Ridings, the last
in the West.
On the question of wages they were all content. Here and there a man got
eighteen shillings a week; but the general rate was fifteen shillings,
or "nine shill'n's a week and our meat" (diet), as one expressed it.
Whatever folk might do in the south, Yorkshire lads didn't mean to work
for nothing, or to put up with scanty food. "We get beef and mutton to
eat," said lazy Mat, "and plenty of it."
The road continues between fat fields and pastures, skirts a park
bordered by noble trees, or tall plantations, in which the breeze
lingers to play with the branches: here and there a few cottages, or a
hamlet, clean in-doors, and pretty out of doors, with gay little
flower-gardens. Frequent thunder-showers fell, and I was glad to shelter
from the heaviest under a roof. Always the same cleanliness and signs of
thrift, and manifest pleasure in a brief talk with the stranger. And
always the same report about wages, and plenty of work for men and boys;
but a slowness to believe that sending a boy to school would be better
than keeping him at work for five shillings a week. I got but few
examples of reading, and those far from promising, and could not help
remembering how different my experiences had been the year before in
Bohemia.
One of the cottages in which I took shelter stands lonely in a little
wood. The tenant, a young labourer, who had just come home from work,
"not a bit sorry," as he said, "that 'twas Saturday afternoon," entered
willingly into conversation, and made no secret of his circumstances.
His testimony was also favourable as regards wages. He earned fifteen
shillings a week, and didn't see any reason to complain of hard times,
for he paid but three pounds a year for his cottage, which sum he
recovered from his garden in vegetables and flowers, besides sundry
little advantages which at times fall to the lot of rustics. He eat
meat--beef or mutton--"pretty well every day," and was fully persuaded
that without enough of good food a man could not do a fair day's work.
While we talked his wife was putting the finishing touch to the day's
cleaning by washing the brick floor, and without making herself unclean
or untidy, as many do. Her husband had shown himself no bad judge of
rustic beauty when he chose her as his helpmate, and her good looks were
repeated in their little daughter, who ran playfully about the room. I
suggested that the evening, when one wished to sit quiet and
comfortable, was hardly the time to wet the floor. "I'd rather see it
wet than mucky" (_mooky_, as he pronounced it), was the answer; and
neither husband nor wife was ready to believe that the ill-health too
plainly observable among many cottagers' children arises from avoidable
damp. To wash the floor in the morning, when no one had occasion to sit
in the room, would be against all rule.
"Stay a bit longer," said the young man, as I rose when the shower
ceased; "I like to hear ye talk."
And I liked to hear him talk, especially as he began to praise his wife.
It was such a pleasure to come home when there was such a lass as that
to make a man comfortable. Nobody could beat her at making a shirt or
making bread, or cooking; and he opened the oven to show me how much
room there was for the loaves. Scarcely a cottage but has a grate with
iron oven attached, and in some places the overpowering heat reminded me
of my friend's house in Ulrichsthal. Then we had a little discourse
about books. He liked reading, and had a Bible for Sundays, and a few
odd volumes which he read in the evenings, but not without difficulty;
it was so hard to keep awake after a day out of doors.
Meanwhile I made enticing signs to the merry little lassie, and at last
she sat without fear on my knee, and listened with a happy smile and
wondering eyes to my chant of the pastoral legend of _Little Bopeep_.
Such good friends did we become, that when at length I said "good-bye,"
and shook hands, there was a general expression of regret, and a hope
that I would call again. I certainly will the next time I visit
Holderness.
Often since has this incident recurred to my mind, and most often when
the discussion was going on in the newspapers concerning the impropriety
of marriage on three hundred a year. I wished that the writers,
especially he who sneered at domestic life, could go down into
Yorkshire, and see how much happiness may be had for less than fifty
pounds a year. As if any selfish bachelor enjoyments, any of the talk of
the clubs, were worth the prattle of infancy, the happy voices of
childhood, the pleasures and duties that come with offspring! Sandeau
deserved to be made _Academicien_, if only for having said that "un
berceau est plus eloquent qu'une chaire, et rien n'enseigne mieux a
l'homme les cotes serieux de sa destinee."
A mile or two farther and water gleams through the trees on the right.
It is Hornsea Mere, nearly two miles in length, and soon, when the road
skirts the margin, you see reedy shallows, the resort of wild-fowl, and
swans floating around the wooded islands; and at the upper end the belts
and masses of trees under which the visitors to Hornsea find pleasant
walks while sauntering out to the sylvan scenery of Wassand and
Sigglesthorne. The lake, said a passing villager, averages ten feet in
depth, with perhaps as much more of mud, and swarms with fish, chiefly
pike and perch. He added something about the great people of the
neighbourhood, who would not let a poor fellow fish in the mere, and
ordered the keeper to duck even little boys poaching with stick and
string. And he recited with a gruff chuckle a rhyming epitaph which one
of his neighbours had composed to the memory of a clergyman who had made
himself particularly obnoxious. It did not flatter the deceased.
In Henry the Third's reign, as may be read in the _Liber Melsae_, or
Chronicle of the Abbey of Meaux, the Abbot of St. Mary's at York
quarrelled with him of Meaux, about the right to fish in the mere, and
not being able to decide the quarrel by argument, the pious churchmen
had recourse to arms. Each party hired combatants, who met on the
appointed day, and after a horse had been swum across the mere, and
stakes had been planted to mark the Abbot of St. Mary's claim, they
fought from morning until nightfall, and Meaux lost the battle, and with
it his ancient right of fishery.
In Elizabeth's reign, the Countess of Warwick granted to Marmaduke
Constable the right to fish and fowl for "the some of fyftye and five
pounds of lawful English money." This Marmaduke, who thus testified his
love of fin and feather, was an ancestor of Sir Clifford Constable, the
present "Lord Paramount," upon whom the blind fiddler exercised his wit.
Hornsea church stands on an eminence at the eastern end between the mere
and the village. Its low square tower once bore a tall spire, on which,
as is said, the builder had cut an inscription:--
Hornsea steeple, when I built thee,
Thou was 10 miles off Burlington,
Ten miles off Beverley, and 10 miles off sea;
but it fell during a gale in 1773. The edifice is a specimen of
fifteenth-century architecture, with portions of an earlier date. The
crypt under the chancel was at one time a receptacle for smuggled goods,
and the clerk was down there doing unlawful work when the tempest smote
the spire, and frightened him well-nigh to death. The memory of the last
rector is preserved by an altar tomb of alabaster, and of William Day,
gentleman, who "dyed" in 1616, by a curious epitaph:
If that man's life be likened to a day,
One here interr'd in youth did lose a day
By death, and yet no loss to him at all,
For he a threefold day gain'd by his fall;
One day of rest in bliss celestial,
Two days on earth by gifts terrestryall--
Three pounds at Christmas, three at Easter Day,
Given to the poure until the world's last day.
This was no cause to heaven; but, consequent,
Who thither will, must tread the steps he went.
For why? Faith, Hope, and Christian Charity,
Perfect the house framed for eternity.
Hornsea village is a homely-looking place, with two or three inns, a
post-office, and little shops and houses furbished up till they look
expectant of customers and lodgers. Many a pair of eyes took an
observation of me as I passed along the street, and away up the hill,
seeking for quarters with an open prospect. Half a mile farther, the
ground always rising, and you come to the edge of a clay cliff, and a
row of modern houses, and the _Marine Hotel_ in full view of the sea.
Even at the first glance you note the waste of the land. As at Kilnsea,
so here. A few miles to the south, between us and Owthorne, stands the
village of Aldborough, far to the rear of the site once occupied by its
church. The sea washed it away. That church was built by Ulf, a mighty
thane, in the reign of Canute. A stone, a relic of the former edifice,
bearing an inscription in Anglo-Saxon, which he caused to be cut, is
preserved in the wall of the present church. This stone, and Ulf's horn,
still to be seen in York Minster, are among the most venerable
antiquities of the county.
Hornsea is a favourite resort of many Yorkshire folk who love quiet;
hence a casual traveller is liable to be disappointed of a lodging on
the shore. There was, however, a room to spare at the hotel--a top room,
from which, later in the evening, I saw miles of ripples twinkling with
moonlight, and heard their murmur on the sand through the open window
till I fell asleep.