Bainbridge--"If you had wanted a wife"--A Ramble--Millgill
Force--Whitfell Force--A Lovely Dell--The Roman Camp--The
Forest Horn, and the old Hornblower--Haymaking--A Cockney Raker
--Wensleydale Scythemen--A Friend indeed--Addleborough--Curlews
and Grouse--The First Teapot--Nasty Greens--The Prospect--
Askrigg--Bolton Castle--Penhill--Middleham--Miles Coverdale's
Birthplace--Jervaux Abbey--Moses's Principia--Nappa Hall--The
Metcalfes--The Knight and the King--The Springs--Spoliation of
the Druids--The great Cromlech--Legend--An ancient Village--
Simmer Water--An advice for Anglers--More Legends--Counterside
--Money-Grubbers--Widdale--Newby Head.
Four miles from Hawes down the dale is the pleasant village of
Bainbridge, where the rustic houses, with flower-plots in front and
roses climbing on the walls, and yellow stonecrop patching the roofs and
fences, look out upon a few noble sycamores, and a green--a real village
green. The hills on each side are lofty and picturesque; at one end, on
a flat eminence, remains the site of a Roman camp; the Bain, a small
stream coming from a lake some three miles distant, runs through the
place in a bed of solid stone, to enter Ure a little below, and all
around encroaching here and there up the hill-sides spread meadows of
luxuriant grass. The simple rural beauty will gladden your eye, and--as
with every stranger who comes to Bainbridge--win your admiration.
Wensleydale enjoys a reputation for cheese and fat pastures and wealth
above the neighbouring dales, and appears to be fully aware of its
superiority. The folk, moreover, consider themselves refined, advanced
in civilization in comparison with the dwellers on the other side of
Buttertubs: those whom we talked with yesterday. "Mr. White, if you had
wanted a wife, do you think you could choose one out of Swaledale?" was
the question put to me by a strapping village lass before I had been
three hours in Bainbridge.
Fortune favoured me. I found here some worthy Quaker friends of mine,
who had journeyed from Oxfordshire to spend the holidays under the
paternal rooftree. It was almost as if I had arrived at home myself; and
although I had breakfasted at Hawes, they took it for granted that I
would eat a lunch to keep up my strength till dinner-time. They settled
a plan which would keep me till the morrow exploring the
neighbourhood--a detention by no means to be repined at--and introduced
me to a studious young dalesman, the village author, who knew every nook
of the hills, every torrent and noteworthy site, and all the legends
therewith associated for miles round, and who was to be my guide and
companion.
Away we rambled across the Ure to a small wooded hollow at the foot of
Whitfell, in the hills which shut out Swaledale. It conceals a Hardraw
Scar in miniature, shooting from an overhanging ledge of dark shale, in
which are numerous fossil shells. From this we followed the hill upwards
to Millgill Force, a higher fall, on another beck, overshadowed by firs
and the mountain elm, and which Nature keeps as a shrine approachable
only by the active foot and willing heart. Now you must struggle through
the tall grass and tangle on the precipitous sides high among the trees;
now stride and scramble over the rocky masses in the bed of the stream.
To sit and watch the fall deep under the canopy of leaves, catching
glimpses of sunshine and of blue sky above, and to enjoy the delicious
coolness, was the luxury of enjoyment. I could have sat for hours.
Wordsworth came here during one of his excursions in Yorkshire; and if
you wish to know what Millgill Force is, as painted by the pen, even the
minute touches, read his description.
But there is yet another--Whitfell Force--higher up, rarely visited, for
the hill is steep and the way toilsome. My guide, however, was not less
willing to lead than I to follow, and soon we were scrambling through
the deepest ravine of all, where the sides, for the most part, afford no
footing, not even for a goat, but rise in perpendicular walls, or lean
over at the top. Here again the lavish foliage is backed by the dark
stiff spines of firs, and every inch of ground, every cranny, all but
the impenetrable face of the rock, is hidden by rank grasses, trailing
weeds, climbers, periwinkle, woodbine, and ferns, among which the
hart's-tongue throws out its large drooping clusters of graceful fronds.
For greater part of the way we had to keep the bed of the stream; now
squeezing ourselves between mighty lumps of limestone that nearly barred
the passage, so that the stream itself could not get through without a
struggle; now climbing painfully over where the crevices were too
narrow; now zigzagging from side to side wherever the big stones
afforded foothold, not without slips and splashes that multiplied our
excitement; now pausing on a broad slab to admire the narrowing chasm
and all its exquisite greenery. My companion pointed out a crystal pool
in which he sometimes bathed--a bath that Naiads themselves might envy.
In this way we came at length to a semicircular opening, and saw the
fall tumbling from crag to crag for sixty feet, and dispersing itself
into a confused shower before it fell into the channel beneath. We both
sat for a while without speaking, listening to the cool splash and busy
gurgle as the water began its race down the hill; and, for my part, I
felt that fatigue and labour were well repaid by the sight of so lovely
a dell.
Then by other paths we returned to the village, and mounted to the
flat-topped grassy mound, which Professor Phillips says, is an ancient
gravel heap deposited by the action of water. The Romans, taking
advantage of the site, levelled it, and established thereon a small
camp. A statue and inscription and some other relics have been found,
showing that in this remote spot, miles distant from their main highway,
the conquerors had a military station, finding it no doubt troublesome
to keep the dalesmen of their day in order.
Then we looked at a very, very old millstone, which now stands on its
edge at the corner of a cottage doing motionless duty as one end of a
kennel. The dog creeps in through the hole in the middle. There it
stands, an unsatisfactory antique, for no one knows anything about it.
Of two others, however, which we next saw, something is known--the old
horn and the old hornblower. Bainbridge was chief place of the forest of
Wensleydale--of which the Duke of Leeds is now Her Majesty's Ranger, and
at the same time hereditary Constable and Lord of Middleham Castle--and
from time immemorial the "forest horn" has been blown on the green,
every night at ten o'clock, from the end of September to Shrovetide, and
it is blown still; for are not ancient customs all but immortal in our
country? The stiff-jointed graybeard hearing that a curious stranger
wished to look at the instrument, brought it forth. It is literally a
horn--a large ox-horn, lengthened by a hoop of now rusty tin, to make
up for the pieces which some time or other had been broken from its
mouth. He himself had put on the tin years ago. Of course I was invited
to blow a blast, and of course failed. My companion, however, could make
it speak lustily; but the old man did best, and blew a long-sustained
note, which proved him to be as good an economist of breath as a
pearl-diver. For years had he thus blown, and his father before him. I
could not help thinking of the olden time ere roads were made, and of
belated travellers saved from perishing in the snow by that nightly
signal.
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 Wensleydale
From Morton unto Morsdale moor;
All they that dwell by the banks of Swale
With 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, Scandinavia
Stone 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 town
Save this little house
Where 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.