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THE GIFT OF 
 
 T. F. CRANE, 
 
 . Professor of the Romance Languages and Literatures. 
 
 A.:a^.53..l^ : ajaJTC-i-E^ 
 
n. .,„ JEHI?«" ""'™"l*y Library 
 DA 670.C63A87 1891 
 
 ^°ffl{iiiYi?mrjS.„ P.,.^. Tioorland parish 
 
 3 1924 028 026 254 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028026254 
 
FOETY YEARS 
 
 IN A 
 
 MOORLAND PARISH 
 
FOETY YEARS Lit 
 MOORLAND PARISH 
 
 REMINISCENCES AND RESEARCHES IN 
 DANBY IN CLEVELAND 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. J. C. ATKINSON, D.C.L. 
 
 mOUMBESf'OP THE PAEISH 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 * A HISTORY OF CLEVELAND,' ' QLOSSABT OF THE CLEVELAND DIALECT,' ETC. 
 
 EDITOR OF 
 
 'the WHITBY CHARTULARY,' 'THE RIEVAULX CHARTULARY,' 
 
 'the FURNESS COUCHER BOOK,' ETC. 
 
 WITH MAPS 
 
 HoTilron 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NBW YOEK 
 1891 
 
TO 
 MT LOVING FRIEND 
 
 Q. A.U. 
 
 BUT FOR WHOM THESE PAGES WOTJLD 
 NOT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN 
 
viii Preface 
 
 since reverently and lovingly consigned by himself to 
 their silent homes in the churchyard. 
 
 Personal as such reminiscences as these last must 
 be, the others are scarcely less so, albeit in another 
 sense. There might be no palpable companionship in 
 all those hours and leagues of daily walking ; but there 
 was perpetually so distinct a personality in the matters 
 which passed in succession through the mind, that the 
 effect was rather one of conversation than of solitary 
 reflection. Sixty miles from any coUeotion of books 
 worthy to be named a library, with no neighbours, 
 clerical or otherwise, who could offer intellectual 
 sympathy, the need for something to converse with in 
 those long hours ■ — half of them spent on the lonely 
 moors — was constant. And some of the " conversations " 
 thus held are recorded in the pages which follow. 
 
 Some of the views put forward three -and -twenty 
 years ago in the Cleveland Glossary, as well as previously 
 elsewhere, have been contested or made light of, but 
 seem to be generally, even if sometimes tacitly, admitted 
 now. Others are advanced below which may quite 
 possibly be questioned in their turn ; but, as before, 
 they are advanced only for what they are worth. Let 
 the thoughtful reader decide. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 Intkodttctory .... 
 My Introdttction to Danby 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3 
 
 37 
 
 FOLKLORE 
 
 SUEVITALS OF "FaIEY," "DwARF," " HoB " NOTIONS 
 
 Evidences of Latent Faith in Archaic Folk-Taxes 
 
 The Hob and other Matters, and how eboeivbd in the 
 
 Folk's Mind ..... 
 The "Witch not always or necessarily an Impostor 
 The "Witch : Local Legends of her Doings, and Illus 
 
 trations 
 "Witch Stories and "Witch Antidotes . 
 The "Witch and "Witch Antidotes (contirmed) 
 The "Wise Man ..... 
 The "Wise Man {continued) 
 Bee Customs and Notions 
 
 51 
 58 
 
 64 
 74 
 
 81 
 
 91 
 
 97 
 
 103 
 
 108 
 
 126 
 
 ANTIQUARIAN 
 Barrows — Earthworks — British "V"illages 
 
 Bareow-Digging . 
 Barrow-Digging {continued) 
 
 137 
 145 
 
Contents 
 
 Eakthwokks 
 
 British Villages, so called 
 
 FAQE 
 
 153 
 
 161 
 
 DESCRIPTIVE AND GEOLOGICAL 
 
 Desokiptivb and Geological ... 
 Dbsoeiptite and Geological {continued) 
 
 181 
 194 
 
 MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 
 
 Weddings — Bumals — Halikelds and the Mbll-Suppek- 
 The Dog-Whipper 
 
 Dales "Weddings and their Accompaniments 
 Burials and their Accompaniments . 
 Burials and their Accompaniments 
 Holy-Wells, Mell-Supper, Harvest-Home 
 The Dog-Whippee 
 
 205 
 213 
 222 
 234 
 246 
 
 HISTORICAL 
 
 Historical ..... 
 
 An Old Oak Chest and some of its Disclosures 
 
 253 
 295 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 Notes on Natural History : chiefly Ornithology 
 Ornithology (continued) . . . . . 
 
 Winter in a Moorland Parish 
 Moorland Scenery in Winter 
 Lost on the Mook 
 
 311 
 328 
 348 
 364 
 376 
 
Contents 
 
 XI 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 Appendix A. Inclostjee without Aot of Inclosuee 
 
 Appendix B. Geological Consideeations . 
 
 Appendix C. Glances at a Mooeland Parish (as part of 
 A District) feom a pee-Domesdat Point of View 
 
 Appendix D. The Site of the Ancient Vill of Daney 
 
 Appendix E. Attempt to clbae vv the Difficulties in the 
 Domesday Enteies touching Danby 
 
 Appendix F. Touching Robert de Thweng . 
 
 Appendix G. Black Land .... 
 
 INDEX ...... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 387 
 395 
 
 401 
 429 
 
 434 
 444 
 445 
 
 453 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Castleton Bow Bridge ..... 
 
 Danby Castle Bkidse. Built circa 1386 . . Page 291 
 
 MAPS 
 
 Danby in Cleveland 
 Paeish of Danby 
 
CORRIGENDA 
 
 Page 5, line 14, after 'because' insert 'almost.' 
 
 Page 61, after 'friend,' in the note, insert 'William Robinson, and'. 
 
 Page 80, line VI, for ' class of phase ' read ' class or phase.' 
 
 Page 227, third line from the bottom, for ' Scandinavial ' read 
 
 'Scandinavian.' 
 
 Page 257, last line but one, for 'inferior ' read 'interior.' 
 
 Page 295, ninth line from the bottom, for ' twenty-four ' read 
 
 'twenty-three.' 
 
INTRODUCTOKY 
 
INTEODUCTORY 
 
 "Forty years in a Moorland Parish." Forty years is a 
 long time to have spent anywhere, and I have been nearly 
 forty -five years in this parish ; and during the whole of that 
 time it is not simply that I have been learning something more 
 yearly about the place or its people, or its characteristics, but 
 that, for long spaces together sometimes, I have been almost 
 (Hke Cato) quotidie addiscens. 
 
 Much that I have thus learnt may be of little or no interest 
 to any besides myself. Much of it might not be worth repro- 
 ducing under any circumstances ; and it may truly be added 
 that none of it would have been reproduced in any form had 
 it not been that strong pressure has at divers times been put 
 upon me. 
 
 The publication of the Cleveland Grlossary, followed as it 
 was by that of the major part of a History of Cleveland, made 
 my name known to many who otherwise would never have 
 heard of my existence, and of these several from time to time 
 paid- me visits during their stay at Whitby or Scarborough 
 (the former especially), or sought my acquaintance in some 
 other way. By a considerable proportion of these, after I 
 had been handing out to them from my " stores, things new 
 and old " — facts, theories, investigations, conclusions, or what 
 not — the question has been asked in some form or other, but 
 literally again and again, " Is that in print? " And up to two 
 or three years ago I could and did not only make answer, 
 " No," but add besides, "Nor ever likely to be." 
 
4 Introductory 
 
 However, about that time since, I was induced to alter such 
 decision, and the following pages are the issue of the change. 
 
 If it had been an autobiography I had undertaken the task 
 would have been a comparatively easy one. There would have 
 been the string of time, in its ordered flow of sequence, to 
 connect the varied pages of the records of my life and experi- 
 ences. But much of what follows has been thought out or 
 worked out at intervals of many months, and even, in some 
 cases, years, and there is no possible bond of tangible connection 
 between one section or subject and another. Things that were 
 matters of speculation twenty years ago, which became matters 
 of conviction, or even certainty, ten years later, are here 
 recorded as matters of knowledge now ; and the records have 
 to stand with as little mutual connection or interdependence 
 as the articles in a magazine. They may be compared with a 
 score or two of old coins which were handed over to me some 
 ten or fifteen years ago, some Eoman, some Saxon, and the rest 
 more recent English, a few silver, the rest copper, the only 
 trace of connection between them being that they were con- 
 tained in the same small metal box. 
 
 But forty-five years, it may be said yet once again, is a very 
 long time, and surely the changes in the place, in men and in 
 manners, must have been considerable, and more or less note- 
 worthy, and there can be but little difficulty in giving details 
 of them in sequence, if not in actual successional order. 
 
 Yet even here the annalist is not without his difficulties ; 
 for the changes are less striking, and lend themselves less to 
 description, than the permanent stability of not a few of the 
 habits and usages of the Dales dwellers. It is true, the young 
 people have learnt to dance within the last twenty years or so, 
 and dance with great enjoyment and quite proportionate vigour. 
 It is equally true that the young women (rather remarkable 
 always for their prevailing comeliness) have learned, like other 
 young women in other places, to study the fashions of female 
 dress somewhat more than was customary forty years ago. It 
 
Old Customs still unchanged $ 
 
 is true also that, in the language of a leader in the Standard of 
 only yesterday's date (24th September 1890), "much has been 
 quietly and unostentatiously done by the Church in the dis- 
 charge of her mission to elevate the tone of society and to raise 
 the standard of comfort as well as of conduct among the people," 
 and that it is many years indeed since I heard the remark, 
 once so common, made about the mother of an illegitimate 
 child, "Ay, poor gell, she's had a misfortin; but she's nane 
 the warse for't." And it is quite equally true that hereditary 
 leather breeches are gone out of fashion, and that drab breeches 
 and continuations are no longer looked upon as the de rigueur 
 clothing for the lower limbs of " t'priest," or, as the personage 
 in question is more usually termed, " our parson." Neither do 
 the old folks call me " bairn " any longer ; but it is because all 
 those who knew me forty-five years ago 'are laid in their last 
 beds, and I am too old myself for the application of that some- 
 thing more than friendly vocative case, although there were 
 some still who called me so years after I was turned of sixty. 
 But still there is a singular amount of old and unchanged 
 custom, habit, feeling, among us. It is not long since that I 
 was asked by some who proposed to gather a large party of the 
 Dales folks together for objects all of a social nature, "But will it 
 do to ask masters and mistresses and their farm-servants to meet 
 one another ? " My answer was an unhesitating " Certainly "; 
 and I went on to illustrate rather than explain my dictum by 
 a descriptive reference to the universal custom of the country. 
 The master — the farmer himself, whether he be tenant-farmer 
 or yeoman — and his wife, their children (whether under age or 
 adult), and the servants, male and female (the large propor- 
 tion of them engaged in the farm-work), all Hve together. 
 They sit down to the same table and partake of the same dish. 
 At least, with one exception : the mistress prepares the food — 
 in the local vernacular, " mak's t'meat " — sets it on the table, 
 and in one word "waits," getting her own meal afterwards. 
 When the labours of the day are over, all gather in the same 
 
Introductory 
 
 room, kitchen, or house, or whatever other term may be used ; 
 and in a truer sense than as the word is customarily used, they 
 are all " one family." 
 
 Nay, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred the masters 
 and the mistresses, the male servants on the farm, and the 
 female workers in the house, the dairy, the fields, all went to 
 the same school and imbibed the same amount of the three 
 R's at the lips of the same teacher. I hardly think that during 
 all my forty-five years of residence and intimate acquaintance 
 with the households throughout the parish I have known any- 
 thing like twenty-five instances in which boys or girls be- 
 longing to the farmers' families have been sent to schools other 
 than, or over and above, the village school. True, it has been 
 a good one, and " under inspection " for forty-four years ; and 
 in the days when Blue Books were issued bearing on the char- 
 acter and condition of the schools of the kingdom, when one 
 inspector held the field now occupied by a score or two of the 
 said officials, it stood among the half-dozen or half-score best 
 country schools in the Riding. But still that does not affect 
 the principle I am speaking of. None of our young folks have 
 been what their parents express by the term " high-learnt " ; 
 and there has been almost no desire among the folk that they 
 should be. Certainly, I have myself, in several instances, given 
 friendly assistance, in the way of Latin or arithmetic and ac- 
 counts, to lads of promise who wished to " better themselves," 
 and so have helped to swell the ranks of "professional men." 
 But that exception assuredly proves the rule I state. Forty-five 
 years ago it was not unusual for a farmer to be unable to read 
 or write, sometimes both. The then tenant of far the largest 
 farm in the parish was compelled to "make his mark " for this 
 reason, and so was my nearest neighbour, the tenant of one of 
 Lord Downe's largest farms j and it was a very common thing 
 for the parish clerk, who held the office of parish school- 
 master as well (and so was "qualified to know"), to say to me 
 when I was preparing to register the newly solemnised marriage 
 
Farms universally small 7 
 
 that one or more of the parties — sometimes all four, or the 
 newly wedded pair and the witnesses — were " marksmen " ; in 
 other words, could not write their names. All that is altered, 
 it is true ; hut not the fact that the education aimed at and 
 possessed by the great majority is still strictly " elementary." 
 
 Again, the farms are all, as they have always been, small. 
 Lord Downe has taken the one that exceeded 200 acres into 
 his own hands, paring off a field or two on the outskirts that 
 could be laid with advantage to the adjoining farms. But 
 with the exception of that farm there is no other in the parish 
 with so much as 145 acres of arable land in it. In all, there 
 may be now six or eight farms of more than 100 acres ; all 
 the rest, in number hardly if at all under seventj^, and exclusive 
 of small holdings or cow-keepings, scarcely average seventy- 
 five acres each. 
 
 As compared, in the matter of such statistics, with the 
 Danby of two centuries and a half ago, there has been un- 
 doubtedly a very considerable change. When the entire 
 estate, comprising Glaisdale as well as Danby, changed hands 
 in 1656, it would appear that there was a total of not less 
 than 165 tenements, all, with very few exceptions, involving 
 some land, however little. The preponderating majority of 
 these tenements were farmholds, and of the sum total more 
 than two -thirds were in the Danby township. But this is 
 tantamount to saying in other words that the farms in Danby 
 now are less in number than they were two hundred and fifty 
 years ago, by something like 25 per cent. And that is 
 certainly so. I am quite aware, from the testimony pf the 
 old conveyances themselves, that in divers cases two farms of 
 moderate dimensions have been laid together to make one 
 comparatively large one ; and that, in several instances again, 
 a larger farm has absorbed, so to say, one small one, or more, 
 that lay contiguous. And even within my own time I have 
 known at least half a dozen small farms dealt with in this way. 
 Partly in order to raise his farms to an average size, and 
 
Introductory 
 
 partly with a view to do away with the expense of maintaining 
 buildings which could, without any prejudice to land or tenant, 
 be dispensed with, the landlord has found himself more than 
 justified in adopting such a policy. But admitting all this, 
 still it is absolutely true that Danby is a district of small 
 holdings ; and if the greater landlords are wise, it will always 
 remain so. The holdings are suited to the Dales farmers, and 
 the Dales farmers are suited to their holdings, and alike by 
 their means, their experience, their hardihood, industry, and 
 energy, and by the simplicity of their habits and manner of 
 life. And what I mean by that is that they depend mainly 
 upon the produce of the farm, in kind, for their subsistence. 
 Forty years ago I hardly suppose that the average consumption 
 of butcher's meat per week throughout the parish amounted 
 to half the carcase of a beast or a couple of sheep. The 
 butchers killed once a week, and sold the little that was called 
 for by the requirements of the parish, and carried the re- 
 mainder, far the largest proportion of the whole, down to 
 the Whitby market on the Saturday. And even still, although 
 there are four or five resident butchers in the place, the same 
 statement with only a little qualification may be made. The 
 bacon, bread, potatoes, and milk produced by the land supply 
 by far the chief part of the sustenance of masters and servants 
 alike. 
 
 That there are changes in relation to the management of 
 the land may be almost assumed;^ and these changes 
 mostly in the line of improvement. But the general 
 system remains totally unaltered. The land is held from 
 year to year, and I hardly suppose there is an extant lease 
 
 ' Notably the introduotion of "mowers "and "reapers." Improved 
 or modern ploughs, harrows, rollers, are more frequent than they used to 
 be. But the drill is comparatively rare still. The introduction of arti- 
 ficial manures, when concomitant, as it oftener than should be is, with a 
 much lessened application of lime, is hardly a step in the march of improve- 
 ment ; especially as viewed in connection with the nature and needs of no 
 small part of the Dales land. 
 
Quasi-hereditary Descent of Farms 9 
 
 throughout the parish. Neither is there apparently any desire 
 to have the system altered. On the principal estate the farms 
 in a certain sense may be said to go by descent. I mean 
 that if a tenant dies leaving a son, or even a widow, capable 
 of conducting and managing the farm suitably and efficiently, 
 the preference, to say the least, always rests with such successor. 
 There is one farm in the parish which has descended from 
 father to son in this way for two centuries at least, and when 
 the last male " heir " died, ten or twelve years ago, the pre- 
 ference fell on the husband of one of his sisters, by whom it is 
 still held. It is not so very long since a tenant-farmer, hold- 
 ing of one of our freeholders, on asking me to use my interest 
 with the landlord of the estate in question on his behalf, 
 added, "Why, every one knows, sir, that being 'on the estate' 
 is next best to being a freeholder." And the land as held 
 from year to year is for the most part well and efficiently 
 managed, and dealt with in a husband-like way. 
 
 The system of management, or rotation of crops, remains 
 practically unaltered in every particular throughout the entire 
 period of my acquaintance with the district. Beginning with 
 the fallow, a large breadth of potatoes is grown, and the area 
 occupied by Swedes and turnips is by no means a small one. 
 But little wheat is raised, hardly more than enough in most 
 cases to supply the household with flour. Of the rest of the 
 land occupied by corn, a moiety (or nearly) is taken up with 
 the growth of a mixed crop of barley and oats, which grains 
 are ground as well as grown together, and the meal mixed 
 with the potatoes just named (when duly boiled) and served 
 to the pigs, a large head of which is kept, part being used at 
 home in the form of fat bacon, and the rest disposed of to the 
 bacon-factor. I have sometimes seen as many as a dozen up 
 to twenty large carcases of pigs going from one farm to the 
 purchasers in the farm waggon, and had reason to know that 
 not so very many fewer had been kept at the farm for con- 
 sumption by the family, constituted and fed as above noticed. 
 
I o Introductory 
 
 The corn-crop which succeeds the fallow is itself succeeded 
 by a crop of hay springing from mixed grass-seeds and clover- 
 seed, sown in the spring when the young corn is two or three 
 inches above the ground. After the hay is secured and the 
 aftermath — locally called the "fog" — has grown, it is fed off 
 by the stock of the farm, and not infrequently the land lies in 
 grass a second year. But whether it be so or no, the sward 
 is then ploughed up and a crop of oats is taken ; after which 
 the fallow, and so on de novo. 
 
 As to the stock on the farms : besides the pigs already 
 named, our farmers have considerable flocks of sheep, a few 
 of them Improved Leicester, but the great bulk Blackfaced, 
 or so-called "moor-sheep." Connected with each farm, and I 
 think with hardly an exception (if indeed there be an excep- 
 tion), is what is called a " common right," in virtue of which 
 the tenant is privileged to enjoy the liberty of free sheep-stray 
 for a number of sheep proportionate to his acreage, besides 
 taking what quantity of peat and turf he requires for his own 
 use from the "peat-moor," or the available surface. And 
 besides this, he may take what ling he wants for "kindling," 
 subject to the same rule. 
 
 After the sheep come the cattle and the horses. Most 
 farmers with a hundred acres of land keep nine or ten cows 
 for dairy purposes, some of them making' cheese of excellent 
 quality, and the rest producing butter, which is bought up by 
 the " badgers " who go round the parish week by week, col- 
 lecting the eggs and spare poultry as well, and who find ready 
 sale for them at Middlesbrough, Stockton, and other centres 
 of population. 
 
 Much of the stock kept is of a very good type, and the 
 proportion kept, inclusive of horses, is a very large one. On 
 a farm which maintains eight or nine dairy cows there will be, 
 inclusive of calves, yearlings, and two-year-olds, a total of 
 hardly less than thirty head of " cattle " ; and, inclusive of 
 foals, yearlings, and two-year-olds, at least nine or ten horses. 
 
Improvement in the Stock kept . 1 1 
 
 And in speaking on this head it must be broadly stated that 
 there has been a great and marked change in the district 
 generally. Forty -four years ago, at the rent -dinner given to 
 Lord Downe's tenants, reference was made to the desirability 
 of something of the nature of a Show of live stock in the 
 district. I took the opportunity of offering, if the farmers 
 were really wishful to organise such an association, to under- 
 take the secretary's part ; and in no long time an Agricultural 
 Association was formed, of which I became secretary and 
 treasurer, giving whatever assistance in other directions I 
 could, or as far as my experience and ability permitted ; and 
 I remained secretary for thirty -one years. The Society still 
 exists, and is as flourishing as ever ; and the proofs and tokens 
 of its efficiency and success are everywhere apparent. 
 
 I remember at the first, or perhaps the second, Show we 
 held being myself in attendance on the judges, recording 
 their decisions and bestowing the premium tickets as they were 
 awarded, on having a class of bulls brought into the ring for 
 adjudication, hearing one of the judges, as he cast his eye 
 over the lot as they arrived, and noticed a strange-looking, 
 
 brindled, breedingless animal, say to the other, " I say, S , 
 
 what breed is this % " The answer was, " Well, I don't know. 
 I should say a cross between a bear and a jackass ! " But our 
 Show soon altered all that ; especially as Colonel Duncombe, 
 the owner of most of the land in the adjoining parish of 
 Westerdale, had already interested himself in the improve- 
 ment of the stock kept in the district, and with an eye to it 
 had introduced some good blood from the Duncombe Park 
 herd of the day. For many years past our farmers have been 
 able to show really fine stock, and a good head of it; and 
 only half a dozen years ago one of the tenants on the Estate 
 exhibited a shorthorn bull which not only carried off more 
 than thirty premiums in local and other more important or 
 provincial exhibitions, but "took a second" at the All-England 
 Show held at York. 
 
1 2 Introductory 
 
 But whatever the change in the way of a better class of 
 cattle may have been, I think the change in the same direc- 
 tion in the matter of horses has certainly not been less 
 marked. Not only has the number of horses bred in the 
 district been on the increase, and steadily so, but we have 
 now, in place of the two classes of Cart-horses and Cleveland 
 bays, the same two classes with the additional classes of 
 Hunters, Eoadsters, and Coaching-horses. At our recent 
 Show in August last, the horses shown in the several classes 
 were not only about five times as numerous as in the shows 
 held during the earlier years of the existence of the Associa- 
 tion, but such in quality as to elicit the highest commendation 
 from very many good judges of a horse who had come from a 
 distance to attend our Dales Show. 
 
 Eecognising, then, and as fully as possible, the change 
 that is implied in the statement that better stock, and as 
 much of it, is kept now than was actually kept forty-five 
 years ago, and the still more important change involved in 
 the alleged fact that there is far greater regard for moral 
 decency, that there is distinctly more respect among the 
 younger folk both for themselves and for one another, than 
 there used to be, still it may, perhaps it must, seem strange 
 that so much should remain still unaltered. It may be that, 
 growing old with my elder parishioners, and seeing my 
 younger ones grow up around me and becoming middle-aged 
 men and women, with their families (and no longer only 
 children) about them, I have been in a measure insensible to 
 the changes passing over men and things; and even yet, 
 though my attention is awakened, continue in the same con- 
 dition. But I do not think it is so. We have no more 
 class-dififerences among us than we had half a century ago. 
 The master lives and works with his men, and the mistress 
 with her maidens. We have no rich men in our midst, 
 nor any who live the life of idleness, save only those whose 
 work is done, or the few lazy ones who have not sufficient 
 
Hard-working Farmers 1 3 
 
 self-respect to be ashamed of sponging upon others. I think, 
 indeed, that if a rule could be laid down in such matters, 
 it would rather be that the farmer, or other "master-man," 
 works harder, and at things wanting more nicety or care or 
 skill, than any one else merely in his employ ; and his sons are 
 hardly exceptions to the rule as long as they remain at home 
 with their father. I remember, nearer forty years ago than 
 thirty, when just beginning a long pastoral walk into some 
 one of the many far parts of my parish, seeing three lads of 
 from thirteen up to sixteen or seventeen working away at a 
 bit of toilsome clearing which had been made necessary 
 for " mensefulness," and indeed for the plough, by the recent 
 erection of a new dry-stone-wall. Their father I knew was 
 ill, unable to leave the house, and, hard-handed son of toil as 
 he had always been, always laborious and "endeavouring," 
 would never leave his house again save once. When I came 
 back, five or six hours later, they were still there, still at 
 work, and with goodly piles of material moved to be a record 
 that they, boys as they were, and with no one to set them 
 their task and see that they did it, had " worked with a will " 
 while I had been gone. Those same three are all still living 
 and are all that their father was before them, steadily and 
 enduringly industrious, and bringing up their families to tread 
 in the same steps they have trodden in before them. The 
 eldest too, poor fellow, has been sorely stricken by disabling 
 attacks twice, and he who was the strongest man in the parish, 
 or nearly so, is now but a crippled wreck ; and still he is never 
 idle, never negligent, the condition of his farm being such as 
 to show that he must farm well and work hard who would 
 fain be George's " master " in farming and all that belongs to 
 it. We may have — I suppose with our small farms and some- 
 what capricious seasons we can have — no scientific farmers 
 among us ; but we have what the scientific farmer cannot do 
 without, the steady, persistent industry and energy which lies 
 at the root of all real success in the multitudinous ways in 
 
14 ■ Introductory 
 
 which men's heads and hands are occupied. And so our 
 farmers, our master-men, are as much workers now, and with 
 and among their men, as they have ever been. 
 
 And what is true of the men is not less true of the females. 
 I remember, when I first took up my abode in the place, dis- 
 covering after a week or two that there was a piano in the 
 parish, old-fashioned and jangly, but still a pianoforte ; and I 
 remember the young lady to whom (together with the three 
 farms left her by her yeoman father) it belonged, in obedience 
 to her mother's injunction, "Now, sit thee down, Hannah, and 
 mak' the minister some music," sitting down accordingly and 
 playing "The Battle of Prague." And beyond that I remem- 
 ber how this solitary Danby piano became supplemented in 
 less than a score of years by some fifty or sixty other pianos 
 and harmoniums, and how one of our old inhabitants, on my 
 noticing this great increase in musical instruments, gravely 
 shook his head, and misdoubted how it would work ; whether 
 or no the farm-daughters and others who were learning to play, 
 or had already learnt, would not become too fine -fingered, 
 and too much given to other new-fangled ways, to attend as 
 they ought to the dairy, with its cheese -press and butter- 
 runner ; and the household work, with its dainty cleanliness ; 
 and the "mak'ing the meat" and its thrifty hospitality. But 
 our butter is as delicate and sweet as it used to be, and 
 our cheeses still take the best premiums at the shows of 
 agricultural produce; and I am sure that no one who has 
 partaken of the hospitality of one of our extant farms, and 
 much more has sat down to a real "Yorkshire tea" as pro- 
 vided (for perhaps hundreds of guests) by our Dales house- 
 wives, can do so without being forced, and even admiringly, 
 to admit that the cunning has not left the hands of those who 
 provided such pastry, such cakes, and such and so varied other 
 delicacies. 
 
 But while, as it seems to me, our social relations have, in 
 all essential matters, submitted to but very little variation 
 
Church and Nonconformity 1 5 
 
 during the last half -century, I cannot but think that very 
 much the same remains to be said as to any very apparent 
 change in matters pertaining to politics or religion. Shortly 
 after my acceptance of the incumbency the patron wrote to 
 me, " You will find the Wesleyans worthy of much considera- 
 tion. Indeed I think that if it had not been for them and 
 their influence, religion would practically have died altogether 
 out in these Dales." And I am very much inclined to think 
 there was more truth in the remark than a stickler for the 
 influence of the Church would find it pleasant to have to 
 admit. The days were but lately passed away when one 
 " minister " (or " church priest," as he was quite as often called) 
 found himself charged with the burden of three, in one or two 
 cases I knew of, even four parishes ; and where parishes are 
 such as this moorland district necessitates in point of area, 
 that is equivalent to saying that even one service in the week 
 and a proportionate amount of visiting was a thing to be 
 desired rather than statedly enjoyed. My immediate prede- 
 cessor had Danby (of 13,600 acres) and Westerdale (of about 
 9000) on his hands, and was neither strong nor good at read- 
 ing, let alone preaching. One of his predecessors had Danby, 
 Rosedale, and Farndale. Another parson in the same district, 
 and not a century ago, had Glaisdale, Egton, and Goathland. 
 And I have reason to think that even thus the pittance earned 
 by such men was barely up to the proverbial wealthiness of 
 "forty pounds a year." Thus, the Wesleyans with their 
 admirable organisation were an important factor in the con- 
 ditions of religious life in the Dale, and had more than merely 
 a claim to consideration. And they are still a strong and 
 influential body. And I think they will continue to be so 
 yet awhile, although they are but barely holding their own 
 at present. The religious fervour and earnestness of the old 
 days seems to have lost warmth and energy, and to have been 
 in part replaced by more secular feelings and objects. And 
 the change will be fatal in the end. Nor do I think that the 
 
1 6 Introductory 
 
 Primitive Methodists, who constitute another strong element 
 in the religious life of the parish, quite reach the point of 
 making up what is missing. There is one defect in the 
 organisation of both bodies, the weakness of which is already 
 becoming more than apparent, and which will be but the 
 more evident as time rolls on and the advancing tide of 
 information, knowledge, and especially inquiry, more than 
 keeps pace with the times. They can multiply chapels, but 
 the local-preacher system will not supply the teachers that are, 
 and will increasingly be, wanted. " Men of light and leading " 
 do not grow up like mushrooms in remote places like these, 
 and will be slow of growth even where the culture can be and 
 is attended to. 
 
 For the days are upon us when such things are, and will 
 be. Forty-five years ago there were, I believe, about three 
 newspapers brought into the Dale. Fifty years ago, certainly 
 not more. I myself remember the Yorkshire Gazette passing 
 on from one farmer to another, and its circulation hardly 
 ceasing until it was three or four weeks old. But all that is 
 strangely altered now. Newspapers abound, and comprising 
 those statedly taken and others of more casual introduction, 
 all classes of opinion, religious, non-religious, agnostic in a 
 greater or lesser degree, sectarian and unsectarian, and of 
 many different shades of political opinion, are to be met with. 
 Other literature also, over and above the Parish Magazine 
 class, or the authorised publications of the Wesleyan body, is 
 freely introduced, and although the qualified readers may be 
 by some assumed to be few, still the fact remains that there 
 are some, and they not the least thoughtful or the worst 
 informed in the parish. Many years ago I was not a little 
 astonished by a call from one of my parishioners, a yeoman 
 (or freeholder cultivating his own farm, one of our principal 
 ones in point of size), who came with a book in his hand, 
 which he said he had lately bought, and he thought it was 
 hardly a book he cared much for ; maybe I might think it 
 
Politics in the Dales 1 7 
 
 worth looking at, and I could keep it if I liked. The book 
 was Colenso's volume on the Pentateuch. There are difficulties 
 in store for the local-preacher system in such facts as these. 
 For my own part, I have been in the habit, now for several 
 years past, of touching from time to time on matters of doubt 
 or debate, such as are mooted perpetually by agnostic or free- 
 thinker writers or speakers, in my pulpit work, and I have 
 not found any apparent want of attention, much less evidences 
 of indifference, among my hearers. Perhaps, speaking gener- 
 ally, the very reverse. 
 
 As to changes of a political complexion, I should speak 
 with very considerable diffidence, even if not hesitation. 
 As a rule, I have abstained from any active participation in 
 pohtical matters, and the rule has never been broken through 
 but on one occasion, and that was the candidature of a man 
 whom I had known and loved from his childhood, one of 
 the noblest of a noble family, namely, the late Guy Dawnay. 
 Apart from this, my overt interest in politics has never been 
 displayed, and I have had but few opportunities of observing 
 any very pronounced manifestations of political feeling. But 
 judging by what I have seen, and from the casual facilities 
 affijrded me in my continued intercourse with all the sections 
 of my own parishioners and the people of the neighbouring 
 Dales district, I should say there was but little change in the 
 political views or feeling or bias generally. It is very seldom 
 that direct reference is made in my presence to the subject in 
 any company, or on any occasion, except when local or general 
 elections are pending, and there is of necessity more or less 
 excitement stirred in the country-side. More than forty 
 years ago, on occasion of the first general election which 
 took place after my arrival here, the then agent of the late 
 Lord Downe was desired to notify to the tenants at large that 
 their landlord wished every man among them to vote accord- 
 ing to his own views, and without the slightest reference to 
 any supposed feeling or views of his ; and I was requested 
 
 C 
 
Introductory 
 
 privately to confirm the same on any or every occasion of 
 personal application to myself on the subject. But I had no 
 doubt whatever, either then or since, that the majority, 
 perhaps the large majority, of voters, whether freeholders 
 or tenants on the Estate, voted, and continue to vote, as 
 Conservatives. 
 
 I have used the word "feeling," because I think it more 
 descriptively suitable than any other term would have been. 
 Hitherto there has been but little agitation, and the works 
 and ways of the schoolmaster have not diffused any great 
 amount of the materials out of which political principles are 
 supposed to spring, or of the methods by which such con- 
 clusions as go to the formation of principles are evolved. I 
 have not always been able to suppress a smile at the simplicity 
 with which I have heard almost startlingly Radical sentiments 
 propounded by a staunch Conservative, or admissions made 
 by a pronounced Liberal which would have sounded well from 
 the lips of a through-and-through Tory of the old school. 
 
 But however inconsiderable, in comparison with the great 
 mass of unchanged usage and habit among the people at large, 
 such changes as I have referred to above may actually be, still 
 there is one particular as to which a very great and significant 
 change has taken place, which if not effected literally within 
 the last half- century, yet surely has experienced its most 
 marked development within that specified term. What I 
 mean is a matter that may be regarded as a revolution rather 
 than simply an alteration, and one affecting private morality 
 rather than decency only, and connecting itself as well with 
 the simplest experiences of health as of comfort. I refer to 
 the altered conditions characterising the dwellings of the 
 people. No doubt the change has been advancing for several 
 generations ; but it is only within a very measurable space 
 that it can be assumed to have attained its completion — even 
 if it can be positively affirmed even yet that there is nothing 
 left to admit of improvement. 
 
Housing of the People 1 9 
 
 Some twenty years ago or thereabouts, on occasion of 
 some official inquiry as to the ways in which the working 
 classes were housed, I received an invitation from the then 
 Vicar of Egton (Ishmael Fish) to go down thither to meet 
 the Commissioner, and to assist in the inquiries he wished to 
 make. Besides myself and Mr. Fish, at least one other neigh- 
 bouring incumbent was present, and two or three of the 
 most intelligent of the Egton farmers and office-bearers. We 
 first went to a small farmhouse, which has since been entirely 
 rebuilt by the present owners of the estate, wherein the 
 commonest rules of decency were not, and could not be, 
 attended to as regarded the sleeping arrangements. We then 
 went to two cottage dwellings in the main street of the village 
 or (one of them) hardly out of it. As entering from the 
 street or roadside, we had to bow our heads, even although 
 some of the yard-thick thatch had been cut away about and 
 above the upper part of the door, in order to obtain an 
 entrance. We entered on a totally dark and unflagged 
 passage. On our left was an enclosure partitioned off from 
 the passage by a boarded screen between four and five feet 
 high, and which no long time before had served the purpose 
 originally intended, namely, that of a calves' pen. Farther 
 still on the same side was another dark enclosure similarly 
 constructed, which even yet served the purpose of a henhouse. 
 On the other side of the passage opposite this was a door, 
 which on being opened gave admission to the living room, 
 the only one in the dwelling. The floor was of clay and in 
 holes, and around on two sides were the cubicles, or sleeping- 
 boxes — even less desirable than the box-beds of Berwickshire 
 as I knew them fifty years ago — of the entire family. There 
 was no loft above, much less any attempt at a " chamber " ; 
 only odds and ends of old garments, bundles of fodder, and 
 things of that sort. And in this den the occupants of the 
 house were living ! And the other place we went into 
 was no better. The ' Commissioner seemed " satisfied " ; 
 
20 Introductory 
 
 at least he did not desire to carry on his investigations 
 any farther. 
 
 This was at Egton. Now let me tell some of my experiences 
 nearer home. I made a iierce onslaught, when I first came 
 to the place, on the shameful immorality of the usages and 
 manners I found prevalent here. The resident Wesleyan 
 minister wished me God-speed, and hoped I would persevere, 
 adding that his own hands and tongue were tied by reason 
 of certain relations affecting his position. One of my most 
 respectable inhabitants, himself a leading Wesleyan, also came 
 to me, equally wishing me God-speed, but adding, " But you 
 must not stop here, Mr. Atkinson ; you must go a bit farther 
 yet," and when I pressed him to speak out, and explicitly, he 
 said, " You must go in at the landlords and put it upon them 
 to give us better-arranged houses to live in. I want to keep 
 my servants decent. But how can I when, doing all I can, I 
 have to let my men farm-servants go through the women- 
 servants' room, or else, just the other way, the girls through 
 the men's apartment ? " 
 
 Nay, one day, when as little expecting anything of the kind 
 as to be called upon to say "Nolo episcopari," on occasion 
 of a visit to Kilton Castle, I entered the farmhouse on the 
 Liverton side, to greet my old friends who lived there and 
 permitted the stabling of my horse, and the woman of the 
 house said to me (in direct reference to my "onslaught" 
 aforesaid), "Would you mind coming upstairs with me, and 
 seeing for yourself how our sleeping-place is arranged \ " Of 
 course I went, and what I found was one long low room, 
 partitioned off into four compartments nearly equal in size. 
 But the partitions were in their construction and character 
 merely such as those between the stalls in a stable, except 
 that no gentleman who cared for his horses would have 
 tolerated them in his hunting or coaching stable. These 
 four partitioned spaces were no more closed in the rear than 
 the stalls in an ordinary stable, and the partitions were not 
 
Old Habits dying hard 2 1 
 
 seven feet, hardly six and a half in height, while the general 
 gangway for all the occupants was along the open back. The 
 poor woman said to me, as she showed me the first partition, 
 allotted to her husband and herself and their two youngest 
 children, the next to their children growing rapidly up to 
 puberty, the third to the farm-girls, and the fourth to the 
 man and farm-lad, " How can I keep even my children clean 
 when I can only lodge them so % " 
 
 But the hopeful thing in these cases, and in one or two 
 others Kke them, was that the people themselves were awake 
 to the shame and the indecency and the certainty of moral 
 degradation involved in such usages and arrangements as these. 
 And yet the state of feeling and sentiment so illustrated was 
 by no means universal thirty or forty years ago. I remember 
 — and the date was subsequent to 1857, though not much — 
 the then great lady of the place coming to me one day in 
 great displeasure. Much had been done to a certain house in 
 Danby Head with a view to the observance of the ordinary 
 rules of decency and classification in the sleeping department ; 
 and on looking to the way in which the directions given had 
 been complied with, she had become aware that the very 
 object of the alterations made had been nullified, and ignored 
 by the arrangements made and carried out by the tenants. 
 The apartment which had been practically added to the 
 accommodation of the house for the very purpose of reliev- 
 ing the plethora of sleepers in the other available chamber 
 (or chambers), had been converted to the use of a guest- 
 chamber, and the abuses themselves — many of both sexes 
 and divers ages having to sleep together in the same limited 
 area — deliberately continued. True, there was a bed in 
 the new room ; but it was a bed not in use, and not intended 
 to be used save on the very few and far -apart occasions when 
 they had an honoured guest to be put up for a night or two. 
 To all intents and purposes the new room had been made a 
 reception room, and the family had to huddle together as 
 
2 2 Introductory 
 
 before. And this was no uncommon case. I knew of a 
 dozen or more instances in which a room with a bed in it, and 
 needed as well as intended for a bedroom, was in use only 
 when a " party " was being entertained. It was " the best 
 room," and never profaned by homelier use, notwithstanding 
 the fact that such use would have done very much indeed 
 towards a decent separation of the sexes, and of the married 
 from the single, in the rooms used as sleeping apartments. 
 
 That all this regardless commingling of the young lasses 
 and lads of the family, whether sons and daughters or hired 
 farm-servants, and of the married heads vnth children (old 
 enough to need to be kept apart), was simply and solely a 
 survival from older and strangely less refined days is a matter 
 that hardly needs assertion. I hinted above that the entire 
 completeness of what I spoke of as a "revolution" might 
 perhaps be a matter open to some question. What I meant 
 was this. There are two of the old-fashioned, as well as old, 
 cottages, once the rule in the district, still remaining in one 
 part of the parish. In one of these, when I first came, the 
 Dog-whipper (named elsewhere), his brother (and successor), 
 and their sister lived together. The hut contained one room 
 (with a floor sunk beneath the level of the ground), of per- 
 haps four yards square, and no pretence at a separate room 
 for the woman, there being no loft even. In the other, much 
 the same in point of area and arrangement, lived a married 
 couple with their family ; and when the Dog-whipper family 
 died out, their cottage was occupied by another married 
 couple and their offspring. The united population of these 
 two one-roomed, loftless dens at one time reached the trifling 
 total of twenty-three souls ! They are still occupied, the one 
 by a widow woman and two or three of her children, and the 
 other by the occupant of the old days, now a widower, and 
 one or more of his progeny. 
 
 But these cottages are but modified types of what the old 
 dwellings of the district used to be. Some four or five years 
 
Construction of Primitive Houses 23 
 
 ago I was walking between my residence and the station, when 
 my attention was arrested by the then proceeding demolition 
 of a very old, and latterly unused, tenement close by the road- 
 side. The roof was gone, one gable-end was down, the side 
 next the road was a mass of fallen material and debris, and 
 what was left of the farther wall seemed to require but a 
 moderate thrust to fall over bodily too. But the striking 
 thing was what is here called "a pair of forks"; in other 
 words, one of the principal pairs of rafters of the old roof; 
 and I noticed that the old walls had been so built as to admit 
 or receive and enclose the rafters, and not the rafters so pro- 
 portioned and shaped as to be supported more or less directly 
 by the walls. I drew the attention of the elderly tenant who 
 was " siding up " some of the ruinous mass of material, to the 
 circumstance, adding the information (as I intended it to have 
 been) that in the old days the houses had customarily been 
 built with the forks resting on the ground, and not on the side 
 walls. "Ay," said he with a good-humoured but somewhat 
 meaning smile, " I wur born in just sikan a yan." And again, 
 but a week or so since, I was told of just such other houses as 
 now or lately extant more in the Kirby Moorside direction. 
 
 But the bare mention of these houses, without some ade- 
 quate measurements and plans as well as mere letterpress 
 description, hardly serves the purpose I had in view when 
 reference was just now made to them ; and it so happens_that 
 the wrecks of several of them, or rather their ramshackle, 
 shattered, imperfect skeletons, still remain for delineation, 
 measurement, and close examination, down to the present 
 moment. In fact I have within the last three weeks had four 
 photographs of one of them taken, and three of another, 
 besides noting all the salient features of the same. In one of 
 these the two original pairs of forks remain in situ, and in the 
 other one pair is still extant. Their ends rest still on what 
 was once the ground-floor, meaning the actual or natural 
 surface of the ground. In the one case large flat stones, as 
 
24 Introductory 
 
 nearly flush with the level of the soil as may be, were placed 
 for the forks to rest on; in the other the accumulation of 
 fallen stones and rubble, with infinite and majestic nettles 
 growing thickly among them, makes it difficult to ascertain 
 whether the base of the rafter rests on stone, wood, or earth. 
 But it is obtrusively plain in either case that the side-walls 
 were an afterthought, and entirely foreign to the idea and the 
 construction of the original dwelling. When those rafters, of 
 scantling sufficient to furnish forth half a dozen pairs of such 
 as are used in the construction of modern houses of much 
 greater pretension than these under mention, were first set up, 
 the roof (a fairly high-pitched one), with the gable-end walls, 
 was all there was to constitute the exterior shell of the house, 
 and the door was in one of the ends of course. Whether 
 originally there was a chimney in the primitive structure, can- 
 not be asserted with distinctness. For myself I incline to think 
 there was not ; that the fire was on the hearth, and the smoke 
 escaped from a hole in the roof. Certainly there are no very 
 apparent indications in the gable-ends of the existence of a 
 chimney of however primitive a type, and it is scarcely possible 
 that some trace of smoke or fire should not be observable if 
 there had ever been one.-' 
 
 With respect to these pairs of forks it may be remarked 
 that they have evidently been carefully selected for the pur- 
 
 ^ I was examining the interior of a very old house still standing at 
 Ainthorpe but a few days before writing this, and abutting on the inner 
 side of one of the ends were the remains of the fireplace and of the 
 chimney which had formerly suffered the escape of the smoke. Both the 
 cheeks or jambs of the fireplace projected from the flat surface of the wall 
 between two and three feet into the room, and the chimney had been con- 
 structed on a similar principle ; there had been no tunnelled passage in 
 the substance of the wall. A chimney of the same character may still be 
 remarked in one of the lofty chambers in Danby Castle, one of the massive 
 tie-beams having been cut away for some distance on either side (to allow 
 for the safe passage of the chimney), and supplemented by the insertion 
 of another between the next pair of rafters — a measure made all the more 
 remarkable by the fact that the roof is a fine specimen of hammer-beam 
 construction. 
 
No room for Fancy 2 5 
 
 pose. They fail of being quite rectilineal throughout their 
 length. At about four feet from the surface on which they 
 stand is a curve, such as may be seen in the timber designed 
 to be the stem of a boat, and such also as to allow of a much 
 steeper slope upwards from the ground than could have been 
 possible if the whole had been in one and the same straight 
 line. From this point of curvature, however, the rafters are 
 straight all the way to the ridge piece, and with the old tie- 
 beam would form an almost exact equilateral triangle. 
 
 The deflection thus noticed would allow for more and 
 somewhat more available space within, than if the rafters had 
 reached the ground in a straight line xmbroken from the ridge. 
 But allowing for this, still the space within must have been 
 inconceivably cramped ; for the interval between the two 
 pairs of forks longitudinally was scarcely more than eighteen 
 feet, and the total width within the perpendiculars from the 
 point of curvature of the rafters was barely as much. In 
 other words, the dimensions of the one room in which the 
 family had to live, work, cook, sleep — fulfil all the functions 
 of human existence — were just about eighteen feet square ; 
 and, as a woman who had lived in one of these very houses 
 down to less than twenty years ago (enlarged as it had been 
 by later additions), remarked to me in connection with the 
 dimensions of the original dwelling, " Ay, there was not much 
 room for fancy there" — "fancy" in her mouth meaning the 
 simplest dictates of decency. 
 
 I have referred to later additions made to the original 
 dwellings of such contracted dimensions. The evidence of 
 this is apparent enough in the still extant side-walls. In one 
 of the two houses under notice three successive additions, 
 each to the end of its predecessor, are noticeable; in the other, 
 two. 
 
 I connect these old, old habitations with a very early and 
 a very interesting period in the economical history of the 
 parish. From the dates still remaining on most of the wrecks 
 
26 Introductory 
 
 that are left, it is assured that the side-walls are, in each 
 several case, not earlier than 1656. That date still stands on 
 one of these old-fashioned houses, and on such a part and in 
 such wise as to show incontestahly that the part of the house 
 on which it is cut was a secondary, and by no means a primary, 
 alteration in the original fabric. It marked a much later 
 innovation on old fashions and habits. First there had 
 grown up the side-walls enclosing within their embrace the 
 " forks " of the first house ; then this side-wall had had a pro- 
 jecting insertion introduced, such as to give a little more width 
 inside and to admit of the intrusion of a window, the fashion of 
 which attests the age as well as does the inscribed date, 1656. 
 Here are thus two distinct periods of building-work both 
 subsequent to the epoch of the rafter-built dwelling the 
 remains of which are still extant. 
 
 But this throws us back into the sixteenth century, and, 
 beyond doubt, into an early period of the same ; and, if so, 
 what about the date of the original rafter-built house % And 
 quite possibly this inquiry may prove to be a suggestive one. 
 But as there is at least an equal possibility that it might be a 
 thought tedious if introduced here, the reader who is interested 
 in such matters is referred to Appendix A. 
 
 Passing on to our more general survey of dwelling- 
 houses as they were, I would remark that the replacement 
 of these ancient, incommodious, comfortless, hovel -like 
 dwellings by new and substantial and decently arranged 
 houses, or at least the substitution of such for them,'^ did not 
 begin, certainly was not in full progress, much, if at all, 
 
 ^ In some cases at least the old house was not destroyed or entirely 
 removed ; but such part of it as was available and in suflBoiently good 
 repair was incorporated in some or other of the new farming offices. Thus, 
 in listening to the Stormy Hall legend [see Note, p. 293, and end of 
 Historical Section, infrd^, the auditor is assured that part of the old house 
 honoured by the king's presence may yet be seen in the stable : and surely 
 there are parts of the old mullioned windows, which characterise all these 
 old ruins, perfectly evident in the buildings referred to. 
 
Rowdyism on the decline 27 
 
 before the last quarter of last century. There are dates 
 on some of the existing (or what were till lately) freehold 
 farmhouses which warrant such an assumption. And I should 
 be inclined to put the more general progress of rebuilding or 
 replacing later still ; and, if that be so, the change for the 
 better in the habits and manners and morals of the people, 
 which is seen to be involved in such sweeping alterations 
 in the mode of living as the rule is now, can scarcely be 
 looked upon as a full century old yet, even in its active 
 inception. 
 
 That there may be rowdyism among us still, it would be 
 absurd to dispute ; but, at least, it is limited rowdyism, and 
 of a mitigated character. Time was, unquestionably, when 
 such an assertion could not truthfully have been made. 
 But that time had passed before I had ever heard of 
 Danby. But there were men I had a personal acquaintance 
 with soon after I came into residence, who were the last 
 of an expiring class ; men whose pastime it had been, if not 
 whose object and desire, to provoke a row or a scuffle, and 
 to fight it out then and there. One of these persons, a stout- 
 built muscular man, even in his old age — he must have been 
 turned of seventy — was described to me as literally the " hero 
 of a hundred fights." Poor old William was quiet enough 
 when and after I began to know him; but those who had 
 known him in the elder days said he had, in the days of his 
 strength and vigour, been the most turbulent of a turbulent 
 group. Rows, scuffles, scrimmages had been the rule then, 
 and William, with another still then living, was never out of 
 them. Hardly -contested boxing-bouts, with a cruel amount 
 of "punishment," were of continual occurrence, and truly 
 William's scarcely lovely countenance looked as if it had 
 been sorely battered. From all I could hear, the stranger 
 whose devious footsteps brought him to Danby in those old 
 days, was likely to experience something of the " Heave 'arf 
 a brick at 'im " treatment recorded by George Stephenson as 
 
2 8 Introductory 
 
 the customary welcome extended by north-country natives to 
 unlucky explorers of the country -wilds. 
 
 As to drinking habits and usages, I must not say they 
 are extinct. But the evil is not so great as it once was. 
 I have seen but too much of it and its unhappy influences 
 and results, and know too many victims (many of them 
 innocent victims) of intemperate habits and indulgences. Five- 
 and-forty years ago all the business of the parish, inclusive 
 of vestry and other public meetings, was transacted at the 
 public-house, and it was far more customary than not to find 
 pipes and glasses the accompaniments of the business ; and to 
 a great extent the same rule, barring only the pipes and the 
 drink, prevails even yet. The church, a mile, and indeed 
 much more than a mile, away from the bulk of the people, 
 affords no facilities for even the vestry meetings themselves, 
 and there is no public building that is available for such 
 purposes. Thus the parishioners were driven to such resorts 
 as were open to them. As having to attend divers of these 
 meetings, inclusive, of course, of those connected with the 
 operations of the Agricultural Association, I had to go where 
 the meeting was. But I took neither tobacco nor a " glass," 
 merely paying my sixpence for the use of the room — an implied 
 charge which was supposed to be covered by the " custom " in 
 the case of the rest of those present. Very shortly the natural 
 courtesy of the farmers led them on to dispense with the pipe 
 and glass until all business was out of the way; and even then, 
 if I remained for a space, I often had to suggest the lighting of 
 the pipes, which had been laid aside on my account. In the 
 old days, on all such occasions, and on the days of the rent 
 audits, and also after the markets and fairs, and those very 
 undesirable things, the hirings, much liquor was consumed, 
 and many went home the worse for it. Some became uproari- 
 ous, and others were only able to sit their steady old galloways 
 in a mysterious manner. I could tell much as touching this 
 matter. I knew men who rarely went home sober from either 
 
Temperance and Intemperance 29 
 
 market, fair, or meeting, or who never missed their daily 
 potations, and carried on so for so many years — two of them 
 lived to be over eighty — that many notes of admiration were 
 employed in speaking of their marvellous endurance. But 
 many, sadly too many, came to grief in either (or both) body 
 and substance, in consequence of their indulgences of this 
 kind ; and more than one I have known whom drink excited 
 to such a degree that the lives of their wives and children 
 were hardly safe on their return home drunk. 
 
 But I think that all of this is mainly, though not quite 
 entirely, a thing of the past. Of course there is excess, and 
 some of it habitual, still ; but I think that sobriety is, on the 
 whole, steadily advancing, and that the movement is not one of 
 yesterday only.^ Of course we have our Temperance Societies, 
 
 ^ I do not tliink the extravagance, the absolute "intemperance" of 
 ideas, words, language, which too many advocates of even temperance, 
 and much more total abstinence, indulge in with respect to those who do 
 not go entirely with them, can be, or is, anything but repellent, certainly 
 deterrent, to many who might be influenced by gentler methods and 
 milder figures of speech. I remember being asked by a strong advocate of 
 temperance principles (who afterwards, by the way, became the vibtim of 
 his own excesses) for the loan of my schoolroom, and that I would add 
 to that favour the further one of presiding, and acting as judge of the 
 merits of certain essays on Temperance which were to be composed and 
 read (or recited) by lads or quite young men resident in the parish, and 
 for the best of which he had offered certain premiums. One of them, 
 rather a clever fellow, but odd in some of his ways during his continuance 
 at the school, had "committed" his composition, and hopelessly broke 
 down. "What he had said up to the time of his failure was sensible and 
 good. Most of the others delivered themselves of a series of platitudes 
 and stock phrases, and their essays were distinctly below mediocrity. 
 One or two, however, distinguished themselves by a voluble outpouring of 
 blatant intemperance in connection with all who were not total abstainers. 
 And as I sat there and heard myself and at least three-fourths of the 
 steady, respectable, sober members of the meeting denounced under the 
 designation of "little-drop-drinkers" in the most scathing terms, sent 
 without respite, and before our proper time, to a very warm place, and 
 described as the guides, if not the drivers, of all such as were not 
 teetotalers to the same hot residence, I admit I did not feel the least like 
 "taking a pledge" which committed me to the countenancing any such 
 
30 Introductory 
 
 our total abstainers, our Bands of Hope, and what not, and I 
 do not doubt for a moment that their operation and influence 
 are beneficial. But at the same time I cannot help thinking 
 that there are other influences at work which, quiet and 
 gradual as they may be in their nature and operation (and of 
 which it may well be that much of the influence of the 
 various temperance societies, if not the societies themselves, 
 are but consequences), are, and have been for years, becoming 
 more real day by day. I am old enough to remember when 
 the " social gatherings," the dinner-parties of the day, met at 
 2 P.M., and sat with the wine before them, after the removal 
 of the cloth, until six or seven o'clock in the evening, and 
 sometimes later still, the guests being the country gentle- 
 men, the parsons, and other "professions"; some among 
 whom were pointed out to my young mind for admiration 
 as "three-bottle men"; when "going to the ladies" meant 
 more or less inability to drink any more, possibly even 
 to remain on their chairs; and when nobody, not even 
 the parson, was thought much the worse of because of such 
 
 ideas, or the language in wMot they were conveyed, on any future 
 occasion. In fact, I was forcibly reminded of one of my experiences at 
 Scarborough before I had ever heard there was a place called Danby. I 
 had taken the Prayers at Christ Church, a very noted ultra-Protestant 
 preacher having been announced as the occupant of the pulpit that even- 
 ing. The sermon, professedly in aid of the interests and objects of a well- 
 known society, was throughout one virulent, unreasoning, unreasoned 
 attack on the Roman Catholic Church and Roman Catholics generally. 
 I "sat under " him sensible of mental and moral creepiness, and was glad 
 indeed when the senseless, most unlovely exhibition was over. Two or 
 three days after I met the Roman Catholic priest then stationed there (no 
 unfriend of mine, by the way), and he congratulated me on the vigorous 
 sermon we had had the previous Sunday evening. ' ' I like such sermons 
 as that, " he said ; " they do us no harm, but the contrary. For they set 
 reasonable people thinking, and there is generally a little reaction when 
 it is found we have been unjustly bullied and baited." And I think it is 
 so too with the intemperate effusions of ultra-temperance orators and 
 writers. Even non-callous "little-drop-drinkers" don't seem to see them- 
 selves or their doings or shortcomings in quite such lurid lights or in 
 such highly coloured pictures ; and it " reacts." 
 
Decay of the Yorkshire Speech 3 1 
 
 debauches (as they would be called now) as these. Less than 
 three-quarters of a century ago that was the state of public and 
 private feeling both within and touching the class of society 
 customarily spoken of as " the clergy and gentry." I need 
 not waste space in describing what it is now. All that is 
 altered indeed. In other words, public opinion has spoken 
 out on such matters, and her utterance is respected. 
 
 And, as it seems to me, precisely the same may be said of 
 the class to which the people I am most interested in belong. It 
 is growingly felt and admitted among them that intemperance 
 carries a stigma with it ; that it is not a fine thing to be a 
 drunkard, even occasionally ; that a man can be a good fellow 
 without being a sot ; and that it is a thing to be regretted and 
 apologised for if such a lapse occurs. I have had men come 
 to me bitterly resenting the supposed or gossip-bom statement 
 that they had come home from market or rent-dinner "changed," 
 in other words, not quite sober ; and others hoping, if I had 
 heard such things about them, that I did not believe them. 
 But what had been, or was supposed to have been, imputed to 
 them, would not have been felt as tending to their discredit, 
 either with themselves or others, fifty years ago, and I know 
 that such " opinion " is of steady growth still. 
 
 But there is one change, and a great one, which I cannot 
 help remarking upon, and in a tone of real regret, which is not 
 lessened because I myself have been " art and part " in it to so 
 great an extent. I mean the decay of the old pure Yorkshire 
 speech. Time was when I heard it all round me, and from 
 the mouths of all my old parishioners. Time has been when I 
 have seen a southerner who had chanced to be by during a 
 colloquy between myself and one of the "old school" — literally 
 lucus a non liicendo — after showing more and more perplexity as 
 the dialogue proceeded, at last break out into a laughing inquiry, 
 " What language it was we were speaking 1 " Time was when, 
 after a talk with old George Coverdale, or his wife Esther, or 
 with old John Plews, or indeed half a score others I could name, 
 
32 Introductory 
 
 I could go home and lengthen my list of old outlandish terms 
 and phrases, and enlarge my note-book with memoranda for 
 recollection or inquiry. But all that is different now. The 
 schoolmaster and the Inspector of Schools have been the ruin 
 of the so-called "dialect." During my five-and-forty years of 
 acquaintance with the Inspector I have of course seen and 
 known almost every conceivable species or variety, from the 
 gentleman who left his boots in his bed and his night-shirt 
 underneath it, to the other who crossed every t and dotted every 
 i religiously ; or from him whose eye twinkled with enjoyment 
 of a racy bit of Yorkshire in a child's answer to his question, 
 to the other who set his face, as well as his ear, against a northern 
 tone or a non-" Elementary Education " vowel or consonant 
 sound. I thought the latter mistaken. The vernacular, with 
 all its suggestiveness over and above its racy peculiarities, was 
 doomed, and he might have let it die with simple quietude. 
 But he wanted to "worry" it. One day a poor shy, slim shp 
 of a girl was set to read in due course, and she read the 
 " Standard English " of the Standard Readers fluently enough, 
 but with the unmistakable intonation and pronunciation of a 
 child who did not speak as the Dales children speak, and it 
 was this that drew his attention really. He made her read the 
 sentence over again, and she read as before ; for she knew no 
 other way. A second time and a third she had to repeat the 
 reading, and then he lost patience, and spoke a little sharply to 
 her, adding that she had never heard her mother speaking so. 
 It was the worst shot he had ever made in his life ; for, if I 
 had been bhndfolded, I. could have told whose child Annie 
 
 P was, the tones and accents she had employed being 
 
 just those her mother had used all the days of her life. But 
 as illustrative of the dictum that the dialect is doomed, I may 
 mention two circumstances. The first is that, as the author of 
 the Cleveland Glossary, I was asked a few years ago to 
 adjudicate on the merits of certain descriptive essays written 
 by the children of the upper classes of an East Riding 
 
Education v. Dialect 33 
 
 parish school. The conditions were that, over and above 
 any merit they might have in the way of good speUing, toler- 
 able composition, and fair descriptiveness, they were to be 
 couched in the English of the folk-speech ; they were to be as 
 " good Yorkshire " as the competitors could write. Not quite 
 a dozen essays were sent to me, and although the writers in 
 one or two cases had gone a little out of their way to get a 
 " Yorkshire word " in, it was like an ill-assorted square in a 
 patchwork quilt. The essays, one and all, were not "York- 
 shire " in any sense. The other circumstance is more suggestive 
 still ; for the influences tending to conservatism in such matters 
 as words, phrases, idioms, are surely more operative in a com- 
 paratively retired place like Danby, than in the Bridlington 
 and Driffield district. During the past year, in the hope of 
 encouraging observation, thought, efforts to describe, and so 
 forth, I offered a series of premiums to the boys and girls of 
 the three higher standards in the Danby School for the three 
 best papers on "All about Danby," following that subject up, 
 and on the same principle and conditions, with "All about 
 Birds," and "All about the Cow." As I write these lines I 
 have from thirty-five to forty of these essays before me, some 
 very good for such children, some fair, many mediocre, and a 
 few disappointing. But throughout there is no " Yorkshire," let 
 alone " good Yorkshire," in them. One or two of them occupy 
 three sides of a foolscap sheet, with never a true " dialect-word " 
 or idiom in them. Thirty years ago I disinterred a longish 
 series of words which had become obsolete, and were buried in 
 practical forgetfulness. But now, at the end of these thirty 
 years, I puzzle the men and women of the day, baptized by 
 myself the most of them, by the use of words their grandparents 
 regularly employed in their everyday intercourse with their 
 fellows. " Ill-gotten gear has nae drith with it," is not now 
 understood by the very sons and daughters of the good old 
 friend who one day produced the saying for my behoof and 
 edification out on the wild moor. 
 
 D 
 
34 Introductory 
 
 Nor is this decay of the ancient tongue the only change in 
 the same direction which we have to bewail. Previously to 
 the decadence of the dialect there were not only a great number 
 of quaint, forcible, pungent sayings current, — not all of them 
 perhaps remarkable for the absence of what was not, when 
 they were framed, counted free or indecent, but is so reputed 
 nowadays, — which for point and brevity were not easily to be 
 beaten ; but, besides this, there was a proclivity among not a 
 few of my elder parishioners forty years ago to express them- 
 selves, in the ordinary flow of their talk, in the same sharp, 
 sententious manner. I was at a largely attended parish meeting 
 one day, when reference was made to a man who was giving 
 himself over to immoderate smoking, and an octogenarian 
 present described his habit in the sentence, "Ay, he reeks 
 like a sod-heap." This man it was who was one of the 
 " company " taking in the Yorkshire Gazette forty -five years 
 ago, and who, with a canny twinkle in his eye, when the old 
 question as to the right pronunciation of the word " neither " 
 came up for comment at some small gathering of Dales folks, 
 with a happy reference to the only sound of the word ever 
 heard in the Dales, remarked, " Weel, now. Ah s'ud seea, 
 'twur nowther." It is very nearly forty years ago since I 
 buried that dear old friend, so that his saying was not a recent 
 plagiarism on Joe Miller. 
 
 Another impromptu saying, in the nature of a retort, struck 
 me much, especially taking all the circumstances into account, 
 as really somewhat telling. Our local medico was visiting an 
 old lady, an old acquaintance of mine, who always had a "gey 
 gude dish " of " my Lady Tongue " ready for instant produc- 
 tion. She was in peril of her life with hemorrhage, which 
 the doctor had had much difiiculty in staying, and which 
 might come on again at any moment, and was almost safe to 
 recur if she began her usual voluble chatter. However, talk 
 she would, and at last the doctor, out of patience with her, 
 addressed her sharply in her own tongue : " Ho'd thah noise, 
 
Yorkshire Saws and Sayings 3 5 
 
 thee blethering au'd feeal, or Ah'll tie thah toongue ti thah 
 teeath;" the instantaneous rejoinder being, "Thee caan't, 
 doctor ; fur Ah ha'e na a teeath i' mah heead ! " But much of 
 this readiness seems a thing of the past now, and I think it 
 is because the stiffness of the "New English" instilled in the 
 Elementary School lends itself both less familiarly and less 
 well to the ready expression of quaint conceit or incisive 
 repartee. 
 
 As further illustrative in the same connection, I may 
 perhaps mention the following. Making inquiry one day 
 about a person who, I had supposed, was no longer single, I 
 was answered as follows: "Neea, neea, he's nane married. 
 He still trails a leeght harrow: his hat covers his house- 
 hold." And from an old note -book I extract the next: 
 "He's ower mickle a feeal to ken how many beans mak's 
 five." Of a miserly skinflint, "He wad skin tweea deevils 
 for yah pelt." Of an emaciated man, "He's that thin, he's 
 lahk a ha'porth o' soap efter a lang day's weshing." Of a 
 woman newly but not wisely married, " Ay, she's tied a knot 
 with her tongue she'll be matched to unloose wiv her teeath." 
 And lastly this, of a man without brains or 'gumption,' 
 " Ay, there's t' heead an' t' hair ; but there's nowght else." 
 
MY INTRODUCTION TO DANBY 
 
 The way in which I came to find myself planted in Danby 
 was as follows. A letter, written with the intention that it 
 should be read by me, was shown me, in which this parish, 
 with its ecclesiastical income of £95 a year, was described 
 as one afifording a fine field for work to any one so inclined. 
 There was a church in it, it was true, but distant from 
 the overwhelming majority of the parishioners — exceeding 
 1500 in number — by from one and a quarter to four miles, 
 upwards even of that in some directions. There was a 
 clergyman, too, but he had not been famed for strength of 
 body nor energy of mind and purpose ; so that, while there 
 were Wesleyan Methodists and Primitive Methodists, in 
 numbers and organisation alike considerable, Churchmen were 
 not conspicuous in either the one respect or the other ; a 
 condition of matters which of course need occasion no surprise 
 under the circumstances. But even this was not all ; for 
 when I mentioned to a shipowning friend, who had been a 
 seafaring man in his earlier days, that I had thoughts of 
 going a-prospecting, and looking at the place, in consideration 
 of the ofier of the living made to me, his view of my wisdom, 
 and of the eligibility of the place itself, was expressed as 
 follows : " Going to see yon place ! Why, Danby was not found 
 out when they sent Bonaparte to St. Helena ; or else they never 
 would have taken the trouble to send him all the way there ! " 
 However, I had my own reasons ; and one fine afternoon. 
 
My Introduction to Danby 
 
 six-and-forty years ago, I found myself riding along the not 
 too traffic -worn road to Whitby from Scarborough. Born 
 and reared a South -countryman, and not as yet conversant 
 with the wild solitary tracks and the deep pitches and steep 
 ravine-banks of the North Yorkshire moors, I was but little 
 prepared for some of the sights and sounds that greeted my 
 unaccustomed perceptions. One might sometimes see an 
 eagle in those days still ;^ and two or three large hawks 
 might well be seen on the wing at once; and the curlew 
 skirled as he crossed, far above your head, from the wild 
 moors of Goathland or Grlaisdale, where he bred then and 
 breeds still, to the sea-coast on the east. Hitherto, moreover, 
 I had been accustomed to regard the sheep as a quiet, un- 
 impulsive sort of creature, with unstartling habits, much 
 given to the pursuits of growing wool and developing the 
 masses of fat not loved by boys at school; but during the 
 experiences of this ride my preconceived notions were ex- 
 posed to a very rude shock. For I saw a sheep — there could 
 be no doubt that it was a sheep — deliberately, — no, I must not 
 use that word, for there was no deliberation about the act, — I 
 saw it jauntily skip up a six-foot-high bank, steep as a wall- 
 side, and rugged with rock and brier, which rose from the 
 road I was riding along to the foot of a five-foot-high rough 
 mortarless stone wall or dike, and proceed incontinently to 
 
 ^ On one occasion, not so very long after the date of the ride mentioned 
 in the text, I saw, from near the eminence called Danby Beacon, an eagle 
 on the wing, which doubtless was the bird which was taken or shot— I 
 forget which— some few days after, at no great distance away, with a 
 rabbit-trap attached to one of its feet. This was an erne or white-tailed 
 eagle, from which the Arncliff of the West Arncliff woods in Egton parish, 
 and the Arncliff of Ingleby Arncliff in "West Cleveland, had both taken 
 their names in the old Anglian times. On the same day, and in the same 
 part of the moor, I saw a pair of hen harriers, and another large hawk, 
 which might have been a buzzard, but was too far off to be identified. 
 Once too I have seen the kite here ; and in the older days ravens used 
 to breed in the parish, and might be seen or heard any day, or almost 
 every day. 
 
The Ride from Whitby 39 
 
 leap up part of the height and scramble the rest with cat-like 
 activity and hoofs that clung like claws, and disappear in the 
 enclosure on the other side. Other denizens of the moor too, 
 besides these athletes among sheep, were there, and were 
 noted by me as creatures to be much observed. For grouse 
 and golden plover — a good pack of the one, or a large flock 
 of the other — claimed my attention; or a series of symme- 
 trical mounds, dotting the moor on either side of me — the 
 intent and contents of which have been familiar enough to me 
 since — ^were like the " little star " to the child, and made me 
 " wonder what they were." 
 
 Three hours' riding brought me to Whitby, and the quaint, 
 picturesque old town — there were no lodging-houses there then ; 
 the Royal Hotel itself was not so much as projected — with 
 the setting autumn sun gilding and glorifying its red roofs 
 and quaint gables, impressed an image on my retina which 
 has never faded away, and which has stirred the eye and the 
 heart of many a one besides the artist with a longing for 
 some lasting memento of its beauty. 
 
 The following morning saw me still farther on my journey 
 of exploration. I was told I should find but few on the road 
 to make inquiry of as to the route I was bound to pursue. 
 After the first three or four miles, a rough moorland road 
 would have to be traversed, and I might not see a passenger 
 for miles and miles together. Nor did I. The heights of 
 Swart Houe once attained, with the bare moor on either side 
 of me, I passed on to Barton Howl without seeing a soul. 
 Thence to Stonegate, according to the directions obtained at the 
 little roadside inn just passed, and there the solitude of my way 
 was singularly broken. I was no longer the sole traveller on 
 this rugged lonely roadway ; for there was a cavalcade such as 
 I had never before imagined, much less realised. What I met 
 was a stone-waggon with a team — a " draught " we call it in 
 our North Yorkshire vernacular — of no less than twenty 
 horses and oxen attached to it, half of either kind. They 
 
40 My Introduction to Danby 
 
 were drawing a .huge block of fine freestone up the terribly- 
 steep "bank," or hill-side road, which rises like a house-roof 
 on the eastern side of Stonegate Gill. At the foot of the 
 bank, on the limited level space available, there were standing 
 four other waggons similarly loaded. The full complement 
 of animals dragging each of these "carries" was a pair of 
 horses and a yoke of oxen ; and when they reached the foot 
 of one of these stupendous hills, the full force of animal power 
 was attached to each of the carriages in succession, and so the 
 ponderous loads — five tons' weight on the average — were 
 hauled to the top ; and then, when all were up, the cavalcade 
 proceeded on its slow march again. I had seen oxen used in 
 the plough in Suffolk, but never before had I seen such a 
 spectacle as this on the highroads of England. 
 
 At last I reached the Beacon, the highest point, houe- 
 crowned, of all that part of the North Yorkshire moors, and 
 the site of a beacon in Armada times, and on many subsequent 
 occasions when it was thought or feared that invasion might 
 ensue. Before me, looking westward, was moor, so that I 
 could see nothing else. On either side was moor, with a 
 valley on the left, and on the right, to the north, an 
 expanse of cultivated land beyond. Across, the valley just 
 named there was moor again ; and the valley was, it was 
 clear, but a narrow one ; while behind me, as I knew, lay 
 three good miles of moor, and nothing but moor. It was a 
 solitude, and a singularly lonely solitude. The only signs of 
 life were given by the grouse, or the half-wild moor-sheep, 
 whose fleeces here and there flecked the brown moor with 
 white spots. It was a wild as well as a lonely solitude ; and 
 yet not dreary, nor could one well feel altogether alone. For 
 there, from the south-east round by the north to Tees mouth 
 on the north-east, and thence on again straight out to the 
 north along the coast of Durham and Northumberland, was 
 the great wide open sea ; and no one feels alone in sight of 
 the sea, any more than under the clear canopy of a starry 
 
Astray on the Moor 4 1 
 
 heaven in a bright cloudless winter's night. Nay, the stillness 
 of such a night, far more than the wild wailings of the rushing 
 blast, is instinct with the wisht, weird creatures of the 
 imagination ; far too much so for the superstitious or fancy- 
 led to be able to feel themselves alone; and more so yet to 
 one fairly cognisant of his inner life and its connections. 
 And the sea, even at a distance, is a creature — a being — full 
 of a great vitality, and with many voices ; and by aid of one 
 of them at least, whatever the mood of the listener, there is 
 an inner and most real communion with the unseen. 
 
 But I was at the Beacon, and with a choice of roads — at 
 least of tracks — ^before me ; and beyond a general idea that I 
 was too much to the north to be in the right way, I had 
 nothing to guide me. A direction-post there was, but the 
 arms which had once borne the names of the places the 
 various tracks led to were gone. There was nothing in sight 
 but moor, to the west, and to the north and south of the 
 same; while the track or rough road that appeared to lead 
 downwards towards the farther part, if not the termination, 
 of the valley on my left, was grass -grown and little used. 
 My suspense and uncertainty were terminated in an unfore- 
 seen way. A woman, riding a strong pony, had come up 
 unseen and unheard behind me, the hoofs of her steed giving 
 out no sound on the grassy sward at the edge of the road. 
 I asked her the way to Danby ; but whether she misunder- 
 stood my Southern English, or I misunderstood her York- 
 shire vernacular — a mighty easy thing to happen, as I knew 
 right weU before long — or whether she did not like the look 
 of me, and preferred solitariness to company — for she was 
 herself bound for Danby Dale -end — the direction I took 
 led me away from the place I wished to reach, instead of 
 directly towards it. A mile and a half more of nothing but 
 heather — or, in Yorkshire speech, "ling" — convinced me of 
 what I had but suspected before, namely, that I was too far to 
 the north, and now too far to the west, to be right for Danby 
 
42 My Introduction to Danby 
 
 Dale. So the first road I came to bearing south was taken, 
 and a mile ridden along it brought me in sight of on? of 
 the loveliest scenes it had ever been my lot to behold. There 
 was the long valley, running east and west, which had seemed 
 so narrow when beheld from the grudging heights above, and 
 which was now seen to be from a mile to a mile and a half 
 broad, and with dale after dale, not wide but long and deep, 
 opening into it from its southern side. High on either 
 side of each of these dales towered the moorland banks, and 
 along each dale I could trace the course of a minor stream, 
 with its fringe of trees, running its descending race towards 
 the main stream in the longer or medial valley. There was 
 verdure everywhere, with plentiful signs of careful tillage, 
 and the luxuriant growth springing from a grateful soil. It 
 might be that, having had the wild wilderness of the brown 
 moor around me for so long, the eye was doubly grateful for 
 the fresh greens of the beck-side pastures and the widely-spread 
 green crops. But with colour, contrast, and contour, soaring hill 
 and deepening dale, abrupt nab-end and craggy wood, all claim- 
 ing notice at once, rather than in their proper turn, the scene 
 spread before me was something more than simply beautiful. 
 
 Ten minutes now brought me to a little country hostel, as 
 clean as it was plain and unpretending, kept by two sisters 
 kno^vn far and wide as " Martha and Mary," and wherein, some 
 two or three years after, I heard propounded the doughty 
 question, "Gin Adam had na sinned, how wad it ha' stooden 
 then?" — and commending my horse to the care of the 
 blacksmith, who officiated as ostler, I betook myself to a 
 hamlet half a mile distant, where I was told I should find 
 the "minister." The house I was told to look for was found 
 without difficulty, but to find the " minister " in it did not 
 seem quite so easy. It was a long low gray building, on 
 a sort of grassy terrace by the roadside, and with nothint^ 
 between it and the roadway. At one end were a cow-house 
 and other like premises, and at the other a low lean-to shed 
 
Visii to my Predecessor 43 
 
 appearing to give access to some sort of a back-kitchen or 
 scullery. Beyond the one window which looked out upon the 
 highway was a door, twin to the one opening into the cow-house, 
 and quite innocent of any such appendage as a knocker or a 
 bell, — innocent even, one would have said, of any nascent 
 suspicion that such things existed. But seeing no other door 
 and no way that seemed to lead to any other, I made up my 
 mind to knock at this one. I knocked once, twice, and again, 
 with no response. I learned in after days that I ought to 
 have gone to the door in the lean-to, the only one in use by 
 all the members of the family ; for there in the kitchen, which 
 was also the living-room, as it presently appeared, I should 
 have found father and mother, son and four daughters, who, 
 together with the daytal-man ^ (who was working for the 
 father, and with the son), were just sitting down to dinner. 
 Not suspecting this, I went on knocking; and at last I 
 heard a slow step evidently sounding from an uncarpeted 
 floor of stone approaching the door. Slowly the door 
 was unlocked and the bolts drawn, and as slowly was it 
 opened; but not for more than a few inches. As well 
 as I could see, the person who opened it was an old man, 
 clad in a rusty black coat, with drab breeches and continua- 
 tions, and with a volume of what was supposed to be white 
 
 neckcloth about his throat. I asked, "Does Mr. D- live 
 
 here?" and the answer was, "Mr. D does live here." I 
 
 rejoined, "Can I see Mr. D- ?" I was asked in return, 
 
 " What do you want with Mr. D f '— " Well," I said, naming 
 
 the patron of the living, " Lord Downe asked me to call on Mr. 
 
 D ." My interlocutor responded, " Lord Downe sent you 
 
 to call on Mr. D ! Why, last week he sent a Fowler Jones 
 
 to call on Mr. D ." My reply was, " I am not Mr. Fowler 
 
 Jones ; my name is so-and-so. And Lord Downe told me he 
 
 ^ That is, a day-labourer ; a man reckoned with by the day, in contra- 
 distinction to one reckoned with by the term ; a man the " tale " of whose 
 wages, or work, is from day to day. 
 
44 My Introduction to Danby 
 
 had written to Mr. D , mentioning my name, and not with- 
 out reference to helping him in the parish. Can I see Mr. 
 
 D ?"— "Why, yes, I suppose you can. I's Mr. D ." 
 
 After this the door was opened a little more widely, and I was 
 requested to walk in and partake of what I afterwards found 
 was the dinner prepared for the family at large, who were 
 meantime left hungry and expectant in the kitchen without. 
 
 In due time I was asked, Would I like to go and see the 
 church? — a proposition to which I gave a willing assent. 
 After a walk of a mile and a half it was reached, the door 
 unlocked, and we entered. There is no need to dwell on what 
 I saw of the condition of the said edifice. It must suffice to 
 say that my conductor, the "minister," entered without 
 removing his hat, walked through the sacred building and up 
 to the holy table with his hat still on. Although I had seen 
 many an uncared-for church, and many a shabby altar, I 
 thought I had reached the farthest extreme now. The altar- 
 table was not pnly rickety, and with one leg shorter than the 
 others, and besides that, mean and worm-eaten, but it was 
 covered with what it would have been a severe and sarcastic 
 libel to call a piece of green baize ; for it was in rags, and of 
 any or almost every colour save the original green. And 
 even that was not all ! It was covered thickly over with 
 stale crumbs. It seemed impossible not to crave some 
 explanation of this ; and the answer to my inquiry was as 
 nearly as possible in the following terms : " Why, it is the 
 Sunday School teachers. They must get their meat^ somewhere, 
 and they gets it here." It may be thought I am romancing, 
 drawing upon my imagination. But indeed I am not; 
 
 1 This is the term in universal use throughout the district in order to 
 convey the sense of food in general. What is usually termed meat, 
 is here spoken of as flesh, or perhaps flesh-meat. In the old days a 
 daytal man — day labourer in ordinary English — used to be spoken of 
 as "addling" (earning) half a crown a day and his meat. And there 
 was, and is, a verb to [correspond. So-and-so is meated in the house 
 is quite the customarj' manner of expression. 
 
Reverend, but scarcely Reverent 45 
 
 I am but detailing the literal fact. And everything was in 
 hateful harmony with what I have thus described. There 
 lay the dirty shabby surplice, fiung negligently over the altar- 
 railing, itself paintless and broken, and the vestment with 
 half its length trailing on the dirty, unswept floor. The 
 pulpit inside was reeking with accumulated dust and scraps 
 of torn paper. The font was an elongated, attenuated repro- 
 duction of a double egg-cup, or hour-glass without the sustain- 
 ing framework ; and in it was a paltry slop-basin, lined with 
 dust, and an end or two of tallow candle beside it.^ 
 
 Such was the parish church and its reverend but hardly 
 reverent minister. And he was but one of a pair; for his 
 brother was parish clerk and parish schoolmaster as well; 
 and the first time I had to take a funeral, on arriving at the 
 church a little in advance of the hour fixed, and entering the 
 basement of the tower (which in the days of the barbarous 
 re-edifying of the poor old church had been made to subserve 
 the purposes of a porch), I became aware of a strong perfume 
 of tobacco smoke ; and there inside the church I saw the 
 clerk sitting in the sunny embrasure of the west window, 
 with his hat on of course, and comfortably smoking his pipe. 
 A good harmless man enough, but one who might as happily 
 be described by the efi'ective Scottish word "feckless" as by 
 any more laboured attempt to convey an idea of him. He 
 
 ^ The explanation of this fact lay in the circumstance that, as the rule, 
 haptisms were not solemnised in the church. "When, some months after 
 the time of the incidents mentioned above, arrangements had been made 
 
 for the transference of the incumbency to myself, Mr. D said to me one 
 
 day, "I hope you will be kind to my people ;" my reply being to the 
 effect that I had no thought of being anything else. But the old gentle- 
 man went on to explain more fully what was in his mind, and very much 
 in the words which follow : " I must say I have been very kind to them, 
 but they have not been very thoughtful or considerate about me. I mean," 
 he continued, ' ' that when a child is born, they send for me to baptize the 
 bairn ; and I go. A fortnight afterwards, they send for me to ' church 
 the mother ' ; and I go ; and I think they might be content with that. 
 But they are not, for a fortnight later they send for me to ' christen ' the 
 child. And that is surely a little too much." 
 
46 My Introduction to Danby 
 
 had begun his independent life not so ill provided for as a 
 Dalesman of those days. His elder brother had had a uni- 
 versity education, and he himself had received the patrimonial 
 land, subject, I daresay, to some small burden on a sister's 
 account. He had muddled through this in some way or other, 
 but nobody knew how, and he himself least of all. He had 
 smoked his pipe and played his 'cello, and I suppose done 
 nothing much besides. And then, when at the end of his 
 resources, mental and other, he had had the parish honours 
 above named almost literally " thrust upon him." For, a little 
 later in the course of my connection with the parish, I asked 
 the worthy old gentleman who was then the senior church- 
 warden, why this very incompetent person had been put, of 
 all places, into the onerous as well as responsible office of 
 schoolmaster; and his answer was significant, as well as 
 graphic. It was, "Wheea, he could dee nowght else. He 
 had muddled away his land, and we put him in scheealmaster 
 that he mou't get a bite o' bread." A sort of Free School it 
 was, with a small endowment furnishing the fees for about 
 twenty children "put in free." The rest of the scholars paid 
 weekly fees at the rate of threepence for reading only, four- 
 pence for reading and writing, and sixpence for all " the three 
 E's " combined. Some two years and a half after the date of 
 this smoke in the church, the rector of a parish some seven 
 miles distant from Danby, a friend of longer standing than 
 my residence in the parish, with another beneficed clergyman 
 from the same neighbourhood — now the Archdeacon — came 
 over to call upon me, and to see how the house, which was 
 then in process of building with a view to its becoming the 
 Parsonage house, was getting on. The rising buildings duly 
 inspected, the rector said he would like, as we returned to my 
 temporary dwelling, to call upon the aforesaid minister of the 
 parish ; and to this his companion added that he would like 
 to pay the Free School a visit of inspection. I dissuaded him 
 from this project as forcibly as I could, knowing but too well 
 
A School Inspection 47 
 
 what must of necessity await him there. However, he still 
 continued bent upon the visit, alleging that, as he was Diocesan 
 Inspector, it was after all no more than his duty. Of course 
 there was nothing that could, with propriety, be urged against 
 this view, and I was silent. Well, we arrived at the school- 
 house, a low thatched building of some antiquity, the door of 
 the schoolroom being reached at the end of a narrow, long, 
 dark, roughly-paved passage. Here the noise, which had been 
 plainly audible outside, became very pronounced ; but somehow 
 seemed to harmonise better with the idea of a jolly good game 
 of romps than of severe study. I knocked at the school door. 
 I might as well have knocked at the door of a smithy with 
 half a dozen blacksmiths plying their vocation in full swing. 
 I knocked again, taking advantage of a partial lull within ; and 
 this time I was heard. Silence ensued. At least, a sort of 
 comparative silence ; for the shufSing of feet and the scraping 
 of wooden soles, strongly tipped with iron, upon the stone 
 floor could be heard only too plainly. I knocked a third 
 time ; but there was still no response, nor any that answered, 
 "Come in." So I opened the door, and motioned the "In- 
 spector " to enter. The school was still enough now ; for most 
 of the boys and girls were in their places. Only three or four 
 small figures could still be seen struggling under the desks, or 
 into the places that should have been occupied by them. But 
 meanwhile, where was the master ? Fast asleep, and again 
 with his tall hat on, in a large high wooden-backed chair by 
 the fireside. But the unwonted stillness did for him what 
 all the preceding hullabaloo had failed to do : — it woke him. 
 Eubbing his eyes with a half-comprehending consciousness, he 
 presently recognised the presence of strangers in his abode of 
 the Muses. His first action was to pull off his hat; unfor- 
 tunately, however, leaving a black skull-cap on, which he was 
 wearing under his hat. To remove this also was his next 
 attempt, while he staggered up to make a show of receiving 
 his visitors. By this time the "Inspector" had found an 
 
48 My Introduction to Danby 
 
 opportunity to whisper to me, " Let us get away as soon as 
 
 we can;" and thus terminated the first "inspection" of the 
 
 schools of this parish of Danby. 
 
 But I find myself wandering far away from the special 
 
 matter I was describing, namely, my " prospecting " visit to 
 
 the parish of which I have so long been the incumbent. After 
 
 my interview with the "minister," and my visit to the church, 
 
 with all the concomitant circumstances, I was at no loss to 
 
 comprehend the derogatory description, given in the patron's 
 
 letter, of the state of the parish as regarded from a " church 
 
 work " point of view. I could understand the slovenly, 
 
 perfunctory service once a Sunday, sometimes relieved by 
 
 none at all, and the consequent sleepy state of church feeling 
 
 and church worship. ^ I could well understand how the only 
 
 religious life in the district should be among and due to the 
 
 exertions of the Wesleyans and Primitive Methodists. I could 
 
 easily understand too, how the spirit of a good, right-thinking, 
 
 earnest-minded man like the patron of the living, one largely 
 
 interested, moreover, in the welldoing and wellbeing of the 
 
 many tenants who held under him, as well as more generally 
 
 of the parishioners at large, would be, or rather had been, 
 
 affected by finding what he, in common with so many others 
 
 set in high places as to position, intelligence, and earnest zeal 
 
 for the true elevation of the people, held to be one of the chief 
 
 energies of improvement, so sadly in abeyance. And I hope 
 
 I thought that, while I felt no great dread of the seclusion, 
 
 any more than of the work I needed no one to tell me would 
 
 lie before me in such a field, things might be so ordered that 
 
 I might be enabled, at least in part, to become a fellow-helper 
 
 in the good work which I knew right well this good and noble 
 
 man wished to organise and see carried out. 
 
 ^ One of the freeholders, a steady churchman, told me not long after- 
 wards, that within a given period — a little more than a year, as I remem- 
 ber his information — he had himself been to church four times oftener than 
 the minister himself. The latter, besides being a man uninterfered with 
 by any superfluity of energy, either bodily or intellectual, was an old and 
 infirm man, and did not care to face the elements in bad or stormy weather. 
 
FOLKLOEE 
 
SUEVIVALS OF "FAIEY," " DWAEF," " HOB " 
 NOTIONS 
 
 I WAS once paying a visit to one of my elderly parishioners 
 who was not exactly "bed-fast," for she could get up from time 
 to time, but being far past " doing her own tonns " (turns), 
 or little odds and ends of household work, was still house-fast, 
 or unable to leave the house, even for the sake of a gossip at 
 the next door. I found her, with her husband — a man who 
 died a couple of years since at the age of ninety-seven — just 
 sitting down to tea. As a rule, I carefully avoided meal- times 
 in all my visiting from house to house ; but on the occasion I 
 refer to there was some deviation from the customary hour 
 for the meal just mentioned, and the old couple were going to 
 tea at the timely hour of about half-past two in the afternoon. 
 On finding them so engaged, I was going to retire and call in 
 again later, or perhaps some other day. However, this did 
 not suit the old lady's views at all, and I had to sit down and 
 wait until their tea was satisfactorily disposed of. Naturally 
 we fell into talk, and as the old woman had lived in the district 
 all her life, and most of it in the near vicinity, I began to ask 
 her questions about local matters. Within a quarter of a mile 
 from the house we were sitting in — one of a group of three or 
 four — was a place commonly known by the name " Fairy Cross 
 Plains." I asked her, Could she tell me why the said place 
 was so called? "Oh yes," she replied; "just a little in front 
 of where the public-house at the Plains now stood, in the old 
 
5 2 Folklore 
 
 days before the roads were made as they were now, two ways 
 or roads used to cross, and that gave the ' cross ' part of the 
 name. And as to the rest of it, or the name ' Fairy,' every- 
 body knew that years and years ago the fairies had ' a desper't 
 haunt o' thae hill-ends just ahint the Public' " I certainly had 
 heard as much over and over again, and so could not profess 
 myself to be such a nobody as to be ignorant of the circum- 
 stance. Among others, a man with whom I was brought into 
 perpetual contact, from the relative positions we occupied in 
 the parish — he was, and is, parish clerk — had told me that his 
 childhood had been spent in the immediate vicinity of "the 
 Plains," and that the fairy-rings just above the inn in question 
 were the largest and the most regular and distinct he had ever 
 seen anywhere. He and the other children of the hamlet used 
 constantly to amuse themselves by running round and round 
 in these rings ; but they had always been religiously careful 
 never to run quite nine times round any one of them. " Why 
 not?" I asked. "Why, sir, you see that if we had run 
 the full number of nine times, that would have given the 
 fairies power over us, and they would have come and taken 
 us away for good, to go and live where they lived. "^ — "But," 
 said I, "you do not believe that, surely, Peter f — "Why, yes, 
 we did then, sir," he answered, "for the mothers used to 
 threaten us, if we wer'n't good, that they would turn us to 
 the door (out of doors) at night, and then the fairies would 
 get us." 
 
 But to return to the old woman with whom I was con- 
 versing. I admitted that I had both heard of and seen the 
 fairy-rings in question ; but what about the fairies themselves ? 
 Had anybody ever seen them? "Ay, many a tahm and 
 offens," said she ; " they used to come down the hill by this 
 deear (door), and gaed in at yon brig-steean," indicating a large 
 culvert which conveyed the water of a small beck underneath 
 the road about a stone's throw from the cottage. A further 
 question elicited the reply that it was a little green man, with 
 
Fairy -Butter, audits Making 53 
 
 a queer sort of a cap on him, that had been seen in the act of 
 disappearing in this culvert. Just here the old woman's 
 husband broke in with the query, "Wheea, where do they 
 live, then?" — "Why, under t' grund, to be seear (sure)." 
 "Neea, neea," says the old man; "how can they live under t' 
 grund?" The prompt rejoinder was, "Why, t' moudi warps 
 (moles) dis, an' wheea not t' fairies ?" This shut him up, and 
 he collapsed forthwith. His wife, however, was now in the 
 full flow of communicativeness, and to my question. Had she 
 ever herself seen a fairy ? the unhesitating reply was, " Neea, 
 but Ah've beared 'em oflfens." I thought I was on the verge 
 of a tradition similar to that of the Claymore Well, at no great 
 distance from Kettleness, where, as " everybody used to ken," 
 the fairies in days of yore were wont to wash their clothes and 
 to bleach and bpat them, and on their washing nights the 
 strokes of the "battledoor " — that is, the old-fashioned imple- 
 ment for smoothing newly-washed linen, which has been 
 superseded by the mangle — were heard as far as Eunswick. 
 But it was not so. What my interlocutor had heard were the 
 sounds indicative of the act of butter-making ; sounds familiar 
 enough to those acquainted with the old forms of making up 
 the butter in a good-sized Dales dairy. These sounds, she 
 said, she had very often heard when she lived servant at such 
 and such a farm. Moreover, although she had never set eyes 
 on the butter-makers themselves, she had frequently seen the 
 produce of their labour, that is to say, the "fairy -butter"; 
 and she proceeded to give me the most precise details as to 
 its appearance, and the place where she found it. There was 
 a certain gate, on which she had good reason to be sure, 
 on one occasion, there was none overnight ; but she had 
 heard the fairies at their work "as plain as plain, and in 
 the morning the butter was clamed (smeared) all over main 
 part 0' t' gate." 
 
 But her fairy reminiscences were by no means exhausted, 
 even by such a revelation as this. She had known a lass quite 
 
5 4 Folklore 
 
 well, who one day, when raking in the hayfield, had raked 
 over a fairy bairn. " It was liggin' in a swathe of the half- 
 made hay, as bonny a lahtle thing as ever yan seen. But it 
 was a fairy-bairn, it was quite good to tell. But it did not 
 stay lang wi' t' lass at fun' (found) it. It a soort o' dwinied 
 away, and she aimed (supposed) the fairy-mother couldn't deea 
 wivout it any langer." Here again I was a little disappointed. 
 I had expected to get hold of a genuine unsophisticated 
 changeling story, localised and home-bred. But the termina- 
 tion was as I have just recorded. 
 
 From fairies the old lady got on to recollections of what 
 clearly was a survival of dwarf folklore. For she told me 
 of certain small people who used to dwell in the houes (grave- 
 mounds) that years ago were to be found in the Eoxby and 
 Mickleby direction, but which had been dug into and after- 
 wards ploughed over, so that the former denizens had clearly 
 been evicted and forced to retire. But it was only imperfect 
 recollections of what she had heard in her own young days 
 that my informant was dealing with now ; and the lack of 
 feature and detail consequent on her lack of personal interest 
 in the subject was quite evident. But it was quite different 
 when I T)egan to ask her if in her youth she had had any 
 knowledge of the Hart Hall "Hob." On this topic she was 
 herself again. "Why, when she was a bit of a lass, every- 
 body knew about Hart Hall in Glaisdale, and t' Hob there, 
 and the work that he did, and how he came to leave, and all 
 about it." Had she ever seen him, or any of the work he had 
 done \ " Seen him, saidst 'ee 1 Neea, naebody had ever seen 
 him, leastwise, mair nor yance. And that was how he coomed 
 to flit,"— "How was that?" I asked. "Wheea, everybody 
 kenned at sikan a mak' o' creatur as yon never tholed being 
 spied efter." — "And did they spy upon him?" I inquired, 
 "Ay, marry, that did they. Yah moonleeght neeght, when 
 they beared his swipple (the striking part of the flail) gannan' 
 wiv a strange quick bat (stroke) o' t' lathe fleear (on the barn 
 
Hart Hall Hob 5 5 
 
 floor) — ye ken he wad dee mair i' yah neeght than a' t' men 
 o' t' farm cou'd dee iv a deea — yan o' t' lads gat hissel' croppen 
 oop close anenst lathe-deear, an' leeak'd in thruff" a lahtle hole 
 i' t' boards, an' he seen a lahtle brown man, a' covered wi' 
 hair, spangin' about wiv fleeal lahk yan wud (striking around 
 with the flail as if he was beside himself). He'd getten a 
 haill dess o' shaffs (a whole layer of sheaves) doon o' t' fleear, 
 and my wo'd ! ommost afore ye cou'd tell ten, he had tonned 
 (turned) oot t' strae, an' sided away t' coorn, and was rife for 
 another dess. He had nae claes on to speak of, and t' lad, he 
 cou'd na see at he had any mak' or mander 0' duds by an au'd 
 ragg'd soort ov a sark." And she went on to tell how the lad 
 crept away as quietly as he had gone on his expedition of 
 espial, and on getting indoors, undiscovered by the un- 
 conscious Hob, had related what he had seen, and described 
 the marvellous energy of "t' lahtle hairy man, amaist as 
 nakt as when he wur boom." But the winter nights were 
 cold, and the Hart Hall folks thought he must get strange 
 and warm working " sikan a bat as yon, an' it wad be sair an' 
 cau'd for him, gannan' oot iv lathe wiv nobbut thae au'd rags. 
 Seear, they'd mak' him something to hap hissel' wiv." And 
 so they did. They made it as near like what the boy had 
 described him as wearing — a sort of a coarse sark, or shirt, 
 with a belt or girdle to confine it round his middle. And 
 when it was done, it was taken before nightfall and laid in 
 the barn, " gay and handy for t' lahtle chap to notish " when 
 next he came to resume his nocturnal labours. In due course 
 he came, espied the garment, turned it round and round, and — 
 contrary to the usual termination of such legends, which 
 represents the uncanny, albeit efficient, worker as displeased 
 at the espionage practised upon him — Hart HaU Hob, more 
 mercenary than punctilious as to considerations of privacy, 
 broke out with the following couplet — 
 
 Gin Hob miin hae nowght but a bardin' hamp, 
 He'll coom nae mair, nowther to berry nor stamp. 
 
5 6 Folklore 
 
 I pause a moment in my narrative here to remark that 
 this old jingle or rhyme is one of no ordinary or trifling 
 interest. It seems almost superfluous to suggest that up to 
 half a century ago, and even later, there was hardly a place 
 in all Her Majesty's English dominions better qualified to be 
 conservative of the old words of the ordinary folk-speech, as 
 well as of the old notions, legends, usages, beliefs, such as 
 constitute its folklore, than this particular part of the district 
 of Cleveland. The simple fact that its Glossary comprises 
 near upon four thousand words, and that still the supply is 
 not fully exhausted, speaks volumes on that head. And yet 
 this couplet preserves three words, all of which had become 
 obsolete forty years ago, and two of which had no actual 
 meaning to the old dame who repeated the rhyme to me. 
 These two are "berry" and "hamp." "Stamp" was the verb 
 used to express the action of knocking off the awns of the 
 barley previously to threshing it, according to the old practice. 
 But "berry," meaning to thresh, I had been looking and 
 inquiring for, for years, and looking and inquiring in vain ; 
 and as to " hamp," I never had reason to suppose that it had 
 once been a constituent part of the current Cleveland folk- 
 speech. But this is not all. The meaning of the word, and 
 no less the description given of the vestment in question, in 
 the legend itself, throws back the origin, at least the form- 
 taking, of the story, and its accompaniments, to an indefinite, 
 and yet dimly definable period. There was a time when the 
 hamp was the English peasant's only garment ; at all events, 
 mainly or generally so. For it might sometimes be worn over 
 some underclothing. But that was not the rule. The hamp 
 was a smockf rock-like article of raiment, gathered in somewhat 
 about the middle, and coming some little way below the knee. 
 The mention in Pier& the Plowman of the " hatere " worn by 
 the labouring man in his day serves to give a fairly vivid idea 
 of the attire of the working-man of that time, and that attire 
 was the " hamp " of our northern parts. For the word seems 
 
The Teller's implicit Faith 57 
 
 to be clearly Old Danish in form and origin. But although 
 the form and fashion and accessories of our old lady's stories 
 were of so distinctly an old-world character, it was impossible 
 to doubt for a moment her perfect good faith. She told all 
 with the most utter simplicity, and the most evident convic- 
 tion that what she was telling was matter of faith, and not 
 at all the flimsy structure of fancy or of fable. 
 
EVIDENCES OF LATENT FAITH IN ARCHAIC 
 FOLK-TALES 
 
 The subject adverted to at the close of the last section was 
 the simplicity, the — to all appearance — absolute personal faith, 
 which characterised all the deliverances or f orth-teUings which 
 my old parishioner favoured me with. Neither the fairies of 
 Fairy Cross Plains nor the Glaisdale Hob were unrealities to 
 her mind. They might not be now ; but they had been, as cer- 
 tainly as her own remote fore-elders, and much more certainly 
 than Oliver Cromwell or Julius Csesar. And I have noticed 
 the same sort of underlying implicit faith in more than one or 
 two of my hard-headed, shrewd, matter-of-fact Yorkshire 
 neighbours, dwellers in these deep, retired, and, fifty years 
 ago, almost out-of-the-world dales of ours, when once I had 
 succeeded in breaking through the outside husk of semi- 
 suspicion and reserve instinctively worn as a shield by the 
 mind of the unlearned when newly roused by the prickings of 
 doubt or the questionings of incredulity. I have often found 
 it very difficult to get them to speak with any approach to 
 unreserve on the topics which lie nearest to the very core of 
 our most interesting folklore. One old man in particular, as 
 simple-minded, honest, truth-loving, and, I always believed, 
 as good and God-fearing a man as I ever met with, who had a 
 great personal regard for me, and besides was drawn to me by 
 my connection with the place of his birth and the people of 
 his father's house, as well as by the official intercourse which 
 
Sent for to ' lay a Spirit ' 59 
 
 his position as master of the Union House at Guisborough, 
 and mine as guardian of the poor for the parish, had involved 
 during a period of several years, was, with the greatest diffi- 
 culty, led on to speak at all, and much more to talk freely, 
 about such matters. I knew from many sources and circum- 
 stances that he was a veritable storehouse and magazine of 
 folklore subjects and experiences — I use the latter word 
 advisedly — and recollections. In the course of our business 
 relations there was too much on his hands and on mine to 
 admit of our " hoddin' pross " (holding a gossiping talk) about 
 such matters as "wafts" (Scottice, wraiths), or "wise men" 
 (Anglice, wizards, soothsayers, or conjurers) ;i but some little 
 while after he had ceased to wear the official dignity just 
 
 ^ This is a word whicli had some few years ago, if it has not still, its 
 full and true sense in this part of the world. Some forty years ago, when 
 country-parsons, or, as we were called throughout this district, ' ' Church- 
 priests," were not so distinguished by their clerical attire, or clerical 
 pursuits, or clerical activity, either Sunday or " war-day," as they have 
 come to be since, and when I was seldom walking less than thirty-five or 
 forty miles weekly in my church and house-to-house work, an elderly 
 woman living about half a mile from my house, and who had been used 
 otherwise than well in her younger days, and in consequence was not 
 quite sound as to some particulars in her intellect, sent to me urgently 
 one day to go to her house, for she was in much trouble. I had seen her 
 often, both at my residence and her own, and had a shrewd suspicion as 
 to the nature of her trouble, and that it was spiritual, in a sense, although 
 perhaps not quite within the province of the parish priest. On going to 
 her house I found poor old Dinah was much troubled indeed. She told 
 me the house was fairly taken possession of by spirits, and that, turn 
 which way she would, she was beset by them. She told me what spirits 
 they were, and in some instances whose spirits, and what their objects 
 and efforts were ; and she had sent for me that I should " lay them." I 
 tried to soothe her, and talked to her in the endeavour to divert her 
 thoughts into a more reasonable channel. She was perfectly clear and 
 reasonable on every other topic ; but do what I would, and represent what 
 I could, her mind continually reverted to the one subject that possessed 
 her, namely, the actual presence of the spirits. I told her at last I could 
 not, did not profess to "lay spirits" ; and her reply was, "Ay, but if I 
 had sent for a priest o' t' au'd church, he wad a' deean it. They wnr a 
 vast mair powerful conjurers than you Church-priests." 
 
6o Folklore 
 
 named, having been pensioned off in consideration of long and 
 faithful service, I rode over to his abode, partly to pay my 
 old friend a visit, and partly to try if I could in any way 
 induce him to talk to me freely about the matters which were 
 of interest to me as a folklore inquirer, and which I knew 
 had greatly occupied, and perhaps exercised, his mind through 
 years of his long life. It was long before I could get him to 
 enter upon the subject at alL His scruples were partly of a 
 religious nature — there was so much that seemed uncanny in 
 his recollections, so much that his unsophisticated mind could 
 not but refer, directly or indirectly, to the agency of something 
 unhallowed, if not to " t' au'd Donnot " himself — but partly 
 they were due to the fear of being thought credulous or 
 superstitious ; and partly, no doubt, to a suspicion that many 
 or most among his questioners and interlocutors on such topics 
 would most likely be trying to draw him out on purpose to 
 make fun of his old-world tales, and treat him as an object of 
 ridicule and mockery. His anterior knowledge of me, and 
 personal respect and regard for me, combined with my already 
 well-known and unquestionably sincere interest in what I 
 wanted him to tell me about, prevailed at last, and he began 
 to discourse freely. He soon warmed to his subject, and 
 there came a flow of reminiscences, personal experiences and 
 impressions, reflections, considerations, and remarks, that kept 
 him occupied as the chief speaker for well on to a couple of 
 hours. And all through, from beginning to end, there was 
 not a word or a look or a gesture to even suggest a doubt or 
 a question, I must not say as to the entire truthfulness of his 
 narratives, for that was transparent, but of his own implicit 
 but unconscious conviction that he was relating to me the 
 plain unvarnished tale of what had actually taken place under 
 his own observation, or within the scope of his own personal 
 knowledge. He told me much that he could not explain, 
 much that was quite beyond his comprehension, much that 
 he clearly looked upon as very questionable in its origin or 
 
Unlooked-for Confidences 6i 
 
 inspiration, but which he had seen or heard, and no more 
 thought of questioning than his own being, present and future, 
 because no doubt either of one or the other had ever suggested 
 itself to his simple mind. 
 
 Another case of the same sort was that of one of the 
 worthiest of my many worthy parishioners, a man sensible, 
 clear-headed, intelligent, one of my best helpers in all good 
 and useful things as long as he was spared for this life's works, 
 a man with the instinctive feelings of the truest gentility, but 
 who always seemed averse to entering on any folklore talk or 
 inquiry, and was, even admittedly, on his guard lest he should 
 be led on to speak of them inadvertently. Twice, and twice 
 only, I got him into conference with me on the, by him, 
 tabooed subject-matters ; and on both occasions it was equally 
 a surprise both to him and to me. In either case an acci- 
 dental remark was like a spark by chance firing a train ready 
 laid, but not laid for the special purpose of firing that special 
 mine. And on both occasions not only did I succeed in 
 collecting some of the very most interesting details it has ever 
 become my good fortune to meet with, but I saw that my 
 usually recalcitrant informer was strangely impressed with 
 what he was telling me in the connection in which I had put 
 it.i One of these subjects was the careful ceremonial to be 
 observed in the obtaining of effectual "witch-wood" for the 
 incoming year; and the other, one that led on to the dis- 
 covery of an original act of Odin -worship in one of the 
 commonest, most every-day practices of all the farmers and 
 occupiers of the district, as they were five-and-twenty or thirty 
 years ago, not a few of them doing the same thing to this 
 day. 
 
 But perhaps the most striking illustration that can be 
 given of the tacit, unsuspected, but still implicit faith, in the 
 Dales folks' minds, in old folklore usages and customs is as 
 
 1 Some of my friend John Unthank'a stories are set forth in later 
 sections, as, e.g., on the Witch -wood, p. 97, and the Wise Man, p. 103. 
 
62 Folklore 
 
 follows. This used to be, and still is to a considerable extent, 
 largely a dairy district. The farms are none of them large, 
 there not being half a dozen in the parish much over a 
 hundred acres in extent. Nevertheless, dairies of ten or 
 twelve cows each used to be the rule on these larger farms. 
 And it is alleged as a fact, and by no means without reason 
 or as contrary to experience, that if one of the cows in a dairy 
 unfortunately produces a calf prematurely — in local phrase, 
 "picks her cau'f" — the remainder of the cows in the same 
 building are only too likely, or too liable, to follow suit ; of 
 course to the serious loss of the owner. The old-world 
 prophylactic or folklore-prescribed preventative in such a 
 contingency used to be to remove the threshold of the cow- 
 house in which the mischance had befallen, dig a deep hole 
 in the place so laid bare, deep enough, indeed, to admit of 
 the abortive calf being buried in it, on its back, with its four 
 legs all stretching vertically upwards in the rigidity of death, 
 and then to cover all up as before. 
 
 Now, I had good reason for feeling assured that this had 
 been actually done on a farmstead no very great way distant 
 from my dwelling, and almost within the term of my own 
 personal acquaintance with the place ; as also I had reason to 
 believe that it had been done more than once, within the same 
 limit of time, in more than one of the adjacent dales to the 
 south of us. Wishing to be fully assured of the first-named 
 circumstance as a fact, I took the opportunity afforded by a 
 casual meeting with the occupant of the farm just referred to 
 — in point of fact a son of the alleged performer of the said 
 rite or observance, and a regular hard-headed, shrewd, inde- 
 pendent-willed Yorkshireman, now dead, poor fellow — to ask 
 him if he knew of the continued existence of the said usage, 
 adding that I had heard of it as still practised in Farndale. 
 "Ay," he said, "there's many as dis it yet. My au'd father 
 did it. But it's sae mony years syne, it must be about wore 
 out by now, and I shall have to dee it again." Poor George 
 
A Living Faith 63 
 
 Nicholson's fa,ith needed no greater ' confirmation as a still 
 living faith than this. But the like characteristics were not 
 merely present, they were palpably evident in the case of each 
 of the other persons I have mentioned. The old woman in 
 Fryup, the ex-Union-House master, my much regretted old 
 friend, all spoke of the matters they talked to me about as 
 things that had been, and were real, and not as creations of 
 the fancy, or old-wives' tales and babble. 
 
THE HOB AND OTHER MATTERS, AND HOW 
 RECEIVED IN THE FOLK'S MIND 
 
 But we left our old lady in the midst of her " Hob " remi- 
 niscences, which, as I have said, and emphasised in the last 
 chapter, she told with a sort of personal recollection of them, 
 rather than as what had been told her by others, or handed 
 down from one teller of the old, old story to another. One 
 of her tellings was that the people of the farm in question, or 
 Hart Hall in Glaisdale, had been leading — that is, carting — hay 
 in a " catchy " time, when every load got was a load saved, as 
 if by snatching from the wilfulness of the weather; and 
 another load had been won, and was creeping its slow way 
 towards the " staggarth," when, as ill-luck would have it, one 
 of the wheels of the wain slipped in between two of the 
 " coverers of a brigstone," ^ and there remained fast and 
 
 1 A brigstone is a kind of rough, conduit for water across a gate-stead, or 
 even a road of greater pretension, made by paving the bottom of a transverse 
 trench or channel, dug on purpose, with flagstones, setting up other flags 
 on either side as walls, and covering all in with other slabs of stone of 
 sufiicient solidity to upbear any loaded vehicle likely to be driven across 
 the said conduit. The "coverers" are the slabs just mentioned, laid 
 over all ; and, from wear and tear, or natural decay, it not infrequently 
 happens that the interspace between two coverers widens by degrees, 
 however closely the edges may have been laid at first, until, on some 
 unlucky occasion, a wheel a little narrower than usual, or grinding along 
 under a load heavy enough to break a bit from the attenuated edge, forces 
 its way down and betwixt, and remains a fixture, even if it does not 
 occasion an overthrow. 
 
Hob strong and kindly, not malicious 6 5 
 
 inextricable by any easily applicable force. Extra horse-power 
 was fetched ; men applied their shoulders to the wheel ; gave- 
 locks were brought and efforts made to lever the wheel out of 
 its fix ; but all equally in vain ; and there seemed nothing for 
 it — awkward as such a place was for the purpose, for the 
 brigstone lay across a gate-stead — but to " teem " (empty) the 
 hay out of the vehicle, and liberate it when thus lightened of 
 its load. But it was too late in the day to do that at once, 
 with prudence, even had the weather been much less un- 
 certain than it was. And so, with whatever unwillingness, 
 the load was left for the night under its detainer, and all 
 hands were to be set to work the first thing in the morning 
 to effect its liberation. But there was one about the place 
 who thought scorn of waiting for the morrow for such a 
 trifling business as that, and when the wearied and worried 
 household had retired to bed. Hob went forth in his mysteri- 
 ous might, made no difficulty about extricating the locked-in 
 wheel, and trailing the cumbersome load up the steep, broken 
 road to the homestead, putting the hay in beautiful order on 
 the stack, and setting the wain ready for the leading that 
 would of course be renewed early in the morning. 
 
 This was but one of the many exploits of a like nature 
 achieved by this well-willed being in aid of the work on that 
 favoured farm. In the barn, if there was a " weight of work " 
 craving to be done, and time was scant or force insufficient, 
 Hob would come unasked, unwarned, to the rescue, and the 
 corn would be threshed, dressed, and sacked, nobody knew 
 how, except that it was done by the Hob. Unaccountable 
 strength seemed to be the chief attribute ascribed to him. 
 One did not hear of him as mowing or reaping, ploughing, 
 sowing, or hari-owing ; but what mortal strength was clearly 
 incapable of, that was the work which Hob took upon himself. 
 Another thing to be remarked about this Hob — at least in all 
 the stories about him and his doings — was that there was no 
 reminiscence of his mischievousness, harmless malice, or even 
 
66 Folklore 
 
 tricksiness. He was not of those who resent, with a sort of 
 pettish, or even spiteful, malice, the possibly unintended in- 
 terference with elfish prerogative implied in stopping up an 
 " awfbore " or hole in deal-boarding occasioned by the dropping 
 out of a shrunken knot, and which displayed itself in the way 
 of forcibly ejecting the intended stopping, in the form of a 
 sharply driven pellet, into the face, or directly on to the nose, 
 of the offender. Neither was he like the Farndale Hob told 
 of by Professor Phillips (among other chroniclers), who was so 
 " familiar and troublesome a visitor of one of the farmers of 
 the dale, and caused him so much vexation and petty loss, that 
 he resolved to quit his house in Farndale and seek some other 
 home. Early in the morning, as he was on his way, with his 
 household goods in a cart, a neighbour meeting him said, ' Ah 
 sees thou's flitting.' — 'Ay,' cries Hob out of the churn, 'ay, 
 we'se flittin'.' On which the farmer, concluding that change 
 of abode would not rid him of his troublesome inmate, turned 
 his horse's head homeward again." 
 
 I am sorry that it has never fallen to my lot to hear this 
 last story from one of the people — one of the " folk " them- 
 selves. In that case, I am certain it would have assumed a 
 very diiTerent aspect. I have not given an exact copy of 
 Professor Phillips's version, and for this reason — that the whole 
 story is in reality a mere travesty. The story never was, and 
 never could be, told in that form, and with such " properties " 
 as are given by the author in question. He speaks of the 
 neighbour who meets the flitting farmer as " addressing him 
 in good Yorkshire." It would be a strange thing indeed if a 
 Farndale farmer even now spoke anything else except " good 
 Yorkshire." He makes him carry all his "household goods 
 and gods" on one cart. He causes him to suspend and 
 reverse all his flitting proceedings, quite regardless of what a 
 flitting is, and how subject to a set of suflSciently fixed 
 and stated rules, as to period or term, succession of one 
 tenant to another, and so forth. He seems to me entirely 
 
The Danish Counterpart to Hob 67 
 
 unaware that a "flitting" is, like matrimony, "not to be 
 lightly or wantonly taken in hand " ; and, still less, abandoned 
 after the said fashion. And besides, he makes a " play on the 
 vowel" in the words, "Ay, we are flutting," which he puts 
 into the mouth of the Hob, and which is simply nonsensical 
 when all is taken into account. Such a play on the vowel is 
 alien to the district ; and a Farndale man would be fully as 
 likely to say "hutting" for "hitting," "sutting" for "sitting," 
 or " mutten " for " mitten," as " flutting " for " flitting." Eefer- 
 ence is also made to the Scandinavian version of the story. 
 But that, as told by Worsaae himself, is reasonable and to the 
 point ; and is true as to the characteristics in which Phillips 
 goes astray. Certainly the Danish professor calls the being 
 of whom the story is told "Nisse," instead of "Hob," as he 
 calls the human actor in the drama by his Danish epithet 
 " bonde " instead of English " farmer " ; but he steers clear of 
 the mistake of calling the Nisse "a daemon," which is the term 
 applied by the English professor to poor soulless Hob. "In 
 England," says Worsaae, "one may hear many a tale told, 
 just as in Danish lands, about the tricksiness of the Nisse (Nix). 
 On one occasion during my stay in England, it occurred to me 
 to tell our northern story about a ' bonde ' (a word nearly 
 equivalent to our English 'yeoman') who was teased and 
 annoyed in aU sorts of ways by a Nisse. At last, he could 
 not stand it any longer, and he determined to quit his holding, 
 and to go to some other spot. When he had conveyed nearly 
 all his movables to his new farm, and was just driving the 
 last load of all, he happened to turn round, and what was the 
 sight that met his eyes ? Nothing less than Master Nisse him- 
 self, red cap and all, calmly perched on the top of the load. 
 The small chap nodded with provoking familiarity, and added 
 the words, 'Ay, here we are, flitting.'" But there is no play 
 on the vowel in Worsaae's Danish. It is just the ordinary 
 Danish phrase, " Nu flytte vi," which is employed. 
 
 Worsaae adds that the English counterpart — almost word 
 
68 , Folklore 
 
 for word (ncBsten ord til andef) — was found by him localised 
 in Lancashire ; and it is possible Phillips's version is not really 
 of Yorkshire origin at all, although localised by him in Farn- 
 dale. For I do not doubt that, misconceived and mistakenly 
 coloured as the features of the story as told by him are, the 
 change of the vowel may have a significance. Times without 
 number I have heard the word " bushel " sounded "bishel"; 
 the personal name " Eidsdale " is commonly " Eudsdale " in 
 Cleveland at the present day ; and I have many instances in 
 which the bishopric (of Durham, namely) is written "busshop- 
 rick " in the first James's time and later, and written so, more- 
 over, in the official Eecords kept by the Clerk of the Peace of 
 the time. It is possible, therefore, that, if the story as given 
 by Professor Phillips is not in reality derived from a Lanca- 
 shire, a County of Durham, or a Scottish Border source, the 
 presence of the form " flutting " in it may be of antiquarian 
 significance, and betoken that such form of the tale indicates 
 an antiquity of not less than from two to three centuries, and 
 quite possibly even much more than that : that, in other 
 words, the ' terms "hamp," "berry," and "stamp" of the 
 couplet given above, and the " flutting " of this Hob story, are 
 correlative as to the inference we are, in either case, more than 
 simply enabled to make as to the hoary antiquity of the Hob 
 legends. 
 
 And yet our communicative old lady told forth her tale as 
 of things that had happened under everybody's cognisance,' 
 and as it might be only the other day ; and of which she had 
 only just missed personal cognisance herself by coming a little 
 too late on the scene. She told her story of the doings and 
 disappearance of Hob, and of the fairy dancing, of their 
 retreat to their underground habitations, and "bittling" their 
 clothes, of the finding of the fairy-bairn, in precisely the same 
 tone and manner as I was told in after years by divers of the 
 folks in the same vicinity, who only had not been actual eye- 
 witnesses, of the marvellous escape of a child sleeping between 
 
Overtrow v. Siiperstition 69 
 
 two adults in their bed in a cottage no great waj^ distant, and 
 yet coming forth scatheless, although both his companions had 
 been struck dead in a moment by lightning ; and she told her 
 story of the butter-making as of a thing the actuality of which 
 was so assured that it never entered her imagination to suppose 
 it could be questioned. 
 
 Of course such an unpremeditated, unintended assumption 
 of personal experience, such a spontaneous disclosure of 
 personal conviction, made the telling very effective ; and if it 
 could be appropriated and employed at will by the mia wee 
 story-teller, would forthwith make his fortune. But that is a 
 point by the way, which need not be dwelt upon. The thing 
 really worth notice is the deep hold these divers matters of 
 overtrow had gotten, and had continued to hold, not only on 
 the imagination, but on the uncultured mind of our dale- 
 dwellers of even less than a century ago. But if, in saying 
 this, or in anything that I have previously advanced, I have 
 led on to the idea that I hold these people to be, in any true 
 practical sense of the word, a "superstitious" people, I shall 
 have conveyed a wrong impression. I have met with any 
 number of educated, cultured people who devoutly believe 
 that suffering the sun to shine freely upon a fire in the ordinary 
 grate puts it out ; that setting a poker vertically up against 
 the fire grate in front of it, causes the smouldering, nearly 
 extinct fire to burn brightly up; that the changes of the 
 moon influence the changes of the weather; that even the 
 coincidence of certain phases of the moon with certain days 
 of the week exercises a disastrous influence upon the weather 
 of the ensuing days of the week, or month; that a great 
 profusion of hedge-fruit — "hips and haws" especially — be- 
 tokens, not a past favourable fruiting season, but the severity 
 of the coming winter; and so forth. Now all this is what 
 I would willingly call "overtrow," or believing overmuch, 
 not " superstition " : which word, as Professor Skeat tells us, 
 is due to the elder French superstition, which is derived from 
 
70 Folklore 
 
 supersfitionem, the accusative of Latin superstiiio, and means "a 
 standing still over or near a thing, amazement, wonder, dread, 
 religious scruple." Now there was no more dread, nor even 
 wonder or amazement, in the simple minds of these worthy 
 parishioners of mine, than there is in the mind of the refined 
 and cultured lady who leans the poker against the top bar of 
 her drawing-room grate to draw the fire up, or puts down the 
 Venetian blind to prevent the sun extinguishing the fire that 
 seems to be dulled by the superior brightness of his rays. 
 The nearest approach to the feeling — I must not say of dread, 
 or even apprehension, so much as — of precaution that I have 
 ever met with was in the case of a farm-lass in Farndale, 
 who, hearing the " gabble-ratchet "^ overhead, as she was 
 coming in from the fold-yard to the house in the dusk of the 
 evening, rushed hastily indoors, slammed the door to, bolted 
 it, and flung her apron over her head. On being asked, 
 "What was the matter?" her answer was, "I beared t' 
 gabble-ratchet ; but I lay I've stopped it fra deeing me any 
 ho't (hurt)." Or I might quote another and entirely analogous 
 instance. In the days when there was no lime procurable 
 here otherwise than by sending waggons with their full teams 
 over the moor to Hutton le Hole, or some such place, the 
 journey was often one which, beginning at four o'clock in the 
 morning, was not concluded until eight at night. It was at the 
 close of just one of these tedious, wearisome expeditions that 
 the farm-servant on one of the farms in Fryup Head was 
 loosing out his weary "draught" (team), and the willing 
 farm-lass was lending a helping hand, when they saw in the 
 swampy, undrained " swang " lying some quarter or third of a 
 mile below the house on the border of the beck, a will-o'-the- 
 wisp, or in local nomenclature, a " Jenny -wi'-t'-lant'ren." The 
 man turned his jacket inside out and the girl turned her 
 
 1 A name for a yelping sound at night, like the cry of hounds, and 
 probably due to flocks of wild geese ilying by night. Taken as an omen 
 of approaching death. See my Glossary of Cleveland Dialect, sub voce. 
 
Unintended Superstitious Usages 7 1 
 
 apron ; after which they proceeded placidly with their occu- 
 pation, troubling themselves no more about the misleading 
 propensities and powers of the assumed personal entity just 
 named. 
 
 Not that I suppose there was any real or deep-seated 
 dread or apprehension, or any feeling allied to either, which 
 led to the adoption of these precautionary measures in these 
 last two instances. I don't believe for a moment that the 
 Fryup Head man and lass supposed the Jack 0' Lanthorn 
 would actually come up from the swamp and try to bewilder 
 and mislead them where they were ; nor that the Farndale 
 maiden believed that the omen would have a personal applica- 
 tion to herself had she omitted the ceremonies named in her 
 case. The feeling in action in either case may be difficult to 
 analyse, but I do not think it is hard to comprehend. I was 
 walking one day, many years ago, with a very old and a very 
 dear friend of mine, only just out of this immediate neighbour- 
 hood, when a magpie flew across the line of our path. My 
 friend, a solicitor in large practice, and holding the position of 
 Deputy Clerk of the Peace, as well as that of Clerk to the 
 local Bench of Magistrates, a wise and a good man, with 
 such opportunities of insight into the workings of human 
 nature as such a position forced upon him, took off his hat 
 with the greatest ceremony, a:nd so saluted the bird in its 
 passage. On my remarking on the circumstance, " Oh," said 
 he, "I always take off my hat to a magpie." And I myself 
 was always in the habit of turning all the money I had in my 
 pocket on the first sight of the new moon, until one day 
 another old friend of mine completely disillusioned me by 
 remarking, when he saw me busy in the accustomed way, 
 "Why, what's the use of doing that? You always see the 
 moon through glass," in allusion to my invariably-worn 
 spectacles. And it is but a week since I saw a lady stoop 
 down in one of the most frequented streets in York, deliberately 
 pick up a horse-shoe which lay by the side of the flags of the 
 
7 2 Folklore 
 
 foot-pavement, as deliberately deposit it in the natty lady's 
 light basket she was carrying, and I was quite well aware that 
 it would be heedfuUy borne off home, and hung, as I knew 
 nearly a dozen predecessors were already hung ; but fruitlessly 
 and in vain, as I had often told her, because they were hung 
 as they could be hung on a nail — and that is, with the toe 
 upwards ; and not, as everybody ought to know, with their 
 hinder ends or heel upwards — a matter which, unless it be 
 attended to, completely invalidates the efficiency of the 
 prophylactic power of the accidentally found but observantly 
 picked up horse-shoe. 
 
 And yet it was not " superstition," in either of its gradu- 
 ated senses as tabulated by Professor Skeat, which induced 
 any of the three actors above mentioned to do as they did. 
 It was not even "overtrow." For no one of the three for one 
 moment believed or imagined, entertained so much as the 
 initial germ, of a conception, that we should be advantaged in 
 reality, even by the mass of a mote in the sunbeam, by what 
 we did ; or, on the other hand, disadvantaged by its omission. 
 There was a sort of " use and wont " in it, which, though in 
 a certain sense "honoured in its observance," it was felt in 
 some sort of indirect, unmeditated, unvolitional sort of way, 
 would not be dishonoured in the breach. 
 
 And something of the same sort, as I take it, was the con- 
 dition or attitude of mind in these old friends of mine who, 
 divers of them, and on divers and manifold occasions, have told 
 me such stories and traditions as the above with so much 
 empressement and apparently evident conviction of the realily 
 of what they were relating. I do not say that I think it was 
 so always ; that there had never been a time when there was 
 absolutely a faith of a sort in that which furnished the basis of 
 all these narratives, a superstition really, and not a mere harm- 
 less exhibition of overtrow. Thus, for instance, I have no 
 doubt at all of the very real and the very deep-seated existence 
 of a belief in the actuality and the power of the witch. Nay, 
 
The Witch everywhere 73 
 
 I make no doubt whatever that the witch herself, in multitudes 
 of instances, believed in her own power quite as firmly as any 
 of those who had learned to look upon her with a dread almost 
 reminding one of the African dread of fetish. Fifty years ago 
 the whole atmosphere of the folklore firmament in this district 
 was so surcharged with the being and the works of the witch, 
 that one seemed able to trace her presence and her activity in 
 almost every nook and corner of the neighbourhood. But this 
 is far too wide and deep and intricate a subject to be entered 
 upon at the close of a section already quite sufficiently long. 
 
THE WITCH NOT ALWAYS OE NECESSARILY 
 AN IMPOSTOR 
 
 At the end of the last section I made reference to the omni- 
 presence of the witch and the persistency of witch-tales or 
 legends throughout the Dales district. It would indeed be 
 difficult to exaggerate the dimensions of that element of folk- 
 lore. I can but give an illustration or two of the position 
 thus laid down. 
 
 It is not yet twenty-five years since a member of the Society 
 of Friends, himself a very shrewd and observant man, as well 
 as a successful tradesman in a considerable market-town in 
 Cleveland, when talking to me about some of the different 
 matters which he knew were of interest to me, touched not 
 .only on the general subject of folklore, but on the specific 
 branch of it furnished by witchcraft, and the extensive and, in 
 some part, still current belief in it ; and he gave me the 
 following anecdote in illustration of what he was advancing. 
 " Not long since," he began, " a woman very well known to me 
 as a neighbour and more than a merely occasional customer, 
 came into my shop, and after making her purchases, took out 
 her purse for the purpose of paying for the goods bought. In 
 doing so she dropped something which had been in the pocket 
 together with the purse. A close and very diligent search for 
 the object that had fallen ensued immediately. But it was 
 apparently in vain, and it continued to be in vain for so long 
 that I asked her what she had lost. For a space she seemed 
 
The Witch a Believer in her own Powe? 7 5 
 
 shy of telling me ; but at last she replied, ' I have lost my 
 witch-wood ; and it will never do to be without that.' — 'Why, 
 Mally,' I said in reply, ' surely you don't believe in witches ! ' 
 'Not believe in witches, saidst 'ee? Wheea, Ah kens weel 
 
 there's eleven in G at this present tahm (time) ! Neea, 
 
 neea, it will na dee to be wivout my witch-wood ! ' " But not 
 only was there this still current and widely-spread faith in the 
 witch, in her influence as well as her malevolence, but not a few 
 of the stories current were such as to imply absolute convic- 
 tion on the part of the witch herself of the actual possession 
 of the powers she was credited with. I do not mean that 
 under terror of possible application of some modified sort of 
 "question" or torture, or the pressure of actual cruelty, they 
 admitted the imputation of witchcraft, nor even that for 
 sinister purposes they laid claim to the possession of the 
 powers implied ; ^ but that, whether under the influence of an 
 excited credulity, or possibly a condition allied to if not 
 identical with that spoken of as "magnetic," "hypnotic," or 
 "mesmeric," they might verily and really conceive themselves 
 to be possessed of the alleged powers,^ and adopt both the 
 
 ■^ As to the matter here adverted to, note the following extract from 
 the preface (p. 30) to Depositions from the Castle of York (S. S.), the 
 immediate subject being certain depositions illustrative of the history of 
 this remarkable superstition, witchcraft: "And yet some of these weak 
 and silly women had themselves only to thank for the position they were 
 placed in. They made a trade of their evil reputation. They were the 
 wise women of the day. They professed some knowledge of medicine, and 
 could recover stolen property. People gave them money for their services. 
 Their very threats brought silver into their coffers. It was to their interest 
 to gain the ill name for which they suffered. They were certainly 
 uniformly acquitted at the Assizes, but no judge, jury, or minister could 
 make the people generally believe that they were innocent. The super- 
 stition was too deeply rooted to be easily eradicated." 
 
 2 In illustration of this point the following paragraphs translated 
 from Hylten Cavallius's Wdrend och Wirdarne will be found not without 
 their interest. Speaking on the general subject of what we call " witch- 
 craft," and adverting to the special subject of spells, written charms, 
 incantations, etc., he mentions the collection of books on the so-called 
 Black Art, which had been accumulated in the course of the witchcraft 
 
76 Folklore 
 
 language and the action consonant thereto. Indeed I can 
 hardly conceive that it could possibly be otherwise. It is' 
 not long since I was reading a series of very able and, some 
 of them, very striking essays and addresses by Rev. J. M. 
 Wilson, one of which might be looked upon as, in a certain 
 sense, an "Apology for the Christian Miracles," or some of 
 them. The immediate subject of his remarks is the "inter- 
 pretation to be put on St. Paul's words touching the miracles 
 wrought by him according to his own account." This inter- 
 pretation is, says he, "that certain highly unusual phenomena 
 repeatedly took place, which the agent and the witnesses agreed 
 in considering as in some sense supernatural ; that these pheno- 
 mena consisted in an exalted spiritual condition, which de- 
 veloped extraordinary spiritual and intellectual gifts, such as 
 those of exposition, speaking with tongues, or extraordinary 
 physical power, such as that of healing certain unspecified 
 classes of disease. ... It further appears that these phenomena 
 
 investigations carried out in some parts of Sweden in the earlier half of 
 the eighteenth century, and which were seen by Linnaeus in 1741, and by 
 him described as full of jargon and gibberish, of idolatrous notions, super- 
 stitious prayers, devil-worship, and the like, and mainly in verse and 
 rhyme ; and then proceeds : ' ' The same irregular rhyming forms are also 
 the peculiarity of nearly all spells or incantations which are yet to be met 
 with. The very form itself, as the natural mode of expression for an 
 excited condition of the senses, carried with it also the implied certainty 
 that the incantations of the old times would be uttered with a deeply 
 perturbed spirit, just as the remarkable vagaries of the understanding 
 which are so characteristic of the entire category of ' trolldom, ' or witch- 
 craft, can only be psychologically explained or illustrated on the assump- 
 tion or supposition of the strongest excitement of the imagination and 
 inner consciousness. Take, for instance, the confession made by Ingeborg 
 Boge's daughter before the King's District-court in 1618, in which she set 
 forth how she, in order that her husband might not detect her nocturnal 
 expeditions to BlaakuUa (the witches' place of meeting), without using 
 any definite form of words or spell, employed for the purpose certain good 
 devices, such as that taking her sark she blew into it till it was filled out 
 with air, when she laid it by her husband's side, making it so completely 
 in her own image and form, that, if he looked at her, he could not detect 
 any difference from her actual self. From such a statement as this no 
 
Mental Phenomena jj 
 
 of healing consist in the action of mind upon mind or mind on 
 body; and the conditions plainly include a highly exalted 
 spiritual condition in both agent and patient. The class to which 
 the phenomena alluded to by the agent himself belong, is that 
 obscure class of mental actions of whose existence we have now 
 ample evidence, but of the details of which we are still at present 
 very ignorant, from lack of a sufficiently wide and accurate obser- 
 vation of facts to serve as the basis of induction. Such phenomena 
 need not be regarded as in any sense miraculous, nor evidential 
 of anything else except of those highly wrought spiritual con- 
 ditions which an induction from experience may show are in- 
 separable from such phenomena. . . . That these powers would 
 in such a society " as that contemplated by the circumstances 
 of the case "be often misunderstood, the limits of them 
 unperceived, the exercise of them misreported and exaggerated, 
 is certain. In St. Paul's letters, however, I think it will be 
 admitted by any candid reader, there is no trace of their mis- 
 one can draw any other concltision than that in this imaginary night-trip 
 to Blaakulla the real state of the case was that she was in a strangely 
 visionary and most Ukely spontaneously magnetic condition. In the case 
 of other individuals, that same condition of nervous non-natural excite- 
 ment has been induced by the application of unguents impregnated with 
 strong narcotic or narcotico-soporific drugs, whence also the ointment horn 
 {smorje-horn) is looked upon as part of the witch's equipment ; such a horn 
 being preserved among other like matters in the High Court of Gothland. 
 In some way or other, however, whether called into play by incantations 
 merely, or by the use of some other means, have an unnatural and pervad- 
 ing straining or tension of the nerves, and psychical delirium, closely 
 united with an aberration of an imaginary nature, always found admission 
 as a fundamental condition in the original and archaic development of 
 the witchcraft system, whose most remarkable expression or manifestation, 
 together with journeys through the air, and so forth, thus find their readiest 
 psychological explanation. . . . Yet further, and without recourse to any, 
 even the simplest spell, witchcraft has provided itself, under diverse cir- 
 cumstances, with equally various means and resources, among which, and 
 in the midst of other articles of the same general nature, is preserved in 
 the court-house just named a little horn pipe, which was used by the 
 witches when they desired to exercise their art or summon their familiar 
 to their presence." 
 
78 Folklore 
 
 representation ; he was himself an agent, and speaks of them 
 without exaggerations and without surprise. Let us repeat, 
 therefore, that St. Paul possessed an astonishing power over 
 the minds, and through the minds over the bodies, of men; 
 that such powers were regarded both by himself and others as 
 miraculous, so abnormal were they ; and that we may regard 
 them as exceptional powers produced by certain conditions of 
 mind and will, primarily highly exalted and intense spiritual 
 conditions, and therefore evidential of those conditions." 
 
 These powers, the lecturer goes on to say, "produced 
 effects of at least two kinds"; on the one hand, in really 
 wonderful spiritual results, both in the agents themselves and 
 in the masses of men to whom they addressed themselves ; 
 and " on the other hand, in power over men's bodies through 
 their minds and emotions ; in other words, gifts of healing ; 
 and both of these were appreciated by contemporaries." 
 
 Now, it would seem to me that, on collation of these 
 extracts with the translation from the Swedish inquirer and 
 author given in the last long note, there is really no valid 
 reason why whole sentences from the former, with only slight 
 verbal alteration, should not be transferred from the subject 
 of the Christian miracles (or some certain section of them) to 
 the question of the actual possession by the reputed witch of 
 two hundred years ago, and of later periods still, of some very 
 actual power or active influence. I am quite satisfied that, 
 some of those phenomena of witchcraft might and did 
 " consist in the action of mind upon mind or mind upon 
 body," and that the conditions plainly include "a highly 
 exalted or excited mental and nervous condition" in both 
 "agent and patient." Quite apart, moreover, from the 
 possible, or more than possible, use or application of powerful 
 drugs, there must have been cases, of by no means rare 
 occurrence, in which the witch not only produced given and 
 remarkable eifects upon both the minds and bodies of her 
 " patients," but knew that she could do it, and both intended 
 
Animal Magnetism 79 
 
 and expected to produce them. In fact, the annals of animal 
 magnetism go infinitely beyond anything here postulated, in 
 hundreds and hundreds of facts which are of the most ordinary 
 and everyday occurrence. I remember being told by one of 
 the then leading medical men in one of the principal watering- 
 places in the north of England, nearly fifty years ago, that 
 being a mesmerist himself and having a case in which he 
 believed that the influence then known as " mesmeric " would 
 be beneficial, he applied it daily ; but finding it often incon- 
 venient to have to attend his patient at the precise hour at 
 which the inducement of the mesmeric slumber most conduced 
 to her benefit, he resolved to try whether he could not induce 
 it otherwise than by personal attendance and operation. For 
 this end he, as the phrase was, mesmerised a bottle of water 
 and also a handkerchief, and gave them to her with orders to 
 use them, or one of them, at the proper season. Somewhat 
 to his own surprise — for it was somewhat nearer the birth of 
 animal-magnetism than this present year of grace 1891 — the 
 experiment was a complete success. I myself knew the 
 patient, and visited her, both as a friend and as a clergyman ; 
 and I had the means of verifying the statements made to me, 
 if I had had any doubt, which I had not. Finding his initial 
 
 experiment so far successful, Dr. W tried others also, and 
 
 found that it was possible in this patient's case to bring on 
 the slumber without entering her presence, or even giving her 
 any tangible token of the influence he had established upon 
 her. What he did was to make the "passes," which in those 
 days were the recognised means employed for inducing the 
 slumber, as he passed along the street in which her residence 
 was situated, and the passes were found to be efficacious. All 
 this is mere everyday experience now, and indeed is very 
 much short of many of the experiences detailed in any 
 memoir or treatise on the subject of electro-biology or animal- 
 magnetism. What is possible in the way of action of mind 
 on mind or of mind upon body, the nervous and mental 
 
8o Folklore 
 
 conditions of the patient and the agent being in fitting corre- 
 lation, is in point of fact almost astounding. Is it possible to 
 deny, or rather, is it not imperative on us to assume, that in 
 some quite sensible proportion of the hundreds of persons 
 credited with the power of the witch, there may or must 
 have been an exact analogy to the examples afforded in the 
 experience of the magnetic or biological professor % 
 
 And so, I believe that in multitudes of cases the witch 
 herself was a believer in the reality and the efficacy of her 
 own powers. No doubt, "these weak and silly women made 
 a trade' of their evil reputation." No doubt, fraud and 
 imposture were rife among them. But still there must have 
 been many a member of the sisterhood who was, as regards 
 a belief in the power or influence of the witch, to the full as 
 "superstitious" as the silliest and weakest of her dupes or 
 the victims of her craft. And it is thus that I account for 
 the existence of that class of phase of witch-story or legend 
 which was so very far from uncommon some forty years ago, 
 when I was gathering up the fragments that remained of a 
 witch-lore which must have been singularly rich, and in which 
 phase or class the witch herself was the principal or prominent 
 agent rather than simply the witch's patient, victim, or dupe. 
 
THE WITCH: LOCAL LEGENDS OF HEE DOINGS, 
 AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 At the time indicated at the close of the last section, or more 
 than forty years ago, a very noteworthy proportion of these 
 witch stories were not only localised, but the names, the 
 personality, the actual identity of the witches of greatest 
 repute or notoriety were precisely specified and detailed. I 
 have had houses in three or four of the townships of this 
 immediate district pointed out to me as the abodes of this or 
 that "noted witch." In Danby, Westerdale, Glaisdale, Fam- 
 dale, as well as farther afield, this place or that, and sometimes 
 to the number of two or three in a single one of the parishes 
 named, has been indicated as the scene of this or that strange 
 experience springing out of witchcraft, or of some stranger 
 exploit in the same connection. Here the witch was bafiled 
 by the employment of an agency more potent than her own 
 (of which more at a future page) ; here she was irresistible or 
 triumphant ; there she came to grief, perhaps through the use 
 of silver slugs fired at her, perhaps through some other of the 
 accredited means for neutralising her power or damaging her 
 person. In one of these stories, perhaps as graphic as any I 
 have met with, and which to my regret I am unable to give 
 in detail by reason of the nature of the means, or at least the 
 effect of the means, employed for the purpose of bringing the 
 witch to book, her name and abode as well as those of her 
 victim being given with all precision, she is brought on the 
 
 G 
 
82 Folklore 
 
 scene as forced to confess her misdeeds, and constrained to 
 remain in a condition of sheer bodily purgatory until she had 
 removed the spell laid on her victim and his goods, and besides 
 that remedied its baneful effects. Another, in which the self- 
 same uncanny old lady is the principal actor, and eventually 
 the actual sufferer, runs thus : A party of freeholders,^ mainly 
 
 ^ It is not without interest to observe that this legend accommodates 
 itself with accuracy to the actual sporting circumstances of the district at 
 the period alleged — at least assumed — hy the names of the men mentioned. 
 Even to the present day I sometimes meet with an old inhabitant who 
 recalls the time when the exclusive right of sporting over the common or 
 moorlands was not as yet claimed, or at least not as yet exercised, by the 
 lord of the manor. There was a man living here when I first knew the 
 district, at that time "well on in his seventies," who was described as 
 having possessed a singular species of skill or dexterity in the use of a 
 peculiar missile, such as I had never heard of before. This was a short 
 straight cudgel of some eighteen inches in length, which he could hurl 
 with such unerring aim that a grouse or partridge within the range of his 
 weapon — not a very wide one, it may be noted — had but small chance of 
 
 escape. John S never missed. It so happened one day that three 
 
 or four of our Danhy freeholders had taken their guns in quest of a hare, 
 but in vain ; every shot had been missed, and they were coming home 
 without the game, when they met our friend John with his cudgel. 
 Being told of their want of success, with the utterance of a gibe or 
 two, he offered to go with them to the moorside they were leaving, and 
 procure them the hare they wanted. A short time only elapsed before 
 one was found, and John's cudgel rolled her over before she had gone 
 half a dozen yards. Over and above this feat of marksmanship, the 
 matter of interest to me was that these freeholders, whose names and 
 histories and successors were all quite familiarly known to me, should 
 be sporting, apparently quite at their own will and discretion, over 
 what was, at the time of narration, and had been for many years, the 
 jealously preserved and exclusively enjoyed sporting ground of the lord 
 of the manor. A word or two of inquiry suiBced to convey to me the 
 fact that, up to the time of such and such a predecessor of the present 
 lord, the freeholders had exercised the right of sporting at their own 
 discretion over the entire moor, and even of shooting the sacred grouse 
 exactly as they pleased. But the lord aforesaid had instituted a suit at 
 law with the view of proving that such right was vested in him and his 
 successors only, and had won his cause. There is, therefore, in the story 
 in the text observance of an historical fact which serves to illustrate the 
 fidelity of the legend in a case where modern invention would infallibly 
 have gone astray. 
 
Coursing extraordinary 83 
 
 if not exclusively belonging to Westerdale, were out coursing, 
 but had met with no success, not having found a single hare 
 in the course of their long morning's quest. Wheii thinking 
 of giving up their pursuit as hopeless, they fell in with old 
 
 Nanny , the most " noted witch " in all the country-side. 
 
 No long time passed before she was made aware by the dis- 
 appointed sportsmen — and some thought she knew it all before 
 — of their failure to find a hare, and much more of getting a 
 course. "Oh," says the wrinkled, hook-nosed, crook-backed 
 old dame, " I can tell you where you will find a hare ligging, 
 and a grand one and all. I'se ho'd ye (I will undertake to 
 you) she'll gi'e ye a grand course. Only, whativver ye deea, 
 minnd ye dinna slip a black dog at her ! That wad be a sair 
 matter for ye all." They gave their word to attend to this 
 injunction, and proceeded to the locality the old dame indi- 
 cated. There, sure enough, they found a noble hare, which 
 went away gallantly before the two dogs slipped at her. I 
 ought to mention that the names and abodes of all the party 
 were mentioned to me in detail by my informant ; the place at 
 which the interview with the witch took place, the place where 
 she told them to seek the hare and found her, and the line of 
 country taken by the quarry, with the places where the grey- 
 hounds " turned " her, and all the particulars of a most exciting 
 and, to sportsmen, interesting course. In short, the hare led 
 them a chase of several miles over parts of the Westerdale 
 moors, over the Ingleby boundary, circling back by Hob Hole 
 till she had nearly reached the spot where she was originally 
 met with. Here, as luck would have it, a black dog, not 
 belonging to any one of the party, and coming no one knew 
 whence, suddenly joined in the course, and just as the hitherto 
 unapproachable hare made a final effort to get through a 
 smout-hole at the foot of the wall of the garth in which the 
 cot of the reputed witch was situate — and the habitation in 
 question is a habitation still — the black dog, according to the 
 expression used, "threw at her," but succeeded in little more 
 
84 Folklore 
 
 than tearing out some of the fleck of her haunch, bringing 
 with it, in one place, a bit of the skin. That was the end 
 of the course, but not of the story. It continued thus : 
 The party after a pause, due, as it would seem, in part to 
 apprehension, and, in the case of one at least, to suspicion, 
 went to Nanny's door, and, although it was fast, succeeded 
 eventually in obtaining admission. The apprehensive mem- 
 bers of the party, having a wholesome fear of witch-prowess 
 in general, and of Nanny's in^particular — especially in con- 
 sideration of their live stock — desired to excuse themselves 
 for the inadvertent violation of her injunction as to the colour 
 of the dogs which were to be permitted to join in the course. 
 One of them, however, as just intimated, more suspicious or 
 better informed than his comrades, wished to satisfy himself 
 as to the presence and the condition of old Nanny herself. 
 Finding admission to the dwelling, in the cots of the time, 
 was finding admission to the sleeping apartment and all. For 
 there were no chambers upstairs then. There was the living 
 room, with a sort of boxed- off place or two for sleeping 
 arrangements, and perhaps a roost for the fowls ; but nothing 
 beyond in the way of more modem refinements. And when 
 the party entered, there was old Nanny stretched on her bed, 
 disabled and in pain. "What was wrang wiv 'er? She had 
 been weel eneugh but a bit afore." — "Eh, she had happened 
 an accident, and lamed hersen." But the suspicions of the 
 suspicious one were allowed to prevail, and the old woman's 
 hurts were overhauled, and it was found she was rent as if 
 by a dog's teeth on the haunch, exactly where the hare, which 
 had run through the smout into Nanny's garth, had been seen 
 to be seized by the unlucky (and unwelcome) black dog. 
 
 There was another Nanny, of Danby celebrity, who lived 
 in a house of precisely the same character as the Westerdale 
 Nanny's, situate about half a mile to the east of the house 
 in which this is written. I have no doubt that she was 
 really an "historical" character, and that the plain English 
 
A Witch-hunt 85 
 
 of many of the stories that have been told me about her is 
 that she was an object of persecution by the " young bloods " 
 of the day and district, — young fellows of the farming 
 persuasion, the sons of freeholders, or possibly freeholders 
 themselves. But the story I would relate came to me in much 
 the following form. " Au'd Nanny " used to lie j)erd,u in the 
 evenings in a certain whin-covered bank — a regular gorse 
 covert in those days, as I was made to understand. Here 
 these young fellows beat for her as they would for a hare, and 
 for the same purpose — namely, for sport's sake — and expecting 
 to find her in her qumi form there. "When found, she always 
 "took the same line of country," namely, up the hill from the 
 side of the basin low down in which her hut was placed, and 
 then along the slope from the moor-end down towards the 
 hamlet called Ainthorpe, and so down the steeper part of the 
 same descent to where a run of water used to cross the road 
 on its surface, but is now bridged over in a substantial, if not 
 a showy, manner. Down this steeper descent there was 
 and is a flagged path or causey — the survival of what had 
 once been the veritable highroad, or king's highway, up and 
 towards the eastern part of the parish. Down this causey 
 it was the witch's custom, when she was thus chivied, to run 
 at headlong speed, and as she wore clogs, or rough shoes 
 with wooden soles, fortified at the extremities with iron 
 tips and heels, the clatter of her footsteps could be heard long 
 before she arrived near the foot of the slope, and the water, 
 at which perforce the chase ceased. One evening one of the 
 customary starters and pursuers had not been present at the 
 "meet," nor consequently at the "find." However, he was 
 near the lower part of the causey when the clatter of the 
 wooden shoes at the highest part warned him that the hunt 
 was up. His first thought was to stop the quarry in her head- 
 long race for the running water, and see what would happen 
 when she was headed and forced to turn back, or away from 
 her refuge. So he set himself firmly right across the causey 
 
86 Folklore 
 
 aforesaid, with his legs necessarily a little apart, in order to 
 stop the -gangway effectually. Onwards came the chase ; the 
 footsteps sounded nearer and nearer, and sharper and sharper. 
 
 But there was nothing to be seen. Thomas P began to 
 
 be in a fright, rather : it was uncanny to hear what he 
 heard, and as he heard it, and to know that the witch he had 
 so often harried and hunted was the author of it, and yet 
 not be able to see a hair of her. But he had no time for 
 deliberation ; and before he had made up his mind about the 
 best thing to be done, he felt something rush full force between 
 his legs, himself carried on unresistingly for a yard or two, and 
 then hurled over on one side like a sucked orange, hearing a 
 weird sort of chuckling laugh as the being he had expected to 
 baffle reached the point beyond which pursuit was impracticable. 
 The idea in this case, as also in the story last given, was 
 that of the witch becoming the object of pursuit, and under 
 the form of a hare. In the one case, certainly, she sponta- 
 neously offers herself in that capacity, while in the other it 
 hardly seems possible to assume entire willingness on her part ; 
 while, besides, there is a sort of a jumble between the silent 
 pads of the hare ^ and the noisily resonant clatter of the iron- 
 
 ^ There is also in this story another discrepancy or inconsistency, as 
 collated with the ordinary witch-lore deliverances, and as regards one of 
 their most customary features. What I refer to is the idea that the witch 
 could not cross running water. Every one "kens" Tarn O'Shanter's 
 adventure, and the apostrophe to his gallant mare — 
 
 Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg, 
 
 An' win the key-stane of the hrig ; 
 
 There at them thou thy tail may toss, 
 
 A running stream they darena cross ; 
 and in one of the most graphic of the witch stories kno^vn to me as told 
 in this district, the convicted witch remains in acute suffering because she 
 is unable to cross a stream and undo the spell which is torturing her. And 
 yet, in this story of the hunted Nanny, her flight is always directed to 
 the running water at Ainthorpe, once beyond which she was no longer 
 the victim of her persecutors' malice or mischief. But this is nearly the 
 only, if not the one single, striking incongruity of the kind that I have 
 detected. 
 
The Witch-hare as a Milk-stealer 87 
 
 shod wooden clogs. But it is to be observed that the witch, 
 under the form of a hare, is of perpetual recurrence in all the 
 copious witch-lore of the district : most often, perhaps, as the 
 sufferer, but by no means invariably so. And what is interest- 
 ing, especially in connection with the Scandinavian repertories 
 of the same kind, there is reference to the witch as taking that 
 form in relation with the abstraction of milk from the cows in 
 the field by night. One story of the kind, in which moreover 
 the witch did not come off second-best, may be worth recording, 
 especially as there was — what was not true of the general run 
 of these stories — a kind of anachronism, as it would seem, 
 introduced into the telling of it. That milk -stealing was a 
 common offence from two to three centuries ago there is no 
 manner of question ; milk-stealing, I mean, from the cows in 
 their pasture. The entries in the Quarter Sessions Eecords 
 alone would be sufficient to establish that fact. But it may 
 not occur to a modem reader to consider how it was that such 
 a practice became feasible. Our idea is naturally of the cows 
 belonging to any given farmer being all duly milked in the 
 evening, and turned out into the safe pasture to browse and 
 provide another " meal of milk " by the morning. But down 
 to the time when the Enclosure Act was obtained in any par- 
 ticular parish, the cows of the village community all pastured 
 together in one common field (or in one of them, if, as usual, 
 there were more than one within the vill) ■ and it is obvious 
 that under such circumstances, when the cows of perhaps thirty 
 to forty owners were all mixed up together, dishonest milking 
 would be much more difficult of detection than under the 
 modern arrangement. And, doubtless, many cases of appar- 
 ently mysterious failure of milk would be referred to the witch, 
 when the witch and her wicked works were commonly in 
 men's minds, and almost as currently in men's mouths. One 
 thing, however, is quite certain ; and that is that not only was 
 the witch accredited with the abstraction of the milk from the 
 neighbours' cows, but that she was supposed, if not believed, 
 
Folklore 
 
 to do the deed by aid or by means of the " witch-hare." In 
 the Scandinavian "troUdom," or witch-lore, over and above 
 other means employed by the witch in this unrighteous process, 
 such as tying a rope to the cross-beam of the bam (or other 
 out-building), and manipulating it (after due employment of 
 the appropriate spells) as one does the paps of the cow in the 
 act of milking, the calling into being and despatching of the 
 witch-hare is constantly referred to or described. A log of 
 wood, a three-legged stool, a bit of hair rope, and the like, 
 might, either or each of them, be utilised, and, once the in- 
 cantation was spoken, the hare rose up and was ready to be 
 sent on its dairymaid errand. Here, however, in this district, 
 I have never been fortunate enough to come on any scrap of 
 tradition, or any feature in a story, leading on to the identi- 
 fication of the means or the mode by or in which the hare 
 was evoked and pressed into the witch's service. But still, the 
 hare was the vehicle by which the neighbour's milk was con- 
 veyed from his cow to the witch's dairy, and, among many 
 other stories, I heard the following, in which, as I said, the 
 " witch did not come off second-best." The scene was laid in 
 Commondale, part of which valley lies in this parish and part 
 in the parish of Guisborough. A farmer there was per- 
 petually finding that his cows gave very much less milk to 
 the milker's fingers than they ought; and the loss became 
 so considerable that it was deemed necessary to try and put 
 a stop to the cause of it. There were witches galore in the 
 neighbourhood, and their well-known nefarious practices in 
 the way of diverting the flow of milk from the right channel 
 were also only too well known. But how to discover if this 
 were the right explanation of the loss complained of, and, 
 if it were, how to obviate its continuance, were both matters 
 the solution of which was not unattended with difficulty. 
 In the issue it was settled that the best and most feasible 
 plan would be to watch the field in which the cows were 
 turned out to pasture during the night, and to take further 
 
Watching for the Milk-stealer 89 
 
 means or measures according to the result of the watching 
 process. Accordingly the farmer set a trusty hand to keep 
 the necessary watch. An uneventful night, a second, a third 
 passed. The sentinel declared nothing had passed into the 
 field, the cows had never been approached by a soul, and least 
 of all by crone or maid with pail and stool complete. And 
 yet the morning meal of milk was as deficient as ever, there 
 being nothing in the condition of the cows, or in the circum- 
 stances of the pasture, or what not, to account for the vexa- 
 tious fact. At last one of the neighbours, "mair skeely 
 'an t' ithers," or perhaps, like the Westerdale yeoman, a little 
 more suspicious, on cross-examining the watcher, elicited the 
 fact that it was not quite accurate to say that nothing what- 
 ever had gone into the field where the cows were pasturing, 
 for that each night he had noticed a hare that came in through 
 a gapway in the dike, and that seemed to be feeding about, and 
 mostly right in amongst the cows where they were feeding or 
 standing the closest together. Asked whether the hare 
 always came from the same side, and entered the field through 
 the same broken way, he answered, "Ay, for seear (sure), 
 and wherefore not % Hares allays gaed the seeam gate, as a' 
 folks kenned." But the said gap happened to be on the side 
 that was handiest of access to a certain "Au'd Mally," who 
 had an uncanny reputation, and the "skeely" (or perhaps 
 suspicious) neighbour suggested that "Au'd Mally might 
 lik'ly ken whilk weea t' milk gaed." Hereupon followed 
 another deliberation, the upshot of which was that the farmer 
 himself should watch the next night, armed, and with his gun 
 loaded — not with leaden pellets, but — with silver slugs ; and 
 as it was not easy to come by silver slugs in an out-of-the-way 
 place like Commondale, — and besides that, it was highly 
 expedient to keep their plans as quiet as possible, which could 
 not be if they went to a town to buy such ammunition, — it 
 was resolved to cut up an old silver button or two, and charge 
 the gun with the pieces. Well, all was duly done according 
 
90 Folklore 
 
 to programme; the farmer, with his "hand-gun" charged 
 according to rule, took up his position near the gap aforesaid, 
 and in such a place that, while he was well concealed himself, 
 he could have a good sight of the hare as she entered, and 
 also of the pasturing cows ; for he did not want to " ware " 
 (expend) his costly charge on a mere ordinary long-eared 
 pussy, but wished to catch " Au'd Mally " — if it were she — 
 flagrante delicto, and shoot at her in the very act. Midnight 
 passed and nothing came; but as the small hours drew on 
 the hare was seen approaching with stealthy step, and sitting 
 up on her haunches every minute or two to listen for 
 suspicious sounds, as natural as life. With sheer expectancy 
 the farmer's heart began to beat much faster than usual, and 
 the palpitation did not decrease when, just at the verge of 
 the gap, it stood up again and glowered at the very spot 
 where he lay concealed. Apparently reassured by the still- 
 ness, pussy resumed her leisurely advance, and entered the 
 enclosure; but instead of approaching the feeding cows, she 
 came deliberately on with -direct course to the farmer's ambush, 
 her eyes getting bigger and bigger with each lope she took, 
 until almost upon the startled watcher, when she reared her- 
 self up, growing taller and taller, and "wiv her een glooring 
 and widening while they war as big as saucers," and with 
 their glare directed full upon the terrified skulker the form 
 stalked straight up to him ! With a scream of utter, horrified 
 terror, he sprang from his hiding-place, flung his gun far from 
 him, and rushed headlong away, "rinning what he could," and 
 never halting even to draw breath until he had got himself 
 safely within his own door, and doubly locked and bolted it. 
 And so ended that attempt to bring the milk-stealing witch 
 to book ; and certainly hardly either to her complete dis- 
 comfiture, or even to her complete conviction. 
 
WITCH STORIES AND WITCH ANTIDOTES 
 
 Our last story ended with something very like a somewhat 
 telling amp on the part of a grievously suspected witch. 
 But such incidents are decidedly rare. It was very much 
 otherwise with many of the "noted witches" who had the 
 credit of doing so much mischief that remedial measures 
 had to be taken, shooting at them with silver shot or 
 silver slugs seeming to be the only, at least the readiest, 
 means available. Thus, in Glaisdale Head the trees in a 
 young plantation were continually eaten oflF. If replaced, 
 still the same fate awaited their successors. It was easy to 
 say there was nothing new in having young sapling trees 
 gnawed completely off by hares and rabbits ; or, if of larger 
 size, barked by the latter if not by the former. But there 
 were circumstances in this case which showed — so it was said 
 — that no mere ordinary hare was the cause of the damage 
 complained of. " Hares might have been seen in the nursery 
 (plantation), leastwise, one particular hare, a bit off the common 
 to look at : but common hares did not cut the tops of the 
 young trees off, ommost as gin they had been cut wiv a 
 whittle, and leave 'em liggin' about just as they were cut, 
 as if nobbut for mischeef. Hares was reasonable creatur's 
 eneugh, and i' lang ho'dding- storms, when ivvery thing was 
 deep happed wi' snow, and they could na get a bite ov owght 
 else, they'd sneap t' young trees, and offens dee a canny bit 
 ov ill. But they did not come, storm or nae storm, and just 
 
92 Folklore 
 
 knipe off tweea or three score o' young saplings, any soort o' 
 weather, as if for gam' or mischeef." So the usual consulta- 
 tion was held, and with the issue that watch was to be kept 
 by the owner concerned, with a gun loaded with silver shot — 
 which, by the way, was procured as in the last case — and the 
 moment he saw the suspicious hare beginning its nefarious 
 practices, he was to take steady aim and shoot. The watch 
 was set, and at the " witching bour of night " of course, the hare 
 put in an appearance — "a great, foul au'd ram-cat ov a heear 
 t' leuk at — and began knepping here and knepping there as 
 if 't wur stoodying how best t' deea maist ill i' lahtlest tahm. 
 Sae t' chap at wur watching, he oop wi's gun, and aiming 
 steady he lat drive (discharged his gun). My wo'd ! but 
 there was a flaysome skrike! An' t' heear, sair ho't (badly 
 wounded), gat hersel' a soort o' croppen out o' t' no'ssery, 
 and ho'ppled (hirpled, limped, hobbled) away as weel 's she 
 could, an' won heeam at last at Au'd Maggie's house-end, in a 
 bit o' scroggs at grows on t' bank theear." Inquiries, however, 
 were made next day, not among the brushwood on the bank 
 (steep slope or hillside), but at the cottage of the old woman 
 called "Au'd Maggie"; and unluckily for her reputation, 
 already more than sufficiently shaky in the witch connection, 
 she was found in her bed "sair ho't in many spots," she 
 said with splinters of a broken bottle she had fallen down 
 upon ; but her visitors thought " mair lik'ly wi' shot-coorns o' 
 some soort." 
 
 Another story, essentially of the same character, but 
 varying in some of the details, runs as follows : A farmer in 
 Farndale was terribly unlucky with his live stock. "Stirk 
 and heifer, yearlings and two-year-au'ds, he had lossen yan efter 
 anither, and naebody kenned what ailed 'em ; and now at last 
 t' cauves wur gannan' too. And it had coomed to be notished 
 that, whenivver a lahtle black bitch wur seen i' t' grip o' t' 
 cow-'us, or i' t' cauf-pen, then, for seear, yan iv 'em took bad 
 and dee'd." So the customary consultation ensued, and the 
 
Witch Antidotes 93 
 
 accustomed advice was sought, and the prescription was : 
 " Charge your gun with silver shot, watch for the black bitch 
 — but be sure you don't shoot your neighbour's black cur-dog 
 (collie) — and when it gets out of your garth, let drive." All 
 was arranged accordingly. The black "female dog" came in 
 due time ; it was noted that it was black all over, off forefoot 
 and all — the neighbour's cur-dog had that foot white ; it was 
 in the grip (the groove or channel in the floor behind the 
 cow-stalls), but it could not win into the calves' pen ; and as 
 it was leaving the farmstead garth the fatal shot was fired, 
 followed by the " skrike " as aforesaid ; the domiciliary visit, 
 not of condolence but of detection, was paid next day, and 
 the sufi"ering witch found groaning in bed, with a terrible 
 series of shot-wounds in the hinder part of her person. 
 
 There were other modes, besides those recorded in these 
 stories, of bringing an offending witch to book ; as there were 
 divers offences and shades of offence alleged against the 
 offender; but the majority of the tales did not record such 
 eventual proof of the justice of the suspicion, or overwhelm- 
 ing testimony that the punishment had fallen on the actual 
 transgressor. Indeed, in a very considerable class of stories 
 the punishment inflicted on the particular witch proceeded 
 against was rather left to inference than specified, or even 
 indicated. Nay, there were even cases in which modes of 
 permanent or sustained annoyance or mortification of the 
 witch were resorted to ; measures calculated and intended to 
 defeat or frustrate her malice, and to nullify her power. 
 Thus, I have before me now a spell or charm the object of 
 which was to hamper and hinder the vdtch in her attempts 
 (possible or anticipated) to injure the stock of the person 
 employing it. And this said charm or spell was in process 
 of application much within the period of my personal resi- 
 dence here and acquaintance with the said person. He was 
 the largest farmer in the parish, a right good sort, and a 
 fair specimen of the old untutored, unschooled Yorkshire 
 
94 Folklore 
 
 yeoman, with a large amount of natural shrewdness at the 
 bottom, and with any amount of credulity in some directions, 
 and obstinate incredulity in others, mainly on the side where 
 reason and knowledge lay. He could neither read nor write 
 — by no means an unknown thing among the Dales farmers 
 of fifty years ago; but he was as honest as the day — in 
 horse -dealing even. Perhaps I need hardly say he had a 
 lively sense of the actuality of the witch, of her power, of 
 her malice, and not least, of the ascertained direction of it 
 against himself and his belongings. He never assigned any 
 reason he had for supposing himself a special object for the 
 malevolence of the uncanny old crone. But why, or how, 
 could he doubt it % Were not his beasts continually affected 
 with the red- water, when his neighbours' were not? Was 
 there ever a year when he did not lose a yearling or two, 
 or may be more, with some mysterious languishing illness? 
 Were not his calves afflicted above other men's calves, so that 
 he scarcely ever was able to rear more than a part of them ? 
 Of course, to one like him, this reasoning was irrefutable, and 
 he " went the entire animal " in his appreciation of what the 
 witch — whether it were one or several — could and did do 
 day by day continually. Prejudiced people might say that 
 bad management, insufficient food and shelter, pasturage on 
 sour undrained lands, with an alternation of scraping for 
 bare subsistence on dry, parched, shaly banks, might have 
 something to do with the unluck of his stock generally; 
 but my old friend Jonathan knew a vast better than that. 
 "There was more than one witch in the Head (Fryup 
 Head), and there was more than him as kenned it." Well, 
 among other ways and means, Jonathan employed a stand- 
 ing charm; and when he died it was found in (as was to 
 be presumed) full operation, in his standing-desk or bureau, 
 with a white-handled penknife, half open, laid in front of it. 
 It consisted of a half -sheet of letter-paper, folded in the 
 fashion of those days when as yet the envelope was undis- 
 
A Formidable -looking Charm 95 
 
 covered, and sealed with three black seals, inserted between 
 each two of which was a hackle from a red cock's neck. This, 
 when opened, was found to have a pentacle, inscribed within 
 a circle, drawn on it. It is somewhat difficult to make out 
 which is top and which is bottom. But from such indica- 
 tions as there are, I assume that the point from which the 
 passage from the Psalms, which surrounds the circle just 
 named, begins to read is the bottom. The said extract is, 
 " In Him shall be the strength of thy hand. He shall 
 keep thee in six troubles, yea, even in seven shall no harm 
 come to thee," — the "thee" being interlined over the 
 word " come." In the central hexagonal space formed by 
 the mutual intersection of the three triangles which form 
 the figure, is what is meant for a short sentence of three 
 words in the Hebrew character, but is really a mere rough 
 imitation, such as might be made by an ignorant impostor, 
 who knew the general characteristics of the Hebrew as 
 printed. There are then six triangular spaces formed by 
 the cutting off of the apices of the composing triangles 
 by the intersecting sides of the same; and beginning 
 with the lowest — as we are regarding the diagram — and 
 proceeding to the right, round the circle, in the first (or 
 lowest) is the word "Agla"; in the next, the letters or the 
 word "El"; in the third, "On"; in the fourth, and upside 
 down, as we are regarding it, the word "Nalgah," with a 
 cross above it; in the fifth, "Adonai"; and in the sixth, 
 "Sadai." Besides these triangular spaces, there are six 
 other spaces formed by the segments of the containing circle 
 cut off between the several apices of the constituent tri- 
 angles and the sides of the small vertical triangles, already 
 noted. Taking as the first of these that on the left of the 
 triangular space numbered as the first, just above, the words 
 inscribed are, "Caro verbum factum est;" and proceeding in 
 the same order as before, in the second the inscription is, 
 " Jesu Christi Nazarenus Eex Judaeorum ; " in the third, the 
 
96 Folklore 
 
 word " Permumaiton " ; in the fourth, "Amati schema"; in 
 the fifth, "Sadai"; and in the sixth, "Adonai." Turning 
 the charm the other way up, nearly underneath the cross 
 ahove named, as it now stands, begins the sentence, " Ye are 
 everlasting power of God theos ; " and then, at the bottom of 
 all, in a straight line, the words "Hoc in vince," all run 
 together, as was the case also in the sentence previously 
 noticed. This last, doubtless, refers directly to the sign of 
 the cross made immediately above in the small triangle con- 
 taining the word "Nalgah." 
 
 Surely a formidable -looking weapon of defence is here, 
 and, as it is reasonable to suppose, one likely to occasion 
 Jonathan's unfriends among the uncanny crew of witches 
 more than a mere occasional miscarriage of some of their 
 nefarious, however craftily laid, schemes and intentions. 
 
 But there were other and less elaborate, and beyond 
 question less Gostly, means available for frustrating, or at 
 least in some measure enervating, the witch's maleficent 
 energy. I say "less costly," because a spell like the one 
 just described involved a visit to the nearest, or possibly 
 the most renowned, "wise man" (of whom more at a 
 future page) in the district ; and he, like the doctor and the 
 lawyer, and other learned professors, naturally expected and 
 took care to secure his honorarium^ quid pro quo, or fee. 
 But of these simpler and more inexpensive safeguards more 
 in the following section. 
 
THE WITCH AND WITCH ANTIDOTES (continued) 
 
 One of the simpler and more inexpensive resources adverted 
 to at the close of the last section, and which, in point of fact, 
 has been already mentioned at a former page, is the use 
 of the "witch- wood," that is, of portions of the rowan or 
 mountain-ash tree, duly obtained and selected ; for, as I think, 
 all was not " witch-wood " that was of the rowan-tree. The 
 "witch-wood," to be effectual, was not to be lightly or uncon- 
 sideringly come by. It must be cut in due season, and in due 
 season only ; and not only that, but it must be cut in due 
 place, and with due observances. But by way of illustration, 
 it may be best to introduce here a little story told me by 
 one of my parishioners of the days that are gone, and 
 to whose normal unwillingness to talk to me on such 
 matters reference has been made at a previous page. The 
 story was on this wise : He was out and about his farm 
 one day, several of the fields belonging to which lay far up 
 towards the Head of the dale, where the surroundings, 
 however rugged and picturesque, were quite sufficiently 
 lonely. Earely indeed, when I have been — as I have been 
 scores of times, whether with my gun or with only my 
 walking-stick for my companion — in that part of my parish, 
 have I ever seen a human being in these wild solitudes, except 
 attracted by the sound of my gun, or perchance in quest of 
 some stray sheep. Naturally, then, my old friend was a little 
 surprised, not to say startled, at seeing one day a woman he 
 
 H 
 
98 Folklore 
 
 knew, and knew as somewhat quaint in some of her ways, 
 coming by an unfrequented route into the loneliest part of 
 this lonely wilderness ; and not only that, but casting 
 anxious and inquiring looks all about her, as if wishing to 
 be assured she was neither followed nor under observation. 
 She was carrying some bright object in her hand, which, as 
 well as he could see from the distance at which he stood, might 
 be a " gully," or large domestic knife. His first thought, he 
 told me, on recognising the female in question, and connecting 
 her queer suspicious ways with the fact of her being in 
 such a peculiarly lonely and, for her, strangely out-of-the- 
 way place, was that she might be meditating making away 
 with herself. A little consideration seemed to be sufl&cient 
 to dispel that notion, and after watching her with some 
 little wonderment for a few minutes, he went about his 
 business. A little later in the day he met her full face, 
 and apparently bending her steps towards her own home. 
 But the way she was pursuing involved a considerable cir- 
 cuit, as leading from the place at which he had last seen 
 her, and particularly as connected with the route by which she 
 had entered on the scene when he had first noticed her. " Hie, 
 Hannah," he said to her, "what mak'st t' here?" — "Wheea," 
 says she, " Ah's just gannan' yam (home) t' gainest (nearest) 
 way Ah can." And then he told her he thought it was a 
 strange sort of " gainest way home " for her to be taking, con- 
 sidering where he had seen her an hour or so before, and the way 
 he had seen her arrive there by. And then he went on to tell 
 her how her goings on had perplexed him, and how for a minute 
 or two he had thought perhaps he ought to follow her, and 
 prevent her doing herself a mischief. The poor woman seemed 
 a little taken aback by the discovery that she had been thus 
 under observation, when she had fondly imagined that all her 
 doings were unseen, at least unnoted by any mortal eye ; but 
 presently, recovering herself, she uttered the explanatory 
 sentence, " Wheea, I was nobbut lating my witch-wood " (only 
 
How the Witch-wood was to be got 99 
 
 seeking my wood-charm against witches). Well, but why go 
 all the way into the Head, and that far into the Head, more- 
 over \ In reply to this, and a series of other questions, the old 
 woman gave the following mass of information : To be 
 effectual, the requisite pieces of rowan-tree, — for many were 
 wanted : one for the upper sill of the house-door, one for the 
 corresponding position as to stable, cow-byre, and the other 
 domiciles of the various stock, one for personal use, one for 
 the head of her bed, one for the house-place, etc. etc., — must 
 not only be cut on St. Helen's day, but, in order to be quite 
 fully efficacious, they must be cut with a household knife : they 
 must be cut, moreover, from a tree which not only the cutter 
 had never seen before, but of the very existence of which he 
 must have had no previous knowledge or suspicion ; and that, 
 on the tree having been found in this blindfold sort of way, 
 and the requisite bough or boughs having been severed and 
 secured, they must be carried home by any way save that 
 by which the obtainer of them had gone forth on his 
 quest. And so, as she had known all the rowan-trees in 
 the nearer neighbourhood of her cottage for years, she had 
 been obliged to go farther afield, and all her proceedings had 
 been regulated according to these various conditions. 
 
 Whether these conditions were always and punctiliously 
 observed by the devout believers in the power of the witch 
 and in the prophylactic efficacy of the witch-wood, I am not able 
 from positive knowledge or information to affirm ; but I am 
 quite well aware that the consumption of the article in question 
 was by no means small, and that, too, even within the period 
 of my personal acquaintance with the district. 
 
 But there were other means of anticipating or obviating 
 such harm and loss, and not a few, besides these already men- 
 tioned. Thus, I knew an old lady, a dear, canny old body she 
 was, who, before she proceeded to chum, invariably took 
 forcible measures to expel the witch, or any witch-emissary, 
 who might, in the malice of her intention, have lodged herself 
 
100 Folklore 
 
 in the churn. And this she did by proceeding to throw one 
 pinch of salt into the fire and another into the churn, re- 
 peating the alternate sprinkling until the mystic number of 
 nine times for each had been completed. Another and not in- 
 effectual method on the like occasion was — in order, I suppose, 
 to make the place too hot to hold the witch — to take the 
 kitchen poker, heated to an unmistakable red heat, and, 
 inserting it at the opening or bung-hole, to turn it slowly 
 round, sweeping as wide a space as possible within the said 
 utensil, nine several times. Witch-wood too had its allotted 
 station in the dairy, and in connection with the various 
 dairy vessels. 
 
 So that, on the whole, the witches must have had a hard 
 time of it to get in, and it would almost seem, having some- 
 how or other got in, a harder time still to maintain the position 
 they had won. But, on conning over the old woman's recipe 
 for the gathering of effectually serviceable witch-wood, we see 
 there was a good deal to think of, and a good deal to be very 
 punctilious over, and that a lapse in any one of the particulars 
 named might easily be fatal to the virtue of the whole season's 
 stock of the article in question. I remember when I was a 
 schoolboy in Essex, with youthful ambitions stirring within 
 me, how the being able to do some day what the old statute 
 terms " shooting in a gun loaded with powder and hail-shot," 
 vrith the said " tormentum " or " hand-gunne " pressed to my 
 own individual shoulder, seemed a consummation most devoutly 
 to be wished for. What a jolly life I used to think the 
 little village boys who were set to " keep the crows " in that 
 then wheat-growing county of Essex must lead. No tiresome 
 school, dame or boarding, no multiplication table, or, worse 
 still, pence-table, to learn, no work of any kind — for bird- 
 nesting and cutting the bark off long svntches in alternate 
 rings clearly was not work — but just to halloa ad libitum from 
 time to time when the crows might be coming, or the master 
 or the foreman be within hearing — and what boy does not 
 
' Keeping the Crows ' sometimes ineffectiial i o i 
 
 like kicking up a hullabaloo of that kind when it suits him % — 
 but over and above all the rest, and over and above with a 
 towering pre-eminence, the privilege and the opportunity to 
 fire the real gun, and then to recharge it one's own glorified 
 self ! Certainly, creeping round those huge thirty- or forty- 
 acre fields, and duly peeping into every fork in the old thick 
 hedge, and scrutinising every moss-covered stub, and every 
 half-hidden but suggestive hollow in the bank, all took time, 
 and when you were doing your " work " of this kind on one 
 side of the wide field, the crows might perchance find their 
 way in at the other, and pick up a few stray grains of the 
 scattered seed-corn. Again, sitting down and ringing those 
 bonny long straight sticks required a good deal of attention 
 and care, and even measurement, and when one was intent on 
 such rightful occupation, of course a cunning, cautious, keen- 
 eyed crow might seize the chance afi'orded by such pre- 
 occupation. Besides, a boy, even a brazen-throated one, 
 caimot always be halloaing, especially on market-days or 
 sales-days, when both master and looker are safe to be away, 
 " minding their business " there. Lastly, too, the gunpowder 
 is dealt out in such graduated doses, like physic that is not 
 bad to take, that you cannot in the nature of things keep up 
 an aU- day -long fusillade, and so, some way or other, the 
 crows that our small friends in rough boots which smell of 
 stale oU, and ragged jackets that tell of past rather than future 
 wear, are set "to keep," find as many loopholes as a rabbit in 
 the fence enclosing its natural covert, or as the proverbial 
 coach-and-six in the proverbial Act of Parliament. 
 
 And just so, I think, it must have been with the sadly 
 peccant witch of the days not so very long gone. At least 
 this is quite certain, that, from time to time, not only our old 
 friend Jonathan's young stock and so forth " went wrong," 
 and, of course, by reason of the malice and the uncanny might 
 of the witch, but many and many another besides him were 
 sufferers too. But were they to continue sufferers, tame. 
 
I02 Folklore 
 
 unresisting, uncomplaining, resourceless, almost acquiescent 
 sufferers % Were they not to stir hand or foot in self-defence, 
 in defence of their hapless, witch-abused calves and yearlings 
 and beasts and milking-cows ? Could not they in any way 
 oust the witch after she had gotten possession, — at all events, 
 carry the war into her quarters, and make her feel and under- 
 stand that the motto which accompanies the heraldic thistle 
 may be the practical motto still of the North Yorkshire owner 
 of " neat stock, sheep, and pigs " ? The thought was one not 
 to be entertained for a moment by a canny, considering, and 
 devoutly believing farmer of three-quarters of a century ago. 
 If the witch had got in in spite of all his forethought and pre- 
 caution, what was to hinder her being driven out? Nay, 
 what was to hinder her being made to feel, and sensibly too, 
 that if she had the power, and used the power, to make the 
 farmer suffer through the suffering of his stock, even if not in 
 his own person, still there were means available, by the appli- 
 cation of which all her malicious intentions, all her mischievous 
 plottings and workings, might be made of none effect, and she 
 herself be reduced to the condition of being the personal 
 sufferer, in place of the unlucky stock belonging to the object 
 of her envy, hatred, or malice % 
 
 These means, or some of them, may well become the 
 subject-matter of the succeeding section. 
 
THE WISE MAN 
 
 " Ay, the witch might have — there's not yan that kens, but 
 kens that she liad — a vast o' power ; but the Wise Man he had 
 a vast mair; he was mair 'an a maister over sike as her." 
 
 And great was the resort by our old friend Jonathan, and 
 many and many another of his day and school, to the said 
 Wise Man on the occurrence of troubles of the class and kind 
 indicated. And, as became a wise man, many and various 
 were the resources at his command ; but, being a wise man, 
 he did not take everything for granted, even when related 
 with a strange quaint fulness of detail, enforced by a heap 
 of stranger imaginations and more marvellous amplifications 
 of suspicions as to person and motive. "Ay, maybe your 
 beasts are ' witched.' What you tell me looks like it. And 
 Au'd Betty may be at the bottom of it. She's a noted witch — 
 we all ken that. And as like as not she has a bit of a grudge 
 against you. Nay, even if it bean't as bad as that, still some 
 folks can't keep themselves quiet, even if they'd like. They 
 mun be doing, or him that gies them the power might not be 
 weel suited. Still, ye ken, we mun be canny, and ken what 
 we're ef ter. I mak' no doubt that somebody has ' witched ' 
 your stock, and maybe ' wished you ' (invoked some evil thing 
 upon you) as well. But that is what we have got to find out. 
 And if we mak' sure o' that, why then we'll see who's done 
 it." Some discourse of this kind, there is no doubt, passed 
 between the Wise Man and the seeker unto him. And one 
 
1 04 Folklore 
 
 not uncommon recipe furnished by him — for a consideration 
 always ; that goes without saying — was as follows, due instruc- 
 tions as to time and mode of provision of the requisites named 
 being first of all given : " Take nine bottry (boretree, common 
 elder) knots, and put them on a clean platter all close together, 
 but without too much care about arranging them in regular 
 order ; only let them be all in a bunch. Then cover them — 
 exactly at midnight is the right time — cover them with a clean 
 cloth, set the whole on a table near the window, and take 
 tent that no one goes nigh-hand them while (until) the morn- 
 ing. And if, when you take the cloth off in the morning, you 
 find them all squandered (scattered in confusion) about the 
 platter, well, it's a safe thing that your stock is really witched." 
 Then, in some cases, especially if the symptoms were not very 
 urgent, came a further inquiry as to the identity of the wrong- 
 doing hag, who was the active cause of the trouble in hand. 
 But in cases of emergency, where the stock was grievously 
 afflicted, and perhaps death was already busy among them, 
 more summary measures were resorted to, and without delay. 
 One course, of which I heard from more informants than one, 
 and which I had unquestionable reasons for being assured had 
 been put in practice, twice if not three times, by the Jonathan 
 mentioned above during his occupation of the farm he held in 
 this parish, was much if not exactly as follows : He took the 
 heart of one of the animals which had died under the male- 
 volent witch's maleficent practices, and having provided 
 himself with all the various requisites, proceeded to stick it 
 carefully with nine new pins, nine new needles, and nine new 
 nails. Then a fire was to be made as the " hoU time of the night" 
 (the depth of the night) drew on, yet not with ordinary or 
 any haphazard kind of fuel ; but with bottree wood — in one 
 or two of the stories rowan-tree wood, or even ash-wood, was 
 specified^ — and such wood only was to be used. And the fire 
 was to be kindled and kept up so that there might be the 
 hottest possible bed of bright, clear-burning embers exactly 
 
An Exciting Tale lOS 
 
 at midnight. But before lighting the fire all the doors and 
 windows of the house were to be made fast, very safely fast ; 
 and besides, the utmost care had to be taken to darken the 
 windows, and even cover the cracks in the door (if there were 
 any), so that no ray of light should by any possibility be seen 
 from the outside, and no curious eye from without be able to 
 penetrate to the mysteries within. And on no account, what- 
 ever happened, whatever noise or disturbance occurred without, 
 was any one to look out or do anything to interfere with the 
 precautionary barriers against external observation or inter- 
 ference. All this duly attended to, the prepared heart was to 
 be placed on the glowing bed prepared for it at just such time 
 that it might be dried to a coal and ready to take fire, and 
 blaze away and fall into ashes, at the very hour of midnight ; 
 at which precise moment two verses of a certain psalm were 
 to be read aloud by the principal operator. On one occasion 
 when this uncanny ceremonial was carried out to the very 
 letter, the concomitant circumstances outside, according to 
 the statement of the narrator, were more than sufficiently 
 startling ; and he told me with all the apparent simplicity and 
 sincerity of a person who believed it all himself, and had no 
 sort of doubt he was telling an " ower true tale." He described 
 the house and its situation to me, with all the circumstances 
 of local feature and character. It was a house with a door in 
 the front, there being the parlour on one side and the " house " 
 or living room on the other, into which, moreover, the door 
 opened. Between it and a roadway which ran past it lay a 
 bit of garden-ground separated from the roadway by railings, 
 through which a wicket-gate gave admission to a flagged path- 
 way leading directly to the door just now mentioned. As 
 the witching hour drew on, cries and moans as of one in pain 
 were heard outside. As the heart began to shrivel and 
 blacken, these increased in intensity. As it began to blaze, 
 and the reader commenced the reading prescribed, steps as of 
 a person shod with the wooden clogs of the district, iron-tipped 
 
1 06 Folklore 
 
 and iron-heeled, clattered loudly down the flags, ^ — a loud 
 lumbering noise was heard as of heavy wheelbarrows driven 
 hastily over a pavement of cobble-stones, unearthly eflforts 
 such as might have been made by some boneless and yielding 
 body, against the barred and darkened doors and windows, 
 and then, just as the heart blazed up with a final leap of 
 flame and collapsed into darkening ashes, a prolonged wail, 
 like that of one in bitter agony, and after that only still 
 silence. 
 
 In another case, all the details of which were given me 
 with even minute exactness, embracing the names and 
 residences of witch and victim, the mischiefs enacted, the 
 mode of conviction employed, the scene of the final ordeal — 
 all appertaining to the neighbouring parish of Westerdale — 
 the new pins, new nails, new needles, nine of each again, were 
 to be put into a clean bottle, which was then to be very 
 securely corked, so that by no ordinary means could the cork 
 be extracted ; and then it was to be buried in a hole dug for 
 the purpose with much secrecy, and not without due observance 
 and ceremony, and, besides that, on the other side of a small 
 stream which ran along the foot of the steep bank on the side 
 of which the spell -detected witch's rudely and anciently 
 fashioned hut-cottage stood; and buried, moreover, with the 
 neck and cork downwards, the filling in of the hole being 
 very carefully done, and all made as like an undisturbed 
 bit of ground as could be. The witch — no other, in fact, 
 than the old carline who had changed her shape into that 
 of a hare, as detailed in a former narrative — soon began to 
 feel the effects of the spell laid upon her, then began to 
 be sorely uneasy, tried all her arts, all her power, to 
 reverse it or make it of none effect; but all in vain. 
 Indeed, she ascertained what the spell was, and where in 
 its sensible potency it was acting ; but though she was able 
 actually to move the bottle in its mysterious hiding-place, 
 she could not reverse it, or tamper with the security of 
 
A Witch in extremis 107 
 
 the cork, or in the least degree impair the efficacy of the 
 charm. At last, in the extremity of her suffering, which was 
 becoming more than she could bear, she wandered down to 
 the place where the bottle was hid, regardless of the implied 
 confession, at least disclosure, of her guiltiness, with the 
 intent of doing by manual agency what she found herself 
 unable to do by aid of witchcraft — namely, tear the bottle 
 out of its hole. And then came in the power of the running 
 water, and the superior craft of the Wise Man, who had been 
 duly consulted, and under whose direction every one of the 
 preceding steps had been taken. She could not cross the 
 running stream ! There, within arm's reach of the active 
 instrument of her pitiful misery, she was remediless and help- 
 less altogether. Just then, as previously instructed by the 
 doughty discoverer of witches, the sufferer under her malice and 
 unhallowed practices enters on the scene. A short colloquy 
 ensues, the issue of which is that the witch, in the extremity 
 of personal suffering, surrenders unconditionally, reverses her 
 evil spells, and promises to undo all the mischief then in pro- 
 gress, and never to injure him and his again. The victim of her 
 spells then proceeds to take up the bottle out of the hole, and 
 finds it, of course through the potency of the spells the unlucky 
 witch had exercised in her desperate efforts to medicine her 
 pains, almost drawn up to the surface of the ground, and 
 thinks to himself he has had but a narrow escape after all. 
 The sequel of the story is that he breaks the bottle, and so 
 dissolves the charm, and the poor suffering, baffled hag obtains 
 relief and escapes with her life, which had come in sore danger 
 through what the Wise Man had laid upon her. 
 
THE WISE MAN {continued) 
 
 I DO not know how it may be with others, but to me, when 
 thinking over such legends and narratives as those above given, 
 it appears that the conception of the Wise Man is not only 
 extraordinary, but also exceptional and anomalous — himself a 
 wizard, and the chief of witches, and yet the foe of witches, 
 the counter-plotter and confounder of the whole malignant 
 crew. That the conception is a very old one, as old, or nearly 
 as old, as that of the witch herself, it is hardly necessary to 
 remind ourselves. But there are other matters in the con- 
 ception which call for a measure of attention. The witch was 
 supposed to derive her power more or less directly from the 
 evil spirit himself. The Wise Man, however, was scarcely 
 credited with commerce with "T' au'd un," either personally 
 or indirectly. The witch again was credited with malignity 
 more or less pronounced. Not so the Wise Man, but rather 
 the reverse. The one went about not exactly like a roaring 
 lion seeking his prey, but still seeking victims, some to 
 maltreat, injure, and destroy ; others of whom an evil- 
 gotten gain might accrue. The other stayed at home to 
 be consulted, and always ready for a considei-ation to do the 
 good he was asked to do. And yet this jelly-fish sort of 
 beneficence and benevolence was scarcely assumed by the 
 devotees, or even too forcibly declared by the Wise Man him- 
 self, to be altogether celestial in its origin, any more than it 
 was purely unselfish in its application and utility. I look 
 
Rather Sorcerer than Wizard 109 
 
 upon the conception of the Wise Man as a survival, and a 
 survival only — that is to say, as I found it still extant here 
 some forty odd years ago. And, like other survivals, it had 
 both lost and gained in divers particulars. The conception in 
 reality would seem to be a compound arising out of a confusion 
 of the characters and credentials of three or four original 
 creations of the imagination, aided by overtrow and supersti- 
 tion. In other words, I think the Wise Man part wizard or 
 witch, part sorcerer, magician, or enchanter, and part " conjurer" 
 in the true and full sense of the word. But I think there was 
 more of the conjurer, and of the sorcerer and enchanter, in 
 him than of the wizard or witch. And if any one tries, he 
 will find it harder than perhaps he anticipated to keep these 
 characters and their special attributes apart in the character 
 under notice. Perhaps some illustration of this position may 
 be obtained by collation of the two following quotations from 
 Brand. Grose says, "A sorcerer or magician differs from a 
 witch in this : a witch derives all her power from a compact 
 with the Devil; a sorcerer commands him and the infernal 
 spirits by his skill in powerful charms and invocations ; and 
 also soothes and entices them by fumigations." The difference 
 between a conjurer, a witch, and an enchanter, according to 
 Minshew, on the other hand, is as follows : " The conjurer 
 seemeth by praiers and invocations of God's powerful names to 
 compell the Divell to sale or doe what he commandeth him. 
 The witch dealeth rather by a friendly and voluntarie conference 
 or agreement between him (or her) and the Divell or familiar, 
 to have his (or her) turn served, in lieu or stead of blood or 
 other gift offered unto him, especially of his (or her) soule. 
 And both these differ from inchanters or sorcerers, because 
 the former two have personall conference with the Divell, 
 and the other meddles not with medicines and ceremonial 
 forms of words called charmes, without apparition." The 
 confusion is manifest. The character and some of the attri- 
 butes of the witch are fairly distinct and clear, however vague 
 
1 1 o Folklore 
 
 and blurred, as well as imperfectly delineated, the general 
 character may be. But can anything like that be said as to 
 the ideas or conceptions of the conjurer and the sorcerer \ 
 And surely the fundamental idea in the word conjurer — one 
 whose tools or implements, material instruments of operation, 
 are invocations, exorcisms, spells or forms of words instinct 
 with power — is totally different from that involved in the 
 word magician or enchanter ; one, that is, who works by the 
 exercise of occult arts, magic arts, the black art, or whatevei' 
 other name may be, or may have been, applied to his supposed 
 supernatural enginery. 
 
 But I am in danger of being led away from the Cleveland 
 conception of the Wise Man of less than a hundred years ago. 
 I have heard much of him, and, as I suppose, the ideal of him 
 is preserved in the hundred and one stories told of "Au'd 
 Wreeghtson, t' Wahse man o' Stowsley." And in all the 
 stories I have heard of him, and whoever chanced to be the 
 narrator, I never once heard him spoken of as a man of mis- 
 chief, or as an evil-liver, or as extortionate, or as a man who 
 had, it was likely or possible, made a compact with the devil ; 
 or even as one with whom the less people had "to do the 
 better. No doubt, by some he was spoken of with a kind of 
 involuntary or unconscious awe ; and by all he was evidently 
 credited with the possession of extraordinarj' insight, know- 
 ledge, and power. 
 
 More than one or two of the most remarkable and the most 
 graphic of the stories I used to listen to came from one who 
 had himself visited the Wise Man of Stokesley. He was the 
 man to whom pointed reference was made at an earlier page 
 (p. 58), a good, sensible, simple-minded old man, who had up to 
 quite recently held an office of trust and much responsibility, 
 when I obtained from him the details about to be given. 
 And I would observe that the terms employed by him in 
 speaking of Wrightson were simply terms of respect, not 
 unmingled with a sort of wondering awe. And certainly 
 
The Wise Man of Stokesley 
 
 III 
 
 nothing that I heard either from him or any other of my 
 informants was such as to prepare me to read such a notice of 
 him as that which is conceived in the following terms. The 
 narrator, it should be said, is described as a Yorkshire gentle- 
 man, and the date given is 1819. "Impostors who feed and 
 live on the superstitions of the lower orders are still to be 
 found in Yorkshire. These are called Wise Men, and are be- 
 lieved to possess the most extraordinary power in remedying all 
 diseases incidental to the brute creation, as well as the human 
 race ; to discover lost or stolen property, and to foretell future 
 events. One of these wretches was a few years ago living at 
 Stokesley in the North Eiding of Yorkshire ; his name was 
 John Wrightson, and he called himself the seventh son of a 
 seventh son, and professed ostensibly the calling of a cow- 
 doctor (' cow-leech,' it should have been). To this fellow 
 people whose education, it might have been expected, would 
 have raised them above such weakness, flocked; many came 
 to ascertain the thief, when they had lost any property; 
 others for him to cure themselves or their cattle of some 
 indescribable complaint. Another class visited him to know 
 their future fortunes ; and some to get him to save them from 
 being balloted into the militia, — all of which he professed 
 himself able to accomplish. AU the diseases which he was 
 sought to remedy he invariably imputed to witchcraft, and 
 although he gave drugs which have been known to do good, 
 yet he always enjoined some incantation to be observed, with- 
 out which he declared they could never be cured. This was 
 sometimes an act of the most wanton barbarity, ^ as that of 
 
 ^ In all my many inquiries and all my continued listenings I never 
 heard one single syllable leading me to suppose, or even to suspect, any- 
 thing of this kind. Had the charge been true, I must have heard of it — 
 at least have met with some trace or evidence, however slight. But I 
 never did, and I entirely doubt the accuracy of "this deponent"; and 
 not in respect of this particular statement only. Both the next succeeding 
 allegations require much more to prove that they are true than the fact 
 that they are thus made. 
 
1 1 2 Folklore 
 
 roasting a game-cock alive, etc. The charges of this man 
 were always extravagant ; and such was the confidence in his 
 skill and knowledge, that he had only to name any person as 
 a witch, and the public indignation was sure to be directed 
 against the poor unoffending creature for the remainder of her 
 life " (Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. iii. p. 34). 
 
 My own view of this statement is that much of it is 
 exaggeration, and no small proportion of it gratuitous 
 misrepresentation. My old friend John Unthank did not 
 speak of Wrightson in such a way as this ; and the story 
 of the extravagant fees is, on the face of it, absurd. He 
 did not do what he was asked to do for nothing, undoubtedly ; 
 but anybody who knows the country and the people, and 
 their means, and the saving, thrifty-' life they lead, knows 
 that the payments actually made to professional men, parsons, 
 lawyers, and doctors, even down to the middle of the present 
 
 ^ Perhaps I might as well mention an anecdote in illustration of this 
 point here as defer it to a future page. On occasion of the iirst show of 
 live stock held under the auspices of the Danby Agricultural Association, 
 two among the elders of the people, each much respected both in the 
 parish and out of it, were among the after-dinner speakers. Both delivered 
 themselves sensibly and well, and both with more than a mere touch of 
 native humour. One of them, by name William Hartas, was an old 
 Quaker, whose judgment, experience, and probity were equally well known, 
 and caused him frequently to be appealed to as arbiter in cases of dispute 
 or valuation. Among other things pithily and tersely — albeit a little 
 quaintly — said, he addressed some remarks to the subject of, as he con- 
 ceived, the apparent declension of habits of thriftiness and careful, not 
 to say rigid, economy. He said, and I wish I could give it in his own 
 inimitable Yorkshire, ' ' I aim (think, assume, believe) folks are not so 
 saving and careful as they used to be. You must look to it. Farmers' 
 daughters are not content with good calico, but want something smarter 
 for their dresses ; and dressing and dairying won't go together, no ways 
 you can frame it. And the young chaps, why, they're almost as bad as 
 the lasses ; they want cloth trowsers and smart waistcoats. Why, when 
 I was a lad there was a vast still sitting in their fathers' leather breeches, 
 and more than one I kenned had breeks their grandfa?thers had had for 
 their best, and there was a vast o' good wear in 'em yet. Mak' things 
 last what they will, is my advice to this meeting ; and old-fashioned 
 homespun and good leather breeks is baith very lasty." 
 
Not an utter Impostor 113 
 
 century (and in some cases even still), are such as to laugh 
 that part of the statement to scorn. I have known men per- 
 sonally whose clerical stipends had not exceeded £40 a year 
 at the earlier date alleged, and the medical and legal fees 
 were in strict accordance therewith. But, quite apart from all 
 this, the impression I was unconsciously led on to receive of 
 Wrightson was — setting aside the inevitable circumstance 
 that, like all others of his class, he was, up to a given degree, 
 a charlatan and an impostor — ^that of a man of a not unkindly 
 nature, with a pungent flavour of rough humour about him, 
 shrewd and observant, and with wonderfully well-devised 
 and well-employed means of information at his command. 
 I say "a charlatan and an impostor up to a certain degree"; 
 but by no means an impostor pm et simple. A grudging 
 admission that he "gave drugs which have been known 
 to do good" is made in the extract given above. By the 
 light of what I think I may say I know, I should read that 
 thus : he possessed, in common with many others then and 
 since, wide and deep acquaintance with herbs and simples, 
 and he used his knowledge with skill and judgment. No 
 doubt also he knew the properties and uses of what we more 
 usually speak of as " drugs," and employed them accordingly. 
 No doubt either that he possessed the power of influencing 
 men's minds and imaginations, and knew it right well, and 
 used it of set purpose and intention ; and heightened it, more- 
 over, by the mystic means he had at his command, and knew 
 how to render serviceable on occasion and with sufficient 
 impressiveness. But, grant these particulars frankljr, it must 
 yet be admitted that he had much and effectual machinery 
 available, other than what is implied when we style a 
 man a "rank impostor." The unjust steward's lord "com- 
 mended" him for the sharpness or cleverness of his trick, 
 detected though it was. I am sure that the attitude of my 
 mind when I had heard what Unthank had to tell me about 
 his own personal intercourse with Wrightson (after I had 
 
 I 
 
114 Folklore 
 
 heard so much about him and his doings from others) was 
 something of the same sort as that with which the lord of 
 the steward is accredited in the parable. I said to myself, 
 This Wise Man must have been, no doubt, part knave ; but 
 all the same one of the cleverest, not to say ablest, fellows 
 of his craft.^ He must have known the district as if it 
 were a map, and the people in it as the master knows his 
 scholars. He must have had channels of information such 
 that he could depend upon what they supplied him with, and 
 yet such as not to be known, or even suspected. That some 
 of these sources or origins of information were local, I have 
 no doubt at all ; that some of them were simply personal I 
 have as little ; and that some of them depended on confederates 
 I regarded as established. But his confederates were they of 
 his own household : namely, as described to me, an elderly 
 housekeeper-servant and an odd man about the house. I 
 have been told too that an ostler at one of the inns at Stokesley 
 was an ally. And there was a code of signals whereby much 
 general information about a visitor and the cause of his 
 application might be and was given to the master, without 
 any personal passages between himself and his dependants. 
 But all this will possibly be better illustrated after producing 
 one or more of the stories to which reference has been made 
 at an earlier page. 
 
 One of the most telling of these narratives, and possibly 
 the most illustrative of them all, was that told me by old 
 John Unthank. At the time of the occurrence of the 
 incident he was living with his uncle, who held the post 
 of gamekeeper to the then Viscount Downe, and lived at 
 what was then called Dawnay, but now Danby, Lodge. 
 The uncle held some pasture land of his lordship, and 
 kept sundry cows and other stock. Among these was a 
 
 ^ Except Dawson, mentioned in the popular talk as Wrightson's 
 nephew as well as successor, I have heard of no other local wise man hy 
 name. That there had been many another before him goes without saying. 
 But he was as the sun among stars. 
 
The Wise Mans Previsions 115 
 
 beast (a stot or bullock) grievously afflicted with some 
 mysterious disorder — an "indescribable complaint," as the 
 above extract phrases it. The symptoms were altogether 
 unusual, the sufferings of the poor brute seemed to be very 
 great, and no local cow-leech was able to make anything of 
 the case, or hold out any prospect of cure. So the uncle 
 decided to apply to the Wise Man, and sent his nephew to 
 Stokesley, a ride of about eleven miles over a rough, wild, 
 lonely road, the greater part of it. Unthank went as directed, 
 and on reaching Stokesley proceeded first to stable his nag at 
 one of the " publics " there, and this done repaired to the 
 Wise Man's abode. After some little delay he was admitted. 
 The Wise Man was seated in his consulting room, dressed in 
 some sort of long robe or gown, girded round him with a 
 noticeable girdle, and with a strange -looking head- covering 
 on. There were some of the accustomed paraphernalia of 
 the character assumed and its pretensions — a skull, a globe, 
 some mysterious-looking preparations, dried herbs, etc. etc. 
 Unthank, who was then quite a young man, and to whom a 
 journey to Stokesley formed an epoch in life, and who knew 
 but little indeed of what went on in the world outside the 
 lonely, half-inaccessible dale which was his home-place, was 
 naturally impressed alike by the strange garb and the strange 
 objects, and by his preconceived ideas of the personage he 
 beheld. Before he had time, or perhaps presence of mind, to 
 open the cause of his coming and explain what he wanted, 
 Wrightson addressed him with the words, " Well, John, thou's 
 come to ask me about Tommy Frank's black beast, that is 
 carried on in yon strange way." Unthank told me he was 
 taken quite aback by this unexpected greeting, and was too 
 astounded to be ready with a word in reply; and without 
 giving him time to collect his ideas, the Wise Man went on — 
 "Why, it is little use your coming to me for advice, or to ask 
 me for something to mend the beast, if I can't tell you why 
 you've come, and what you want. And maybe you think I 
 
1 1 6 Folklore 
 
 can't do that. But I'll let you see that I ken more than you 
 think. What was it the last thing your uncle said to you 
 hef ore you left to ride to Stokesley % " Unthank told me he 
 stopped a moment to recollect, and before he had recalled the 
 parting words, Wrightson continued, "Ay, I see you have 
 forgotten. But I'll tell you. The last thing he said to you 
 was, 'Now, John, you mind and see t' galloway gets her 
 whoats and eats 'em afore you leaves t' stable.'" "And, by 
 gum," said the old man to me, " them was the very words my 
 uncle said to me as I rode away out of the yard." Wrightson 
 then went on to tell his visitor divers particulars touching the 
 sick animal. He described the position it occupied in the 
 cow-byre — the door opened right on to its rump, only a much 
 coarser word was employed; it made a very peculiar and 
 unusual noise ; it was continually shifting its position ; the 
 spasms or fits of pain came on at such and such times, and 
 the manifestations were variable, and so forth. It was all 
 accurate and true, and Unthank seemed to think he could not 
 have told the Wise Man about the beast so clearly and descrip- 
 tively as Wrightson had told him. The end of the interview 
 was that Wrightson said he could do nothing that would be 
 of any good; that the affection under which the beast was 
 suffering was past his skill ; that the poor beast would die ; 
 and that when it was dead, they had better open it — in politer 
 language, hold a post-mortem examination — and then they 
 would find some abnormal growth which was the cause of the 
 illness and pain, and would be, with scarce any delay, the 
 cause of the death. Unthank further stated that when the 
 beast died it was opened accordingly, that the strange growth 
 inside was found, and, in fact, that everything the Wise Man 
 had said was verified. 
 
 Now, I have no hesitation in admitting that I believed the 
 story as the old man told it me from point to point. He told 
 it with great clearness, and as he went on with it seemed 
 almost to be living the scene over again. He grew quite 
 
Previsions explained 1 1 7 
 
 animated, and told it all with readiness and fluency as if it 
 had been something he had witnessed but a day or two before. 
 And besides believing it to be an essentially true story, I 
 thought I could see the explanation of much which seemed 
 the most striking, and which at the time had, to Unthank 
 himself, seemed the most startling. It was, of course, a piece 
 of Wrightson's business, nay, of his very "wisdom," to keep 
 himself an courant of all such extraordinary cases as this. 
 His system of information, well organised, as I have already 
 said I think it must have been, would provide him with early 
 notices of all such matters ; and his code of home signals 
 would acquaint him with much that remained to be known. 
 Given that he had a canny old housekeeper and an inquiring 
 man about the house, and an ally at the inn stables, there 
 would be no great difficulty in fishing out of the comparative 
 novice, as Unthank was, such minor matters as the position 
 of the creature in the byre even, and much more the general 
 way in which it was "handled," or "carried on"; and even 
 the parting caution of old Tommy Frank, whose peculiarities, 
 moreover, were well known to less shrewd and observant 
 people than the Wise Man himself, was one which might easily 
 have been forecasted. 
 
 Another characteristic story which I had from Unthank, 
 as also an independent counterpart from my other great 
 informant in such matters, was given me with great precision 
 of detail, as well as with the names, families, and abodes of 
 the actors — or rather the acted upon — in the transaction as 
 described. Two men, both belonging to, or at least connected 
 with, this parish, were on their way to Stokesley on some 
 particular occasion, — the " Hirings " there, I think I am right 
 in assuming, — when it occurred to one of them, just as they 
 were going down the bank or steep moor-side, lying above 
 West House — a singularly lonely farm on the road from 
 Castleton to Stokesley, and within a mile or so of Kildale — 
 to propose to the other, as his idea of a joke — "Let's gan and 
 
1 1 8 Folklore 
 
 have a bit o' spoort wiv Au'd Wreeghtson." They were to 
 go to him as if in earnest, with some imaginary case, I forget 
 what, even if it were mentioned in the narrative ; but his 
 wisdom was to be tested by asking his advice about a matter 
 which existed in imagination rather than in reality. In due 
 time they reached his house, and were before long admitted 
 into his presence. But there was no long robe or headgear 
 with mystic symbols ; no grinning skull or stuffed creatures 
 of strange or gruesome look. The sage was in the house- 
 place, with his pipe in his mouth, sitting in his own comfort- 
 able high -backed chair, with a cheery fire — for it was 
 Martinmas time, when the days are raw and cold — and with 
 something to drink quite handy. The Wise Man made his 
 visitors kindly welcome, made them draw in their chairs to 
 the fire, provided them with pipes and tobacco, and no doubt 
 the requisite moisture also, and, in short, "behaved hissel' 
 real menseful wiv 'em." The day was cold, and he heaped on 
 fuel, and kept them "weel entertained wi' pross an' talk." 
 Presently, as the fire began to blaze up higher and higher, 
 and the glow to become ruddier and hotter, the visitors began 
 to find they were over near the glowing coals for comfort, 
 and they were for setting their seats a bit back. But try as 
 they would, not only the said seats would not move, but they 
 themselves were quite fast in their seats ! The heat continued 
 to become more and more unbearable, and what with the 
 roasting they were getting, and the perturbation of spirit 
 which had come upon them on realising their position, they 
 were undergoing the experience of the inner fat of the newly- 
 slaughtered pig when -being "rendered" (melted down) in 
 the process of conversion into lard. After quietly enjoying 
 their discomfiture and their discomfort for a space, and when 
 nature could have endured no further continuance of melting 
 moments such as theirs, Wrightson quietly but sardonically 
 said to them, "Ay, ye cam' to ha'e a bit o' spoort wiv Au'd 
 Wreeghtson. Au'd Wreeghtson aims it's a spoort 'at differs fra 
 
The Biter bit ; or joking no Jest 119 
 
 what ye considered (settled on, fixed) coming down West 
 House bank. Anither tahm, mebbe, ye'U think tweea tahms 
 afore making spoort wiv Au'd Wreeghtson. And noo, Gude 
 deea tiv ye !" and as he spoke those last words, they found 
 themselves freed from their previous helplessness, and losing 
 no time in elaborate leave-takings, they got themselves away 
 from the uncomfortable presence of such a joker as " t' Wahse 
 Man 0' Stowsley." 
 
 Here again, with all the features of a very uncanny insight 
 into men's thoughts and intentions, it seems to me by no 
 means impossible to give an intelligible account of the whole 
 affair. Thus, it is hardly possible to think of a couple of 
 young men, bent on a spree of the kind in question, keeping 
 their scheme religiously secret. It is far more likely that, 
 whether with a sort of bravado, or with an idea of the great 
 original wit involved in their purpose, they would talk about 
 their intention, and the where and when and how of its 
 original conception. And as to the fixing them in their chairs, 
 the simple supposition that he possessed certain so-called 
 mesmeric powers — a supposition that accredits itself as soon 
 as suggested — is enough to account for it, and there certainly 
 would be nothing marvellous in an experiment of that 
 description. 
 
 But stiU, there are other stories about this personage and 
 his doings, the explanation of which must be of an entirely 
 different cast — namely, that we have a good deal of embellish- 
 ment, addition, exaggeration, perhaps even fiction, connected 
 with them. Certainly these were told me by my two principal 
 and most trustworthy informants with the same amount of 
 apparent faith, often assuming the aspect of thorough convic- 
 tion, as any of their other recollections or experiences. But 
 then there were elements in them which claimed a very confid- 
 ing receptiveness, or a very well-grown credulity, in order to 
 accept them all, chapter and verse, just as they were told. 
 One of these was touching the recovery of some stolen 
 
120 Folklore 
 
 weights, and another, of the same general character, as to the 
 recovery of a stolen shirt. Perhaps I ought to state at once 
 that, according to the legends I had so many occasions to 
 listen to, no small part, and, no doubt, the most lucrative part, 
 of the Wise Man's "practice" seems to have been connected 
 with the recovery of stolen or otherwise lost goods. Indeed, 
 that is one of the items in the indictment laid in the extract 
 from Brand. The stories I specially refer to were on this 
 wise. The weights belonging to one of the water-mills on 
 the Esk in this parish were found one fine morning to be 
 missing, and it was at once concluded that they had been 
 stolen. After vain search and inquiry, a messenger was sent 
 to the Wise Man. On his arrival, and after giving in his 
 information, and answering all the questions put to him by 
 the wizard, he was told to go straight home, and, it was added, 
 " Thee'U find the weights back again afore thou wins sae far, 
 and they'll be all clamed wiv (with) ass-muck," — ^in other words, 
 smeared over with pea1>ashes and such other refuse as is 
 thrown into an ordinary moorland ash-pit. And the final 
 direction was, " Thee'd best not ask any questions. Ah kens 
 all about it, and when thee gets t' weights back, thee'U be 
 nane the warse. Sae, just he'd yer noise (make no outcry) 
 about the matter." 
 
 The other story was of a like nature. A man living at 
 Danby End was engaged as one of the miners employed at 
 the Eryup Head (or Fryup Trough) coal-pits, the said pits 
 being more than four miles from his house. A wilder scene 
 can hardly be imagined ; the Trough being a ravine, and the 
 pits themselves in the midst of the brown, almost trackless 
 expanse of the moor, with no human dwelling within almost 
 half an hour's walk. The miners had a difiicult time of it, 
 as the coal is not only inferior and impure, and of but small 
 value compared with the coal of commerce, but it is in such 
 thin seams as to make the winning of it a matter of no small 
 labour in proportion to the mass won. A seam of fully 
 
A Strange Tale of a Shirt 121 
 
 eighteen inches in thickness is, I should say, almost a thing 
 unknown. Consequently the miners have to work a great 
 amount of the adjacent strata to spoil, in order to obtain room 
 in which to work the coal itself. A man can scarcely work 
 in less space than four feet from floor to roof ; and thus the 
 labour is made additionally burdensome. Necessarily the 
 men undress before descending into the pits, which, however, 
 are none of them of any great depth. The man of whom the 
 present story is told had left his clothes above ground as 
 usual, but on coming to bank again he missed his shirt. All 
 inquiry proving fruitless, he made up his mind to go directly 
 away from the pit-mouth to Stokesley, in order to consult the 
 Wise Man about his loss, and the possible recovery of the 
 abstracted garment. He went off accordingly, was admitted 
 after the usual manner, detailed his loss and the circumstances 
 of it, answered the various interi'Ogatories put to him, and in 
 due course was told to go straight back home as directly as he 
 could, and to rest comforted with the assurance that the shirt 
 would be safely in his wife's hands before he got back himself. 
 And then" came the customary rider : " You may think it 
 strange I know more about this shirt than you do yourself ; 
 but if I didn't know that, and a vast more like it, it would be 
 to no use you and such as you coming to me to find how to 
 get back what you have lost, or maybe what folks have 
 thieved from you. Well, I'll tell you this about your shirt ; it 
 was made by a left-handed woman. And I'll tell you one 
 thing more. When you get home, you tell your wife not to 
 give salt out of the house to anybody, unless she wishes the 
 witches about to get sair ho'd on her." 
 
 The man went home as directed, found that the shirt had, 
 as the Wise Man had said it would, got home before him, and 
 that it was a fact that the seamstress who had made it actually 
 was a left-handed work-woman. This put him in mind of 
 the Wise Man's injunction about the salt, and the danger of 
 i^iving it away from the house. " Who's been here to-day % " he 
 
1 2 2 Folklore 
 
 inquired. "Well, nobbut so-and-so, and t' strange chap as 
 brought the shirt, and wad say nought about it but that a 
 man had gi'en it him to hug (carry, bear as a parcel or 
 package) on to me." — "What, no one else? no one of the 
 neighbours?" — "Wheea, au'd Elsie Green wur in, axing me 
 to lend her a bit o' salt, as she said she wur out " (had none 
 left). We can imagine the rest, and one might venture to 
 conclude that the wife, on hearing the husband's story, would 
 not be too easy in her mind at thinking of what she had 
 unwittingly done, and the possible consequences of the gift so 
 unwisely bestowed. 
 
 But our very attempt to imagine all this very possibly goes 
 part of the way in illustrating the process of mind in the 
 thief himself in either of the cases just detailed, or indeed 
 in any like case whatsoever. The Wise Man's commonly 
 believed-in marvellous insight into hidden or obscure matters, 
 the country-side persuasion that there was scarce ought but 
 what he knew, the reputation he had, and which it is perfectly 
 evident, from what I have called the "riders" to these narratives, 
 it was his object to consolidate and keep as well as obtain, 
 must, in the very great proportion of cases, have affected the 
 thief's mind, and powerfully too, when once he knew that the 
 inquiry into the theft and as to the perpetrator of it had been 
 referred to such a detective ; and in quite as pronounced a 
 manner and degree as the telling of this miner's tale and 
 experience would affect his wife's imagination, would it 
 impress the many neighbours to whom the narrative, and very 
 likely with ever -increasing accentuation, came to be in due 
 course repeated ; and the thief must at once feel that detection 
 was inevitable, and that his best plan would be to restore 
 the plunder, and, if in such a way as to avoid exposure, so 
 much the better. And no doubt this was one reason why 
 the Wise Man so often enjoined a " calm sough " about the 
 offence and the offender upon those who went to consult him. 
 No doubt, too, the wizard's domestic confederates would easily 
 
Possible Solutions 123 
 
 contrive to fish out of such people as the miller in the one case, 
 and the miner in the other, the main points of the matters 
 which had brought them over to consult the " master." It is 
 even quite supposable that Wrightson might have become 
 acquainted with the circumstance of there being a left-handed 
 seamstress in some sort of connection with the shirt-loser's 
 female belongings. 
 
 But still, when we get beyond these considerations, we are 
 at a standstill as to any probable or reasonable hypothesis. 
 The salt incident can only be explained away. Was the 
 incident one of real occurrence at all? Or was it a telling 
 addition to a tale in other respects really founded on fact % 
 Such suggestions will present themselves, and it is impossible 
 to avoid the conviction that they are quite reasonable and 
 fairly satisfactory. And the story of the recovered mill- 
 weights may perhaps be dealt with upon the same principle. 
 
 But there is yet another solution possible with a case 
 presenting such features as these. What I mean is that the 
 whole affair might have been a " put-up " concern. Wrightson 
 might have planned it, arranging all the details in such a way 
 as to lead on to the desired result — that is to say, increased 
 prestige accruing to himself. Such an assumption would 
 explain every detail given ; but I must admit that, to myself, 
 it is utterly and entirely unsatisfactory. And certainly I never 
 heard of any such insinuation being made against the man's 
 doings. On the contrary, the faith in their reality as well as 
 authenticity was a robust faith ; and it would have been but 
 to little purpose to suggest to either of my principal " contri- 
 butors " any doubt as to the honA fide nature of the things 
 they told about the Wise Man's exploits, however strange and 
 marvellous they may have been. 
 
 Before taking final leave of the Wise Man and his doings, I 
 will add only the following copy, made verbatim et literatim, with 
 the capitals and stops (or the want of them) precisely as in the 
 original, of a prescription or recipe to be followed or put in 
 
124 Folklore 
 
 practice in the case of an animal affected with some mysterious 
 kind of malady, which formula is in my possession, and is, 
 as I have reason to believe, in Wrightson's own handwriting. 
 It is written on a half-sheet of letter-paper, such as I remember 
 in use nearly sixty years ago. It is folded in four, and yellow 
 with age, and is, moreover, somewhat soiled, as if often touched 
 with warm but not dirty hands. I cannot be quite positive 
 that it emanated from Wrightson himself ; as there is a bare 
 possibility that Wrightson's successor, a man said to have been 
 his nephew, and to have inherited his books, but not, I fear, 
 his native shrewdness and ability — if any other of his better 
 qualities — may have been applied to by the former owner of 
 this paper. But Dawson's — the nephew's — occupation of the 
 office or position of Wise Man was but a short one ; and it was 
 so, I was led to suppose, by reason of his utter incompetency 
 to fill the post ; and no long time elapsed before he died a 
 wretched death, that of a drunken, miserable, beggarly out- 
 cast, "like a dog by the roadside," as the man who told me 
 about him expressed it. Thus I have no doubt in my 
 own mind about the authorship of this noteworthy manu- 
 script. It reads thus : " Bleed the Sick animall and Clip in 
 amongst The Blood som hair Cut of the animals mane Tail 
 and 4 Quarters Then put in 3 spoonfuls of Salt Then have a 
 Sheeps heart stuck with 9 new pins 9 new needles 9 small 
 nails Then rool The heart well in the blood and at 12 at 
 night put The heart on a Good fire of Coals and ash Sticks 
 and as it Burns Eead Those Psalms 35—104. 109—56—77 
 Read Them 3 times over and let all be done by one Oclock 
 make doors and windows fast keep all very Secret and have a 
 Strong faith if this do not answer you must do it twice more 
 at the full and Change of the moon Just as you did the first 
 time with fresh Things should This fail you need go to no 
 one else as Thay will nor Can not Cure your Beast." 
 
 This precious formula is written in a firm, bold, unfaltering 
 hand, very plain and legible. The occasional misspelling may 
 
Another Charm 125 
 
 be noticed, as also that the numeral preceding the words 
 "new pins" is 59, which, as I have no doubt the number 
 intended was 9 and not 59, 1 have altered to the former figure. 
 The direction as to the psalms to be read is altogether per- 
 plexing. I assume that what is meant is that the psalms so 
 numbered are to be read in the sequence indicated ; but it is 
 somewhat difficult to understand the principle upon which 
 the selection was made — assuming, that is, that there was a 
 principle and also a selection. 
 
 It only occurs to me further to remark that the use of 
 this formula appears to be very greatly variant from that, 
 resembling it in several particulars, described at a former 
 page. There the intention and the anticipated result were 
 both of the most pronounced anti-witch description. She, the 
 witch, was to be baffled, foiled, defeated, and made to suffer 
 for her misdeeds past. Here the entity even of the witch is 
 not so much as glanced at. The animal, whose illness is 
 supposed, is ill of a lingering disorder ; but no imputation as 
 to any person or party's connection with the illness is so 
 much as hinted at, and the formula seems intended to be used 
 with a curative intention only. Just as the witch-wood was 
 understood to be a prophylactic against witches in general, 
 with no personal application, so, it would seem, was it the in- 
 tention of the present charm to reverse or baffle the malicious 
 practices of some or any witch unknown. 
 
BEE CUSTOMS AND NOTIONS 
 
 There is yet one topic among the many suggested by the 
 comprehensive term "Folklore," on which 1 would willingly 
 add a few remarks. I mean the curious and interesting sub- 
 ject of Bee Notions. They are very various, and some, at 
 least, among them are still very persistent. Such are the 
 ideas that bees bought by the exchange for them of the ster- 
 ling coin of the realm never thrive with the purchaser ; the 
 swarm or hive dwindles and dies out, or perhaps it takes its 
 departure to settle elsewhere than in the place destined for it 
 in the ill-omened trafficking ; that a swarm which comes to 
 the bee-keeper adventitiously is lucky, but if claimed by its 
 proper owner, no money must pass for its surrender, or, on 
 the other hand, in consideration of its retention; that if a 
 swarm settles on dead wood, such as a post or rail, or a dead 
 tree or shrub, it surely betokens the imminent death of some 
 member of the household visited ; and so forth. 
 
 But I think one of the most curious notions is that con- 
 nected with the manner of dealing with the bees when a 
 death occurs in the household they belong to, and especially 
 when the death in question is that of the master or head of 
 the household. I remember when I was a schoolboy in Essex, 
 my father being then curate of a country parish not far from 
 Colchester, the news came that the rector was dead, which of 
 course implied the consequent removal, after a space of weeks 
 or months, of the curate. But that did not affect me or fix 
 
The Bees put into Mourning 127 
 
 itself on my attention as did the proceedings taken in connec- 
 tion with the bees, of which a large stock belonged to the 
 rectory. I cannot remember who the person acting on behalf 
 of the rectorial family was, or by what authority the said 
 person acted ; but I do remember the key of the main door 
 of the house being taken, together with sundry strips of 
 some black material, and a kind of procession organised for a 
 formal visit to the bee-stand. And when it was reached the 
 bearer of the key proceeded to bind a black strip round each 
 hive — this was called "putting the bees into mourning" — and 
 as each strip was knotted, three taps with the key were given, 
 and each hive severally informed that the master was dead. 
 There was a sort of weird solemnity about the whole proceed- 
 ing which produced a lasting impression on my young mind. 
 
 In after years many things conduced to the retracing and 
 deepening of such impression. I will not enter into details of 
 them, but simply say I was led to notice and collect as well 
 as inquire. While my interest was still fully awake I hap- 
 pened to receive a long letter from the then rector of Sessay, 
 in which, among a variety of other matters, all more or less 
 illustrated by classical quotations, he gave me an account of 
 a recent experience of his when he had been called upon to 
 bury one of his elder parishioners, and had accordingly been 
 "bidden" to the house where the deceased man was lying, 
 some hours before the " body was to be lifted " and taken to 
 the churchyard. He told me he had partaken of the accus- 
 tomed hospitality, and had retired to the garden to smoke his 
 pipe in quiet, and had seated himself accordingly in a sort of 
 arbour or summer-house. Presently his attention was aroused 
 by the passage of a woman, the wife of the eldest son of the 
 deceased man. She was carrying a tray, on which he saw 
 there were piled a variety of eatable and drinkable matters. 
 She went straight to the beehives, and he heard her address 
 the bees themselves. Naming the late owner, she said, " John 
 G is dead, and his son is now master. He has sent you 
 
1 2 8 Folklore 
 
 something out of every dish and jug on the table, and we 
 hope you will be content to take him as the new master." 
 
 Founded on this were divers inquiries of mine prosecuted 
 in Danby and the Dales district generally, and from my old 
 and helpful friend who was my right hand in most of my 
 barrow-digging undertakings, I ascertained that at no less 
 than four recent "buryings" he had noticed some observances 
 more or less tallying with those recorded by the Sessay 
 rector. He had seen the bees put into mourning ; he had 
 never known the intimation of the death of the late owner 
 and the accession of the successor omitted ; and the oflFering 
 of food and liquor had been, and to some extent was even 
 yet, much more than simply prevalent. And he gave me 
 more than one illustration of the formula employed when the 
 offering was presented. One was, "So-and-so is dead, and 
 So-and-so is the new master. He has sent you a bite and a 
 sup of whatever there is on the tables, and he hopes you won't 
 be offended." 
 
 I do not think I am acquainted with any part of England 
 in which these bee observances have not obtained, and in the 
 days of my youth I met with them in a still flourishing con- 
 dition. Of late years they may have not unusually fallen 
 into a condition of decadence, but I have met with some or 
 other among them in different parts of Lincolnshire and in 
 the north in such vigorous existence, within the last ten to 
 fifteen years, that my interest in them has never been per- 
 mitted to die away. And all the less because at an earlier 
 period still I had been able to connect modern English notions 
 and usages with certain analogues undoubtedly as archaic as 
 they were non-English. 
 
 For years ago I had gone through a course of Folklore 
 reading, very copious and equally curious, mainly (though not 
 exclusively) Danish and Swedish, in which I had met with 
 quite unanticipated illustrations of a great variety of our 
 Yorkshire superstitions and practices founded upon them ; 
 
Illustrations from Scandinavian Sources 129 
 
 and among others, these bee notions and usages received no 
 little illustration. 
 
 It would be tedious to detail the various steps and stages 
 by which I reached my conclusions, and it must suffice to say 
 that after a long course of other reading, mainly Danish, I be- 
 came acquainted with Hylten Cavallius's J'Fdrend och Wirdarne, 
 which not only enabled me to co-ordinate matters derived from 
 various sources, but in many instances gave me lively illustra- 
 tions proceeding from origins hardly a century old (and some 
 of them much younger still), of many things which had 
 hitherto seemed altogether obscure. It was in this way I was 
 led on to perceive what an important factor, not only in 
 explaining the conceptions involved in the old legends about 
 fights in the old grave-mounds for the possession of the buried 
 sword of a mighty hero, but in clearing up much of the 
 obscurity involving many folklore principles and practices, 
 both ancient and modern, the old animistic theory as pro- 
 pounded by Tylor and others really becomes. Why should 
 we hear as we do of the burial with the dead of articles of 
 food as well as weapons of war and the chase % There is no 
 answer to the question until one remembers that what may 
 be called the animistic entity of the man might be conceived 
 as being in a position to utilise and employ the animistic 
 principle of the food or the weapon. I think there are four 
 if not five constituents, according to Egyptian philosophy, 
 going to make up the complex idea or entity involved in the 
 human being, and although our far-away ancestors may not 
 have realised those subtle definitions and half-metaphysical 
 conceptions, still they were able to realise something as to the 
 fact, and conjecture something as to the particulars, of a state 
 of existence after the mortal life had ceased, and to fashion 
 their own beliefs and practices accordingly. 
 
 It is not a little curious as well as interesting to notice the 
 way in which the old popular notion of the ghost or haunting 
 spirit lends itself to the illustration of the matter in hand. 
 
 K 
 
I30 Folklore 
 
 When the old lady of the " Mark's e'en watch," mentioned else- 
 where, threatened to " come again " if her directions touching 
 her burial were not faithfully attended to, or when Jonathan 
 
 F 's funeral procession was detained and delayed by reason 
 
 of the discussion of the church-road notion, and its sequel, it 
 was not merely because the old woman herself, or even the 
 witch-fearing old farmer, had held certain well-defined super- 
 stitious notions, but far more because all the survivors 
 principally concerned were themselves, however tacitly and 
 unsuspectingly even, under the influence of exactly analo- 
 gous feelings and fears. The expressed conviction of the 
 mourners that Jonathan would not " rest easy in his grave " 
 if borne otherwise than along the church-way — the "Hell- 
 way " of the old mythology — to his last resting-place, meant 
 neither more nor less than what was not only implied in 
 the old wraith-seer's open threat, but acknowledged by her 
 friends. But it is important to observe what a wide and 
 impassable guK lies between the crude conception of the rest- 
 less entity breaking through the prison-walls of the grave, or 
 the vindictive coming-again-being (gengangare of the Swedish 
 folklore tellings), and that of the "spirit" of our Christian 
 faith — the one as essentially non-immaterial as the other is 
 impalpable, like "the baseless fabric of a vision." 
 
 The step from a non-immaterial " ghost " to an " animistic 
 principle," a quasi-wmJra of the dead, who, in such condition 
 of being, might need the corresponding substitutes for his 
 weapons of the old life, for the food and drink by which the 
 old life had been sustained, is not a far or a difiicult one, and 
 the conception of the daily-renewed fights and slayings of the 
 Valhalla bit of mythology, with the nightly-renewed banquet- 
 ings on the as regularly revivified and re-slaughtered boar 
 which furnished the staple pihce de resistance, -with the equally 
 recurrent bowls of mead and new ale, is one which, when 
 considered in its concomitants and consequences, involves a 
 singularly effective illustration of these singular bee notions 
 
How Bee- customs probably originated 1 3 1 
 
 and bee usages. The departed bee-owner, in his new condition 
 of being, would require his appropriate arrows, axe-hammer, 
 sword, what not. He would require his appropriate " victuals 
 and drink." But much of his drink had depended on the pro- 
 duce of his bees. All the mead that washed down the boar- 
 meat must depend still on the honey they produced. What 
 wonder then that he should be idealised as wanting the busy 
 makers, and, being even more and more actively non-immaterial 
 than the old woman's "ghost," should be likely to prefer his 
 claim, and make it good moreover by actually " coming again " 
 and taking possession, if not formally and effectually prevented ? 
 The suicide, the executed malefactor, down to not so very far 
 back even in enlightened England, was staked down in his 
 grave, sometimes had his legs or arms strangely hampered with 
 cord or by twisting, simply to prevent his "coming again," 
 while in parts of Sweden the precautions taken were even of 
 a stranger and (to modern ideas) far more revolting character. 
 Nay, when the corpse was just newly taken from the dweUing- 
 house, scarcely a century ago, the use was to scatter live embers 
 just beyond the threshold, avowedly to bar the road back 
 thither against the gengangare ; and for the same reason, and 
 with equally little reticence as to the object, the bee-skeps 
 were visited, and a formal intimation conveyed to the occupants 
 that the old owner was departed, and that no summons to 
 wait on and serve him for the future was to be heeded. 
 
 In fact, the more one really enters into the story of the 
 folklore still surviving in these dales of ours, until lately so 
 little accessible and so little intruded upon by the people and 
 the opinions of the outside world, the more one finds to suggest 
 how hard has been the struggle between the old paganism 
 and the new Christianity. Survivals of this form or that of 
 the old nature-worship, of the old cults of hero, demigod, 
 traditional divine ancestor, of this or that quaint, dim, blurred, 
 obscure conception of man himself, and his mysterious constitu- 
 tion and attributes, meet one at every turn. The burial of 
 
1 3 2 Folklore 
 
 the abortive caK suggests the propitiatory offering to the earth- 
 spirits almost as sensibly or strikingly as the pins cast into 
 the halikeld, or the votive rags tied to the adjoining bush, do 
 that to the spirits of the water, or of the special spring in 
 question. The dead lamb, or other portions or remnants of 
 animal matter, thrown lip into the berry-bearing tree have as 
 much to impart to the inquiring observer tracking the once 
 prevalent Odin-cult as has the strangely significative name of 
 the accustomed weather-presage in the clouds which we call 
 "Noa-ship." There are places, but not with us in "thoase 
 deeals," where the name has been biblicised into Noah's Ark ; 
 but the old dalesman still abides by the old "Noa-ship." And 
 in the honles of our Old Danish fore-elders the equivalent 
 "Noeskeppet," wherein the final et is the postfixed Scandi- 
 navian definite article, and the prefix is the easily traced 
 corruption of Odin, tells us an equally plain and (to some) 
 over-true story of the place held a thousand years ago (and 
 who can tell how much earlier or how much later ?) by the old 
 northern god of the seas and the weather in the thoughts and 
 notions of the men who went before us in Danby and near. 
 
 Truly the ghost notions and the bee notions and bee 
 practices are not hard to comprehend when reviewed under 
 such side-lights as these. 
 
ANTIQUAEIAN 
 
 BAEROWS—EAETHWORKS— BRITISH VILLAGES 
 
BAREOW-DIGGING 
 
 I REMEMBER, on one occasion when my father came to pay 
 me a visit here, making arrangements with two or three men 
 to be present the next morning at a large tumulus, grave- 
 mound or houe, known as Herdhowe, and situate at no great 
 distance from the top of the steep hill on the road leading to 
 Guisborough from Whitby, called Gerrick Bank. My object 
 was to show my father what sort of work barrow -digging 
 really was. One of the men I had sent to, a shoemaker by 
 trade, a strong resolute worker, by no means imaginative, but 
 shrewd, hard-headed, "Yorkshire" through and through in 
 the matter of a bargain, or a deal in horse-flesh, had been a 
 "pal" of mine in every houe-digging enterprise I had yet 
 undertaken. He it was who, in my maiden essay in 
 that line, when I was creeping, carefully, and with cautious 
 scrapings and anxious probings of the soil — for I felt sure we 
 were near a deposit — tiring of my tardy approaches to the 
 centre of expectation, reached forward over my bended back 
 and lowered head, and with his shovel firmly grasped in his 
 nervous hands, made a fell scoop into the thick of the little 
 mound I was delicately shaping ; and by his action disclosed 
 the deposit, it is true, but at the expense of shearing ofif one- 
 third part di a perfectly entire and uninjured cinerary vase. 
 His concern and regret at the consequences of his impatient 
 act were really rather distressing to witness ; and his shame 
 at having misunderstood and undervalued my careful and 
 
136 Antiquarian 
 
 cautious approaches helped to make him one of the most 
 careful as well as most vigilant workers any barrow -digger 
 could possibly be blessed with. 
 
 He became also a diligent and effectual helper in a different 
 kind of grubbing or digging, namely, in the search after the 
 " dialect " or provincial words which it had long since become 
 an object to me to collect and record. No one could exceed 
 him in zeal in this pursuit, and not many in discretion ; and 
 it was " as good as a play " to mark the manner in which, 
 when he remembered or thought he had secured a "good 
 word" for me, he brought it out; often in the course of a 
 digging, when there was no excitement from an expected or 
 imminent " find," and almost always set in a very characteristic 
 saying ; so that frequently I had the sentence to record, and 
 not just the new word itself only. Such was the case, for 
 instance, with the fine old saying, "Ill-gotten gear has nae 
 drith (pronounced dreet) wi't " ; and again, with a remark 
 touching an old mare of his own, " She mayn't be ower good 
 at gannin', but she's a maister to eat." He's still alive, but 
 no longer the man he was. His " record " as walking post- 
 man would be "bad to beat"; but the unsparing use he has 
 made of his bodily powers has paved the way for worse than 
 mere gradual bodily decay. Still, however, the old interest in 
 our joint diggings remains ; and he listened with sympathetic 
 eagerness to the details I gave him a short time ago as to 
 the digging I had been directing in Skutterskelf Park. 
 
 On the morning referred to above, I fell in with this man 
 on his way towards the scene of our intended operations, but 
 at some little distance from it still. He was always ready for 
 a " bit 0' pross," or " to ho'd talk wiv a body," on any topic 
 of common interest ; but this morning he was even eager to 
 talk, for he had something to tell me. He began much as 
 follows : " Ah nivver could understand what pleasure folks 
 could finnd in fox-hunting ; men and bosses and dogs all 
 rinnin' like gaumerils after a nasty, stinking, lahtle beast like 
 
A very lively Dream 1 3 7 
 
 yon ! But Ah've coomed to see different sin' Ah got to come 
 diggin' wi' you in thoas houes. You'll maybe hardly credit 
 it, but sin Ah gat word fra you yesterday at e'en, Ah framed 
 as if Ah could settle to nowght, only thinking it lang o' t' 
 moom to come. Well, I gat me to bed middling early, aiming 
 it wad nae be sae lang while moom, gin Ah could only get a 
 gay good sleep. But bless you, bairn, there wa'n't nae sike a 
 thing as sleeping. Ah tonned (turned) and Ah toommled, 
 and tahms Ah sloommered (dozed) a bit, but wakkened oop 
 again iv a minnit or tweea, while (till) Ah was as wakrife as 
 a backbearaway i' t' glooaming (a bat in the evening dusk). 
 Towards moom Ah gat me to sleep some mak' (make, way, 
 fashion) or ither, but it wa'n't for lang. Ah began to dream 
 all mak's and manders o' fond things. But all at yance, Ah 
 foonn (found) mysen digging for bare liffe in this houe we's 
 boon for now, and we coomed on a finnd, a soort of a lile 
 (httle) chamber made wi' steean. And in't there was a main 
 big pankin (pancheon, cinerary vase or urn), and it wur near 
 hand full o' bo'nt beeans (burnt bones). Some way — Ah 
 deean't ken how — it gat whemmled ower, and a skull rolled 
 out, nearlings a haill yan (a whole or entire one). And it, 
 looked to be splitten all across the top ; and then it oppened, 
 and out cam' a elephant — and a greeat foul beast it wur ! 
 And Ah warsled (wrestled, struggled) to get out o' t' rooad, 
 and wiv a skrike and a loup (a shriek and a leap) Ah gat me 
 out iv the houe, and that minnit Ah wakkened i' truth ; and 
 if you'll believe me, Ah fun (foon, found) myself raxing 
 and striving o' t' fleear (straining and struggling on the 
 floor) as gin Ah had gaun clean wud (stark mad). And 
 Ah've considered thae foxhunters 's nae sike feeals as Ah 
 aimed 'em." 
 
 I do not wonder the man enjoyed those days on the moors 
 among the grave-hills as he did. We all enjoyed them. I 
 seldom had more than four men at work at once ; they were 
 as many as I could fairly supervise and direct. Once or 
 
138 A ntiquarian 
 
 twice I had five or six. But, all save one, who was casually- 
 impressed one day (and whom I never in the course of years 
 saw smile, or otherwise than grumpy), made almost a gala-day 
 of a day's digging on the moor with the parson. But the man 
 just noted seemed to find no more excitement in and preceding 
 the finds than " a gowk in finnding its gorpins " (a cuckoo in 
 feeding its fledglings). To be sure, he relaxed a little over 
 what he called the grub ; and no wonder, for what appetites 
 we all had ! It was a veritable picnic, with all the abandon 
 and enjoyment of a picnic, and with excitement of a 
 very pleasurable sort superadded. My wife and a friend 
 or two, together with two or three of my elder lads — boys 
 from ten to fourteen years old — besides the working men, were 
 the party. And we all of us worked. The boys had their 
 small spades. I marked out the work, and directed it ; and 
 when there was no near likelihood of a find, took my place 
 among the working "navvies." Two of my men were so well 
 trained and so trusty that I could, to some considerable 
 extent, leave the supervision of the work done by the others 
 to their vigilance. But the moment any of the recognised 
 signs of an approach to what might prove to be a deposit were 
 observed, the vicar was warned ; and all the work of localising 
 the deposit precisely, and of carefully groping and feeling for, 
 and finally extracting, the precious and probably broken or 
 crushed, as well as frail, earthen vessel was his exclusive 
 province. And the eager faces grouped around as the inter- 
 ment began to be defined, especially if it were a "pankin" of 
 some dimensions ! And the theories that were broached as to 
 what the contents would prove to be ! And then, when it 
 was finally taken from the place it had occupied for perhaps 
 two thousand years, possibly even for many more than that, 
 the speculations were renewed, and the value or the interest 
 of the find compared with that or those of some other day. 
 
 The measure of success attending these diggings was of 
 course a variable quantity. Speaking generally, however, a 
 
Houe- digging for buried Treasure 139 
 
 " blank day " was a thing we hardly knew. And this is a re- 
 marljable fact. For in the grave-hill researches I have per- 
 sonally conducted — in several cases begun and carried through 
 with my own unassisted labour — with about two exceptions, 
 the mounds we examined had been previously tampered with 
 and opened. Indeed, in every case but one they had been 
 excavated from the apex or summit, and very often terribly 
 mutilated and blundered. 
 
 The one exception from the rule of digging down to the 
 centre from above, was in the case of the largest grave-mound 
 in the entire district. The basin-shaped hollow at the summit, 
 betokening the former disturbance, was there ; but the height 
 of the hUl — originally not less than sixteen feet — had frustrated 
 the efforts of the explorers, and they had opened a drift into 
 the side of the houe. Another, the Herdhowe already named, 
 had been broken into by the menders or makers — or marrers 
 — of the highways for the sake of its stony constituent parts ; 
 and in consequence the ugliest-looking gaps and cavities had 
 been left. I believe that this previous work expended on our 
 barrows had been systematic — organised and carried out by 
 treasure-seekers. It is a matter of record that in different 
 parts of the kingdom treasure-hunts of this kind were arranged 
 and effected under the authority of a written permission, duly 
 signed and sealed, from the sheriff of the county. Such docu- 
 ments are stiU extant, and copies are given in more than one 
 book dealing with the prehistoric antiquities of such and such 
 a district. And although there is no record of any such 
 authority given in this county, so far as I have been able to 
 ascertain, still the idea has been proved to be quite livingly 
 extant down to a very recent period. Once I asked permis- 
 sion from a Moorsholm freeholder, a wealthy rather than 
 merely well-to-do man, to open a very fairly perfect-looking 
 barrow on a part of the moor which had lately been enclosed 
 in virtue of an apportionment which allotted it to him as his 
 own absolute property. My first request was met with a 
 
140 Antiquarian 
 
 demur, the grounds of whicli were not stated. The second 
 time it was made on my behalf by a near connection of the 
 owner's, and permission was ultimately conceded; but with 
 the condition attached, that I should make over to him all the 
 silver and gold I might chance to meet with in the course of 
 my excavations. And again, to quote another instance illus- 
 trative of the same particular, being one day, with my party 
 of diggers, occupied in the examination of a houe at no great 
 distance from a trackway across the moors leading to Guis- 
 borough, one of a small party who were crossing in that direc- 
 tion, after watching us in silence for a few minutes, called out 
 to us, " What is it you are after there % Are you laiting gou'd 
 (seeking gold) ? " 
 
 But to return to what I was saying, namely, that it was 
 remarkable that, dealing with grave-mounds which all, with 
 scarcely an exception, had been opened before, still we were 
 almost invariably successful. In fact, the success was so great 
 that in the issue my workmen became a little demoralised by 
 it ; and, failing the excitement of the accustomed finds, after 
 digging vainly for a while they Ijcgan to lose spirit, and to 
 work languidly and listlessly until such time as something 
 happened to brighten them up a little. And indeed there was 
 . some justification for their excited anticipations ; for on one 
 occasion we carried home no less than eight sepulchral vessels 
 of one kind or another ; and one of them was found on exami- 
 nation to contain, over and above the usual complement of 
 burnt bones, a very beautiful and finely polished axe-hammer 
 of fine-grained granite. A total of two or three urns from 
 the same barrow was by no means unusual ; and while some 
 houes yielded only one interment, or at the most two, others 
 produced three or four. Herdhowe, indeed, yielded in 
 all, counting the distinct evidences of previously rifled and 
 ruined deposits, no less than the extraordinary number of six- 
 teen. There were nine entire urns — including a so-called food- 
 vessel and three small vases such as are usually described 
 
Cinerary Urns 141 
 
 Tmder the general but misleading term "incense-cups" — all 
 added to my collection from that one single source. 
 
 And I pause here to notice one particular group of four 
 among the rest of this great find, which was such as to 
 constrain one, entirely against the dictates of his soberer 
 judgment, to hazard a sort of wild-goose guess of what might 
 have been the antecedent reason for their deposit, grouped as 
 they were. For two of the vases in question (small ones all 
 of them) contained each the calcined bones of a child of very 
 tender years ; another, the largest of the set, was inverted as 
 well as empty ; and the remaining one, besides the bones of an 
 adult of small stature, had in it a perforated bone-pin, or quasi- 
 needle, with the fragments of what had most evidently been 
 a fine cutting instrument of flint, which had flown to pieces in 
 the burning. These four, as I have said, formed a group. 
 The empty — was it a cenotaph ? — vessel was a little in the 
 rear. Advanced a few inches were the two urns with the 
 children's remains; and on a stone, thin and flat and some 
 twenty inches in length, laid over them, stood the fourth vase, 
 containing the needle and cutting-flint. 
 
 What theory will my readers devise for themselves touch- 
 ing such a group ? For I think the vessels could not have 
 been placed as they were without thought, intention, or object. 
 
 Again, another day I went, with only my two eldest boys, 
 lads of twelve and thirteen years of age respectively, and set 
 to work on a tumulus which I knew had been opened before 
 on two different occasions ; on the latter, by a party of gentle- 
 men from Whitby, now fifty years ago or more, who left a 
 precise memoir of the results of their investigation, which 
 memoir has since passed into my possession. In this docu- 
 ment they speak of the evidences of former opening from 
 above, and of the discovery of the fragments of two large urns 
 which had been found by the previous explorers, broken up 
 (as the manner was) and the sherds thrown carelessly on one 
 side. It was recorded, too, that, though they had carried their 
 
142 A ntiquarian 
 
 trench right through from north to south, they had met with 
 nothing to recompense their labour and pains ; and that they 
 were assured there was nothing left beyond the traces of former 
 spoliation as described. 
 
 Knowing only too well how utterly unscientific and un- 
 thorough all such investigations then were, and having the 
 good reason of considerable experience for thinking that the 
 part of the houe they had left untouched was almost certain 
 to prove the most prolific, I began, after my usual system, on 
 the eastern side of their bootless cutting, at its southern end, 
 working inwards from about a yard within the south-eastern 
 rim of the mound towards the centre. About half-way 
 between the circumference and the centre, and within a few 
 inches only of the eastern edge of the abortive cutting from 
 north to south, my spade suddenly passed through no less than 
 four thicknesses of " Ancient British " pottery. To say that I 
 was vexed, annoyed, discomfited at such apparent proof of 
 reckless rather than unconsidered working, would be to con- 
 vey a wrong impression, for I knew I had been working as 
 carefully and as watchfully as usual, and that there had not 
 been any, the slightest, indications of proximity to a deposit 
 hitherto afforded. Besides, the section of material obtained 
 by that one application of the sharp edge of the spade was in 
 itself astounding to an old digger. As described above, my 
 energetic friend with his trenchant shovel shore off at one 
 .stroke one-third part of a rather large cinerary vase, but he 
 had only cut through one thickness of the luckless vessel, 
 while I had just cut through four thicknesses ! Now we have 
 all seen oranges peeled for the amusement of children by pass- 
 ing a skin-deep incision round the greatest circumference, and 
 proceeding carefully to raise each half of the peel by the use 
 of a spoon or what not, so as to get two cups or bowls (so to 
 speak) each of them comprising half the skin of the orange. 
 Treat two oranges thus, and fitting the one half of the peel of 
 each into the other half, bring the two double cups thus obtained 
 
A singular Interment 143 
 
 into contact, hollow to hollow, and, more or less roughly, edge 
 to edge. Then press them together so as somewhat to flatten 
 the resulting glohe (hut without bursting the peel), and pass 
 some sharp cutting instrument transversely through the four 
 thicknesses. The section that will be obtained will be precisely 
 the kind of section just spoken of as effected by my spade, 
 two curvilinear concave edges opposed to two other concave 
 curvilinear edges precisely like. I need not say that curiosity 
 was stirred, or that close and careful investigation was 
 prompted. With every possible care and delicacy a space of 
 more than two feet square was laid bare, and then the mystery 
 stood revealed, — at least a certain measure of it did, not quite 
 all. Over the whole area exposed, portions of a large urn 
 were dispersed, and with them the calcined bones which it 
 had once contained. In that particular part cut through by 
 the spade the chief part of the said vase had been laid (or 
 thrown), one concave piece within the other, and two such 
 composite pieces opposed to other two like, just as with our 
 supposed orange peel. In the very middle of this medley of 
 burnt human bone and sherds of the old imperfectly baked 
 vessel stood a small delicately moulded and decorated vase of 
 the type usually called "incense-cups," with its own proper 
 deposit of incinerated remains and accompanying flints. I 
 described it as follows in the Gentleman's Magazine at the 
 time : " One inch in height and under one inch and a half in 
 greatest diameter, of red ware, and scored with lines crossing 
 one another diagonally, but so as to leave a space of three- 
 eighths of an inch all round, nearest to the bottom, untouched. 
 It was placed mouth upwards, in the centre between four 
 flints laid east, north, south, and west, and comprising a very 
 flat leaf-shaped arrow-point, another of the same description, 
 but thicker, a thumb-flint or scraper, and some other imple- 
 ment; but all of them coarsely or rudely fashioned and 
 chipped, — that is, as compared with many others found by 
 the writer." 
 
144 A. ntiquarian 
 
 These were both, and quite obviously, what are called 
 "secondary deposits." The houe had not been originally 
 built or piled over them. They were later — and who shall 
 say how much later? — than the mound itself as originally 
 fashioned. Perhaps even the original mound had been 
 added to or enlarged on purpose to qualify it for receiving 
 these later interments, each in its own proper sequence. For 
 again it is perfectly obvious that there were two insertions in 
 succession, — the disturbed or desecrated one, and that which 
 had led to or caused the disturbance or desecration. For the 
 present I leave the idea suggested by the alternative terms 
 employed for a little consideration.-' 
 
 ^ I may mention here that by very far the largest proportion of all 
 such objects as those mentioned in the text, that I have at any period 
 found in Cleveland, are preserved in the British Museum. Among them 
 are forty-three cinerary vases of one description or another, inclusive of 
 the minute cup described on the preceding page, as well as of the 16-inch, 
 18-inch, and even in one case 24-inch high cinerary vase proper, or "urn." 
 Besides, there are the few and roughly wrought jet beads found with an 
 inserted interment, the polished axe-hammers found in two of the larger 
 urns, with sundry bone pins, arrow-points, and other objects of flint. But 
 it seems to be a matter for a little regret that they are not all grouped 
 together as a collection belonging to one definite and strictly limited 
 Yorkshire district. 
 
BAEROW-DIGGING (continued) 
 
 There is a good deal of speculation involved in the alter- 
 native terms made use of at the close of the last section. Was 
 what had been observed the result of disturbance, or was it 
 accidental only? Or had it been desecration, intended, 
 systematic, effectual? I remember well what I felt rather 
 than thought as I opened out that questionable deposit. For 
 the time being I entertained no doubt of the intention and 
 the object, namely, that desecration, reckless and purposed 
 interference with the remains of one departed, was the end 
 sought. I had been doubtful in divers other cases. I had 
 thought the interference with, or the displacement of, a 
 previous burial which had come under my notice in earlier 
 explorations might be best and most easily explained as 
 accidental and unintended. Thus there had been an examina- 
 tion of a large houe on the Skelton Moors, sixty-three feet in 
 diameter, in which, at a point twenty feet south of the centre, 
 I had found an inserted cairn, or conical pile of stones, of very 
 considerable size for only an "insertion," and which covered 
 incontestable evidences of disturbance of a previous burial, if 
 not of more than one. The pile had flat stones laid slopingly 
 round and over it. They were of considerable size, and when 
 they were removed they left the appearances of hollow spaces 
 within, which led one to expect the speedy discovery of 
 deposits. HaH an hour spent in careful work disclosed the 
 site of the main deposit intended to be protected or signalised 
 
146 Antiquarian 
 
 by the cairn, and near it a small incense-cup of red clay inverted 
 and quite without ornament. "There were many stones of 
 the pile still to be removed, several of them below the exact 
 place where the cup had just been found ; and at a level lower 
 by at least a foot, numerous fragments of another red urn, 
 accompanied by portions of calcined bone, which had assumed 
 a clay colour, and were much decomposed as well as scattered 
 about, were met with, and under such circumstances that 
 there could be no reasonable doubt that they belonged to a 
 deposit anterior in point of date to that found just before, and 
 disturbed in the process of excavating the bed on which the 
 cairn enclosing that had been raised. This urn was completely 
 disintegrated, and its various mouldering portions found in 
 divers different parts of an area of fifteen or eighteen inches 
 square." And my contemporaneous commentary on all this 
 was as follows : " This barrow was a most interesting one, 
 and certainly wonderfully illustrative of the custom of burying 
 continuously in a barrow already formed. No less than nine 
 interments, clearly, and ten urns were discovered; besides 
 which, the distinct chronological connection of three of them 
 is clearly indicated. First, the tumulus was raised over the 
 remains of some one of note or importance. Then, and one 
 cannot even guess how long afterwards, a secondary deposit 
 was made on the southern flank. Then again, and doubtless 
 after many years, a third interment was made on the very site 
 of this last mentioned, causing the entire demolition of its 
 accompanying urn and the dispersion of the incinerated 
 remains enclosed." It is clear, then, that I did not then think 
 — it is now twenty-six years ago — of anything but a chance 
 or accidental disturbance of the previous burial. Years and 
 years in that dim far-away past had come and gone, and the 
 precise locality of this secondary interment had been forgotten, 
 or lost sight of. That was what was in my mind when fresh 
 from the contemplation of the circumstances. But how about 
 this other, where the entire previous deposit had been 
 
The Grave- mounds carefully made 147 
 
 deliberately spread, or rather scattered about, in order to 
 make room for, and, as it were, wait in degraded subjection 
 upon, the latter deposit of the bones of a deceased superior — 
 and superior, it might be, in virtue of a stronger arm, or of a 
 greater and overwhelming force ? 
 
 In truth there were many things in the interior of these 
 old-world burying-places to set the thoughtful man thinking, 
 and the speculative man imagining, guessing, reconstructing. 
 No two of those of the larger size were built of the same 
 material, or planned on precisely the same principle. In one 
 I found a circular platform of symmetrically piled stone. It 
 was twenty feet in diameter, nearly six feet in vertical depth, 
 with a cist neatly constructed in the centre, and the entire 
 level surface of it covered, six inches deep, with the whitest, 
 snowiest sand. It was years upon years — twenty -four or 
 twenty-five, I should say — before I ascertained where that 
 sand could have been procured from. I knew of its existence, 
 but not in anything like sufficient purity to supply a tithe of 
 what I saw bestrewing that platform. And the place at 
 which, as I at last ascertained, it could have been obtained in 
 the requisite whiteness and quantity, was at least seven miles 
 distant in a linear direction ! 
 
 Not perhaps that that would make any difference to those 
 devoted builders. For, in one large and still symmetrical houe 
 at the foot of Freeburgh Hill — the very grave-mound in which 
 I obtained the conditional permission to dig recorded above — 
 I found, on the natural surface, and concentric with the 
 mound itself, a cairn or conical pile of stones, many of them 
 as heavy as, putting forth all my strength, I could lift, ^he 
 base of which was sixteen feet in diameter and the height 
 six. And every one of those stones was so marked in charac- 
 ter that I had no more uncertainty about the place of their 
 origin than I had about the dwelling-places of the men who 
 were working -with me or merely looking on in wondering 
 curiosity. 
 
148 A ntiquarian 
 
 Everybody has heard of the " whinstone dike " that runs 
 transversely across Cleveland, entering the district no great 
 way from Yarm and running a south-easterly course of nearly 
 thirty,five miles, only slightly deflected from a perfectly direct 
 line. It was this whinstone or basaltic dike which had 
 furnished every individual block in the whole of that very 
 considerable cairn ; and the nearest point at which it could 
 have been obtained in the quantities employed was at least 
 three miles and a half away, and across the untracked moor, 
 with swamp and morass to cross and recross on the route. 
 
 In the case too of another grave -hill nearer home, the 
 great constituent mass thereof consisted of clean water-worn 
 pebbles and nodules of half a dozen difierent varieties of 
 stone, such as could have been derived only from the bed of a 
 beck running its course to the sea through a moor-valley some 
 two miles and a half distant. 
 
 As a rule, I should say that the constituent materials of 
 all the largest houes — and some of them are very large, one 
 being ninety-five feet in diameter at the base, and even still 
 thirteen feet in height — were brought from a distance. There 
 are no signs of excavation, or even of removal of the 
 former surface, anywhere in their vicinity ; I have ascertained 
 that by direct personal examination. I am inclined to think 
 too that the work was done not only very carefully but very 
 systematically, whether merely for the due preservation of 
 symmetry, or (it might be) under the direction of some chief, 
 or the personal oversight and engineering of some skin-clad 
 " clerk of the works," with curiously tattooed body and limbs. 
 
 For, in divers different hills, when I had succeeded — often 
 at the cost of some sensible amount of personal labour — 
 in obtaining a good clean section of the interior of a grave- 
 hill, I have observed a significant regularity of stratification, 
 always following the outline of the mound, as that outline 
 must have been in the early days of its being. And this 
 stratification was such in its character as to show con- 
 
The Material of the Houes in Layers 1 49 
 
 clusively that the material was not only derived from 
 diverse localities, involving diiferent colours and various 
 qualities, but also deposited, when obtained and brought to 
 the site of its destined application, with the steady regularity 
 which characterises systematised and methodical, as well as 
 graduated, accretion. By way of illustration of what I mean : 
 One often sees a railway embankment in process of construc- 
 tion. Coup-cart after coup-cart is tipped at the edge of the 
 slowly growing and lengthening mound, and the contents of 
 each go streaming down the sloping face in intermingling and 
 irremediable confusion. There is no such thing as stratification 
 there, even though sand and gravel, clay and peat, loam and 
 vegetable soil are all being brought up in unfailing supply. 
 In the houes, on the other hand, there is often well-defined 
 stratification. Not that there was not an unfailing supply 
 also in those days of houe-building, as long as the demand 
 lasted at least ; but what was brought was carefully strown and 
 neatly evened over the whole surface of the rising mound. 
 
 But to turn to quite another topic, and matter also for 
 some little attentive consideration. I hardly think that on 
 these wide and wild moors in this division of the district of 
 Cleveland the custom as to the actual placing of what 
 remained of the body after cremation — for no one actual 
 instance of inhumation simple has so far been met with — 
 varies at all, except in the rarest instances. The incinerated 
 remains were simply laid on the natural surface, whether with 
 the protection or accompaniment of an urn or without, and 
 then covered over with earth, and whether with or without 
 the protection of some sort of rough or rude stone-work. 
 Once, and once only, have I found a platform of stones, in a 
 cist wrought in which the body had been placed ; and once, 
 and once only, a platform of earth on which the accompanying 
 urn had been placed ; and once, and once only, a shallow ex- 
 cavation or grave, which had been the receptacle of the original 
 deposit — speaking, of course, of the " original deposit " only. 
 
ISO A ntiquarian 
 
 As to the "secondary burials," they seem to have been 
 made, at least occasionally, in excavations hollowed out in the 
 side of an existing grave-mound. Perhaps, even, that was the 
 rule. But there can be no doubt that in many cases these 
 secondary interments led on not only to very considerable 
 additions to the existing grave-hill, but to additions of such 
 magnitude as entirely to remodel the grave-mound dealt with. 
 Thus, in one instance — that of the mound, about his adven- 
 tures in which my faithful helper dreamed his dream, and in 
 which I ascertained that, from first to last, no less than 
 sixteen cinerary vases had been deposited — what I had no 
 doubt had been the original work of the hill, namely, a shallow 
 pit of sixteen feet in length by something less in width, filled 
 in and piled over with a cairn of stones, had been thrown 
 some eight feet out of the centre by subsequent additions, 
 chiefly on the southern and eastern flanks. 
 
 But whatever the alteration on the original pile, or the 
 deviation from the original ground-plan, there was no departure 
 from the rule of symmetry. Wherever enough of the mound 
 stands as when it was left as finished by its builders, to guide 
 one's conclusions, the base is regularly circular, and the sides 
 slope up with the graceful lines of the accurately-shaped cone. 
 And not unseldom there are as evident signs of careful and 
 diligent pains expended over the exterior as in the general 
 and consistent construction of the whole great mass of the 
 barrow. In many instances the more considerable among 
 these remnants of antiquity are girt in at the base with large 
 containing stones, laid slopingly, so as not to interfere with 
 the even outline of the sloping sides. Sometimes even an 
 exterior ring of encircling stones, sunk deeply enough into the 
 earth to have remained firm fixtures during the long wear and 
 tear of five-and-twenty or thirty centuries, is found. 
 
 Truly these men of the past, whoever they were, and 
 whatever they were, and whencesoever they came, wrought 
 great and abiding memorials, leaving traces behind them that 
 
Old Grave- mounds v. Modern Headstones i s i 
 
 but few are disposed to notice without a sort of sneer for 
 those who care for them, but which yet are more full of 
 material for thought than five -sixths of the books which 
 cumber the modern bookstall. 
 
 I go into a graveyard of the day that now is — into this 
 quiet, remote, reposeful one around my own parish church, if 
 you will — and I see there headstones by the hundred, all of 
 them, with the exception of a scant half-dozen, tasteless, ill- 
 shapen, ugly, meaningless, hopeless, wretched erections ; with 
 an occasional equally unprepossessing monument^" thruff," as 
 it is termed here, — and one or two plain slabs lying flush with 
 the turf. If I examine them with some care and attention to 
 date, and so forth, I find two or three that record the burial 
 of persons who were still living in the latter part of the seven- 
 teenth century. If I want anything of the sepulchral "in 
 memoriam " type, I have to look in the walls of the church- 
 yard, or in the lintel of the door out of the basement of the 
 tower (which does duty as the porch to the right modern 
 church of to-day), and there I can see bits of floriated crosses 
 on portions of the original coffin-covers, or perhaps a stray 
 entire one, just saved from utter demolition because they 
 admitted of being employed in the mason-work of the altera- 
 tion ! These once covered the remains of men of position in 
 the parish, perhaps of knightly rank ; but we know no more 
 of them than we do of the builders of the grave-mounds on the 
 moors. And those great imposing grave-mounds will survive, 
 as durable as ever, if left only to the hand of time, when the 
 crosses on those grave-slabs shall have mouldered away ages 
 before ; while, as to the headstones which disfigure as well as 
 crowd the churchyard, whereon the pagan " urn " contends for 
 supremacy as an emblem — of what? — with the Christian cross, 
 they are already put to self-invited shame by the enduringness 
 of the piles which were raised to cover the urns they feebly 
 mimic, the urns that enclosed the still enduring ashes of those 
 who had no cross to cling to ! 
 
152 Antiquarian 
 
 One thing else. I am told that it is a shameful thing, an 
 abuse, to violate the graves of the dead, to disinter the 
 remains of those committed to their "last resting-place," as is 
 done in barrow-digging. Many a philippic of that sort I have 
 had to listen to, and to read. I suppose that is a part of 
 the rampant cant of the day. I am sure I have seen more 
 desecration of churchyards, more interference of the most 
 shameful and shameless kind with "the last resting-places of 
 the dead," in one case of a "restoration" of an old parish 
 church, than has been occasioned by all the excavations of all 
 the barrow -diggers united ! I have actually seen cartload 
 after cartload of mingled earth and human remains — the latter 
 now and then predominating — taken out of the churchyard of 
 one watering-place in the North of England (the church of 
 which was undergoing restoration), and carelessly thrown down 
 on the cliff ! I have seen — but why pursue the loathsome and 
 distressing recital % We have seen and heard enough of it 
 from time to time in the newspapers and elsewhere. 
 
 And yet further, let us not forget that there was some- 
 thing to be gained, some knowledge to be acquired, in and 
 by and through every instance of careful and observant 
 barrow-digging properly carried out. The feeling that in and 
 through our work we were trying — and not altogether unsuc- 
 cessfully — to decipher a partly obliterated page of history, has 
 been sometimes so strong in my own individual case, that it 
 hardly seemed a mere stretch of erratic imagination to try and 
 form a mind-picture of the old dwellers among these wastes, 
 whose abiding memorials I was dealing with. I have long 
 ceased to look upon the groups of pits which have been 
 christened "British villages" as connected, even in the 
 remotest degree, with our " Ancient British " predecessors. 
 But it was otherwise indeed with the old and by no means 
 — at least when properlj^ questioned — uncommunicative grave- 
 mounds of the wild moors. 
 
EAETHWOEKS 
 
 Although the last thing I said was that the connection of 
 the groups of pits, so-called "British villages," with our 
 ancient British predecessors was a matter I had long ceased 
 to look upon as probable or indeed reasonable, still I hardly 
 propose to enter into a consideration of the reasons which 
 have led me into such an instance of unbelief as that is, just 
 at present. I can only say now that I believe the object 
 with which they were excavated, and the epoch of the ex- 
 cavation, have to be inquired for in a widely different direction 
 from any indicated by the name they are credited with and 
 made to bear. 
 
 But although it may be, and is, idle to look for any traces 
 of habitation amidst these misnamed, or rather misdescribed 
 pits, and especially of such a date, or, perhaps, anywhere in this 
 district, it is not idle to look for traces of occupation — occupation 
 as distinct from habitation. They are to be seen, and seen 
 distinctly, in many different directions. But they are mostly 
 of one character, and the indications they afford are nearly 
 all of the same general nature and bearing. 
 
 It is true, I am told of " camps " and " British strengths," 
 and even " castles " ; and I regret to see the authority of the 
 Ordnance Survey pledged to such statements. For, while I 
 know that many of them are altogether imaginary, and others 
 uttei-ly suspicious, in very few cases are the accepted designa- 
 tions or allegations to be fully depended upon. 
 
154 A ntiquarian 
 
 But it is otherwise with the "dikes," " intrenchments," 
 "trenches," etc., many of which are marked, and others left 
 unnamed, if not unnoticed, in the Ordnance sheets, and un- 
 described or misdescribed by local writers. They all have a 
 legend to be read, if only there be one sufficiently versed in 
 such lore to decipher it. Not tha,t the task is easy, or the 
 interpretation self-suggesting and unmistakable. I take, for 
 instance, the dikes or intrenchments which cross the ridges 
 of moorland, between which lie our dales of Glaisdale, Fryup 
 Dale (Great and Little), Danby Dale, Westerdale, etc. None 
 of these have less than two lines of defence crossing them, 
 and some of them have three, and even four, or at least have 
 had ; for the clean stone of which more than one of them 
 were constructed had, since the times of enclosure, and 
 especially of drainage, came in, proved a strong attraction to 
 the farming freeholders to plunder, and eventually entirely 
 destroy them by total removal of their material. 
 
 Moreover, all these dikes seem to have one general feature 
 in common, and to indicate one special intention. As 
 defensive works at all, they are defensive against attack 
 delivered from the south, and in no other direction whatever. 
 Wherever the works are left sufficiently undamaged by time 
 or depredation to admit of adequate examination, that is the 
 direct testimony of them. There is one, for instance — one out 
 of two, moreover — across what is named the Castleton Eidge 
 in the one-inch Ordnance map, and therein designated the 
 " High stone-dike," of which a small section is yet so far 
 intact as to permit it to be definitely asserted that the 
 front of it (looking south) has been faced with stone, and 
 had a deep ditch before it. Besides, as it would appear 
 from what is left still standing, stone posts have been set 
 thickly along the crest of it, of nearly four feet in height 
 above the surface, and yet almost flush with the aforesaid 
 stone-faced front. 
 
 Granted what is thus premised, of course the question 
 
The Ancient Earthworks, and their Origin 1 5 5 
 
 arises, Against what attacks, directed from^the south, against 
 what assailants, were these defences Resigned and erected % 
 Were they meant for bulwarks against the onset of the men 
 of one tribe or tribelet, dwelling in the Famdale, Rosedale, 
 Wheeldale valleys, or, in other words, the people of the 
 valleys south of the watershed furnished by the line of the 
 Cleveland Hills, delivered upon the inhabitants of the general 
 district lying north of the said ridge line ; or had they some 
 totally distinct object and end from any of such a merely 
 local and arbitrary supposition % 
 
 For my own part, after walking over and along these 
 ancient earthworks, some of them so elaborate, and all 
 evidently forming a part of a single and individual system, 
 extending several miles in their dale-inteiTupted course from 
 east to west, I have become less and less able to entertain the 
 view that the tribes on the south — supposing that phraseology 
 can be looked upon as sufficiently admissible, if not accurate — 
 were likely to live in a state of chronic warfare with the 
 tribes to the north. Indeed, I do not in the least believe in 
 such distinction of tribes so sharply defined. I do not think 
 it even possible that there should have been a hard-and-fast 
 line of demarcation between two sets of people of the same 
 general family who could have differed, and did differ only — 
 so far as our means of testing the matter go — in living a few 
 miles north, or a few miles south, of a certain geological 
 " axis." 
 
 But if not war between contiguous tribes or tribelets, war- 
 fare between what two sets of combatants could have led up 
 to and occasioned the erection of the earthworks in question \ 
 
 In order to try and answer this question to my own 
 more or less complete satisfaction, I have said to myself : 
 " If General Pitt Eivers's researches and investigations touching 
 the Danes Dyke, the Argam Lines, the Scamridge Dykes, go for 
 anything — and surely the patient, systematic, long-continued 
 inquiries of a military engineer, with all the special ad van- 
 
156 A ntiquarian 
 
 tages in and by that designation implied, ought to go for 
 something — then surely the results and deductions he has 
 arrived at in an investigation which more than probably 
 presents many points of analogy with the question we have 
 ourselves propounded, not only ought not to be overlooked 
 by us, but most likely will be found to be by no means with- 
 out suggestiveness." 
 
 His conclusions seemed to be something of this nature : 
 That the Danes Dyke was a defensive work thrown up, not 
 by the denizens of the land, but by an invading force, com- 
 ing by sea necessarily; that it, the said dike, constituted a 
 base for their invasive operations, and that having acquired 
 mastery over a given area in their front, they pushed still 
 farther forward, protecting their advance by another work, 
 on the same principle, namely, the Argam Lines ; and that, 
 pursuing the same tactics, they advanced farther into the 
 interior from thence, protecting - both their front and their 
 flanks by other earthworks, which still remain in more or 
 less of their being to attest alike the strategy and the skill 
 with which the invasive progress was devised and conducted. 
 
 And then next came the question, "Who" — or, if that 
 could not be answered — " What, of what age and period, or 
 quality, were these said invaders % " 
 
 An answer of some sort, perhaps as satisfactory as, 
 under the circumstances, could have been anticipated, was 
 obtained by the process of cutting through the so-called 
 Danes Dyke in divers places, with the view of ascertain- 
 ing, if possible, if any, and if so what, indications as to 
 the people who really constructed those huge works might 
 possibly be found buried in those old banks of earth and 
 stones. And one section in particular — nearly all of them 
 affording something or other in the shape of indication — one 
 section in particular might almost be termed communicative 
 from the nature and amount of the information it conveyed. 
 For it disclosed the fact that the men who threw up the 
 
Flint hnplements made on the Danes Dyke i s 7 
 
 fortification not only used flint implements, but made them, 
 and, moreover, made them on the spot. 
 
 We find flint chippings, flint flakes, flint implements even 
 (of the commoner sort), in the graves in our churchyards ; a 
 fact which just proves that the users and makers of flint 
 objects had once lived in the district. We find scrapers, flakes, 
 drills, knives, arrow-points, all of flint, in and about the barrows 
 so continually and systematically, that we know they were 
 scattered or deposited (as the case might be) of set purpose, 
 by those who raised the barrows as well as used the flint. 
 And I have myself found three places on these moors where 
 the chippings, spiculce, remnants of flint of divers characters, 
 as plainly showed that flint implements and weapons had been 
 manufactured there, as the matters commonly lying about a 
 blacksmith's shop show the vicinity (past or present) of the forge. 
 And just such indications of the manufacture of flint were found 
 in the very thick of the dike, not scattered about as in our 
 grave-mounds, and so much more sparingly in our church- 
 yards, but as thickly spread as you find the shavings 
 and scraps and odds and ends of wood below the joiner's 
 bencL The inference was obvious. While the works, mis- 
 named the Danes Dyke, Were yet in progress, while they 
 lacked still some feet of the intended or ultimate height and 
 massiveness, some among the host of the builders were plying 
 their vocation as makers and fashioners of those indispensable 
 flint weapons and implements. There lay the little piles and 
 accumulations of the chips and refuse material, ready to be 
 covered up and preserved by the next course in the building 
 of the bulwark, and for discovery and cross-questioning and 
 interpretation by the modern military engineer. 
 
 Yes, the devisers and builders of those massive and skil- 
 fully projected lines of defence were makers and users of 
 flint weapons and flint implements ; and yet that is not a fact 
 inconsistent with a knowledge, on their part, and possession of 
 instruments and weapons of metal. On the contrary, all that 
 
158 Antiquarian 
 
 we know — and it is no little nowadays, thanks to the scientific, 
 accurate, and painstaking researches and records of such men 
 as Greenwell, Pitt Elvers, Eolleston, and others of the same 
 school — of the men who raised the round barrows that stud 
 the high grounds of our country, tends to the assurance that 
 they were possessors and users of bronze for their tools and 
 weapons, as well as fabricators and employers of the more 
 primitive flint. What then is to hinder the inference that the 
 Danes Dyke invaders, wielders of bronze weapons as well as 
 users of flint-headed arrows and javelins, prevailed over the 
 simply stone-weaponed denizens of the land of which they 
 had arrived as the invaders ; that, as prevailing, they became 
 occupiers ; and that, as occupiers, they left those intelligible, if 
 not communicative, memorials of themselves which have been 
 so abundantly met with in the grave-mounds and earthworks 
 of the district % 
 
 But, suppose all this admitted as regards the origin and 
 purpose of the works we know under the name of the "Danes 
 Dyke," the "Argam Lines," and the "Scamridge Trenches," 
 can we for a moment maintain the theory that the only 
 landing-place available to or utilised by such invaders was 
 just that particular point on the Yorkshire coast which 
 afforded ready access to the headland which was made defen- 
 sible by the casting up of these great lines of defence % The 
 merest consideration of the circumstances in their general 
 significance — to say nothing of the knowledge derivable from 
 what is known of later invasions made from the same side 
 of the North Sea — leads on inevitably to the conclusion, not so 
 much that there may have been, as that there must have been, 
 divers and sundry raids from over the sea upon the old stone- 
 weaponed inhabitants of the land, made at diflFerent times and 
 at various places. And it is much more than merely possible 
 that these lines of defence, and of defence, moreover, against 
 possible or menaced attack from the south, to which attention 
 was drawn a little above, may all admit of the same kind of 
 
The Ancient Earthwork at Est on Nab 159 
 
 explanation as Danes Dyke near Flamborough Head, and its 
 more inland accessories. 
 
 And if this be so, one of the first inquiries to be made 
 must of necessity be, "Where should the base to correspond 
 with the base identified in the Danes Dyke be looked for in 
 this more northerly part of the country \ Can any suggestion 
 of even a possible similar site be made \ " And I think the 
 answer may not be far to seek. 
 
 The very remarkable fortification at Eston Nab, which 
 has given occasion for so many wild guesses and unreason- 
 able hypotheses, remains as yet totally unexplained and 
 totally unappropriated, and might well challenge, at the hands 
 of some competent local antiquary, or some scientific Society 
 in the district, some such careful and scientifically conducted 
 inquiry as that which has resulted in the happy identification 
 of the real origin and purpose of the strong ancient lines near 
 Flamborough, and across the inland route from thence. 
 
 At least this much is certain, that while the Ordnance 
 Survey amply sufiices, even where the possibilities of personal 
 examination do not exist, to demonstrate that certain lines 
 of communication between the Cleveland seaboard and the 
 interior are cut across and blocked by carefully, often elabor- 
 ately, devised intrenchments, the only conclusion admissible 
 is that, at the times indicated by the construction of the said 
 lines, the only route or routes available for a body of men to 
 move along on such an expedition were just these lines of 
 way so blocked. For the merest and most superficial examina- 
 tion of the entire Dales district is sufficient to show that even 
 in the earlier historic period, all that was not moorland was a 
 series of swampy marshes, intergrown rather than overgrovni 
 vnth wood and forest. And one has but just to dip into 
 such a book as Green's Making of England in order to become 
 aware of what the barriers were that were presented to 
 hinder or forbid the further advance of better equipped as 
 well as better armed invaders of many centuries later, by 
 
1 60 Antiquarian 
 
 marsh and swamp, forest and -wood, and other such natural 
 defences. 
 
 But while firmly believing that all the works which have 
 been referred to afford indications, not of small intertribal 
 scuffles or skirmishes, but of systematic military advances 
 from the seaboard into the interior, and that they can only 
 belong to the same date, and be attributed to the same con- 
 structors as the numerous and Bpiost instructive grave-mounds 
 of the district (so many of which have been made to yield 
 up their hidden testimony), I still find myself totally unable 
 to agree with those who have had no difiiculty in discovering 
 any number of " British villages " almost at command. But 
 this is a subject which deserves to begin a new section. 
 
BRITISH VILLAGES, SO CALLED 
 
 I SUPPOSE there must be something very attractive in the 
 British Village theory akin to the delight of castle-building or 
 the weaving of Alnaschar's famous dreams. I have seen pil- 
 grimage after pilgrimage paid to the alleged British Village 
 on the Danby low moors. People used to come up in 
 carriage-loads from Whitby, to see it; and now, in the time of 
 trains, the number of votaries, notwithstanding the distance 
 from the station and the difficulty of the walk, does not fall 
 off; and they look at the holes in the ground, and, I suppose, 
 they go away happy. I remember once on a time taking a 
 learned Greek professor, afterwards Master of his college, to 
 see the said "settlement," warning him first that walking 
 through the ling from the Beacon — as far as which point I 
 had driven him in my pony-trap — and back again, might 
 prove no joke to his professorial legs. As we went down 
 the slope from the hill bearing the said Beacon he smiled 
 superior to the idea of a tramp through the ling proving 
 fatiguing. He smiled also on scanning the instructive line of 
 holes in the soil, with tufts of rushes growing in them. But 
 he smiled no longer when we took the slope the other way on, 
 and had to make our way through ling mid-thigh high. But 
 he smiled again, and benignantly too, when, some three hours 
 later, he was seated at my dinner-table, and felt himself 
 refreshing and in a fair way of reaching the perfect tense of 
 the operation; but this time it was his own simplicity in 
 
 M 
 
1 62 Antiquarian 
 
 undertaking such an expedition for such a questionable object 
 that he smiled at. And veritably the craze is a funny one. 
 
 Because it is nothing but a craze, and a most manifest 
 craze, on the face of it, in the great majority of instances ; 
 and it is hard to deal with the way in which the theory is 
 delivered in any other sense. The preposterous rubbish, 
 for instance, written by Ord in his History of Cleveland, 
 touching what he calls "British habitations," might be 
 enough, one would think, to show any thinking person the 
 unstable basis on which the British village theory is made to 
 rest: "Large oval or circular pits, eight to twelve feet deep, 
 and sixty to eighty and a hundred yards (!) in circumference," 
 and " many hundreds in number " — truly any one who can 
 swallow that as the first item in a description of the aggregated 
 dwellings of the scattered and scanty population of half a 
 dozen, perhaps half a score centuries before Csesar, with whom 
 bronze implements must have been about as common and as 
 procurable as silver dinner-plates and dishes among our 
 village populations now, will have no occasion to " strain at " 
 any " camel " that is likely to follow. Probably, if Mr. Ord 
 had been set to work with the best and sharpest wood-axe 
 and saw procurable for love or money, to roof over a pit — 
 not thirty yards in diameter, or even twenty, but a modest ex- 
 cavation — of half a dozen yards wide, with poles cut from the 
 forest, and rushes from the marsh, or ling from the moor, and 
 then to maintain his spouse and his progeny vnth. the pre- 
 carious supplies derivable from hunting, and the hardly 
 less doubtful produce of his herds, flocks, or agricultural toil, 
 he might have thought twice before proposing to domicile 
 some hundreds — not of persons, but — of families in such 
 dwellings and on such sites as his absurdly "tall talk" 
 asserts rather than assumes. 
 
 For my own part, I am exceedingly doubtful whether, in 
 even one single instance of all the British villages or settle- 
 ments alleged, the claim for such consideration can be shown 
 
Scientific Examination never made 163 
 
 to have any reasonable, and much more any satisfactory, 
 ground to rest upon. There is no extant record of any really 
 careful and conclusive examination of any one of the pits by 
 competent, qualified, and intelligent investigators. There is 
 no satisfactory proof adduced in any of the accounts or so- 
 called records of such attempts that the true and actual 
 bottom of the excavation operated upon had really been 
 reached, or, indeed, nearly approached. 
 
 I remember a great archaeological authority telling me one 
 day of the way in which he had had shown to him a series of 
 pits, with a striking local name, some of which had been 
 " opened " under the auspices of a local Scientific and Literary 
 society ; and how he was assured that the bottom had been 
 reached in this pit and in that ; and with all the particulars 
 or accompaniments of charcoal, stones afiected by fire, etc. 
 etc. ; and how, in his inexcusable (though latent) incredulity 
 he had craved, and not without some persistence obtained, his 
 desire for further excavation in one of the already (perfectly !) 
 explored cavities. Two feet below the previously " ascer- 
 tained" bottom unquestionable proofs were obtained that, 
 as old Edie Ochiltree expressed it on a somewhat similar 
 occasion, "the ground had been travelled before," and the 
 assembled science and literature began to feel surprised, and 
 look perplexed. To make a long story short, my archaeo- 
 logical friend afterwards instituted investigation on his own 
 account ; and the upshot was that he had to go down, with 
 patient, persevering excavation, to the depth of thirty-three 
 feet before he reached the real bottom of the pit, which had 
 been regarded as fully and satisfactorily explored by the 
 local philosophers. 
 
 But even that was but a beginning of what knowledge and 
 experience, or, in one word, science, enabled the new investi- 
 gator to achieve, in the way of ascertained knowledge of facts, 
 as regards the great group of hitherto mysterious pits he was 
 working among. He discovered that all the pits, scattered about 
 
1 64 Antiquarian 
 
 in rude quincunx form, just like the great majority of our so- 
 called British villages, communicated with one another by a 
 series of low-roofed galleries at the real level of the ascertained 
 bottom. He discovered the tools with which the ancient ex- 
 cavators had worked, and the object for which they had 
 worked. For just where the sinking ceased there had been 
 a six-inch layer or vein of flint, such as to be available for 
 manufacture of flint implements and weapons. This had been 
 won, not only over the area of the actual bottom of the shaft, 
 but as far under the encircling sides of it as it was safe to 
 excavate; and then the sinking of another shaft from the 
 surface had been commenced, and the same process again 
 pursued at its bottom as in the previous one, so as to lead 
 on necessarily to what has been mentioned above as a galleried 
 system of communication of shaft with shaft. 
 
 Now, rejecting altogether Mr. Ord's " hundreds of habita- 
 tions of from sixty to eighty and a hundred yards in cir- 
 cumference," I do not think that any one pit in all the 
 hundreds of pits which are ticketed with the name of British 
 village, has ever been subjected to such an examination as 
 were these old flint-mines in Norfolk by Canon Greenwell. 
 Indeed, I do not think that, if there had been a whole 
 Committee of such inquirers and historians as Ord so abund- 
 antly proves himself to have been, the merest notion of what 
 to look for, or how to look for it, would have so much as 
 risen in the brain of any one of them. They would have looked 
 for the charcoal of a foregone conclusion, and found it ; they 
 would have looked for a preconceived bottom, and found it. 
 But as to ascertaining, actually ascertaining beyond the 
 possibility of a dispute or doubt, that it really was the veri- 
 table bottom, or, being the bottom, why it was so, and how far 
 all round the circumference it extended, or did not extend, — 
 why, neither the mode of examination required, nor yet the 
 grounds on which it was required, would so much as have pre- 
 sented themselves to their imaginations. They would simply 
 
Systematic Examination imperative 165 
 
 have looked for a. preconceived bottom to a preconceived 
 habitation, they would have dubbed the search with the grand 
 names of examination and investigation, but they would have 
 ended as they began, with their own preconceived notions — 
 nothing else. 
 
 But what might not have been the results of a systematic 
 and scientific investigation, on the other hand, properly and 
 exhaustively carried on by competent and trustworthy in- 
 quirers? It would at least have been ascertained what the 
 noteworthy groups of pits were not, even if nothing very 
 definite in the way of actually deciding their real character 
 had been met with. But my own conviction is that the origin 
 and object of the pits grouped together as they are would, in 
 the majority of cases, if not in all, have been actually and 
 fully ascertained; and that it would have proved identical 
 with the conclusion which is suggested by observation of the 
 geological character of the vicinities wherein they are found, 
 illustrated by a little experimental as well as local knowledge. 
 
 What I mean by " the geological character of the vicinity " 
 wiU be better shadowed forth, perhaps, if I say that I believe 
 that wherever a group of the pits in question in eastern Cleve- 
 land and the vicinity of Whitby Strand is met with, a fairly 
 accurate geological map shows also the presence, at or near the 
 surface, of some seam or other of ironstone ; and what I think 
 and mean by " local and experimental knowledge and observa- 
 tion " will be best illustrated by the following relation. It 
 was an object vnth me some six or seven years ago to collect 
 whatever local information I could, bearing in any way on the 
 somewhat obtrusive fact that, at a long-ago time, the reduction, 
 although not the actual smelting, of iron had gone on largely 
 in this immediate district. Quite forty years ago I had be- 
 come aware from a variety of historical sources, that iron 
 had been worked in various parts of this and the adjoining 
 North Kiding divisions ; and even before that, I had noted the 
 fact that the traces of the said working still existed in nearly 
 
1 66 A ntiquarian 
 
 a score of different places, almost all situate in my own parish 
 and in what once had been a part of it, and all as striking as 
 they were numerous. 
 
 What I especially refer to were the hills or mounds, many of 
 them of very considerable, and some of them of very large 
 dimensions, composed of nothing else than the slag which had 
 resulted from the obviously very incomplete reduction of the 
 iron ore. These hills had the common name of " cinder-hills." 
 But all tradition, all trace indeed, of any survival of recollec- 
 tion as to the time when, or the way in which, they had been 
 accumulated had ceased to be, and to all appearance had so 
 ceased for a long time past. Still they were unmistakable 
 indications of what once, in the far-away past, had certainly 
 been. 
 
 As inquiry went on, and I slowly succeeded in gathering 
 together a series of facts of one kind or another, all bearing 
 upon the subject of investigation, I became aware that in 
 one part of the parish, and within the memory of living 
 men, Structural remains had existed, the former object of 
 which my informant could not explain, but which, from his 
 description of them, I could only infer had been built and 
 used in the production of the iron the manufacture of which 
 had led to the accretion of those huge mounds of slag. The 
 size, shape, mode of construction of these remains all tallied 
 with what I had got to know about the simplest sort of fur- 
 naces used in the early epochs of the process of reducing iron- 
 ore. And what was almost more, there lay in the close 
 vicinity a cinder-hill, a large mound, in fact, which had been 
 much drawn upon by the road-makers of no very distant date 
 in order to be employed in the making and mending of the 
 cross-roads in the near neighbourhood of the Fairy Cross 
 Plains already more than once mentioned above. 
 
 Naturally, having satisfied myself that the ancient furnace, 
 or rather group of furnaces, was here in juxtaposition with the 
 slag which had resulted from their operation, the next question 
 
Co-ordination of Evidence 167 
 
 ■was, " Where did the ironstone, which it was apparent had 
 been abundantly used, actually come from % " 
 
 No one knew. No one could even hazard a guess. 
 
 Eventually, however, I referred the question to one of the 
 gentlemen employed on the Ordnance Geological Survey, who 
 had been occupied in that part of the district, and with whom 
 I had frequently spoken on such topics. His reply was 
 remarkable, for it was to this effect : " You have asked me a 
 question which is, in a sort, a little puzzling ; for all I can say 
 in answer is that the ironstone available for a furnace in the 
 position indicated by you ought to show itself at this point 
 and at that point," indicating two recognisable places on the 
 six-inch map, one of them only separated by the modern high- 
 way from the site of the furnace and slag-heap which were the 
 subjects of my inquiry; "but," he continued, "it certainly 
 does not show itself at either of these two points." 
 
 This was, as I said, remarkable. The geological surveyor 
 knew exactly where to look for the mineral ; only the mineral 
 was not there. Only a day or two later a purely fortuitous 
 circumstance enabled me to explain its absence. And this 
 circumstance befell as follows. 
 
 I wished to test the accuracy of my recollection of what 
 had been told me about these assumed furnaces by the man 
 who, as a boy, had been, as he had told me, in the habit of 
 playing "hide-and-seek" in them. The narrative, as he 
 proceeded to give it, ran almost verbatim as my memoranda 
 recorded it. But as he concluded, he added this : " You 
 remember, sir, my old father-in-law held the farm on which 
 this particular spot is, for some little time after you first came 
 into this country r' Of course I remembered the circum- 
 stance and poor old Jonathan equally well. In fact, the spell 
 or charm described on another page was his, and his were the 
 anti-witch proceedings also noticed above. "Well," continued 
 my interlocutor, " when he died, all his papers and such like 
 came into my possession; and among the rest there was a 
 
Antiqtiarian 
 
 farm-plan of the holding he occupied, and in it every field 
 marked with its own name ; and among them, of course, the 
 field just across the road that runs past these old furnaces 
 and the cinder-hill : and the name it was called by was 
 'Mine-pit Field.'" 
 
 Here was an explanation indeed. No wonder my geo- 
 logical friend could not find the ironstone where it ought to 
 have been, seeing it had all been mined away from the 
 immediate vicinity in the manner indicated by the name of 
 the field in question ; that is to say, by a series of pits or 
 shallow shafts worked down to the level of the seam, so as 
 to eAable the sinkers to win all the ore at the bottom of each 
 shaft, and as much besides as they could reach all round, by 
 the process of undermining the walls of the circular shaft as 
 far as it was safe to do so — a system thoroughly well known 
 in difi'erent parts of the kingdom under the name of the 
 "Bell-pit system." 
 
 But my purpose in mentioning this incident is not merely 
 to illustrate the connection of furnace, slag-heap, and ironstone 
 seam, but is of quite another nature. I had known that field 
 for near forty years, walked over it, shot over it, speculated 
 even from how great a distance the ironstone which had been 
 reduced just across the road had been brought for the purpose. 
 But there was nothing in or about the field to indicate the 
 former existence of mines or pits, or depressions even, any- 
 where near. No one remembered anything of the kind. No 
 tradition, however dim, existed. And yet the pits had been 
 there. The old field-name left no doubt of that. 
 
 But most likely, if they had remained till our own day 
 we should have had a "British village" the more in the 
 parish. 
 
 As a matter of fact, one day when I was prosecuting my 
 inquiries touching the slag-heaps or cinder-hills in Glaisdale, 
 which, in a certain sense, I knew where to look for, because I 
 knew more or less about the limits within which they had 
 
A Roman Village ! 169 
 
 been formed during the thirteenth and two following centuries 
 by the canons of Guisborough — -these holy men having been 
 empowered by certain definite grants from the great lords of 
 the district, namely, the De Brus barons, to dig mines, build 
 furnaces, and make charcoal to reduce the iron with — I hunted 
 up a certain old friend of mine, whom I had long known as 
 one of the shrewdest dalesmen in the district, and asked him 
 to tell me what his local knowledge enabled him to tell me 
 about the precise locality of any, or as many, cinder-hills as 
 he was acquainted with. He pointed out the sites of five or 
 six; and then he asked me if I was aware of the "Roman 
 village " just on the edge of the moor, about half a mile to a 
 mile from where we were talking at the time. I said " No " 
 in the most natural way I could, and asked him to show me 
 the place. He was delighted to be able to instruct the chief 
 archaeological authority of the district, and took me " up the 
 bank," and a pretty steep one it was. On the road thither 
 he showed me one of the cinder-hills he had only indicated by 
 word and gesture previously, and a very nice untampered- 
 ^vith specimen of a slag-heap it was, containing I do not know 
 how many hundred tons of slag. 
 
 After examining this and making a few local notes, we 
 resumed our climb, and presently came to a large group of 
 pits dotted about in due quincunx order, and in point of 
 numbers such that they might be counted by scores. " Here 
 they are, sir," said he, " and a biggish village it must have 
 been." I agreed with him. " But," I added, " what makes 
 you call it a Eoman village?" — "Why, sir," said William, 
 "there is the 'Julius Csesar' band of ironstone there," point- 
 ing to a line easy to be traced in the upper part of the face of 
 the sweeping curve of the bank of the dale-head we had 
 in sight ; " there's the ' Julius Caesar ' band ; and that shows 
 the Romans must have known of it, and named it too." 
 True, there was the band — more indisputable than the logic 
 perhaps — and the local geologists have named it the " Julian 
 
17° A ntiquarian 
 
 band"; and tracing the line, it was "good enough to see," as 
 my friend would have expressed it, that its level was some 
 dozen feet or thereabouts below the surface we were stand- 
 ing on, all pock-marked with ra-y informant's special set of 
 assumed hut-pits. 
 
 I am afraid I became chargeable with the crime of per- 
 verting my friend William's faith alike in the Eomans and 
 their village. My remark was, "Why, it's a bleakish spot, 
 William. It must be a deal snugger and more sheltered down 
 yonder," pointing to his own home in the valley beneath, — 
 " especially when it snows and blows in the winter-time ; or any 
 time, indeed." — " Ay, you may say that," he replied. " Well," I 
 continued, " but don't you think the Romans were canny enough 
 to have found that out for themselves % " William pondered, 
 perplexed for a while, and then queried with the tone of one 
 "convinced," but somewhat "against his will," "But what 
 do you say them pits is, then, Mr. Atki'son 1 " The briefest 
 reference to the " Julius Csesar " band and to the requisite 
 supply of ironstone necessary for the production of the huge 
 mound of slag we had inspected as we came up the hill, lying 
 quite handy, seemed to be enough to convert his lingering 
 doubts into a state of quite satisfactory conviction. 
 
 Now had Mr. Ord been taken to this place in Glaisdale 
 Head, and been duly " insensed," as I was, there can be little 
 or no doubt, judging from the way in which he deals with 
 similar "discoveries," that he would at once have discovered 
 another beautiful example of at least a British village ; even 
 if the Roman camel was a little in excess of his capacity for 
 absorption. And it is on such foundation, and on no other, 
 that — to mention but two or three of the better-known so- 
 called British settlements — the group of pits above Glaisdale 
 Station, locally known as Holey Intack, the Killing Pits on 
 the verge of the Goathland moors, and the Eefholes (as they 
 were called nearly seven hundred years ago) at Westerdale, 
 have been so denominated, or rather nicknamed. So far as I 
 
Geological Testimony 171 
 
 am aware, no particle of actual evidence has ever been offered 
 such as to justify the name in question. The very idea that 
 "evidence" might be wanted seems never to have entered 
 the mind of the godfathers. Like Caesar, they came, they 
 saw, they conquered ; but the conquest they won was localised 
 only in the dreamland of their own fancy. There were the 
 pits ; and the pits were of course the sites of ancient British 
 habitation. The process was equally short, summary, decisive, 
 and convincing, so long as no questioning or inquiry was 
 allowed or desired. 
 
 Certainly, there are the pits; and if the fiat of the dis- 
 coverers of British habitations in them be neither like the 
 law of the Medes and Persians, nor yet absolutely final, the 
 question, "What, after all, were they'!" may be ventured. 
 And this is what a very cautious geological writer has to say 
 about the group last named, — that, namely, at Westerdale, 
 and situate at no great distance from the village : "On the 
 northern front of the height called Top End is a consider- 
 able plateau constituted of the ironstone and the harder beds 
 of the upper part of the Middle Lias. On this plateau are 
 the 'pits' conjectured by some to be ancient British settle- 
 ments. These are excavated in the ironstone." And again, 
 a few pages farther on, he resumes : " The earliest discoverers 
 of the local stores of ironstone are considered by some to have 
 been the Eomans, by others the monks ; but we are agreed 
 in thinking that these early operations were carried on in the 
 so-called top seams. With respect to the supposed ancient 
 British settlements in Westerdale, which are pits sunk in the 
 main seam of the ironstone, a difiference of opinion exists as 
 to the use they may have served." The writer then proceeds 
 as follows : " Charcoal is said to have been found at the 
 bottom of some of them, which seems to indicate dwelling- 
 places, yet their great depth seems to militate against the 
 idea." 
 
 Undoubtedly it does ; for they are said to be eleven feet 
 
172 A ntiquarian 
 
 deep before the ironstone is reached, and the ironstone itself 
 is two feet thick at the place indicated. And the objection 
 thus raised to the habitation theory — for, however easy it may 
 be to get into a hole eleven or twelve feet deep by as many 
 wide, it might be much less easy to get out of it ; to say 
 nothing of the advantages (?) attending the presence of a fire 
 at that depth below the surface — would be quite sufficient to 
 demolish it, even if the finding of charcoal in them — the only 
 item of proof alleged of their occupation as dwellings — were 
 of some little force, instead of being in reality of none at all. 
 
 Let me try and illustrate what I mean. I have, I suppose, 
 at one time or another, made intimate acquaintance with the 
 interiors of from one hiuidred to a hundred and twenty of the 
 grave-hills, little and large, which dot our Cleveland moors all 
 over. But I have never opened one, or seen one opened, in 
 which — although in the larger half of them there were no 
 signs whatever of an interment present — there was not char- 
 coal in noticeable quantities, and in some of the larger houes 
 in such abundance — sometimes in layers covering four or five 
 square feet — as to force attention rather than merely to invite 
 it. And yet I never heard of any one who argued that, simply 
 because of the presence of charcoal, the houes aforesaid were 
 old habitations. 
 
 But again, there is another consideration by no means 
 irrelevant to the charcoal incident — and an established fact in 
 the Norfolk flint-pits — and that is this : that at such a depth, 
 even on a not very dark day, especially when the workers 
 had to win the mineral that underlay the circular sides ; and 
 still more, when they had occasion to work out what I have 
 called "the galleries" from the bottom of one shaft to the 
 bottom of its newest or nearest neighbour, artificial light not 
 only may, but must, have been wanted; and it is certainly 
 conceivable that a resinous pine-branch, for instance, may 
 have occasionally done duty in that capacity. And is not this 
 enough to account for the charcoal in the Westerdale and 
 
Careful Inquiry v. Hasty Assumption 1 7 3 
 
 other pits of the same class? The artificial light theory, 
 moreover, does not depend on mere imagination, or even 
 deduction; the flint -pits referred to gave up among other 
 things small-sized lamps rudely fashioned out of the chalk — 
 one or more of them, if I remember, with traces of the wick 
 still in its place. 
 
 But indeed the argument from the presence of charcoal to 
 the not-to-be-questioned fact of human residence in the place 
 or places wherein it occurs, is too utterly unreasonable to call 
 for detailed refutation. 
 
 To return then to our geological writer (Mr. Blake, in 
 The, Yorkshire Lias) : " On the other hand," he continues, 
 and that is as militating against the habitation theory, " there 
 is the remarkable fact of their being excavated on the most 
 considerable outcrop of the ironstone in the dales ; and as 
 most other excavations are known to be made for some 
 economical purpose, it would seem probable that these were 
 too. Though the workers would have been very foolish to 
 make such isolated vertical diggings, and not carry their 
 operations horizontally as others have done." 
 
 Yes ; but that is the very point to be ascertained, and not 
 gratuitously assumed. So too the isolation is a matter to be 
 ascertained, and not merely assumed. This is what a writer, 
 who in dealing with matters of fact was thoroughly careful, 
 observant, and accurate — I mean Dr. Young, the historian of 
 Whitby — had to say about these pits, in a book published 
 just over seventy years ago: "The Hole-pits commence 
 about 500 yards south-west of the church, and extend in 
 that direction about 1000 feet, and in breadth about 300 
 feet. They are partly on the common, but chiefly in an 
 enclosure. The pits are in many places much defaced by 
 the cattle. The most entire are chiefly towards the south 
 end, where some of them owe their preservation to bushes 
 growing on their sides." 
 
 And if some owed their preservation simply to the fortui- 
 
174 Antiquarian 
 
 tous protection afforded by growth of bushes, what about those 
 which had no such protection'! And what about the defacing 
 by cattle, and the ploughing, harrowing, scruffling, tillage 
 generally, within the enclosure % Let us recall the fact that 
 our own Danby Mine-pit Field has not had a pit to show within 
 the memory of man, nay, within the date of tradition even. 
 And while the Westerdale Hole-pits or Refholes are of seven 
 centuries of ascertained age, it would require a vast deal more 
 proof than could be adduced that the Mine-pits had not been 
 in process of working as late as the reign of Henry VH, and 
 possibly even later than that. 
 
 Mr. Blake winds up his notice of these Westerdale pits in 
 the following cautious terms : " Though, therefore, we incline 
 to the opinion that these may have been early mining excava- 
 tions, we cannot consider the fact conclusively proved." But, 
 at all events, from personal talk with the writer during the 
 course of his investigations in Westerdale and other parts of 
 the Danby neighbourhood, I had not the slightest doubt what 
 his own personal convictions were. And if, on the last day 
 he was at my house, I could have gone on with him only half 
 a mile farther than the point to which I had guided him in 
 connection with his ironstone quest in Fryup, and have told 
 him all I knew only two or three years later, about Mine-pit 
 Field; or if I could have gone still fa,rther with him, and 
 showed him what I so soon came to know about as the 
 " Roman village " and its accompaniments, I dare venture to 
 say that the sentences quoted above from TIm, Yorkshire lAas 
 would have been very materially altered both in tone and 
 deiiniteness of assertion. 
 
 For my own part, if only the opportunity could be achieved, 
 I should go in for an examination of any of these so-called 
 British villages with very definitely preconceived opinions as 
 to what should be looked for, and the way in which the look- 
 ing for it should be conducted ; and, for one thing, I should 
 have no more doubt about finding "horizontal operations" 
 
The British Village Theory in extremis 1 7 5 
 
 > 
 
 than about the fact that the pits were there. If I did not find 
 the ironstone, it would be for precisely the same reason that 
 my geological friend did not find it where " it ought to have 
 been" just across the road dividing the old furnaces and 
 slag-heap from the — for our purpose — happily named "Mine- 
 pit Field." 
 
 With the Geological Ordnance Survey maps before one's 
 eyes, it is impossible not to be struck with the fact that 
 there is either a distinctly marked outcrop of some iron- 
 stone seam or band, or else that it is present at no great 
 depth in the strata marked as those of the surface, in the 
 immediate vicinity of, if not at the precise spot occupied 
 by, every one of the alleged "villages." Even at the 
 British village on our Danby north moors, between the 
 Beacon and Waupley — perhaps honoured with more pil- 
 grimages than any other in the list — the tale-telling map 
 places a seam of "impure ironstone" inconveniently close 
 by. And yet this is the one of all others, the circumstances 
 and surroundings of which admit of most doubt as to their 
 original intention or raison d'Ure. For they are not only not 
 arranged in more or less quincunx order as the rest are (or 
 have been), but they are in two parallel rows, and apparently 
 with an intended outside bank or protection. They have 
 never been properly examined, or indeed subjected to any 
 process of exploration that would satisfy the merest tyro in 
 such inquiries ; for the recorded examination already referred 
 to was, as a scientific examination, altogether delusive. True, 
 the inevitable " bottom " and the inevitable " charcoal " were 
 found, and the burnt stones, and so forth. But the full and 
 convincing investigation remains to be made ; and from my 
 own personal experience on the spot, I am disposed to think 
 that when the true bottom is found the British village theory 
 will be disposed of for good. 
 
 Certainly the extravagant absurdity of Mr. Ord's account 
 {Cleveland, p. Ill) might be supposed to have done that 
 
I "J 6 Antiquarian 
 
 already with all thinking readers. If his own words were not 
 reproduced, it might be imagined that I was romancing, not 
 misrepresenting merely ; so I give them : " Our exploration 
 was amply rewarded by the discovery of the remains of a 
 complete BRITISH TOWN of vast magnitude . . . stretching 
 upwards of two miles to the base of Rosebury Topping. The 
 remains of these British dwellings are in the form of large 
 oval or circular pits, varying considerably in size, viz. eight to 
 twelve feet deep, and sixty to eighty and a hundred yards in 
 circumference. These pits commence near Highcliff, stretch 
 across Bold Venture Gill and the Kildale road,. nearly on a 
 line with Haswell's Hut, run along the lower edge of Hutton 
 Moor, below the Haggs, Hanging-stone, and White Hills, and 
 terminate in a deep line of circumvallation round the upper 
 part of Rosebury Topping. Of the pits here mentioned there 
 are many hundreds in single or double lines, of a zigzag 
 irregular form. . . . On one level spot, right of the Kildale 
 road, these habitations are extremely numerous ; indeed the 
 hill is completely scooped out like a honeycomb, sufficient to 
 afford room for a whole tribe of Brigantes." Then come the 
 charcoal, and the burnt stones, and the fortifying, and all the 
 rest of the marvellous tale ; but not a thought or a suspicion 
 even of all the strange inconsistencies involved. A "vast 
 town," "two miles in length," and^what the adventurous 
 author does not state — following a tortuous course to which 
 the erratic vagaries of a frolicsome letter S, with a curlicue at 
 each termination, would form no unsuggestive parallel, and 
 yet, "with the comfort of a town," uniting "the security and 
 protection of a fortified camp " ! 
 
 But however little our author thought of consistency or 
 possibility, he thought still less of what the geological map, 
 with its perverse system of colouring following all those 
 sinuosities and contortions just noted with a pertinacious 
 fidelity, would have to reveal to an inquirer after the real 
 rather than the fanciful. Even the obliging nomenclators 
 
' Like the baseless fabric of a vision ' 1 77 
 
 of the Ordnance maps could not quite digest this marvel 
 among discoveries, and they are unkind enough to prefix the 
 word "supposed" to "British settlement," and to insert in 
 the very thick of the indications of pits the still unkinder cut 
 involved in the two words "jet holes." The simple explana- 
 tion of course is, that the pits follow the course of the strata 
 containing minerals capable of being applied to economic uses, 
 inclusive of jet as well as ironstone. 
 
 Alas for the ruined glory of the " vast British settlement " ! 
 
DESCEIPTIVE AND GEOLOGICAL 
 
DESCRIPTIVE AND GEOLOGICAL 
 
 In one of the introductory sections of the present book I tried 
 to give some sort of an idea of the way in which I first came 
 to hear of Danby, and under what circumstances I first beheld 
 the place, as well as of some of the impressions produced upon 
 my mind by what I saw and experienced. In few words, I 
 wanted others to see it in some sort or degree as I saw it, and 
 with something of the same preparation of mind and thought 
 as in my own case. And I gave the several details. Now, how- 
 ever, I want rather to proceed with a more descriptive notice 
 of the place, and, perhaps, in part, of the district it belongs 
 to, and so to try and delineate some of the Danby features as 
 they display themselves to the observant eye whether of native 
 or visitor. 
 
 I remember, among other " fond " ^ things I have been 
 guilty of, once telling my children a story of "The Last of 
 the Giants," whose habitation I placed in a great cave in our 
 local " Crag Wood," and to whom, jointly with his walking- 
 staff (with a huge knob at the upper end of it), I assigned but 
 one eye with certain remarkable properties, giving him, in 
 
 ' This word here means " foolish, " " silly. " A " fond trick " is what 
 only a foolish or silly person would be guilty of. A "fondy" means a 
 natural, a horn fool. Like so many of our so-called "dialect words," it 
 is only a survival of the older English. In Palsgrave, or about 1530, 
 "the word /ojmZ changes from stuUus to amans (cynics say that that is no 
 great step) : Iwaxe fond upon a womam is translated hy je m'enamoure " 
 The New English, vol. i. p. 456). 
 
IS2 
 
 Descriptive and Geological 
 
 part-compensation, a hand with five fingers besides the thumb, 
 the fifth of the right hand having two tips to it, the middle 
 one being short instead of the longest, and all of them gnarled 
 and swollen-] ointed from such rheumatics as a giant, dwelling 
 in a vefy damp cave, would be likely to suffer from. I do not 
 remember giving this great personage a princess for his house- 
 keeper — princesses having been, I think, scarce hereabouts in 
 those days — but a regular old crone, of the old-fashioned 
 sort. Now, had he chanced one day, when the old woman in 
 question was making bread-cakes for his consumption, and the 
 solitary eye was in the head of the stick (where it used to 
 spend a good half of the four-and-twenty hours) instead of in 
 his own, to stumble as he moved from his place, and in the 
 attempt to steady himself, put his hand by accident upon the 
 cake she was moulding, with the rolling-pin lying across it, the 
 dough would have been impressed with one longitudinal 
 valley, due to the rolling-pin, and five smaller ones, roughly 
 at right angles with the long one, and presenting divers 
 irregularities of form and length, due to the eccentric shape 
 and make of the impressed fingers, and, most likely, with 
 some roughnesses and steepnesses here and there, due to the 
 sticking of the paste to the fingers that had not been duly 
 floured before the contact with the dough, and so had broken 
 the smoothness of the edges of the impressions. Now the 
 mould that would thus have been left might serve to give a 
 reasonable idea of the configuration of the district of which 
 Danby forms by far the most considerable part. It must, 
 however, be remembered that the main or rolling-pin valley 
 has a general direction of east and west, and that, conse- 
 quently, the subsidiary or finger-valleys are roughly north and 
 south. The fifth finger, with its twin tips, will represent 
 Westerdale; the next, Danby-dale; the third, or short 
 middle-finger. Little Fryup; the next, longest of all. Great 
 Fryup; and the remaining one, with its nail rather crushed 
 out of shape, and bulging on the side towards the left hand, 
 
Geological Configuration 183 
 
 Glaisdale. The ridges between the impressions, especially if 
 you bear in mind that the plastic mass of dough, from the 
 nature and manner of pressure put upon it, as supposed, would 
 of necessity thicken towards and beyond the extent of the 
 finger-tips, would represent the moorland ridges which lie 
 between the dales, and which unite beyond the terminations 
 — locally "the Heads" — of them, forming one huge area of 
 moorland, which grows higher each furlong of its progress 
 towards the south, until, where Danby marches with Eosedale, 
 it reaches at one point the not inconsiderable height of 1420 
 feet above the sea. But while the impressions of the fingers, 
 such as we have supposed them, with knotty joints and 
 partially distorted configuration, serve fairly well to convey 
 an idea of what these dales are as to fashion and form, we 
 must not suffer ourselves to be entirely misled by the rolling- 
 pin notion. The vaUey which cuts across the mouths or ends 
 of the dales is no more straight like the pin itself, or regular 
 like its impression, in reality, than the dales themselves are, 
 in proportion as they justify the idea of the impressions made 
 by gouty fingers. It varies in width as it varies in regularity 
 of outline. Some of the outstanding moorland ridges project 
 themselves farther into its area than others do. True, the 
 northern boundary, a bank which rises with decision from the 
 general level of the central valley until it reaches the moor 
 again, and then still goes on ascending until it reaches to 
 nearly 1000 feet above the sea, is much more regular in the 
 directness of its outline than the other side, and is but a little 
 broken in upon by the passage of small streams or "becks," 
 none of which are of sufficient dimensions to need or pro- 
 duce a dale to convey their waters to the main stream — 
 that, namely, which rolls and rattles, winds and twists its 
 devious course along the slow slope of the central valley. 
 Still, with aU these deviations from directness — and in 
 places they are so pronounced that the stream, running 
 past a given point for three-quarters of a mile or so, returns 
 
1 84 Descriptive and Geological 
 
 to within a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards of the said 
 point, only to continue the same vagaries at a somewhat lower 
 level — still, with all this, the direction of its course, on the 
 whole, is always to the east, and though it trebles the necessary 
 distance for reaching the place at which it receives the waters 
 of the Glaisdale stream, it receives them at last. And from 
 the vagrant line of this lesser rivulet, called the Glaisdale beck, 
 to the watershed of the ridge between Danby-dale and Wester- 
 dale, with a wide deep cantle of moor to the south of the 
 dales, reaching across to Westerdale Head, and with a corre- 
 sponding sweep of moorland on the north side of the principal 
 valley (claiming a crow-line length of six miles and a half for 
 the extent of its northern boundary), all lies within the meres 
 and limits of the ancient demesne or district known as Danby. 
 The entire area of this great expanse is nearly 23,000 acres of 
 land, of which 11,600 consist of "undivided moor" belonging 
 to the two townships of Danby and Glaisdale, and 6290 acres 
 represent the enclosed or cultivated land in Danby alone. 
 The following description is given of the parish in GUvt- 
 land, Ancient and Modern : " The shape of this tract is that of 
 an irregular five-sided trapezoid, having the least side for the 
 southern boundary. The greatest length is from north to 
 south, and is not less than seven miles; while the medium 
 breadth is scarcely under six, the diagonals being respectively 
 eight miles and a half, and seven and a half. Throughout the 
 entire district thus embraced it is difiicult, except, perhaps, 
 for a small space on either side of the main stream, and that 
 with many interruptions, to find a plot which for a hundred 
 yards together lies on a real level. The lowest level in the 
 entire area, as marked on the Ordnance contours, is 250 feet, 
 and the area lying under 300 feet is probably less than a score 
 of acres ; while between this practical minimum and the 
 maximum of 1420 feet, which is attained at Loosehow on the 
 south, there is a continual and a continually renewed series of 
 fluctuations and variations. This reiterated sliding scale may 
 
AtAift^cns JlvcrUuul I'oLt L6,li 
 
 A MAP OF THE PARISH OF DANBY. 
 
 Loi>tk~l., StnJ*sCf'l ht'-'j' S-tt/ib* 
 
The Views come to be looked at 185 
 
 be the better imagined, perhaps, if we keep in mind that in 
 the district under notice we have the dales — giving its full 
 meaning to the word, so descriptive in its local use and 
 application^of Glaisdale, Great and Little Fryup, Danby, and 
 Commondale, besides a portion, six miles and a half long, of 
 the Esk valley ; and besides, also, several " gills " or rocky 
 picturesque ravines, the most important of which are Stone- 
 gate and Crunkley Gill. For it is impossible to think or con- 
 ceive adequately of what is meant by a " dale " without having 
 brought before the mind's eye the steep or abrupt slopes or 
 "banks" which on either side must aid in its constitution or 
 formation. And the realisation of what is thus implied in the 
 enumeration of so many "dales" and "gills" as combining to 
 constitute the district under notice, necessarily prepares the 
 way for accepting the idea of an endless succession of changing 
 levels and altitudes." 
 
 But no amount of letterpress description can give any 
 adequate idea of what the district really is in its physical 
 aspects and conditions. I once heard a very taking and com- 
 prehensively descriptive remark made by a man who had seen 
 much in foreign travel as well as in home rambles, in regard 
 to the diversified sections and aspects of these dales of ours 
 and their characteristic scenery. He said : " They differ from 
 all other I have ever seen, and in this particular especially, 
 that elsewhere you have to go in search of the beautiful views ; 
 here they come and offer themselves to be looked at." That 
 is true ; and necessarily true when the contours and configura- 
 tion of the district are borne in mind. For the advance or 
 retrocession of a hundred yards or so will remove the obstacle 
 to vision intruded rather than merely presented by some steep 
 nab-end or projecting spur of a hillside outlier, and permit one 
 to gaze at will on some varied or romantic scene alike unex- 
 pected and unforeseen. 
 
 But even this is but one item in the many which, when 
 united, have the effect of making the Dales scenery what it is. 
 
1 86 Descriptive and Geological 
 
 In the way of illustration of what I have just written, I will 
 mention one noteworthy matter. Fryup Head (that is, the 
 upper or higher end of the dale, where it is newest and 
 narrowest, where it has just begun to be scooped out from 
 between its steep containing banks) is one of the most pictur- 
 esque of all the picturesque dale-heads in the district. At the 
 point at which that division of the dale called "the head" 
 begins (that is, as you ascend or go up the dale in a southerly 
 direction) the width of the valley from moor edge to moor 
 edge is fully a mile and a quarter. On the west side the upper 
 half of the bank is steep and rocky, and clothed with wood, 
 mainly pines, extending nearly a mile in length. Where 
 the wood ends the last rise or upper hundred feet of the 
 bank becomes more rugged and precipitous, turning round 
 abruptly about the third of a mile farther on, and taking an 
 easterly direction instead of the original one towards the south. 
 And soon after the turn the place or part of the "head" 
 called "the hills" is come upon, and "the hills" in Fryup 
 Head are a very singular feature indeed. Of course the 
 authentic story of the Eildon Hills and the manner of their 
 formation is in everybody's recollection, as are also their 
 general aspect and appearance. Remembering all this, one 
 would be fully justified in assuming that some apprentice of 
 the great manufacturer implicated there had been at work in 
 the head, and that his " 'prentice hand " had wanted a very 
 great deal of "trying" indeed. For all along the last half of 
 the rugged, broken, precipitous bank (as it has now become), 
 spoken of as running towards the east, and yet onwards still, 
 when it makes a turn and goes for the south, lie tumbled, in 
 infinite and most confused confusion, a series of short banklets, 
 hillocks, mounds, and peaks, with intertwining gullies, slacks, 
 and hollows — these last with the lush growth of damp or 
 watery places in them, and the banks with scattered rather 
 than scanty growth of bracken, jumper, and whin all about 
 them. Many a question has been asked me by the people, 
 
' What a lovely Undercliff '/ 187 
 
 craving an explanation of this wilderness of confused and 
 tumbled piles of earth and rock. "Had there been mining, 
 perhaps mining for iron, there, and on a large scale, in old 
 times?" "Had there been an earthquake, and had it thrown 
 'the hills' up in that strange way?" "Had they been made 
 and left so by the Flood?" Such questions have been 
 put forth once and again, and I remember wishing the 
 querists could have been present one day as I was walking 
 with an enthusiastic and much-travelled geologist over the lofty 
 ridge of moorland commanding a full view of a great part of 
 these "hills." As he came suddenly and unexpectingly in 
 sight of the strange waste of broken ground, down dropped 
 his stick and up went both arms in his surprise and admi- 
 ration, a rapid exclamation following, " Oh, what a lovely 
 undercUff!" There was the explanation in one word — an 
 undercliff — and opening up what a vista into the far past ! A 
 great body of water filling up these depths that are now dales, 
 in its milder moods gently laving the foot of the cliffs which 
 now supply the moor-topped banks of the dale, and in its 
 rougher tempers sapping their stability as surely as rudely. 
 And then when the process had gone forward to the requisite 
 extent, there ensued the falling forward of the upper and 
 undermined portion — veins of rock and deeper solid beds, and 
 thick strata of unconsolidated earth and stones — and the issue 
 of the fall was "the hills." 
 
 Strange to say, I once saw these dales — the illusion was so 
 utter, so complete, so perfect, that I can use no other words 
 competent to convey what I want to communicate — I once 
 saw these dales just as they must have appeared in the times 
 — how many tens of thousands of ages ago who shall say ? — 
 when this great water-flood filled them. I had been travelling 
 all night in order to get back, after a pressing call from home, 
 to my duty on Sunday. I had left York by the early train, 
 as the trains ran in those days, and there was a trap waiting 
 for me at Grosmont. In this I began my drive, — over moor- 
 
Descriptive and Geological 
 
 land almost the whole way when once I had climbed the long 
 wearisome hill from Grosmont Station to the village of Egton. 
 When we reached the heights from which we could see well 
 into Eskdale, it was — so far as the testimony of actual vision 
 went — full of water as far as the eye could see, and full to 
 such a height that only 100 feet or so of the upper banks 
 was not submerged. No amount of rubbing one's eyes pre- 
 vailed to corroborate the testimony of my recent conviction 
 that there was no water, save the usual fine-weather supply, 
 in the bed of the Esk when I had crossed Grosmont Bridge a 
 short half-hour before. As the scene expanded itself more 
 and more before me, Eskdale and all its tributary dales were 
 inundated, drowned, submerged, and there was the level of 
 the mighty flood just marking its horizontal line at the foot 
 of what ought to have been the higher banks rising from the 
 dales, but which were in all reality, so far as ocular demon- 
 stration went, absolute cliffs on the margin of a mighty sheet 
 of water — inlet from the sea or lengthening inland lake. As 
 I mounted higher and higher towards the Beacon, and looked 
 into what ought to have been, and had been, Danby-dale when 
 last I had seen it, there was nothing but the calm glistening 
 surface in sight as far as the eye could discern, and the point 
 I had attained was high enough to enable me to look into the 
 very head of Danby, a good six miles distant. There was 
 a great sheet of water with deep, narrow, far-reaching gulfs 
 or inlets, and only the moorland heights standing out of it. 
 No stranger to the country and to the actual everyday scene 
 could for a moment have suspected that it was not a sheet of 
 water over which his eye roamed. 
 
 By this time the sun was getting well up, and there was 
 no cloud to obscure his rising brightness. Truly it was a 
 wonderfully and mysteriously beautiful scene. But just as 
 Nature had spread before our eyes this mimic representation 
 of one of her ancient phases, so Nature presently supplied the 
 disillusionment. As the sun rose to a greater altitude, and 
 
A real Vision of the Past 189 
 
 his rays began to fall on the seeming water -sheet with 
 incidence at a greater angle, I saw little threads and streaks 
 of the dissembling surface detach themselves from its face, 
 rise up and disappear, like the steam from the locomotive in a 
 fine sunny day. Soon they were followed by larger films. 
 But still the general surface was not visibly affected ; until 
 at last, as the process of dissolution continued, a sort of dim 
 translucency seemed to supervene, and the higher range of 
 objects and points, hitherto concealed, began to show them- 
 selves, much as if the flood was settling away rapidly, and 
 beginning to leave the trees and higher grounds uncovered. 
 The first object to be seen distinctly was the small group of 
 Scotch pines near the old parish church ; the emergence of 
 which was speedily followed by that of the church itself ; and 
 then the whole west bank of the dale came into sight ; and 
 finally, and almost as if by a species of legerdemain, so rapid 
 and effectual was the process, the whole remaining cumulus 
 of white vapour was caught up, torn to shreds and films, and 
 completely dissipated. 
 
 But still, illusive and fleeting as the scene had been, it had 
 efiectively served to aid the mind and the imagination in 
 forming and retaining the conception not only that water had 
 once filled what are now the main valley and its ofishoots, the 
 dales, but that its part in fashioning and finishing the said 
 valley and its dales, as we now see them, had by no means 
 been an insignificant, even if in reality only a subsidiary one. 
 Every new section of the bank of the Esk itself, or of one of its 
 many feeders draining the dales as well as the moors above ; 
 every cutting or other excavation carried through in railway 
 construction, or other considerable work ; every drain sunk a 
 couple of feet or so lower than the average three feet ; every 
 digging for a foundation, or sinking of a well, — all serve to 
 show, and often with a singular power of illustration, what 
 the agency of water has been, in the dawn of the hoariest eld, 
 in making and leaving our country what it is. "What do 
 
1 90 Descriptive and Geological 
 
 you think of this dales country ?" I said one day to the then 
 engineer of the North-Eastern Railway Company, who, as I 
 knew well, had been put to no ordinary trouble by the wanton 
 behaviour of the " batters" or slopes of the sides of the cuttings, 
 which had to be made below Danby End for our railway, then 
 in process of construction. The answer was emphatic, in force 
 as well as in form : — " It is a devil of a country." The said 
 batters had been laid at the usual angle ; and why not ? The 
 soil, as every one could see, was a fine, firm clay, and with no 
 apparent weak or watery places in it ; and the slopes when 
 finished were as neat-looking and seemingly as likely to be 
 stable as any in any district whatsoever. But the incidence 
 of a wet season soon altered all that, Before the wet time 
 had lasted a week, these fair-seeming batters had begun to 
 move, to give way, to slide down bodily in many places, and 
 in none had they stood firm. Large lumps had come away, 
 leaving ugly-looking cavities in the bank, and cumbering, per- 
 haps filling up, the space destined to receive the sleepers ; or 
 else there were treacherous, lazy flowings of soft mud, spread- 
 ing themselves, in places two feet deep, along the level bottom 
 of the cutting. " The batters were too steep " was the view 
 taken; and accordingly, when the navvies were able to get 
 to work again, two or three yards, or more where the cut- 
 tings were deepest, were taken off the higher parts of the 
 slopes, and lessened out by degrees as the level of the in- 
 tended permanent way was reached. It was a slow process ; 
 but at last all was made good, and the neat slopes — only 
 much less steep than before — were left in their naked regu- 
 larity. But again the wet time came ; and again the unlucky 
 batters began to slip and slide, and discharge massive lumps, 
 and form great mud-puddles. And yet again had the weary 
 work of repairing damages and clearing away debris, of lower- 
 ing the inclination of the slopes, and digging great trenches 
 up and down the sides, filling them up with blocks of clean 
 broken freestone, to be gone through; and, to mention but 
 
A ' Devil of a Country ' 191 
 
 one place in which the result of all this work may plainly be 
 seen, there is a longish slope, just below the Danby End 
 Station, the angle of which cannot be much more than twenty 
 or twenty-five degrees, having been originally, I suppose, 
 hardly less than forty-five. 
 
 The quantity of earth that was dug out and " run to spoil " 
 in the process of making good what had been damaged and 
 ruined by the untrustworthy nature of the soU of this " devil 
 of a country " was something enormous. I forget how many 
 hundreds, or even thousands, of truck-loads had to be removed, 
 but there was a huge mound of the useless material deposited 
 on a space between the beck and the line, some half-mile or 
 so on the Whitby side of the Danby Station. And besides 
 that, wherever a few loads could be vented nearer the place 
 it was taken from, in the way of filling up a hollow, or raising 
 the access to one of the new gateways which had to be formed 
 in divers places, giving passage across the line from one part 
 of a severed enclosure to another, or what not, there a suffi- 
 ciency was sure to be deposited. It so happened that I was 
 passing along one day by the beck-side over a hollow that had 
 been thus filled up, and with a gateway approach leading 
 across it ; and there lay the material that had been removed, 
 under my feet and on either side, as I stopped to take note 
 of the fact. And, inasmuch as it was no long time since the 
 work had been completed, numbers of the symmetrical pieces 
 of clay raised by employment of the navvy's " hollow-tool " — 
 seven or eight inches in the blade by about six wide, and with 
 convex back and concave front — were lying almost as perfect 
 in shape as when newly freed from the tool which had dug 
 them. "Almost as perfect," but not quite. For I noticed a 
 sort of blui- about the edges of several, which edges I knew 
 must have been cut quite sharp. These blurred edges, I also 
 noticed, were frequent, and not due to impact or forcible 
 action of any sort. Looking more closely at the objects in 
 question, I saw that the circumstance noted depended on 
 
192 Descriptive and Geological 
 
 what almost might be called spontaneous exfoliation, or action 
 peculiar to the shaped segments themselves. The edges were 
 opening under the influence of natural causes. A few seconds 
 of aroused attention and observation sufficed to demonstrate 
 the fact that the structure of the clay was not homogeneous, 
 but finely laminated, and that as the process of desiccation 
 consequent on exposure to the air went on, the several laminae 
 of which the mass was composite began to separate, exactly 
 as the leaves of a book that has become damp and is exposed 
 to the influence of the sun or a fire always do. The thickness 
 of each lamina was about that of ordinary stifl' brown paper, 
 and between each two of them was an almost imperceptible 
 film of almost impalpable siliceous matter or sand. The 
 explanation of the treacherous slippery nature of the apparently 
 stable clay slopes, and of the tendency of the constituent parts 
 to run into pools and streamlets of liquid mud, was given at 
 once, and with a cheerful clearness. When the wet time 
 came, water worked in through some of the countless fissures 
 or cracks met with in all clay formations in times of drought, 
 and finding its way along the sandy partings, induced motion 
 of one lamina over another, motion led on to abrasion, 
 and abrasion, in the case of such thin laminae in a wet time, 
 meant the abundant and still increasing formation of a totally 
 disintegrated accumulation of semi-liquid clay with an inter- 
 mixture of finely comminuted sand. ' No wonder the batters 
 
 ^ The thickness of the lamina! varied, as, on a moment's reflection, is 
 seen to be inevitable. But the comparison with a block of sheets of thick 
 brown paper, with the reservation that they shall not all he of one thick- 
 ness, and that some of them may be thick enough to be of the very 
 thickest material of that description, will be by no means misleading. 
 In some of the pieces examined there was no difficulty in counting five- 
 and-twenty or thirty "leaves," the thickness of each of the said pieces 
 being well on towards four inches ; and when the intercalation of the 
 films of sand is remembered, a tolerable idea of the constitution of the 
 clay as a mass is obtained. It may further be mentioned that a good 
 many truck-loads of the material in question were employed as backing 
 to the piers of two large girder-bridges thrown across the Esk, opposite 
 
Relieving the ' Batter' 193 
 
 would not stand, and that the only effectual remedy lay in 
 reducing the slope to such a degree that the superincumbent 
 weight should be thrown as far back as possible, and in pro- 
 viding the readiest possible discharge for the water that must 
 of necessity fall upon them or percolate through them from 
 the adjoining strata. 
 
 But to avoid being tedious I relegate to the Appendix 
 certain further observations on the nature of this deposit, and 
 the deductions one has to make in connection with them. 
 See Appendix B. 
 
 and a little below Danby Lodge, and to add to the height of the embank- 
 ment at either end of the same, and that precisely the same difficulty 
 ensued in these cases also : the packing and the added material simply 
 melted away, and the work supposed to be done had to be done over 
 again. 
 
DESOEIPTIVE AND GEOLOGICAL (continued) 
 
 But before finally leaving that part of my subject which 
 occupied the last chapter, it may be expedient to add a few 
 words more, both as introductory to other like reminiscences 
 and as illustrative of the significance, value, and importance 
 of time as a factor, in any effort to estimate geological changes. 
 And I do not think that the circumstances to be adduced are 
 by any means the least interesting of those which have 
 attracted my observation during my sojourn here. 
 
 There is a locality in the parish (indeed there are two) 
 called by the name " Coums." The name has been variously 
 spelt, and it is met with, similarly applied, in other dales 
 besides Danby, Eosedale being one of them. But the sound 
 is the same in either case, being that represented by the 
 spelling coombs, the b being nearly silent as in comb. The 
 name is probably coeval with the Celtic occupation of the 
 district. The Coumfe I advert to is a roughly semicircular 
 gap or hollow, with rather steeply-sloping sides, something 
 like half a basin, scooped out of the side of the moor-bank. 
 It is nearly half a mile wide from one end of the moor-brae 
 semicircle to the other, and somewhere about the same from 
 front to back, or from mid-diameter by the perpendicular 
 radius to the circumference. On the western slope of this 
 hollow or half-basin is a long narrow chasm, in all extending 
 to about 150 yards in length. This in the six-inch Ordnance 
 map is marked "gravel-pit," on the Incus a nan lucendo 
 
Remarkable local Subsidence 195 
 
 principle clearly, for there is no gravel there nor anywhere 
 near. But there chanced to be an uncouth-looking gap in the 
 moor-side there, long and narrow, and so it had to be noticed 
 and designated ; and the surveyor being, as it would seem, a 
 man of imagination, it was named a gravel-pit. But the said 
 surveyor's imagination was far from reaching forth to the fact 
 that in that queer-shaped gully (which might have marked 
 the site of a slip if only there had been a bank high enough 
 for a slipping section to slide from) he had the key to the 
 whole formation of the locality designated by the local name 
 "Coums." For this magnified trench or gully is due to 
 vertical subsidence, and it has been a part of my experience 
 to note the process in full course. The high road into Fryup, 
 past Danby Castle, lies directly across the lower part of the 
 said trench or gully, and it chanced to me one day some seven 
 or eight years since to observe, as I descended the hill-side 
 above, two dark lines drawn (a little obliquely) across the 
 roadway just where it traversed this strange gully — strange 
 enough in the eyes of the country-folk to have led to the 
 imposition by them of the name "Hell-kettle." On coming 
 to the lines in question, it was apparent that they were 
 due to slight fissures, vertical in direction, and apparently 
 springing from some depth. When I returned some three or 
 four hours later the lines were more marked, and it was 
 already quite evident that there was a discernible difi'erence 
 of height in the two edges of the several rifts. The next day 
 was Sunday, and as I drove over the place the jolt as the 
 wheel crossed the first or higher edge to the lower level of the 
 second was quite perceptible ; and a close examination made 
 on the return journey showed a distinct settlement of three 
 inches in the case of the higher split, and about two-thirds of 
 that in the case of the other. Close and almost daily 
 observation showed the process, whatever it was, to be in 
 steady progress. It revealed also that the cracks or rifts 
 were not confined to the roadway, but extended on either side 
 
198 Descriptive and Geological 
 
 weapon than a walking-stick, I should not . exaggerate ; and 
 what I have seen during the whole of that period, and seen 
 illustrated in divers manners, has been movement, essentially 
 lateral movement, in- the banks of the beck themselves, and in 
 the fields lying, with more or less of a slope always, above, 
 and at no great distance above them. I have seen, too, great 
 changes in the bed of the stream itself, all more or less evi- 
 dently connected with what I have spoken of as lateral motion. 
 Thus, there is no perceptible extension of the width of the 
 bed of the stream ; the average distance from the brae of one 
 bank to the brae of the other remains relatively the same. 
 And yet, the waste of the steep earthy faces of these banks — 
 many of them from seven to nine feet from the average level 
 of the water to their uppermost edge — after times of long- 
 continued drought, or other times of sharp and continued 
 frost, suggests a total amount of abrasion which is not easily 
 calculable, alike from its magnitude and from its indefinite 
 factors. Say that a frost of from fifteen to twenty degrees 
 lasts over three or four nights — and there are few winters in 
 which that does not befall from half a dozen to half a score 
 times — and that such frost affects or causes the exposed part 
 of the bank to, so to speak, exfoliate to the depth of only 
 an inch and a half ; or that a drought of a third or a half 
 the duration of that of the summer of 1889 pulverises the 
 said surface to no more than the same extent ; and that so, 
 in either case, there is so much material, easy to be removed, 
 placed at the disposal of the first " fresh " that ensues ; of 
 course the absolute linear space between bank-face and bank- 
 face cannot escape being affected in the same proportion. 
 Carry this process on over a year, — or much more, over a series 
 of years, — and it is self-evident that the banks, considering 
 only this absolute waste of either of them, must be receding 
 from each other indefinitely; unless indeed there be some 
 compensating energy at work. And that compensating energy 
 is what I am intending by the phrase " lateral movement." 
 
Evidences of Lateral Movement 1 99 
 
 The action of this movement is seen, moreover, in other 
 ways. Thus, for instance, there is not in all the extent of the 
 beck with which we are concerned a "stream" or a "pool" 
 remaining as it was, and exactly where it was, when I first 
 threw a fly over its waters. Some of them have receded or 
 otherwise altered from a hundred feet to a hundred yards in 
 the positions occupied by them. In other words, there are 
 now, and higher up in the river, beds of water-worn stones 
 with a sharp run of the stream over them, where forty years 
 ago there was only smoothly flowing water, with the bottom 
 from a foot to two or three feet lower than it is now. Now 
 these stones did not work their way up the stream, neither 
 were they brought down from the rockier banks nearer the 
 head-waters, for there are heavy mill-dams at Danby End 
 and at Castleton ; and as a matter of fact masses of rock or 
 large blocks of stone are not driven over them. But these 
 stones in the beck may be and are dug out by the stream 
 itself from the banks which restrain it on either side. And 
 these high banks, as I have described them, as pushed forward 
 on either side by a slow progressive movement, would supply 
 an adequate quantity of stony blocks and cobbles for the 
 result alleged. 
 
 But this is by no means all. There is in the close vicinity 
 of one of the " streams " referred to as having undergone great 
 alteration, and also near a place where the southern bank of 
 the stream shows very open tokens of slow but continued 
 movement towards the water, a bed of yellow clay, of several 
 feet in width, exposed to the continual action of a quickly 
 running stream, and to all the attrition thereby involved, and 
 which yet never seems to waste in the slightest degree. There 
 it is still, within some eight or ten inches of the surface — that 
 is, at what may be called the average level of the river — and 
 there it has been these twelve or fifteen years, for I do not 
 remember it during the earlier twenty-five years or so of my 
 acquaintance with the beck-side, so far as ordinary observation 
 
200 Descriptive and Geological 
 
 can discern. And yet such a material, under such circumstances, 
 must have undergone a process of degradation calculated to 
 wear away many feet of its thickness. Of course then it must 
 be rising towards the surface under an adequate amount of 
 pressure. And that pressure can only be exerted by lateral 
 superincumbent weight, alike local in character and in applica- 
 tion. And yet in the close vicinity there are, as already 
 noticed, more symptoms of relief of local pressure by the 
 yielding of the bank in the immediate background than almost 
 anywhere else. But whatever the bank may lose in this way — 
 and the loss is evidently great — is fully con^pensated from 
 behind, so that even after the lapse of forty years the said 
 bank is practically unaffected and undiminished in volume, 
 height, or general aspect and conditions. The inference seems 
 plain : not only that what is worn away and lost in front is 
 made good by what is supplied from behind, but that also 
 there is a downward pressure somewhere in the rear, of great 
 energy, and maintained in lasting vigour, the operation of 
 which levers up the plastic clay-bed in the stream, and con- 
 tinually causes to be presented a renewed surface in compensa- 
 tion of that which is being continually abraded. And it is 
 further, and thoughtfully, to be observed that, whatever is, 
 as supposed, " made good from behind " is supplied, not by a 
 series of slips perpetually falling forward and filling up the 
 vacuities as they are created, but in some other way ; for in 
 the first place, no such slips occur or have occurred, and in 
 the second place, the slope from the foot of the Coums 
 depression is so gradual and of such considerable linear width 
 that mere slips within the higher area could in no way affect 
 the condition of matters involved. But then there are these 
 subsidences ; and the. semicircular area over which they are in 
 operation is a very considerable one, and the operation seems 
 never to be subjected to either suspension or intermission. ^ 
 
 ' Thus, at the foot of the moor-bank proper, about a quarter of a mile 
 from the pseudo-gravel-pit, on the way to the Castle, is a wall of the 
 
Temptcs edax reruni 201 
 
 But if we are not merely permitted but compelled by 
 circumstances to assume that this is so, what follows \ Surely 
 this : that, given the factor of time, there is presented a 
 forcible as well as intelligible explanation of the way in which 
 this remarkable -looking semicircular hollow or half-basin — 
 sufficiently marked to have been named "combe," or rather 
 "cwm," perhaps two thousand, perhaps three thousand, years 
 ago — -first began to be and has gone on "being," and growing 
 and widening and deepening from the era of that said first 
 beginning in the far-away lost cycles of the infinite past down 
 to the fleeting times of the present measurable now. Yes, 
 only given the factor of time, this misnamed gravel-pit in our 
 well-named little local division of Coums supplies the clue to, 
 at least intimates the nature of, the explanation of the way in 
 which these sinking masses of material are disposed of in the 
 process of backing up the ever-worn but continually renewed 
 banks of that tireless little carrier, "the river of Esk." 
 
 ordinary mortarless description so common in this district, but well and 
 carefully built, and of a character to stand for a century with only casual 
 attention and repair. This wall has not been built twenty years yet, 
 and still it is perpetually in need, not of repairs merely, but of rebuilding, 
 iu some part or other ; sometimes even in two or three places at the same 
 time. It is seen to bulge and begin to overhang on the roadside, for 
 no apparent reason ; and then, on some slight provocation of wind or 
 impact, over it comes for a rood together. Previously to the winter of 1888 
 three or four of these bulgings were patent to the most unobservant eye, 
 and it required no prophet to foretell the rebuilding which would become 
 necessary when once winter's winds and melting snows were past. And 
 the explanation is simply this : that the wall is built mainly along one 
 of the old lines of subsidence, and as the line of hard consolidated road 
 tends, in some degree, to influence the axis of subsidence by directing 
 it towards the more yielding material of the pasture-field on the slope 
 below, the support is gradually withdrawn from one part or another of 
 the foot of the wall, and naturally and necessarily it falls over on the 
 other side. Now the length of this wall is not less than the third of 
 a mile, and it terminates very nearly where the semicircular area called 
 Coums reaches, as to its highest part, its eastern limit. So wide and 
 extensive is the surface, over all, of which some signs or other of vertical 
 displacement are perpetually to be traced. 
 
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 
 
 WEDDINGS— BURIALS— HALIKELDS AND THE 
 MELL-SUPPEE^THE DOG-WHIPPER 
 
DALES WEDDINGS AND THEIR ACCOMPANIMENTS 
 
 The most typical Dales wedding I ever remember having 
 witnessed was nearly forty years ago and on Martinmas day. 
 But I should not have spoken of the event in the singular 
 number ; for there were, in point of fact, four weddings all to 
 be solemnised coincidently. And, whether by arrangement 
 or by chance, all four of the couples, with their attendants, 
 came up to the church in one cavalcade. First, there were 
 no less than seven horsemen, each with a pillion-borne female 
 behind him. Three of these were brides ; the others attend- 
 ants. Of other attendants, male and female, there must have 
 been at least as many more ; and then came those who had 
 gathered to see the weddings, and so forth. But besides, 
 there were from a dozen to a score men, mostly young, 
 who carried guns, and who, as the weddingers passed down 
 the little slope leading to the churchyard gate, fired a salvo. 
 As may be supposed, more than one or two of the horses, 
 being neither sobered by age and hard work, nor yet trained 
 to stand fire, were startled and began to plunge or rear. I 
 fully expected a disaster. However, with the exception of 
 one of the pillion ladies, who slid gently — though not with- 
 out raising her voice — backwards down over the crupper of 
 her steed, no casualty occurred. After the ceremony was 
 over, great was the scramble among the small boys for the 
 coppers, which it was and is customary for the newly married 
 man, or his best man, to scatter the moment the chancel door 
 
2o6 Manners and Customs 
 
 is left. And then an adjournment to the field adjoining the 
 churchyard was made; and there were a series of races, all on 
 foot, to be run for the ribbons which were the gift of the 
 several brides ; and as some of them gave more than one, the 
 races were multiplied accordingly. 
 
 Time was, and not so very long before the commencement 
 of my incumbency here, when these races were ridden on 
 horseback; and at an earlier period still, the race was a 
 "steeple-chase" across country — the goal being the house 
 whence the bride had come, and to which the wedding caval- 
 cade was to return for the usual festivities. More than once, 
 too, I have known, when the bride in some way incurred the 
 suspicion of niggardliness, through not complying with the 
 recognised usage of supplying one ribbon at least to be run 
 for, the " stithy was fired upon her," i.e. a charge of powder 
 was rammed into a hole in the anvil (much after the fashion 
 of a " shot " in a mine) and fired in derision ; well pronounced, 
 if the loudness of the report counted for anything; as the 
 wedding party passed on the journey home from the church. 
 The direct converse of this, was the firing of guns as the party 
 passed the residences of friends or well-wishers. 
 
 The almost invariable practice on the part of the newly 
 married man has been, and still is, after the registration in 
 the vestry has been duly attended to, and when the party 
 are just on the point of leaving the church, to hand to the 
 officiating minister, nominally in payment of the fees, a 
 handful, sometimes a very large handful, of money, taken 
 without the slightest pretence of counting it from his trousers 
 pocket, from which the said minister is expected to take the 
 usual fees for parson and clerk ; and, that done, to hand over 
 the surplus to the bride. Twice within my incumbency a 
 deviation from this ritual— and a very pretty deviation — has 
 occurred. The bridegroom, together with the ring, at the 
 proper point in the service, has laid upon the book the afore- 
 said handful of money, so that, besides the direct pertinency 
 
Running for the Ribbon 207 
 
 of the next following part of the service, viz. " With this ring 
 I thee wed," ensued a typification of the further sentence, 
 " With all my worldly goods I thee endow." 
 
 The races still linger on, and only a week or two since 
 the bride gave two "ribbons to be run for" ; and a few years 
 ago one young chap, fleet of foot, and with as much inclination 
 for "laiking " (playing) as for sticking to work — some folk said 
 more — was quoted as the fortunate winner of almost enough to 
 start an itinerant haberdasher in trade. But still, even so, 
 " what a falling off was there ! " For nearly the whole, if not 
 the whole, of the usages under notice are, in the strictest sense, 
 survivals. To what an extent the original customs obtained in 
 the district may be as largely, as well as safely, inferred, perhaps, 
 from the memorials engraved on the tablets of the folk-speech, 
 as from any other source or authority. There are three terms, 
 of which it is almost incorrect to say that, however much 
 fallen into disuse, they are quite obsolete. These are, Bride- 
 ale, Bride-door, Bride-wain ; and they are defined, the first, as 
 " the warmed, sweetened, and spiced ale yet presented in some 
 villages to a wedding party on its return from church " ; the 
 second, as " the door of the house from which the bride pro- 
 ceeds to church, and at which the wedding festivities are to be 
 held afterwards : used in the phrase ' to run for the bride- 
 door ' " ; and the third, as " a waggon, loaded with household 
 goods, to be conveyed from the bride's father's house to the 
 bridegroom's." The late F. K. Eobinson, the careful compiler 
 of the Whitby Glossary, and collector of unconsidered trifles 
 in the way of tradition, local legend, and the like, says, " To 
 'run for the bride-door' is to join in the race for the bride's 
 gift, run by divers of the young men of the neighbourhood, 
 who wait near the church-door till the marriage ceremony is 
 over. The prize is usually a ribbon, which is worn for the 
 day in the hat of the winner." That other great collector of 
 archaic words and phrases, usually quoted as Mr. Halliwell, 
 after giving a precisely similar statement, adds that " the race 
 
2o8 Manners and Customs 
 
 is run to the bride-door." But in Cumberland, according to 
 Brockett, it is customary for the bridegroom, "attended by 
 his friends on horseback, to proceed at a gallop to the house 
 of the bride's father. . . . After breakfast the whole party 
 ride to church together, and at the conclusion of the ceremony 
 they all proceed to some neighbouring alehouse, where many 
 a flowing bumper is drunk to the health of the happy pair. 
 Then they set off at full speed towards the future residence of 
 the bride, where a handkerchief is presented to the first who 
 arrives." In Craven, according to the same authority, after 
 the service is over, " a ribbon is offered as the winner's prize, 
 either in a foot or a horse race. Whoever first reaches the 
 bride's habitation is ushered into the bridal chamber, and after 
 having performed the ceremony of turning down the bedclothes, 
 he returns, carrying in his hands a tankard of warm ale, to 
 meet the bride, to whom he triumphantly offers the cup he 
 bears, and by whom he is presented with the ribbon as the 
 trophy of his victory." When making inquiries on the general 
 subject some twenty-five years ago, I found that much of 
 what is thus detailed was still carried on at St. Helen's, 
 Auckland, and other villages in the county of Durham ; only 
 the handkerchief was supposed to be a delicate substitute for 
 the bride's garter, which used to 'be taken off as she knelt at 
 the altar ; and, the practice being anticipated, the garter was 
 generally found to do credit to her taste and her skill in 
 needlework, and was made the chief prize in the ensuing sports. 
 In Cleveland, however, and the neighbouring district the hot 
 ale, duly sweetened and spiced, was presented by the friends of 
 the bridal party at some point or points of the return journey 
 from church. Mr. Robinson's testimony is to the effect that, 
 within the present half-century, the custom has been upheld 
 in full force at Robin Hood's Bay, as many as twelve hot-pots 
 having been brought forth and partaken of in the one-mile 
 distance between the church and the town. 
 
 Hardly more than half a century since these races 
 
The Bridal Race 209 
 
 were hotly contested in Danby by mounted men, two or 
 three of whom, together with their steeds, were well known 
 for their exploits on such occasions of racing. One of these 
 men, a member of an old and "yabble" (well-to-do) Danby 
 family, was, if my memory serves me rightly, the retailer of 
 a tradition, mentioned for my instruction, that in days gone 
 by the race was always from the churchyard gate to the bride- 
 door, and that the prize was not barely the bride's garter, but 
 the added privilege of taking it himself from her leg as she 
 crossed the threshold of her home. The hot-pots of the Cleve- 
 land dales, the liberal ale-drinking in Cumberland and Craven 
 mentioned by Brockett, the rapid riding as well as the fact of 
 the mounted cavalcade, all point to Northern customs, where 
 the very word for a wedding — hrullaup, or bride-rush or speed — 
 is itself a standing testimony to what the marriage ride was in 
 the old days ; and as to that, let the following sentence bear 
 its own witness: "The most ancient mode of wooing had at 
 least the merit of simplicity ; it consisted in carrying off the 
 desired object by physical force. There are traces of the 
 custom in a ceremony still occasionally practised on the 
 marriage of a Welsh peasant. After the wedding the bride- 
 groom mounts on horseback and takes his bride behind him. 
 A certain amount of ' law ' is given them, and then the guests 
 mount and pursue them. It is a matter of course that they 
 are not overtaken ; but, whether overtaken or not, they return 
 with their pursuers to the wedding feast." The old old usage 
 in vogue when the matter in hand was the obtaining of a 
 helpmeet amid the burdens and labours of life, which lives 
 as a survival in the old classical myth of the Rape of the 
 Sabines, — the usage which prescribed or compelled ihe 
 securing of a spouse by an absolute abduction of her by 
 force from another tribe or another district, — is more than 
 faintly figured forth in the Welsh custom just named, while 
 the horse-races of two or three generations back, explained by 
 all we now know concerning the marriage customs of the 
 
 P 
 
2 1 o Manners and Customs 
 
 remote past, contain much more than an indication merely of 
 what their real origin and meaning unquestionably must be. 
 And, little as the fleet-footed young dalesmen think of it when 
 "running for the ribbon," they are doing their little best to 
 keep up the remembrance that, in the old days of their fore- 
 elders' and predecessors' living experience, if a man wanted a 
 wife, he had to go and seek her where it was known there was 
 an eligible young lady, who might be won literally w et armis, 
 or by dint of the strong hand and fleet enduring horse. 
 
 As to the bride-wain the thing may be obsolete, but neither 
 the feeling nor the practice connected with the name is so. 
 The long lists of " wedding presents " we see paraded in the 
 newspapers on occasion of some "high-up" bridal, and the 
 array of less gorgeous but equally well-intended presents one 
 may see in even our humble Dales habitations, alike testify to 
 the survival of the idea which found its expression in the older 
 days in the bride-wain and its accessories. 
 
 As to what the bride-wain really was. When I first came 
 into residence here, there were few farmhouses in which 
 there was not one of those fine old black oak cabinets or 
 "wardrobes," with carved panels, folding-doors, and knobby 
 feet, that have gladdened so many collectors' hearts ; in not 
 a few cases I have seen them in old cottages also. And 
 not once or twice only, but many times I have heard the 
 name "bride- wain" attributed to them. The word itself 
 was sufficient to suggest if not to provoke inquiry. For 
 the " wain " was a vehicle that went upon wheels, and 
 upon two wheels rather than four; because the wain upon 
 four wheels speedily became a waggon, and ceased to be a 
 wain. But a press or wardrobe certainly is not a vehicle, 
 however much it may be a repository. 
 
 But the wardrobe might be, and often was in the olden 
 times, a constituent portion of the "wedding presents," 
 which always partook of the homely and useful character, 
 almost to the exclusion of the merely graceful or pretty, 
 
Wedding Presents in the Olden Time 2 1 1 
 
 and much more the sentimental. And the closets above, 
 with their carven doors, and the drawers below with their 
 antique brass handles and lock -plates, so far from being 
 empty, were uncomfortably full with articles of household gar- 
 nishing or personal wear, made from home-grown, home-spun, 
 home-woven, home-made material, linen or woollen. Much 
 thereof might be the work of the bride's own deft, if toil- 
 hardened fingers; but much, too, came of the many and 
 heartily offered gifts of the neighbours and friends of the 
 young couple. And it was once a thing of occasional occur- 
 rence rather than a custom that could be said to prevail, to 
 place this wardrobe, so stored, on a wain — itself a gift like 
 the rest, as well as the oxen which drew it — and convey it 
 to the church at which the marriage ceremony was to be 
 solemnised ; making it a part of the wedding procession, in 
 fact, and letting it stand by the church-door, or in the very 
 porch, while the priest was fulfilling his function ; and after 
 the service to drag it thence to the future abode of the 
 couple just made one. So by an easy transition of idea 
 the wardrobe itself came to be called a bride-wain. "One 
 such bride-wain," I have said in my Glossary, "which took its 
 departure for the church from Danby Castle, was specially 
 mentioned by my informant as having had no less than six- 
 teen oxen yoked to it." Many of the oxen so employed 
 having actually been gifts (as noticed above), as well as the 
 wardrobe itself, and no small part of its contents. 
 
 I see, too, that I have remarked at the place cited — what 
 should hardly be passed over without note or comment — "that 
 it was essential that the wain should travel along the ordinary 
 or recognised ' church-road,' and not make short cuts or other 
 deviations from the time- and tradition-hallowed as well as 
 established route." 
 
 But all these things are altered now, and I am not alto- 
 gether sure that all of them are altered for the better. I am 
 no indiscriminate laudator temporis adi, but I cannot help 
 
2 1 2 Manners and Customs 
 
 seeing that more modem usages have shut out much that 
 was simple, homely, and touching, without introducing any 
 improvement upon the old downright, homespun code of 
 manner and action. 
 
 I remember having an old man of nearly seventy pointed 
 out to me in my father's Lincolnshire parish, who was said 
 to own land and property to the value of a thousand pounds 
 or so, and of whom it was told that, on coming away from 
 the church on his wedding-day, he said to his newly-made 
 wife, "I have the price of a pint still left in my pocket. 
 Shall we go to the public-house and drink it, or shall we go 
 and work ? " And the lady was said to have answered, " WeU, 
 if it is left to me, I say, let us work," and work they did ; 
 and they worked on from his twopence halfpenny to his thou- 
 sand. I think there was the same downright and honest 
 thrift and perseverance and industry throughout these dales 
 in the old days; and I think, too, it was better than the 
 aping of the " wedding-tour " which is now getting the upper 
 hand. 
 
 Not that there may not be some compensation. There is 
 certainly less of the exuberant festivity on the occasion of a 
 wedding than there used to be, — festivity which so continually 
 degenerated into downright drunkenness and debauchery, — and 
 the people generally have learnt to respect decency of expres- 
 sion and conduct. In the old days a spade was a spade, 
 and there was no affectation of reticence about naming it. 
 
BURIALS AND THEIR ACCOMPANIMENTS 
 
 I THINK I have had, first and last, within the last five-and- 
 twenty years, either shown me or brought to me, something 
 like a large wheelbarrow-load of fragments of pottery taken 
 out of the earth thrown up in the process of digging the 
 necessary graves in the Danby churchyard. It is mainly of 
 one character — coarse, rough, and red ; red, however, of differ- 
 ent shades. Most of the vessels of which these sherds are 
 fragments seem to have been of the jug or pitcher description, 
 having handles, plain or lined or twisted, with mouths, not 
 of large size in proportion to the other dimensions, flanging 
 outwards a little, and glazed inside for some little depth, and 
 with the glaze in some instances straying a little over the 
 outside of the neck. 
 
 That these vessels are of mediaeval date there can be no 
 doubt. Precisely similar vessels — similar, that is, as to ware, 
 colour, shape or average form, handles, glaze, etc. — may be 
 seen in any collection of such pottery, notably in the York 
 Museum. 
 
 I have, in some cases, seen portions of five or six different 
 specimens taken out of the earth thrown up from one grave ; 
 and in very few instances indeed is a grave dug without 
 the occurrence of some of these reminiscences of a past and 
 forgotten usage. 
 
 But besides these old sherds, there is disclosed in almost 
 every case more or less charcoal, sometimes in quantities such 
 
2 1 4 Manners and Customs 
 
 as to attract the trained eye at once, and always in particles 
 the size of a small bean, or in small sections, admitting of easy 
 identification when looked for. I have occasionally seen half 
 a spade-graft of mould brought to the surface, nearly one-half 
 or one-third of which was composed mainly of charcoal. In 
 fact my sexton — who was trained to the watchful part of the 
 barrow -work, so that he became one of my two best men 
 — still lives in hope of finding such a mass of charcoal in 
 connection with the pottery as to enable us to come to a 
 satisfactory conclusion touching the presence of the substances 
 throughout the churchyard. 
 
 For connection there must have been, and, as necessarily, 
 an explanation dependent on that connection. And, for my 
 own part, I think there is a connection between finds of this 
 and finds of yet another sort, made in the same place and 
 under the same circumstances, which deserves some attention. 
 At least half a dozen small silver coins have been noticed 
 among the mould thrown up in the course of grave-diggings, 
 picked up and put into my hands. One may have been a 
 coin of the time of Henry III ; the others were of the reigns 
 of the Edwards. When one looks at these small objects, and 
 considers their tenuity and their lustreless, tarnished, almost 
 decomposed condition — one or two among them are as frail 
 as chippings from the shell of a boiled egg — one cannot hel{» 
 thinking, " Well, for one that is seen and rescued, the chances 
 must be that many others are never detected, and remain 
 where they were placed — at least, 'beneath the sod' — never 
 coming within the range of a speculative antiquary's eye, nor 
 able to attract even passing observation." It was but the 
 other day that, in the course of my casual reading, I met with 
 the record of a silver coin being found still between the jaws 
 of the skull of a man who had been buried three centuries 
 or more ago, and it reminded me of what had happened at 
 one of the churches in this neighbourhood not twenty years 
 since, as far as my recollection serves me. On the disturbance 
 
Money buried with the Dead Body 2 1 5 
 
 and removal of the remains of a former interment, when the 
 skull came to be moved something was heard to rattle in 
 among the bones of it, which, on examination, proved to 
 be a silver coin about the size of a Commonwealth half-crown 
 (or rather florin, I suppose). And it was evident that its 
 original place of deposit must have been between the teeth, or 
 at least just inside the mouth. 
 
 "While I was closely occupied over the final sheets of my 
 Cleveland Glossary, a correspondent (Mr. Baring Gould) wrote 
 to me as follows : " I heard some rustics talking about an 
 odd old man who had been buried somewhere up your way 
 a few years ago with a candle, a penny, and a bottle of port ; 
 and, as they explained it, the candle was to light the way to 
 Jerusalem, the penny to pay the ferry, and the port to sustain 
 him on the journey." And Professor George Stephens of 
 Copenhagen about the same time gave me the following quota- 
 tion : " Within the coffin, along with herself, she got a pair 
 of new brogues, a penny candle, and a hammer, with an Irish 
 sixpenny-piece to pay her passage at the gate." 
 
 And these old, old coins found in my churchyard, and, to 
 my knowledge, in several others in the district as well, have 
 the same story to tell to quickened ears as these two 
 instances of so much later a date, and the multitudes of others 
 that may be found by looking for them; and that story, I 
 conceive, is not so very widely different in its essential char- 
 acteristics from the story to be told by the pottery and the 
 charcoal obtruding themselves on the notice of the observant 
 in the old, but not as yet compulsorily disused, graveyards of 
 our country churches. 
 
 One of my earliest recollections as a boy is of places — 
 houses, always old and mostly old-fashioned, barns, lanes, 
 the moated sites of old manor-houses, " four-want-ways " or 
 the place of intersection of two cross-roads, churchyards, 
 suicides' graves — which were spoken of, dreaded, avoided 
 after nightfall, as being " haunted." There were two barns, 
 
2 1 6 Manners and Customs 
 
 one local "hall," one moated site of an old mansion, one road- 
 side grave, all within half an hour's walk of one of my homes 
 in the days of my boyhood, besides a long-disused old house 
 of considerable size and pretension, a grove, and an old 
 ruinous building, which once, I suppose, had been the parish 
 pest-house, close to the place of my schooldays — to say 
 nothing of a long, dark passage behind two of the dormitories 
 at the school itself — all of which were "haunted." And there 
 was a large section of an old moated mansion in another of 
 my father's curacies, with a tapestried chamber in it, the subject 
 illustrated thereon being the beheading of John the Baptist, 
 with his bleeding head in the charger, wrought in right grisly 
 fashion ; as to which I heard a man, mainly employed in my 
 father's garden, tell a right gruesome story of his own experi- 
 ences there one night when storm-stayed. 
 
 I found no difficulty in entering into the feelings of the 
 narrator, and understanding the impression produced upon 
 him. And perhaps I was enabled to trace the mental process 
 throughout ; for the district he lived in was full of common- 
 place, unimaginative superstition. But there is no need to 
 give a catalogue of the apparitions, ghosts, spirits, which were 
 said to beset the district, or to enter into exhaustive details. 
 A sample or two will suffice. There was the lady who, at a 
 certain hour on a certain night, depending on the moon's age, 
 walked abroad in her bloodstained night-gear, but without 
 her head. There was another of the same sex, and habited 
 also in her white night-gown, who " walked " with her hands 
 chained and her lower limbs fettered, sobbing and crying, and 
 jangling her chains. There was the great dog miinm his head, 
 who ran to his destination — where he vanished suddenly — as 
 well as if he had had his eyes in the usual place to guide him. 
 There was the black wide-horned creature wth great glaring 
 saucer-eyes, at the old moat. There was the shape of the 
 smcide, with his self-murdering knife, his gibbering features, 
 trembling limbs, and pitiful moans, — all of these, and many 
 
Confining the Dead to their Graves 2 1 7 
 
 more. And the story was, this man had cut his own throat, 
 and by " crowner's-quest law" had been buried by the road- 
 side with a stake driven through his body. I make no doubt 
 all that was true to the letter. And then there had been a 
 jumbling together of the old tradition and of older folklore 
 ideas, which had got mixed in the process, and the issue of 
 the process was the ghost. 
 
 There is no doubt that the self-murderer, or the doer of 
 some atrocious deed of violence, murder, or lust, was buried 
 by some lonely roadside, in a road-crossing, or by the wild 
 woodside, and that the oak or, oftener, thorn stake was 
 driven through his breast ; but not because of any intended 
 scorn, or horror, or abhorrence. These were the characters 
 who — to use an expression common enough among us to this 
 day, though perhaps we do not trouble to think of its origin 
 or meaning — could not "rest in their graves." They /wif to 
 wander, nay, often they were self-constrained to wander about 
 the scenes of their crimes, or the places where their un- 
 hallowed carcases were deposited, unless, that is to say, they 
 were prevented ; and as they wanted the semblance, the 
 simulacrum, the- shadow -substance of their bodies for that 
 purpose — otherwise there could have been no appearance — the 
 body it was which was made secure by pinning it to the 
 bottom of the grave by aid of the driven stake. Here is an 
 explanation which has long been lost sight of, and replaced by 
 notions involving the ideas of ignominy, abhorrence, execration, 
 or what not ; and it is just the explanation that was wanted. 
 The corpse of the fearful malefactor, cast out of hallowed 
 ground, as belonging to the devil and not to the saints, must 
 be disabled, as well as the guilty spirit itself, for further 
 mischief or ill-doing. 
 
 And there were other means adopted with the same end 
 in view. The head was severed from the body and laid 
 between the legs, or placed under the arm — between the arm 
 and the side, that is. Or the feet and legs were bound to- 
 
2 1 8 Manners and Customs 
 
 gether with a strong rope. Or the corpse might be cut up 
 into some hollow vessel capable of containing the pieces, and 
 carried away quite beyond the precincts of the village and 
 deposited in some bog or morass, so as never to come within 
 the precincts of the hallowed ground. 
 
 Now these things are not the creation of fancy. The 
 records of such sentences and of their execution exist in the 
 Dooms-books or other judicial records of this country and 
 other lands in the north of Europe, and there is a sort of 
 uncanny recognition in them of the apparitions of headless 
 ladies and chain-rattling ghosts, ghastly bearers of cruel knives, 
 and the like. 
 
 I remember when, some twenty-five years or more ago, I 
 became acquainted with Hylten Cavallius's admirable book on 
 the ethnology of a certain district in the south of Sweden, I 
 was greatly struck with the passage of which the following is 
 a translation : "For the purpose of preventing restless, unruly, 
 sinful, and intensely worldly men from 'going again after 
 death ' " — the Cleveland idiom is " coming again " — " our 
 Warend folk have been in the habit from a very remote time 
 of employing various characteristic measures. • The very oldest 
 among these takes its origin from the ancient fire-cult, and the 
 still older sun-worship. It is to this that we must refer the 
 presence, for the protection of the dwelling against ghosts 
 {gengangare), of a red cock, the solar bird, on his perch over 
 the house-entrance. To the same again must be referred the 
 custom of consuming with fire the mattress on which a man 
 has breathed his last ; of casting live coals (charcoal, notably) 
 after a corpse on its removal from the dwelling, and of strew- 
 ing ashes, salt, linseed, or the seed of the water-hemlock, 
 around the homestead, or across the approach to the house, 
 beyond which limit the ghost may not pass. On the same 
 principle, subsequently to the time at which men became 
 acquainted with the use of steel, the custom has been to drive 
 in an axe or some other sharp-edged tool above the door of 
 
The ' Company ' of the Ghost not desired 2 1 9 
 
 the house-place. ' And at a later period still it became usual 
 to tie the feet of the' corpse together, to stick pins into the 
 shroud in such wise that the points were opposed to the feet ; 
 as also to place hooks and eyes in the coflSn, or else a stake 
 wrenched out of the fence round the homestead. Moreover, 
 when a corpse is carried out of the house of death, it is in- 
 variably borne forth feet first, in order to prevent the dead 
 person from ' coming again.' Nay, even in the days of hoary 
 eld, it was a custom to whisper in the ear of the corpse that 
 he was not to ' come again ' ; while, finally, there was the old 
 practice of laying earth on the body, which was a heathen 
 practice long before it was adopted in the Christian grave- 
 service. And even yet the accustomed Warend name for the 
 burial ceremony is to 'earth-fasten a corpse,' or to 'earth- 
 fasten the dead person.' " 
 
 Turning all this over in one's mind, and remembering 
 at the same time that the idea represented by the word 
 " haunted " is as yet by no means an extinct idea, there is no 
 great difiiculty in suggesting an explanation of the presence of 
 charcoal in these old graves in the churchyards. 
 
 But it is possible to illustrate the living reality of this 
 superstition by a reference to what took place here not so 
 very long before my personal acquaintance with the place 
 commenced. An old woman who lived in Fryup, and whose 
 chief celebrity depended upon the allegation that she kept 
 the " Mark's e'en watch," and was able in consequence to fore- 
 show the deaths of the coming year, one St. Mark's day, when 
 she was questioned on the subject after her vigil, announced 
 her own death as among the foredoomed ones, and assigned 
 her reason for saying so. " And," she added, " when I dee, for 
 dee I s'all, mind ye carry me to my grave by t' church-road, 
 and not all the way round by t' au'd Castle and Ainthrop. 
 And mind ye, if ye de'ant, I'll come again." 
 
 Now the church-road lay straight past her house to the 
 foot of a very steep moor-bank, up which it went — and goes 
 
2 20 Maimers and Customs 
 
 yet — with two zigzags. It is a stiff climb at any time, even 
 when one has only himself and his coat to carry ; but with a 
 burden such as a coffin, with the grisly occupant inside, it is 
 "bosses' wark, not men's." Well, the old lady died as she 
 had predicted, and she died in a snowy time. And the 
 difficulties of the church-road in a snowy time are almost in- 
 tensely enhanced. I have gone both up and down the bank at 
 such seasons, and speak with feeling. But the bearers faced 
 the difficulties — perils, in a sense, they almost amounted to, — 
 and waist-deep sometimes ; still they persevered, and eventu- 
 ally -got through with their undertaking and their burden. 
 In plain words, they were ready to face anything ; and many 
 among them must have had such a day of toil and effort and 
 fatigue as never before nor after fell to their lot; but they 
 could not, dared not, face the chance of the old woman's 
 " coming again." 
 
 My own idea, entertained now for a very long time past, 
 relatively to the presence of charcoal and broken pottery in 
 our graves, is that they were placed at the first in the original 
 graves in conjunction ; that is to say, the charcoal, in the 
 form of live coals, was placed inside the earthen vessels. 
 And while it is possible that the purificatory energy of 
 fire may not have been lost sight of in the observance, 
 all the probabilities suggested by such collateral items of 
 evidence as those I have quoted go to show that the deposit 
 was of the nature of the casting of live embers after the 
 departing corpse, burning the straw mattress on which the 
 departed had given up the ghost, strewing ashes, salt, or what 
 not, or striking some sharp-edged instrument above the house- 
 door, vrith the avowed object of keeping ghosts, or the special 
 ghost, in abeyance. And at this point there is another fact 
 which it will be by no means irrelevant to advert to. And 
 that is, that in all the burial mounds I have myself opened or 
 seen opened, or the opening of which as described by competent 
 observers, taking special notes of all incidental and collateral 
 
Charcoal always present in archaic Interments 221 
 
 particulars I am acquainted with, I do not remember an 
 instance in which the absence of charcoal is recorded. 
 I do not mean that there were always such evidences 
 of burning as are attested by the presence of charcoal 
 in mass, or sensible quantities, but that the unvarying 
 rule appears to be that charcoal occurs in all these mounds, 
 scattered up and down throughout the greater part of 
 the hill. Even in the small houes, fifteen to twenty feet 
 across, and a foot and a half, or little more, in height (of 
 which literally hundreds have existed on' these moors, and 
 many scores of which are still in being, and none of which 
 ever covered a burnt body), there are small fragments of 
 charcoal in every individual mound, varying in size from a 
 bean to a nutmeg, far more than enough to convey the in- 
 evitable conclusion that it was not there accidentally. 
 
 The speculation, the corroborative considerations, and the 
 conclusion as to the why and because of the occurrence of 
 charcoal and potsherds in our Danby graves, are all, whether 
 entertained or no, matters of no slight or merely local 
 interest. 
 
BURIALS AND THEIR ACCOMPANIMENTS 
 (continued) 
 
 I HARDLY cared to enter upon my recollections or experiences 
 in relation to the peculiarities which, have characterised Danby 
 funerals — or, to use the older Cleveland word, " burials " — some 
 of which even yet are hardly things of the. past, without 
 first adverting to the occurrence of both charcoal and broken 
 pottery, in marked quantity, in the oft-stirred earth thrown 
 up in the process of digging our modern graves. That occur- 
 rences of this kind are not exceptional, that they are not 
 confined to Danby alone, I am well aware. I have never 
 examined the earth thrown out of a new-made grave in any 
 one of the churchyards of the near district without finding 
 samples of the pottery ; and I will specify the churchyards of 
 Great Ayton, Westerdale, and Sneaton as among those most 
 prominent in my recollections. I have also heard the same of 
 one or two other churchyards wherein I have had no oppor- 
 tunity of personal examination. One other remarkable case, 
 however, is almost worth special notice. 
 
 Many years ago I had undertaken a week-day service in 
 the schoolroom at Dunsley. In some way or other, after the 
 service, the subject of graveyard potsherds was referred to, and 
 the schoolmaster remarked that he had collected a number of 
 such fragments, which appeared to answer the description I 
 had been giving. He produced a quantity of them, and with- 
 out exception they were similar to those vnth which I was so 
 
Potsherds in other Graveyards 223 
 
 familiar^ except only that they were all portions of broken 
 pot- or pitcher-handles. But on inquiry, it proved that these 
 only had been preserved, because they were not mere sherds 
 from the broken sides of the vessels. I further learned that 
 all came from a place in the close vicinity of the school, namely, 
 the site of the ancient Dunsley chapel. I went with the master 
 to ,the place, and he showed me where the greater part had 
 been met with, and although he did not seem very hopeful that 
 renewed search would be successful, still certain small pieces 
 were found. I will only add that my informant made no doubt 
 about the sherds coming from the old graves ; and old graves 
 they certainly were. Young's memorandum concerning the old 
 chapel is as follows : " It was older than the Hermitage of 
 Mulgrif, and it subsisted longer ; for it continued until the 
 Dissolution ; " and in a note he adds : " An imperfect inscription 
 shows that it had been used as a cemetery prior to the Reform- 
 ation. . . . The foundation of the north wall has been under- 
 mined by people digging up materials for repairing roads, and 
 the bones of the dead have been exposed to view." 
 
 This is a valuable testimony as bearing upon the dates to 
 which I have assigned the original deposits of pottery and 
 chaocoal in our own churchyard. 
 
 But to come to more recent times and later "reminiscences." 
 It is a well-known circumstance that — to use the formal term 
 employed in the old county records — the "people called 
 Friends " were once both numerous and influential in these 
 dales, and nowhere more so than in Danby. I should be 
 more than justified if I extended the remark to a very much 
 wider North Riding area than this parish only, as a list of 
 North Riding places licensed for the Quakers' worship about 
 the time of the Toleration Act, which I compiled for pub- 
 lication in the North Riding Records Volume for the year 1889, 
 abundantly demonstrates. Indeed they were so numerous here 
 that no less than three of their burial-places exist on the west 
 side of Danby-dale only. 
 
2 24 Manners and Customs 
 
 There were still five or six Quaker families in the Dale 
 when I first came to it. Of course I knew them all, and had 
 a great respect for more than one of them, as well as simple 
 regard. Indeed, one of them — he died, turned of eighty years 
 old, many years ago — was a man much looked up to beyond 
 the limits of the Dale ; and was often called upon to act as 
 arbiter and peacemaker in cases which might otherwise have 
 led on to litigation. He was a man of shrewd, sound sense 
 and judgment ; and it was with the feeling of having lost 
 a personal friend and a helper in all efforts for the good of 
 the parish and the district, that I heard of the death of old 
 William Hartas. 
 
 The days of his lifetime were the days in which church 
 rates were collected. Dear old William and his co-religionists 
 never paid a penny of the " cess " they were liable for. But 
 somehow or other, when the churchwardens went their col- 
 lecting rounds, a sheaf or two of corn, of an approximate value 
 to the sum set down against their names, stood handy to the 
 said churchwardens' hands, and no inquiry was ever made as 
 to the person who had " conveyed " the Quakers' corn. 
 
 There is a story told of old William which I have every 
 reason to believe is a true one. It is, I suppose, well known 
 that there is no grave-service in use among the Friends. The 
 ceremony of depositing the body in the grave is a silent one, 
 unless some one or more among the attendants on the funeral 
 feels called on to address the bystanders. My friend William 
 was often in the habit of speaking on more or less public occa- 
 sions, both in the parish and out of it ; and when he attended 
 a funeral of a Friend it was by no means unusual for him to 
 "speak a few words." 
 
 On one such occasion no one spoke after the coffin was 
 lowered to its resting-place, but there seemed to be a sort 
 of expectation that William would " say a few words " before 
 the party separated. And so he did. After looking long and 
 fixedly into the grave in still silence, he gave utterance at 
 
Hats worn in Church during Burial Service 225 
 
 length to the following speech : " Our fri'nd seems vara com- 
 fortable. Thou mun hap him oop," — these last words being 
 addressed to the sexton. 
 
 Many a time have I seen this worthy old man, and others 
 of the sect, in attendance at the funeral of some old and re- 
 spected parishioner. Sometimes I have seen them, as I went 
 out in advance of the coffin into the graveyard, the first part 
 of the burial service over, sitting in the church porch. But 
 not once or twice only I have seen them come inside the church 
 and sit the service through — hatted, as a matter of course ; and 
 I had more reasons than one for not being intolerant enough 
 to insist on the removal of themselves, if so be their hats were 
 unremovable. I was glad to see them among the throng of 
 other parishioners who came to pay their last tribute of regard 
 to the person who had long lived among them, a neighbour 
 among neighbours and a friend among friends. And I was 
 not going to take any step which might have the tendency to 
 lessen good feeling, either general or particular. 
 
 Besides, I could not, with anything like consistency ; for 
 the rule was the country-side throughout, as it had been even 
 in Scarboi'ough up to less than ten years before I took up my 
 abode there, for all the male relatives of the deceased person 
 present among the mourners to sit close round the coffin during 
 the reading of the burial-service psalm and lesson with their 
 hats on. I had for divers reasons, and with the full concur- 
 rence of the patron and others concerned, resolved to let the 
 practice wear out, instead of suppressing it with the high hand, 
 as the Vicar of Scarborough had done ; for I did think that 
 people who had had the good example of the parson and his 
 brother the parish-clerk, to say nothing of the churchwardens, 
 customarily wearing their hats in church, and never doffing 
 them even on Sundays until they had got to their several 
 places in the church, had a very fair claim to be treated with 
 some sort of tolerance, and be shown the better way, instead 
 of being driven into it at the cost of much heart-burning. 
 
 Q 
 
2 26 Manners and Customs 
 
 And so I let tte hats alone, and did not interfere with my good 
 old friends the Quakers. 
 
 But truly the " burials " were rather a thorn in my side for 
 long. It is almost " a tale that is told " now, but it is perhaps 
 worth recalling and recording. As soon after the breath had 
 left the body as was possible, the next day at the latest — often 
 the same day, if the person had died early — the person whose 
 professional name was " the bidder," went round from house 
 to house among those who were to be "bidden to t' burial," to 
 " warn " them that the burial was fixed for such and such a 
 day, and to add, " and so and so " — naming the principal friend 
 or friends of the deceased — "expect you at ten o'clock in the 
 morning." The " minister " was always among the first to be 
 bidden. Sometimes when the dead person had been long in 
 the place, had borne parochial office, and had won the goodwill 
 and respect of all the neighbours, or if he was a man with 
 numerous relations and connections (a very common case), or for 
 whom general sympathy had been aroused, these invitations 
 might be numbered, not merely by the score, but by the hundred. 
 I have myself counted more than three hundred seated in the 
 church on at least four, if not five, different occasions. And the 
 rule is, and, still more, was, that the preponderating majority of 
 these " went to the burial " at the house where the corpse lay, 
 beginning at ten o'clock and continuing to drop in, according to 
 convenience or distance to be traversed, throughout the morn- 
 ing and afternoon till it became time to " lift the body " and 
 make a start for the church. 
 
 And all these were fed — entertained, rather — at the house 
 of mouriiing, if it chanced to be that of one of the principal 
 inhabitants. All day long, in relays of from a dozen up 
 to a score, according to the dimensions of the reception- 
 room, the hungry host came streaming in, until all had been 
 " served." Those who had been the first to enter went and 
 sat about wherever they could find seats, whether in the house 
 or outside, or in the farm premises, or at some neighbour's. 
 
Funeral Biscuits 227 
 
 smoking (not without the necessary "wet," it might be) and 
 chatting, as on any other occasion when friends and acquaint- 
 ances were wont to meet. The last part of the entertainment, 
 at least in the later days of the old practice, was to hand round 
 on salvers or trays glasses of wine and small round cakes of the 
 crisp sponge description, of which most of the guests partook. 
 
 I do not know if these cakes are still in vogue, — " funeral 
 biscuits," I have heard them called, — but I was greatly inter- 
 ested one day some twenty years ago or more, on going into a 
 confectioner's shop in Whitby, to see some of these cakes in a 
 dish, but not, as it were, exposed for sale. I forget how the 
 talk began ; but the shopkeeper — an old, gray-headed, tottering 
 man, as I saw him a short time ago — had somehow come to 
 tell me what they were, and for what funeral they had been 
 ordered ; and by the merest chance he gave me an, if not the, 
 old name for them. He called them, not funeral biscuits, but, 
 as it sounded from his lips, " averil breead," or, as it should 
 be written, avril bread. 
 
 As will be readily conceived by any one who knows of my 
 eighteen or twenty years of persevering " dialect - word " 
 hunting, and, more especially, by any one who has ever occu- 
 pied himself personally in that engaging (if not exciting) 
 pursuit, I pricked up my ears on hearing this word; for I 
 recognised it at once, and it was as good as half-a-dozen shots 
 in the turnips, and never a miss among them. I had had 
 years before many a struggle over the origin (rather than the 
 derivation merely) of such words as dozz or duzz, wossle or 
 vnursel, and so forth ; and it was not without trouble and diffi- 
 culty that I had got these forms, rather than words, which, as 
 it were, had been turned inside out like a stocking, turned 
 back again to the right side outwards. Dozz or duzz was the 
 country pronunciation of dmse or dirze, as dorse or durze was of 
 drose (from an original Scandinavial drosa, cognate with our 
 English drizzle), and vmsle or wursel was the same sort of dis- 
 solving-view word from English wrestle, and so forth. On 
 
228 Manners and Customs 
 
 the same rule — that of the transposition of the letter r and its 
 following vowel — avril was simply arvil or and, and that was 
 neither more nor less than arval, or succession-ale, where al or 
 ah has just the same weight and substance as in bridal, still 
 current, and the leet-ales, scotales, church-ales, clerk-ales, bid- 
 ales (all quoted by Skeat), and toll-ales, and another or two, 
 all obsolete. And as to the word itself, entire, that is, arvel 
 or arval, "At arvel — heir-ale — feasts," says Sir G-. W. Dasent, 
 "when heirs drank themselves into their fathers' land and 
 goods, there was great mirth and jollity, and much eating and 
 hard drinking of mead and fresh-brewed ale " {Burnt Njal, i. 
 p. cxv.) ; this among the old Icelanders and their compatriots. 
 
 So much for the "arval bread" which, in the form of the 
 cakes and biscuits aforesaid, was handed round with the wine 
 by two young women who, from the discharge of this function, 
 were — are yet — termed "servers," and whose place it is, as the 
 funeral procession marshals itself at the churchyard gate, to 
 walk immediately in front of the coffin. 
 
 As to the preparation made for supplying the bodily wants 
 of such great concourses, I have again and again heard state- 
 ments made as to the number of " stones of beef and ham " 
 provided and consumed. Notably this was so in the case of 
 one of the worthiest of the many worthy Dales yeomen — 
 "freeholders," they call themselves — it has been my privilege 
 as well as my pleasure to know, who was one of the church- 
 wardens when I came here, and who died at the age of eighty- 
 eight, never having paid a doctor's fee up to his death-illness, 
 which was rather cessation of life than sickness. When he 
 was buried, between two and three hundredweight of meat, 
 mainly beef and bacon, was put on the tables ; and when the 
 keeper and owner of one of the inns at Castleton died — a man 
 universally popular as well as known to all— the amount pro- 
 vided was said to have been even greater still. 
 
 These great assemblages and colossal providings are now 
 mainly things of the past, although even within the past 
 
Burial Fixtures not punctually kept 229 
 
 year I have twice seen upwards of one hundred and fifty to 
 two hundred persons assembhng or assembled in the church 
 and churchyard to be present at a funeral. 
 
 Necessarily when there were such numbers of friends and 
 relations to be fed, and such scant accommodation as cramped 
 space in the kitchen, as well as at the board, entailed, there was 
 great loss of time, and often exceeding unpunctuality in the 
 starting, and, much more, the arrival at the chiu-chyard of the 
 funeral cortege. Once in my predecessor's time the arrival did 
 not take place until after dark, and the service in the church 
 — which is near no house at all save one, and that is a third 
 of a mUe distant — had to be read by the light of a taUow dip, 
 procured after some delay, and the grave-side service by 
 the wavering, flickering Hght of the same held in the sexton's 
 hand. 
 
 Delay too would naturally in such a district as ours be 
 caused by distance and bad roads ; and other causes also led 
 to unpunctuality. For in one case, when the funeral was fully 
 two hours late, the procession had started in ample time, and 
 the detention had arisen from a totally unforeseen and, in 
 practice, unaccustomed cause. It was a long way that had to 
 be traversed, undoubtedly — nearer twelve than ten miles, I 
 should say — and much more than half of it over highways 
 that crossed the moors. Yet there was a short cut that might 
 have been taken, but was not taken, contrary to the intentions 
 and expectations of the organiser of the journey. For on 
 reaching the point of divergence from the accustomed way, or 
 the " highway," the proposed deviation was at once demurred 
 to, and in the issue a sort of parliament was held on the high- 
 road, and the decision to proceed by the high-road was 
 dehberately come to. 
 
 And why % Nobody doubted that to take the longer way 
 round would add still more to the delay occasioned by the 
 debate ; but there was a graver consideration than that, and 
 one with which the weightier part of the mourners could 
 
230 Manners and Customs 
 
 not and ■would not deal lightly. The person to be buried was 
 no other than the man previously mentioned more than once in 
 these pages, namely, our friend Jonathan, who had fought the 
 witches so strenuously with the best weapons at his command. 
 "Take Jonathan to his last home otherwise than by the 
 ' church-road ' ! Why, it wasn't to be thought of ! He would 
 never rest in his grave. He would come again. Didn't every 
 one know that such as were carried to the church otherwise 
 than by the ' church-road ' were provoked, and got the power 
 to come again ? " 
 
 We remember the old woman in Little Fryup, who 
 threatened her friends with what she would do if they did not 
 carry her to her burial by the chureh-road, and how the dread 
 of her menace forced her bearers to that terrible snow- 
 hindered march up the steep bank and across the moorland 
 ridge. And here was another case of the same kind, accentu- 
 ated in a somewhat different manner, but quite as strongly and 
 decisively marked. 
 
 I have been interested in finding repeated references made 
 in the old County Eecords it has been my lot to deal with 
 during the last eight or nine years, to the "church-way" or the 
 " church-road," in divers parts of the North Eiding, and the 
 observance evidently attached to it in every individual in- 
 stance. How old the notion is, how long ago it came to be 
 held that a way over which a body was borne to its burial 
 became thereby a recognised high-road, and obtained a certain 
 sacred sanction therefrom, there is probably no one to tell us, 
 and there may be no means of finding out. Probably also it 
 might prove very hard to decide whether, in the case of this 
 bit of folklore, the survival is in the idea of the consecration 
 of the way by the carrying of the dead over it, or in the idea 
 that any not carried along the dedicated way are sentenced to, 
 or become qualified for, a restless unconfined sojourn in the 
 grave. But at least we know that, among our Scandinavian 
 ancestors at least, the hell -way and the hell -shoes and the 
 
Rules as to ' the Bearers ' 231 
 
 difficult and perilous passage to be essayed by the dead were 
 as constantly thought of and provided for as the occurrence of 
 death itself. The matter is a curious and interesting one, and 
 well deserves careful investigation. 
 
 But there are yet other matters to be remarked, or our 
 notice of the observances at a Dales " burying " would be left 
 imperfect. Thus the coffin is never borne on the shoulders 
 of the bearers, as is most customary elsewhere. So far as it 
 is " carried by hand " at all — which, from the distance of the 
 church from all the constituents of the population, is very 
 little, usually only from a few yards outside the churchyard- 
 gate to the trestles set to support it in the western part of the 
 nave of the church — ^it is carried by the aid of towels knotted 
 together and passed under the coffin, the ends on either side 
 being held by the bearers, six in number (or three pairs). 
 And as regards the bearers, the usage was so consistent and 
 so steadfast that there would be no impropriety in speaking 
 of it as "the rule." Thus a single young woman was borne 
 by six single young women, a single young man by six of his 
 compeers, a married woman by married women, and so on 
 all through. Nay, it is no unusual sight even yet to see the 
 child carried by six children, var3ring according to the sex of 
 the dead child. In the case of the young unmarried woman, 
 moreover, some peculiarities of costume were always to be 
 observed about the bearers. Their dress was not all un- 
 relieved black. White sashes or scarfs were customarily 
 worn, and white gloves always. Much of this remains still, 
 but the observance in such matters is hardly so religious as 
 it used to be. 
 
 Another usage struck me very forcibly, when I was as 
 yet a stranger in the district, and to its ways and customs. 
 This was the practice of singing at divers places and times 
 during the proceedings. The custom used to be to sing a 
 hymn, or part of one of the old version of the psalms, when 
 the body was brought forth from the death-room, and set on 
 
232 Manners and Customs 
 
 the chairs arranged for its reception in front of the house. 
 Singing was continued or repeated on "lifting the body," 
 and again once or oftener on the road to the church — that is, 
 in the days preceding the acquisition and use of the hearse, 
 which, I believe, was a sort of joint-stock property at first. 
 There were, indeed, in some places regular stations at which 
 the body was rested and a hymn or psalm sung. Invariably, 
 too, in the old days, and even in some instances in later days, 
 when the funeral procession began to move down the grassy 
 slope by which the churchyard is approached, a hymn was 
 raised, and the singing was continued until the churchyard 
 gate was reached. In point of fact, in the days immediately 
 preceding my incumbency, the practice was such that the 
 rubric prescribing the meeting of the corpse by the priest 
 and clerks at the churchyard entrance, and their singing or 
 saying the prescribed sentences as they preceded the body 
 into the church, was not only practically but completely 
 ignored. The singing was persevered in to the very entrance 
 of the church. The singers were supreme, and " the priest and 
 clerks " nowhere. This I stopped by remaining steadfast in 
 the entrance to the churchyard until the loudest and longest- 
 winded of the singing men had sung themselves out. And 
 yet again, within the church, the strains were upraised on 
 the conclusion of the reading of the lesson by the officiating 
 minister. And as the old clerk drawled the words to be sung 
 out, two lines at a time, and the voices, though many and 
 strong, were restrained neither by training nor any niceties 
 of pronunciation, modulation, or time, the effect was not 
 usually either harmonious or such as to conduce to solemn 
 or sober feelings. 
 
 Before long I was requested to give the hymn out myself, 
 and the men who sang were members of the church choir. 
 Previously the Wesleyan hymn-book was freely used, and 
 the man who acted as reader of the two lines at a time outside 
 the churchyard, and leader of the band, seldom darkened the 
 
Burials not as they once were 233 
 
 church doors save when oflBciating as chief songman at a 
 burying. 
 
 Some of the singing scenes I was privileged to witness, 
 when I was still a stranger more or less, were, considering 
 the occasion, painfully ludicrous. But it is all past now. 
 
HOLY-WELLS, MELL-SUPPER, HARVEST-HOME , 
 
 So far as I am aware, we have no well or spring in Danby 
 of reputed old-world sanctity; no wishing-well, rag-well, or 
 pin-well. A later name — in one sense later, if not in another 
 — is hMikeld, holy-well ; and, perhaps, the latest of all, St. 
 John's well, St. Hilda's well, or some other prefix embodying 
 a saintly name. What I mean to imply by speaking of these 
 terms or names as the one of them later than the other, accord- 
 ing to sequence of time, is that almost certainly such names 
 as pin-well or wishing-well are distinct indications that, in the 
 remote times of our remote antecessors, some sort of religious 
 cult, some offering of adoration more or less pronounced, of 
 vows, gifts, wishes, uttered or conceived, found its expression 
 and its ritual at that place ; that a well-preserved survival of 
 both sentiment and practice or observance continued, in the 
 early days of a brighter faith, to attach the idea of sanctity 
 and severance from the merely natural to the springing 
 waters, and to the place from which they gushed; and that 
 next, in the sequence of such succession, the name of some 
 saint, some great one in the annals of the new faith, should 
 either arbitrarily or for some special reason of force in the 
 vicinity, be attached to the hallowed keld, spring, or well. 
 
 Probably few persons except such as are in the habit of 
 poring over not only the six-inch Ordnance sheets, but old 
 plans or maps of parishes, estates, and farms, old charters and 
 other like documents dealing with grants of land and the 
 
Hdlikelds and Folklore Connections 235 
 
 boundaries involved, — and last, but not least, old legends, old 
 folk-notions and feelings, old folk-practices and sayings, or 
 what not, — have any idea of the number of pin-wells and wish- 
 ing-wells, of what used to be rag-wells, of h&likelds or holy- 
 wells, and saints' wells, there still are, whether with or without 
 their old prestige, reputed sanctity, or Pool-of-Siloam virtue, 
 still duly accredited to them, scattered up and down through- 
 out our Cleveland district. And a further remark that may 
 be safely ventured is, that the neighbourhood of the church 
 is not at all infrequently a clue to the vicinity of some such 
 spring or well. Such instances as those of St. Hilda's well 
 in Hinderwell churchyard, St. John's well at Mount Grace — 
 to which large and fully-organised pilgrimages were wont to 
 be made, even after the Dissolution — of the hilikeld just 
 through the churchyard at Liverton, of the holy -well at 
 Crathorne, just outside the churchyard, of course occur to any 
 one moderately acquainted with the legends and local ideology 
 of the district. But besides these there are divers less 
 obtrusive instances of the same kind. And that there must 
 have been one of these now unsuspected and undreamt-of 
 wishing-wells or hS,likelds in Danby one can doubt but little, 
 land of fountains, wells, and springing waters as it is ; only 
 there is no local name, no sort of folk-saying even, to indicate 
 which or where it was. 
 
 It may be supposed by some that much of this is merely 
 fancy ; that, admitting there may have been the practice of 
 well-worship, of the offering of vows or wishes, or gifts, to the 
 spirit of the springing water or the running water, in the old 
 days that are gone, still there can be no survival of what is 
 essentially paganism in the nineteenth century ; that ignorance 
 and superstition cannot extend to such a length as that, even 
 in far-away or out-of-the-way places, in this enlightened day 
 of ours. But there is no doubt possible on the subject. I 
 have seen pins enough in some of these pin-wells — many of 
 them as bright as when just taken out of the paper, and not 
 
236 Manners and Customs 
 
 so very many years ago — to have furnished the votive pin- 
 cushion presented at a baby's birth ; and although many of 
 them now may be put in in the way of frolic, and by the 
 sportive members of pleasure parties — as may be seen to one's 
 discontent at such wells as that at Mount Grace — yet there 
 is no doubt as to the hona fides with which the greater portion 
 of these votive offerings are dropped within the circle of 
 the mystic well. There is something very suggestive even 
 yet to the mind of one accustomed to look into the reason 
 of things in J. E. Green's notice of the struggle between 
 Christianity and heathenism in England, and the tenacious 
 survival of the latter in divers matters and various directions 
 even after the apparent victory of the former. " But if the 
 old faith was beaten by the new," he says, "it was long in 
 being killed. A hundred years after the conversion of Kent, 
 King Wihtred had still to forbid Kentishmen 'offering to 
 devils.' At the very close of the eighth century synods in 
 Mercia and Northumbria were struggling against the heathen 
 practice of eating horse-flesh at the feast to Woden. In spite 
 of this resistance, however, Wodenism was so completely 
 vanquished that even the coming of the Danes failed to revive 
 it. But the far older nature-worship, the rude fetichism which 
 dated back to ages long before history, had tougher and deeper 
 roots. The new religion could turn the nature-deities of this 
 primseval superstition into devils, its spells into magic, its spae- 
 wives into witches, but it could never banish them from the 
 imagination of men ; it had in the end even to capitulate to 
 the nature-worship, to adopt its stones and its wells, to turn 
 its spells into exorcisms and benedictions, its charms into 
 prayers. How persistent was the strength of the old belief 
 we see even at a later time than we have reached : ' We 
 earnestly forbid all heathendo^n,' says a canon of Gnut's time. 
 'Heathendom is that men worship idols; that is, that they 
 worship heathen gods, and the sun or the moon, fire or rivers, 
 water-wells or stones, or great trees of any kind ; or that they 
 
The true Meaning of Folklore Usages 237 
 
 love witchcraft, or promote morth-worh in any wise, or by blot, 
 or hjfyrht, or do anything of like illusions.'" But although 
 the secular arm was stretched out to stop the continued practice 
 of heathen usage, either backing or being backed by authority 
 of spiritual men, so that a witch- wife — the first in the grisly 
 host — was drowned at London Bridge in the course of the 
 tenth century, still there were many heathen usages against 
 which " even councils did not struggle. Easter fires. May-day 
 fires, midsummer fires, with their numerous ceremonies, the 
 rubbing the sacred flame, the running through the glowing 
 embers, the throwing flowers on the fire, the baking in it and 
 distributing large loaves and cakes, with the round dance 
 about it, remained village customs. At Christmas the entry 
 of the boar's head, decked with laurel and rosemary, recalled 
 the sacrifice of the boar to Frigga at the midwinter feast of 
 the old heathendom. The autumn feast lingered on unchal- 
 lenged in the village harvesthome with the sheaf, in old times 
 the symbol of the god, nodding gay with flowers and ribbons 
 on the last waggon. As the ploughman took to his plough he 
 still chanted the prayer that, though christened as it were by 
 the new faith, remained in substance a cry to the Earth-goddess 
 of the old, — 'Earth, Earth, Earth, Mother Earth, grant thee 
 the Almighty one, grant thee the Lord, acres waxing, and 
 sprouts wantoning, ... and the broad crops of barley, and 
 the white wheat-crop, and all crops of eartk' So, as he drove 
 the first furrow he sang again, ' Hail, Mother Earth, thou feeder 
 of folk, be thou growing by goodness of God, filled with fodder, 
 the folk to feed ' " (Conquest of Englamd, p. 11). 
 
 Mr. Green's references are to Kemble's Saxons in Eng- 
 land and to Saxon Leechdoms, published in the Rolls Series, 
 and the incantation to Mother Earth and on the occasion of 
 driving the first furrow are from the Cottonian MSS., headed 
 by the editor "A Charm for bewitched Land," and commencing, 
 as translated literally from the original Anglo-Saxon, " Here 
 is the remedy how thou mayest amend thine acres, if they 
 
238 Manners and Customs 
 
 will not wax well, or if therein anything uncanny have been 
 done by sorcery or witchcraft," and of which it is safe to say 
 that the ceremonies and observances prescribed and the in- 
 cantations enjoined could not be outdone for sheer pagan 
 superstition, reliance on occult nature-craft, and manufacture 
 of spells, by half a dozen arch -impostors of the school of the 
 noted "Wise Man o' Stowsley." And the mass-priest is to 
 have his share — by no means an insignificant one, the very 
 altar of the parish church being the scene of some part of the 
 " ritual " — in the mummeries ordained ! And what is more 
 to the point, some of the directions given are such that in 
 them are involved the principles lying at the root of more than 
 one of the very most superstitious of the many superstitious 
 practices it has fallen to my lot to note in this district of old 
 sayings, old usages, and unforgotten traditions. 
 
 Two or three pages before that on which the "charm" 
 thus noted is found, but eighteen pages from the commence- 
 ment of a series of like or analogous charms, as they are 
 collectively termed, stands one which is not a little curious 
 and no less interesting, by reason of its more than possible 
 suggestiveness. It is again in Anglo-Saxon, and derived 
 from the same source as the last, namely, the Cottonian MSS., 
 and the translation is, " This is St. Columcille's (Columbkill) 
 circle. Write this circle with the point of thy knife upon a 
 meal-stone, and cut a stake in the midst of the enclosing 
 hedge, and lay the stone upon the stake, so that it be all 
 underground except the written -upon part." There is 
 nothing to specify the particular purpose or object of the 
 circle, a diagram of which is given, except certain inscribed 
 words, from the character of which some surmise as to the 
 intent of the charm may be risked. The saint's circle consists 
 of -two concentric circles, the inner one of which is divided 
 into four equal sections by two lines passing through the 
 centre at right angles with one another. In the upper left- 
 hand segment are a series of Roman numerals arranged in five 
 
Parallelism of Meal-stone and Quern 239 
 
 horizontal lines ; in the lower segment on the same side, three 
 rows of the same; in the upper right-hand section, "cont". 
 apes ut salvi sint, & in corda eorum .s'.a.h."; and in the 
 remaining section simply the numeral xxx. That it is a spell 
 or charm to ensure the wellbeing of the bees belonging to the 
 man making use of it seems then to be apparent ; and one 
 might venture the expansion which would afford the translation, 
 "Compass the bees about, that they may be kept safe, and 
 that human intelligence may possess their hearts." But this 
 is comparatively immaterial from the point of view from 
 which I would fain regard it. The peculiar use of the peculiar 
 article mentioned, namely the meal-stone, is what arrests my 
 attention. The translator, than whom no more competent 
 Anglo-Saxon scholar existed, gives the explanatory rather 
 than alternative meaning of quern for meal-stone. Admitting 
 this rendering, the use of the meal-stone or quern in the 
 manner indicated, or in the practice of rites which can only 
 be spoken of as connected with pagan observances or acts of 
 heathen worship, is certainly one to be noticed under any 
 circumstances. And it is not impossible that it may suggest 
 an explanation where an explanation is admittedly very 
 much wanted. 
 
 Let us recall Mr. Green's remark that the " autumn feast," 
 characterised by him a few sentences before as a "heathen 
 usage," " lingered on unchallenged in the village harvest-home 
 with the sheaf, in old times a symbol of the god, nodding gay 
 with flowers and ribbons on the last waggon." But we cannot 
 use the past tense even yet in speaking of this accompaniment of 
 the harvesl^home, albeit the " harvestrhome," in the historian's 
 sense, is no longer the village festival, but one that is celebrated 
 on divers farms all comprised in the same parochial district. 
 And that is true over very wide districts of our country. 
 Here in our own Yorkshire, and especially in our own dales, 
 notwithstanding the modem "harvest -home," which is 
 essentially a resurrection rather than a survival only, of the 
 
240 Manners and Customs 
 
 old "village festival," we know well what the " mell-sheaf,"- 
 the " mell-supper," or " kern-supper," truly is ; and scarcely a 
 generation back the sheaf and the festival so called were of 
 as regular occurrence as the harvest itself on many and many 
 a primitive farm-hold or hilly dale-side occupation throughout 
 our northern districts. 
 
 All the same, there long has been, and there still is, no 
 little uncertainty about the meaning and the origin of both 
 the names " kern-supper " and "mell-supper." In the Cleve- 
 land Glossary the definition of the former is, " A supper given 
 to the work-people by the farmer on the completion of 
 'shearing,' or severing the corn, on a farm;" of the latter, 
 "The harvest-supper, or supper given by the farmer to his 
 work-people on the conclusion of the harvest; that is, as 
 regards reaping or cutting the corn, not the leading or 
 carrying." The "kern-baby" is described as "an image, or 
 possibly only a sheaf of the newly-cut corn, gaily dressed up 
 and decorated with clothes, ribbons, and flowers, and borne 
 home rejoicingly after severing the last portions of the 
 harvest;" while "mell-sheaf" is called "the last sheaf of the 
 harvest, which used to be formed on finishing the reaping with 
 much observance and care." Perhaps the most character- 
 istic, certainly the most suggestive, and it may be the most 
 instructive account of the matters under mention is that 
 which is given by Mr. Henderson in his Folklore of North 
 Englarid, p. 7. What he says is as follows : " Our most 
 characteristic festive rejoicings accompany the harvest, namely 
 the mell-supper and the kern-baby. In the northern part of 
 Northumberland the festival takes place at the close of the 
 reaping, not the ingathering. When the sickle is laid down 
 and the last sheaf of corn set on end, it is said that they have 
 'got the kern'; the reapers announce the fact by loud shout- 
 ing, and an image crowned with wheat-ears and dressed in a 
 white frock and coloured ribbons is hoisted on a pole and 
 carried by the tallest and strongest man of the party. All 
 
'Kern-feast'' probably one with 'Mell-supper 241 
 
 circle round this 'kern-baby' or harvest-queen, and proceed 
 to the barn, where they set the image up on high, and proceed 
 to do justice to the harvest-supper." This harvest-supper is 
 called the "kern-feast" a little farther on, and it is added 
 that "the mell-supper in the county of Durham is closely 
 akin to the Northumbrian kern -feast." It is more than 
 possible that a distinction may have been made at some 
 period and in some districts between the " kern-supper " and 
 the " meU-supper " ; and indeed there is ample reason, alike 
 from what I have myself collected among my elder parishioners 
 in the old days and from what has been recorded by Eugene 
 Aram, as well as others less notorious, that in various parts of 
 North Yorkshire both the one and the other were celebrated, 
 but the one on the completion of the severing of the corn, 
 the other on finishing the ingathering. Originally, however, 
 there can have been but one festival of the nature indicated, 
 and the distinct probability is that the one name of the said 
 festival being from the beginning interchangeable with the 
 other, in order to suit the fact to the word, as has been done 
 in such multitudes of instances, two separate suppers have 
 been arbitrarily distinguished by these synonyms. This 
 seems to be the conclusion that is pointed to by every 
 consideration. And perhaps even the perplexity and un- 
 certainty about the very form, as well as the origin and 
 meaning of either of these names, is neither the least nor the 
 least significant of these considerations. 
 
 The prefix in kern-supper, kern-feast, kern-baby, is variously 
 referred to "kern," our Yorkshire word for churn, and to the 
 word " corn " ; while the " mell " in mell-supper, mell-sheaf, 
 etc., has been diversely attributed to French mder, to mingle, 
 and also mMie, a contest; to Teutonic rmhl, meal; to Old 
 Norse mdr, wild corn ; to mell, a mallet or wooden hammer ; 
 to English meal, a service of food ; and even to Norse amilli, 
 between, intermediate ! Possibly nothing could show forth 
 more conspicuously the utter uncertainty as to the actual 
 
 R 
 
242 Manners and Customs 
 
 source of the word in question than such a preposterous 
 array of impossible and, many of them, nonsensical deriva- 
 tions. Indeed if one were not only too well acquainted 
 with the extravagances of the amateur derivationists of place- 
 names and personal names, he vi'ould be surprised at the 
 fertility of folly displayed by such as have attempted to 
 account for the words or names under comment. But just 
 as it has begun to dawn on the minds of a few among the 
 great host of derivers of place-names that the only safe 
 method is the historic method, that the name or word under 
 inquiry must be hunted out, as far as may be, to its original 
 forms, and connected, if it be possible, vrith fact, to the passing- 
 by of fancy, so it is a thought that should have presented 
 itself to the minds of the imaginative people who have helped 
 in supplying that plentiful crop of absurd connections for mell 
 and for hern, and that must be entertained by any one bent on 
 the same quest still, that historical considerations not only 
 cannot be out of place, but must of necessity be entertained. 
 It is not, however, certain, a priori, that such considerations 
 will lead on to discovery at all, and much less to a complete 
 elucidation of the doubts and difficulties which beset all such 
 inquiries. 
 
 Now the first fact in this connection that presents itself for 
 recognition is that which is stated so simply and plainly by 
 Mr. Green, namely, that it is the autumn feast of the old 
 paganism which lingers on in the village harvest -home, 
 including the minor but most pregnant facts that the sheaf 
 borne in rejoicing was in old times the symbol of the god, 
 and that still, as the kern-baby or the mell-sheaf, it is borne 
 nodding gay with flowers and ribbons on the last waggon. 
 Surely what is thus faithfully preserved, alike in fact and 
 in usage, may be reasonably expected to have retained, 
 together with such marked attendant recollections, some 
 survival, however faint and indistinct, of the old terminology 
 connected with it. In other words, "the nodding sheaf the 
 
Quern, Corn, Meal or MeH, if not all connected? 243 
 
 symbol of the god," and the effigy— surely a more pronounced 
 symbol of the god — as they must have had distinctive names 
 in the time of their early survival, may be not unreasonably 
 questioned as to vrhether or no they have been utterly 
 divested of any or all trace of the names by which they used 
 to be called. It is strange if a sheaf vtrhich lives on to this 
 day, and is a special sheaf in such various parts of the country, 
 — here appearing as a mighty burden of corn, heavy and 
 large enough to task a strong man's strength in the bearing 
 of it ; ftiere small but made with fastidious neatness, and 
 plaited about the parts below the ears with a remarkable and 
 most taking cunning, — the sheaf comprising the very last of 
 the severed crop, should have nothing at all in the names it is 
 known by to serve as a reminder, a reminiscence even, of what 
 it was wont to be called in the elder days of its survival. . 
 
 Is it then altogether impossible that the meala-stan of the 
 old Anglo-Saxon charm or incantation, with its alternative 
 of " quern," as given by Mr. Cockayne, should furnish some 
 sort of a suggestive hint as to what may have been the early 
 expression of the early idea, crystallised alike in the fact and 
 in the name of the mell- or kern-sheaf or -feast 1 The meala- 
 stan is that which grinds ; and, says Professor Skeat, under 
 . Quern (A,-S. cwemn, cwijrn, Icel. qvern) " originally, that which 
 grinds." But this is not all. Under Churn the same great 
 authority says, speaking of the root-words he quotes as 
 connected, "All these words are closely related to E. corn, 
 with all its Teutonic cognates. The root of these latter is 
 GAR, to grind, pulverise. . . . From the same root, and from 
 the same notion of grinding, comes the remarkably similar 
 M. E. quern, a handmill, with its numerous Teutonic cognates, 
 including the Gothic kwairnus, a millstone." 
 
 Thus we have the fact that the meal-stone or quern was 
 actually employed in what we speak of as the superstitious 
 acts of the ritual of the old days; the further fact that, in 
 attempting to account for the origin of the familiar old terms 
 
244 Manners and Customs 
 
 mell-sheaf, kern-baby, mell- or kern-feast, etc, men have 
 fallen upon the words churn, corn, meal, etc., as furnishing 
 possible suggestions of derivation ; and the philological facts 
 that quern, corn, churn are all cognate, and that uieal-stone 
 and quern are synonymous, even in the far past of the Gothic 
 day. Is it altogether too far-fetched a notion that the ideas 
 connected with meal, meal-stone, quern are intimately con- 
 nected not only with the old pagan harvest festival, but with 
 the perplexiiig terms associated with the survival of the said 
 old, old autumn feast? Let us take an illustration of the 
 possibility accompanying this hypothesis from an authority 
 which will hardly be questioned even by the agnostic in such 
 a matter as this : " Speak unto the children of Israel, and 
 say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give 
 unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall 
 bring a sheaf of the first-fruits of your harvest unto the priest ; 
 and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted 
 for you. . . . Also, in the day of the first-fruits, when ye 
 bring a new meat-offering unto the Lord, ... ye shall have a 
 holy convocation," etc. And this "meat-offering," what of it? 
 This : "And when any will offer a meat-offering, his offering 
 shall be of fine flour." Flour, otherwise " meal," in some form, 
 or ears of corn, or corn out of the ears first and specially 
 gathered, this was the "meat-offering" ; and one whose atten- 
 tion has not previously been drawn to the circumstance might 
 well be a little surprised at the incessant mention in the 
 directions for ritual given in Leviticus and elsewhere in the 
 same part of the Old Testament, of the meat-offering and its 
 concomitant observances. The baking of great loaves and 
 cakes in the embers of the great fire lighted at one of the 
 great seasonal festivals of pagan times, and the distributing of 
 them after, is referred to by the historian, and it is surely idle to 
 suppose that there was no eating and drinking at the autumn 
 feast ; and what more natural than the supposition that at the 
 said autumn feast of the ingathering there should have been 
 
Survival of the Autumn Feast 245 
 
 not only the equivalent of the harvest-sheaf we have just been 
 reminded of, or of the " meat-offering " in its most usual form, 
 but also an imperative requirement that new corn should be 
 forthcoming, fresh meal procured therefrom, kneaded into 
 cakes or loaves, and baked and consumed, and that the meal- 
 stone or quern should have had a sufficiently important part 
 to play in the function to be made to bequeath its name and 
 that of its produce aUke to what even yet is admittedly the 
 representative rather than the survival merely of the old 
 autumn feast of our pagan ancestors ? 
 
THE DOG-WHIPPEE 
 
 Forty years ago the " Dog-whipper " was still an institution 
 in this dale. Auld Willy Richardson was then the hereditary 
 holder of the office, his father having been dog-whipper 
 before him ; and when Willy himself died, the office, the 
 honour, and the insignia passed to his brother John. 
 For the office was by no means one without outward signs 
 and tokens of its existence. The office-holder held also 
 a whip, and whenever he was on duty the whip was en 
 Evidence. 
 
 Poor old Willy, the first dog-whipper of my acquaintance, 
 was a little man of about five feet four, with legs that were 
 hardly a pair, and which it would have been slander to call 
 straight or well shapen ; and, as was natural perhaps, he 
 shambled in his gait. His usual garb on the Sunday was an 
 ancient drab coat, cut — if a tailor had ever been concerned in 
 the making of it — after the fashion described as that of 
 Dominie Sampson's, with broad skirts falling quite below the 
 knee. There were side-pockets in it, opening just upon the 
 hip ; capacious and with a sort of suggestiveness about them 
 that they were not simply meant to contain sundries, but were 
 put to such a use by wont and custom. On Sundays, and days- 
 when a " burying " was to be — for Willy was sexton also, and 
 kept the depth of his graves religiously to under three feet — 
 the short handle of the whip he bore reposed in the right- 
 hand pocket, but the lainder and lash hung outside ; the latter. 
 
The Dog in collision with the Dog-whipper 247 
 
 inasmucli as the bearer's stature was not great, trailing on the 
 ground. 
 
 Willy was valorous in the execution of his duty, although 
 he may sometimes have seen occasion for the exercise of a 
 wise discretion. I knew of two such instances. In one the 
 intrusive dog was made slowly to recede before the duly- 
 armed official, who was fairly well able to command the whole 
 interspace between the pews which runs the length of the 
 church ; but when it came to turning round the corner and 
 backing towards the door, the dog did not see the expediency 
 of the desired course quite so clearly as Willy did ; and so, 
 having more room in the crossing in which to attain the neces- 
 sary impetus, he made a bolt for it, aiming at the archway 
 presented by the dog-whipper's bow-legs. But the archway 
 proved to be less than the dog had assumed it to be ; and, in 
 consequence, after riding backwards for a pace or two,. poor 
 old Willy came backwards to the pavement, and to grief 
 besides. The dog on the other occasion was more resolute, or 
 else less accommodating ; for he met all Willy's advances with 
 a steady refusal to budge an inch in a backward direction. 
 Willy persevered ; the dog growled. Willy showed his whip ; 
 the dog showed his teeth ; and the teeth having a more per- 
 suasive look about them than the whip, the man gave way 
 and the dog did not. 
 
 Willy Dog-whipper's successor, as I have said, both as to 
 the office and its badge, was his brother John. Him I induced, 
 by the addition of sixpence from the parson's magnificent burial- 
 fee of eighteenpence, to his own pittance of one shilling and 
 threepence for digging the grave, attendance at the funeral, 
 and filling up the grave at the close, to dig the graves an 
 extra foot in depth. But it was an innovation to which, 
 despite the — by comparison — easily earned sixpence extra, he 
 never completely grew reconciled. He thought a coffin with 
 twenty or twenty-two inches of soil upon it was " weel eneugh 
 happed oop for owght." John wore a ring, made out of the 
 
248 Manners and Customs 
 
 old coffin-tyre he met with in digging the graves in the well- 
 worked churchyard the Danby "kirk- garth" was, until I 
 got an additional half acre laid to it. This ring was good 
 against "falling fits." His predecessor's particular wear had 
 been earrings of the same material. 
 
 These two worthies held other offices, either by favour or 
 by inheritance or descent. Willy was the "bidder to the 
 burials," while John was in extensive request on occasions of 
 pig-killing ; and, having a considerable number of patrons and 
 friends among the farmers, and others who had pigs to kill in 
 the course of the winter, he had very many engagements of 
 that kind. It was said that, in addition to his food and a 
 small money fee on these occasions, he had the pigs' ears as 
 his perquisite ; and that he always kept count of how many 
 pig executions he had attended in the course of the season, 
 by aid of small reserved and preserved pieces of the said ears. 
 
 But there was a matter to be noted in connection with 
 this family which may be more worth recording than any yet 
 mentioned. Besides the aforesaid "Willy and John, there was 
 a sister, Nanny, who would assuredly have been credited with 
 the character of a witch had she lived two or three genera- 
 tions earlier, and have met with the observance usual in such 
 cases. In fact, there were some whose opinions on that sub- 
 ject were not quite settled, as it was. Not three months since 
 I was asked, " Had she not had that reputation?" This woman, 
 a good match in symmetry and size to her brother Willy, 
 was, during the greater part of her life, after my acquaintance 
 with her began, practically voiceless. She could not even so 
 much as whisper audibly ; and it did wear an uncanny look to 
 see her, so to speak, trying to talk — lips, mouth, tongue in 
 rapid motion, and with a sort of emphatic action — and yet 
 not be able to hear a sound. Some even of my own children 
 thought her alarming, and were shy of being accosted by her. 
 But the noteworthy matter remaining to be chronicled in con- 
 nection with her, and certainly one of her brothers, if not 
 
Non-' withdrawal of Charitie ' 249 
 
 both, was that practically they lived by begging. But that 
 expression must not be misunderstood. They were not pro- 
 fessional mendicants ; but they were the survivals, and the 
 last survivals, of an outworn system. Thus Nanny, to the 
 last day of her life and ability to go her accustomed rounds, 
 had her dinner one day in the week at one particular farm- 
 house, and another dinner another day at another house ; and 
 besides this she had "a piece" here and "a piece" there 
 given her, to carry away in her bag for home consumption. 
 The system is, of course, utterly obsolete now, and in England 
 generally it has been so for long. But it was an accredited 
 system once ; and I think accredited by at least unwritten 
 law as well as custom. What I mean will appear from the 
 following extract from the Orders made at Quarter Sessions 
 held at Thirsk, 4th April 1654: "In regard the parishioners 
 of Osmotherley withdraw their charitie, which formerly they 
 gave at their doores to Alexander Swailes, a poor man, it is 
 therefore Ordered that the parish officers there shall, for the 
 future, pay the said poor man 12d. weekly." Our parish- 
 ioners here did not "withdraw their charitie" from poor, 
 voiceless old Nanny up to something more than twenty years 
 ago. I buried her in 1867, and as long as she was able to 
 walk about I used to meet her with her accustomed bag, and 
 knew she had a place reserved for her once a week at Howe 
 End. 
 
HISTOEICAL 
 
HISTOEICAL 
 
 The history of the parish divides itself naturally into the 
 prehistoric, the ancient, and the more recent. 
 
 As to the prehistoric, no one can walk over our moors 
 without having his attention drawn to the numerous grave- 
 mounds scattered over all the higher and drier portions of the 
 wide expanse. Some of these are of large size, many of moder- 
 ate dimensions, and a vast number so small as to be compara- 
 tively insignificant. Not a few too have been removed bodily, 
 and only spaces of wiry grass with a few brackens, and surfaces 
 bare of any growth of ling, remain to testify to their former 
 sites. Of these larger or more conspicuous houes there may 
 be (or have been) perhaps thirty to thirty-five within the 
 limits of the manor ; while of the smaller ones it is not easy 
 to estimate how many there have been. They have been 
 removed in great numbers simply for the sake of the stones 
 which had been rudely piled together in the making of them. 
 One man told me he had himself destroyed not less than thirty 
 in the course of building one single enclosure wall. 
 
 That these smaller hills — they are from ten or twelve feet 
 to sixteen or eighteen in diameter, and about two feet or less 
 in height — are grave-mounds, rests rather upon assumption 
 than proof. I have opened many of them with my own 
 hands, and, save in one instance, I have met with no distinct 
 trace of any interment, and Mr. Kendall of Pickering told me 
 that his experience was of the same character as my own. In 
 
2 54 Historical 
 
 one I found a very fine scraper of red flint ; but in all without 
 any exception I have found chippings of flint and fragments 
 of charcoal — but only very rarely sherds of pottery — which 
 are such invariable adjuncts to houe-burial and houe-building 
 in general, that it is, I think, safe to infer from them alone 
 the sepulchral character of these minor mounds also. 
 
 The contents of the larger houes are such as to leave no 
 uncertainty on this point, or as to the approximate date of 
 their construction. They belong unquestionably to what is 
 now universally styled the Bronze Period, and to all appear- 
 ance to the later division of* the same. It is indeed remark- 
 able how very few bronze articles, implements or weapons, 
 have been found in Cleveland in all ; and the whole of these, 
 without any exception, so far as my information extends, have 
 been of the less archaic style of form and manufacture. My 
 own individual findings have been limited to a few mouldering 
 fragments of very thin plate, found with the unprotected bones 
 of a cremated body, and not sufficient to fill a very small pill- 
 box half an inch in diameter. And yet I have thoroughly 
 examined no fewer than eighty to one hundred houes in 
 Cleveland alone. 
 
 The last and most interesting, because most local, find of 
 the sort that has come to my knowledge was a rather fine 
 socketed celt which was found a few years ago near the stone 
 quarry on Glaisdale side. This is now in Canon Greenwell's 
 collection. 
 
 These grave-mounds or houes then serve the historical 
 purpose of giving irrefragable testimony to the fact of the 
 former existence in the district of a people who were not un- 
 acquainted with the use of metal, in the form of bronze, but 
 who seem to have become so acquainted later on in the bronze 
 epoch, and to have possessed but a very scanty supply of what 
 must have been in those days, at all events in this district, a 
 very costly material. But, it may be said, they are memorials 
 which connect themselves only with the cessation of life among 
 
The ' Sentiment ' of the Houe-builders 255 
 
 these early inhabitants, and not with their actual life. That 
 is certainly true, but only in a limited sense. 
 
 We hear of Christian burial, and the decencies and privi- 
 leges of it ; we hear of cremation, and the recommendations 
 and alleged advantages of it; we hear of funerals that, cost 
 hundreds or thousands of pounds, of others less costly but 
 made historical by the numbers of mourners, relatives, friends, 
 dependants, clients, connected with the deceased and brought 
 together by a community of strong and powerful feeling. 
 But all these things, however much they may have to do with 
 the dead, have more still — much inore, in the historical sense 
 — to do with the living. 
 
 So too with the builders and makers of these lonely, ex- 
 posed, and, in the older days, doubtless, gruesome receptacles 
 of the dead. Cannot one see the toiling tribesmen, labouring 
 for days and weeks, maybe, raising that mighty mound we call 
 Robin Hood's Butt, ninety-five feet in diameter and seventeen 
 or eighteen high, basketful by basketful, almost handful by 
 handful, brought together with infinite pains and care, and 
 strewed symmetrically with accurate adjustment? Or that 
 lesser mound, near to the foot of the great Freeburgh Hill, 
 with its enclosed cairn of whinstone blocks, each of them 
 brought three or four miles over the trackless moor, and 
 despite of swamp and morass, from the only source from 
 which they could be quarried or obtained? And these 
 instances, remarkable as they are for such a district as ours, 
 are a mere nothing as compared with corresponding memorials 
 in other districts with a fuller population jnd fewer physical 
 obstacles. 
 
 One cannot but allow for the presence of very potent con- 
 siderations and very strong and sustained feelings in the 
 breasts of the people who acted thus. Whatever their belief 
 or their superstition (if we are " sectarian " enough to allow 
 for nothing better), yet they were capable of acting in 
 concert, of a great respect for the dead, of a conviction that 
 
2 s 6 Historical 
 
 life was not yet totally at an end, even for their cremated or 
 inhumed fore-elders, relatives, friends, leaders. There might 
 be, there probably was, fear as well as respect or reverence 
 mixed up with the funeral rites and observances. There 
 migUt be, there probably was, a desire to restrain the " umbra," 
 the "ghost" of the departed to his own department and 
 interests. There might be, almost certainly there was, an 
 idea of purification in the fire wherein the body was burned, 
 without application of which, in some form, it is probable no 
 body was consigned to the houe or the ringed-in grave ; and 
 a dozen other analogous or co-ordinate suggestions might be 
 made. But in every one of them a feature of the life of the 
 men of the time strives for recognition, and we are not so 
 much enabled as compelled to recognise the kinship in con- 
 viction, emotion, purpose, and action, between the constructors 
 of those impressive mounds and the throng who took part 
 in the great military funeral of last year, or the consign- 
 ment to her last resting-place of all that remained below of 
 a beloved and respected Yorkshire lady but a day or two 
 after. 
 
 No mean workmen either were these dwellers in the wilds 
 of the old times. The more we think of them in the con- 
 nections just noted, the less able are we to think of them as 
 half-clothed or skin-clothed savages ; and as we watch them 
 in a sort of mind-picture surrounding the funeral pyre, sedu- 
 lously collecting the calcined remains, consigning them to the 
 cinerary vase prepared for their reception, that very vase 
 itself tells us of no mean advance in the fictile art. The 
 modern potter himself, with all his appliances and all the aid 
 of nicely constructed and adjusted machinery, is not quite 
 secure from the risk of collapse of some weak place in the 
 walls of the large-sized vessel he is fashioning ; while these 
 people, without so much as a rough " wheel " to help them, made 
 their sepulchral vases eighteen, twenty, twenty-five inches 
 high, and ten, twelve, fifteen to eighteen in diameter, sym- 
 
Era of the Houe-building indefinite 257 
 
 metrical, well, even gracefully, shaped, firm enough to bear 
 the pressure of the decorator's simple tools, and of a con- 
 sistency to bide the effects of moisture and the natural 
 reagents of the soil for a period of twenty, twenty-five, or 
 even perhaps thirty centuries. However imperfect or, in a 
 sense, inartistic the ware on the whole, still this is an 
 achievement, and a great one. 
 
 But there are other things which connect themselves with 
 the doings of the life of these early dwellers in the Danby 
 district; although of these there is no occasion to speak at 
 length in this place, because they have already been discussed 
 elsewhere : I mean the ancient earth and stone works, de- 
 fensive in their nature, which are met with in so many places 
 on our moors. Whatever their intention and raiion d'Mre, 
 there can be no question as to the testimony they bear to the 
 existence among them of military skill and experience, as well 
 as of social or tribal co-operation. 
 
 The question of date; the inquiry, "When did all this 
 houe -piling and shaping, all this intrenching and walling, 
 take place 1 " is one to which there are a hundred things to 
 hinder if not to baffle, and scarcely one to suggest a reasonable 
 answer. The "when" may have begun six, eight, ten centuries 
 before the Christian era, may have lasted on, in part or degree, 
 until after the Gospel era had been inaugurated. It is a fact 
 as certain as that the houes themselves exist and are sepulchral 
 in their origin and design, that many of them give the most 
 explicit and unhesitating testimony to the lapse of considerable 
 epochs of time between their earliest inception, or the piling 
 of the mound over the original interment, and what are called 
 "secondary" interments, of which sometimes as many as four 
 or five took place successively. 
 
 It is equally true — and any conclusions arrived at as to 
 comparative scantiness of the prehistoric population tend in 
 the same direction— that the contents and inferior fashion of 
 not a few of the houes of the district are such as to suggest 
 
 s 
 
2 s 8 Historical 
 
 wide intervals of time between the relative periods of their 
 erection. But still, all that we arrive at, in the way even of 
 inference, is of the vaguest, shadowiest description. Professor 
 Ehys, while adverting to the questions archaeology has not yet 
 attempted to solve, perhaps even to formulate, admits that it 
 undertakes, and in the main correctly, "to distinguish the 
 burial-places of the Celts from those of the pre-Celtic peoples 
 of Britain, the former having the round barrows assigned to 
 them, and the latter the long ones ; and that, maj^ be, the 
 archaeologist has no data to help him to more exact results." 
 But, proceeds the writer, "he should remember that his study 
 of the tombs falls short of the historian's wish so long as he 
 cannot tell the resting-place of a Brython from that of a Goidel " 
 (that is, a Celt of the later or second invasion from a Gael or 
 one of the former invasion), " and both from those of the 
 neolithic native." ^ And then the Professor surmises that 
 both the neolithic native and the first Celtic immigrant 
 may, according to the latest archeeological investigations, have 
 buried — as the former of the two unquestionably did — in long 
 barrows ; while, as for the later or Brythonic branch, " there 
 is no difficulty in supposing them to have continued in 
 Christian times their use of the barrows." 
 
 But while the somewhat diffident suggestion or surmise just 
 adverted to — namely, that the " Goidel " as well as the " neo- 
 lithic native " may possibly both of them have buried their dead 
 in long barrows — may be safely left as a problem for the 
 archffiologist to solve, there is no doubt that the later Celts, 
 or " Brythons " (as Mr. Ehys calls them, in the wish to escape 
 the confusion which results from the use of the more indefinite 
 term Briton), used the. fashion of round barrows for the inter- 
 
 ^ " The two last, the Goidel and the neolithic native, would seem to 
 have buried in long barrows ; but some of those barrows contain the dead 
 placed with care to sit grimly in their subterranean houses, while others 
 disclose only the huddled bones of men and beasts, as though they were 
 the remains of cannibal feastings. Can they be ascribed to the same race ? 
 We doubt it." (Celtic Britain, p. 246.). 
 
Earthworks possibly earlier than Houes 259 
 
 ment of their dead, and as little that our Cleveland barrows, 
 or houes, without any exception, belong to that class, and 
 that the class itself belongs to a period of very considerable, 
 although indefinite, duration. And if we were able to speak 
 vrith less uncertainty on this head, we might also be able to 
 give some sort of an estimate of the age of the earthworks. 
 For while from one point of view it might be possible to speak 
 of them correctly as coeval with the epoch of the barrows, from 
 another it would be safer to say that they were conterminous 
 with it. 
 
 For, being both systematic and found to extend laterally 
 over so wide a space, it is not possible to look upon these 
 earthworks as thrown up with the view of repelling mere petty 
 border aggressions. The attack which, if made, was intended 
 to be warded off by their aid, was emphatically an attack from 
 the south, and attacks from the south on the scale indicated — 
 that is, with a front of at least seven to eight miles — by tribesr 
 men or clansmen against their fellows can hardly be looked 
 upon as probable. In other words, the struggle, whether 
 actual or anticipated only, could scarcely have been a struggle 
 between Brython and Brython. It must have been between 
 Brython and a foe to the Brython. And if so, the earthworks 
 in question must have been either of an aggressive or a de- 
 fensive nature. If aggressive, they must have been designed 
 to cover an advance from the north towards the south by the 
 Brythons themselves ; if defensive, their object could only have 
 been to impede, if possible to frustrate, an inroad made on the 
 Brythons from the south ; and such inroad could, it is obvious, 
 have been made by no Celtic people or tribal section. This 
 subject is dealt with elsewhere,^ and it is only referred to here 
 as belonging to the ancient history of Danby, and showing 
 why the defensive barriers across the ridges between Danby 
 and Westerdale, across the Ainthorpe ridge, across the ridge 
 between Fryup and Glaisdale, and that across the Glaisdale 
 ' "Earthworks," p. 163 d seq. 
 
26o Historical 
 
 End ridge, must be attributed rather to the beginning of the 
 later Celtic occupation than to the approaching close of the 
 same. 
 
 From the close of the houe- raising epoch, of whatever 
 duration it may have been, and from whatever cause it came 
 to an end, the history of Danby is a blank ; and if we accept 
 the conclusion that there is too little in the way of evidence to 
 assure us that the Anglian colonist ever set his foot in the 
 district, while it cannot be alleged that there are no reasons 
 for thinking he did not, the blank in question becomes wider 
 and vaguer than ever. We have to wait until well on into the 
 ninth century before we can descry the approach of the settler, 
 or listen to the strokes of his axe commencing the needful 
 "riddings," and making way for his cumbrous plough and its 
 unwieldy team. And even then our inquiry is not fully closed ; 
 for we have to ask the question, "In which direction are we 
 to look with the view of descrying the approaching settler % 
 From what quarter, or from what centre, does he come % " 
 
 The ready answer to this question as to many — not to say 
 most — parts of England would be, "From the sea, and along 
 the course of this or that river." But that answer is one that 
 cannot be given offhand in the present case. The first non- 
 Celtic settler or colonist in Danby did not come up the river 
 from the sea, because for one thing it is an absolute certainty 
 that two hundred years before Domesday, access to Danby along 
 the course of the Esk was impossible by boat and impracticable 
 along its banks. Our pre-Domesday survey of the Dales 
 country, and its condition as to water and weed, assures us of 
 that.^ The immigrant must have come from the south or the 
 west, for the north and the east were closed against him. 
 
 From the immediate west, with the forests and wild woods 
 
 of Westerdale, Kildale, Greenhow to traverse, the access may 
 
 not have proved too easy, although we must not overlook the 
 
 Thorkell-sty to Broughton and Stokesley, or the wild, rough 
 
 ^ Appendix C. 
 
Access to Cleveland 261 
 
 way yet farther west, in which Norman William had to face 
 the dour, merciless intensity of a northern moorland winter's 
 storm. These may have been, probably were, tracks two 
 centuries earlier. But besides these there was a grand route 
 open from the soxith in the Roman Road from Malton through 
 Goathland to Goldsburgh, which would be easily available as 
 far as to Hazlehead. 
 
 And here let us recall the leading conditions of the Danish 
 occupation of the north of England so far as they bear on the 
 matter we are considering. A brief sketch of the history reads 
 somewhat in this way. " While the Ostmen," says Mr. Green, 
 "gathered in a fleet of 200 vessels under Olaf the Fair, and 
 threw themselves on the Scot-kingdom across the Firth of 
 Forth, a Danish host from Scandinavia itself, under Ivar the 
 Boneless, landed in 866 on the shores of East Anglia, wherein 
 they were enabled or permitted to winter ; and it was only in 
 the spring of 867 that they horsed themselves and rode for the 
 north. Their aim was Northumbria ; and as they struck over 
 Mid-Britain for York they found the country torn by the 
 wonted anarchy, and two rivals contending, as of old, for the 
 throne. Though the claimants united in presence of the com- 
 mon danger, their union came too late. The Danes had seized 
 York at their first arrival, and now fell back before the North- 
 umbrian host to shelter within its defences, which seem still to 
 have consisted of a wooden stockade crowning the mound 
 raised by the last Roman burghers round their widened city. 
 The flight and seeming panic of their foes roused the temper 
 of the Northumbrians; they succeeded in breaking through 
 the stockade, and pouring in with its flying defenders, were 
 already masters of the bulk of the town when the Danes turned 
 in a rally of despair. From that moment the day was lost. 
 Not only were the two kings slain, but their men were hunted 
 and cut down over all the country-side, till it seemed as if the 
 whole host of Northumbria lay on the fatal field. So over- 
 whelming was the blow that a general terror hindered all 
 
262 Historical 
 
 further resistance ; those who survived the fight ' made peace 
 with the pagans,' and Northumbria sank without further 
 struggle into a tributary kingdom of the Dane." It was after, 
 and consequent upon, this that " the doom which had long ago 
 fallen on Jarrow and Wearmouth fell now on all the religious 
 houses of the coast," and that among the rest " Streonshealh, 
 the house of Hild and Caedmon, vanished so utterly that its 
 very name disappeared, and the township which took its place 
 in later days bore the Danish name of Whitby " (Green, p. 93). 
 
 Now Whitby would be reached by the sea, of course ; but 
 besides the difficulty of doing more than merely reconnoitre 
 the country west of Whitby from Whitby itself, it must be 
 borne in mind that the central point from which the Danish 
 movements as a whole in the north of England were directed 
 and carried out was and continued to be York. It was from 
 York that the plundering raids upon divers parts of the dis- 
 trict at large were organised. It was from York that the 
 systematic attack upon Mercia was designed and executed. It 
 was from York that the ravages in Lincolnshire were entered 
 upon and effected, and other expeditions emanated as from a 
 general centre. 
 
 With the struggle in Wessex and the conquest of Mercia 
 we have nothing to do here, but we may remark that the 
 general issue of these operations " gave the Danes a firmer base 
 from which to complete their conquest of the island, both in 
 north and south" (Green, p. 106); so that "in the spring of 
 875 Halfdene marched northward to the Tyne to complete the 
 reduction of Bernicia." And one thing more is to be noted, 
 that " although their victory at York had left the district occu- 
 pied by the present Yorkshire in their hands as early as the 
 spring of 868, they contented themselves for the next seven 
 years with the exaction of tribute from an under king whom 
 they had set over it " (iW. p. 117). "But in 875 Halfdene, with 
 a portion of the Danish army at Eepton, marched northward 
 into Northumbria, and proceeded unopposed to the Tyne. 
 
Dealing out of the Cleveland Lands 263 
 
 From his winter camp there ' he subdued the land, and oft- 
 times spoiled the Picts and the Strathclyde Wealhs.' With 
 the spring of 876, however, he fell back from Bernicia to the 
 south, and ' parted or dealt among his men the lands of North- 
 umbria; so that thenceforth they went on ploughing and 
 tilling them.'" And then the historian adds, "The names of 
 the towns and villages of Deira show us in how systematic a 
 way southern Northumbria was parted amongst its conquerors. 
 The change seems to have been much the same as that which 
 followed the conquest of the Normans. The English popula- 
 tion was not displaced, but the lordship of the soil was trans- 
 ferred to the conqueror. The settlers formed a new aristocracy, 
 while the older nobles fell to a lower position ; for throughout 
 Deira the life of an English thegn was priced at but half the 
 value of a northern 'hold'" (Green, p. 116). 
 
 But while in a large proportion of the immediate Dales 
 district of which Danby forms part there is a presumption, 
 almost if not quite amounting to proof, that there was 
 ho "English population" to be displaced,^ there remain 
 the same features of approximate inaccessibility character- 
 ising the said portion of the country. Halfdejie marches 
 from the north — the Tyne — to the south, but he could surely 
 come no farther to the east on such a march, with his whole 
 force, than the Conqueror on a like march two hundred years 
 after ; and the " dealing " or parting of the country could only 
 have been carried into practical effect in detail, and by the hand 
 of men who were virtually, if not by express distinction, com- 
 missioners. 
 
 And then comes the allotment of what was eventually to 
 be Danby, and the settlement or actual colonisation, and the 
 naming of the name. Such names as Ormsby, Normanby, 
 Ugleberdesby, Thormodby, Thoraldby, Elwordeby, Bergelby, 
 Barnby, Asulfsby, and the host like them, give us no trouble, 
 for we are familiar with the names Orm, Norman, Ugleberd, 
 ' See Appendix C. 
 
264 Historical 
 
 Thormod, Thorald, Elward or Ailward, Bergulf, Asolf, as 
 with "household words." But as surely as Norman was a 
 personal name, so surely was Dane also, and the names Dane, 
 Norman, Ugleberd, not to mention others, survive as the 
 names of Domesday tenentes two hundred years later than 
 the earliest period to which we can relegate the effectual 
 settling of Danby. The place was allotted to a man called 
 Dane, and of course almost certainly because he was a Dane, 
 as Norman wag a Norwegian — and there were two Normans 
 wanted to stand as godfathers to places in Cleveland — and 
 he, as was the practice with fully one-half of his co-allottees, 
 named the allotment after his own name, and it still remains 
 to hand down his designation, if not his memory, to future 
 generations. 
 
 But while we thus unhesitatingly and unerringly indicate 
 the force and application of the first element of the name, 
 or Dan, what about the second, or hy 1 Much too generally 
 this question is answered in a half-flippant, careless, inexact 
 way, with the explanation "a house, a dwelling." Canon 
 Taylor himself writes, " The word originally meant a dwelling, 
 or a single farm, and hence it afterwards came to denote a 
 village," and he relegates to a note what is not merely the 
 most significant part of the requisite explanation of the 
 syllable in all such names, but the altogether essential idea 
 that ought to be conveyed ; for in that note he says that the 
 Jy at the end of place-names "denotes Danish colonisation. 
 In places visited only for purposes of trade or plunder no 
 dwellings would be required." Just so; "it denotes Danish 
 colonisation," and colonisation, in all cases of possession and 
 occupation for cultural purposes, meant a good deal more 
 than merely a dwelling to cover the head of the colonist 
 himself against the assaults of the elements or the winter's 
 cold. True, there must be the settler's " shanty," but there 
 must be also shanties meaner than the master's for the men 
 who came with him for the colonist's work in the forest and 
 
What 'by' in Place-names meant 265 
 
 on the land ; there must be stables for the horses, byres for 
 the cows, sheds for the oxen, refuges for the sheep, the swine, 
 and the other live stock necessary to make the settlement 
 efficient from all the requisite points of view. So that a hj 
 from the first, instead of being an isolated dwelling, was a 
 farmstead in the old full sense, when the men who worked the 
 land were all thought of and provided with adequate dwelling- 
 places, however rough, as well as the live and dead stock of 
 the agriculturist. It was in this way that, when the clearings 
 and the cultivable area became enlarged, and the population 
 increased and went on increasing accordingly, the hj afterwards 
 came to denote a village. 
 
 Well, Danby was simply a hy first — simply a Danish 
 colonist's settlement, and he called it after his own name — 
 Daneby, a word of three syllables (the second being due to 
 inflection, or marking the possessival case), which afterwards 
 became shortened into two, just as Normanneby became 
 shortened into Normanby, Witeby into Whitby, Asulfesby 
 into Aislaby, and so forth, without stint. A little land was 
 cleared, and then a little more, and so on, until by the time 
 of King Edward the Confessor it had become a hamlet of 
 some size ; and the original farm -settlement of Dane, with 
 its grouped shanties and sheds, stables, byres, etc., had 
 expanded into a vill '^ of thirty or forty cabins, with here 
 and there a dwelling of slightly more pretension than 
 the rest, and possibly an outlying station or two belonging 
 to such as had thriven and expanded into something like 
 the bonder of the old Danish fatherland. That there were 
 serfs — slaves captured in foray or fray — tilling the lord's, the 
 chief man's, holding or demesne, I do not doubt; but that 
 the men who had in all likelihood served under Dane in the 
 wars preceding the parting or " dealing " of the country were 
 mainly or exclusively free men is, I should suppose, a con- 
 clusion that will be gainsaid by none conversant with the 
 ' See Appendix D. 
 
266 Historical 
 
 general subject ; least of all by such as have remarked the 
 manorial and cognate peculiarities observable in what are 
 now called the "Danish counties." 
 
 Time passes on, and the Conquest comes, and is ultimately 
 the means by which we are made' acquainted with the scanty 
 scraps of information of which we have availed ourselves 
 in the inquiry into the pre-Domesday condition of Danby and 
 its sister districts,-^ and through which we are enabled to 
 gather a few other scraps as to its condition in the Confessor's 
 time, and as to the lord of the fee — if we may so express 
 ourselves — in the years preceding the Conquest. For we 
 learn that in 1086 not only was Hugh FitzBaldric lord of 
 Crumbeclive, Lelum, and Danby, but that he had been pre- 
 ceded in that possession by Orm ; and on looking over the 
 other parts of his fee we see that Orm had been his predecessor 
 in so large a part of it as at once to indicate that he had 
 been by no means an unimportant personage. 
 
 Besides, there was a Gam el who was a predecessor of 
 Hugh FitzBaldric in many of the manors which in 1086 
 were of his fee. Whether this Gamel were related to Orm, 
 either as father or son, must be a matter of surmise only. 
 For it would appear there was a Gamel son of Orm and an 
 Orm son of Gamel ; but there is no question that both Orm 
 and Gamel had held parts of the fee which is entered as the 
 fee of Hugh FitzBaldric. Young {History of Whithy, p. 744) 
 says that " Orm before the Conquest was lord of Kirkdale, 
 then called Chircheby or Kirkby, and had ample possessions 
 in that neighbourhood, and in the vale of the Esk." He is 
 wrong in identifying Kirkby with Kirkdale, the place meant 
 by Chircheby being quite certainly Kirkby Moorside, but 
 there can be little uncertainty attaching to the identification 
 of the Orm named with Orm the son of Gamel, who was 
 murdered by Earl Tostig in 1164, under circumstances of 
 great treachery ; and as little in assuming that he was the 
 ' See Appendix C. 
 
Danby andits pre-Conquest Lord 267 
 
 Orm son of Gamel who rebuilt the church at Kirkdale, and 
 commemorated the fact by the celebrated Anglo-Saxon in- 
 scription on the stone over the south door.^ 
 
 But this being so it is sufficiently evident that in the days 
 preceding the Conquest Danby was a part of the possessions 
 of a lord who was no mean man ; he ranked among those whom 
 the historian of Whitby terms the nobles of Northumbria, and 
 the historian of the Conquest terms thegns. And it would 
 seem that, through whatever change of fortune or chance of 
 personal or political preference the fee had ceased to be Orm's, 
 on passing into other hands it passed into the possession of 
 no mean man again. Hugh FitzBaldric was of sufficient im- 
 portance to be Sheriff of Yorkshire, and so to sustain a dignity 
 and a charge which amply bespoke the consideration he was 
 held in by his clear-sighted and practical royal master. And 
 possibly there may be more implied in saying this than we are 
 
 ' This inscription is said to run thus, being translated : ' ' Orm 
 Gamalson bought S. Gregorius minster when it was all to-broken and to- 
 fallen : he it let make new from the ground, to Christ and S. Gregorius 
 in Edward's days the King and Tosti's days the Earl." And as Tostig 
 was Earl from 1055 to 1065, we have the limits of date within which the 
 church was rebuilt. This clearly brings to our minds the conTiction that 
 the Gamel who was murdered by Tostig and the Orm who rebuilt Kirk- 
 dale Church were the Gamel and Orm mentioned in the Domesday entry 
 as to Hugh FitzBaldric's fee, as holding adjoining lands under the 
 previous disposition of the said fee, were nearly connected ; and that, 
 allowing for the historical connection, they were connected as father and 
 son. And this justifies Young's assumption that Orra's father Gamel 
 "ranked among the Northumbrian nobles." Dr. Freeman's notice is, 
 "Two Thegns, Gamel the son of Orm and Ulf the son of Dolfin . . . had 
 been treacherously slain by Tostig's order," and in a note he adds, 
 " Dolfin and Orm both appear in Domesday, seemingly as holders under 
 William of small parts of great estates held under Eadward," in other 
 words, they had been great men in the Confessor'^ days. "Orm married 
 .ffithelthryth, a daughter of Earl Ealdred and sister-in-law of Earl Siward, 
 though Gamel was not her son." It is apparent, then, that the Orm who 
 had formerly held Danby — there being many reasons for identifying him 
 with the Orm who held the Kirkby and Kirkdale lands, and none what- 
 ever against it — was originally, or in the pre -Norman times, a man of 
 name and note. 
 
268 Historical 
 
 prepared to recognise, unless we bear in mind the circumstances 
 of the time. We have no definite information, it is true, as to 
 how long Hugh FitzBaldric had been sherifi'; but at least we 
 do not hear of any other occupant of the place of responsibility- 
 he now held (for under all the circumstances the responsibility 
 far outweighed both the honour and the profit) between 
 "William Malet and himself. And William Malet had been 
 not simply an unlucky sheriff but an ill-judged one. He had 
 told his master that he and his fellow-captains of the York 
 garrison could hold out against the enemy from Daneland 
 (who were known to be on the coast), and of course their allies 
 from the country-side, for a year if necessary ; with the result 
 that all was lost at nearly the first assault. But this was not 
 all. Among those who delivered the assault were two who 
 had held high office under the king in this very Northumbrian 
 province, one of them a previous sheriff, namely Mserleswegen, 
 with Grospatrick, formerly earl, and Archill, one of the most 
 potent thegns of the Northumbrians, all of whom had proved 
 utterly faithless to William. And to William Malet the un- 
 lucky, who was next in order after Mserleswegen the traitor, 
 Hugh FitzBaldric seems to have been the immediate successor. 
 Nor is it only this that leads us on to the inference that he 
 was greatly trusted by the royal Norman; for we find that 
 when it was deemed expedient to bring the ^theling Eadgar 
 to William's court, it was Hugh the son of Baldric who was 
 deputed to " meet him at Durham as he journeyed south from 
 the Scottish court," and by whom he was "attended through 
 the whole length of England, and across the sea into Nor- 
 mandy." But the most interesting mention that is made of 
 him is in the pages of Simeon of Durham, who when detailing 
 the circumstances connected with the foundation of the abbey 
 of Selby states that the "cross on the founder's cell was seen 
 by the sheriff of the shire, Hugh the son of Baldric, who was 
 sailing along the river (Ouse), accompanied by a large body of 
 soldiers, a way of travelling which was necessary in those 
 
The Lord of Danby probably the Sheriff 269 
 
 times on account of the attacks to which all Frenchmen were 
 liable at the hands of the revolted English. The sheriff has an 
 interview with the hermit Benedict, he leaves him his own tent 
 as a temporary dwelling-place, and directs the building of a 
 chapel for his use" (Freeman's Conquest, vol. iv. p. 795). The 
 historian, however, does not seem to be quite confident that 
 Hugh FitzBaldric was certainly sheriff of Yorkshire, his words 
 being, " Hugh appears in the Nottingham Domesday as Hugo 
 filius Baldrici Vicecomes. He was therefore sheriff some- 
 where, and it is very possible that he may have been appointed 
 sheriff of Yorkshire late in 1069, after the capture of William 
 Slalet." Still, in the previous reference the words employed 
 are, "There he (Waltheof) was met by Hugh the son of 
 Baldric, who had succeeded William Malet in the sheriffdom 
 of Yorkshire ;" so that I think we may assume with perfect 
 safety that the Domesday owner of Danby was no one less than 
 William's trusted sheriff of the district. 
 
 During the considerable interval between 1069 to 1071 
 and 1086 we are left to infer that there may have been no 
 change in ownership affecting the Danby possessions, although 
 it is impossible to affirm so much. All that is clear is that, 
 whether by the death or forfeiture of Hugh FitzBaldric, or 
 Hugh FitzBaldric's successor, at some date later than 1086, 
 Danby, with CrumbecHve and Lealholm, was again in the 
 hands of the king to bestow. And the man on whom he 
 bestowed it was Robert de Brus, the Eotbertus de Bruis of 
 the late entry in Domesday.^ 
 
 The old story about this baron is that " he came in with 
 the Conqueror." It is like a good many other old stories rest- 
 in'' rather on a guess at what might have been, than on any 
 reasonable consideration of the circumstances. No doubt he 
 o-ot a good grant when he did get one ; but we are not even 
 able to say that the grant was actually made by the Conqueror 
 at all ; and if made by him, it could not have been made before 
 ^ See Appendix E. 
 
270 ' Historical 
 
 the year 1086-87. It is surely the very reverse of likely that 
 a man who had served the king since 1066 with such zeal 
 and fidelity as to have a claim upon him which could be 
 acknowledged only by such a princely gift as the " feudum 
 Rotberti de Bruis" proclaims, could have been overlooked 
 so long. And if perchance the gift came not from the first, 
 but from the second William, of course the old fable falls to 
 the ground. Beyond all reasonable doubt Robert de Brus 
 came late into the field of action ; and when he did come, 
 rendered such good and acceptable service as to call for rather 
 than simply warrant such a munificent acknowledgment. 
 
 There seems to be little doubt that Brus lived to a great 
 age. His death is believed to have taken place about the year 
 1145. But between thirty-five and forty years before that he 
 had merited so well of the first Henry that he received from 
 him further grants, so large and important as almost to outvie 
 . the greatness of the first royal gifts. And this led to import- 
 ant changes which affected Danby, and may therefore be 
 fittingly mentioned here. For the grant in Henry's reign 
 involved the ownership of Skelton, and the possession of 
 Skelton involved the transference of the head of the lordship 
 from Danby to Skelton. For there can be no doubt that 
 during the first quarter of a century and onwards, for perhaps 
 a decade or so longer — or until the great and strong pile which 
 Skelton Castle unquestionably became had been erected — 
 Danby Castle occupied the position of the head of the Brus 
 barony. On no other ground can be explained the transfer- 
 ence of the manorial seat from Crumbeclive to Danby, the 
 building of the enormously strong castle at Danby, and the 
 exceeding great regard and interest felt by the Brus family 
 for the Castle and Manor of Danby. 
 
 The castle — the site of which is declared by the name 
 " Castle Hill " at Castleton — occupied a very considerable area, 
 much more considerable than is allowed for, in all proba- 
 bility, by nineteen out of twenty of those even who know 
 
Site and Dimensions of the Castle of Danby 2 7 1 
 
 or speculate as to the possible former existence of a castle 
 there. As it is laid down in the six-inch Ordnance map, the 
 measures over all from east to west are 110 yards, and from 
 north to south 130 yards. But the former of these two 
 measures is deficient, inasmuch as the surveyor was not aware 
 of the fact that the moat on the west side had been dug 
 through fully twenty-five yards farther in that direction than 
 it was competent to him to allow for, dealing as he necessarily 
 had to do with only the contours left by modern innovations. 
 The existing road to the station is in reality cut through the 
 castle precincts, and the mound on the castle side is actually 
 in no small part due to the accumulations of soil accruing 
 from the cutting and removed thither. The foundations of 
 the adjacent Primitive Methodist Chapel were dug for through 
 the puddled bottom and side of the original moat on that side. 
 But if we allow for 130 yards in the one direction and 135 
 to 140 in the other, it is at once seen that, for a very early 
 Norman castle, the dimensions are such as to indicate that it 
 was no mere insignificant fortalice ; and if, besides, we take 
 into account that the moats were more than ordinarily elabo- 
 rate, inasmuch as while the one on the north was at a consider- 
 ably lower level than that (or those) on the south-east and 
 south, and that over and above the carefully arranged and 
 constructed water-defences, the mason-work bulwarks were 
 enormously strong — the walls on the east side and round the 
 north-east angle having been eleven feet thick at the ground 
 level — it is impossible to come to any other conclusion than 
 that the founder had special reasons for holding it, and dealing 
 ■with it as of importance and probably of personal as well as 
 military moment. Certainly if Danby were not the head of 
 the wide and valuable Cleveland lordship, comprising over forty 
 vills, there was no such head in any other part of the district.^ 
 
 ' The list given at p. Ixx of the Yorkshire Facsimile runs tlius : 
 Appleton, Hornby (not in Cleveland but in Allertonshire), Worsall, Yarm, 
 Otrington, Harlsey, Welbury, Levington (both Church and Castle Leving- 
 
2 72 Historical 
 
 Twenty-five or thirty years later it 'was a different thing, for 
 Skelton was then in existence. 
 
 There is one historical matter connected with Danby Castle 
 to which no adequate measure of justice has hitherto been 
 done ; and, in order to arrive at it in due sequence, it may be 
 well to remark at once that there is no uncertainty now as to 
 the Cleveland Brus's genealogy. In all probability, in order 
 to obviate the difficulty created by making the first baron, the 
 Rotbert de Bruis of the Domesday entry, " come in with the 
 Conqueror " (a coming which would have made him, supposing 
 him no more than twenty-five at Senlac, a mere youth of 
 ninety-seven at the Battle of the Standard), another Robert 
 de Brus was raised up unto him as a son ! It need hardly be 
 said that there is no historical authority whatever for such an 
 assumption as this. There was but one Robert, and he died 
 at a good but vigorous old age, as has been mentioned already. 
 He was succeeded by his son Adam, his second son Robert 
 having become enfeoffed in the county of Durham and in 
 Scotland, and so becoming the progenitor of Scottish kings. 
 To Adam the first succeeded Adam the second, and to him in 
 succession came three Peters, the last of whom, or Peter the 
 third (his only brother John having predeceased him), dying 
 childless, the male line became extinct. But this again calls 
 for a word or two of comment. Dugdale and others make a 
 fourth Peter de Brus. But there is in reality no uncertainty 
 about it; " Petrus de Brus tertius et ultimus " died in 1271, 
 and his vast possessions were divided between his four sisters, 
 married respectively to Walter de Fawconberg, Robert de Ros, 
 Marmadake de Thweng, and John de Bellew. Two other 
 sisters, probably three, were nuns ; and so ended the name of 
 the great English Bruces. 
 
 ton), Morton, Bordelby, Arncliff, Ingleby, Busby, Cratliorn, Foston, Hilton, 
 Thornaby, Marton, Newhani, Tolesby, Aclam, Faceby, Tanton, Goulton, 
 Borrowby, Nunthorp, Morton, Newton, Upsal, Pincbingtliorpe, Kildale, 
 Ormsby, Lnzenby, Guisborough, Stanghow, Moorsom, Crumbeclive, 
 Danby, besides the two Hanktous and Lealholm. 
 
Danby Castle taken from the Bruces 273 
 
 But to return : Dugdale states that King Henry II " took 
 the Castle of Danby, with the Lordship and Forest thereto 
 appertaining, and gave him instead thereof the Grange of 
 Micklethwait, with the whole fee of Collingham and Berdesey," 
 from Adam de Brus, son of Robert, the founder of the family 
 and of the priory of Guisborough. To the statement as made 
 by Dugdale, Ord {Hid. Cleveland, p. 248) adds that Adam by 
 " adhering faithfully to Stephen throughout his stormy and 
 disastrous career, had incurred the displeasure of Henry II," 
 who thereupon acted in the way just named. It would be 
 interesting to know Mr. Ord's authority for this statement ; 
 for the ordinary historian, under the impression that there was 
 " no love lost " between Stephen and his successor, would be 
 slow to discover the likelihood of the feeling attributed to the 
 latter as so originating. The probability surely rather is that 
 the motive for the deprivation was of a political nature. We 
 cannot read the account that is given of the part played by 
 Robert de Brus when the Battle of the Standard was imminent, 
 or of the motives which animated him to take it, without 
 becoming sensible of the strong feeling towards Scotland and 
 her monarch which reigned in Brus's breast ; and as his second 
 son, besides his patrimonial lands in the north, soon acquired 
 vride domains in Scotland, it is not to be supposed that the 
 feeling of the Brus barons would become less warm towards 
 the Scottish kingdom and its wielder. And, perhaps, even the 
 being suspected of such leaning might almost amount to a 
 direct charge of disaffection in times of such critical relations 
 between the two kingdoms as those were. It is at this point 
 that it becomes of interest to remember the great strength 
 of the Brus stronghold at Danby, and its importance from a 
 military point of view, as commanding one route from Yarm 
 and the north through Kirkby Moorside to York. And surely 
 on such grounds as these we can most easily account for an 
 exchange of his Danby Castle and manor for other and 
 even more valuable lands in the Leeds district being forced 
 
 T 
 
274 Historical 
 
 upon Adam de Brus, the then occupant and owner of the 
 same. 
 
 For it is indisputable that the exchange was most reluc- 
 tantly made, and was never acquiesced in peacefully by either 
 of the barons who continued to be affected by it. 
 
 Nor indeed is that a matter to be wondered at. When we 
 call to mind the long list of North Eiding lands and lordships 
 enumerated as forming part of the possessions of the great 
 Brus family, there seems to be something more than merely 
 invidious, something almost insultingly marked and pointed, 
 in the deprivation enforced by the compulsory surrender of 
 the seat of the barony and the residential castle alone out of 
 all the rest. 
 
 In support and illustration of the foregoing, or some parts 
 of it, I append the following translation of a document which 
 I do not think has ever been much noticed before, and certainly 
 at no great length by either of the former historians of Cleve- 
 land. It is from the Botuli de Ohlatis, p. 109, and under date 
 1200: "Peter de Brus has restored and quit-claimed to our 
 Lord the King and his heirs for ever, the vills of Berdsey and 
 Colingham and Rington, with all their appurtenances, as well 
 in advowsons of churches, as in demesne lands, fees, homages, 
 services, reliefs, and in all other matters to the said vills per- 
 taining, without anyreserve, in exchange for the vill of Daneby, 
 with all its appurtenances, and the forest of Daneby, which the 
 King has restored to the said Peter and his heirs,- to be held 
 of him and his royal heirs by the service of one knight, in lieu 
 of the aforesaid vills which King Henry, the father of the now 
 king, had formerly given to Adam de Brus, the father of the 
 said Peter, in exchange for the said vill and forest of Daneby. 
 And the said Peter is to deliver over to our lord the King the 
 aforesaid vills free and quit from all those who have been 
 enfeoffed in them by himself or his said father during the time 
 they had been held by them or either of them. And in con- 
 sideration of the eager desire entertained by the said Peter 
 
Restoration of the Castle to Brus 275 
 
 for the compassing of this exchange, and at his instant prayer 
 for the same, he has induced our lord the King to receive from 
 him one thousand pounds sterling, two hundred and fifty marks 
 whereof is to be paid into the Treasury at Easter now instant, 
 and thereafter two hundred and fifty from Treasury-term to 
 term, until the whole shall have been paid up. As Pledges 
 for the fulfilment hereof, William de Stuteville stands bound 
 in 100 marks ; Henry de Neville in 60 marks ; Hugo Bard in 
 40 marks ; Eobert de Eos in 200 marks; Eustace de Vesci in 
 200 marks; Robert FitzRoger in 100 marks. And the said 
 Peter's bond is delivered to William de Stuteville, who, together 
 with Robert de Ros and Eustace de Vesci, undertakes that the 
 said Peter, at the first ensuing Court of the County of York, 
 shall find sufficient pledges for the remainder of his obligation, 
 and such that our lord the King shall obtain full satisfaction 
 for the same." 
 
 In the Botuli Ghartarum also there are two other docu- 
 ments, the one by the king formally restoring Danby to Brus, 
 and the other from Brus as formally surrendering the West 
 Riding manors, specified above, the former dated 7th February 
 in the same year, and the other doubtless of the same date, so 
 as to make the exchange in due form. The witnesses to 
 either are the same, beginning with "R. Andeg. Episcopus," 
 who is followed by Hugo Bard, Eustace de Vesci, Robert 
 de Ros, William de Stuteville, Robert FitzRoger, William 
 Briwerre, Robert de Turnham, Symon de PateshuUe, and 
 the usual cum multis aliis. 
 
 But there is yet another historical incident affecting this 
 same Peter de Brus, and through him the Castle and Lordship 
 of Danby, which should not be passed over in entire silence. 
 The contest of the baronage with King John, and its issue in 
 the concession of Magna Charta, is a matter of such famili- 
 arity in our minds that there is no occasion to do more than 
 advert to it in the briefest terms, merely bearing in mind that 
 the revolt of the barons practically took form when they were 
 
276 Historical 
 
 called upon to follow the king over sea for the campaign 
 which ended with the battle of Bouvines in July 1214; 
 and it is in distinct relation to this that J. E. Green writes •} 
 "From this point indeed the northern barons begin to play 
 their part in our constitutional history. Lacies, Vescies, 
 Percies, Stutevilles, Braces, houses such as those of de Eos or 
 de Vaux . . . had done service to the Crown in its strife 
 with the older feudatories. But, loyal as was their tradition, 
 they were English to the core ; they had neither lands nor 
 interest over sea, and they now declared themselves bound by 
 no tenure to follow the king in foreign wars. Furious at this 
 check to his plans, John marched in arms northwards to bring 
 these barons to submission." Langton's intervention, when 
 the king had already reached Northampton on his way to 
 attack the nobles of the north, combined with political con- 
 siderations, "induced the king, after a demonstration at 
 Durham, to march to the south again. But the defeat of 
 Bouvines gave strength to the king's opponents, and the open 
 resistance of the northern barons nerved the rest of their 
 order to action," and early in January of 1215 they appeared 
 in arms to lay, as they had planned, their demands before the 
 king ; and Magna Charta was extorted as we know. 
 
 Here we pause for a moment to notice that Danby (castle, 
 manor, and forest) had been grudgingly and of necessity, as 
 is evident, restored after urgent and pressing insistency on 
 the part of de Brus, and with the accompanying exaction of 
 an unconscionable fine; that de Brus is one of the most 
 powerful of the northern barons named by Green as taking a 
 decisive part against the king as early as 1213; and that the 
 king was proportionally enraged — "furious" is the historian's 
 word ; and next we go on to observe that the last thing that 
 John either wished or intended was to abide by the terms of 
 the Great Charter extorted from him in the time of his weak- 
 ness. And in the issue, when he knew the mercenaries he 
 ^ History, vol. i. p. 287. 
 
The Ki-ng Master of Skelton Castle in 1216 277 
 
 had hired were near enough to make such a procedure safe, 
 he positively refused to abide by what he had bound himself 
 by oath not to attempt to revoke. And then the briefest 
 fisumi of the subject that can be given is : " The mercenaries 
 arrive in September (1215), and John immediately begins to 
 ravage the barons' estates, and takes Rochester Castle ; after 
 which, accompanied by 'that detestable troop of foreigners' 
 whose leader was Falkes de Breaut6, and carried away by his 
 fury, he began to lay waste the northern parts of England, to 
 destroy the castles of. the barons, or compel them to submit 
 to his order, burning without mercy all their towns, and 
 oppressing the inhabitants with tortures to extort money." 
 That is the testimony of Matthew of Paris. Very early in 
 1216 John advances into Scotland ravaging the country, but 
 soon turns southward, and thence and thus the following 
 extracts from pubhc documents become intelligible, and with 
 a hitherto unnoticed connection. They are from the Botuli 
 Litt. Pat., and I append the several dates : — 6th February 
 1216, "Peter de Brus has Letters of safe-conduct from King 
 John, to last from the Sunday next after the Purification of 
 the B. Virgin for the eight following days, issued from 
 Gyseburn (Guisborough)." On the 8th, 9th, and 10th the 
 king was at Skelton Castle, Bruce's Cleveland stronghold. 
 On the 15th, at Kirkham, the king engages to receive, imder 
 safe -conduct from himself, "Eobert de Eos and Peter de 
 Bruis, with all such as they should bring with them unarmed, 
 to a conference, to treat with him about making their peace 
 with him ; and the said safe-conduct shall hold good for one 
 month from St. Valentine's day. And for greater security 
 our lord the King wills that . . . . , Archdeacon of Durham, 
 Wydo de Fontibus, Frater Walter, Preceptor of the Templars 
 in the district of Yorkshire, with one of Hugh de Bailloel's 
 retinue, shall go with them in person to the Lord King, and 
 escort them ; and they have Letters Patent from the King to 
 that effect ; and the said letters are the same day handed to 
 
278 Historical 
 
 the aforesaid parties, Thomas, Canon of Gyseburn, being 
 further added to their numbers." On the 26th of the same 
 month, John, being then at Lincoln, issues the following 
 mandate : " The King to Philip Marc' etc. We command 
 you that you receive and see to the safe keeping of the pris- 
 oners whose names are underwritten, taken at Skelton Castle, 
 who will be sent to you by Dame Nicholas de Haya — that is 
 to say, Godfrey de Hoga, Berard de Fontibus, Anketil de 
 Torenton (Thornton), Eobert de Molteby, Stephen Guher, 
 William de Lohereng, Eobert de Normanby, Eoger le Hoste, 
 Eobert de Gilling, John de Brethereswysel, Thomas Berard's- 
 man, and Ealph de Hoga." With scarcely an exception, if 
 indeed there be an exception, these are the names of men 
 holding of Brus in different parts of Cleveland, and the fact 
 that they had been captured at Skelton Castle, coupled with 
 the fact of John's personal presence at Skelton for three days, 
 leads on to a self-evident inference. The castle had fallen, 
 whether taken by assault or surrendered because untenable 
 in face of the king's force.^ 
 
 But the castle at Skelton having fallen, in whatever way, 
 what were the chances that the castle at Danby, in the matter 
 of which a good deal of unpleasantness as between the baron 
 and the king had already occurred, would be suffered to go 
 scot-free % There is no manner of doubt that at the date of 
 the death of the last Peter de Brus, in the year 1271 (or 
 some fifty-five years subsequently to the events now under 
 notice), the castle and immediate precincts were in a state of 
 ruinous decay; for the first entry under the head of.Daneby 
 
 1 It may be noticed here that in connection with the prisoners taken 
 at Skelton Castle on the 8th July the king commands Brian de Insula 
 that he should arrange, as much to the king's advantage as possible, 
 about the redemption or ransom of two knights taken at Skelton Castle, 
 and then in his (Brian's) custody ; and, their ransom having been paid, 
 let them go free. And then, 13th August, at Shrewsbury, a further 
 order is given that all the sermcntes taken at Skelton Castle should be at 
 once put to ransom. 
 
X^astle of Danby probably dismantled in 121 6 279 
 
 in the " Partitio inter Hseredes Petri de Brus " is " Capitale 
 mesuagium, cum parvo parco, valet vis. viiid.," a valuation 
 so absurdly small when contrasted with those that immediately 
 follow, where the acre of arable or pasture land is set at a 
 shilling for either, that no conclusion save one as to the con- 
 dition of castle and park is in the least degree admissible. 
 And the question then becomes, not as to the condition of 
 ruin and decay, but at what time and under what circum- 
 stances ruin befell the castle and its precincts. 
 
 And the question seems to be one of no material intricacy. 
 The castle was but a generation or so old when seized into the 
 king's hands in the time of Adam de Brus. The king might 
 of course have dismantled it during the half -century it 
 remained in the royal power ; although I can see no sufficient 
 reason for thinking it was so, and all tangible reasons lead to 
 the conclusion that he would be much more likely to preserve 
 it in its integrity, if on no other account than that it was im- 
 portant as a singularly strong border fortress, which, however 
 dangerous in the hand of an unfriendly or a suspected ally of 
 the more than possible Scottish foe, could not but add to the 
 defensive strength of the district it commanded. And that it 
 had remained in the king's hands during its alienation is 
 apparent from the terms of the documents of restoration. 
 There had been no enfeoffment of the castle and manor to 
 any one who needed to be dispossessed when once the 
 restitution was resolved upon. 
 
 There would seem then to be not only no reason for 
 supposing that the castle was rendered ruinous before its 
 restoration to de Brus at the outset of John's reign, but 
 good reason to conclude it had been carefully kept in its 
 pristine strength ; and if that is conceded, the only explana- 
 tion that can be given of its pitiful condition in 1271 is that 
 it had been taken and dismantled, or rendered untenable, in 
 the progress of John's vengeful expedition against the northern 
 barons, which took place in the early part of the year 1216. 
 
28o Historical 
 
 Only a few lines more to note the further progress of 
 events connected with the relations of the lord of Skelton 
 and Danby castles with his royal master. On the 12th April 
 of the same year John issued from Reading the following 
 mandate to John, Constable of Chester, Gerard de Furnivall, 
 and Geoffrey de Neville : " We do you to wit that we do not 
 so much wish to take money from the barons of England who 
 have been on our contrary part, as we long for their good and 
 faithful service. And we therefore charge you that if Robert 
 de Ros, Eustace de Vesci, and Peter de Brus shall be willing 
 to give full assurance in the matter of good and faithful 
 service to be, for the time to come, rendered by them, for- 
 going on our part the exaction of any money from them, it is 
 our good pleasure that they come to our presence, and that 
 you bring them in all security and safety to the said presence. 
 And if it happen that all of you be not able to conduct them 
 as aforesaid, it shall suffice if they come with two of you, and 
 if that cannot be, one shall suffice. And we send herewith 
 our Letters Patent concerning the safe-conduct for the said 
 Robert, Eustace, and Peter." And there is yet one further 
 entry on the Rolls dealing with the same negotiation, which is 
 unhappily imperfect (or rather illegible) in places, the part of 
 it which can be made out being as follows : " The King, etc., 
 to Robert de Ros, William de Mulbray, Eustace de Vescy, 
 Peter de Brus, . . . Richard de Percy, . . . Roger de Mer- 
 lay. . . . Your messengers, bearers of your presents, have 
 come to us at Dover on Wednesday next after the Feast of 
 the Invention of the Holy Cross (11th May), who had been 
 despatched to us on your behalf. . . . (Understanding) that 
 it is your desire to be reconciled to us, we send back to you 
 the same messengers, and with them Robert de Kerneford, 
 our knight, that he our will and pleasure may ..." 
 
 Here the legible part unfortunately ends, and we are 
 
 unable to follow the record any further. ^ But perhaps for 
 
 ^ From other sources we know that the barons had offered the crown 
 
An old Danby Tradition 281 
 
 our special object there is no necessity to proceed with the 
 history of the time, either local or general, beyond the point 
 we have reached. Assuming, as it would appear we safely 
 may, that the ruin of Danby Castle, in spite of its enormous 
 massiveness, was deliberate and intended, the old tradition 
 which was still freely current less than half a century ago, 
 namely, " that the castle had been destroyed by fire, and that 
 the stony materials had been employed in building the church," 
 takes on such an aspect that, with the single substitution of 
 the word " rebuilding " for " building," it is seen to involve 
 much more than merely the elements of probability. It is a 
 fact that the materials of the ancient castle are not to be found 
 in the walls or houses of Castleton. In reality the village of 
 Castleton did not exist until almost down to the present 
 century, and walls were not wanted where there were neither 
 houses nor enclosures. But there were enormous stores of 
 wrought stones embedded in the construction of such a build- 
 ing as the castle unquestionably was, and the inquiry, " What 
 became of them % " is one that will suggest itself. It is equally 
 
 to Lewis, son of the King of France, about the end of March ; that John, 
 on the approach of Lewis, is said to have withdrawn westward ; that 
 Lewis sends aid to the barons, and lands himself at Sandwich 21st May ; 
 that he takes Rochester, and receives the homage of the barons at Loudon 
 ou 2d June ; that Lewis besieges Dover ineflfectually, and loses his fleet, 
 captured by the English fleet. From the above document it would appear 
 that John was at Dover in person on 7th May, probably in order to put 
 the place in a good state of defence against the coming storm. Green 
 sums up the whole position at the time in the following graphic sentences : 
 "In the April of 1216 Lewis accepted the crown in spite of Innocent's ex- 
 communications, and landed some time after in Kent with a considerable 
 force. As the barons had foreseen, the French mercenaries who con- 
 stituted John's host refused to fight against the French sovereign, and the 
 whole aspect of affairs was suddenly reversed. Deserted by the bulk of 
 his troops, the king was forced to fall rapidly back on the Welsh Marches, 
 while his rival entered London and received the submission of the larger 
 part of England. Only Dover held out obstinately against Lewis. By a 
 series of rapid inarches John succeeded in distracting the plans of the 
 barons, and in relieving Lincoln ; then, after a short stay at Lynn, he 
 crossed the Wash in a fresh movement to the north." The rest we know. 
 
2 82 Historical 
 
 a fact that the oldest existing part of Danby Church when I 
 first saw it, nearly forty-six years ago, was distinctly Early 
 English, and not of late date in that period; while all the 
 fragments of the church which was destroyed in 1789, to be 
 replaced by the existing barnlike edifice, that I have been 
 able either to note or to recover, agree in point of age. In 
 other words, the tale they have to tell concerning the time at 
 which they were made to replace the preceding Norman 
 fabric is such as to connect itself with a period not much over 
 a score of years later than the ruination of the castle by John 
 or his emissaries. If we couple the singular scarcity of stones 
 bearing the impress of the Norman axe and chisel at Castleton 
 with the abundance of squared stone we know was employed 
 in the old Danby Church with its nave, aisles, and chancel, 
 it may serve to remind us that the old, old traditions of 
 a place or district not infrequently embody an historical 
 truth which may be disclosed by aid of patient analysis 
 and inquiry. 
 
 But there is yet another consideration which must be 
 taken into account, and such that we should do unwisely to 
 ignore it altogether. It is true the patronage of the parish 
 was in the hands of the Prior and Convent of Guisborough, 
 and it may seem unlikely that the church would be destroyed 
 as well as the castle by the troops of the king. But whether 
 or no that be so, the fact remains that the church was practi- 
 cally (and I think entirely) rebuilt about the time assumed 
 above, or drca 1240-45; and the materials of the castle were 
 de Brus's to give. Under what influence or actuated by what 
 considerations we are ignorant, but Peter de Brus, Eustace de 
 Vesci, Hugh Wake, and other nobles, presumably northern, 
 went to the Holy Land in 1241, from whence Brus never 
 returned to England alive. At the least, it is not improbable 
 that the influence of the same motives or considerations which 
 sent him on that long crusading expatriation of his, may have 
 also led him on to give such aid in rebuilding the church — 
 
Descent of Danby to de Thweng 283 
 
 from whatever cause such rebuilding became either expedient 
 or indispensable — as would be afforded by the supposed grant 
 of material. That it was so may be a surmise merely, but, at 
 the least, it is a surmise which is neither inconsistent with 
 probability nor irreconcilable with the facts. 
 
 Peter dis Brus the second, who has been the baron so fre- 
 quently referred to in the preceding paragraphs, was de fado 
 succeeded (although not actually, but only legally or morally 
 dead) by his son, Peter the third, in 1240 ; at least the latter 
 paid the accustomed rehef, as on succession to his father in 
 that year. He was, as already noted, one of a large family — 
 eleven in all — one brother, John, who predeceased him, and 
 nine sisters. Two if not three of these sisters were nuns, and 
 four others were married and surviving when their brother 
 died without issue in 1271. These four ladies were his heirs, 
 and his great estates were divided among them. One of 
 them, Lucia, had, at least thirty years before, married 
 Marmaduke de Thweng, baron of Kilton, and owner of other 
 possessions in Kirkleatham and the vicinity. Her share com- 
 prised Danby (castle, manor, and forest), besides Lealholm, 
 Wolvedale, Brotton, Skinningrove, lands and tenements in 
 Yarm, Great Moorsham, with other valuable matters in Cleve- 
 land, and some manors elsewhere. But Thweng's baronial seat 
 was at Kilton, as has been said, and so the dilapidated condi- 
 tion of Danby Castle would, it would seem, have made no 
 material diflference to him, and Kilton, as a matter of fact, 
 would continue to be the baronial residence of the Thwengs 
 after the intermarriage with so great a personage as a sister of 
 the great Baron of Skelton. These are facts hardly to be 
 extracted from the current local histories; but they are 
 certainly facts, and attested as such by a coram rege plea 
 dated in 1242, the gist of which is that Robert de Thweng, 
 father of Marmaduke, affirms his gift to the latter of the manors 
 of Kilton and Kirkleatham for the endowing of Lucia de Brus 
 his wife; and as we proceed further with the document it 
 
284 Historical 
 
 becomes apparent that both Marmaduke and Lucia were under 
 age, inasmuch as it is provided that the wardship of themselves 
 and their lands should remain with Robert the father, to- 
 gether with that of the lands accruing in virtue of Lucia's 
 marriage settlement, and that this arrangement should hold 
 good until Marmaduke should attain his twentieth year. 
 
 The Thwengs, it is hardly necessary to say (for the name 
 itself reveals the fact), were East Riding people; but it is not 
 easy to say who the first that took the territorial name was, 
 nor where he came from, nor at what exact date he lived. 
 But certainly they held lands of value and importance besides 
 Thweng (nowadays Thwing) itself. There may be suspicions, 
 arising partly in their heraldic bearing (the three popinjays), 
 and partly from the fact that they were subinfeudatories of 
 the great Percy family, that in some way they were originally 
 connected with Henry de Pudsey (Puteaco), himself a son of 
 Bishop Pudsey by Alicia de Percy (one of the sisters and co- 
 heiresses of the last male of the original family of Percy). 
 The first of the family of whom I have any note is a Marma- 
 duke, who in 1205 gave three marks to recover seisin of certain 
 lands in the manor of Lund, of which Henry de Pudsey had 
 possessed himself on the occasion of de Thweng's imprison- 
 ment — for homicide, if I remember. The next is Robert de 
 Thweng, who, with his wife Matilda, is heard of in 1229 as 
 defending a suit brought against them by the Prior of Guis- 
 borough in re the Advowson of Kirkleatham. And here 
 naturally the question arises, " How could Thweng, an East 
 Riding man, have any interest in, or anything to do with, a 
 North Riding benefice % " and the attempt to answer the 
 question brings in a rather pretty historical induction. 
 
 To revert, then, to Robert de Thweng and his wife Matilda. 
 In the year 1221 Richard de Alta-ripa and his wife Matilda 
 claim the advowson of the church just named against the Prior 
 of the said convent, who asserts that the advowson belongs to 
 the convent in virtue of the gift of the said Matilda's uncle, 
 
How de Thweng became Lord of Kilt on 285 
 
 William de Kilton (Matilda being his next teir). The 
 rejoinder is that William de Kilton made the gift when he was 
 not only on his deathbed, but non compos sui, or not competent 
 to make a will or demise a grant. But it is clear that de 
 Alta-ripa's right to appear at all depended on the fact that his 
 wife was de Kilton's heir ; and it is at least equally clear that 
 de Thweng's like right could only depend on the same fact : 
 his wife too at that date must have been the right heir of 
 the last male de Kilton. Put that into other words, and what 
 it amounts to is, that the widow of de Alta-ripa had remarried, 
 Robert de Thweng being actually, in point of fact, her second 
 husband. 
 
 But there is a yet further consequence depending upon 
 this conclusion, and that is that the inferred marriage of de 
 Thweng with the right heir of the last male de Kilton explains 
 at once how Robert de Thweng became Thweng of Kilton and 
 lord of Kirkleatham, Coatham (or rather of certain portions 
 of either), and other possessions in the same vicinity.^ 
 
 At whatever date Marmaduke succeeded his deceased father, 
 we find that in 1257 he obtained a charter of free-warren in 
 all the demesne lands of his manors of Thwenge, Kirkleatham, 
 Kilton, Moorsom, and Kilton Thorp, besides weekly markets 
 at his manors of Lund, Thweng, and Coatham, with fairs at 
 either place as weU. 
 
 Marmaduke and Lucia had issue (besides other children) 
 an eldest son Robert, and a second son Marmaduke. Robert's 
 marriage is assumed rather than declared by Dugdale. From 
 other sources, however, we know that his wife was Matilda, 
 daughter of Gilbert (son of John) Haunsard ; but as to the 
 date of his marriage nothing perfectly definite seems to have 
 been ascertained. His daughter Lucia, however, was born at 
 Kilton Castle in the year 1279, and baptized (two days after) 
 on Palm Sunday, at the chapel of that vill. The said daughter 
 appears to have been the only offspring of the union ; for on 
 1 See Appendix ¥. 
 
2 86 Historical 
 
 Robert's death the headship of the family and the inheritance 
 of the family manors came to his brother Marmaduke, except- 
 ing, of course, such as had been settled on Eobert himself, his 
 wife, and their heirs. 
 
 Our interest centres in Robert's daughter Lucia, and her 
 only as connected with Danby. For to her fell her grand- 
 mother's share and interest in the Brus inheritance, and as 
 married in 1296 (at the age of seventeen) to William le 
 Latimer the younger (for his father was still living), she 
 carried the same to her husband, and their heirs, should 
 there be any. 
 
 And there was such issue, namely, another William le 
 Latimer, who was returned at his father's death in 1327-28 as 
 being then of the age of twenty-six. Thus he would not be 
 born until some four or five years after the marriage of his 
 parents in 1296. 
 
 In Dugdale's Baronage there is an entry which, as at 
 least apparently connected with just this time, looks more than 
 ordinarily perplexing. The matter stands thus : William 
 le Latimer, Lucia de Thweng's father-in-law, is mentioned as 
 being in 1300-1 "in the garrison of Berwick," and as having 
 "obtained the king's charter" in the following year "for a 
 market and certain fairs" in divers manors of his in Kent, 
 Surrey, and Yorkshire ; and- intermediate between the state- 
 ments of circumstances thus dated stands the following : "To 
 this William King Edward granted the manor of Danby in 
 Com. Ebor. for Hfe, with free chase there, the remainder to 
 William his son and Lucia his wife, and to the right heirs of 
 Lucia." The difficulty at first sight is evidently perplexing, 
 and as such sure to lead to suspicion of misconception or mis- 
 construction of the charter in question, and to surmises as to 
 the motive of the grant, and even of the grantee, all of which, 
 when examined into, appear to be impossible or fallacious. 
 For instance, one such supposition is that " William le Latimer 
 senior, having his misgivings about the marriage of Lucia de 
 
Lucia de Thweng a Ward of the King s 287 
 
 Thweng with his son, insisted on a life estate " ! Rather 
 late in the day, surely, for such insisting, the marriage having 
 taken place some five years before ; and besides that, upon 
 whom was his insisting to become imperative \ Scarcely upon 
 the king himself. And yet there was no one else to be influ- 
 enced in such a matter. 
 
 The real explanation vnll be found, I think, or at the least 
 suggested, in certain entries in Kirkby's Inquest, the date of 
 which we must remember was 1284-85. On p. 125 it is stated 
 that a change in the secular status of the vills of Kilton, 
 Brotton, Kirkleatham, Moorsom, and Danby — or the joint 
 estate of Marmaduke de Thweng and Lucia de Brus — had 
 been effected, now for ten years past, by the late Marmaduke 
 de Thweng himself. The thing for us to note, however, is 
 that Lucia de Brus's husband is dead before the inquest is 
 taken,^ or about 1284. The next entry for us to notice is 
 that headed "Yarom," on p. 127, of the first (and pertinent) 
 part of which the following is a translation: "The heir of 
 Marmaduke de Thweng, who is in the wardship (custodia, as a 
 minor, namely) of our lord the King, holds eight Knights' 
 fees and a half ; he holds also Danby as one fee of our lord 
 the King in capite, and the vill of Yarm as a free burgh." 
 But at this date (1284-85) the heir of Marmaduke de Thweng, 
 an infant under age and in the custody of the king as the 
 feudal lord, could be none other than Lucia de Thweng, born, 
 as we remember, just before Easter 1279, and consequently 
 at this period a little girl of about five years of age. Of 
 course this is "another way of saying" that her father 
 Robert is dead, which again throws hght on the perplexing 
 circumstance that so very little is heard of him in history, 
 
 1 This does not tally with Dugilale's statements, nor consequently 
 with the pedigrees given by Graves, Ord, and Co., which are founded 
 upon Dugdale. Our Inquest entries, however, are such as to show beyond 
 question that Dugdale was wrong. The fact is, that with both the de 
 Thweng and the Latimer families Dugdale's mistakes and confusions are 
 as numerous as they are perplexing. 
 
2 88 Historical 
 
 either private or public. Married in 1 279 or thereabouts, he 
 was dead some years before his grandfather paid the debt of 
 naturb, and his little daughter, with her inheritance, was a 
 ward of the king, and her lands and eventual marriage at his 
 disposition. 
 
 And thus we arrive at a dispersion of the mystery hitherto 
 attached to, and an explanation of, the true nature of the 
 king's Danby grant to the elder William le Latimer. Under 
 the circumstances named, it was competent to him, as to any 
 or every other guardian of a young lady and her inheritance, 
 to "give (or sell) her marriage," as it was termed, to any one 
 he wished to favour or who offered a suflSciently high price, 
 and the favoured recipient acted at his discretion in the 
 matter. In the present case William le Latimer was the 
 fortunate applicant, and it was no new thing in his career. 
 For Dugdale tells us that in 1260-61 he " gave the king (Henry 
 III) twelve hundred marks for the wardship and lands of the 
 heirs of Hugh de Morewick, and benefit of their marriages ;" 
 as also that in 1296-97 he " obtained a grant of the marriage 
 of Isabell, the daughter and heir of Simon de Sherstede, to 
 be a wife for John de Latimer his son and heir." And 
 indeed, if ever a man deserved consideration at the hands of 
 his sovereign, William le Latimer was such a man. As early 
 as 1253 we find him in sufficient repute to be made Sheriff of 
 Yorkshire, and Governor of the castles of York and of 
 Pickering, and as late as 1302-3 "again in the wars of 
 Scotland " ; while the list of services with which the interval 
 between those two dates is absolutely filled, is very greatly 
 too long to be reproduced here. He served in Wales, in 
 Gascony, in half a dozen campaigns in Scotland, went with 
 Prince Edward to the Holy Land, was Sheriff of the county 
 again, and Governor of other important castles as well as of 
 those named before, and in fact died in the service of his king 
 and his country, being summoned to Parliament the very year 
 of his death. 
 
William le Latimer the third 289 
 
 With such claims 011 the royal consideration there is little 
 wonder that he should have obtained "the wardshii^ and 
 marriage" of the heiress of Marmaduke de Thweng, and as 
 little that he should have arranged the marriage of his second 
 son with the young lady ; and one wonders whether (hoping 
 almost against hope that he did not) he lived long enough to 
 see the disastrous issue of the said marriage. He died in 
 1304-5, and Lucia, his son's young wife, left her husband's 
 mansion at Brunne (Kirkburn, not far from Driffield) to go 
 and live in adultery with de Meinill, the Baron of Whorlton 
 Castle, by whom she became the mother of an illegitimate son. 
 After Nicholas de Meinill's death she married, first, Eobert de 
 Everingham, and next, Bartholomew de Fanacourt. There is 
 no reason to think that, although after many delays she was 
 divorced from William le Latimer in or about 1312, she was 
 ever married to her seducer, de Meinill. 
 
 The lordship, castle, and manor of Danby passed of course 
 to her son by her first husband, William le Latimer, the third 
 of the name in succession. He was, as has been already noticed, 
 twenty-six years of age when his father died in 1327-8, and 
 had livery in due time of the manor of Danby and the other 
 lands of his inheritance. He lived about ten years after, and 
 by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John de Botetourt, had a 
 son, also named William, who was a child of six years old 
 when his father died. This baron is said by Dugdale to have 
 been resident at Danby, and to have been made Governor of 
 the fortress of Becherel in Brittany in 1360, and the year 
 after "Lieutenant and Captain -General to John Duke of 
 Brittany " ; and after this again he seems to have seen much 
 and honourable service in the same province. But in his case 
 also, " it is not all gold that glitters," and towards the close 
 of the now weak and licentious king's reign grave charges 
 of peculation, malversation, and even worse, were brought 
 against him (Latimer) which were held to be proved, and the 
 removal of the offenders was effected. The previous situation 
 
 u 
 
290 Historical 
 
 is thus summed up by one annalist of England : " Much 
 discontent is occasioned by the extortionate and illegal 
 proceedings of the Lords Latimer and Neville, the king's 
 counsellors, and of Alice Ferrers, his mistress ;" while Green, 
 in his History of the English People, expresses himself thus : 
 " Edward was now wholly swayed by Alice Ferrers, and the 
 duke (of Lancaster, John of Gaunt) shared his power with 
 the royal mistress. But if we gather its tenor from the 
 complaints of the succeeding Farliament, his administration 
 was as weak as it was corrupt. The new lay ministers lent 
 themselves to gigantic frauds. The chamberlain. Lord 
 Latimer, bought up the royal debts and embezzled the public 
 revenue. With Eichard Lyons, a merchant through whom 
 the king negotiated with the gild of the staple, he reaped 
 enormous profits by raising the price of imports and by 
 lending to the Crown at usurious rates of interest. When the 
 empty treasury forced them to call a parliament, the ministers 
 tampered with the elections through the sheriffs. But the 
 temper of the Farliament which met in 1376, and which 
 gained from after times the name of the Good Parliament, 
 shows that these precautions had utterly failed. . . . The 
 presentation of a hundred and sixty petitions of grievances 
 preluded a bold attack on the royal Council. 'Trusting in 
 God, and standing with his followers before the nobles whereof 
 the chief was John Duke of Lancaster, whose doings were ever 
 contrary,' their speaker. Sir Feter de la Mare, denounced the 
 mismanagement of the war, the oppressive taxation, and 
 demanded an account of the expenditure." John of Gaunt 
 made a scornful retort, "but the movement was too strong 
 to be stayed. Even the duke was silenced by the charges 
 brought against the ministers. After a strict inquiry Latimer 
 and Lyons were alike thrown into prison, Alice Ferrers was 
 banished, and several of the royal servants were driven from 
 the Court." 
 
 It is true that this proceeding was reversed shortly after ; 
 
Danby passes to the Family of Neville 291 
 
 but only through the imperious will of the duke. For the 
 old king died, and the young king, a boy of thirteen years 
 old, was set upon the throne, and Gaunt was again master of 
 the situation — for a time at least — and we hear of Latimer's 
 employment and action in divers matters of some importance. 
 But his race was nearly run, and we read of his death in the 
 
 DASET CASTLE BBIDOE. BUILT circft 1386. 
 
 fourth year of the boy-king's reign. Statesmen and warriors, 
 good men and true, a diligent judge learned in the law (the 
 last Peter de Brus), had been among the lords of Danby. In 
 this William le Latimer we seem to have had a man of 
 a different stamp. 
 
 By his wife Elizabeth, daughter of the Earl of Arundel, 
 he had issue a daughter, also named Elizabeth, who was the 
 
292 Historical 
 
 second wife of John, Lord Neville of Eaby ; ^ and by his will, 
 
 dated 14th April 1381, he (William Latimer) directs that all 
 
 the manors of his paternal inheritance should pass to the said 
 
 " Seigneur de Nevill " and his heirs, who (the heirs) should 
 
 thenceforward bear his (the Latimer) arms ; and he was 
 
 accordingly summoned to Parliament as Lord Latimer (in 
 
 right of his wife). The issue of this marriage was a son, 
 
 John, who died without offspring, and a daughter, Elizabeth, 
 
 who married into the Willoughby family, and is erroneously 
 
 spoken of by Ord {Cleveland, p. 330, " Pedigree of the Lords of 
 
 Danby ") as " sole heiress to her brother and the barony of 
 
 Latimer." For many of the lands and lordships in question 
 
 were affected by the dispositions of the last William le 
 
 Latimer's will just named, and the " Seigneur de Nevill," to 
 
 whom they were devised, had a son and heir by his first wife, 
 
 Matilda, namely, Ealph Earl of Westmoreland. And this is 
 
 Dugdale's account of what ensued : " Divers of these lordships 
 
 whereof he (the John who died childless) died seized, being, 
 
 for want of issue of his body, entailed on Ealph his elder 
 
 brother (half-brother, more correctly), he, the said Ealph, 
 
 settled them by feoffment upon George Nevill, one of his sons 
 
 by his second [first, it ought to be] wife. Which George was 
 
 thereupon summoned to Parliament as Lord Latimer the next 
 
 ensuing year" (1431-32). The claim to the barony, how- 
 
 ^ The arms of this nobleman are conspicuous both on the Castle of 
 Danby and the old bridge below the castle. And perhaps the fact is the 
 more noteworthy because of the direction in Latimer's will that his heirs 
 should hear the Latimer arms. In my History of OUvelaTid I have 
 remarked upon the shield, or rather the escutcheon, on the south front of 
 the castle that it is "peculiar"; for that "the Nevilles, Lords Latimer, 
 whose arms they are, usually had two griffins, and not a griffin and a lion, 
 as supporters ; and either a black roundel or a black annulet as the 
 difference. Moreover the sal tire does not reach the edge of the shield." 
 It is possible that this so-called saltire — for it is an even-armed Latin cross 
 set obliquely rather than a saltire — may be intended as a sort of acknow- 
 ledgment of the matter of the father-in-law's injunction or permission 
 (whichever it was intended to be) as to the eventual bearing of the 
 Latimer arms. 
 
Henry VIII never at Danby 293 
 
 ever, was not entirely uncontested; for in George Neville's 
 grandson's time a counter-claim was urged by Willoughby, 
 Lord Brooke (Graws, pp. 274, 275), the issue of which was in 
 favour of Eichard Neville, Lord Latimer, the grandson just 
 named. 
 
 Richard was succeeded by his son John, Lord Latimer, 
 who ought not to be passed by in entire silence, as one of the 
 lords of Danby, seeing that he was the former husband of the 
 lady who afterwards became Henry the Eighth's last queen ; ^ 
 and it was his son John who was the last lord, and who left 
 four daughters, the eldest of whom, Elizabeth, as the wife of 
 Sir John Danvers of Dauntse}^, carried the manor, castle, and 
 lands of Danby into another family. The issue of this 
 marriage, as far as we are concerned, were two sons and a 
 daughter. The elder of the two sons was Henry, described 
 as "Lord Danvers of Daventree," and as created "Earl of 
 Danby" in 1626; and as having grant in the following year 
 " of the goods, chattels, and debts of all felons in the manor 
 and forest of Danby." The second was John Danvers who, 
 on the death of his brother without heirs of his body, suc- 
 ceeded to the Danby property (among others), and was the 
 person who alienated the said property to others under the 
 circumstances detailed in another place. [See next section. On 
 the Contents of an old Oak Chest.] The sister was Eleanor, 
 who married Thomas Walmsley, and by him had a daughter 
 
 ^ This is the only grain of historical fact in the legend which tells 
 of a personal visit of Henry VIII to Danby. The legend is to the 
 effect that Henry riding from York (necessarily over the moors) to visit 
 Lady Latimer at Danby Castle, was caught in a storm and forced to 
 take refuge in the farmhouse in Danby Dale, which still bears the 
 name of Stormy Hall. As a matter of fact Henry's fifth c[ueen was, when 
 he was at York, still living, and he never came north of York, either 
 then or later. The name of the farm is in reality due to the fact that 
 the land had been held from the thirteenth century by members of the 
 family (well known in Cleveland) of Esturmi or Sturmy. And in the first 
 written occurrence of the name of the farm with which I am acquainted 
 it stands as Sturmy Hall. 
 
294 Historical 
 
 Anne, who became the wife of Sir Edward Osborne of Kiveton, 
 the father of the well-known Sir Thomas Osborne, High 
 Treasurer of England in 1673; created Baron of Kiveton and 
 Viscount Latimer by Charles I. ; soon after made Earl of 
 Danby, and, in the issue, Duke of Leeds. 
 
AN OLD OAK CHEST AND SOME OF ITS 
 DISCLOSURES 
 
 The oak chest stands in " the Jury room," and the Jury room 
 is an oak-panelled room in the castle, with a grandly moulded 
 late mediaeval fireplace in it — only hidden away from view by 
 modern "Gothic" innovation. The chest itself is about three feet 
 and a half long, by twenty inches high and twenty-four in width. 
 The oak of the sides and ends is more than an inch thick, and 
 it is barred and cross -barred with iron bands, so that the 
 parallelograms of oak left uncovered are not of imposing 
 size. And the documents it contains have been in it for 
 nearly two centuries and a half, and the chest was not new, but 
 was probably venerable, when they were first entrusted to its 
 keeping ; for it has a till in it, and a secret compartment below 
 the till, its present purpose being to hold secure the counter- 
 parts of a long series of conveyances afi'ecting the division and 
 distribution of an estate that comprised, in one form or another, 
 nearly twenty-four thousand acres of land. 
 
 I have been engaged for more than eight years in the most 
 careful and prosaic examination of the vnritten Eecords of the 
 Quarter Sessions' proceedings in the North Riding. In this 
 process I have either copied out myself, or most heedfully per- 
 used the copies made by another of, the lists of the men serving 
 on the Grand Juries from 1604 to 1680. The rule for these 
 lists is that with one, two, or three — rarely more — " gentle- 
 men " at the head of the catalogue, the rest of the names, to 
 
296 Historical 
 
 the average number of three or four and twenty, were those of 
 men described as "yomen." The total number of names thus 
 recorded in the space of time indicated is certainly not under 
 five thousand. And the men whose names are found in this 
 lengthy roll-call come, as they are summoned, from every nook 
 and corner of the whole Riding. At least, that was as the 
 matter appeared to the writer for many months after his work 
 had become as systematic as it was possible to make it. One 
 day, however, he happened to notice that his own parish was 
 an exception to the general rule. No jurymen were supplied 
 by that parish, save it were an occasional "gentleman"; and 
 this happened so very seldom that it could with diflBculty be 
 tortured into the proverbial "exception." And even at last, 
 when it was actually noticed, it was rather with a vague sort 
 of surprise than with any thought of seeking an explanation. 
 Still, there was the fact. Small places not one-fifth the size 
 of this parish, and of much less mark in other particulars, sent 
 their half-dozen or half-score representatives of the yeoman 
 class ; but this great and, by its connections, important parish 
 did not supply a single one. The writer might speculate, and 
 he did speculate ; but the speculation was as unprofitable as 
 speculations very often are ; and it was not until years of the 
 examination of minutes and orders had run their course that 
 explanation of the mystery suggested itself. But one day a 
 bit of the popular history of the parish flashed across his recol- 
 lection, and it solved the whole difficulty. For he recollected 
 that up to the time of Charles I, though not for long after, 
 the entire parish was still in the hands of one sole and single 
 owner. There could therefore be no room for yeomen, in the 
 sense of freeholders, under such conditions. And on this fact 
 depends a series of transactions, which are not without their 
 interest from the " local history " point of view, and all the 
 more so from the fact that the whole series of circumstances has 
 hitherto been misconceived and misdescribed alike by the local 
 historians, such as Graves and Ord, in their several histories 
 
How Danby came to be sold out in Lots 297 
 
 of Cleveland, and, as a matter of course, by the whole corps of 
 copyists at large. In the latter class the most astounding 
 muddle is found in Murray's Handbook for Yorkshire. There 
 we are told that a " certain branch of the Nevilles," owners of 
 the estate in question, " ended in females, the eldest of whom 
 retaining the estate was ^^-ife of Sir John Danvers. Their 
 son was Charles I.'s Earl of Danby — a title which died with 
 him. ... Sir John Danvers, father of the earl, sold the 
 greater part of the estate to five Danby freeholders ; and the 
 residue, about 2500 acres, with the manor and its rights, was 
 sold to Mr. — afterwards Sir John — Dawnay.". It is difficult to 
 characterise this statement otherwise than as I have just now- 
 designated it — an astounding muddle. The father of the earl 
 did not sell the estate ; on the contrary, the earl, who died in 
 1643, died possessed of it. He was succeeded in the possession 
 of the said estate by his brother John, Sir John Danvers of 
 Chelsea, his grandfather having been Sir John Ddnvers of 
 Dauntsey. In the year 1647 Sir John Danvers of Chelsea, 
 being involved in very serious pecuniary difiiculties, was com- 
 pelled to make arrangements to meet at least a part of them. 
 These difficulties, as it seems to me, may best be described in 
 the old document itself, dated 1st May 1647, from which the 
 information given is derived. It recites that " Sii* Thomas 
 Sawley, Bart., now deceased, in his lifetime, at the request of 
 Sir John Danvers, and together with him as his surety, and 
 for his only and proper debt, became bound in the following 
 obligations, viz. to Isaac Jones, Esq., in an obligation of £3000, 
 dated Feb. 12, 1641, conditioned for the payment of £1500, 
 principal debt and interest : to Sir Gerwas Ellwes and Jeremy 
 EUwes, in an obligation of £800, dated Oct. 22, 1640, condi- 
 tioned for the payment of £500 : to Anne Rewes, widow, of 
 £800, dated Oct. 25, 1640, for £500: to Angelo Grey, in 
 £6000, dated April 16, 1638, for £3000: to Sir William 
 Acton, Knt. and Bart., in two several obligations, one of 
 £2000, dated Nov. 30, 1645, for £1000, and the other of 
 
298 Historical 
 
 £1000, dated April 25, 1646, for £600 : And that Sir Peter 
 Osborne, Knt., became bound with the said Sir John Danvers, 
 as his sui'ety, to Thomas Crompton, Gentleman, in an obliga- 
 tion of £2000, dated Dec. 18, 1639, for £1000 : And that John 
 Mountford, D.D., became bound with Sir John Danvers to 
 Francis Lucye, Esq., in £2000, dated May 24, 1638, for £1000 : 
 And that the said Sir John Danvers became bound to divers 
 other persons in divers other great summes of money, for all or 
 the greatest parte whereof some other of his ffreindes, or some 
 of his serwants, stand ingaged with him as his suertyes in 
 severall other obligations : And that the said Sir John Danvers, 
 out of his greate care to have all such debtes as are his owne 
 proper and just debtes, and not any other, for which he stands 
 bound or ingaged as suerty with or for any other person or 
 persons, to bee paid, and to have his flfriendes, servants, and 
 suerties, and their estates, kept harmelesse and without any 
 damage dr losse by reason of any of their ingagementes for him, 
 for which, if the times had not bene soe troublesome, and his 
 losses by reason of those troubles soe greate as they have of 
 late byn, hee intended to have done before this tyme. But 
 finding those his owne debtes to bee since these troubles soe 
 much encreased by the greatnes of his losses, as that for the 
 present hee hath noe other meanes to satisfie them, hee is now 
 desirous and resolved to make some provision for raysing of 
 moneys for that purpose by the leasinge and selling either 
 absolutely or by way of mortgage of some of his landes of in- 
 heritance. And conceavinge his property hereafter mentioned 
 in the County of Yorke, in respect of their remoteness from 
 the rest of his landes, which, for the most partes, lye in the 
 County of Wiltes, may be fittest for that purpose : and that 
 the same is intailed, and that he hath issue heritable to that 
 estate-entail, and at present he only designs to pay Sir Tho. 
 Sawley, Sir Peter Osborne, and Dr. Mountford," he therefore 
 covenants with Rowland Jewkes senior to levy a fine at West- 
 minster, before the end of Trinity term next, of the Manor 
 
Danvers, first. Baron, then Earl of Danby 2 gg 
 
 and Castle of Danby, and the Forest and Chase of Danby, and 
 the Rectory of Danby, and all tithes in Danby, Leleholmes, 
 and Glacedale, together with Bennington and Flixton in the 
 same county, and all Leetes, Lawdayes, Viewes of Frank 
 pledge, etc. ; and the fine is to enure to the uses declared in 
 the deed to the parties of the third part, viz. Thomas Yates of 
 Chelsey, Clerk, Nathaniel Bostock of Heston, Clerk, Edward 
 Thorne of Twickenham, Gentleman, and Rowland Jewkes, the 
 younger of London, Gentleman, upon trust to sell, etc., and 
 pay his debts. 
 
 The covenanted fine was accordingly levied before Justices 
 Peter Phesant and John Cobbold on the 28th of May follow- 
 ing ; and there the matter seems, in the absence of any 
 evidence to the contrary, to have hung fire for a period of 
 seven years. Whether or no the " times soe troublesome " had 
 anything to do with this delay, is a matter of speculation only ; 
 but at least such a supposition is by no means inconsistent 
 with the history of the times and what we infer (if we do not 
 absolutely know) of Sir John Danvers himself, and the almost 
 certain explanation of the fact of his difiiculties and their origin. 
 
 For we remember that Sir Henry Danvers of Dauntsey, 
 brother to Sir John of Chelsea — our Sir John that is — had 
 been created Lord Danvers of Daventry by James I., and was 
 afterwards created Earl of Danby by Charles I. in the first 
 year of his reign (5th February 1626) j"^ and in June of the 
 following year he had grant from the same monarch of the 
 goods, chattels, and debts of all felons in the manor and 
 forest of Danby. There is enough in these facts to indicate 
 
 ■^ I am aware thi3 is not as the story is customarily told. Ord, for 
 instance {Hist, of Clevelaiid, p. 330) writes, "Henry, created Earl of 
 Danby, James I.," and quotes Defoe in support of the allegation as 
 follows : ' ' Henry Danvers, created baron of this place (Danby ) by James I. , 
 though by Charles I. made Earl of Danby. He hrfd distinguished him- 
 self in Queen Elizabeth's Irish wars, was good as he was great, and died 
 with glory," in 1643. From which it is clear that Ord has blundered his 
 authority. 
 
300 Historical 
 
 that Sir Henry Danvers stood well with James I., and certainly 
 not less well with King Charles. And it would be anything 
 but a random supposition if we assumed that there were good 
 reasons, such as attachment and devotion to the House of 
 Stuart and its interests, for the circumstance so ascertained. 
 Assuming, then, the existence in the breasts of the Earl of 
 Danby and his brother Sir John Danvers of such a feeling, is 
 it a mere coincidence that the period at which these money 
 obligations are seen in their inchoative and most urgent stages 
 corresponds with the period at and through which " a voluntary 
 war-tax was levied in every county for the purpose of equip- 
 ping forces " to fight for the king, and when " gifts of money 
 and plate " for the king's service became the order of the day 
 among the royalist adherents, whether public bodies or private 
 gentlemen and nobles? The year 1638 was the year of the 
 said "voluntary tax," and 1643 that of the "gifts of plate 
 and money"; and it was in the year 1638 that Sir John 
 Danvers incurred the obligations of £6000 to one party and 
 £2000 to another, adding £3500 more the following year, 
 and increasing the burden still further in 1641. But whether 
 or no the contemporaneousness of the incipient and augment- 
 ing indebtedness of Sir John Danvers and the necessities of 
 Charles I. be taken to afford a very strong presumption that 
 Sir John was one of the goodly band of noble and faithful 
 gentlemen who impoverished themselves and risked all they 
 held most dear in the effort to support a doubtful cause, 
 certain it is that all practical diflBculties appear to have been 
 cleared out of the way of the proposed alienation of Danvers's 
 Yorkshire property, for the purpose of liquidating at least 
 some of his liabilities, by the earlier part of the year 1655. 
 For it was on 21st February of that year Sir John Danvers, 
 Tho. Coppin, Esq., Tho. Gunter, Gent., with Nath. Bostocke 
 and Will. Baxter, Clerks, with the consent and approbation of 
 Rich. Sallwey, Tho. Estcourt, Eob. Atkins, Rowland Jewkes 
 sen., Will. Yorke, Esquires, and Tho. Yates, Clerk, engage 
 
Agreement to convey to two persons 301 
 
 and agree " that the Manner and Lordshippe of Danby with 
 the demeasne lands, messuages, farmes, tenements, Royaltyes, 
 priviledges, and hereditaments thereunto belonginge, late 
 the landes and possessions of the E.t. Honble. Henry, late 
 Earle of Danbye, together with the Eectorye and tythes of 
 Danby, shall be sold and conveyed unto Samuell Levingstoune, 
 Clerk, and John Agari', yeoman, or to such other persons as 
 they shall appointe, uppon this special Trust and Confidence : 
 That all and every the tenanntes and farmors within the said 
 Mannor and Lordshippe shall have full freedome and power 
 to purchase all and singuler their severall and respective 
 farmes and landes as are now held by them respectively, att 
 such reasonable rates and values as they are now agreed to be 
 sold att, the purchase and value of the said Manor and Lord- 
 ship, together with all necessary charges and expences about 
 purchaseinge and dividinge the same duely considered : 
 Provided always that the said Sam. Levingstoune and John 
 Agar, and all and singuler the said tenants and farmors, 
 shall pay and satisfye unto us, the aforesaid Coppin, Gunter, 
 Bostocke, and Baxter, for the purchase of the said Manor, etc., 
 the full sum of £17000, in three instalments, to be severally 
 due and payable on the 24th June next after date, the 28th 
 November next following, and 28th May next after that : 
 with a proviso, however, that all rents, etc., due on the said 
 lands be all paid up by or before the Feast of Penticoste next 
 ensueinge the date of the deed to the four persons already 
 specified.". 
 
 And after this date affairs were not suffered to drag their 
 slow length along as in the years after 1647. No doubt there 
 were reasons quite sufficiently forcible to account for the delay 
 in the one case and for the promptitude in the other, and 
 which suggest themselves the moment we recall the con- 
 temporary history of the country. In 1647 everything was 
 in confusion or worse than confusion. In matters political, 
 ecclesiastical, civil, nothing was assured, nothing save the 
 
302 Historical 
 
 present certain. The king had newly fallen into the hands of 
 the Parliament, the army and the Parliament were not at one, 
 an accommodation between the army and the king seemed 
 possible, was negotiated for ; a second civil war was imminent, 
 nay, speedily ensued ; and it was but an unpropitious time for 
 such dealings as that under notice, or indeed for any dealings 
 at all that would possibly admit of postponement. In 1654-55, 
 on the contrary, whatever view we take of the Protector's 
 action, peace had been ensured, a strong government existed, 
 the prosperity of the country was returning with rapid strides, 
 and there were no threatening clouds looming up from abroad. 
 Men might prudently and safely and wisely invest their money 
 now, and find every necessary facility as well as encouragement 
 to do so. And thus, tripartite indentures of agreement or of 
 conveyance, bearing the several dates of 7th July 1655, 11th 
 July immediately following, and 25th June of the following 
 year, are drawn up and duly executed, each of them being of 
 interest in its own way. 
 
 It will be remembered that in the deed of which the sub- 
 stance was given a little above, two trustees only were nomi- 
 nated (Samuel Levingstoune, the non-episcopal "minister" of 
 the day, and John Agar, a yeoman of the place, occupying 
 a farm then and now called Didderhow), but with the alter- 
 native proviso, " or to such other persons as they shall 
 appoint, upon this special Trust and Confidence " always ; and 
 accordingly, as will be seen from what immediately follows, 
 these two trustees had effected the addition of three others to 
 the original number of two. For in the "Indenture Tripar- 
 tite," dated 7th July 1655, Tho. Yates of Chelsey, Clerk, Nath. 
 Bostock of Heston, Clerk, Edward Thorne of Twickenham, 
 Gentn., and Eowland Jewkes junr. of London, Gentn., of the 
 first part, with the consent and approbation of Sir Francis 
 Lawley of Spoonehill, Shropshire, Eichard Salway of Short- 
 hampton, Oxon., Tho. Estcourt and Eob. Atkins, both of 
 Lincolns Inn, with Eowland Jewkes senr. and Will. Yorke, 
 
Conveyance to five Trustees 303 
 
 of the Inner Temple, all designated Esquires, of the second 
 part, agree and covenant to convey to Sam. Levingstoune, Clerk, 
 John Agar, Eob. Prodam, Geo. Harrison, and Tho. Watson, 
 yeomen, of the third part, in consideration of £6200 already 
 paid, and £11,114 further to be paid to the first party, "the 
 Mannor and Castle of Danby, with the Forest and Chace of 
 the same, the Rectory of Danby, with all tythes, etc., and all 
 the rights and appurtenances whatsoever." And herein we 
 notice that, besides the addition of three others, yeomen, to 
 the original two trustees, we have the four gentlemen who are 
 named as of the third part in the deed of 1st May 1647, now 
 as the parties actually covenanting to convey the aforesaid 
 manor, lordship, etc., of Danby to the said trustees, but as in 
 co-operation with two gentlemen (one of them directly con- 
 cerned in the matter as bondsman for and \^'ith Sir John 
 Danvers to a heavy amount), and four other gentlemen, all 
 learned in the law, who may be regarded as engaged on behalf 
 of the baronet aforesaid, and the other creditors whose names 
 have been above specified. 
 
 Quite possibly, it will have been noticed that although in 
 the instrument of 1st May 1647 Sir John Danvers covenants 
 to convey to Yates, Bostock, Thome, and the younger Jewkes, 
 and again in that of 21st February 1664-55 the same Sir John 
 personally, with four other gentlemen named, engages and 
 agrees that the said manor, castle, and so forth, shall be con- 
 veyed, in trust, to Levingstoune and Agar, still in this last 
 deed of 7th July in the same year the name of Danvers does 
 not appear at all. The explanation is that Sir John Danvers 
 had deceased in the interim, and the receipts for the payment 
 of the first instalment of the purchase money are signed by 
 Tho. Badcocke -pro Thomas Coppin and others, trustees for 
 Sir John Danvers, Knight, deceased. The earliest of these is 
 dated 13th June 1655. 
 
 The deed that follows next in sequence in connection with 
 this transaction may safely be described as one of singular local 
 
304 Historical 
 
 interest ; for it is entitled " Articles of Agreement Tripartite 
 concluded and agreed upon by and between " the five trustees 
 of the first part, John Dawnay of Cowicke, Esq., Rich. 
 Etherington of York, Esq., and Rich. Alline of Danby, Gentn., 
 of the second part, and 168 intending and covenanting pur- 
 chasers (of either sex) of " such their severall and respective 
 farmes and lands as are now held and enjoyed by them 
 respectively." There are in all seven different clauses in the 
 said agreement, placing the whole transaction on the most 
 carefully considered business footing, and drawn up with a 
 legal knowledge, skill, and precision such as to elicit high 
 commendation from the conveyancing practitioner of the 
 present day ; while to the whole is prefixed " A Schedule of 
 the severall purchasours of the Manner, Castle, Lordshippe, 
 Royaltyes, Lands and Tythes in Danby, Leleholmes, and 
 Glacedale in the Countye of Yorke, with the severall valewes 
 thereof, freed and discharged of all mannor of Tythes and 
 Fee-farme rentes." 
 
 Of this schedule it is quite safe to say that it abounds with 
 varied interest. There is matter in it for the student of local 
 history, both personal and topographical ; for the student who 
 confines himself to the observation of manners rather than 
 men ; and for the student who pursues the intricate subject of 
 the decadence of the old Common -field system, and the 
 building up upon its ruins of a system of land-management of 
 a singularly different nature. 
 
 But there is one revelation in especial made by it, which is 
 of a nature such as alike to discredit popular tradition and to 
 confute the most trusted deliverances of the accepted historian, 
 and still more his unquestioning copyists. The mistakes made 
 in Murray's Handhooh have already been noticed. Ord's 
 account is more than equally incorrect, both as to person and 
 circumstance. And even the sober and diligent Graves can 
 give no better account of so important a transaction than the 
 following: "Sir Henry Dan vers. Earl of Danby, having in 
 
Sir John Dawnays share in the transaction 305 
 
 his lifetime sold this lordship to five freeholders, inhabitants 
 of the place ; of whom the castle, manor, and greatest part of 
 the estate were purchased by Sir John Dawney, of Cowick, 
 knight." The popular notion or tradition, however, does not 
 go quite so far astray as either of the authorities last named ; 
 for, instead of making Mr. (not Sir John) Dawnay purchaser 
 of the whole estate, manor, etc., as Ord does, or of the greater 
 part, as Graves does, it attributes to the gentleman named 
 quite another share in the bargain ; and the view that is thus 
 represented is, that whatever the freeholders at large did not 
 buy of the five was bought by Mr. Dawnay, as well as the 
 manor, castle, lordship, etc. — in other words, that he was a 
 sort of residuary purchaser. 
 
 As has been seen already, all these representations are 
 essentially erroneous, and this in several particulars ; and 
 the schedule we are noticing sets all the mistakes about Mr. 
 Dawnay and his share in the transaction in a painfully clear 
 light. It will have been noticed that in the agreement by 
 the five freeholders of the first part to the 168 intending 
 purchasers of the third part, the names of three gentlemen 
 are mentioned as of the second part; and they were the 
 Mr. Dawnay in question, Mr. Etherington of York, and Mr. 
 Eichard AUine of Danby, described as " gentleman," the other 
 two being esquires. From this alone we see that Mr. Dawnay 
 was much more than a residuary purchaser, or even the most 
 considerable purchaser — which, indeed, he by no means was, 
 except in comparison with individual purchasers. And on 
 coming to look into the details of the schedule we find 
 him named among the intending and, indeed, covenanting 
 purchasers in connection with four out of the 158 lots into 
 which the estate was parcelled out. And these four lots were 
 as follows : In the first, Mr. Dawnay, with four others named, 
 agrees to give £258 for the west end of Oakley side ; in the 
 second, he covenants to buy three -fourths of a certain en- 
 closure, a water-mill, and twenty-three several farms, giving 
 
3 o 6 Historical 
 
 £3050:18:8 for the lot; in the third, he engages to give 
 £148 : 16 : 6 for several intakes, certain free rents, and also 
 free rents and tithes issuing out of certain freehold lands ; 
 and in the fourth the covenanted purchase is of the castle and 
 its farm, the park, a tenement in Whitby, with the manor 
 and manorial privileges thereto appertaining, the sum to be 
 given being £550, the total purchase money amounting to 
 about £4000, out of a grand total of between £18,000 and 
 £19,000 to be paid by the collective purchasers. 
 
 But it is when we come to study the conveyances which 
 made the aforesaid agreement effective that the mines of 
 information, local, economical, customary, archaic, illustrative 
 of divers matters of interest, begin to be developed ; and they 
 are of such a nature that it is impossible to do more than 
 glance at the fact of their existence here. But what ought 
 not to be omitted is the fact, or the series of facts, that there 
 is much variation between the list of actual or eventual 
 purchasers, as compiled from the conveyances themselves, 
 and that given in the schedule; that the total number of 
 conveyances — strictly speaking, they are the counterparts of 
 the original conveyances — contained in the chest is but 138, 
 as against more than 150 specified in the schedule; that 
 three out of the four conveyances made to Mr. Dawnay do 
 not appear, only the conveyance of the castle and manor 
 lot being present; that more than one of the conveyances 
 extant deal not with single holdings, but with a group of 
 farms (six or seven, or even nine in one case), and without 
 precise details of any kind connected with them, except 
 as regards the names of the persons who were in present 
 occupation; and, lastly, that the whole series of trans- 
 actions connected with the sale, purchase, conveyance, and 
 delivery of all these several allotments, comprising the entire 
 extent of the parish and manor of Danby (Glaisdale, as of 
 necessity, included), was carried through and completed within 
 the course of the year 1656. Not one of all the 138 convey- 
 
The Conveyances full of curious Information 307 
 
 ances referred to is dated Otherwise than in that year. And 
 this prompt execution and completion of the business is 
 covenanted and provided for in the second and third of the 
 seven articles which the agreement comprises. The latter of 
 these two articles specially provides that there shall be no 
 further addition at any time to the existing number of free- 
 hold farms, each with its own especial common right — a rule 
 which is most strictly insisted and acted upon down to the 
 present day. 
 
 All of these articles contain some curious reading, and 
 their preciseness in a variety of particulars is of a nature to 
 arouse general local interest. But of all, perhaps the fourth 
 is the most marked in this particular ; for it defines alike the 
 rights and privileges accruing in virtue of his purchase to the 
 lord of the manor and his successors, and also his (and their) 
 obligations and duties as towards the rest of the purchasers, 
 or, in other words, the resulting body of freeholders. 
 
 As a case in point it not only authorises, but requires 
 him, in case of any encroachment on the peculiar rights of 
 the freeholders, such as the removal of turf, ling, brackens, 
 etc., by non-freeholders, or such as do not possess a common 
 right, to take proceedings against the offender. And this has 
 actually been done within the past year. A man living in 
 the parish, but not the holder of a common right, cut and 
 carried away a certain amount of brackens, and, when fined by 
 the jury for the encroachment, made difficulties about the 
 payment of the fine, and eventually altogether declined to 
 pay it, and strove, under bad advice, to resist the infliction 
 of it. The case was referred to the proper court, and then, 
 under better advice, the defaulter gave in and paid the fine. 
 
 There is, indeed, far too much calling for notice in this 
 mass of documents to be dealt with at the close of one of 
 these sections, or indeed, it may be, in such a book as this. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS 
 
NOTES ON NATUEAL HISTORY: CHIEFLY 
 ORNITHOLOGY 
 
 One of my old parishioners, for whom I entertained lively 
 feelings of regard and attachment — a stalwart-looking mason, 
 who died, however, of consumption some twelve or fifteen 
 years ago — told me one day, while detailing certain facts 
 which he had verified touching the moats which had originally 
 encompassed the original Castrum de Daneby, from which 
 the hamlet of Castleton derives its name, that one portion 
 of the system of moats had been dug through by himself 
 when excavating for the foundation of a chapel, the construc- 
 tion of which had been entrusted to him ; and that he had 
 helped to fill up another portion situate in a field in his own 
 occupation. These details were of great interest to me for 
 many reasons, and I listened with great attention. I was 
 myself tolerably weU acquainted with the said system of 
 moat-defences, part of which is still extant, and part has been 
 filled in to help find space for a garden, since I have been 
 here ; and what he told me cleared up a great diflSculty in the 
 way of a satisfactory conception of what the water defences of 
 this castle had been. I had seen the basement of the walls 
 on the northern side laid bare by this same man and his work- 
 men, and had found the width of them in excess of eleven 
 feet; and it had seemed that there might have been some 
 reason for this enormous strength in the fact that from the 
 position of the castle the moat could not be carried round it 
 
312 Miscellaneous 
 
 on that side, because the ground fell away abruptly from 
 almost the very foot of the wall as I saw it had been built. 
 Still my friend's positive and matter-of-fact, as well as detailed, 
 statement left me in no doubt that this considerable, and 
 certainly important, early Norman fortress had had water- 
 defences also on the north side ; although, and of necessity, at 
 a lower level than on the eastern and southern sides and, most 
 likely, on the western side as well. 
 
 But this is not going to be an antiquarian chapter, and I 
 only mention these details to lead on to another statement made 
 by my poor friend Frank when he told me he had done so 
 much in the way of filling in the moat on the north side. He 
 described the condition of the place filled. It had been a place 
 for the habitation and breeding of toads as long as he could 
 remember, and much ill-usage the poor toads had experienced 
 at the hands of the Castleton boys ; and " a vast of filling 
 in " it had taken. But he and the mason he had been appren- 
 ticed to had " a great vast of masons' rubbish " which they 
 were glad to be able "to vent" anywhere, and it had gone to 
 fill up this place, and make a good firm road into the field, a 
 purpose it serves still. 
 
 Well, one day when I was talking to Frank about many 
 things, one of us adverted to some notice or other which had 
 recently been going the round of the papers about a toad 
 found enclosed in the boll of an old tree, which was being 
 split up (or cut up) for firewood, or something of that sort ; 
 and Frank asked me what my opinion was as to the rights 
 in that much -vexed question. I expressed my unqualified 
 incredulity, both as to the alleged fact itself and as to the 
 authenticity of the statements in regard to it. But Frank 
 did not take my view, that was clear. He did not see why 
 it could not be. "Why, pricky-back otchins (urchins, hedge- 
 hogs) slept all the winter thruff (through), and he himself 
 had offens seen the backbearaways (bats) hinging up in the 
 church-tower, and au'd garrets i' different spots, and a few 
 
Toads alleged to be enclosed in stones, etc. 3 1 3 
 
 weeks more or less of winter seemed to make no diifer to 
 thae ; and besides folks did say that swallows had been fished 
 up out of the bottoms of ponds and such like, all hinging to- 
 gether like bees iv a swarm, and all as wick (aUve) as gam'- 
 some kitlins (frolicsome kittens)." But I saw there was more 
 in my companion's mind than even these natural history recol- 
 lections, and after a little trouble I got him to tell me what 
 it was. He believed toads could live, and did live, " a weight 
 of years even," if they happened to be covered up, ay, and 
 blocked up so they couldn't stir and much more get out. 
 "Why, he had heared thae teeads (toads) that had been 
 covered up years and years ago, with loads on loads of broken 
 stone, rubble, earth, old mortar — all sike-like minglements as 
 came in mason-work, from pulling down old buildings and 
 putting up new — five foot deep in some places ; and yet he 
 had heared them croaking, not once or twice only, but scores 
 of times ; and that ^howed they could live in such spots." And 
 nothing could shake this good man's faith that the toads he 
 had heard were the toads whose dwelling-place he had helped 
 to fill up so many years before. 
 
 I do not for a moment doubt that my poor friend had heard 
 the croakings in question, nor even that they had come from 
 the place he aflBrmed them to have come from. I no more 
 disbelieved his statement than I disbelieved the evidence of 
 my own eyes one day when, amid a little scene of excitement 
 among my fellow-workers, I saw a living viper disclosed from 
 a pile of stonework in the heart of a barrow on the moor, 
 which stonework lay below a superincumbent covering of 
 earth at least two feet in thickness. But then I could account 
 for the presence of the toads where Frank said he had heard 
 them just in the same way as I could account for the presence 
 of the hagworm three or four feet below the surface of the 
 houe. Some means of entrance and access to the interstices 
 between the piled stones existed in either case, although it 
 escaped notice, and even suspicion, in the case of all the 
 
3 1 4 Miscellaneous 
 
 observers, myself only excepted. It is the habit of the toad, 
 equally with the viper, to " choose for its winter retreat some 
 retired and sheltered hole, a hollow tree, or a space amongst 
 large stones, or some such place," as Mr. Bell writes, and so 
 the old habitat below the castle would still be occupied dur- 
 ing the winter, and when the spring came again, and the toads 
 awaked from their long slumber, they would be likely to 
 croak as naturally as a man yawns under the like circum- 
 stance every morning. 
 
 I do not like to misuse the words fancy and imagination. 
 The latter is a grand thing, and the other a pleasant thing. 
 And so I do not care to say, "What a lot of imagination or 
 what an amount of fancy is expended upon very everyday 
 topics connected with natural history !" but I would rather 
 say, " What an awful lot of unthinking, unstable supposings or 
 assumings, based upon no real or genuine observation, is 
 continually put forward in almost every vehicle of natural 
 history 'Notes and Queries'!" and my dearly -beloved star- 
 lings are among the sufferers thereby. 
 
 A few years ago there was a craze among some fancy 
 ornithologists to make the cock starling a bigamist. Posi- 
 tively the theory was started that he customarily had a couple 
 of hens attached to him, and that this accounted for the 
 groups of three one perpetually saw in the breeding time ! 
 For one thing, although I have been on very intimate terms 
 with starlings for some sixty years, I did not even know that 
 " groups of three " were to be recognised at all. Certainly I 
 have often seen three together, but the same observation 
 holds good of most other species of birds, I think; but as 
 to a male starling mating with two female starlings at one 
 and the same time, the idea is simply absurd to any one 
 who has the opportunity, continued for dozens of years, 
 of watching all the domestic proceedings of some ten or 
 twelve pairs of the bird in question during the entire breeding 
 season ; five to seven of their nests, moreover, being placed 
 
Queer notions touching the Starling 3 1 s 
 
 within three yards of his seat by his own dining-room 
 window. 
 
 Starlings "pair," Hterally and simply ; and if I were asked 
 to give the impressions produced in my own mind by what I 
 have observed in connection with my own private colony here 
 especially, I should say that I am by no means sure they do 
 not remain paired all the year round — at least in some cases. 
 Thus, they always come back to their haunts in the ivy sur- 
 rounding their nesting-boxes, and they always come in even 
 numbers. To avoid begging the question, I say — not that 
 there are three pairs, but — six birds here now, and for the 
 ■ last six weeks there have been always either two or four or 
 six. I have seen two of these roosting for the night in a large 
 sweeping thom-tree night after night, two in a spruce fir 
 near, and two in the ivy. The last two weeks, or since the 
 weather became very cold, they have quartered themselves for 
 the night mainly in the ivy. They sit on the chimneys or the 
 pinnacles of the house for half an hour or more before bedtime, 
 and converse, cheerfully and musically always, and sometimes 
 mocking-bird-like. But that is the more usual practice of the 
 springtime of the year. But they are always separable into 
 twos, only greatly more then than now. 
 
 Another craze of the fancy ornithologist, with the starling 
 for its object, is occupying some pages of the Naturalist at the 
 time of writing, the question being, "Is the starling double- 
 brooded?" or, in other words, "Does the starling bring off 
 two broods in the same season ? " The question, on the face 
 of it, is nonsensical ; for it does not appear that any one of 
 those who write on the affirmative side is willing to display so 
 much of a crack, rather than a craze merely, as to advance 
 that the rule with the starling is to produce two broods 
 annually unless exceptionally prevented : and as certainly no 
 one of those writing on the negative side disputes the fact 
 that in divers instances they have been known to multiply 
 to that extent. 
 
3 1 6 Miscellaneous 
 
 To be sure, one gentleman on the affirmative side writes, 
 " My reply to the question. Are starlings double-brooded % must 
 be distinctly in the affirmative." But there is the most artless 
 innocence of any attempt to produce evidence to support, and 
 much more establish the soundness of, the verdict given. The 
 "united experience of himself, the members of his family, and 
 the school-children" — it is absolutely so written — "is that, 
 with hardly any exception, these birds" — the occupants of 
 nine nests within a radius (sic) of little over one hundred 
 yards — "reared two broods every season." As the good 
 gentleman winds up by making " Turdidse " of the nine pairs 
 of starlings in question, besides adducing such a mass of well- 
 digested facts in evidence, it may perhaps be assumed that the 
 affirmative side might have been none the weaker had his re- 
 markable contribution been withheld. 
 
 Of course the starling, like other birds, is double-brooded 
 on occasion. And I suspect that qualifying "on occasion" 
 goes to the root of the matter. Thus, I am aware that 
 the much larger proportion among my own home favourites 
 were double - brooded during the breeding season of the 
 year 1889, and that for a special cause. Owing to unusually 
 mild and indeed warm weather in the early part of the year, 
 the starlings — one pair of them at least, and I think another — 
 and some other birds, including a pair of blackbirds and a 
 pair of chaffinches, began nesting operations at a most un- 
 usually early period, and I had reason to be assured that the 
 starlings had eggs as early as the first week in March. Then 
 came three nights during which severally my thermometer 
 registered 18°, 21°, and 22° of frost, after which for a week 
 there was, as a rule, more or less snow falling ; and it was not 
 till the end of that week that I heard or saw the first pewit of 
 the hundreds that annually breed about our fields. During 
 all this time — nine days in all — the starlings had disappeared ; 
 and when they returned, the nesting work, which had so 
 far prospered before, had to be done over again. It was 
 
Birds not infrequently hatch two Broods 317 
 
 two days after the pewits came that the starlings resumed 
 their operations; but only two, or at most three, pairs of 
 them. 
 
 Now for a parallel case. Some thirty years ago, or nearly, 
 Whitmonday here signalised itself not only by the blowing of 
 a great wind (which levelled the section that was left of my 
 haystack), but by the falling of about three inches of snow, 
 and two nights — those preceding and succeedir^ it — of very 
 hard frost. One of the consequences was the bursting, under 
 the tender mercies of the frosty temperature, of hosts of the 
 grouse eggs on Westerdale moors and the equally exposed 
 parts of our Danby high moors. The birds, however (in the 
 majority, as I was led to think), nested again ; and the con- 
 sequence was that the proportion of " cheepers " upon the 
 moor was so great, that the practical effect was the postponing 
 of "The Twelfth" for a fortnight or three weeks. My im- 
 pression was that perhaps one -third, or nearly so, of the 
 broods on our high moors that year were hatched from a 
 second laying of eggs. Yet surely no one would think, from 
 any number of such instances of this — and they are by no 
 means few — of styling the grouse, in the language of the 
 Natit/ralist, double-brooded. 
 
 But even imder more ordinary circumstances I could 
 adduce similar instances from observation of the "ways and 
 the tricks" of the partridge, the ringdove, the water- 
 hen, the dabchick, and divers other birds. Eob them, by 
 whatever means, of their first laying of eggs sufficiently early, 
 or let them get off their first brood unusually soon, and they 
 are likely to lay again and hatch the second cletch of eggs. 
 And with the blackbird, the thrush, the robin, the chaflSnch, 
 and a score or two more of our most familiar birds, this 
 happens in numberless instances almost every year ; actually 
 every year, I do not doubt. As to the robin, I positively knew 
 one case in which the same pair of birds built three nests in 
 contact with each other — like three tenements under one roof 
 
3 1 8 Miscellaneous 
 
 — and brought off three broods, one from each nest, in quick 
 succession. 
 
 Here is another statement made 'by one of the writers of 
 notes in these Naturalist papers which reads very strangely 
 to me : "It may interest , readers of the Naturalist to 
 know that in dry times the starlings will leave the meadows 
 to make descents upon strawberry beds, and that when 
 they do this they take all before them, whether they 
 be green or ripe." Now on this point my experience 
 is not small. • I should say my average annual crop of 
 young starlings for the last five -and -twenty years has been 
 somewhere about five -and -thirty. I have had as many as 
 twelve broods, averaging four each, brought ofi" in one year. 
 The year 1868, in young starling time, was so dry that I had 
 not a green blade left on my fairly large grass-plots. This 
 past summer (1889) was something the same, only the fields were 
 not quite so parched, although the grass in many fields about 
 was half hay before it was cut. And the year 1887 in straw- 
 berry time was like. Now I grow a good breadth of straw- 
 berries. During the past summer we gathered an average of 
 fifteen pounds a day for thirty-five to forty days. And for 
 the last forty years the average yield has not been less than 
 that ; indeed, more rather than less. During these said forty 
 years the blackbirds, ring-ousels, thrushes, and, occasionally 
 only, the missel-thrushes have fairly worried me as well as 
 the garden. I have shot scores on scores year after year. I 
 remember once being in the lower part of the garden, under 
 cover from the adjoining field where my men were then 
 cutting the wheat in a field that had only come into my 
 possession two or three years before, and which I had culti- 
 vated with a view to laying it down in grass. "Why, here's 
 a black ussel," I heard one say to another. " And here's a 
 moor blackbird," cries a second; and a minute after, "Why, 
 here's another and another. Wheea, t' land 's wholly 
 mannered (manured) wiv blackbirds ! " One day actually 
 
Starlings not free of blame in the garden 319 
 
 one of my lads, getting his younger brothers and sisters to 
 " drive the garden " for him, shot fifteen of these depredators 
 from one stance, having three different drives. 
 
 But all these years, and with such potential array of bad 
 example before their eyes, I have never once seen a starling 
 on the strawberry beds, or been led to imagine, and much 
 more suspect, that they had even tasted so much as one. Let 
 the fact stand. Vdmi quantum. 
 
 All the same, the starlings are not entirely blameless 
 as visitors in the flower-garden. One day, years upon 
 years ago, I was visiting an old man, living in one of 
 the old-fashioned houses that are hardly believed in as 
 having ever been in use as human dwellings, and I was 
 talking to his wife, a woman still young enough to take an 
 interest in her garden — younger than her old husband by 
 thirty years, I should say ; and she was speaking of the 
 starlings' misconduct in her limited little bit of flower space. 
 I asked, " Was she sure it was the starlings ? " She had no 
 doubt about it ; and, as luck would have it, a couple of the 
 alleged criminals flew down into the Uttle plot just under the 
 window of the room we were sitting in, and began deliberately 
 to pluck off the crocus flowers under our very eyes. And the 
 flowers did not come easily ; they took a good deal of tugging, 
 and mending the bird's hold, and tugging again, before the 
 decapitation was fully effected. I had not another word to 
 say for my clients. Their ostentatious indulgence in the 
 crime imputed to them shut me up for good. 
 
 And in this garden they take great liberties of the same 
 sort with our early primroses, polyanthuses, and so forth. 
 Not often with the crocuses; though, with the many thou- 
 sands blooming within a score or two of yards of the nesting 
 and roosting place, the temptation cannot be said to be want- 
 ing. But my experience is that one peacock will do more 
 mischief in the ways alleged in one short spring morning 
 than all my colony of starlings in the year. 
 
3 2 o Miscellaneous 
 
 I mentioned the missel-thrushes as occasional plunderers. 
 One year, why or wherefore I never could understand, they 
 were very troublesome. They came in a flock of thirty and 
 upwards, and always settled among the raspberry canes. If I 
 shot at them — though I hardly succeeded in stopping more 
 than about two in all, they were so very wary — they were back 
 again in half an hour, and circling once or twice high up in 
 the air, as if to see whether the coast were clear, down they 
 swooped upon the unlucky raspberries. This was the only 
 instance of their coming in a flight. Odd birds, or two or 
 three at a time, I see not infrequently. 
 
 But the moor blackbird or ring-ousel is the bird of all 
 birds to " walk into " your fruit of the berry sort. I do not 
 know for certain that birds do blush, or else I should say he 
 is the most unblushing, the most unabashed of all possible 
 delinquents in the fruit -stealing and wasting line. His 
 effrontery exceeds that of the Irish member of fiction, of 
 caricature even. The blackbird flies away when caught in 
 the act with a startled cackle ; the thrush retires with an 
 apologetic cheep. But the moor blackbird — always a past 
 master in birds' Billingsgate — swears at you, calls you all the 
 choicest names in his repertory, blackguards you for inter- 
 fering with his meal, and if forced to make himself scarce, 
 does so with the assurance emphatically delivered and repeated 
 that " you are no gentleman." I have sometimes ventured to 
 represent to them that I thought I had a little right in my 
 own garden, even if it was only to see what sort of a feed 
 they were getting. They flatly and insultingly declined to 
 see it. I suppose it must have been the rankling of their 
 contumelious treatment of me which always made me gloat 
 with a fine sense of compensation obtained, whenever one of 
 them fell a victim to my avenging gun. 
 
 Some years large numbers of these birds are produced on 
 our moors. Sometimes I have seen them, when out with my 
 gun, well on into September, in flocks of some hundreds 
 
The ways of the Ring-ousel 3 2 1 
 
 together. This would be of course at the commencing stage 
 of their making ready to "flit" at the accustomed "term." 
 If it so happens that there is a plentiful harvest of bilberries, 
 it is very- seldom we see them in the gardens very early. 
 Nay, even our common blackbirds go up on to the moors to 
 share in the feast, when it so befalls. During this past 
 autumn I have seen the plainest evidences that foraging 
 parties of blackbirds had gone from the very centre of the dale, 
 and had not come away empty. If any one suggests that 
 there is no reason why blackbirds, and thrushes too, should not 
 have an occasional picnic on the moors as well as what the 
 Suffolk people used to call "humans," I have nothing to say 
 against it, except that I think they must picnic every day of 
 the week, for ten or fifteen days together. 
 
 When the bilberries are exhausted, then down come ,the 
 moor blackbirds; and if they are let alone, they show that 
 bilberries are better appetisers than sherry-bitters, or even 
 than the boasted solan. I have literally seen them fifty at a 
 time in this garden, on occasions when they had been left 
 undisturbed for two or three days. It is then that they resent 
 so bitterly and so abusively your intrusion upon their refresh- 
 ment-room. After the somewhat precarious time in the 
 gardens is over, and that much-grudged supply is exhausted, 
 they fall back upon the berries of the mountain-ash or rowan- 
 tree, and as these trees are fairly abundant throughout the 
 district, there is usually a fair board spread for their enjoy- 
 ment during the greater part of the period they have yet to 
 spend in the haunts of their callow-hood. And after that 
 comes departure. 
 
 Certainly I should be quite willing to have my mountain- 
 ash berries spared, and it is a little trial to me to see their 
 beauty destroyed in the shamelessly wasteful, extravagant 
 manner in which these marauders deal with them. They 
 begin before they are quite red-ripe, and for one they eat out 
 of the gorgeous clusters, they seem to squander three, and drop 
 
 Y 
 
3 2 2 Miscellaneous 
 
 them recklessly to cumber the paths and beds beneath. But 
 that is the character of all the plundering perpetrated by these 
 members of the Thrush family. They run their bill through 
 the ripened or ripening side of a big strawberry — big enough to 
 furnish such a bird a full meal for the time — and then pass on 
 and do the same by another and another, wasting at least twice 
 as many as they consume. It is only among the smaller varieties 
 of the strawberry that I ever find a hull from which all the 
 berry has been cleanly cleared away. It is the same with the 
 currants, the gooseberries, the raspberries. Your red currants 
 and your black currants spot the ground beneath the bushes 
 with brilliantly translucent coral and lustrous beads of jet; 
 but they are beads that will never be strung or gladden a 
 creature's eye. The poor gooseberries too, their skins hang 
 half empty on the bushes and rot ; and the raspberries droop 
 in raggedly granulated halves, or stick in dismembered grains 
 on the leaves or ground below. 
 
 And yet it is not so with them in respect of other matters 
 of food. I have seen the thrush who had caught a big earth- 
 worm incautiously looking out of its bore upon the morning, 
 tug, tug, tug at its prey, leaning back with its effort till its 
 tail touches the ground, and you think if the worm was spiteful 
 enough or wide-awake enough to break, or otherwise give way, 
 what a head-over-heels tumble there would be, and a tail all 
 rumpled and broken. It would be so easy for the bird to 
 secure a good big bite of the worm, and end at once the meal 
 and the struggle too. But no ; he sticks to his capture, tugs 
 and tugs on, gains a little bit, almost imperceptibly, or loses a 
 hairbreadth or two by reason of the slipperiness of the victim. 
 And then you see him mend his hold with a lightning-like 
 dart ; and the struggle rarely ends without success attending 
 the thrush, usually in the form of the whole worm ; if not, 
 always with the bigger half of it. It is the same in the winter 
 time, when the blackbirds come and eat of the crumbs which 
 fall from the parson's breakfast-room window. They get hold 
 
How the strong Birds plunder the weak 323 
 
 of a big piece, a corner of half-softened crust, a shred of the 
 tougher part from the side of the loaf, and away they go to 
 the covert of the shrubs and worry every fragment of the 
 edible morsel. Nay, more ; even at this time of the year they 
 are plunderers. The robin or the shufflewings — I like that 
 name ; it is as descriptive as a mediaeval nickname — the 
 sparrow or the chaffinch, get a bit too large to be disposed 
 of easily, and make for the bushes with it. But they very 
 seldom enjoy theif " gettings " themselves ; they are not 
 " havings " to them, poor little weaklings. There is a black- 
 bird under each of the most frequented little bird haunts 
 among the shrubs, and the pelf passes to the strongest pilferer. 
 It is a lesson after the morning's meal, and when there has 
 been a fall of fresh snow, retaining every impress of foot and 
 claw, to see whose footmarks betray the actual eaters, and how 
 the robins and sparrows and caddies (hedge-sparrows) have 
 been forced to act as the blackbirds' providers. 
 
 The poor rooks certainly do the same, but in a very small 
 degree, and with a sadly abashed and apologetic demeanour. 
 In a long hard time they come and sit on one of the larches 
 or spruces growing a score or two of yards from the house ; 
 but it is rarely indeed they venture to come to the terrace 
 below the window, where the crumbs and so forth are scattered, 
 and act as if they knew they were invited guests. I have, 
 however, sometimes induced even these distressful vagrants — 
 I can hardly call them mendicants — to look about as if thinking 
 food might be found that had actually been laid for them. 
 Pieces of boiled potato spared from the yesterday's dinner, or 
 a lump of parsnip, or a tenacious bit of dumpling, would 
 always serve the purpose when once the poor starving "crows," 
 as our Clevelanders call them, had got into the way of taking 
 a flight of inspection, — a sort of "circular tour" about the 
 precincts of the lawn. 
 
 But the birds that have distressed me most by their con- 
 tinued endurance of any amount of privation, rather than come 
 
324 Miscellaneous 
 
 to our window soon enough to save themselves from absolute 
 death by starvation, have been the fieldfares. I remember 
 once, nine or ten years ago, one morning when I was on my 
 way to Fryup Church in a bitter frost, by then of many 
 days' duration, and with some inches of snow all over, 
 seeing eight or nine of these birds in the last extremity of 
 privation struggling to make a scanty meal off a few 
 scattering^ holly berries growing on a stunted holly -tree 
 which used to stand in front of the bar window of the Hare 
 and Hounds " public " at Ainthorpe, and even although this 
 took them almost into contact with the window itself. I am 
 afraid every individual in the scattered flocks there were in 
 this district — caught by a sudden storm of snow and frost — that 
 year perished miserably. And I know nothing sadder than the 
 sight of a wild wary bird, always on the alert and careful to 
 give a wide berth to everything and everybody capable of 
 looking suspicious, so dazed and benumbed and demoralised 
 by hunger and cold as to become dulled, muffled, unvigilant, 
 uncaring, and even tottering wisps of feathers.^ I had gone 
 down the beck with my gun one day, three or four winters 
 ago, and I found myself in a field with some three or four score 
 of these birds hopping slowly, desultorily about, and so numbed 
 in all their perceptions that they let me come within a few 
 yards of them. One poor bird was so weak and so hopeless 
 that its wings drooped from its back as if injured, and it 
 permitted me to come within the length of my gun of it. 
 And even then it only faintly fluttered a few yards away. I 
 
 1 This is good Yorkshire if not good English. I once asked one of our 
 farmers if he had a fair crop of apples. "Ay," said he, "there's a canny 
 scattering few. " He meant that, although the boughs were nowhere laden 
 with fruit, still few or none of them were without a sprinkling. The 
 idiom for " very few " would have been "amaist nane," while for a more 
 abundant crop than the "canny scattering few," the expression might 
 have been "a good few," and for an abundant, or very abundant produce, 
 "a vast," or "a strange vast." 
 
 2 Compare the Winter's Tale in W. Warde Fowler's Tales of the Birds. 
 
'Starved with cold and hungered to death ' 325 
 
 looked back over sixty years and remembered myself a school- 
 boy gunner, and what a triumph it had been when I had 
 managed to stalk an actual fieldfare, and carry home the 
 game to my admiring sisters and mother. 
 
 But perhaps the most pitiful case was that of one of 
 the two or three whose faltering pinions have borne them 
 to my window. It was on a Sunday. Our early dinner 
 was over, and I was giving the poor bird -pensioners their 
 midday dole, when I noticed a stranger feather-ball amongst 
 the expectant lot, sitting below the window at the very 
 foot of the wall. It scarcely troubled to stir on the open- 
 ing of the window — always a welcome sound to half a score 
 robins, cuddies, and house-sparrows, who flew down at once with 
 ready expectancy. But this poor fluflF of fieldfare feathers only 
 moved a yard or two, and when it saw the other birds pecking 
 away for dear life, it seemed too stupefied to understand that 
 they were finding food, and that there was food for it too, if 
 it would. Presently it came to itg old place under the window, 
 and I dropped food upon its very head and back ; but all in 
 vain. It was growing time for me to make ready for after- 
 noon church, and the snow-enforced struggle to get to it on 
 foot ; but I found time to go and take the bird up and bring 
 it into the warm room and try and get a little food down its 
 throat. But it was all in vain ; and though I left it in charge 
 of a sympathetic member of my household, it was as good as 
 dead when I got back again. 
 
 The strangest bird visitants that ever presented themselves 
 at this dining-room window were a couple of snipes, which came 
 regularly, twice always, and sometimes three times a day, to 
 the meal provided for distressed birds ; and for their especial 
 benefit bread soaked in milk, enough to soften it, was put out. 
 This went on, if I remember, for eight or nine days continu- 
 ously. Once a grayback crow came, and the same winter with 
 the snipes a single water-hen ; and regularly, moreover. 
 
 But the queerest bird visitors — the queerest, I mean, in their 
 
326 Miscellaneous 
 
 ways and gestures — I ever had on this bird-trodden terrace 
 were a pair of landrails or corncrakes, which came into my 
 garden as their place of temporary residence, while they took 
 a look round to see where they might advisedly — not exactly 
 pitch their tent, because that is not their habit — but " squat " 
 or settle for the season. I had a patch of lucerne growing in 
 the north side of my garden ground then ; and it afforded the 
 landrails beautiful shelter and abundant food. But they 
 made divers excursions from the place of their shelter, and 
 invariably on foot. More than once or twice their vagrant 
 humour led them on to the lawn, and from the lawn to the 
 foot of the terrace, and twice on to the terrace itself. 
 
 One memorable morning, breakfast was just over, and I 
 had risen from my chair and as usual drawn nigh to the 
 window. The corncrakes were just coming under the hedge of 
 rhododendrons which skirted the lucerne and cut it off from 
 the lawn. I called my wife and two or three elder children to 
 come very cautiously and quietly to watch these quaint-looking, 
 quaintly-moving fowl. The birds drew on, approached the 
 slope of the terrace, mounted it, advanced, came right up to 
 and under the window, to within half a dozen feet of the four 
 or five pairs of watchful eyes which were eagerly surveying every 
 movement, every feather of their bodies almost. All at once 
 they seemed to become conscious that they were not so much in 
 private as they had assumed. They stopped suddenly from 
 their somewhat gliding manner of advance and fixed their view 
 intently upon us. We hardly breathed. The boys had enough 
 of their father in them to be as quiet and as motionless as 
 the birds themselves. The gaze from without continued for 
 many seconds, the gazers continuing to draw themselves up in 
 the most surprising way till they stood more like small posts 
 driven into the ground than anything else. This continued 
 for nearly two minutes, and then in a flash they were gone ! 
 And they ran ; they never stirred a wing — a feather, I was 
 going to say; but the incredible rapidity with which they 
 
Casual visit of Quails 327 
 
 disappeared has always rested in my mind as about the most 
 marvellous bird -achievement in all my sixty-five years of 
 observation. 
 
 A pair of quails once came into the same part of the garden, 
 but they never offered themselves to view. I hoped they 
 were going to nest somewhere near, as they stayed for four or 
 five days in the fields a little east, and later a little north-west 
 of the house. I saw them one day in the field last named, 
 after much trying ; but I never saw nor heard them again. 
 
ORNITHOLOGY {continued) 
 
 It is hard when on with my birds, which in some way or 
 other have been the objects of great interest to me for more 
 than threescore out of man's allotted threescore and ten 
 years, and in many individual cases my pets and my friends 
 too, to turn away for any other attraction whatever ; and 
 I daresay if what I am writing in these reminiscences is ever 
 read- by any one out of my own family, I shall be held ex- 
 cused for one little gentle canter farther on one of my stud 
 of especial hobbies. 
 
 One thing, however, which I do not propose to do is to 
 give a formal catalogue of the "birds I have known" in 
 Danby, although there have been some interesting occurrences 
 among my experiences. Thus, one Sunday afternoon I had 
 a White's thrush on the grass under my study window 
 for perhaps ten to fifteen minutes, examining him at my 
 leisure with the aid of a pair of excellent field-glasses, so that 
 every feather and feature was as clear and well defined to 
 me as if I had held him in my hand. My eldest son was 
 with me at the time, and drew my attention to him as being 
 different from any bird he had before seen. I was getting 
 things ready to go to church, and did not want to be bothered. 
 However, the lad's urgency constrained me to give it a look, 
 and then I wished it had not been almost church-time. My 
 boy wished it had not been Sunday, that he might have taken 
 his gun. I think I was glad, in that connection, that it was 
 
Reckless Bird-murdering 329 
 
 Sunday, for I hate the slaughterous propensities of collecting, 
 and still more, of only curious, ornithologists. 
 
 Not so very many years ago three kingfishers were seen 
 in the beck ; and positively one afternoon I saw five fellows 
 with guns, all bent on the destruction of these poor harmless, 
 but unluckily gorgeously plumaged birds. Another day I 
 heard the note of the great spotted woodpecker. The day 
 after he obligingly flew across the road in front of me, and 
 settled in a stunted oak-tree within a score or so of yards, 
 and as I walked quietly on he let me come within five or six 
 paces. I thought to myself, "You are much too tame," and 
 it was but a day or two after I heard he had been Shot by 
 one of those wretched gunners who persecuted and slaughtered 
 the kingfishers. One of these same beautiful birds — I mean 
 the spotted woodpecker — made his appearance in the parish 
 just about the year I came into residence, and was shot by 
 the gamekeeper, who showed his prize with great pride to 
 "my lord." But he got such a wigging from "my lord" 
 for the slaughter that I do not think he showed his next " rare 
 bird " victim.^ 
 
 Woodpeckers were anything but uncommon here till lately, 
 but what with cutting the wood down and what with shoot- 
 ing the occasional visitors, the visits of these harmless, inter- 
 esting, beautiful birds are strangely like those of angels. I 
 wish our bird-murderers had as much sense as Balaam's ass, 
 and could recognise the angel of kindness to living creatures 
 when she steps in between them and their intended victim. 
 
 The raven has been extirpated within my time. The 
 bam owl — they used to breed in the church-tower — had gone 
 
 ^ The gamekeeper mentioned here was my old friend Robert Raw. 
 Although a gamekeeper, he was still in many particulars a bird-lover, 
 and he is mentioned later on in these notes as being such. I was, how- 
 ever, unable to convert him to my view touching the harmlessness (in the 
 game connection) of the kestrel. It was a "hawk," and the name was 
 as fatal to the poor birds that bore it as the proverbial "bad name" to 
 a dog. 
 
330 Miscellaneous 
 
 a few years before. The brown owl, wood owl, or screech 
 owl, if it exists still, is represented by one pair only ; and I 
 used to know of two nests in the Park ^ alone, and there were 
 other two or three pairs about the woods near the lodge, and 
 again others in the Crag Wood; and any still evening one 
 could hear their note in two or three different directions. But 
 now it is seldom indeed that I hear the — to me, as well as 
 to Gilbert White — musical hoot of the owl of the woods. 
 
 The beautiful merlins, too, are comparatively little seerij^and 
 their place almost knoweth them no more. For they had a 
 place since I have been here. There was a moorland point no 
 great way from the so-called British village on Danby Low 
 Moors where they bred regularly — at least, nested ; for their 
 eggs seldom escaped the gamekeeper or his watchers. Indeed, 
 there were often two pairs on that part of the moors ; and 
 in days yet older they were not infrequently found haunting 
 the high moors. And I have not seen a harrier or a buzzard 
 these thirty years. Last year a sparrowhawk dashed into a 
 spreading thorn-tree which shelters part of my lawn, sweeping 
 very near me as he did so ; and he took his sparrow from a 
 chattering, squabbling group, who, if they had not been so 
 loud and spiteful in their mutual recriminations, might not 
 have attracted the hawk, or been so unluckily blind to his 
 proximity. But the hawk of all others I miss the most is 
 that bird of graceful flight, and almost gracefuUer poising 
 and balancing, the kestrel or windhover. The "little red 
 
 ^ The Park is the name of one of the two bits of old woodland till 
 recently left in the parish ; but the wood in it now is no longer old wood. 
 All the old trees have been cut down within the last twenty-five years, 
 and the ground replanted with spruce, larch, and Scotch pine. The 
 imposing-looking name is due to the circumstance that it was a part of 
 the " park and warren " granted by the king to the old Brus barons. It 
 was of great extent ; for, beginning at a point westward of the site of the 
 Brus stronghold, it extended to below Lealholm Bridge, as is abundantly 
 testified (if need were) by the many local names along its length still 
 embodying the element "park," as Park-end, Park-nook, Park-house, 
 Underpark, etc. 
 
Give a Kestrel a bad name and shoot him 3 3 1 
 
 hawk," they used to call him here, as they called the merlin 
 the "little blue hawk." But alas for the poor kestrel! 
 Among the most useful and quite the least harmful of pre- 
 daceous birds, the beings whose " eyes have not been opened " 
 either by angels or otherwise, have given him a bad name, 
 and plundered and shot him and his too nearly to the verge 
 of extermination. 
 
 One of the watchers here told me one day, in the manner 
 of one who had accomplished a feat, that he had been help- 
 ing in a raid on the little red hawks in Crunkley Gill, that 
 they had killed — little and big — seventeen, and that there 
 were stiU another or two left, which they meant to have yet. 
 I am afraid I made some uncomplimentary reply ; at all events 
 I put my friend William on his mettle. " Dee nae ho't amang 
 t' gam', saidst 'ee ?" he began ; " Ah aims Ah kens better 'an 
 that ! " And then he thought to cover my face with con- 
 fusion as well as shut me up ; for he told me he had shot 
 a kestrel going into its nest (containing young ones) with the 
 hind quarters of a young moor-bird in its claws. Perhaps it 
 was wrong of me to smile, and not to look confounded and 
 abashed ; but I did not, and I asked William if he had seen 
 many birds, game birds or other, which had been struck down 
 by hawks, and furnished the aggressors with a meal. "Ay, 
 he had, a good few. They were gey and good to tell." So 
 I thought, I said, when they were big enough not to be made 
 one mouthful of, so to speak. "But what had that to do 
 with the hover-hawk not doing any hurt among the game ?" 
 Well, I said, when you have found, say a partridge or a young 
 moor-bird that has been killed and eaten by a hawk, which 
 part has the hawk eaten ? " Wheea, breeast and wings, for 
 seear." Yes, said I, and how much, and what part was left % 
 " Wheea, back and hind legs, in coorse." Exactly, I rejoined, 
 and yet you make the poor hover-hawk just leave the breast 
 behind him, and bring the back and hind legs to feed his 
 young with. \\Tiat a precious fool a hover-hawk must be ! 
 
332 Miscellaneous 
 
 I think William smelt a sarcasm, and felt a little conscious 
 that " parson might not be altogether in the wrong," or the 
 kestrel the only wiseacre. But I went on to ask him about 
 the hover-hawk, and his balancing over a pasture-field, or a 
 fallow, it might be, as free of herbage fit to cover a game-bird 
 or even a lark, as his own fustian jacket ; and by continuing 
 the catechism I got him to admit that " mice and such small 
 deer " must form a great part of the kestrel's ordinary captures. 
 All the same the kestrels are ridded out of the country ; and 
 so are the weasels, as well as the owls. And what is the 
 conseqtience, or one of the consequences ? 
 
 An inordinate increase of field mice, long tails and short 
 tails, and all sorts of tails together. It is a fact that my 
 gardener killed down the mice in and about this garden last 
 year to such an extent that he thought there was not another 
 left anywhere near. It is a further fact that, our first snow 
 falling on 27th November, the ofiicial just named saw that he 
 must set his traps, and sunken pankins of water, and other 
 mouse -catching enginery at work, and within the eighteen 
 days which have passed since then he has caught thirty-five 
 mice — mostly long tails — in the garden. And only yesterday 
 our principal farmer said to me, " The mole-catcher keeps down 
 the moudiewarps all right ; but we shall have to have some- 
 body to look after thae mice. They're getting to be over bad 
 for owght with the holes they mak's in the fields, and the 
 heaps of earth they brings out." And this was apropos to my 
 complaint that they had got into the church — not a house 
 near it anywhere — and had injured our valuable American 
 organ to such an extent that it would cost several pounds to 
 make the damage good. They have actually eaten some of. 
 the wooden stop-couplers quite through. 
 
 But to return to our birds. I have twice seen the great 
 gray shrike ; once a fine mandarin drake has appeared in the 
 beck — an escaped bird from some aviary, of course. Once 
 during a walk by the beck-side I saw a goosander — either a 
 
Occasional Bird- visitors 333 
 
 hen or a young bird of the year ; for it was in the so-called 
 " dundiver " plumage — and an interchange of attention passed 
 between us. It came up from a fishing-dive close to the bank 
 on which I was walking — so close to me that barely four feet 
 of space intervened between me and it. Luckily I saw it 
 before it saw me ; and there might be a reason for that ; for 
 it had something else to attract, and, indeed, occupy its 
 attention. I said it had come up from a fishing-dive, and it 
 had the prey it had captured all alive and kicking between its 
 serrated mandibles, and as the said prey — a nice little trout 
 of about six inches long — lay crosswise of the bill, the 
 wagglings and quiverings of the fish affected the bird in some 
 degree. But whether the fact that I saw the bird before the 
 bird saw me might thus be accounted for or not, the result 
 was that I had time to pull up short and stiffen myself as 
 rigidly as I could. And there we remained for, I should say, 
 a hundred seconds, the bird watching me and I watching the 
 bird. I knew it would dive like a flash if I moved a finger, 
 and I constrained myself to be still. At the end of the said 
 seconds the diving-duck brought his trout adroitly and 
 quickly round — too quickly for me to see how it was done — 
 so that its head was in the gape and the tail outside ready to 
 follow. And follow it did. In a moment where there had 
 been a trout there was a straight vacuum, and the next 
 instant the dundiver was in flight. 
 
 On similar walks I have seen a golden -eye, not in full 
 plumage ; and a good specimen of the tufted duck ; and my 
 eldest boy one day got an immature red-necked grebe. This 
 was a rare bird indeed ; and Graham, the bird-stuffer at York, 
 told me it was but the fourth he had seen in forty years' 
 experience. 
 
 Once, and only once, I have seen a little grebe or dabchick 
 in our stream ; but two or three times I have come upon the 
 water-rail. One I shot as it ran along the nearly dry bottom 
 of a deep ditch with suflSciently steep banks, thinking it 
 
334 Miscellaneoiis 
 
 was a rat; for the movements of this bird, as well as of 
 its congener the landrail, are of an even, non- undulating, 
 gliding character, not what we usually understand by the 
 word "running." See the awkward, grotesque action of the 
 Cochin-China fowl, with its long ungainly legs, or of a full- 
 grown turkey, and compare them with the rapid, even running 
 of the partridge or grouse, and you have the very sublimity 
 of absurdly awkward action and movement suggested and 
 illustrated. But even the partridge, as compared with the rails, 
 runs much as the old cow does as contrasted with the graceful 
 tripping of the milkmaid the poet's eye is able to behold. 
 
 Another day I was sitting on the bank of the beck at a 
 point where the current widens out into a good sheet, after 
 having come rollicking down a series of sharp streams, and as 
 if pausing to take breath before going a header over a sharper 
 descent still, with a narrower course, and a bottom rockily 
 uneven enough to insist upon a good deal of acrobatic motion 
 on the part of the stream. As I sat, perfectly still, with a 
 high bank opposite to me sloping up to the grass field above, 
 and more or less overgrown with whins (many of which, 
 however, had been burnt and stubbed not so long before), all 
 at once a water-rail came in view, perfectly at home and 
 entirely unconcerned, and gave me a glimpse of the ways 
 and manners and tricks of the bird in its private life. It 
 glided in and out among the coarse and somewhat sparse 
 herbage, never pecking, as other birds do, on or about the 
 ground, but evidently on the look-out for its own peculiar class 
 of "grub," and finding it where such classes of food are to 
 be found, viz. sticking to the stems of grasses or other coarse 
 vegetation capable of supporting the weight of a small snail 
 shell with its occupant inside. It flirted its tail now and then, 
 when it made a rather longer glide or twist than usual, much 
 after the fashion of the water-hen ; and it was curious indeed 
 to note how it steered itself among the intricacies and obstacles 
 besetting its path. I was able to observe all its actions. 
 
An Artful Dodger among Birds 335 
 
 gestures, movements, captures (as it appeared), for a space of 
 ten to fifteen minutes, when something or other disturbed it, 
 and in a moment it was gone. 
 
 Indeed, the ease and rapidity with which these birds — both 
 the landrail and the water-rail — move amid the obstacles 
 apparently presented by the thick growth of herbage, whether 
 in a corn-field, or in a clover-field or meadow, is a matter I 
 have seen adverted to in many diff'erent notices of the habits 
 or peculiarities of the genus by divers writers on natural 
 history topics. Yarrell, I think it is, who suggests that the 
 bird is specially framed for such a purpose, having what he 
 calls "a compressed form of body." It is perfectly true; and 
 equally true that both birds trust, and with good reason, to 
 the expedient of flight on foot in preference to that of flight 
 on the wing. It is almost impossible to flush a rail a second 
 time, even if the dog be put on the track almost immediately 
 after the bird has reached the covert. 
 
 Another habit characteristic of both birds — which, how- 
 ever, I have only seen illustrated in the case of the water-rail, 
 but flnd described at some length by Jesse, whose account is 
 quoted at length by Mr. Yarrell — is that the bird, as school- 
 boys express it, " shams dead " in the presence of inevitable 
 danger. The account is amusing, and in brief is as follows. 
 A gentleman's dog catches a landrail and brings it to his 
 master, unhurt of course, as is the well-trained dog's way, but 
 to aU appearance perfectly dead. The dog lays the bird down 
 at his master's feet, and he Uxras it over with his toe. It 
 simply moves as it is moved, all its limbs limp. Continuing 
 to regard it, however, the man sees an eye opened, and he 
 takes it up. The "artful dodger" is quite dead again in a 
 moment, head hanging and dangling, limbs loose, and no sign 
 of life anywhere. It is put in its captor's pocket, and not 
 liking the confinement, begins to struggle. When taken out 
 it is just as lifeless as before ; but being put down upon the 
 ground and left undisturbed — the gentleman having stepped 
 
336 Miscellaneous 
 
 to one side, but continuing to watch — it lifts its head in a 
 minute or two, and seeing all apparently serene, it starts up 
 on a sudden and " cuts its lucky " with singular speed. 
 
 In the case of the water-rail, which came under my own 
 observation, it was picked up on a snowy day by the most 
 intimate of the friends of my youth and early manhood. He 
 assumed that it was dazed with cold and perhaps what we 
 Yorkshire folks call "hungered" as well. So he brought it 
 home with him, and laid it on a footstool in front of the 
 dining-room fife. Five minutes passed, ten were gone, and 
 still the lifeless bird lay as it was put down, dead to all seeming ; 
 only not stiff, as it ought to have been if dead of cold as well 
 as hunger. A few minutes later my friend, who was very 
 still, but yet with an eye to the bird, saw it — not lift its head, 
 like the landrail, and take a view, but — start off in a moment 
 with no previous intimation of its purpose, and begin to career 
 about the room with incredible rapidity. It never attempted 
 to fly. Any other captive bird in its position would have made 
 for the window at once, and beaten itself half to pieces against 
 the glass. Not so the rail. With it, in its helter-skelter and 
 most erratic course, it was anywhere rather than the window 
 or the fire. Round the room, across the room, under the sofa, 
 under the table, from corner to corner and from side to side, 
 steering itself perfectly notwithstanding legs of chairs, legs of 
 tables, the sofa-feet, footstools, or what not, on and on it 
 careered ; and it was not without some patience and many 
 attempts that it was eventually secured. Within an hour or two 
 of its capture, moreover, it took quite kindly to some raw beef 
 cut in thin long strips, and did not appear to find captivity 
 too irksome. It was frequently let out for a run in after-days, 
 and always started on the same random course, never once 
 taking wing or making for the window. It was not very 
 difficult to catch it at the close of one of these excursions after 
 the first day or two, and it soon became tame enough to go 
 and take food out of its master's hand. 
 
Young Lapwing and Baby Snipe 337 
 
 It was but three or four years ago that a young pewit, 
 which I had been told by its parents was somewhere very near 
 me, and which, after two or three minutes spent in the search, 
 I succeeded in detecting, and had taken up from its skulking- 
 place, had the consummate " cheek " to try the same dodge upon 
 me. It struggled hard for some seconds after its capture, and 
 I had to be very careful to hold it securely, and yet so as not 
 to injure it. Finding struggling did not pay, it tried the other 
 plan and grew limp. I knew it was not hurt, and I did not 
 believe it was all exhaustion. I opened my hand and let it 
 lie on my palm. It lay quite still, and equally limp. I put it 
 down on the ground, and except that I could see it heard its 
 parents and quite understood what they meant — for there were 
 little tremors or jerkings not due to the action of the heart 
 when they came very close and gave us both (there was no 
 doubt about that) a bit of their mind — there it remained quite 
 quiescent. It was no use for it, poor pinionless birdie, with 
 its as yet ramshackle, lanky apparatus of legs, to jump up and 
 cut off — the slang is so expressive, and must be forgiven — like 
 the full-grown, well-practised, fleet- of -foot water-rail ; so it was 
 more cautious. It looked up, got up, tottered a step or two, 
 but stopped in a second if I moved to recapture it. When the 
 old birds saw it on the ground, they receded to a greater 
 distance. If I took it up again they were at once "as before." 
 I did not wish to prolong their anxiety, and after putting it 
 down again I let it totter along in its half imbecile way for 
 ten or a dozen yards. Something made me take my eye off it 
 for a few seconds, and when I looked again it was lost. I 
 think I spent ten minutes looking for it in the close vicinity of 
 where I had seen it last ; but I saw no more of it. It had 
 skulked out of my sight altogether and effectually. 
 
 A young snipe was caught one day by two of my boys, 
 who must needs bring it home to show it to me, a mile and a 
 half away from the place of its capture. It was already two- 
 thirds the weight of its mother or father, with a bill, however, 
 
 z 
 
338 Miscellaneotts 
 
 not longer than the pewit's, and with such a preposterous set 
 of what it would have called legs, I suppose, if it could have 
 spoken our vernacular; if not, shanks would have been the 
 word. Those loose-jointed toys which are made to execute 
 certain antics called dancing by the pulling of a string between 
 their legs, would supply almost as good a pair of understandings 
 as our young snipe ; arid for proportion of body to legs see the 
 pictorial representations of " Ally Sloper." The poor little bird 
 was taken back to the place whence he came, and when set 
 down on the ground again tottered feebly away. 
 
 When I looked into Yarrell's account of the rails just now, 
 and noted his remarks on the subject of the imitation of the 
 landrail's note, and the way in which it was effected, I was 
 reminded of two or three other circumstances of the same 
 kind. I have been able myself to produce a very good imitation 
 of the method described by Yarrell, as also a very fairly success- 
 ful one of the call of the partridge. At least it sounded very 
 good to me and another who knew the call in question and its 
 intonations as well as I did myself. But how it sounded in 
 the ears of the partridge, distant by the space of a field or two, 
 might be, and no doubt was, quite a different thing. All the 
 same, I used to be well aware that such calls were made 
 and were used not unsuccessfully. The materials were a 
 glover's thimble, a piece of parchment or vellum, and a longish 
 round and strong horsehair. I had no difficulty either in imi- 
 tating the cry of the little grebe or dabchick. 
 
 But besides these empirical attempts on my own part, I 
 have known one man or more who could call the hare by imi- 
 tation of the note or cry used in the breeding season ; and one 
 man in particular, who had retired from the honourable and 
 lucrative profession of poacher as it used to be carried on 
 in this moorland district — which he did on becoming tenant of 
 a cottage belonging to the lord of the manor, and with the 
 fullest understanding, couched in no kid-glove terms, that if 
 ever he was caught indulging in the old tricks, however little, 
 
The Poachers ' Trade Secrets ' 339 
 
 out he would go, custom and term alike notwithstanding — he 
 it was who told me that he had often shot from four or five to 
 six or seven grouse at one standing, having called them thither 
 by his own vocal imitation of their note or call. That his 
 story was true I had no doubt I once had a reclaimed poacher 
 in my stated service, and my formal engagement — or his with 
 me — was in these few and pithy words, " Now, John, if ever 
 I know you either poach or drink, your engagement with me 
 terminates thereby and therewith." John neither drank nor 
 poached, and a capital man he proved himself. It was his 
 cleverness and adaptability when working for me at some deep 
 drains I was putting in, in very diflS^cult ground, that first 
 attracted my attention to him. I had known for long enough 
 that it took no fool to make a good all-round poacher, and I 
 wanted a man who was not a fool ; for in taking the glebe 
 lands (which I was draining) into my own hands, I was aware 
 I was doing rather a venturesome thing. And so I engaged 
 John. After a while we became very good friends ; and John, 
 besides doing his various work as groom, gardener, hind, in- 
 creasingly well, was quite willing to be communicative as to 
 what I may call "trade secrets." As to making a wire and 
 setting it, and two or three other matters of the same kind, I 
 was already a pretty fair proficient ; but there were niceties 
 about both I had never dreamed of. I did not know till he 
 told me that even partridges could be wired, and how it was 
 possible to get from three to half a dozen hares — ^of course 
 where hares were numerous, as in the days when I have seen 
 five at once in my own garden, discussing the flavour of my 
 winter greens by moonlight — from one selected standing only. 
 From him, too, I learnt other (and corroborative) matters 
 touching the calling of grouse and other birds, either by the 
 voice only, or by the voice assisted by art (as in some of the 
 Canadian hunter's experiences), or by artificial means only. 
 
 One day, some twenty or twenty-five years ago, I had 
 arranged with one of the principal yeomen here to go with 
 
340 Miscellaneous 
 
 him to Glaisdale Swangs — a wet, morassy division of the 
 Danby and Glaisdale high moors — our object being to get, if 
 we could, a few couples of golden plover. I had for long prac- 
 tised the imitation of the cry uttered by the golden plover, 
 especially when they are on the ground ; and I flattered my- 
 self I could do it rather well — as, indeed, I think I could. 
 Our plan was to walk towards and over the likely haunts, and 
 get a shot or two before the birds became restless, as they do 
 when disturbed by intrusion into the haunts which are usually, 
 after the height of the grouse-shooting, but little interfered 
 with either by shepherd or dog. The moor thereabouts is too 
 wet to be so much affected by the moor-sheep as other parts 
 are. "We got two or three shots in this way, and then we 
 separated to take our own private chances of a passing flight 
 or a few stray birds still about the ground, and either stalking 
 or calling any of whose comparative vicinity we might become 
 aware. I do not think either of us was remarkably successful 
 for a full hour after we had separated, and I was beginning to 
 think our bag would be light. Suddenly I heard the call of a 
 plover, and under what seemed to be the most favourable cir- 
 cumstances., The moor rose from where I was standing with 
 a gradual slope, but little broken for the third part of a mile or 
 more, and the call came from the upper part of the ridge, but 
 quite evidently from some little distance on the other side of 
 it. I replied to the call, and to my delight there was an almost 
 immediate answer. A minute or so elapsed, during which I 
 was cautiously approaching the point from over which the cry 
 seemed to come, and I called again. Another response, and 
 evidently the bird had been drawing nearer to me as I had 
 been drawing nearer to it. The same interchange of call and 
 reply -continued at the intervals of a half -minute or so, and for 
 a sufficiently long space to allow me to have got to within 
 forty or fifty yards of the ridge. I was crouching as low as 
 possible all the latter part of the ascent, and I made sure that, 
 on rising from my stooping attitude and making a quick rush 
 
Identification of Birds Eggs often difficult 341 
 
 to the ridge, I should have a shot within very easy distance. 
 The call from the other side came just then, and my reply was 
 the best spurt I could make with my gun at the ready. I had 
 not covered two yards when I saw my companion's hat, and a 
 second later his gun, at the ready also. He had been answer- 
 ing my calls as regularly as I addressed them to the supposed 
 plover. I hardly need say that the only explosion which took 
 place was a united one of rather shamefaced but very hearty 
 laughter at our mutual discomfiture. 
 
 To pass to a different subject. Every lover, nay, every 
 friend and acquaintance, of birds knows that there are diffi- 
 culties, and very serious difficulties, in the way of identifica- 
 tion of eggs, occurring from time to time. I have had eggs 
 sent to me by young folks who happened to have fallen in 
 with my book on British Birds' Eggs and Nests, asking me to 
 identify such and such eggs which had puzzled them ; and my 
 correspondents have hailed from all points of the compass and 
 all parts of the kingdom. In many instances, not having the 
 nest to refer to, and no adequate description of it, all attempts 
 at assurance were defeated. But I have met with instances in 
 my own experience which were such that, unless all the cir- 
 cumstances were known, no satisfactory decision could have 
 been arrived at by any one save the finder, and by him only if 
 he were both accurate and observant. Thus, I took an egg 
 one day from a nest I assumed to be a chaffinch's. I was quite 
 certain as to the identity of the nest, and had no doubt that 
 the bird I had seen leave the nest was actually a chaffinch. But 
 the egg was of such a character that I went to the nest on two 
 successive days on purpose to ascertain the absolute identity 
 of the bird, and further, that my egg was not exceptional as 
 compared with the other eggs in the laying, as well as co-ordi- 
 nated with, the average chaffinch's egg. " Pale purplish buff, 
 sparingly streaked and spotted with dark reddish brown," is 
 Mr. Yarrell's description ; and Hewitson, giving the average 
 egg — and a very good representation, moreover — adds, " They 
 
342 Miscellaneous 
 
 rarely differ much from the type given," although he has 
 "taken some of a light blue, blotched with reddish colouring, 
 and much like those of the bullfinch." But the eggs in my 
 nest had no "pale purple," or, as I have elsewhere called it, 
 "a vinous tinge," no "streaks or spots of dark reddish 
 brown," only the buff, but more than pale, and just the 
 slightest suspicion of a tinge as if it had been " shot " with 
 a woof of correspondingly pale "vinous." Delicately beauti- 
 ful they were ; but, besides the general shape and make 
 of them, there was nothing about them to remind one of 
 the chaffinch. But the bird I saw on the nest, as well as 
 leave it three several times, was just an ordinary, everyday 
 chaffinch. 
 
 Another day, in my garden and within twenty-five yards 
 of my study window, in some ivy growing thickly on the 
 wall running along the road-side of the garden, I found a 
 nest ; and I never saw a nest with all the characters of the 
 thrush's nest if that were not one. But the egg already 
 laid in it was a blackbird's egg. Mistake or doubt about 
 either the egg or the nest was impossible ; nay, inadmissible. 
 The next day another blackbird's egg was deposited in what 
 was to all intents and purposes, according to unvarying 
 experience, the nest of a thrush. Then I made it my business 
 to see the mother bird, and saw it ; and it was as veritable a 
 blackbird as ever flew. The next day, however, the mystery — 
 for mystery there was — began to be solved ; for coincidently 
 with the laying of the fourth egg the lining of the nest, 
 after the fashion of the blackbird, had been commenced, and 
 before the close of the following day had been completed. 
 There was now as perfect a blackbird's nest as had ever been 
 looked into by my well-accustomed eyes, and with five as 
 typical blackbird's eggs in it as could be desired. 
 
 But what a grand opportunity for a paragraph on a 
 wonderful instance in which a blackbird had been discovered 
 laying in a song thrush's nest was lost by the habit — 
 
Cases of doubtful Nidification 343 
 
 uncomfortable to so many in such circumstances — of "looking 
 before you leaped " to a conclusion in the matter. 
 
 Another day, not very far removed from the date of the 
 incident just recorded, I was coming up from the beck with 
 my fishing-rod in my hand, when I noticed a bird, which I 
 never thought of doubting was a hen blackbird, fly out of a 
 bush in the hedge overhanging the ditch I vt^as walking beside. 
 It being the time of year, I looked for a nest and saw it 
 directly. There were two eggs in it, and they were not 
 blackbird's eggs, but thrush's ! I took them out and looked 
 at them closely, scrutinisingly. There they were — blue eggs, 
 and spotted, but with none of the streaking and spotting and 
 speckling which are characteristic in the colouring of the 
 blackbird's egg. YaiTell does say they are "occasionally 
 found of a uniform blue, without any spots whatever " ; but 
 these were spotted, and the only difference between the spots, 
 on them and those on the average thrush's egg was that the 
 spots were quite as decided about the smaller end as, with the 
 latter, about the larger end. Of course I watched that nest, 
 and saw the whole complement of eggs laid, and the hen 
 bird well on with her task of sitting, before I discontinued 
 my visits of observation. I may add, however, that they were 
 duly hatched, and produced blackbirds. 
 
 Thirty or forty years ago I could see three or four pairs of 
 the dipper any day I walked by the beck-side, or rambled up 
 the course of one of our brattling moor streams on their 
 downward run to help the volume of what we call, by way 
 of distinction, " the big beck." But now, where I used to see 
 six or eight or perhaps ten pairs, I barely see one. I wish I 
 had a fairy godmother, and that fairy godmothers were 
 as potent as in Cinderella times ! The favour I would try 
 my most ingratiating ways to obtain should be — nothing 
 truculent or bloodthirsty, although I do not love the reckless 
 shooters of rock - birds, rare birds, swallows .for practice, 
 pigeons at blackguard pot-shop matches, et hoc genus omne — 
 
344 Miscellaneous 
 
 but that every gun-carrying lout who wantonly shot a poor 
 harmless bird of any kind whatever without a cause, should 
 be sentenced — not to judicial or other blindness, but — to 
 inability to hit his mark again for ever and a day. What 
 earthly good or satisfaction there can be in shooting a dipper 
 I cannot conceive ; and yet they have been thinned in the 
 way I have mentioned. In the loneliest walk they are always 
 companions, and always cheerful besides. To see him come 
 out of the water as if on purpose to say, " Good morning to 
 you ! Isn't it a nice cheery morning % Oh, it's so jolly," and 
 then to hear him sing his cheery little song, standing on a 
 stone just awash in the bed of the stream ; and then to see 
 him, with something very like a nod and a wink with his 
 bright eye, just trip into the water and go tumbling and 
 toddling along the bottom for half a score yards — why, it is as 
 good as killing a couple of snipe, right and left, to an embryo 
 sportsman. 
 
 I have come across their nests now and again in the 
 district around. One of the small tributary becks running 
 down this dale proceeds by way of Ainthorpe, passing through 
 a spacious garden by aid of a capacious culvert ; then comes 
 into the oj)en air again in a wild little griff; then is culverted 
 over again ; and when it emerges it is just bursting into the 
 road to the Station, but after a leap of a yard or so, is caught 
 in the open mouth of another culvert, down which it slips 
 abashed right underneath the roadway. Just within the rude 
 arch of this culvert a pair of dippers bred for some years. 
 But one unlucky day some of the boys from the school, intent 
 on getting their feet wet, or some like piece of schoolboy self- 
 indulgence, found it; and the haunt once known, there was 
 no future peace for the poor dippers. Another nest I knew 
 was in a hole in one of the piers of a bridge guiltless of arches, 
 lying on the road from Danby End to Castleton. A couple 
 of young fellows then living in my house were fishing one 
 day close to this bridge, when a very heavy thunder shower 
 
A Fountain-gush of Holly-berries 34 S 
 
 came on ; and for shelter, their feet and legs being already 
 wet with wading, they resorted to the landward aroh-space 
 (as it should have been), and so were in a position to see the 
 ingress of a dark bird which flew straight to a put-log hole ; 
 just above their reach as they stood, but which they managed 
 to explore nevertheless ; finding therein a dipper's nest, and 
 in it well on to half a dozen white eggs. Another I knew of 
 just under the slightly overhanging brae of a ditch or drain 
 which served to convey a stream of water on its way to the 
 larger stream just below. Also among some old masonry that 
 had once served as a pier to an old forgotten bridge, and 
 so on. 
 
 But I am warned by the number at the head of the page 
 that I shall do well to bring these bird reminiscences to an 
 end. Yet, at the risk of being a little prolix, I should like to 
 add a few lines more, and on a matter that has from time to 
 time interested me greatly. I was coming through the upper 
 part of our Crag Wood one evening several years ago, after a 
 day's shooting in Fryup, when, seeing a wild pigeon flying 
 over my head and rather high up, I fired, in the belief that it 
 was within range. It fell to the shot, evidently killed on the 
 instant. Falling from a considerable height, which was added 
 to by the fact that it fell some little way below me on the 
 very steep hill-side I was standing on, it dropped with great 
 velocity, and the force with which it struck the ground — for 
 the wood-pigeon is a weighty bird — was very considerable. I 
 have written "struck the ground"; but in reality it struck 
 a bare rock -fragment, and to my surprise I saw a sort of 
 springing jet of brilliant scarlet objects sparkling upwards 
 from the place of its fall. It lasted but a moment, of course ; 
 but it was striking enough for that moment. On going to 
 pick the bird up, I found more than half a pint of holly -berries 
 strewed all round it. The fact was, it had been getting its 
 evening meal from among the many and large holly-trees 
 which abound in the wood in question, and having filled its 
 
346 Miscellaneous 
 
 crop to repletion — you may see these birds' crops actually 
 protrude from fulness as they fly past or over you on their 
 way to their night's roosting-place — naturally it burst when 
 the bird fell with such force against the hard rock. 
 
 Another evening, on a similar occasion, I was passing 
 through the higher part of a considerable plantation of larches 
 growing on the upper part of the slope of one of our steep 
 moor-banks, and a small flight of wild pigeons happening to 
 cross within easy shot, I fired both barrels, getting a bird 
 with each shot. On picking them up I was a little interested, 
 as well as surprised, at finding my first bird was a wood- 
 jjigeon or ring-dove, and my second a stock-dove. But the 
 difference of species was not all. They were flying in to roost 
 in company, but the places in which they had been feeding 
 were as different as the constituents of their repast. The 
 ring-dove's crop protruded (as noticed in the last para- 
 graph), and was quite turgid. It felt like a thick bag of 
 marbles tightly tied, for the hard objects contained were 
 separable as well as hard. The stock-dove's crop, on the other 
 hand, was quite flaccid, and apparently not more than half 
 full, and its contents moved when manipulated with a sort of 
 liquid motion, just as small shot loosely held in a bag might. 
 On opening the two birds, so as to ascertain what the contents 
 of the craw of each might be, I found a large double handful 
 of acorns in the one, and about two tablespoonfuls of " runch " 
 seed (that being our name for that pestilent weed on care- 
 lessly farmed holdings, the field-mustard or charlock) in the 
 other. I knew very well where the runch seed had come 
 from, for I had seen the gamekeeper fire the two barrels 
 of his gun only a week or two before into a great flock, 
 principally consisting of greenfinches, and pick up some thirty- 
 five of the slain — to be used for ferret-meat, as he said. And 
 as I helped him pick up the victims I saw the seed lying on 
 the ground in such quantities that it might have been taken 
 up in spoonfuls. That was on the farm of our witch-fending 
 
One single occurrence of Black Game 347 
 
 friend previously named. But I never heard that he 
 "faulted" the witches for the luxuriant growth of the runch. 
 
 The interest, or even surprise, I felt at noting the two 
 varieties of wild pigeon I had shot in the way mentioned 
 originated thus. The old gamekeeper — or rather the game- 
 keeper of those old days — had (as I daresay has already been 
 remarked) some sort of interest in the birds of the district. 
 In fact, when he died he left quite a nice little collection of 
 birds a little out of the common way, which he had shot and 
 had stuffed. He was not slow in finding out my interest also, 
 and that I was not altogether an ignoramus in the matter of 
 ornithology. Perhaps I had been here a year or thereabouts, 
 when he came into the house I was then living in, bringing 
 with him a bird which he had newly shot, and as to which he 
 was in utter perplexity and doubt. He knew it was "a doo," 
 and that was all. Could I tell what it was % " He had nivver 
 seen owght lahk't afore." On taking it from him I saw at 
 once he had got a stock-dove. The interest to me was, and is, 
 that in and about the year 1846-47 the stock-dove was rather a 
 "rare bird" in Danby. My good old friend Eobert never 
 willingly shot another, as he wished they might increase and 
 multiply about the manor. And so they have ; and I know 
 that as many as half a dozen or half a score pairs now breed 
 annually. And, to mention only one fact more, I have this 
 year twice found one of the pair which has nested for many, 
 many years past in Little Fryup Head, feeding among the 
 moor blackbirds on the bilberry beds growing on the moor 
 brae overlooking Little Fryup Dale. 
 
 One other bird Robert tried hard — and under the strict 
 orders of his master, moreover — to "preserve," if possible; 
 and that was the black grouse. There was a brood of nine on 
 the low moor in the year 1846, including the two old birds. 
 But although no one was killed on this moor, and single ones 
 were seen on the adjacent moors, yet after a year or two no 
 more was seen or heard of them. 
 
WINTER IN A MOORLAND PARISH 
 
 Yes, I have seen some winter weather in this out-of-the-way 
 place. I have seen the snow gathered in drifts of fifteen, 
 eighteen, twenty feet in thickness ; I have seen it gathering, 
 piling itself up in fantastic wreaths,, sometimes busy only in 
 accumulating substance and solidity, like a yeoman of the 
 elder days, and gathering at the rate of six feet or seven feet 
 in thickness in from twelve hours to twenty-four. And once 
 I saw it gathering — and gathering a foot deep in the hour, 
 moreover — before ever a flake of new snow had fallen, and 
 when the old snow was caked over with a crisp crust, the 
 result of diurnal or sun-thaws and nocturnal freezings again. 
 And the manner of it was on this wise. 
 
 It had been a fine day till past twelve o'clock, and it seemed 
 good for walking. There was a young farmer in the parish, 
 at the very eastern boundary of it, distant four miles and a 
 half of good walking the way I had to take, whom I wanted 
 to see. Besides being the son of one of the oldest and 
 stanchest friends I had in the parish — the old gamekeeper, in 
 point of fact — he was in great trouble. He had been engaged 
 to a young woman, also belonging to the parish, for a number 
 of years ; the banns had been asked out, and the wedding-day 
 was fixed. On that very day I had to bury her. She had 
 been seized with illness while ordering some of the wedding 
 gear, and died in two or three hours. And I wanted to go 
 and see him, and talk to him a little. My walk to his place 
 
How Snow 'drifts' in the Dales 349 
 
 was accomplished ■without difficulty ; pleasantly indeed, as far 
 as roads and weather were concerned. But I had noticed 
 before I had reached my limit in that direction that the day, 
 and the weather most likely, were going to change ; and so I 
 was not surprised on setting my face southwards, instead of 
 westwards and homewards, to find that the wind was rising, 
 and rising sharply, not to say fiercely. But I wanted to see 
 another parishioner, the widow of another old and stanch 
 parochial friend, who had been ailing lately, and so I perse- 
 vered with the extension of my walk. This led me into Fryup 
 Head, the house I sought being well on to three miles from 
 the house I left. It was still perfectly fair overhead, the sun 
 shining brightly at times ; and the snow — no great thickness 
 of it anywhere ; perhaps two to three inches where it was 
 thickest — was crusted over, as I said. But the wind grew 
 colder and colder as it increased momentarily in force ; and 
 long before I got to my widowed parishioner's house the 
 crusted snow had begun to be broken up by the force of the 
 wind, and to drive along in most incisive fragments. There 
 were already, when I got to within a field or two of the house, 
 drifts formed in parts of the road approaching it such that 
 the wheels of a recently-passing vehicle had cut through some 
 of them to the depth of eighteen inches. Almost my first 
 remark on entering the house was to the daughter, of whom I 
 asked if the wheel-tracks I had noted were made by any trap 
 driven by a member of the family, hoping that, if so, he would 
 not be long away, or else he " would be matched to get home 
 again ; for it was safe there was going to be a ' hap.' " I did 
 not prolong my visit, for things were looking badly for my 
 walk home — a more than four miles' walk the nearest way I 
 could go, and that way from corner to corner of fields, over the 
 loose stone- walls ; and real rough walking. 
 
 It was quite time I was afoot. Some idea may be formed 
 of the fury of the wind from the fact that, as I paused at 
 the comer of the second field, up which the drift of the 
 
3 5 o . Miscellaneous 
 
 snow -crust had pursued me with cutting sharpness — the 
 pause being due to the strong necessity of making my way 
 safely over a broken wall with a deep drop on the other side 
 — the sharp-edged particles driven with the full force of the 
 wind against the nape of my neck and the more exposed ear 
 and cheek, inflicted such acute pain that it required some 
 nerve to bear it and keep busy with getting over the nasty, 
 dangerous place. Once over, the worst was also over. There 
 were still two more walls to surmount, but then downhill, 
 across a sloping field, and into the road again. My way lay, 
 for the most part, for a mile under the lee of a five-foot wall, 
 and I got along well. But when I came to the gateways 
 through the wall there were snow-banks across the road and 
 a thick stifling drift of sharp snow-powder to work through, 
 as well as the loose snow about my feet and legs. I met one 
 of our farmers on horseback, who could scarcely speak so as 
 to be heard for the blast and the powdery snow. But I 
 managed to hear part of his greeting as we met and passed. 
 "It's a savage day, mister," was all I heard, and I echoed his 
 sentiment. On reaching the castle the direction of my march 
 altered, and I had the wind behind me. But there was a diffi- 
 culty at the first gate across the road I came to. There was 
 a drift just through it, nearly four feet thick, and it reached 
 several yards along the road. And I have known things 
 easier of doing than plunging through three or four feet of 
 utterly loose snow. 
 
 All this time not a flake of fresh or soft snow had fallen. 
 It was perfectly fair overhead, though thickening up from 
 half -hour to half -hour with a prophetic intimation of what 
 was yet to come. And come it did, though not for two or 
 three hours after I reached home, and had at last got the 
 snow out of my hair and beard. 
 
 All that night it snowed, and the next day. I wanted 
 to go to the station and the post on the first of the two days, 
 and the roads were known to be so full, and the drift was so 
 
The way in which Drifts are formed 351 
 
 very bad, that my people would not let me go alone ; so my 
 gardener and eldest lad at home — the latter for the fun of it 
 — went with me. Within a quarter of a mile of the parsonage 
 I found snow in the road over seven feet thick in one place ; 
 and, for scores of yards together, my track lay along a snow- 
 covered fence — above it, not by the side of it. The next day 
 the seven feet of snow in the road had become fourteen, and 
 there was not a place in the entire road for the distance of 
 six or seven hundred yards where the snow lay less deep than 
 five feet, and in places it was from eight to ten. To get 
 along at all, we broke the fences and plunged along the fields 
 parallel with the line of road. 
 
 These accumulations in the roads, however, are all in the 
 way of business, and we are used to them. But the pranks 
 played by the snow at times would be amusing, even interest- 
 ing, if they were not so baffling and tiresome. A great wind, 
 with snow dry enough to drift, either already on the ground 
 or still falling, or, as likely as not, both together, catches hold 
 of the snow as it sweeps over these lofty moorland ridges and 
 drives it irresistibly before it until it loses its grip ; and that is 
 when the force of gravity becomes greater than the force of 
 propulsion ; and this happens on the lee side of a wall, and a 
 fortiori, on the lee side of one of these mountainous moorland 
 ridges. But the snow has this curious circumstance attend- 
 ing it, that it does not fall perpendicularly on reaching the 
 sheltered part ; on the contrary, it seems to become slightly 
 cohesive, and begins to form a projecting ledge from the edge 
 of the sheltering object. I have watched the process on the 
 sheltered side of a seven-foot wall, the top of which was almost 
 level with the face of the land on the other side of it. First 
 the level was attained by the lodgment of snow above the 
 wall. Then the ledge began to form, slightly curvilinear in 
 section ; the ledge itself being, so to speak, undercut like a 
 volute in sculpture. Belo^, on the sheltered side, there is 
 always a sort of gentle undercurrent of air, the action of which 
 
3 5 2 Miscellaneous 
 
 is to keep the foot of the wall — if it be a wall we are watching 
 — free from any accumulation of snow for a foot or two away 
 from it, according to height; but also to blow the falling 
 particles upwards against the under side of the growing ledge, 
 which is thus thickened both from above and below, as well 
 as helped to grow in the direction of its projection. One 
 Sunday morning as I was going to my service at Fryup I 
 noted all this going on at one particular place, almost devised 
 on purpose to permit observation of the process, and I took my 
 notes with some nicety. I returned the same way something 
 under two hours later, and found that the ledge had advanced 
 about six inches, and grown in proportional thickness as well ; 
 as, perhaps, goes without saying. 
 
 This was on the road -side of a stone wall nearly seven 
 feet high. As I stood face to face with it and watched it, on 
 my left, sloping upwards from my very feet, for upwards of 
 one hundred and twenty yards of actual altitude — and the 
 last twenty yards very steeply — was the flank of one of our 
 moory ridges, and I have once and again seen the ledge 
 of snow I have been trying to describe project from the edge 
 or brae of the ridge from sixteen or twenty feet to sixteen 
 or twenty yards. Once, in going to my afternoon service 
 on foot — I could not have gone half a mile either on wheels 
 or horseback, as the roads were all full — on reaching the brae 
 at the point where my ordinary track begins to descend, I 
 found a snow precipice of sixteen feet deep, apparently cut- 
 ting off all further progress. ■ But there was a projecting 
 ledge of snow about a foot in width some ten feet below the 
 upper edge, and I thought I could let myself drop or slide 
 down to that, and bring myself up there. The plan was 
 successful. But on considering my landmarks on reaching 
 the foot of this wall of snow, I found the edge I had dropped 
 from was at least eighteen to twenty yards in advance of the 
 edge of the brae. 
 
 There were thirteen of my Fryup parishioners gathered for 
 
Snow-climbs and Snow-wadings 353 
 
 the service at the foot of the slope, watching my proceedings. 
 The greater part of these inclined to think I would not 
 attempt the descent. Those who had known me longest 
 said, "T' priest wadn't be bett." And the event justified 
 their confidence. But the service over, there arose the 
 question of how I was to get back again ; and when I said, 
 " The same way -as I came," one oldish man besought me not 
 to attempt it; "it was over parlous for owght." Nay, he 
 was so urgent that he actually shed tears over my foolhardi- 
 ness, as he considered it. However I was not to be dis- 
 suaded, and though it was a "parlous " thing in a way, it was 
 safely accomplished. One of my boys, a lad of about sixteen, 
 was with me, and one of us had a strong stick and the other 
 an equally strong umbrella. These I stuck firmly into the 
 snow wall, the one a foot higher than the other, and then 
 working holes in with my feet until I succeeded in getting 
 foothold, I was able to move one of my two handholds 
 a foot higher, and to get a higher foothold ; and so on alter- 
 nately, until at last, after great labour and much delay, I suc- 
 ceeded in reaching the top. But had it not been for the sort 
 of channel worked into the snow by our downward slide I 
 do not think it could have been done. 
 
 But the most laborious, and perhaps the most venturesome, 
 snow walk I ever had was from Easington to Danby. I had 
 exchanged duties with my oldest clerical friend and neighbour, 
 George Morehead, Eector of Easington, with the understand- 
 ing that, while he returned to Easington, the three duties 
 done, I, after my three at Easington and Liverton, should 
 stay all night at the rectory, and have my trap sent over for 
 me in the morning. There had been a slight shower of snow 
 while the Liverton service was going on, but hardly enough 
 to do more than whiten the ground ; and when I had finished 
 the evening duty at Easington, it was a beautiful starlight 
 night, and no one had thought of, much less expected, a fall of 
 snow. But on looking out at eight in the morning, to my 
 
 2 A 
 
3 54 Miscellaneous 
 
 intense surprise, there was a dense covering of white over all. 
 It soon became apparent from the reports brought in that the 
 passage of wheels along the level would be intensely difficult, 
 and over such hills and moor-roads as lay between Easington 
 and Danby simply impossible. I was most anxious to get 
 home for different reasons ; and, resisting the more than urgent 
 entreaties of my dear old friend and his wife, I determined to 
 set forth on foot. For the first three to four miles the walk- 
 ing, though very fatiguing — for there was not an inch of the 
 way with less than a foot deep of the yielding snow, which 
 permitted no firm foothold among it — was practicable enough. 
 As I passed Sir Charles (then Mr.) Palmer's lodge-gates at 
 Grinkle I ascertained that, there being somewhat urgent need 
 to send a carnage to Danby Station, the road had been ex- 
 plored to see if by dint of sending on the snow-plough a 
 passage could be effected ; but the attempt had been given up 
 "«,s hopeless. However, I determined to persevere, and reached 
 the purely moor part of the trudge at Waupley. Here the 
 difficulties began in good earnest. Though there had been 
 no drifting in the sheltered road, yet on reaching the open 
 moor it proved to be very different; for every few yards 
 drifts of from two to four feet deep intervened, and continued 
 to intervene. However, I struggled on until I reached the 
 highest level I had to cross over, and it was a dreary scene 
 before me indeed ! 
 
 I had already been a little impressed with the utter isola- 
 tion of my walk. All life, even bird life, seemed to have dis- 
 appeared. I knew the moors had hundreds of grouse on them. 
 I never saw one nor heard one. I had seen two blackbirds 
 when making my way along a part of the road which was 
 also for two or three score yards the course of a small 
 stream ; and, strange to say, I had seen a goldfinch — the only 
 one I have ever seen in this district — just after reaching the 
 moor at Waupley. Besides these " feathered fowl " I saw only 
 two or three moor pipits, usually numerous enough on the 
 
A 'parlous ' Moor-walk in the Snow 355 
 
 moors at all times of the year. I hardly wondered at this 
 scarcity of bird life, for it was a cruel day. The intensity of 
 the cold may be estimated by this — that as I walked and 
 labonringly perspired (I was in fact so wet that I literally had 
 not a " dry thread " about me) — the perspiration settled and 
 froze on my eyebrows and hair, and freezing into little balls 
 tinkled against the steel of my spectacles more musically than 
 pleasantly ; and naturally the birds and all other creatures 
 dwelling on or about the moors would be seeking such shelter 
 as could be found or made available. I did not even see or 
 hear a single moor sheep. 
 
 On reaching a given point on the level aforesaid, where 
 a cross -track deflected from the course of the high road 
 in such a way as to cut off an angle and save a distance of 
 nearly half a mile, feeling the temptation to try and save so 
 much of the trying fag I was experiencing, I attempted to take 
 the said short cut. The snow looked level enough, but I had 
 not allowed for the unevennesses and hollows of the moor 
 concealed beneath the fair-seeming surface, and before I had 
 waded five-and-twenty yards from the line of the road I found 
 myself struggling to get out of a dish-like hollow in which the 
 snow was deep enough to reach above my waist, and deepen- 
 ing every foot I advanced. Clearly the " short cut " would 
 be no saving, and I struggled back as well as I could to regain 
 the line of the road. I had almost begun to despair of getting 
 through with my walk, when I saw a moving object coming 
 over the top of the ridge next to that on which my path lay ; 
 and I presently saw that it was a cart with two horses in it, 
 and two men in attendance on them. This gave me renewed 
 hope, not to say confidence, for they were coming the very 
 way I had to go, and of course they must have tracked the 
 road for me. At the rate of our relative progress it took a 
 long time to cross the intervening space, but at last we met. 
 They were Liverton men who had been under the extremest 
 necessity for want of fuel, and they had been literally forced 
 
3 S 6 Miscellaneous 
 
 to make the effort to get to Danby Station for a load of coal. 
 The snow was now drifting freely, and the travelling was 
 momentarily becoming worse ; but even when they had started 
 they had provided against the emergencies they foresaw by 
 putting two horses to their cart, doubling also the ordinary 
 force of men — two instead of one only — and providing them- 
 selves with shovels to clear their way if necessary, or dig 
 their "draught" out, if need arose. All the load they had 
 ventured to lay on with all their appliances had been six 
 hundredweight, and only yesterday (4th December 1889) I 
 met a man who had travelled the same road with a load of 
 coal in a waggon drawn by three horses, who had then, as he 
 told me, well on to two tons weight, easily drawn by his team. 
 And the two men I met that day had to walk, partly because 
 their horses were barely able to drag the cart with its light 
 load without their weight added, and partly because the fore- 
 most had to guide the leader over the trackless white waste 
 (with only a bit of ling growing on the braes on either side of 
 the moor road to show here and there where it actually was), 
 as well as help it in its plunging efforts to get through the 
 deeper places ; and the other with the shaft horse to keep it 
 steady to its work. They both of them knew me, and were 
 simply astounded to see me there on foot alone, and under 
 such circumstances and surroundings. 
 
 For the first half-mile after meeting them I found the track 
 they had made of the greatest service to me ; although every 
 step I took was through snow that reached above my knees ; 
 and, even before I reached the top of the ridge on which I had 
 first caught sight of them, the said track was being rapidly 
 obscured by the drifting in upon it of fresh snow. On the 
 other side of the ridge the track was gone in places ; but it 
 was practically downhill now, the most part of the way, and 
 my worst difficulties things of the past ; and I reached home 
 safe, wretchedly wet, and more exhausted than I knew, or had 
 allowed for. 
 
What Moorland Snow-drifts may be ! 357 
 
 The snow came on again before long, and before the week 
 was out enough had fallen to make an even covering all over 
 the face of the country of about twenty -seven inches thick. 
 The Sunday following was vrithout any further fall, and it was 
 possible to get to my more distant chapel ; but the man who 
 drove me, and who had driven me, as he expressed it, thousands 
 of miles — he was the Daniel of my houe-digging experiences 
 — declared (and still declares) he had never had such a journey 
 before. It was indeed, from the difficulties of the roadway 
 alone, an awful drive. I think the fatigue in another way was 
 as bad as that of the plunging, struggling tramp from Easington 
 to Danby. And the next day I was in bed, very seriously ilL 
 My medical attendant shook his head over me, and said he 
 must see me again the next day — he had ten miles to ride to 
 get here — and when he came shook his head more gravely still. 
 " He would come again as early the foUowiag day as he could ! " 
 But he did not come. Another fall of snow made the journey 
 from Guisborough here impracticable alike by road and by 
 rail ; and for six days I lay hovering between life and death, 
 and the doctor not able to get near me ! 
 
 That is one of my reminiscences of a moorland parish in 
 the winter-time. I think it was the worst winter I have known 
 here. The cross-road which runs east and west past the school, 
 about a quarter of a mile north of the parsonage, was so full 
 up with hardened, beaten-down snow, that one of my sons as 
 he walked along it was able to pluck twigs off the road-side 
 trees, which were high enough to admit of the passage beneath 
 them of the mighty loads of com or hay as they are piled up 
 in order to be taken out of the fields into the stack-garth. 
 
 The earliest reminiscence I have of what the snows of 
 vrinter might be in north-east Yorkshire refers to the winter 
 preceding the May which saw my arrival here as a resident. 
 I was living at Scarborough at the time, and saw the snow five 
 to six feet deep in St. Nicholas Street, before that from the 
 house-tops began to be thrown down into the streets. At this 
 
358 Miscellaneous 
 
 time I was taking one duty per Sunday at Hackness Church, 
 riding the intermediate distance of five or six miles. The first 
 Sunday after the fall of snow specified, the journey was utterly 
 impossible. On the Sunday after, having ascertained that "the 
 roads had been cut," I took my journey as usual, and on 
 coming to Suffield Heights I found a somewhat narrow gang- 
 way cut, but wide enough to let a mounted man pass. In the 
 deepest part of the cutting the depth of the snow-wall on either 
 side, allowing for the addition made by what had been thrown 
 up by the digging, was such that as I rode through with a tall 
 hat on, the top of my hat and the tops of the snow-banks were 
 as nearly as possible on a level. 
 
 Probably it will be anticipated by those who have read 
 the preceding pages that on our wide, wild, shelterless moors 
 here, even the Suffield Heights accumulation might be, or would 
 be, outdone. And indeed it was. A little below the top of 
 Gerrick Bank, on the highroad from Whitby to Guisborough, 
 and on the side nearer to the last-named place, the snow was deep 
 enough and compact enough to admit of being tunnelled through, 
 so as to admit of the passage of the coach working between the 
 two places ; and the tunnel stood for more than a week. 
 
 On our Danby moors, at a place about two miles distant 
 from the point named as Gerrick Bank-top, there is a narrow 
 gully or rift, with steeply sloping sides, ling-covered, ascend- 
 ing to a height of about a hundred feet perpendicularly above 
 the level of the trickling moor -stream running through the 
 gully below. This was filled from bottom to top, so that there 
 was an even slope from the slightly higher brae on the west to 
 the lower one on the other side. And the old gamekeeper, 
 who was the first to tell me of the incident, added that a very 
 dry spring and early summer succeeded, and the moors be- 
 came so dry that the moor-birds had to travel considerable 
 distances to get to water, and that he had seen them come in 
 scores to drink of the water which trickled from the melting 
 snow as late as Midsummer day. 
 
Putting the Shovel handy at bed-time 359 
 
 But the most extraordinary feat I have ever known as 
 achieved in the way of the making of snowdrifts by our 
 moorland blasts, took place during the winter of 1886-87, and 
 the account of it was given me by the "gaffer" of the small 
 band of road-minders and menders employed by the township. 
 The wind had blown from the north and east when the snow 
 began to be drivable, and he had had some difficulty in keep- 
 ing the door of his own dwelling — a house on the very edge of 
 the moor, three-quarters of a mile from the site of my own — 
 and one night he had taken the precaution to carry his shovel 
 indoors, with the almost certainty that he would have to dig 
 his way out in the morning ; inasmuch as the passage he had 
 cut and kept clear from day to day was filling fast at the 
 darkening, and there was every appearance of a terrible night 
 of snow and drifting. Armed with his well-brightened tool — • 
 for he had been snow-cutting for days whenever there seemed 
 a chance of doing it to any effect — he opened his door in the 
 early Ught, and strange, incredible as it seemed, there was no 
 big wreath of snow there — no wreath at all worth thinking of. 
 But at the other end of the house there was a gigantic 
 accumulation piled up, and reaching almost to the gable point 
 of the roof. The wind had shifted during the night and had 
 transported the results of its action during the previous days 
 from the one end to the other ! And exactly the same thing 
 had happened at the farmhouse some 200 yards more to the 
 north, and similarly situated. My friend, the road-surveyor, 
 was not the only one among us who went to bed with a shovel 
 — not exactly under his pillow, but — laid quite handy for use 
 the first thing in the morning ; and who had to use it too. At 
 the public-house on the hill opposite my house,, and about half 
 a mile distant, the oldish man who lived there and, in a sort, 
 served the landlady, told me his first work in the morning for 
 more than a week, after making on the fire and so forth, was 
 to dig a way out, and both in front of the house and in its 
 rear; and that "mostlings it teuk a lot o' deeing." 
 
360 Miscellaneous 
 
 Late in the winter of the year before last there were five 
 Sundays in succession during which access to the parish church 
 was like matrimony — not to be " lightly enterprised or taken 
 in hand." The first of these Sundays I had with some 
 diflSculty made my advance about half-way to the church 
 when I met the parish-clerk, who had come forward to tell me 
 there was but one lad at the church, and he thought it a 
 chance if any one else either would or could come. It was a 
 wild day indeed, the snow stouring in blinding clouds ; and I 
 thought Peter might be right, and so I turned back, meeting 
 the wind now. It seems absurd to say so, but it was all I 
 could do to keep myself straight with the aid of the low hedges 
 on either side. But for the hedges I was only too well aware 
 I must have gone hopelessly wrong in the third of a mile 
 between the place where Peter met me and my home. 
 
 As it happened, two men turned up at the church after 
 Peter met me. On the next Sunday the same two men and 
 the boy were there to meet me. On the third Sunday 
 the same trio and a young woman. One of the men 
 had chivalrously essayed to carry the girl over the worst of 
 the snowdrifts, and the treacherous crust had given way 
 beneath the united weights, and a comforting and edifying 
 roll in the snow had been the result. I saw the parties 
 "laughing consumedly " as they came round the corner of the 
 chancel, and I am afraid I laughed myself when I was told, 
 in answer to my query, what had taken place. The fourth 
 and fifth Sundays saw my two male friends already named, 
 the boy, and two other men, present at the service. But all 
 this time I could not get to my distant church in Fryup. 
 
 It seems absurd, as I said just now, to talk of being so 
 easily lost, and within so limited a distance. It seemed infi- 
 nitely so indeed to me until I had made personal and ludicrous 
 acquaintance with it as a fact. Many years ago now, I had 
 been at church on one of these bitterly stormy days which 
 occur from time to time ; and I had already been told of a 
 
A Burial under difficulties 361 
 
 funeral fixed for just after the service. The congregation had 
 barely numbered half a dozen persons all told ; and the snow 
 and sleet were driving about on the wings of a fierce wind, so 
 as to make even breathing difficult when one was forced to 
 face it. One of my sons had gone to church with me, a stal- 
 wart lad of seventeen or eighteen, and on the conclusion of 
 the service, seeing no signs of the funeral near, he decided not 
 to wait for me but to go home at once. I waited half an hour, 
 and still no signs of the approach of the procession. Another 
 quarter of an hour, and the storm still growing worse every 
 minute. Once and again both I and the clerk had gone out 
 to see, as well as we could, if there was any sign, but without 
 result. At last I began to think something must have inter- 
 fered with the arrangements, and that we were waiting to no 
 purpose, and I went out to look, for what was to be the last 
 time. It was almost impossible to look out steadily in the 
 direction the funeral was to come, by reason of the stouring 
 snow which blew directly into one's face and eyes ; but still 
 I had satisfied myself that there was nothing in sight; 
 and I had but just decided with the clerk that it was un- 
 necessary to wait any longer. While I was still speaking the 
 chancel (or priest's) door was opened and the figures of two or 
 three men appeared. But they were men in white garments, 
 men of snow in reality. I never saw such figures before. 
 All of them, as usual at a funeral, in black clothes, and yet 
 nothing that was not white with snow about them. They 
 must have been within a hundred yards or so of the church- 
 yard when I had gone for my last look, and yet, from their 
 whitened covering, and the difficulty of looking steadfastly 
 forth against such a storm, I had not been able to descry 
 them. And their story was that they had left Castleton in 
 good time, with the little girl's coffin in the hearse ; that the 
 difficulty of getting along the road had been considerable almost 
 from the outset ; that after the first half-mile it increased with 
 every step, and at last when they had made their way to 
 
362 Miscellaneous 
 
 within three fields of the church, further progress had become 
 impossible for horse or hearse, and they had taken the coffin 
 out to bear it by hand. Then six able-bodied men had taken 
 it — the body was that of a girl under thirteen years of age — 
 and had left the road, and began to struggle across the fields. 
 Before they had made much progress they were of necessity 
 relieved, and other six strong men took up the burden ; and 
 alternating in this way, they had at length, and with extreme 
 difficulty and the greatest exertion, achieved the passage of 
 the three fields, or the total distance of less than half a mile. 
 
 The service at the grave was a continued physically pain- 
 ful experience. I was compelled to stand with my back to 
 the blast, or it would have been alike impossible to see or to 
 read in such a fierce, savage stour ; and the sharp, hard sleet 
 and roughened snow were driven against the unprotected parts 
 of my neck and face with such vehemence and impinged with 
 such force upon the parts already aching with the bitter cold, 
 that no flogging I ever got was in the least to be compared 
 with the smarting experience of those ten minutes. 
 
 But at last all was duly done and I started on my home- 
 ward way, having the stormy wind and drift directly in my 
 teeth. I could not see ten yards ahead of me distinctly, but 
 it was only a small field of half a dozen acres I had to cross 
 diagonally, to get into the road. But before I had got half 
 the distance, as I reckoned, I saw the boughs of a tree on my 
 left hand which I recognised as growingnn the left-hand fence 
 of the field, whereas my road lay along the right-hand fence ; 
 and at the same moment a voice hailed me with the words, 
 "You've getten wrang, Mr. Atki'son." I laughed over my 
 error and tried again, making for the corner of the field at the 
 end of the right-hand fence. But instead of reaching it, I 
 was brought up by the fence running transversely from that 
 on the left to that on the right — which I followed to the place 
 where I would be. I had thus gone astray twice within an 
 area of less than 300 yards square. 
 
Winter amenities of a Moorland Parish 363 
 
 Smiling with myself at the absurdity of the misadventure, 
 still I was preparing myself for the laughter which, I was sure, 
 would greet the recital of my erring and straying when I got 
 home. Somewhat to my surprise, no one laughed ; my wife 
 eiven looked grave. But the explanation soon came. My 
 strong, stout son, unbothered with spectacles as I was^and 
 they are a bother in a thick mist or a roke ; and worse still, in 
 heavily driving snow — he too had gone astray on his walk 
 home ; and even worse than I had, and from the same cause. 
 The snow lay very deep upon the road which runs along the 
 hedge of the fifth field from the church, and he had gone a 
 little way ofi" the road on to the land, with the purpose of 
 finding easier walking, and the intention of walking parallel 
 with the said road ; which indeed he had no idea he was not 
 doing until he found himself face to face with the angle formed 
 by the meeting of two fences. The truth was he had insen- 
 sibly, under the influence of the pitiless storm and drift, borne 
 to the left as I had done in the much smaller field by the 
 church ; and it had not been without difficulty, owing to 
 the impediments offered by the accumulated drifts, and the 
 manner or disposition of them, that he had succeeded in 
 recovering his right road. After this, I never needed any 
 explanation how easy it was for storm-caught travellers over 
 unenclosed spaces to lose themselves, and with the issue of 
 having to be found by others. One poor feUow lost his way 
 thus some eight or ten years ago, and lay fifty-nine days under 
 the snow before his body was found. And the actual place 
 at which it was found proved that he had been so bafiied and 
 dazed as to be unaware that he was going in exactly the 
 opposite direction to that which would have led him home. 
 
 Such are some of the amenities of a moorland parish in 
 the winter-time. 
 
MOOELAND SCENERY IN WINTER 
 
 It would be easy enough to multiply experiences as to the 
 difficulty, and at times the absolute impracticability, of any 
 locomotion, either by parson or people, in respect of going to 
 or from church, during what are in the vernacular called 
 " ho'ding storms." I will but give an illustration or two, and 
 then pass on to another topic. This house is, I suppose, some 
 1600 yards distant from the charch — not quite a mile, but 
 approaching to it. Two winters ago, and as late as the month 
 of March, the drifting of the snow, under the violence of a 
 wind blowing more from the east than from the north, had 
 been so great that, of the said distance of nearly a mile, there 
 were about fifty yards just near my garden, and fifty yards 
 about half-way between this house and the church, not so 
 snow-blocked as to permit me to walk along the road. All the 
 rest — say 1500 yards and more — was covered with snow to 
 the depth of three or four feet and upwards — in most parts, 
 six feet — and for the whole width of one field from eight up 
 to twelve feet. Fifty yards away from my garden gate I 
 had to break through the fence on my right hand, and 
 make my way parallel with the road along the strips of the 
 fields which had been swept more or less bare by the wind. 
 To accomplish this I had to make my way through two fences 
 running at right angles to the direction of the road, then over 
 two loose stone walls, then through (or over) another quickset 
 hedge, the line of which I could barely distinguish for the 
 
Snow-wading somewhat exhausting 365 
 
 snow piled on and over it ; and so into the field adjoining the 
 churchyard. For three weeks there was no traffic along the 
 road. The farmers " up the dale," who were forced to obtain 
 access (on account of their live stock) to Danby End, the mill 
 there, and so forth, made a track for themselves along the 
 land in the fields alongside the road, making gaps in the stone 
 walls named above, and some sort of a difficult passage into 
 and along the lane past my house. All this traffic was done 
 on horseback. Sacks of grain to be ground, sacks of meal to 
 be carried home, were all conveyed on horseback. 
 
 Another time, I remember, more than twenty years ago, I 
 had myself made my way to the church by dint of breaking 
 the fences and eschewing the roadway, and when I got to the 
 church I had not the "legal congregation." I waited till ten 
 minutes past church-time, and seeing no prospect of any 
 addition to " Dearly Beloved " the parish-clerk and another 
 official, I set off homewards. Half-way between the church 
 -and the parsonage I saw some one leaning against the stone 
 waU by the side of one part of the lane or road. Coming 
 nearer, I saw it was the schoolmaster, a tall, strong, stout man 
 in the prime of his age and strength. I stopped to speak to 
 him, and added it would be no use his going on ; there was no 
 
 congregation, and I was on my way home. Mr. G , in a 
 
 voice that was not cheerful, said it made but little difierence ; 
 he was spent, and could neither go forward nor get back home 
 again. And indeed he did look exhausted — as well he might. 
 For he had toiled through and through the deep snow cumber- 
 ing the road for more than half a mile. I had tried it, and 
 after the experience of the first hundred yards, had given it 
 up as hopeless, and had broken the fence as above described. 
 
 This expedient had not occurred to Mr. Gr , and indeed it 
 
 was the first time I had adopted it so fully myself ; but when I 
 mentioned it to him, he cheered up greatly, and readily followed 
 my lead in clambering over the wall I had found him leaning 
 against, and after a struggle with the deep snow for a few 
 
366 Miscellaneous 
 
 yards we found ourselves getting along without very heavy 
 toil. 
 
 As may be assumed without previous searching inquiry, 
 when a big stalwart master and a wdl-hardened and fairly 
 resolute parson encountered such difficulties in the way of 
 getting to and from church, it was fairly certain that children 
 due at school might not find it very easy to get there. One 
 week, when the snow covered the road to the church as above 
 described, the attendances at the school (excluding the master's 
 two sons) ranged thus : the first day of the week, two boys 
 out of the average eighty ; the second day, three ; the third 
 day, two ; the fourth day, three ; and the fifth day, four. It 
 was almost amusing to look in, as I did every day, and see the 
 master and his select scholars hugging the school stove in such 
 an affectionate manner. But another time, about six years ago, 
 one incident of this sort almost verged on the comic. I was 
 making my way down, not without effort or difficulty, to the 
 station and post. Between the school and the first dwelling 
 on the road in question lay a section of highway quite sure to 
 be filled up speedily, given adequate snow to be driven, and a 
 wind from the north equal to doing the driving. Neither of 
 these elements was wanting on the day in question, and within 
 threescore yards of the school it became necessary to take to 
 the fields, and through the stackyard of the house aforesaid. 
 It was a fearful day, and drifting so fast that newly-made tracks 
 were obliterated with strange speed in places. And there were 
 such tracks before me. Passing the stacks just named, the 
 road was less encumbered, and when I had nearly got to the 
 viaduct over the railway by the station, I saw a figure before 
 me struggling through a drift six feet thick on one side of the 
 road, and about three on the other. Through this shallower 
 part a horse had been made to force its way, and it was in the 
 sort of squandering, sputtering track thereby made that I saw 
 the little object in front of me. I came up with it just before 
 the passage was accomplished, and found it was a small boy of 
 
' White as no Fuller on earth can whiten ' 367 
 
 about eight or nine years old. "What are you doing here, such 
 a day as thisl" I asked him. "Please, Ah's gannan yam." 
 "Why, where doyou live ? " said I. " Please, sir, anenst t' black- 
 smith's." — "Well, but what are you out here forf — "Please, sir, 
 Ah've been te scheeal." — " Been to school ! " I rejoined, " why, 
 there'd be no one there ! " — "Please, sir, yes, sir, there was me 
 and t' tweea teachers." The sturdy little chap had got through 
 all his difficulties, and was within a hundred yards or so of his 
 parents' house ; so I gave him what coppers I had in my pocket 
 and sent him home wishing for another and like snowy day's 
 adventure. 
 
 But it is by no means only in such ways as the foregoing 
 that winter signalises itself in our moorland district. Some of 
 the optical eiFects produced in times of copious snow, while it 
 is as yet unsullied, and alike unaffected by wind or sun, are of 
 almost incredible beauty. Almost forty years ago, at such a 
 time, a great electrical disturbance took place in the atmosphere. 
 I avoid the use of the term thunderstorm, because it might be 
 misleading. The thunder was very loud, and repeated in long 
 bellowing rolls, and the lightning was,- 1 think, as startlingly 
 brilliant as I have ever seen it — two occasions only excepted. 
 But there was no downfall : neither snow nor hail nor sleet 
 accompanied the disturbance. My children were then very 
 young, and there was some trouble among them by reason of 
 the alarming loudness of the thunder, and my wife was with 
 them. I was a little startled at hearing her cry to me from 
 the nursery door to come quickly upstairs ; but the explanation 
 was that she wished me to see the lightning and note the 
 marvellous beauty of the scene, as flash after flash lit the whole 
 snow-covered dale before us, and its steep retaining moor- 
 banks on either side, with an effulgence that defies description. 
 But the dazzling, almost intolerable brightness of the lightning- 
 lit snow — white indeed, and with a whiteness such as "no 
 fuller on earth can whiten " — that forced exclaiming rapture 
 rather thah quiet admiration ; while it was the most marvellous 
 
368 Miscellaneous 
 
 succession of most marvellous tints and tones of colour which 
 dwelt on the retina many seconds after the flash ceased its 
 splendid being, that dwelt in the mind and imagination. 
 The total duration of this after-vision could not have been 
 less than sixty seconds ; and as the heavenly whiteness faded 
 it began to be replaced by the most delicate tinge of rose, 
 deepening by distinct gradations through darker tones into 
 steel-blue, which in its turn gave place to the customary 
 showing of snow by night, the night being unlit by a moon. 
 
 I have witnessed this wonderful display of nature's lights 
 and colouring three several times now, but in no case have I 
 seen the unimaginable glory of the first display outshone. 
 And the remembrance of it I think is indelible. 
 
 But this strangely beautiful succession of delicate rose 
 tints and steel-blue tones of deepening intensity has been 
 witnessed by me once and again since the night of that mar- 
 vellous display ; only with this difference, that the succession 
 of shades and colours was not a succession of time, or sequence 
 in order of progression, but simply of distance and altitude. 
 Or to put it another way ; At your feet and in the foreground 
 your eye rested on the unsullied snow; in the mid-distance, 
 or on the steep slopes of the ascending moor-banks, you saw 
 the tinges and tints of the rose ; and in the far distance, or 
 above the braes of the walls of the dales, you gazed out upon 
 the matchless blues. The colours might be fainter than as 
 they glowed forth after the magic operation of the lightning's 
 blaze, but they were all there ; and waited there to be gazed 
 on with a sort of reverent admiration, until the sun had sunk 
 too low behind the western moor-bank for it to be called day 
 any longer. The first time I saw this exhibition of nature's 
 colouring was on Christmas eve in the year when my walk 
 home from a fruitless visit to the church, in company with 
 the schoolmaster, took place. It was freezing with intense 
 sharpness, and the night was one more intensely cold than 
 usually befalls, even high up among the moors. As it was. 
 
Gorgeous if evanescent Beauty 369 
 
 at this sunset my beard and moustache were frozen into one 
 icy mass while I stood and gazed on the gorgeous panorama ; 
 and it has only been on similar occasions of very sharp frosts, 
 ■ivith a perfectly quiescent atmosphere, that I have ever wit- 
 nessed any repetition of it. 
 
 There is still, however, one phase of winter scenery which 
 has engraved itself as deeply as any other on my recollection, 
 and it is one I have observed under various aspects, and on 
 divers different occasions. What I refer to are the singularly 
 lovely creations of a rime or white frost, on the occasions on 
 which there is so large an amount of moisture in the atmo- 
 sphere as to lead to a heavy deposit. 
 
 I remember one occasion on which the deposit was so 
 heavy that ordinary rushes became rods of more than half an 
 inch in diameter, the merest dry bents — windlestraws, or 
 winn'lstraes as we call them here — the thickness of a big 
 cedar pencil, and every small twig in the hedges a bar of 
 glittering jewellery. It was a glorious winter's day, with 
 some three to four inches of snow on the level in the fields, 
 and with a temperature so frosty in the morning that the 
 moisture of my breath congealed with every expiration on the 
 hair about my mouth and chin. On looking at any of the 
 objects I have named with a little attention it was seen that 
 the incrustation depended on what may — for the purposes of 
 illustration — be described as a coating of fur, every constituent 
 filament in which was as compound as the upper shoot and 
 branches of a fir-tree. There was the spire on an infinitesimal 
 scale, with the whorl of radiating spurs at its foot, and the 
 same repeated at the foot of the second shoot of the leader, 
 and so on. Anything more strangely, mysteriously, ethereally 
 beautiful I never beheld. Each twig, each grassy seed-stem, 
 each blade of grass, and especially each longer and thicker 
 shoot or rush, was a miracle of symmetry, beauty, perfection, 
 composite of myriads of marvels on a lessened and lessening 
 scale. 
 
 2b 
 
370 Miscellaneous 
 
 But these wonderful creations by nature's jeweller were 
 not limited only to the vesture of such objects as those I have 
 named. When I went forth on my afternoon's expedition to 
 Fryup Church — for it was on a Sunday that this fairy world 
 of ornamentation greeted my eyes — and had made my way 
 into a large smooth field, on pausing to look back towards the 
 north-west and north sides of the snow-scape, having the 
 brightly shining sun on my side as I did so, my eye was 
 caught by the myriads of glittering points that gemmed the 
 whole surface of the snow. The whole area for hundreds and 
 hundreds of square yards was lit up in this way ; and there 
 was not a hue or a lustre displayed by the diamond that was 
 not repeated by thousands of resplendent facets bestrewing 
 the field. There were simply acres of lustrous diamonds ! 
 
 Naturally I turned to a closer examination of the circum- 
 stances and conditions leading on to the marvellous scene 
 which gladdened my eyes ; it was indeed the " joy " of a " thing 
 of beauty." And I then observed, what my somewhat im- 
 paired sight had not suggested to me before, that the entire 
 surface of the snow was covered with — to use the word once 
 already applied in the same connection — a thick fur of sprays 
 of frost-work like that on the twigs and grass, only three- 
 quarters of an inch in the pile. Every step I had taken had 
 crushed and destroyed myriads of frost-gems, all symmetrically 
 perfect and beautiful, and set as no jeweller on earth could 
 set them. Still, though these glimmered with a sort of pearly 
 lustre in the sunbeams, the sources of the flashing, lustrously- 
 hued diamond rays were not in them ; but set among them in 
 infinite numbers were facets of such reflecting and refracting 
 power as only Nature herself can produce, and set at every 
 conceivable angle, as well as endlessly diversified in size. I 
 no longer wondered that the brightness and the splendour 
 were so dazzlingly glorious to behold, when I came to regard 
 the enginery from which they resulted. 
 
 One other instance of filigree work of a like nature may 
 
The Jewellery of a Hoar-frost 371 
 
 also be mentioned. I have seen it only during two winters, 
 in tlje course of which we had not only much snow on the 
 ground, and very heavy drifts of the same, but also after the 
 drifting wind had subsided a series of intense frosts — the 
 thermometer down to zero, and one or two nights three to 
 five degrees below. If any one can imagine the filaments of 
 a spider's web encrusted as I have tried to describe the twigs 
 and grass as being, and can further try and realise them, not 
 as in the radiations and concentric circumferences of the great 
 field-spider's geometrical work, but erring and straying in all 
 sorts of graceful and unstudied confusion from one fold of 
 the wreathed snow to another, some of them six or seven 
 inches long, and many less than half that, and all being more 
 or less vertical, he will have a faint idea of the decorative 
 energies of hoar-frost where there would seem to be no sub- 
 stratum of fibres for it to work upon. This kind of work, 
 however, was always on the wall-like drifts on the north side 
 of the roads, or where the sun during the short period of his 
 winter's warmth had been exercising such softening influences 
 as were permitted to him under such circumstances. 
 
 Once or twice also I have seen the snow in such places 
 and with such aspect look as if, so to speak, honeycombed, 
 but in the most delicate fashion, by the agency of the sun's 
 rays ; and then the aggregate group of tiny borings and in- 
 dentations all furred at the edge and in the cavities with a 
 cognate garniture of minute crystallisations, — again one of the 
 most beautiful vagaries of the frost-artist. 
 
 Again, the sun may " come forth as a bridegroom out of 
 his chamber, and rejoice as a giant to run his course," but, of 
 a surety, this Dales country of ours with its mighty moor- 
 banks, when draped and veiled in the marvellous garments 
 of pure, undriven snow, may be the image of the bride ready 
 to respond to his first smiles in the coming morning. 
 
 But similes apart, the dales are so deep, and the moor- 
 banks are so up-sweeping when mantled with fresh and deep 
 
372 Miscellaneous 
 
 snow, and the ■ snow itself is so white, that while the accus- 
 tomed eye revels in the return of unforgotten beauty, and 
 recalls with gratified recognition this or that well-known 
 feature, the unaccustomed eye is fairly bewildered with the 
 Strange, pale beauty of the snow-scape, and for a time at least 
 seems to be incapable of fixing on any idea save that of an 
 immensity of whiteness. The recognition of beauty and 
 grandeur comes later. 
 
 But, indeed, it is not only in the winter time, or when 
 the hills are snow-draped and the dales snow-clad, that the 
 marvels of beautiful colouring are displayed for the delight 
 of the watching eye. A hundred times, and again a hundred, 
 I have seen in the early autumn evenings, when the sun was 
 sinking behind the western banks, all the moorland heights 
 towards the east and north, as they rose in their receding order, 
 take on the most lovely and delicate hues of violet and purple, 
 glorified with the bloom of the plum and the sheen of infinite 
 velvet. 
 
 Once, too, in the late autumn, in the afternoon of a rayless 
 day, I was coming from Westerdale over the end of the ridge 
 traversed by the road from thence to Castleton, when the 
 most amazing, unimaginable study in colour was spread out 
 before my astonished gaze. For I had seen the moor-scape a 
 thousand times before, and enjoyed its varied beauty, here 
 rough and rugged and there softened and swelling with 
 graceful undulations ; but I had never dreamed of the glory 
 it might wear when gorgeously apparelled in array of Nature's 
 own garnishing. At my feet and in the near foreground was 
 what, on ordinary days, we looked upon as the ling dulled 
 and browned by lapse and wear of the past season; in the 
 middle distance, and rising just beyond it, were the valleys 
 of the youthful Esk and the Baysdale beck, still green and 
 fringed with green, and backed by the strong slopes of the 
 Grown End and other moorland banks, all swept and charac- 
 tered by broad fields and patches of russet bracken ; and in 
 
A Study in Colours, by Nature 373 
 
 the remoter distance, just bank behind bank rising in dim 
 solemnity, and all clad in the dulled uniform brown of the 
 ling of autumn. But to-day, although the contours remained, 
 and with them the material features of the scenery throughout, 
 all else was changed. All that was everyday, commonplace, 
 dull, was refined, all that was worn and faded was renewed 
 and glorified ; and not a thing left to remind us of the old, 
 the worn, the faded, or the unbeautiful. At my feet and 
 before me was, as it were, a carpet, hundred -piled, of the 
 richest brown, such shades as I had never seen nor imagined ; 
 the greens of the valleys were become the greens — and only 
 there seen — of the sky in a gorgeous simset ; the fields and 
 sheets of bracken were spaces of "old gold" and burnished 
 gold, and all the great space behind was in vast expanses of 
 richest purple gorgeous with heaven's own perfect bloom. 
 
 If one were to characterise the district as " a District of 
 Surprises," I think it would not be very difficult to justify the 
 description. To any one who may have studied the country 
 in what may be termed the physical geography way, but little 
 in the way of justification would be required. I remember a 
 visit from one of the most accomplished men I ever knew. 
 He covered my dining-room table with the six-inch Ordnance 
 maps of this part of the country. He spent the greater part 
 of two mornings in the diligent study of them, mastering all 
 the details. And at the end of the second morning he 
 remarked, " I have got it all in my head now. To-morrow I 
 shall go here and here and here" — indicating three or four 
 high points from which, it was clear from the maps, he could 
 get a very wide out-look — " and survey the whole fashioning 
 and contour of all, and bring away a complete impression of 
 the whole as a mind-picture." 
 
 I knew well enough what his thought and feeling and idea 
 were, for I had gone through the same process myself, 
 only with worlds less of geological knowledge; and, besides 
 that, the mind-picture or plan of this immediate portion of 
 
3 74 Miscellaneous 
 
 the district which he had thus worked out for himself was 
 but a part of the mind-picture or plan which I had once on a 
 time been aided to form with respect to the entire district of 
 Cleveland. For I had seen, and been able to give some 
 amount of attention to, a most carefully and accurately con- 
 structed model of the whole area named, planned and carried 
 out on the scale and according to the lines of the Ordnance 
 Survey. All wks in proportion, the lengths and the breadths, 
 the depths of the depressions, the elevations of the heights, 
 the windings of the becks, the broader but hardly less tortuous 
 wanderings of the rivers, every physical feature of the district 
 lay there before me — on a small scale, it is true, but such and 
 so true as to enable me easily to piece together such portions 
 as I had been enabled to mark, study, and learn, according to 
 the scale of Nature's own works. 
 
 And this helped me to realise how truly the district is one 
 of surprises, and not only from the geographical point of view. 
 To illustrate this. You toil up from the depths and gullies of 
 Danby Head, and you find yourself with a wide sweep of moor 
 in front, mounting still, on the whole. You trudge or toil, as 
 the case may be, according as the ling is short or knee-deep 
 and the walking easy or beset with damp and not wholly 
 untreacherous places, and almost before you know or think 
 about it, you find an enormous area for your eye to wander 
 over. It is a clear day, and you see miles upon miles over the 
 widening, lengthening prospect. You are ready to rub your 
 eyes, and think they are playing you tricks. But it is York 
 Minster you see, separated from you by only the small linear 
 space of thirty-three miles or so. Wondering, you look on, 
 and realise that the great pile lies there before you, like a 
 huge ship at anchor on the surface, but not the extreme limit 
 of the surface, of a great, smooth, still ocean. It is central on 
 the sea, and not on the horizon. And the interpretation of 
 that is, that you are looking over and beyond York and far 
 into the more southerly distance. 
 
One peculiar Charm of the Dales Scenery 375 
 
 Or you are a pilgrim and have been visiting the unsatis- 
 factory shrine of the reputed British village, and have 
 approached it from the Waupley side ; and now you are 
 breasting the ling -covered ascent between you and the 
 Beacon — stopping for a moment, maybe, to note the stone 
 which tells in simple words that there a man, lost and 
 bewildered in a snowstorm, had been found dead, and 
 shuddering a little perhaps at the thought of finding yourself 
 in such case amid such a scene. And you climb up the last 
 and steepest part of the hill, and mounting to the summit of 
 the Beacon Hill — which has shut everything else out from 
 your sight for the last twenty or twenty-five minutes — you 
 pause and look round. And what a panorama it is that greets 
 your eyes ! Bold mountain ridge and coy shrinking dale from 
 left to right as you face the south, and spreading round so as 
 to overlap on the right side ; and then turning seaward, the 
 sea from Redcar Sands to almost Whitby, and right away out 
 to the north the coast of Durham, beyond Sunderland and 
 northward still, with an outline that seems to lose itself in the 
 dim distance beyond. And a moment since you saw but a 
 barren ling-covered moor-bank ! 
 
 But to meet with surprises of the same class, it may be, 
 but on a more limited and more appreciable, inasmuch as 
 more familiar, scale, one should prowl about on the rough 
 braes of the broken moor-banks, and within the romantic 
 fastnesses of the Dales Heads. Every twenty yards almost, as 
 you wind in and out, climb up or climb down, some new 
 feature, some new object, some new scene, something you 
 would give much to be able to photograph on the instant, and 
 carry away with you indelible for ever, simply comes to be 
 looked at ; and, as you turn aside, or press farther on in your 
 course, gives way to another, equally beautiful and equally 
 desirable in its beauty. In one word, our moorland scenery 
 needs to be lived among. 
 
LOST ON THE MOOR 
 
 "Lost on the moor!" It has an unpleasant sound at any 
 time, and under any circumstances. But lost on the moor 
 with a dense wet fog — what the Dales folks call a " roke " — 
 when you cannot see the grouse that spring into flight almost 
 at your very feet ; when your companion (if you have one), if 
 he goes ten feet away from you, is a dim object looming in 
 a mysterious way at an indeterminate distance, — that is a 
 more uninviting experience still ; but to be lost on the moor, 
 with deep snow on the ground, snow still falling in fitful 
 squalls, and an oppressive fog over and round and all about you, 
 — that is of all others the worst way of being lost on the moor ! 
 And this was the experience it once fell to my lot actually 
 to realise. 
 
 The incident was thus. It was the end of the season, and 
 I wanted a few brace of grouse, which, if not shot that day, 
 could be shot on no day at all. Certainly the moor was 
 covered with snow ; and getting near the birds under such 
 circumstances was a matter of difficulty, and only to be thought 
 of by one who did not mind walking in deep snow, and walk- 
 ing far and fast, — one well acquainted, moreover, not only with 
 the moor itself, but with the haunts of the grouse at such 
 times and under such circumstances. Well, I knew every 
 inch of the moor, and I did not mind walking it in snow ; nor 
 did I know what it was to get tired with even a long day's 
 shooting. Besides, I had one of the under-keepers with me, 
 
Caught in a dense Fog 377 
 
 who knew as well as I did the haunts of the birds, and all 
 the bearings of the moor, and the different beats which might 
 be taken with the especial object of circumventing the game ^ 
 and getting a few shots from time to time within reasonable 
 distance. Certainly the birds not only saw us as soon as we 
 ascended to the moor-level, but flew off with more decisive 
 promptitude than under ordinary circumstances at that time 
 of year. But then we had this advantage too, that we could 
 see them half a mile off, and even more than that when the 
 packs were considerable ; and we could see too whether there 
 was any chance of a successful stalk of any of the packs within 
 range of our eyesight. Suffice it to say that, sometimes by 
 coming down upon them from above, and sometimes by 
 surprising them from below, I got several shots, and very 
 nearly the same number of grouse. 
 
 We had followed a lot which had sped their way from the 
 higher part of the moor to a rather narrow tongue of moorland 
 which stretched itself downwards in the direction of the part 
 of the dale in which my house stands ; and after another suc- 
 cessful shot, we were about turning our steps in the direction 
 of the higher moor, when all at once, for we seemed to have 
 had no previous warning, we found ourselves in the midst of 
 one of the thickest snowstorms I had ever experienced, even 
 in these northern parts of the kingdom. Luckily it was not a 
 " hoddin' (holding or lasting) storm," for the snow ceased in 
 less than half an hour ; but it was succeeded, and as suddenly 
 as it had burst upon us, by a fog so dense that we could not 
 see ten yards in any direction — at times not ten feet. After 
 a pause of a few minutes to see if the fog would lift in the 
 same unforeseen and unaccountable way as the snow had come, 
 had ceased, and been succeeded by the fog, I said to my 
 companion, "Well, William, I think we shall do no more 
 
 ' This was many years before the modem system of driving had been 
 .so much as heard of. There is no difficulty now in getting birds if 
 wanted ; but thirty or forty years ago the case was veiy different. 
 
378 Miscellaneous 
 
 good to-day;" his reply being, "Neea, Ah aims it's overed for 
 to-day." And so we determined to set our faces homewards. 
 
 When this decision was taken we were on the eastern 
 verge of a lofty but narrow ridge of moorland, the utmost 
 transverse width of which at the point we stood on did not 
 greatly exceed half a mile. Our object and intention was 
 simply to cross it from east to west, and then to descend 
 slopingly, so as to reach my home by the readiest way. Even 
 if we had not been practised moorsmen, both of us, with a 
 personal knowledge of every inch of the moor for miles away, 
 we should have had no misgiving about the result. We had 
 but to set our faces with our backs to the brae we stood upon, 
 and keep on straight ahead, and fifteen minutes would take 
 us to the point we meant to reach. 
 
 But we walked thirty minutes, and still no sign of the 
 moor-edge we wanted to get to ! At last the fog seemed to 
 lift a little ; and in a minute or two we saw it was because 
 we were near the western edge of the ridge. But instead of 
 being where we had intended to be, we were at least a mile 
 farther up the ridge, and a good mile and a half from my 
 house, instead, of only three or four fields above it. 
 
 Laughing a little at our discomfiture, we proceeded to 
 retrace our steps, having to go more out on to the moor in 
 order to obtain a better trackway ; for we thought that, where 
 we were, it would be easy to skirt the moor-edge ; and we had 
 no idea but that we were skirting it as we continued our 
 trudge. But when we next came to a point at which it was 
 possible to recognise our landmarks, we found we had been 
 traversing the ridge in a north-easterly direction, and had 
 reached its verge a little above the hollow we call Coums ! 
 
 Yet once more we addressed ourselves to what was proving 
 to be rather a difiicult task ; and this time, when we came to 
 the brae again, it was at a place not more than half a mile south 
 of the intended point, and about less than a mile distant 
 from the parsonage. 
 
What being ' Lost on the Moor' means 379 
 
 Now in the course of our vagaries we had crossed the 
 Church-way twice, and another moor-road called the Mill-way 
 four times, both of them tracks which had been worn down 
 by weather and traffic to the depth of from a foot and a half 
 to nearly three feet (in places) below the level of the moor, 
 and along the side of each of which are set divers tall posts of 
 unhewn stone to act as indications of the line of the said ways ; 
 but we had crossed them without knowing we were crossing, 
 although, of course, we had to plunge through the snow with 
 which they were filled ; and as to the guide-stones, unless we 
 had almost run against them we could not have seen them for 
 the fog. So that to all intents and purposes we experienced 
 all the sensations of being lost, short only of the anxiety and 
 the sense of peril from absolute ignorance alike of which way 
 we ought to go and of the path we ought to select ; and the 
 experience was by no means a pleasant one. 
 
 Another case of "Lost on the Moor," very much more 
 real and actual than this, took place in the instance of two 
 lads very well known to me. They were boys of twelve or 
 thirteen years of age, and, as the custom was, and more then 
 than now, they had gone out "St. Thomasing," that is, visit- 
 ing the farmhouses on St. Thomas's Day (20th December) 
 and asking "Thomas's gifts." These were usually pieces of 
 " pepper-cake " (or the customary thick Christmas ginger- 
 bread), with perhaps a modicum of cheese, or a bite of cake, 
 or maybe a few halfpence. The day was dull and raw, but 
 not bitterly cold. They had reached the farm called Stormy 
 Hall, and then, finding the afternoon growing dark, and more 
 thickness setting in, they made up their minds to give up for 
 the day, and to turn their steps homewards the "soonest 
 way " they could go ; and this was to leave the fringe of 
 farmhouses that lie all along the dale just about the level of 
 the highest enclosure, and the rough road that gives the 
 means of going from one to the other all along, and making 
 up the hill slopingly in order to reach the main road running 
 
380 Miscellaneous 
 
 along the top of the ridge from Kirkby Moorside to Castleton, 
 where their parents lived. All this, however, was not made 
 out until the next day, for the poor boys had never reached 
 home. The anxiety of the parents — the boys were cousins — 
 need not be dwelt upon. 
 
 It so happened the next morning that I had to take an 
 early walk into the outlying part of the parish which Fryup 
 is, and it was near mid-day when I returned to the Parsonage. 
 Just before entering the garden from the Fryup side I heard 
 a number of voices in the lane, and presently saw the speakers 
 coming down the lane from the school. This was so unusual 
 at the time named, for twelve o'clock is invariably called 
 "dinner-time," that I knew there must be some greatly 
 exciting cause to account for this neglect of the mid-day 
 meal ; and instead of going into the house I went into the 
 road to meet the men I had seen. Nearly the first person I 
 met was a stalwart mason, then and always a great friend of 
 mine, who told me that the two boys I have mentioned had 
 never reached home, and to judge by the answers to inquiries 
 made along the line they had taken the previous afternoon, 
 they must have spent the night totally unsheltered on the 
 open moor. My friend Frank's voice shook as he told me 
 this. He was no ways related to the missing lads, but he 
 was himself the father of lads of about the same age, and there 
 was no lack of natural feeling about him. In fact he was a 
 good fellow all round. 
 
 We organised our plan of search at once, and passing in 
 loose order along the fields on the west side of the dale, we 
 made towards the moor above Stormy Hall as directly as we 
 could. We had not proceeded far before a shout came down 
 the dale, and was passed on to us in the rear with a speed 
 that seemed almost marvellous, to the effect that "one of the 
 lads had been found, and though very stiff and lame from the 
 exposure, still not materially the worse." 
 
 We soon met with further and fuller intelligence ; and it 
 
How the lost Boys spent the night 3 8 1 
 
 appeared that the boys, bewildered by the fog, which they 
 had found very dense as they ascended the moor-bank from 
 the farm, and indeed increasing in thickness the higher they 
 reached, had almost immediately, and in a way which they 
 could not explain, gone astray from the right direction ; and 
 the deviation once made, although in the clear light it might 
 seem to have been an unimportant one, yet, as always in a 
 thick fog, it had the inevitable consequence of leading step by 
 step to bewilderment. Our poor luckless little lads soon found 
 they were out of the track, and effort after effort to recover 
 it only ended in disappointment and hopeless discomfiture. 
 And then the darkness of coming night began to intensify 
 the heavy gloom of the fog. But the brave, hardy little chaps 
 did not give up or lose either heart or head in their trouble. 
 They were lost, and they must spend the night on the open 
 moor. Well then, they must make the best of it, and do what 
 they could towards making the inevitable as bearable as they 
 could. And so they looked out a hollow way worn by the 
 feet of the sheep, and dry, and sheltered by a growth of tall 
 ling ; and then they pulled some more ling to hap themselves 
 withal, and munching some of the gifts of food they had got 
 at the difi"erent farms they had visited, they prepared to spend 
 the night as comfortably as wet boots and stockings and damp 
 clothes would permit. 
 
 When the morning broke at last — and the nights are long 
 indeed towards the end of December, and even sometimes to 
 those who have more luxurious appointments than a down- 
 pressing canopy of dull grayish-white fog, with damp ling for 
 coverlet, and moist shoes and stockings, and clothes in general 
 far from dry, for sheet and blanket — only one of the two was 
 capable of movement, and he stiffly and with difiiculty. But 
 with an effort he "got hissel' scratted oop," and began to 
 think what was best to be done. As he sat and thought as 
 well as he cotdd, poor little chap, he fancied he heard the 
 tinkle of a bell, and if so, it would mean deliverance ! It was 
 
382 Miscellaneous 
 
 no sheep-bell that, if a bell at all ; but it would be the bell of 
 the leading horse of a "draught" (team), and it would lead 
 him to the high road, if only he had strength and feet to 
 struggle so far. 
 
 A minute or two, and he is assured it is a bell ; and then 
 he hears the driver speaking to his horses. Away he goes, 
 hobbling as well as he can ; but the passage of the draught 
 along the beaten road is faster than his with his numbed feet 
 over the hindering ling, and the sounds of the rescue that 
 might be are getting a little ahead of him. With a choking 
 sense of something nearer like despair than any yet, he musters 
 all his strength for a last yell, and luckily he is heard. 
 It was time ; for his strength was spent, brave little fellow 
 that he was ! The driver, who was making his early way to 
 the Rosedale Head coal-pits, stopped his draught, shouted in 
 response, and presently had the poor, chilled, footnumb, aching 
 little waif safe in his arms, hoisted him into the waggon, 
 covered him with the hay the horses were to have eaten while 
 taking in the intended load of coal, weighing it, paying for it, 
 and so forth, turned away straight back for Castleton, and 
 dropped the rescued youngster at his father's door. 
 
 But the boy had not forgotten his fellow in the night's 
 bivouac, who, moreover, as being less hardy than himself, was 
 really and sadly disabled, but had given such an account of 
 his own position when he first heard the sound of the bell, and 
 of the way he had taken in trying to intercept the draught, 
 that there was no difficulty for William Eobinson, the rescuer, 
 to give minute directions to such as he fell in with on the 
 road how to look for the lost and helpless sojourner still left 
 in his comfortless night's lodgings. And thus, before the 
 party I had joined had had more than time to spread them- 
 selves out in a long hne, each individual within hailing-distance, 
 if not sight, of his right- and left-hand neighbours, and to begin 
 our systematic search of every yard of the moor before us, the 
 news came up from behind that the boy had been found, had 
 
'■All's well that ends well ' 383 
 
 been taken down to Stormy Hall, and was there quite "safe," 
 though by no means " sound." 
 
 In half an hour's time the poor boy had more visitors than 
 ever before or since in his life. We found him near a cheery 
 farmhouse fire, were told he had enjoyed some warm milk, 
 and, except that he had for the time lost the use of his legs 
 and feet, did not seem to be materially the worse. The 
 doctor too had seen him ; for he had come riding up to join 
 the army of seekers, and was on the spot almost as soon as 
 wanted ; and had said that he must stay where he was for a 
 day or two, and then might be taken home without hurt ; and 
 that after a few days he would be as well again as ever. 
 
 But, thick as the fog was, there was more mist than could 
 be accounted for on that ground in the eyes of more than one 
 or two of the hardy rugged men who had joined in that search, 
 when we realised what exposure on a North Yorkshire moor- 
 land in a December night must be, and did not as yet even fancy 
 to ourselves that these strayed boys might have had coolness 
 enough, and bravery besides, to try, hopeless as their case 
 seemed, to do the best they could for themselves. 
 
 The brother of one of these boys paid me a visit only a 
 few months ago. He had come home from one of the most 
 distant of the English colonies to see the old place again, and 
 he came to see his old friend the parson, and our talk fell on 
 this episode among his early recollections; and we both of 
 us seemed, at even such a long time after " all had ended so 
 well," to feel what a "parlous" chance it was that his brother 
 had passed through that night he was "lost on the moor." 
 
APPENDICES 
 
 2c 
 
APPENDIX A 
 
 INCLOSUEE "WITHOUT ACT OF INOLOSURE 
 
 Certain pages are elsewhere devoted to an effort to identify the 
 site of the ancient vill of Danby.^ I am myself satisfied that the 
 identification is incontestable. But wherever the ancient vill of 
 Danby was situate, there is no shadow of doubt that, at the demise 
 of the last Brus Baron, the said vill was still extant ; and there 
 is like testimony in later Inquisitiones p. m., and correlated docu- 
 ments dealing with different parts of the Brus inheritance, that the 
 vill of Danby sustained no immediate or material alteration as to 
 site or otherwise. In short, I think there is presumptive evidence 
 that the viU. of Danby remained much as it had been, and where 
 it had been, all through the fourteenth century, and most likely 
 some way on into the fifteenth. And then came a great and final 
 change. And in strict connection with this I ask attention to the 
 following extracts from a very valuable book, namely, Scrutton's 
 Gom/mons and Common Fields : " The evils of enclosures were first 
 brought to the attention of Parliament early in the reign of Henry 
 VII, or about 1485. ... In the year 1487 the Parliament passed 
 two Acts, the one local, the other general. The local Act refers 
 to the fact that ' many towns and villages have been let down and 
 the fields ditched and made pastures for cattle.' . . . The general 
 Act — ' an Act against the pulling down of towns ' (and the word 
 ' town ' is used here in the sense of ' village ' or ' township ') — an 
 Act sometimes referred to as the Statute of Enclosures, is directed 
 against the pulling down of houses and ' the laying to pasture lands 
 which customably have been used in tilth,' and it provides that all 
 
 ' See Appendix D. 
 
388 Appendices 
 
 houses let within three years past with twenty acres of land for 
 tillage are to be maintained. This Act is confirmed and extended 
 by two Acts in 1514 and 1515. Both Acts complain of the pull- 
 ing down of towns, . . . and they require the towns decayed to he 
 re-edified within a year." 
 
 But it wiU be observed that previously to the first date men- 
 tioned, or 1485, "many towns and villages had been let down"; 
 yet it is not in every place we are enabled to see how such a state 
 of the case not so much was led on to as actually became an 
 accomplished fact. In Danby I think we can. But possibly the 
 best way for obtaining a clear view of the group of circumstances 
 involved may be by taking into consideration the historical condi- 
 tions embodied in the further extract from Mr. Scrutton's book, 
 which I proceed now to give :— 
 
 " The causes which led in the sixteenth century to the inclos- 
 ures which with the resulting discontent and rebellion play so 
 large a part in the history and literature of the time, have their 
 origin in the great plagues of the middle of the fourteenth century, 
 the Black Death, in which nearly half the population perished. 
 Prior to that date the progress of agriculture had been in the con- 
 version of waste and wood into arable land. The lord had no 
 difficulty in cultivating his demesne lands, at first by the services 
 due from his customary tenants, and when those services gradually 
 became commuted for money payments, by labourers hired with 
 his customary revenue thus accruing. But the great scarcity of 
 labourers caused by the ravages of the Black Death, and the con- 
 sequent rise in wages, averaging fifty per cent in all employments, 
 made this method of cultivation both difficult and expensive, and 
 the lords endeavoured to revert to the old customary services of 
 their tenants, now far more valuable than their money commutation. 
 This attempt to set aside the customary payments led to great dis- 
 content, and was one of the chief causes of the Peasant Eevolt of 
 1381. The Statute of Labourers, intended to compel the labourers 
 to work at the old rates, also proved unsuccessful, and the lords 
 were compelled to abandon the old lines of agriculture. After a 
 transition in which a system of leases somewhat similar to the 
 metayer tenure of the south of France was in vogue, the lord find- 
 ing stock as well as land, and the tenant returning the stock at the 
 
Progress of Inclosure 389 
 
 expiration of liis lease, a new departure was taken. Tlie lords 
 ceased to cultivate the great bulk of their demesne lands, and let 
 them out to small cultivators, at first for short terms and in small 
 plots, afterwards frequently by leases for three lives, or for twenty- 
 one years. By the middle of the fifteenth century the bulk of the 
 demesne lands both of lay owners and ecclesiastical corporations 
 were under this system of tenure." 
 
 The author then goes on to say that "after the "Wars of the 
 Roses a new element entered into English agriculture. ... A spirit 
 of trade breathed through England ; the merchants of the towns 
 turned their attention to farming, and especially to the growth and 
 export of wool. But sheep could not be reared with advantage 
 either on the open commons or on the small and scattered plots in 
 ■*hich a tenant's or a lord's land then lay, and the desire to carry 
 out sheep-farming as a commercial success led to the consolidation 
 of holdings, the conversion of arable land into pasture, and, 
 wherever it was possible by law or by violence, to the enclosure 
 of commons. With the demand for land and the almost universal 
 rise in prices came a great rise of rents ; the small freeholders and 
 they that lived by the plough found it harder and harder to gain 
 a living ; the poor men who had relied on the common for the 
 grazing of their one cow saw it surcharged by the sheep of wealthy 
 graziers, enclosed by rich nobles for their sheep-farms, or converted 
 into a park for their deer." 
 
 All this may have been, no doubt it was, true, for many if not 
 most other parts of England ; but it is eminently without founda- 
 tion for that district of England of which Danby forms a part. 
 The " common " was not " enclosed," is not now. The " small 
 freeholders and those who lived by the plough " did not " find it 
 harder and harder to gain a living " ; on the contrary, they made 
 and saved money to such an extent that when the land on which 
 they had lived came into the market in the first half of the seven- 
 teenth century, more than one hundred and twenty of them 
 covenanted to buy the plots they had farmed. And the great lord 
 did not "convert the common into a park for his deer," and for 
 the best of all possible reasons — he had his wide, far-spreading 
 park and warren already, and was as strongly desirous to convert 
 the available portions of it into small or medium-sized farms as 
 
390 Appendices 
 
 the would-be tenants themselves could be. And indeed I am very 
 doubtful about the conclusive applicability of much of the former 
 quotation — exclusive of the historical data — to the individual case 
 of Danby. For instance, I feel no assurance that there was any 
 lord's demesne at Danby at all, and if there were none, then there 
 could be no endeavour to "revert to the old customary services of 
 the tenants." It is quite true there were in the last quarter of the 
 thirteenth century fifty-six bovates of land held in villenage in the 
 township. But if we may trust the document from which this 
 information is obtained (the " Partitio inter hseredes Petri de Brus"),i 
 the commuted value of each to the lord was 5s. And there were 
 also no less than twenty-two liheri tenentes or freeholders, such as 
 freeholders were at that date ; for it is expressly said of them, 
 " Omnes isti liberi prKsoripti tenent per cartam." But there is no 
 mention made of demesne land ; ^ and naturally, for the Capitale 
 Mesuagium itself was a ruin, and the residence of the baron was, 
 and had been for almost a century and a half, at Skelton. 
 
 But the incongruities between the Danby facts and the writer's 
 theory and assumptions are alike interesting and instructive. 
 Granted that the lord did not here " cease to cultivate the great 
 bulk of his demesne lands," nor " let them out to small cultivators," 
 for the good and sufficient reason that there were none (or next to 
 none) to let in that way, still the fact remains that a large propor- 
 tion of the land in the township was, if not exactly " let for short 
 terms or by lease " for any specified number of years, yet held of 
 the lord per cartam, or in virtue of a written grant or charter. 
 
 ^ The document is injured by time, if not wear, and tliere are many blanlss 
 in it ; and I am inclined to think that in some, if not several cases, the 
 blanks are large enough to suggest the supposition that divers names are lost. 
 Still, there are twenty-two yet legible. 
 
 '- In writing thus I wish to limit the meaning of the terms "in demesne" 
 simply to what is implied in Mr. Scrutton's words quoted above, namely, 
 "The lord found no difficulty in cultivating his demesne lands," qualified as 
 that is by the subsequent sentence, "on the small and scattered plots in 
 which a tenant's or a lord's lands then lay." Of course I am aware that at 
 the date referred to mainly, or 1271, among the fees of the late Peter de Brus, 
 in the Inquisitio thereanent taken, Danby, viewed as the equivalent of ' ' one 
 fee," is returned as held in doniinico. But the meaning there is one thing 
 and that of "held in demesne," as in Mr. Scrutton's words, is another. 
 
Progress of Inclosure 391 
 
 And it is wortli noting that while the acknowledgments rendered 
 — not the rents paid — by these Vtheri varied in the most extraor- 
 dinary manner, or from 4s. for one carucate, 4s. 2d. for another 
 carucate, 3s., 4s., or 5s. for a bovate, to 30s. for twenty-five acres, 
 23s. for thirty acres, or a bovate or half a score acres for two barbed 
 arrow-heads (or, it might be, up to half a dozen), still the total 
 amount so held was already, taking all into consideration, very 
 considerable.^ For, taking the carucate as roughly representing the 
 area of 100 acres, the record quoted from, imperfect as it is, yet 
 gives a total of 625 acres as in the hands of the M6e«, a fact to be 
 collated with the further fact that there were fifty-six bovates in 
 villenage ; for it means that, while all the old carucatage, and indeed 
 distinctly more than that, remains, nearly as much more has been 
 added to the arable total, every acre of which has been added as 
 the result of essarting or clearing, inclosing and cultivating, what 
 had previously been forest, thwaite, or waste. 
 
 I do not think that, allowing only for the considerations, historic 
 and other, which have so far been adduced, this is an arbitrary or 
 unailthorised deduction. On the contrary, I hold it to be inevit- 
 able rather than only simply warranted. But there are other 
 considerations yet which tend to exactly the same conclusion. 
 
 There were in all, as elsewhere stated, certainly not less than 
 165 several farmholds, messuages, or tenements in the general 
 parish of Danby (inclusive, that is, of Lealholm and Glaisdale) 
 when the estate was sold out in allotments in 1656 ; indeed, I 
 am quite certain there were many more than the number stated, 
 for there are many counterparts of conveyances which are, the 
 moment attention is given to the inquiry, conspicuous only by their 
 absence. Why or how is a matter of speculation, perhaps of sus- 
 
 ^ The circumstance here noted Is one that ought not to be passed by totally 
 unnoted. In the earlier part of the document it is stated that there are fifty- 
 si.x bovates held in villenage, or, in other words, seven carucates. Over an4 
 above this area of cultivated land we have to reckon nearly or quite six 
 carucates niore as held by the free men, making a total of thirteen carucates 
 at the least. This is a result to be collated with the Domesday Record, which 
 gives six carucates as the total amount of cultivable land in the township of 
 Danby in and for some indefinite time after the year 1087. The progress of 
 reclamation and improvement which had been made iu the two centuries 
 between 1087 and 1271 had indeed been a marked as well as a real one. 
 
39^ Appendices 
 
 picion, but it is unquestionably a fact. And from my local know- 
 ledge and examination I should be inclined to say that, allowing 
 for cottages with their garths, and small holdings such as would be 
 called cow-keepings now, the total number of messuages or tene- 
 ments would certainly fall very little (if at all) short of two hundred, 
 of which at least three-fifths would be in Danby proper. 
 
 But while the greater part of these conveyances show the traces 
 of general, as well as of internal or divisional inclosure, and much 
 of the latter as more or less recent, several of them attest the fact 
 that some specified act of inclosure was not as yet complete ; that, 
 in fact, it was still proceeding, and proceeding, moreover, not in 
 the way of an underhand or illicit act, stUL less as an encroachment, 
 but as an overt and publicly recognised act. And one of them for- 
 tunately preserves for us a delineation of the process and means 
 employed, for it not only directs the " fencing in " of a certain close 
 called the "Moore Close," but adds that the said "fencing in" is 
 to be done "as it was formerly sett forth by the Bailiff'e and Officers 
 for Sir John Danvers, late lord of Danby aforesaid." 
 
 This is a singularly significant clause. As long ago as 1886 I 
 drew attention to the facts that inclosures from the waste were 
 familiar things in quite the early part of the seventeenth century 
 in the pariah of Egton, and that such inclosures or " encroach- 
 ments" were made by and with the consent of the lord {North 
 Biding Records, vol. i. pp. 154, 155), but through the action of 
 what machinery, or how the assent and consent of the lord were 
 given, I did not know, and only surmised. " As it was sett forth 
 by the Bailiffe and Ofiicers for the lord " revealed the whole pro- 
 cedure, for the bailiff and the officers exist to this day, and their 
 functions are as real and living as in the seventeenth century. 
 Encroachments on the common and settings forth by the bailiff and 
 officers for the lord have been made and done twice within the last 
 quarter of a century, in the case of the North Yorkshire and Cleve- 
 land Railway, and of its projected " extension." In both cases 
 strips of the waste were required for the construction of the lines 
 named, and in both cases the bailiff and the officers for the lord 
 marked out or set forth the portion to be taken. 
 
 For there is no reason to doubt that the "bailiff and the jury" 
 of the present day are the surviving representatives of the " bailiff 
 
Progress of Inclosure 393 
 
 and the officers " of two centuries and a half ago, or that the last- 
 named body were the descendants and successors of a like body, 
 dating not only from the reconstitution of the manor under de 
 Brus, but in all probability from an earlier date still, ante-dating 
 even the manerium or predial domicile, with its appurtenances, 
 which preceded the day of Edward the Confessor. 
 
 But if we set ourselves to look steadily through the vista thus 
 opened up to us, what we look upon is' a series of grants, each 
 protected per cartam, or — if not rather, and — of concessions, each 
 formally set forth and approved by the bailiff and the officers for 
 and on behalf of the lord, and each eventuating in — not delimita- 
 tion merely, but — actual fencing or inclosing ; and "dry-stone walls" 
 had become the means of definition and protection long before the 
 year of grace 1656 ; nay, some of the tenements of these liberi 
 homines of 1271 not simply remain — for they all doubtless do that — 
 to this day, but admit of recognition and identification. Such, for 
 instance, is eminently the case with the carucate held by the " heir 
 of Robert Stormy," while Matthew of Glaphoue's carucate and 
 Robert Forester's "xxv. acres" admit at least of shrewd guesses 
 as to their locality. 
 
 But admitting and correlating the facts that up to 1271 fifty- 
 six bovates continued to be held in villenage ; that besides some 
 six hundred acres were held per cartam by some five-and-twenty 
 free men, all the result of grant and concession by the lord ; that 
 the process of grant and concession, beyond all possibility of ques- 
 tion, continued to prevail, and in the systematised and regulated 
 form in which we recognise it nearly three hundred years ago ; 
 that the vill of Danby did cease to be, and so long ago and so 
 efi'ectually that no scrap of tradition even remains, or has remained 
 for many generations, tending to so much as suggest that there had 
 ever been a former vill of Danby ; that a scanty fringing line of 
 houses, all detached and all farmhouses (in some sense and as to 
 their original intention), sprang up aU round the sides of our dales, 
 just at or just below the line of inclosure, or where the farm-lands 
 cease and the moor-bank begins ; that these, up to the commence- 
 ment of the present century, have been the exclusive abodes of the 
 population of Danby, there having been up to that date neither 
 " villa " nor hamlet properly so called in the parish, — reviewing all 
 
394 Appendices 
 
 these considerations, and collating them the one with the other, it 
 is not too much to conclude that it is a very safe procedure to connect 
 the "letting down" of the vill of Danby (or the "pulling down" 
 of the " town " so called) with the allotment of these daleside farms 
 and the construction of new homesteads upon them ; and to localise — 
 nay, rather, to identify — some of the sites of those old-world home- 
 steads with the sites of these quaint old wrecks and ruinous 
 skeletons which still maintain a precarious being ; if not, indeed, 
 to claim some of the most venerable of them as tottering survivals 
 of human habitations four, or maybe nearer five, centuries old. 
 
APPENDIX B 
 
 GEOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS 
 
 From whatever point of view considered, the bed of laminated 
 clay, with intercalated seamlets of very fine sand, is a most remark- 
 able feature in the general aspect of the district.^ It is, moreover, 
 of considerable thickness. The principal cutting in one place could 
 not be less than thirty to thirty-five feet in vertical depth on its 
 northern side, and a very considerable proportion of the whole 
 gave iTp this kind of clay to the digger's spade. But what a 
 revelation this involves of the manner and the duration of the act 
 of its deposit ! In the first place, the sediment which, by its falling 
 from the water holding it in suspension, had formed those enormous 
 deposits must have fallen from water which was practically quite 
 undisturbed over a wide area, and for considerable periods of time 
 together ; succeeded, however, in every instance by other periods, 
 
 ' A very little reflection or a small amount of observation is sufficient to 
 convince the inquirer that these alternate laminations of fine sand and 
 impalpable clay must have been deposited, so to speak, in pairs. First the 
 sand would be dropped, inasmuch as, however fine its particles, they were still 
 larger than the impalpable argillaceous matters on which the clayey part of 
 the deposit depended. In the next place, the lapse of a certain amount of 
 time must be postulated before the commencement of another pair of lamina ; 
 because otherwise — that is, if the last thin layer of clay had not had time to 
 become definitely consolidated — it would have been liable to disturbance 
 destructive of its regularity, if not of its being, by the irruption of another 
 volume of water like to that to which it owed its own being. As a matter 
 of fact, we seem to be required to assume the existence of a large body of 
 water, and of considerable depth, free from disturbance by currents or streams 
 for considerable periods together, but liable to periodical invasions of verj' 
 large volumes of water holding in suspension proportionably large amounts 
 of argillaceous and arenaceous matters. 
 
39^ Appendices 
 
 whether more or fewer, more or less frequent or infrequent, during 
 which fresh matter for like suspension was worn fine by attrition, 
 and gathered up by water in turbulent motion, ready to be 
 deposited at the iirst ensuing and convenient season. And when 
 that convenient season, a season of stagnancy, caipe, the sand would 
 fall first, and then, more leisurely, the clayey particles. And as 
 such consecutive deposits must have alternated in thousands of 
 successions, with intervals of quietness, the mind is led on to the 
 contemplation of a period of time which bafiies calculation, during ' 
 which the state of things I saw in that mimic valley-and-dale-fiUing 
 flood must have been the standing rule. And this is a conclusion 
 which provokes rather than suggests the inquiry. Was there or was 
 there not a great collection of water, a fresh-water lake, of several 
 miles in length but only narrow in width — a couple of miles or so, 
 or not much more — filling the vale which is now the valley of the 
 Esk, and the outlying dales and gills and slacks on either side of 
 it ; and if so, how far down did the lake in question extend % 
 
 Now it is not a little noteworthy that the Esk in leaving what 
 might have been just snch a lake-bed five or six miles in length, 
 does so by breaking through a very narrow and rugged ravine, 
 cleft out between closely approximating heights on either side at 
 least 175 feet above the level of its bed. Taking the contours of 
 the six-inch Ordnance Survey as our authority, the river-bed at 
 this point is between 300 and 315 feet above the sea-level. The 
 heights on either side, and scarcely more than two hundred yards 
 apart, are 500. The inference is almost inevitable. Time was 
 when these closely adjacent heights were united, forming an adequate 
 dam for the support of the great body of still water required for 
 the depositing of all that vast mass of finely laminated clay that is 
 met with some three or four miles higher up the valley in deep 
 beds, and that shows itself from time to time, where not swept 
 away by subsequent degradation, at many intermediate points. 
 
 But the pursuit of this inquiry, interesting as it is, should by 
 no means make the inquirer oblivious of yet another — " How came 
 about this marked configuration of the district, these narrow ridges 
 of lofty moorland and constricted depressions of deep ^ dales for 
 
 ' Some idea of the comparative depth of the dales may be collected from 
 the old nomenclature of certain portions or divisions of more than 
 
Local Geology ig-j 
 
 the water to collect and remain, in with lengthened periods of 
 freedom from disturbance?" Certainly a giant's hand with ii 
 sufficient number of abnormal fingers might impress itself on the 
 soft paste of a big bread-cake in its state of preparation for the 
 oven ; and a sufficiently big and misshapen giant-hand might be 
 squeezed into a mountain mass of plastic clay. But the material 
 indicated in our inquiry was not plastic clay. It contained or con- 
 sisted of materials too intractable to submit to pressure, even if 
 applied with Titanic force : such materials as freestone rock in 
 beds of forty, fifty, sixty feet in depth, jet-shale rock as thick or 
 thicker still, bands of ironstone, seams of dogger, besides many a 
 series of thinner strata of sandstone, indurated earth, and such like. 
 No amount of pressure would have sufficed in such a case, and 
 Titanic fingers, pointed with nails of the diamond-borer description, 
 would have wanted renewing an inconvenient number of times 
 before their wearer could have grubbed out even one of the shorter 
 dales, to say nothing of all of them, and the big central valley to 
 boot. But still, there must have been some grubbing or eroding 
 agency at work ; and there are certain conclusions as to its nature 
 which are not far to seek or hard to arrive at. For the indications 
 of glacial action are sufficiently plentiful in this district. It is 
 one thing, however, to speak of glacial action, and quite another to 
 show how it may be made to account for the facts before our 
 attention. Now there are the evidences of the presence of ice and 
 
 one of them. Thus, in Ingleby Greenhow there is a local division or 
 sub-district called Greenhow Botton, of which Graves in his History of 
 Cleveland says : " It is significantly called Greenhowe Bottom, it being 
 a narrow secluded vale, so deeply intrenched with mountains that (like some 
 parts of Borrowdale in Cumberland) in the depth of winter the sun never 
 shines." Graves writes "Bottom"; but the word really is "Botton," and 
 has been written with the n (not m) from a very early period, there being 
 two or three documents in the Cartularium of Gysburne Priory, dating early 
 in the thirteenth century, preserving the form Bothine. For there is a 
 Botton in Danby also, named in the charters just referred to ; and in this 
 case, while the beck runs along fields 500 to 525 feet above the sea, the moor- 
 bank on the west rises to 1200 feet, and that on the other side to nearly 
 1300. The original word is Icelandic hotn, and it is applied to the head of a 
 bay, lake, dale, or the like, the compound word dals-botn being a word of 
 actual oocun-ence. Moreover, Vigfnssen remarks that "Botn" is a local 
 name still in Iceland. 
 
398 Appendices 
 
 the action of ice in powerful moving masses, in many a place 
 throughout the district, and just out of it — to deal only with one 
 set of evidences at present — on the broad unfurrowed surface of 
 the moors ; unfurrowed, I mean, by such plough-marks as these 
 valleys and dales of ours in reality constitute. The big ioe-borne 
 blocks or boulders — there are some of Shapfell granite even on the 
 Plyingdales moors not far from the Peak, to say nothing of multi- 
 tudes of others of a different nature, and much less travelled — these 
 big ice-borne rocks testify with forcible evidence to the presence 
 and the carrying power of the ice, but also, by their mere presence 
 where they are, to the fact that the ice passed over their present 
 sites without grubbing everything up in its passage. Why, then, 
 should it have grubbed and eroded or dug out just where it did, 
 and there only — I mean, in our dales and valleys ? I take it that 
 the answer is the same in the case of that slow-moving stream, the 
 ice-stream or glacier, as in the more quickly moving one of running 
 water, whether it be the trickling of a gentle brook or the furious 
 rushing of a mighty torrent ; namely,' that it moves along in a 
 track already marked out for it, if not actually prepared, by 
 previous processes, natural or other. And here let the modern 
 scientific geologist step in to help us. with the solution of our 
 inquiry. " The initial origin of these valleys," he says, " seems to 
 be referable to lines of fracture produced by the elevating force i 
 
 ^ It may be "better to make what is here quoted a little plainer by repro- 
 ducing what had been previously advanced : " The liassio strata in Cleveland 
 have a general dip south-east at a low angle. , . . This dip becomes changed, 
 south of the Guisborough Hills, by the influence of the master anticlinal that 
 stretches in an easterly direction by Botton Head in Ingleby Greenhow, 
 Blakey Topping, etc., along which the liassic rooks attain their greatest 
 elevation, and which form the watershed between the Humber and the Tees. 
 Parallel to this on the north and south are synclinal axes — the northern one 
 allowing the liassic rocks to appear on the coast, and the southern, more 
 remote, forming the basin of the vale of Pickering — the one drained by the 
 Esk, the other by the Derweut. Along the western escarpment the Lias has 
 also a slight diji to the east, and in the south this is lost, and the beds have 
 a north-westerly dip. They would thus form half a basin were it not lor 
 the above-mentioned anticlinal. This is also crossed by another at right 
 angles to it, and of less consequence, as it scarcely affects the northern 
 synclinal, and has its axis in Danby Ridge. The bases of the dales thus fornr 
 a 'saddle.' These dales form a very interesting feature in the geology of 
 
Local Geology 399 
 
 along the anticlinal axis. . . . The denudation has taken place 
 along the lines of fracture. The heads of many of the dales are 
 but lines of fracture still, notably that of Baysdale, as also of 
 Bransdale and Bilsdale East ; farther down their course the 
 general denudation has widened them ; but in some cases, as they 
 encounter the oolite again, they are narrowed into gorges, as in 
 Glaisdale, East Arncliff, Baysdale, Bransdale, and Rosedale. With 
 regard to the epoch of their excavation, we must remark that the 
 boulder-clay scarcely reaches higher than 350 feet in the North 
 Riding, and thus that those dales which do not descend so low are 
 free from \\. At the bases of them, however, are great mounds of 
 sandy clay, with various-sized rather water-worn stones of local 
 origin, as at Ainthorpe, Fryup End, and Glaisdale End, which, 
 from their unstratified appearance, seem best accounted for by 
 glacial action. And as we descend lower in the same Esk valley 
 the blocks become larger, and we reach, near Grosmont, true 
 boulder-clay with foreign blocks. It would seem, then, that these 
 valleys were excavated before the glacial epoch, but that they were 
 scoured out during it by the ice, which left its accumulations in 
 mounds at the ends." 
 
 Yes, no doubt one must conclude that there must have been a 
 period, or periods, of upheaval, lasting perhaps through seon after 
 aeon, accompanied and followed by great tumults of waters. That 
 seems to be what our imagination has to make effort to picture in 
 conceiving the origin of our dales ; the upheaval forming long 
 ridges and blunt mountain-tops here, rupturing the struggling 
 crust there with rendings and fissures and cracks ; and the startled 
 waters fleeing before the rising hills, and forcing their way of 
 escape along the chasms which afi'orded them the readiest passage ; 
 and the process was renewed from period to period, as the throes 
 
 Yorkshire. They are true liassic inliers of the general form of an elongated 
 ellipse, with the axis nearly N.N.E. in the northern, and N.N.W. in 
 the southern. They have picturesque precipitous sides formed by the 
 massive oolites which cap tlie Lias. None of them are connected by liassic 
 surface rocks, except Glaisdale and Eskdale. The streams that draiu them 
 have, of course, a greater fall than the dip of the rocks from the anticlinal 
 at the head of the dales ; but both in the southern and northern series the 
 fall becomes afterwards less than the dip, and they flow over the edges of 
 higher rocks " {The Yorkshire Lias, by Tate and Blake). 
 
400 Appendices 
 
 of the great movement were renewed ; and, in the intervals the 
 slower but not less sure workings of what we speak of as the 
 drainage, the natural drainage, of a district. Only time is 
 demanded, and the power of water to erode, to eat away by slow 
 degrees — why, it is a proverb in many languages. And of time in 
 the cycles of the past Infinite there was no lack. 
 
 Then again, other epochs or seons, or fractions of the same 
 mysterious Infinite, and another flood is upon the oppressed surface, 
 the great ice-flood of the Glacial Period ; and its slow streams 
 leisurely drifting down the chasms already fashioned by the water- 
 floods complete the excavating process, and leave the rough model 
 of our dales system to be worked into final finish by the finer finger- 
 work of time and the elements, vegetation and decay, until, in the 
 end, we see the romantic acclivities, the beautiful contours, the 
 strangely harmonising hues, that go to' make the great charm of 
 the scenery of the " Dales District." 
 
APPENDIX C 
 
 GLANCES AT A MOORLAND PARISH (AS PART OF A 
 DISTRICT) FROM A PRE -DOMESDAY POINT OF VIEW 
 
 In the absence of any historical writing earlier than Domesday- 
 dealing ever so slightly with the parish in question, such a heading 
 as this may seem at first sight rather fanciful ; and yet it may 
 prove possible to elicit from the very brief and apparently inex- 
 plicit Domesday statements touching the parish, and the district it 
 belongs to, some gleams of light and information as to its earlier 
 condition. And these faint indications may possibly admit of 
 weighty corroboration from a certain series of facts and observations 
 which may be alleged in support of them. 
 
 I have styled the Domesday entry as "brief and inexplicit"; 
 perhaps " meagre " might have been a better, because a more 
 descriptive, term. And this is true, although there are in point 
 of fact two entries. The first of them, which is met with in its 
 proper place, appears to have been blundered in the making, and 
 is therefore repeated at the close of the special section it belongs to, 
 and so is out of its proper place. I give the first exactly so far as 
 it is obviously correct, and then I append the second. They are 
 both found in that part of the book which deals with " Terra 
 Hugonis filii Baldrici," on ff. lix.-lxi. of the Yorkshire Facsimile : — 
 " MANERIUM. In Crumbeclive habuit Orm v carucatas terrse 
 ad geldum : terra ad duas carucas. Ibi habet Hugo [filius Baldrici] 
 nunc i villanum et v bordarios cum i caruca. Berewicse hae per- 
 tinent ad hoc Manerium : — Danebi, Lelun. . . . Silva pastilis iii 
 leugas longa, et iii leugas lata. Totum Manerium vii leugas 
 
 2d 
 
402 Appendices 
 
 longum, et iii leugas et iv quarantenas latum. T. R. E. valebat 
 Ix solidos : modo iii solidos." 
 
 " MANERIUM & BEREWICiE. In Crumbeolive & Lelun & 
 Danebi habuit Orm xii carucataa terrse ad geldum. Terra est ad 
 iv carucas. Hugo habet, et waata est. Silva paatilis iii leiigas 
 longa, et iii lata. Totum Manerium vii leugas longum, et iii 
 latum." 
 
 There is, as we perceive, no essential difference between the two 
 entries as regards the material statement made. Crumbeclive (now 
 Crunkley) was the manerium, and Danby and Lelun (now Lealholm) 
 held the subordinate position of berewics to the same. Orm had 
 held it previously to the Conquest, but it was now in the tenure of 
 Hugh PitzBaldric.i In the entire territory, including the two 
 dependencies as well as the capital manor, there were twelve caru- 
 cates of land liable to geld ; of these, five were at Crumbeclive, six 
 at Danby, and one at Lealholm, these figures being obtained from 
 the close of the entry touching the fee of Robert de Brus. But it 
 is specially to be remarked that, although the land liable to geld 
 amounts to five carucates at Crumbeclive, it is such, or in such a 
 condition, as to furnish work for but two full plough-teams, and 
 that is for twice eight animals, mainly oxen, if not exclusively so. 
 
 It is true the whole manor, with its appendages, is described as 
 " waste " ; but still there must be something more than that implied 
 in the statement of fact just noted. Under ordinary circumstances 
 arable land, the crops upon which have been wasted, still remains 
 
 1 "Hugh the son of Baldric succeeded "William Malet in the sheriffdom of 
 Yorkshire, and his name figures in the legend of the foundation of Selby 
 Abbey " (see Freeman's Norman Conquest, vol. iv. p. 571). It does not seem 
 to be absolutely certain that he was Vicecomes of Yorkshire, but ' ' inasmuch 
 as he is mentioned in the Lincolnshire Domesday as ' Hugo filius Baldrici 
 Vicecomes,' he was certainly sheriff somewhere, and it is very possible that 
 he may have been appointed Sheriff of Yorkshire late in 1069, after the 
 capture of William Malet " {ibid. p. 787). That he was a man of importance 
 as well as of large possessions is amply apparent. His Yorkshire fee is a 
 considerable one, and he seems to have had one hardly less in Lincoln- 
 shire ; besides which, he held lands in Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, and 
 Nottinghamshire. His son-in-law Wido is mentioned in the details given 
 touching the Lincolnshire fee, but nothing seems to be known of the circum- 
 stances under which his fees reverted to the king, as it is evident they did in, 
 Yorkshire, probably by death without male heir. 
 
Pre-Domesday Glances 403 
 
 in such state that the plough may be reinserted from the moment 
 the cultivator finds himself in the position to resume agricultural 
 operations. It was otherwise here. There were five carucates, or, 
 in other words, tillage-land adequate in quantity to occupy five 
 plough-teams in its cultivation ; but, as things were, there was but 
 work for two-fifths of that number of beasts of draught. Whatever 
 the explanation, which, however, is not, I think, far to seek, three 
 out of the five carucates were practically no longer " arable " ; they 
 did not submit to the insertion of the plough. The land had been 
 wasted seventeen or eighteen years before, and Nature had reasserted 
 her sway ; thorns and whins, bushes and briers, were now growing, 
 and growing rankly, in places where, previously to the wasting, the 
 toils of the husbandman had met with no undue resistance and no 
 ungrateful return. 
 
 But this circumstance comes out in stiU jdarker relief when we 
 direct our attention to the corresponding figures regarding the 
 whole extent of geldable land comprised within the specified limits. 
 There were twelve carucates in all, and only work for four full 
 plough-teams. Two of these, as we have seen, were at the head 
 manor ; the other two must be spread over the area involving the 
 other seven carucates — one in Lealholm, six in Danby. 
 
 Still, it is brought to our notice that, at Crumbeclive at least, 
 there Wcis not a totally desolate and depopulated district. Hugh, the 
 lord, had there one villan and five bordars, who between them 
 owned a plough-team. But for them, the labours of the husband- 
 man had ceased out of the land. 
 
 But this, although a sufSciently noteworthy circumstance in itself, 
 is not the circumstance on account of which the preceding extracts 
 from Domesday were brought forward. There are two others yet 
 to be noticed, and, as matters involving certain contemporary statis- 
 tics, to be collated with certain other statistics of the same nature, 
 only belonging to the present time. What I mean is the alleged 
 extent of the syhia pastilis or pasturalis, and its relative amount in 
 comparison with the total alleged area of the totum mamerium^ or 
 entire manorial domain. The former is stated to have been three 
 leugce long by as many broad, while the latter is described as seven 
 leugx in length by three (or three and a half, in the other entry) 
 in breadth. 
 
404 Appendices 
 
 It is certainly requisite in the outset to try and obtain as 
 clear an understanding as possible of the significance attaching to 
 the terms employed in the quotation under notice ; and this is 
 eminently the case with the terms i-ijlva pastilis and leuga. 
 
 As to the former, there can be little, if any, doubt, even if the 
 conditions implied by the very words employed had not continued 
 to exist down to the very close of the last century, and in a much 
 less modified form than might have been supposed inevitable. 
 Thus, while a fine between John, Prior of Guisboroiigh, and Peter 
 de Brus (probably the third of the name i), made in Easter term 
 1242, testifies to the fact that there was then silva pasturalis in 
 "the Park beneath the Castle of Danby" — that is, the original 
 Brus stronghold at Castleton — and in four launds or lawns in the 
 Forest of Danby besides, the fact of the inclosure and partition of 
 these launds, effected mainly during the last century, and not very 
 early in it, remains to prove the enormous proportion of the area 
 of the said launds,^ and the enduringness of the silva pasturalis 
 condition. 
 
 As to the second term noted, or leuga, it is difficult to conceive 
 a measure admitting of such an extremely vague and uncertain 
 value ; perhaps, indeed, it would be more correct to say embodying 
 such a very indefinite estimate ; because in these Cleveland entries 
 it is obvious not only that the assumed dimensions of a manor — 
 the totum manerium — -.depended on an estimate, but that that 
 
 ^ It has not been positively ascertained when Peter de Brus the second 
 actually died. There seems to be little doubt, however, that he went to the 
 Holy Laud in 1241, and none, I believe, that his son Peter the third paid 
 relief on succeeding to his father's lands in 1240. The probable explanation of 
 this fact is that, in view of his projected expatriation, arrangements were made 
 in virtue of which Peter the third became de facto regnant baron, notwithstand- 
 ing his father's actual continued existence. Indeed, simply as embracing a 
 religious life, Peter the second would have placed his son in precisely the same 
 position, It is probable, therefore, on this wise, that it was the third and 
 last Peter de Brus who made the fine quoted iu the text. 
 
 '^ The continued existence of such local names as Danby Lawns, Lealholm 
 Lawns, Glaisdale Lawns, Lawns Gate, Lawns House, over and above the 
 Low Wood, is sufficient to attest the importance and the extent alike of 
 the lawns element in the former Forest of Danby. The Low Wood alone, 
 inclosed and partitioned barely a century ago, contained ni arly three hundred 
 acres. 
 
Pre-Domesday Glances 405 
 
 estimate depended, in too many instances, on the merest, most 
 informationless guess. To illustrate this point, I take the entry 
 touching the manor adjoining Danby on the east side — that of 
 Egton, namely. It is as follows : " In Egetune ad geldum iii 
 carucatee, et tot carucse possunt esse. Ibi habuit Suuen i manerium. 
 Nunc habet Nigellus de Comite (Moretoniensi). Silva pastilis iii 
 leugas longa et ii lata. Totum manerium iii leugas longum et ii 
 latum. T.R.E. valebat xx solidos : modo wastum est." 
 
 For purposes of my own — publication, in fact, in the History of 
 Cleveland which I was then preparing — I made the most careful 
 and accurate estimate I possibly could of the superficial area of the 
 various parishes in the district, availing myself in the process of 
 the careful measurements and delineations given in the six-inch 
 Ordnance Survey ; and in the case of Egton I wrote : " From 
 north to south — the shape of the parish being something that of 
 an irregular four-sided figure — the medium length is about six 
 miles, with an average breadth exceeding three miles and a half." 
 Now, if we assume the leuga to represent a measure of a mile and 
 a half, the estimate thus given coincides with the Domesday estimate 
 with rather a singular correspondence. The four leugoe of length 
 are exactly six miles, and the two of breadth three miles. But 
 then, as regards the Danby district, my like estimate made on the 
 same occasion, and with the same punctilious effort for approximate 
 accuracy, was stated as follows : " The shape of this large tract is 
 that of an irregular five-sided trapezoid, having the least side for 
 its southern boundary. The greatest length from north to south 
 is not less than seven miles, while the medium breadth can scarcely 
 be stated as very much less than six, the diagonals from north-west 
 to south-east and north-east to south-west being respectively eight 
 miles and a half and seven and a half." 
 
 But taking the Domesday figures, seven leugce long by three in 
 width, and assuming the same dimensions of the leuga as at 
 Egton — that is, a mile and a half — the result we arrive at is ten 
 miles and a half long by four and a half wide ; the discrepancy 
 between which and the reality is only too striking. Nor does the 
 discrepancy become less when we ignore the striking difference 
 between the shape of the district as presented in the Domesday 
 estimate and as marked out in my description. In the former it 
 
4o6 Appendices 
 
 is almost twice as long as it is broad ; in tlie other, five-sided and 
 not much greater in length than in breadth. 
 
 Moreover, if we proceed to test the accuracy of the two estimates 
 in the most practical way possible, namely, by ascertaining the 
 exact number of square miles contained, as shown by the ascer- 
 tained acreage, the discrepancy noted becomes more noteworthy 
 still. The actual acreage as given in the Ordnance maps is 
 22,853 acres ; which represents a total of thirty-five square miles 
 and seven -tenths within a very small fraction. This shows my 
 estimate, or seven miles by about five and a half, giving a total of 
 thirty-eight square miles and a half, to be excessive to the extent 
 of nearly three square miles, while the Domesday estimate, or 
 forty-seven square miles and a quarter, is excessive by no less than 
 nearly twelve. 
 
 So that, even if the length of the measure called the huga 
 or Uiica, admitted of actual delimitation, still the vagueness 
 with which it is applied in this part of Domesday would deprive 
 it of any statistical value. But then it seems not to admit of any 
 hard-and-fast delimitation, as will be seen from the following 
 extract from Bawdwen's Domesday Glossary (which might be other- 
 wise supplemented) : " Leuga or leuca is a measure of land con- 
 sisting of 1500 paces. Ingulphus tells us it is 2000 paces. In 
 the Monasticon it is 480 perches, which is a mile. . . . Leuca 
 autem Anglica 12 quarantenis conficitur, according to Spelman." 
 Skeat notices the word as follows : " Latin leuca (sometimes leuga), 
 a Gallic mile of 1500 Roman paces : a word of Celtic derivation." 
 The Roman pace, however, was about, or perhaps precisely, five 
 feet, which gives us 7500 feet or 2500 yards as the linear measure 
 of a leuga ; and in connection with the assumed mile and half 
 as the estimated length of a leuga, taken above as admitting of 
 tentative use, it is to be remarked that, the number of yards in 
 a mile and half being precisely 2640, the specific difi'erence between 
 it and the 2500 yards just named is but inconsiderable. And in 
 all probability this is, approximately, as near the Domesday 
 measure intended to be indicated by the word leuga as we shall 
 be likely to attain. 
 
 There is yet another term employed in all these Domesday 
 returns, as touching geldable extent, which calls for at least passing ■ 
 
Pre -Domesday Glances 407 
 
 attention ; and that is " carucate." This term is universally taken 
 as signifying the quantity of land which could be adequately tilled 
 — in the usual agricultural year, of course — by the labour of a full 
 team of draught beasts — oxen mainly, or oxen and horses, eight in 
 number. 
 
 But any one the least conversant with the most elementary 
 agricultural details at once recognises the fact that, if this is a 
 trustworthy definition, it involves elements of almost endless 
 variation. An acre of land of one particular description — that is, 
 light or free-working land, sandy in its composition rather than 
 clayey — may be ploughed with two horses much more easily than 
 an acre of land, the soil of which is "stiff" or "heavy," which has 
 much clay in its composition, can with three horses. And the 
 fact is even so. The carucate varies in different districts, and even 
 in different parts of the same district, to the extent of a ratio of 
 two to three. 1 
 
 For the carucate in all this district is made up, without any 
 exception, of eight oxgangs or bovatm. And the extent of a bovate 
 in Cleveland varies between a minimum of eight acres and a maxi- 
 mum of twenty. The following notes, illustrative of the area of 
 the bovate in three adjoining townships, are from the Black Book 
 of Hexham : In Little Broughton the extent in some instances 
 was eight acres, in others nine ; in Ingleby Greenhow the bovate 
 contained fifteen acres ; in Great Broughton the number rose as 
 high as eighteen. 
 
 Now, in Danby, while I have one note of eight acres to a 
 bovate, I have others of twelve ; and I have reason to conclude 
 that that number is almost certainly the approximate average value 
 of the area embraced by the oxgang or bovate. And if so, the 
 total number of acres comprised in the carucate will be under 
 
 1 In a long Roll, dating in 1299, in which are given the details of the 
 various landed properties of the Priory of Guisborough, so far as not retained 
 in the farming occupation of the Convent itself, we have a variety of very 
 valuable information of various kinds ; and in one place, dealing with the not 
 very large estate held by the Priory in the not very large township of 
 Ingleby Loringe, there is a very singular illustration of the statement thus 
 made. In one part of the estate the bovate contained twelve acres, in the 
 other eighteen, the variation depending, as I have ascertained, on the char- 
 acter of the land. 
 
40 8 Appendices 
 
 rather than in excess of one hundred. And this conclusion leads 
 to a consideration of rather noteworthy bearing and importance. 
 It is this : within the manor of Danby there were about 600 
 acres liable to geld, or, in other words, susceptible of systematic 
 cultivation — "under the plough," as we say. Within the manor 
 of Crumbeclive there were five hundred more, and in the berewic 
 of Lealholm a yet further hundred; or 1200 acres in all, out of 
 the great total of 22,853 — not much more than one- twentieth part 
 of the entire territory ! 
 
 Such a deduction must surely be tested before we fully and 
 finally admit it. And it may be tested in this way. There 
 are in all 11,597 acres of moorland in the district under notice, 
 which amount to eighteen square miles and a very small fraction. 
 The land under the plough amoimted in 1087 to less than two 
 square miles more ; and the sylva pastilis, estimated at three 
 leugcs square, came to twenty square miles and a quarter, or 
 forty and a quarter altogether. Now, we observed that the 
 Domesday estimate on the whole, on the ratio of a mile and a 
 half to the leuga, was excessive to the extent of nearly twelve 
 square miles. Allow for the like excess in the estimate of 
 the sylva pasturalis — that is, deduct three-sevenths of the said 
 excess — and the result obtained is as nearly as possible the precise 
 thirty-five and a quarter square miles of actual measurement. 
 
 On the whole, then, there is no way of declining the conclusion 
 that, according to the Domesday returns, out of the (in round 
 numbers) 23,000 acres comprised within the parish of Danby 
 (inclusive, be it remembered, of Glaisdale), barely 1200 were in 
 any sense brought under cultivation. All the rest was bare moor 
 to the extent of more than one-half ; or else what the great Return 
 terms " pasturable woods " — in other words, forest, marsh, swamp, 
 or morass, with rough pasturage places interspersed. These two 
 relative areas may be clearly brought before the mind by taking an 
 ordinary half-sheet of notepaper, seven inches long by four and a 
 half wide, and cutting out of it a piece of the exact size of one 
 postage stamp and a half. The part removed would represent the 
 cultivable land of eight hundred years ago ; the great surface of the 
 whole remaining half-sheet, the non-cultivable. 
 
 "When one tries to realise what this amounts to, it is not simply 
 
Pre-Domesday Glances 409 
 
 that we find it easier to put the full meaning into Leland's descrip- 
 tive Banheiwm nemns, or into the sixteenth and seventeenth century 
 name for the place, that is, " Danby on the Forest " ; hut we begin 
 to admit a livelier and more vivid conception not simply of what 
 life in such a district must have been, but of what attempted 
 passage through it must have meant. " In our own country," I 
 read the other day, " the wealds of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex are 
 remnants of the great forest of Anderida, which once clothed the 
 whole of the south-eastern portion of the island. Westward it seems 
 to have stretched till it joined another forest that extended from 
 Hampshire to Devon. In the reign of Henry II the citizens 
 of London stUl hunted the wild bull and the boar in the forest of 
 Hampstead. Even under the later Plantagenets the royal forests 
 were sixty-eight in number. In the forest of Arden it was said that 
 down to modern times a squirrel might leap from tree to tree for 
 nearly the whole length of Warwickshire" {Golden Bough, vol. i. p. 57). 
 But this last statement is precisely that which I heard myself one 
 day about thirty years ago from the lips of an old Danby man, who 
 had received it from the lips of his uncle : "Ah beared my au'd uncle 
 offens say 'at he kenned t' tahm when a cat-swirrel could gan a' t' 
 way [all the way] down fra Commondale End to Beggar's Bridge 
 wivoot yance tooching t' grund." And there is an old plan (rather 
 than map) of the manor still extant, bearing date in 1751 — it 
 belongs to the Viscount Downe, lord of the manor — which is such 
 as to show most conclusively that the legend was absolutely and 
 literally true True, moreover, for both sides of the Esk, with 
 very small allowance, possibly, on one side. " Laund " and 
 " thwaite " succeed one another from above Castleton Bridge down 
 to the very limits of the manor on the east ; and in place after 
 place they diverge from the line of the stream to the north or to 
 the south for wide distances. 
 
 I think that perhaps of the two phrases employed just now, 
 "What life in such a country must have been," and "What 
 attempted passage through it must have meant," the latter may be 
 the more suggestive. 
 
 Any one who has seen the Esk in flood, and even the modern 
 raised approaches to the bridges under water for two or three score 
 yards on either side ; or who from the moorland heights on either 
 
4 1 o Appendices 
 
 side of the main valley has seen the sheets of water along its whole 
 length, expanding here, contracting there, according to the nearer 
 or more distant approach of the slopes of the higher ground ; or 
 who from some higher vantage-post has noticed the contributory 
 floods, supplied by the lesser becks running through each dale, 
 often thrown back upon themselves by some obstacle, such as a 
 bridge with too scanty passage-way for the sweeping waters, or an 
 accumulation of branches of trees, dead rubbish, rails, sometimes 
 masses of hay or sheaves of corn, all the debris a great volume of 
 careering water can carry on its surface or propel before it ; and 
 who remembers that all this takes place notwithstanding all the 
 facilities afforded in these modern days for the escape of the flood- 
 waters, all the care and pains expended on the effort to keep 
 them to their proper course, to afford sufficient water-way under 
 the bridges, to clear away potential obstructions, will not have 
 much difficulty in picturing to himself what the condition of the 
 Esk valley must have been in the old, old days when the hand of 
 Nature was the only hand dealing with the drainage, superficial or 
 other, of the whole of Esk-dale, from its actual commencement all 
 the way down to Whitby. 
 
 For it is not simply the difficulties which clogged the transit of 
 the flood waters, considerable, almost insurmountable in a sense, as 
 they must have been, which have to be taken into account ; other 
 considerations and of a significant nature must needs be added. 
 Nowadays, owing to the prevalence of drainage, with its hundreds 
 of miles of underground water-way, and with its scores of miles of 
 superficial channels of greater or less calibre besides, the waters of 
 even the heaviest downfall, or of the most rapid thaw of the masses 
 of snow which get piled together on these wide, wind-swept moors, 
 experience no great obstruction or delay in finding their way to the 
 main water-carriers of the district But then that volume of waters 
 which now leads to a great flood, widespreading for six-and-thirty 
 hours or a couple of days, and a "bank-full" state of the river for 
 two or three or four more, was still only collecting when now 
 nearly all has run off ; was justifying the nomenclature of a much 
 later day wherein the field name " holm " occurs perhaps twenty 
 to twenty-five times as descriptive of the character of the field 
 named ; was leading to a perpetuity of swamp, " mires," or 
 
Pre -Domesday Glances 411 
 
 treacherous marsh-ground, thickets of " saughs " or sallows, willows, 
 alders, and other water-loving saplings, shrubs, and trees, as well 
 as, in other and minor ways, tending to make passage through or 
 across the country more and more difficult, often impossible for all 
 but the /eroB sylvestres, the natural denizens of such a wild and 
 water-beset surface. 
 
 It is but a short time since that I succeeded in identifying the 
 Karlethwaite mentioned in a document dating in the year 1242, 
 and referred to above as a fine made between the Prior of 
 Guisborough and the de facto Baron of Skelton. The latter 
 reserves to himself the tithes of the hay from the park below the 
 Castle of Daneby, and in four " launds " in the forest of Daneby — 
 that is to say, in the launds of Souresby, Eskebriggethwoyte, 
 Karlethwoyte, and that below Threllkelde. The name Carlewaite 
 was still extant in 1751, and the old plan or map of the manor of 
 that date shows that the " laund " in question had Little Fryup 
 Beck on the west. Great Fryup Beck on the east, the Esk on the 
 north, and the height clothed by the Crag Wood on the south. 
 The area enclosed is nearly a mile long by an average of one-third 
 of a nule in width, or somewhere about 200 acres, more rather 
 than less. But the character of the greater part of this area is 
 sufficiently marked. Nearly half of it is to this day " good snipe 
 ground," and that not the part which is nearest to the river. 
 Another part of it, higher up the slope still, is " black land," ' full 
 of the blackened debris of ancient wood-growth, and drained within 
 recent times ; while yet a third part of it, lying within the 
 inclosure of the Crag Wood, is soft, boggy, and treacherous, not- 
 withstanding the drainage of the inclosures below, and the open 
 dikes or trenches cut to let off the water contained in the spongy, 
 miry soil of the surface. But if we come to the line of the Little 
 Fryup Beck, and strike up south from its junction with the Esk, 
 the stUl-existing testimony of the same kind is even more striking. 
 We come to the closes called Pundermires, and on every hand one 
 sees that the name Pundermires was not lightly given — that there 
 was a miry spot there indeed — and in what is really the most 
 elevated part of the extensive inclosures so named I have been 
 more than once (and in spite of much " circumspection " as to my 
 1 See Appendix G. 
 
4 1 2 Appendices 
 
 " walk "), when looking for a woodcock or two, in considerable 
 danger of getting myself " bogged." 
 
 But on all sides evidence of tlie same general bearing and 
 character is in reality inexhaustible. And perhaps, while dealing 
 with this special vicinity or the old thwaite called Karlethwoyte in 
 1242 and Carlewaite in 1751, we might as well notice the character 
 of the lands opening out into it on either hand ; the lands, in other 
 words, constituting no small portion of the lower parts or " ends " 
 of Great and Little Pryup. On the west side of Little Fryujj 
 Beck, beginning from its mouth, we have the lands that were called 
 Butterwaites, the character of which in 1656 was that of all the 
 other "th waits" which lay in all directions in the old parish of 
 Danby ; that is to say, lands with sparse timber-growth upon them, 
 but with abounding thickets of thorn, hazel, alder, holly, bramble, 
 and brier, with glades of pasturage- ground in between, here and 
 there expanding into wider spaces, and possessing such an approxi- 
 mately level surface as to admit of being apportioned and applied 
 as meadow-land, and used for haymaking purposes in the summer 
 season. 1 
 
 ^ I may as well adduce liere what I have written elsewhere as touching 
 the "thwaite." "The thwaites in the parish of Danby are Armethwaite or 
 Armetthwaite ; Butter-thwait, -twait, or -whate ; Mill-waite or -thwaite ; Stubhe- 
 thwaite or Stubble-wait ; Thwaite or Thwaites-hank ; Thwaites or Whates ; 
 Thwate-bank or Wheat-bauk ; Thwait- or Waith-dike ; Upper or High Waiths 
 or Whaits ; Nether, Lower, or Low Whaiths ; besides Carlethwait and Eske- 
 briggethwayte. The two names last quoted are in a document dated in 1242, 
 and it is rather worthy of remark that we should find what is usually held 
 to be a Norse word employed in a name derived from a medieval structure," 
 — for that Bskebrigge assuredly was. " But not to dwell on this, let us direct 
 our attention to Buttertwait or Butterthwaite. The place — it is a farmstead 
 — used to be called by almost every one Butterwicks ; by the few excep- 
 tions, Butterwits. Naturally, perhaps, the latter was regarded as simply a 
 folks-corruption of the former ; for why should not the name range with the 
 two places named Butterwick in Yorkshire, and with the other two in Lincoln- 
 shire ? Besides, when Canon Taylor writes, ' "We find the (Icelandic or 
 ancient Norse) name of Buthar in Buttermere, Butterhill, and Buttergill,' 
 why should we not fancy we could trace another of the same name in our 
 own Danby Butterwicks ? But unfortunately for such a theory the Butter- 
 thwaits are mentioned in no less than four of the conveyances, all dating in 
 1656, preserved in the Freeholders' Chest, and in such a way as to prove that 
 recent inclosures had been made there for agricultural purposes, and that 
 
Pre- Domesday Glances 413 
 
 Proceeding up the dale in a southerly direction, on the Butter- 
 wait side, we have a succession of black-land fields, only matched 
 by those on the other side of the beck as regards the unmistak- 
 able testimony they bear to their own origin and the continued 
 influence of the circumstances which had given them their being. 
 Their very soil, for some feet in depth, is clear evidence of the 
 wood-growth which had prevailed there from time immemorial. 
 Perhaps a mile and a half to the south of Pundermires the black- 
 land area contracts itself, and only a narrow slip of it remains on 
 the western verge of the beck. This whole space, with the space 
 occupied by Pundermires itself, must in Domesday times have 
 presented an impassable swamp in any and every direction. Only 
 systematic drainage could have effected the changes evidenced by 
 its present superficial and subsoil condition. 
 
 And if we turn to the other or eastern end of the ancient 
 Karlethwoyte or modern Carlewaite, or the part into which the 
 extensive dale of Great Tryup debouches, the case is still the same. 
 The two farmsteads. Furnace, on the border of the Great Fryvip 
 Beck, and Wheat Bank (which is but the corruption of the 1656 
 name, Waite Bank, Thwaite Bank, Thwaites Bank), have each of 
 them their testimony to give. The cinder-hill or piled mass of 
 
 these inclosures had been apportioned between farms severally called Arme- 
 thwaite. Lower Armethwalte, and Crossley-side House ; while, as to what 
 thwaites, whates, or whaithes meant, such extracts as the following — one of 
 a dozen or so — sufficiently show : ' A parcell of meadow-ground called by 
 the name of " an acre " in the Low Whaites in Glasedale Lawnes, and also 
 four averLsh gates throughout the Lower Whates and the Upper Whaites, in 
 Glasedale Lawnes aforesaid, as it is now devided.' There were meadow- 
 lands then in the thwaites, apportioned in acres (if not in strips, as it would 
 seem from other entries), over which, after the hay had been severed and 
 carried, there were also apportioned so many 'averish, average, or fog-gates,' 
 or right of stray and pasturage for such and such a number of animals of the 
 ox-kind, and these thwaits were in lawnes, launds, or spaces within the 
 woodlands, open enough to admit of meadow - lands in places, summer- 
 pasturage over perhaps wider spaces (the sylva pasturaKs or pastilis of 
 Domesday), but yet still woodland enough — as appears in manifold places — ■ 
 to allow of numerous rights of taking ' garsell, garthsel, hedge-boot or hedg- 
 ing ' (all these synonymous terms being employed in the various documents), 
 for use by the privileged on their own lands as occasion arose." And thus we 
 have explained the presence of so many " thwaits " in the one parochial area 
 concerned. 
 
4 1 4 Appendices 
 
 mediaeval iron -slag at the former rather impressively enforces 
 attention upon the consumption of charcoal which had taken place 
 there between the years 1200 and 1500, according to extant 
 written evidence ; and the consumption of such huge quantities of 
 charcoal postulates adjacent forest-growth, springing, waxing, and 
 cut down times and again. The other name announces that down 
 to the date given the " thwaite " character was still the character 
 of that part of Great Fryup. And while on the Furnace or western 
 side of Fryup Beck rough and jaggy surfaced black lands scarcely 
 affect to conceal the dusky dibris of the old, old wood-growth which 
 had prevailed there from time immemorial, on the other or 
 eastern aide the present names, Finkle House and Finkle Bottoms 
 (which are but corruptions of the 1656 Fringall, FrinkaU, Frinkell 
 House and Bottom, as Frinkell or Frinkeld is but a corruption of 
 the old 1242 Threllkelde), do but remind us of the launda there 
 extant, in which the last of the Brus barons reserved the tithes of 
 hay, as well as of that growing on the launds of Sowerby, Eske- 
 briggethwoyte and Karlethwoyte. If we leave the neighbourhood 
 of the Frinkell House lands, proceeding southwards or what is 
 called " up the dale," the conveyances of 1656 make it known that 
 from the limit just named, or the Frinkell inclosures, up past the 
 Beanley farm and the lower Wood Head, and back by Hawks Carr, 
 and so to the southern and eastern foot of the isolated eminence 
 called "The Heads," there was a great tract of pasture lands, 
 known then by the name of Fryupp or Fryupp Agistment ; 
 and what a great tract of pasture then meant we know by co- 
 ordinating it with the launds and the th waits we have just been 
 taking note of. 
 
 Nor is this all. There is the tale-telling black earth in the 
 whole area or portion of the lower part of the dale marked out by 
 the boundaries of this great pasture-ground so described. Scores 
 upon scores, nay, hundreds upon hundreds of acres are seen, on even 
 passing inspection, by one who has eyes to see and experience or 
 intelligence to .comprehend, to have alternated in the older centuries 
 between the condition of sturdy forest-growth with plentiful under- 
 wood of many sorts, and that of swamp, marsh, and bog, each to 
 be renewed or relieved by the other, once and again, as the slow- 
 moving ages rolled on. Wherever the valleys which we speak of 
 
Pre-Domesday Glances 415 
 
 as " our dales " widen out sufficiently, and at an elevation a little 
 above the alluvium at their bottoms, through which the several 
 becks gnaw their way, there the water and the woodland-growth 
 struggled for the mastery, sometimes the one prevailing and 
 sometimes the other ; while the slopes ending in the steeper banks 
 were unresistingly occupied by the forest with its lordly sylvan 
 monarchs, its thickets, launds, and glades, dense and untracked as 
 jungle, and equally with the jungle, the dwelling-place of the 
 ordinary sylvan fauna, the wolf and the boar and the stag living 
 on in great numbers until late in the period we speak of as " The 
 Middle Ages." 
 
 And the becks themselves tell the same story. No longer ago 
 than the day on which this is written I have been walking along 
 one of these dale becks, and at a place scarcely a couple of hundred 
 yards from the spot where an old parishioner of mine told me he 
 had cut through three forests in digging a deep drain to relieve a 
 waterlogged bit of his freehold, I saw a new section exposed, cut 
 by the action of the beck during the somewhat heavy floods we 
 had had since the late autumn. This section was about six feet in 
 perpendicular height, and is worked through the beds of alluvium 
 deposited by the beck itself in the past ages. Above is the soil of 
 the fields on either side ; beneath it succeed beds of gravelly matter, 
 mixed layers of rounded sandstone, from the size of marbles to 
 that of a good-sized apple or a cricket-ball, strata of sand ; other 
 strata of mixed material coloured dark with ferruginous matter ; a 
 bed in which lay boughs and small trunks of trees, of the colour 
 and consistency of bogwood ; another bed of iron-coloured rough 
 gravel and sand ; and then below all, and washed by the running 
 stream, a bed of peaty matter, of which I could see six inches in 
 thickness above the level of the stream. And yet the place at 
 which I noted all this is but a mile and three-quarters below the 
 rift in the moor down which the baby Danby Beck wears its 
 way, of dunenaions such that an old man can without difficulty 
 jump across. Within that short course mainly, it and its still 
 smaller tributaries on either side have found the materials for all 
 those beds enumerated above, and each of those beds, but especially 
 the peat and the bogwood, has its own story to tell ; and the story 
 that is told is of woodland growth alternating with the action of 
 
4 1 6 Appendices 
 
 water, in motion and at rest ; in either case suoli as to make 
 transit througli or along inconceivably difficult, if not altogether 
 impracticable. 
 
 Now this I conceive to have been the character of the whole 
 of this Danby district of the Dales country, as it was eight hundred 
 years ago, when the carefully, strictly conducted and enforced 
 requirements of the Conqueror led to the Eetum that, out of a 
 total of 23,000 acres of land in the capital manor of Crumbeclive, 
 and its two berewics of Danby and Lelum, at the very utmost 
 1200 acres were susceptible of the processes of agriculture ; and of 
 them barely one-half could have been actually subjected to the 
 plough and the harrow. 
 
 This conclusion and the considerations which have led on to 
 it may most likely help in supplying some illustration of what we 
 have noticed as the vague and unsatisfactory nature of the Domes- 
 day measurements. They were spoken of above as " estimates " 
 merely, and estimates that did not seem to have been very 
 accurately or even carefully made. But as we have seen, under 
 the actual circumstances of the district, this could not have been 
 otherwise. An actual survey and anything approaching to local 
 measurement were alike impossible. One might traverse the moor, 
 and from such points as the Beacon Hill on the north side of the 
 district, or the heights above Danby Head and Fryup Head on 
 the south, contemplate the greater portion of the home dales with 
 their verdurous fillings-in ; but as to any actual survey, in the 
 modern sense of the word, there was no scope for it. And there 
 were, on the other hand, insuperable obstacles to hinder the simple 
 passage, on foot or otherwise, through the entire district of the 
 would-be surveyor. 
 
 But suppose the validity of the Domesday statements touching 
 the then condition of Danby from the cultivable-area point of view, 
 with all the corroborative considerations which have been alleged 
 in the foregoing pages, be admitted — and I see no loophole open 
 affording any probability of their being evaded — are there not 
 other conclusions, and possibly of an unforeseen and unexpected 
 nature, which are forced upon us by the very admission itself 1 
 For we are asked to believe that no impression whatever had been 
 made upon nearly eleven-twelfths of the cultivable area by the 
 
Pre -Domesday Glances 417 
 
 possessors or the occupiers of the area in question during the 
 generations which had preceded the Norman Conquest. The current 
 theory is that the Angles, at least a colony supplied from that 
 source, had possessed themselves of this among other portions or 
 sub-districts of the Cleveland division of the North Riding, in the 
 sixth century or thereabouts ; and that in due time they had 
 been dispossessed and ousted by the Danish irruption in the ninth 
 century ; and yet the united efforts of Angle and Dane, spread over 
 a period of five centuries or more, had not proved equal to the 
 reclamation of more than the very small proportion just 
 specified of the available soil of the bit of country in question. 
 
 I confess that this is a conclusion which, stated in this crude, 
 hard, unqualified way, I find it very hard to admit, and, much 
 more, to reconcile myself to. I cannot but accept the Domesday 
 .statistics ; but this outcome from them seems to me alike irrecon- 
 cilable with probability and with ascertained historical facts. I 
 cannot bring myself to believe that a colony of Angles, with well 
 on to three centuries to work in, could have succeeded in doing 
 such a strangely small proportion of the work which lay before 
 them in improving the sparse bits of open land, and clearing and 
 cultivating the least densely clothed among the woodlands, as it 
 must be assumed they did, if we assume too that a Danish colony, 
 much more energetic in the way of felling the trees and taking 
 and tilling the grounds so recovered than the Angles were, were 
 only able, in more than a century and a half, to bring the 
 total of reclaimed land up to the proportion disclosed to us by the 
 Domesday returns. Nay, it is hard to conceive that the tree-felling 
 Northman, with all his resolute energy, backed, as it was by 
 generations of like struggling with the arduous experiences of 
 reclaiming the rugged spaces amid the Scandinavian forests, could 
 have effected so little, could have been content with effecting so 
 little, in so long a time, of what was so vitally important to him. 
 On every hand it is evident there must be some explanation for 
 facts that seem so altogether anomalous. 
 
 But if we cease to look upon Danby as a substantive whole, and 
 begin to regard it as rather a sectional unit in a much larger area, 
 I think the necessity of such explanation will be but the more 
 apparent. Reference was made above to the township adjoining 
 
 2e 
 
4 1 8 Appendices 
 
 on Dauby to the east, and to the Domesday estimate regarding its 
 dimensions, but no attention was drawn to the revelations afforded 
 as to its physical condition and circumstances. ^ Briefly, the state- 
 ment stands thus : there were three carucates to be taxed, and 
 there might be as many ploughs ; but it was then all waste. The 
 entire manorial district was four ZeMgce long by two broad, and of 
 that space pasturable wood occupied a full three-quarters ; in other 
 words, out of a total area of 15,600 acres, 300 acres or thereabouts 
 admitted of cultivation — the rest was moor, forest, laund, thwaite, 
 and swampy expanse. Or to recur to the sheet of notepaper illus- 
 tration — remove a section, of the size of half a postage stamp, from 
 the half- sheet for the cultivable land, and take the balance to 
 represent the unreclaimed land ! This may well seem an almost 
 inconceivable state of things, at least to such of us as know Egton 
 chiefly by a passing view from road or rail of the fields and 
 meadows and pastures of the modern township. Of course any 
 one conversant with the wide extent of moorland on the north 
 side of tlie main valley, and with the wider sweep of the same on 
 the southern side, will be aware of the extensive prevalence of 
 moorland country still. But for all that, it is very hard to realise 
 that eight hundred years ago there was probably not a single inch 
 of reclaimed land within the township of Egton south of the Esk, 
 while to the north, in the near vicinity of the poor, desecrated old 
 church, only the extent of about three of the modest moorland 
 farms, as they used to be a few years ago, was in such condition 
 as to submit to the imperfect appliances of the contemporary 
 farmer. 
 
 But suppose now we put the two imaginary half- sheets of 
 notepaper together, so as to make a connected whole, and then 
 make a blot something less than a florin just above the medial 
 
 1 It is obviously unnecessary for the purposes of the argument to subject 
 the Domesday return as to Egton to minute analysis or criticism. I have 
 made such analysis and comparative examination, and find the general result 
 to be that the Domesday area falls short of the reality by six square miles and 
 a half, in contrast with Danby, where the same area is in excess by no less 
 than well on to twelve square miles. And further, that whereas the leuga 
 in the estimate regarding the latter place is found on calculation to be less 
 than a mile and a third, in the Egton estimate it must measure very nearly 
 a mUe and three-quarters. 
 
Pre-Domesday Glances 419 
 
 line of the left-hand leaf, another a little less than a halfpenny 
 about the middle of the line made by the folding, a third not 
 nearly so big as a threepenny piece higher up and a little to the 
 left, on the same part of the sheet ; and yet a fourth higher up 
 still, and more to the right, nearer a threepence than a sixpence 
 in size, — those four attenuated blots would give us the relative 
 sizes and position of the comparatively tiny patches whereupon the 
 farmer of the day, since the era of the settlement of the district, 
 had succeeded in making his effectual mark. 
 
 I do not think that this representation of the country or district 
 embracing Danby, Glaisdale, and Egton — a district implying an 
 area, in round numbers, of 38,600 acres — is in the slightest degree 
 overdrawn. Perhaps even the sin, if sin there be, is in the 
 contrary direction. The only source of error exists in relation to 
 the estimated contents of the caruoate ; and my impression, derived, 
 as I have said, from a large number of notes- specifying the extent 
 of the bovate or oxgang in the district concerned, backed by per- 
 sonal knowledge of the lands in question, is that 100 acres to the 
 carucate is in reality distinctly above the average. But assuming 
 that measurement to hold good, the sum of six carucates at Danby, 
 five at Crumbeclive, one at Lealholm, and three at Egton, amounts 
 to just fifteen ; the estimated number of cultivable acres to a 
 maximum of 1500 ; and the balance of moor and woodland of some 
 sort or other, with swamp and morass liberally interspersed, to no 
 less than 37,000 acres. 
 
 For reasons that are obvious we have confined ourselves in the 
 preceding notice to the district of Danby (inclusive, of course, of 
 Lealholm and Glaisdale) and the contiguous township (or parish) 
 of Egton. But it would be wrong to assume that this large area 
 was, as compared with the great stretch of eastern Cleveland 
 skirting it alike on the east and west, altogether exceptional in its 
 character and condition. On the contrary, so far as we can judge 
 from the somewhat meagre information given in the brief Domes- 
 day notices of the minor or sub-manors north and east of Egton, 
 the physical and superficial characteristics of the country in that 
 direction seem to have been to a great degree analogous to those 
 of Danby and Egton. Thus, Lythe, with a totwm maneriwm of one 
 hiiga and a half long by half a leuga broad, had eylva pasturaUs to 
 
420 Appendices 
 
 the extent of a lenijga long by two quarentens broad, with but two 
 carucates of cultivable land. At Hutton Mulgrave the measures 
 were four Uwgce by one, and three carucates of arable land, three- 
 quarters of the whole area being forest, swamp, and pasture. At 
 Aislaby the proportions were a leuga, and a half long, by one /eitga, 
 with a leuga, square of wood pasture. At Seaton, all but about 300 
 acres would seem to have been under wood. In Goldsborough, 
 Ellerby, and Miokleby, embracing a space three liugx long by two 
 and a half broad, there was a limited extent of wood pasture and 
 a proportionably large one of bare moor, for the whole contained 
 but twelve carucates of land capable of the plough. In Skelton, 
 again, there was a very large area in wood pasture, besides a great 
 space indeed of moor and swamp ; and Kildale was nearly all 
 covered with forest-growth and its adjuncts. Lofthouse, Liverton, 
 Boulby, and Easington are not recorded as having been in the 
 same category, except that a terribly wide acreage is left, after the 
 cultivable portion is withdrawn, for barren waste, inhospitable 
 moor and fen. 
 
 Kildale has just been mentioned as being nearly all "covered 
 with forest." The relative proportions given are : the entire manor 
 two foMfl'CB long by one broad, and the sylva pasturalis of the same 
 length by two quarentens broad, there being about 600 acres 
 cultivable. But it is remarkable that no mention whatever is made 
 of Westerdale, although the explanation of this omission may not 
 be very far to seek. 
 
 The earliest mention of the place with which I am acquainted 
 is in a charter of grant by Bernard de Baliol to Eievaulx Abbey, 
 dating several years before the close of the twelfth century, and 
 the terms employed in the said grant are so remarkable that excuse 
 may readily be found for their reproduction here. After naming 
 certain important gifts in Teesdale, the donor proceeds thus : 
 "Moreover, I bestow two bovates of land, with all appendages, 
 in my vill of Westerdale, and common pasture in the said vill, 
 with all liberties and easements appertaining to the said bovates. 
 I also give them [the monks] common pasture for six score 
 beasts, throughout my territory and the whole forest of Westerdale, 
 except the cornfields and meadows, in which also, however, after 
 the severance of the crops, they shall have the same rights of eatage 
 
Pre -Domesday Glances 421 
 
 as the men of the said vjll. . . : They shall also have pasture for 
 twelve cows and two hulls, with their young, towards the support 
 of their shepherds, the calves to he removed when two years old. 
 They shall also have liberty to make enclosures, sheds, stables, etc., 
 at Wolfdalebeck, below Howthwait, as well as a dwelling for the 
 brother in charge and his assistants at Esklits ; and especially of 
 setting traps for wolves," on condition that everything caught 
 therein was to be Baliol's, with the sole exception of any cattle of 
 their own ; besides which, their shepherds were to have full license 
 " to carry horns, because of the wild beasts (of prey necessarily) 
 and bandits." 
 
 Thus, then, a place which is unmentioned in Domesday, and 
 which, as unnoticed by the Domesday Commissioners, could only, 
 one must conclude, have been so passed by because there was 
 literally no terra ad geldum within its limits, a hundred years later 
 was still in such a condition that while very large and important 
 rights of pasturage were conceded to a growing religious house ^ 
 (there being, besides the six score amimalia, the twelve cows — each 
 with an average of two calves — and two bulls, ail vmspeciiied number 
 of horses at pasture), the grant of arable land only amounted to 
 two ox^ngs. And if we also take account of the provision as to 
 the setting of traps for the wolves, and the significant concession 
 in re prowling wild beasts and marauding outlaws, as these latrones 
 must have been, we shall have before our mind's eye a fair idea, 
 not only of what Westerdale must have been about 1185, biit also 
 of what it actually was in 1086, before any enterprising and fear- 
 less colonist or settler had ventured to penetrate its wilds and take 
 up a precarious existence there. 
 
 ' There was another grant made, it is believed, by the same noble donor 
 to the Templars, as to which the same terms as those employed in the text 
 would necessarily have to be applied. No doubt before the Templars were 
 suppressed the state of things indicated by the nature of these grants had passed 
 away, and a large breadth of land had been cleared and improved, and, for 
 the times, a thriving agricultural condition superinduced, as is most abundantly 
 proved by the " extent " and inventories made by royal mandate on occasion 
 of the suppression of the Order. But it must be remembered that the 
 brethren of the Temple had been in possession for upwards of two hundred 
 years, and consequently had had time to work the most radical change in the 
 condition of the lands bestowed upon them. 
 
42 2 Appendices 
 
 But, to try and obtain a more coijipreliensive view of East 
 Cleveland and its condition relatively to the facts of clearances 
 made and the possibilities of agriculture eight centuries ago, I 
 would observe that, beginning with Whitby Strand (exclusive of 
 Hackness), and following the coast as far as Saltburn, striking south- 
 ward thence by the borders of Skelton, so as to include Kildale 
 and all that lies to the east, up to the southern hill-line limits of the 
 district named, we enclose an area of nearly 121,000 acres of land. 
 Within this area, eight hundred years ago, as we follow the details 
 given by the Survey Commissioners closely and carefully, there 
 were not quite 170 carucates ad geldum. Assume that they em- 
 braced a total of 17,000 acres, still 104,000 acres remained entirely 
 unreclaimed ; and if we increase the estimate of acres to the carucate, 
 and assume that there may have been 20,000 acres cultivable, still 
 the balance of land as yet utterly wild and in nature's condition 
 as to wood, water, marsh, and moor, reaches the great sum of 101,000 
 acres ; or five acres and upwards of waste land for every acre that 
 had been made to submit, however imperfectly, to the forces within 
 the reach of the cultivator. 
 
 Nor is this quite all ; for we are bound to remember that 
 this geldabie land, while lying patchwise even in the places where 
 the industry of man had done most in the way of thrusting back 
 the limits of nature's hitherto undisputed sway, did but represent 
 a few small blotches on an otherwise clean sheet of paper. Kildale, 
 Westerdale, Danby, Glaisdale, Egton, a very large proportion of 
 Lythe and by no means a small one of Whitby, were aU forest, 
 thicket, or moor, swamp, marsh or mire — practically a trackless 
 wilderness for miles and miles together as to the moor, and a 
 pathless and all but impervious jungle as to the wilder and thicker 
 woodlands. Nay, Glaisdale had no name in the Domesday Sur- 
 veyors' note-book, and I think we have seen the reason why. 
 Westerdale had no name either, and again we have seen the reason 
 why. And yet a third place, which a century later, as in the cases 
 of Glaisdale and Westerdale, had newly acquired a name for itself, 
 namely Greenhow, had no name in Domesday, and whatever evi- 
 dence remains goes to show that it was for just the same reason as 
 with its two other nameless consorts. 
 
 For myself, after years of thought and consideration, I am 
 
Pre-Dome'sday Glances 423 
 
 unable to accommodate to this series of facts and conclusions any 
 theory save one — namely, that the forces of nature, supplemented 
 by its almost more forceful ms inertioe, were too great for the 
 forces of human will and muscle brought to bear upon them. I 
 am totally unable to reconcile myself to the theory that a consider- 
 able body of colonising Angles, displaced rather than succeeded by 
 an equally strong body of colomsing Danes, could have been, dur- 
 ing a period of three or four centuries, not simply dwelling as 
 settlers in this or any like district, but actually dependent for their 
 subsistence on what they could force from the soil (untrained 
 rather than unwilling), and yet have made no more impression upon 
 the material source of such subsistence than is betrayed by 'the 
 facts and figures we have been led into contemplating. And as 
 the facts and figures, and the inevitable inferences dependent upon 
 them, cannot be gainsaid, nor, as I think, materially modified, the 
 conclusion which seems to be forced upon us is that the " body of 
 colonising occupants" or "settlers" cannot have been so consider- 
 able or so strong — whatever the cause or explanation of the default 
 may have been — as is usually assumed. 
 
 Now, I find myself writing, nearly twenty years ago, " We may 
 adopt the conclusion that, very possibly, the Anglian population of 
 Cleveland in the times of the Danish appropriations may not have 
 been a very dense one ; may not even have been located in nearly 
 the same number of home-centres as were to be found after a few 
 decades of Danish occupation ; although we certainly cannot suppose 
 that there were no Anglian occupants, or next to none, in the 
 times of greatest throng of incoming Danish colonists, and still less 
 that the said thronging immigrants utterly extirpated the occupants 
 of Teutonic origin whom they found in possession, whether such 
 possession were more or less partial. . . . The opinion that the 
 country was not fuUy settled or thickly peopled antecedently to 
 the times of the most active Danish irruptions seems to be one 
 which may not only be reasonably entertained and even resolutely 
 defended, but which commends itself to our sense of probability. 
 But still, ... it is impossible not to recognise some, and pre- 
 suppose other, and certainly important, Anglian colonies." Had I, 
 with the knowledge now at my command, to rewrite those sentences, 
 I should, I think, use much more definite and decided terms. I 
 
424 Appendices 
 
 should not certainly deny or dispute the fact of " the various and 
 important Anglian colonies," but instead of writing that "very 
 possibly the Anglian population in the days of the Danish inroads 
 may not have been a very dense one or localised in so many home- 
 centres " as a few score years later, or that we could not assume 
 that there might actually be no Anglian settlements here and there 
 to be seized upon by Danish intruders, I should most certainly 
 affirm my conviction that, in many cases, what are now large 
 parochial districts had never been apportioned among Anglian 
 settlers, perhaps even trodden by Anglian feet, except possibly the 
 feet had been those of an Anglian outlaw or runagate. And the 
 reasons which have led to the building up of that conviction are 
 not only based upon the extreme improbability of the supposition 
 that occupation by a band of Anglians, succeeded by a band of 
 Danes, and spreading over nearly five centuries, could have issued 
 in nothing better or more marked than, e.g. the clearing and culti- 
 vation of barely 1500 acres out of a total area of well on to 
 40,000 (as in the case of Egton and Danby united), but on other 
 considerations also, of a nature altogether different. 
 
 Among the several and " important Anglian colonies " in Cleve- 
 land which may most unhesitatingly be " recognised " is the town 
 and district of Stokesley. The name is Anglian in both its 
 elements, and is as English as the pre-Domesday church at Seaton 
 and holy Hilda's well close by ; or Easington with a like church 
 and pre-Christian burials, which were neither British nor Danish ; 
 or Crathorn with its corresponding church and easily recognised 
 name. Every one who knows Stokesley well, and condescends to 
 matters of such small note as field-names, or casts his eye over the 
 six-inch Ordnance map of the district embracing the town and the 
 fields to the north of it, will notice a set of parallel fields with a 
 very commonplace name attached to them. Before mentioning 
 that name I will give an extract from what I printed in Thi 
 Antiquary two or three years ago : " Everybody remembers the 
 episode of our Lord's going through the cornfields, and His disciples 
 plucking the ripe ears of corn as they followed Him. St. Matthew's 
 expression, as given in the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, is — ' He for ofyr 
 eeceras ; ' St. Mark's, ' He thurh eeceras eode ; ' and St. Luke's, 
 ' He fserde thurh da seceras ; ' that is. He yode (went) or fared 
 
Pre -Domesday Glances 425 
 
 through, the acres." And then I quote from Mr. Seebohm : " Ob- 
 viously the English translator's notion of the cornfields round a 
 village was that of the open fields of his own country. They were 
 divided into ' acres,' and he who walked across them walked across 
 the ' acres.' " The field-name in the map just a little north of 
 Stokesley is "The Acres." Let us collate the name with the word 
 in the three extracts from the Synoptic Gospels given above, only 
 bearing in mind that the English of to-day is but the English of 
 the days when the Anglo-Saxon Gospels were penned, with the 
 wear and tear of a great many centuries upon it, and many subse- 
 quent accretions. 
 
 But if we go to what were the first " acres " known in Danby 
 (and some other places in Cleveland like circumstanced nine or ten 
 centuries ago), we find a series of fields, greater in area perhaps 
 than " The Acres " at Stokeslfey, and the name we find applied 
 there is one which may not be found in any English dictionary, 
 although it may be in that or those of a Scandinavian tongue. The 
 name in question is Wandales. And the meaning given to vawg in 
 Rietz's Sioedish Dialect Dictionary is, " tlie enclosed lands of a town- 
 ship or hamlet as contrasted with the common or hill-sides." As 
 to the final syllable of the word, it simply denotes the allotted 
 share or division, or " deal," " dole," or " part dealt." For the 
 " wandales," like the " acres," were simply divided or dealt out in 
 parallel slips of an approximate acre or half-acre. 
 
 Nor is the word " botton," applied as a divisional name, a whit 
 less exclusively or less significantly Scandinavian than " wandale." 
 As it exists in writings six centuries old under the forms bothine, 
 bottne, we need not pay much heed to the modern corruption which 
 has sought to replace it by the by no means really equivalent 
 " bottom." The Icelandic application of the term to the deepest 
 part of a dale, or dalsbotn, is the precise application in our Danby 
 case. And the men who cleared the plateau north of the church 
 sufficiently for the purposes of habitation and tillage, as they gazed 
 southward, from its brow and looked on the deep gulf of forest 
 filling the hollow between the high banks on either side, might well 
 be prompted to use the word of their fatherland, and dub it the 
 " botn." 
 
 But while manifold illixstration of the same character is con- 
 
426 Appendices 
 
 tinually presenting itself in local names, names of conspicuous 
 objects, and the like, it is on the name Wandales that the greatest 
 interest and most pregnant suggestion is seen to depend. Even if 
 it were a solitary Scandinavian term surviving among a company 
 of Anglian ones, it would have its own testimony to deliver, its own 
 statement to make ; for it would show that, while the Danish 
 allottee had seen good to impress his own name on the place, his 
 followers or dependants had been Danish enough and iniluential 
 enough to discard the older and alien name for tlie ager communis, 
 and aflBx their own northern name, unintelligible to all save them- 
 selves, in its place. But standing, as it does, one of a company of 
 others all as national and as northern as itself — the Botton, the 
 Howe, Clither-beck (Icelandic, ar-kliSr ; English, the clatter or mur- 
 muring sound of a stream), and the like — it does distinctly convey 
 the information that such names were not usurpers displacing older 
 synonyms, but in reality the original distinctive appellations applied 
 to the several features in question. 
 
 And thus, while we seem constrained by the Domesday revela- 
 tions touching the very limited proportion of the district in any 
 sense actually brought under cultivation previously to the Conquest, 
 to be doubtful about both the duration of the period during which 
 reclamation had been proceeding and the actual amount of human 
 energy applied, we And also considerations of a totally different 
 character, forcibly impelling us to the very same conclusions. 
 Practically, while there is no evidence to show that, over very 
 extensive areas in East Cleveland, Anglian colonists had ever plied 
 the axe or swept the soil of its encumbering wild growth, almost 
 every detail arrived at through historical inquiry or inference tends 
 to enforce the conclusion that, within these specified limits at least, 
 the Danish occupants were not only the actual pioneers of cultiva- 
 tion, but the only people who had had the right to " call the lands 
 after their own names." 
 
 Danby, then, I look upon as exclusively Danish throughout. 
 And the " How and the Why," the manner and the mode in which 
 this had come to pass, may perhaps be alike explained and illus- 
 trated by the following passages from Green's wonderfully sug- 
 gestive as well as instructive Conquest of England : "It was not 
 till the middle of the eighth century that dim news of heathen 
 
Pre -Domesday Glances 427 
 
 nations across the Baltic came from English missionaries who were 
 toiling among the Saxons of the Elbe ; and an English poet, it may 
 be an English mission-priest in the older home of his race, wove 
 fragments of northern sagas into his Christianised version of the 
 song of Beowulf. But to the bulk of Englishmen, as to the rest of 
 Christendom, these peoples remained almost unknown. Their life 
 had indeed till now been necessarily a home life ; for instead of 
 fighting and mingling with the world about them, they had had to 
 battle for sheer existence with the stern winter, the barren soil, 
 the stormy seas of the north. While Britain was passing through 
 the ages of her conquest, her settlement, her religious and political 
 reorganisation, the Swede was hewing his way into the dense pine- 
 forests that stretched like a sea of woodland between the bleak 
 moorlands and wide lakes of his fatherland ; the Dane was finding 
 a home in the reaches of beechwood and birchwood that covered 
 the flat isles of the Baltic, and the Norwegian was winning field 
 and farm from the steep slopes of his narrow fiords." Or this 
 again : " In all the northern lands society was as yet but a thin 
 fringe of life edging closely the sea-brim. In Sweden or the 
 Danish isles rough forest-edge or dark moor-slope pressed the 
 village fields closely to the water's edge. In Norway the bulk of 
 the country was a vast and desolate upland of barren moor, broken 
 only by narrow dales that widened as they neared the coasts into 
 inlets of sea ; and it was in these inlets, in the dale at the fiord's 
 head, or by the fiord's side, where the cliff-wall now softened into 
 slopes to which his cattle clung, now drew back to make room for 
 thin slips of meadow-land and corn-land, that the Norwegian found 
 his home. Inland, where the bare mountain flats then rose like 
 islands out of a sea of wood, the country was strange to them." In 
 Danby, too, we had " dark nioor-slopes pressing the village fields," 
 " vast and desolate uplands of barren moor, broken only by narrow 
 dales," and " bare mountain flats rising like islands out of a sea of 
 wood." Here, too, men might " set themselves down, turn to, and 
 clear the woods, burn, and settle " ; be told of, like Olaf of Sweden, 
 " that they were clearing the forest," and, like him again, get called 
 the " tree-fellers " ; for here, too, was a " great forest-land, with 
 great uninhabited forests in it such that it was a journey of days 
 to cross them," and that " pains and cost might be spent in clear- 
 
42 8 Appendices 
 
 ing the woods and tilling the cleared land," besides "making 
 trackways over morasses and mountains." ^ And to this actual 
 district came, and settled there, the strenuous Dane and Norwegian, 
 and did as they had done at home. 
 
 ' See Conquest of England, pp. 53 and note, 56, etc. 
 
APPENDIX D 
 
 THE SITE OP THE ANCIENT VILL OP DANBY 
 
 I HAVE been asked times without number, fey friends and other 
 visitors not resident in the neighbourhood, " But where is Danby 
 — the village of Danby, I mean 1" and the question is a very 
 reasonable one. No one ever asks, and for the best of all possible 
 reasons, "Where is Easington or Lofthouse, or Kildale, Harlsey, 
 Staithes, Hinderwell, Lythe or Runswick?" Por there are the 
 villages so named to put the questioner to silence. 
 
 But it is different with Danby. There is no " village of Danby." 
 And as far as any one can tell, after even careful searching and 
 inquiry of the ordinary sort, there never has been such a village. 
 
 And yet that is such an anomaly that one scarcely feels dis- 
 posed to admit it as a fact without some previous inquiry of some 
 kind. That a man called Dane — and after precisely the same rule 
 and for precisely the same reason that hundreds of people are now- 
 adays, and have been for generations, called Scott, English, Prench, 
 Welsh, Norman, and so forth — had the possession now called Danby 
 allotted to him — say, one thousand years ago ; and proceeded in 
 due course to construct his by, make his clearings — riddings, he 
 would call them — begin farming operations ; and that thus the 
 wooden dwelling, with stables, beasthouse and cow-byre, lathes, 
 bake-house and brew-house, and all necessary shanties for his free- 
 men and serfs (all of the same material), would grow up with more 
 or less rapidity, forming the sort of circumscribed hamlet the hy 
 actually was, is a matter which admits of no dispute. The simple 
 existence of the place-name Danby is amply sufficient to prove it. 
 
 But this conclusion in reality only accentuates the question, 
 
43 o Appendices 
 
 "Where is, or rather, where was, the vill or hamlet originally 
 distinguished by that name % " 
 
 There are groups of houses nowadays at Oastleton, Ainthorpe, 
 Danby End (or, as it is more correctly called. Dale End), aU in the 
 parish of Danby. , But both Castleton and Dale End have grown 
 up to what they are within the present century ; and Ainthorpe 
 is more modern stiU. I know that the number of habitations at 
 Oastleton a hundred years ago was not more than six ; while at 
 Dale End there were but two. So that we cannot look for the 
 original Danby at either of those places. 
 
 Now, here let me remark that another question to which I have 
 had to reply times without number, has been, " But where is your 
 church ?" Once the question was put to me after the close of a 
 Oonfirmation held in the chapel of ease at Oastleton, and by 
 archiepiscopal lips : " But where," said his Grace, " where is the 
 parish church ?" And I pointed it out, as well as I could, distant 
 a mile and a half from the chapel near which we were standing ; 
 and I daresay I added, "And there are not forty souls living 
 within the limit of a mile from it." 
 
 But one of the things that I have never learned in the course 
 of my manifold inquiries has been that churches and chapels were 
 built, any more in the old days than now, far away from the dwell- 
 ings of those by whom they were designed to be attended. If 
 Egton old church and Danby parish church — to advert to no 
 others here — be far away from the mass of the presumptive 
 worshippers, we are not at liberty to assume that, it was planned 
 so from the first ; but rather that, for reasons good in the economy 
 of things, the worshippers generally have shifted the site of their 
 habitations from the vicinity of the ancient church. There can be 
 no hesitation about accepting that as an axiom. 
 
 It will easily be understood, then, that when I have been asked 
 for the village of Danby or its site, I have usually answered in the 
 somewhat general form, " Probably somewhere in the fields to the 
 north, but not far to the north, of the church." 
 
 Now my study of all available sources of information touching 
 the parish — of the Domesday record, the Ordnance maps, the local 
 names occurring in it, their meaning and general bearing, aided 
 not a little by what could be learned from those multitudinous old 
 
The Site of ancient Danby, the Vill 4 3 1 
 
 conveyances in the Freeholders' Chest — has led me on to a conclusion 
 which goes far towards an exacter localisation still. 
 
 No one the least cognisant of the contents of old documents 
 dealing with local matters, and even so low down in point of time 
 as 1550 to 1580 — and indeed later yet — can but be aware that, at 
 and through the period so connoted, wherever there was a dwell- 
 ing — castellated mansions and so forth excepted — there was also a 
 "toft" for it to stand in. Toftum adificatum and toftum non- 
 mdificatwm, or, in the English of the Armada period, " builded 
 fronts " and " unbuilded fronts," are the phrases which denote the 
 site, or the possible or intended site, of an ordinary dwelling-house. 
 
 Now, with this maxim, that the " toft " implies the dwelling- 
 house, let us couple the fact that one field to the north of the 
 church lies a group of fields, six or eight in number, which are 
 to this day distinguished by the general name of " Tofts." They 
 are not all in one farm, but they are all in one compact group ; 
 and, besides that, of adequate area or extent. Because it is not a 
 very limited area that is required; for in the year 1272 there 
 were fifty-six oxgangs or bovates in vUlenage in the township of 
 Danby ; and striking the fairest average we can for the number 
 of villans among whom they were held, we cannot allow for less 
 than thirty-five. Or, in other words, we want sites for at least 
 thirty-five dwellings — probably more — in these tofts, each of which 
 dwellings must have had its own proper and peculiar toft or 
 inclosed yard, of from a quarter of an acre in extent up to a whole 
 acre, to stand in. 
 
 Here, then, in this particular area marked out for observation 
 by its significant name, deducing what are seen to be perfectly safe 
 and warrantable inferences from perfectly well-ascertained premises, 
 we probably find the site of the original vill of Danby. And in 
 such vicinity and correlation with this site as strongly to confirm 
 the inference so drawn, are the series of fields known by the very 
 marked name " The Wandales." There are the traces, it is likely, 
 of a somewhat later system of husbandry in the series of separate 
 inclosures (as they are now) called the Long-lands, the Mill-thwaits, 
 and so forth, which lie near hand ; but the name " The "Wandales " 
 belongs to a much earlier period of agricultural procedure than 
 any indicated by such names as those last mentioned. For 
 
432 Appendices 
 
 Wandales, like Danby itself, like Clitherbeok, like Botton, like 
 Howe as thie name of two marked conical but natural hilla in 
 the parish, goes back to the time that Dane and his family of 
 dependants, or their immediate successors, made their mark on the 
 physical aspects of the country, and left their abiding impress on 
 its habits, language, and local nomenclature. And it is a term 
 such as to preclude the possibility of mistaking either its origin or 
 its application. As noted above, the explanation of the primary 
 element in the name Wandale was made on purpose to suit and 
 illustrate the connection I have sought to trace between the original 
 vill of Danby, its church, its site as marked by its tofts, and the 
 closely adjacent Wandales : " the enclosed lands of a hy or hamlet, 
 in contradistinction to the common or waste belonging to it." 
 And our Wandales are separated from our tofts now simply by 
 the lane called Wandales Lane, exactly as the tofts themselves are 
 divided into two parts by a lane parallel to the former, which ran 
 through the centre of the old settlement, as its street runs through 
 a modern village. 
 
 What revelations Danby Church may have had to make in the 
 past bearing on this topic, or what disclosures it may have to make 
 in the future, it is idle to speculate about. The Kildale Church 
 of twenty years ago, with the weaponed skeletons of its old Danish 
 lords — the trenchant swords and the scarcely less terrible battle-axe 
 — had facts to detail that were read with avid interest in Sweden 
 as well as in Denmark. Worsaae, Stephens, and others wrote to 
 me for further and fuller details, and the acknowledgments of the 
 writer first named — whose visit to North England and researches 
 and inquiries there, touching on the same and correlated matters, 
 were then comparatively recent — were very pleasant to read. That 
 poor old Danby Church once had similar records entrusted to her, 
 possibly keeps them still, there can be little or no doubt. The 
 medifeval pottery found in hundreds of instances in the graves 
 throughout the churchyard, with the accompanying charcoal — almost 
 certainly committed to the ground in the form of live embers — has 
 its own tale to tell ; but I, for one, should be very sorry to say 
 that all the pottery I have seen taken from the graves there was 
 no earlier than mediaeval ; or that the old consecrated churchyard 
 comprised all the ground originally devoted to sepulchral purposes. 
 
The Site of ancient Danby, the Vill 433 
 
 That pagan Danes were laid to their rest there I make no doubt ; 
 and that they were the fore-elders of a Christianised generation or 
 series of generations is equally certain. And while the great men 
 among these might well be buried, as at Kildale, within the pre- 
 cincts of the (since) sacred building, or, at least, so close to it as to 
 be included within it at the rebuilding of a future day, the meaner 
 dwellers in the 61/ itself, as it expanded and grew to be a more 
 populous place, would find their earthy beds to the south and east 
 of the dedicated building. And the journey thither from the 
 homes they had dwelt in would be, if our deductions are right, 
 neither a distant nor a difficult one, and preceded by just such 
 gatherings of friends and neighbours as are very far indeed, even 
 yet, from being merely things of the past. 
 
 2f 
 
APPENDIX E 
 
 ATTEMPT TO CLEAR UP THE DIFFICULTIES IN THE 
 DOMESDAY ENTRIES TOUCHING DANBY 
 
 Under the heading " XXIIII. TERRA HUGONIS FILII BALD- 
 RICI " are the two following entries, the first on f. lx.a and the 
 other on f. lxi.6. 
 
 " M. In Crumheclive habuit Orm v. car. terree ad geldum. 
 Terra ad ii carucas. Ibi habet Hugo (F. B.) nunc i uillanum & v 
 bordarios, cum i oaruca. 
 
 " B. hse pertinent ad hoc M. Danebi, Lelun, Bro . . . Camise- 
 dale. In his sunt ad geldum xi car. terrse. Terra ad v carucas. 
 Silva pastilis iii leug. long, and iii leug. lat. Totum M. vii leug. 
 long. & iii leug. & iiii quar. lat. T.R.E. valebat Ix sol. modo 
 iii sol. 
 
 " M. & B. In Crumbeclive & Lelun & Danebi habuit Orm xii 
 car. terrss ad geldum. Terra est ad iii carucas. Hugo habet et 
 wasta est. Silva past, iii leug. long. & iii lat. Totum M. vii leug. 
 long. & iii lat. 
 
 " M. In Camisedale habuit Orm i car. terrge ad geld. Terra est 
 ad dim. carucam. Hugo habet ibi i uillanum cum i caruca." 
 
 This second entry is placed at the end of the notice of Hugh 
 FitzBaldric's teura, saving only the following : — 
 
 "M. In Hevvarde habuit Orm iii car. terrse ad geld. Terra 
 ad i carucam. Hugo habet ibi i hominem cum i caruca. T.R.E. 
 valebat x sol. modo v sol." 
 
 Over these three entries stands the heading " NORT REDING." 
 
 In several particulars, indeed in almost all, these two entries 
 tally so precisely that, as regards those particulars, the one may 
 be spoken of as the duplicate of the other. Crumbeclive is the 
 
Attempt to clear tip a Danby diffimlty 435 
 
 manerium, Danebi and Lelun the berewicce. The extent of diva 
 pasturalis mentioned in either case is the same, and so is the extent 
 of the totum maneriwm. The total number of carucates involved in 
 the first entry is sixteen, and that, again, is the number involved 
 in the second. 
 
 The occurrence of a second entry, involving so much of what 
 is contained in a former entry, is in itself not only totally anom- 
 alous, but such as at once to suggest that an explanation is 
 wanted, and also that it would be well to look for it and, if 
 possible, supply it. 
 
 One explanation which, in a sense, suggests itself, is that the 
 earlier entry might possibly involve a mistake made by the scribe, 
 and detected either when just made or, it might be, on revision, 
 and that the second entry was made as containing the rectifica- 
 tion of the mistake ; and for myself, I am inclined to believe 
 that this explanation will be found to cover all the diificulties 
 involved. 
 
 But I would further remark that there is yet a difficulty 
 involved, diverse in kind from any glanced at so far ; and that is, 
 that the reading in the first entry, or rather at a certain part of it, 
 is by no means ascertained, and I even think, by no means ascer- 
 tainable. The word which begins Broc — I think it is safe to 
 assume so much as ascertained — ^is not easily continued. In the 
 Yorkshire Facsimile the doubtfulness is so great that I wrote to 
 Sir Henry James on the subject, and the following reply was most 
 courteously given by him : " The entry on page Ix. of the York- 
 shire Domesday Book is, I think, BROCTUN Camisedale ; but thei e 
 is a blotch of scattered ink over the writing Broc . . . Garni, which 
 makes the reading a little doubtful ; and so with the words t'ra ad 
 in the next line. But this is undoubtedly (ra ad. I cannot find 
 where Broctun is ; it is probably near Denby, Barnsley." 
 
 We need not pause over the manifestly erroneous character of 
 this surmise ; our business is rather with the fact of the blotched 
 word. Is it quite certain that the said blotch was made inadver- 
 tently? In the Recapitulation, Camisedale and Broctun come in 
 immediate sequence the one to the other. It is surely not impos- 
 sible that a slip of the pen should have, through the local facts 
 involving this circumstance, been facilitated, and on being detected 
 
436 Appendices 
 
 have been thus marked purposely. For it is manifestly a slip of the 
 pen. Hugh FitzBaldric had no Urra, and could have had no Urra, 
 in either of the Broctuns — Parva Broctun, that is, Magna or Alia 
 BroGtun (Little Broughton and Great Broughton), or Broctun near 
 Skelton (now Brotton). There is no uncertainty as to the holders 
 of lands in either or all of those places, and Hugh FitzBaldric is 
 not one of them. 
 
 It was otherwise, however, at Heworth ; for on f. i., where the 
 locality dealt with is York and the immediate vicinity (much of 
 what is now the suburbs of York), Hugh FitzBaldric is not only 
 mentioned as holding four mansions — those, namely, of Aldulf, 
 Hedned, Turchil, and Gospatric, with twenty-nine small dwellings 
 arid St. Andrew's Church (acquired by purchase) — but also as holding 
 largely in Heworth. The entry is as follows : " In Heuuarde 
 habuit Orm i manerium de vi carucatis terrse quas iii carucse 
 possunt arare, Modo habet Hugo Filius Baldri i hominem & i 
 carucam. T.E.E. valebat x sol., modo v solidos." In immediate 
 sequence to this is the further entry, " In eadem villa habuit 
 "Waltef i manerium de iii car. terrae. Modo habet Ricardus de 
 Comite de Moritonio. T.E.E. valebat x sol., modo x sol. & viii 
 den. Hsec villa i leug. long. & dim. latum." 
 
 Now, there is a degree of inconsistency between the statement 
 touching Heworth in the Eecapitulation and the several entries in 
 the body of the record, there being another short one on f. Ixv. as 
 follows: "TERRA GOSPATRIC. M. In Hevvorde i car. terra; 
 ad geld. Terra ad dim. carucam," and the notice of Heworth in 
 the Recapitulation, which is, " In Heuuorde iii car. : Ibid, iii car.," 
 the latter specified as holden by Earl Alan, and the former (at 
 least presumably) by the Archbishop ; which is such in its nature 
 and extent as to arrest attention arid claim some measure of in- 
 vestigation. 
 
 It does not follow necessarily that because in the first entry 
 Orm is mentioned as having held six carucates in Heworth and 
 Waltef three, these tenancies were synchronous, and that the 
 united total, or nine carucates, is to be held the measure of the 
 actual area of Heworth. Nor can it possibly be assumed that 
 because Orm had held six carucates, therefore Hugh FitzBaldric 
 held the same, for what he is represented as holding directly 
 
Attempt to clear up a Danby difficulty 437 
 
 militates against any such assumption. What he is stated to have 
 had there was " i homo & i caruca," his predecessor having had 
 " iii carncas." It is evident on the face of it that there had been 
 displacement and rearrangement. 
 
 Waltef, otherwise Earl Waltheof, had been arrested in the year 
 1175, the second half of it, and he had been tried at the mid- 
 winter following, and beheaded 31st May ensuing. Gospatric also 
 had been under the Conqueror's displeasure, and consequent 
 forfeiture, and had fled for the second time near the end of 1072. 
 The duration of his absence from England seems to be uncertain, 
 but it must have lasted some little time, and it was not until its 
 expiry that he received what Dr. Freeman speaks of as "the 
 partial restoration of his lands." Here we have elements of dis- 
 placement and rearrangement provided ready to our hand, and it 
 is quite possible that between the giving in of the returns forming 
 the bulk of the Domesday Book, and the labour of summarising 
 which found its issue in the Recapitulation at the end of the book, 
 the said process of rearrangement had been proceeding, and most 
 likely received its completion. 
 
 It is more than possible that the entry in the Summary or 
 Recapitulation gives us the total carucatal area of the township, 
 viz. two inaneria (or, at least, fees) of three carucates each ; and 
 besides that represents the final settlement of the tenures. And 
 with this agrees the precise statement in Kirkby's Inquest to the 
 effect that "in He worth sunt vi car. terrse, quarum iii sunt de 
 feodo Briani filii Alani, . . . et iii car. sunt de feodo Abbatis et 
 Conventus B. Marise Ebor."i The former of these two fees is 
 
 ' There are certain details given after the mention of Brian FitzAlan's fee 
 wliich are inconsistent -with the primary statement unless they are understood 
 as a somewhat muddled account of the subdivision of the said fee. Tlie 
 editor, in a final note, remarks that "this account of the wapentake of 
 Bulmer is very incomplete," and refers the reader to certain documents 
 printed in the Appendix, from one of which we learn that Brian FitzAlan's 
 fee was actually so divided, and that one division thereof, consisting of one 
 carucate, was held by Andrew de Bolingbroke and Hamo de Grusey jointly. 
 And this subdivision tallies with what we are led to infer from other sources, 
 viz. the one carucate of the Gospatric fee, and the one-third of the entire fee 
 of six carucates apparently held by Hugh FitzBaldric, according to the earliest 
 entry of all (f. i.) And this, again, tallies with the three carucates of his 
 tenure in Heworth as specified in the amended or corrected entry on lxi.6. 
 
43 8 Appendices 
 
 probably that held for a time only by Hugh FitzBaldric, aud 
 eventually by Earl Alan of Richmond. 
 
 There are yet other considerations to be adduced in connection 
 with this suggested explanation of the duplicated and connected 
 entry of f. Ix., which, moreover, may be found more or less corro- 
 borative of the said suggestion. And one of these is, that no 
 herewica in Camisedale either did or could appertain to the 
 manerium of Crumbeclive. In the amended entry the herewicos 
 of Danby and Lelum are, and correctly, described as so appertain- 
 ing, but Camisedale was in another district and another connection 
 altogether. Besides the one carucate there in Hugh FitzBaldric'a 
 fee, the king still retained five carucates, and the Earl of Mortain 
 three, and its local position is indicated as being both more in the 
 Stokesley direction, and in near juxtaposition with Ingleby Green- 
 how and Little Broughton. But excluding the Camisedale carucate 
 and the three carucates in Heworth, which, we have had suggested, 
 were in the mind of the scribe when he began the blundered name 
 of Broc . . ., we have the exact number of carucates required for 
 Crumbeclive, Danby, and Lelum, and that is twelve — five in 
 Crumbeclive, and (as we shall see later) six in Danby, and one in 
 Lelum. 
 
 And here I would call special attention to the fact that it is 
 Crumbeclive that takes the rank of manerium, Danby and Lelum 
 both being merely berewicce to it. Both the fact and the remark 
 will probably be found in the sequel to be not without their 
 importance. 
 
 For we have yet another entry bearing upon the three places 
 thus mentioned and their relative connection. And that entry is 
 found in the document which is headed, " Hie est feudum Eotberti 
 de Bruis quod fuit datum postquam Liber de Wintonia scriptum 
 fuit," the very last passage in it being, " Et in Eschedala xii car. 
 & ii bov. : scilicet in Danebia vi car., et in Crumbecliva iii car., 
 & in duabus Hanechetonis ii car., et in Laolum x bovatse." 
 
 It will be at once observed that, save only the additional two 
 bovates (or a quarter of a carucate) the area mentioned is precisely 
 what it had been more than twenty years previously, or twelve 
 carucates. The additional two bovates most likely represent some 
 small accretion (whether by a correcter estimate or a process of 
 
Attetnpt to clear up a Danby difficulty 439 
 
 assarting, cannot be alleged) made at Lelum, or near. But the 
 relative connection and importance, and even distribution in a 
 degree, have been altered. Crumbeclive is no longer the manorial 
 head or superior ; and, besides that, it has been dismembered. Its 
 original five cariicates have been divided, and while but three 
 remain as the dwindled portion now known as Crumbeclive, the 
 other two are divided again between the " two Hanktons." 
 
 I am quite aware that this entry has never been read, or rather 
 interpreted, in this way hitherto. Young reads "and in duabus 
 Hanechetonis, the two Egtons, probably Egton and Egton Bridge," 
 with " perhaps duabus ham Echetonis, the two hamlets, the Egtons," 
 appended as a nute. But anything more hopelessly astray than 
 either of these solutions it is difiicult to conceive. Egton was not 
 only not in the fee of Brus, it w£is already in the fee of the Earl 
 of Mortain, and Nigel Fossard was his sub-feudatory there ; and 
 there were not two Egtons, or even two hamlets, Egton Bridge, 
 so called, being a growth of much later date. Indeed it is a matter 
 of question whether the name Egton Bridge had begun to be applied 
 as early as the year 1500. 
 
 And again in my own incomplete History of Cleveland, although 
 I advert to " the difficulty which besets the record," and offer a 
 suggestion towards its solution, still the suggestion is insufficient, 
 and the difficulty remains as clearly evident as before. 
 
 Of couree, however plausible it may appear to assume that the 
 original Crumbeclive manerium of five carucates may have been 
 divided into the Crumbeclive three carucates of the Brus feudum, 
 and the two carucate lot comprising the two Hanktons, something 
 more than a mere surmise that it may have been so is required 
 before such surmise becomes of any value except to its originator ; 
 and I would suggest that what is advanced below may supply at 
 least a part of the something more required. 
 
 In the first place, the name Hankton is a surviving place-name, 
 and in the exact locality required. And, besides that, there is to 
 this day a marked — nay, even a twofold — natural division between 
 the Crumbeclive part and the Hanktons part. For the Crumbe- 
 clive part is simply but indisputably marked by the vicinity of the 
 old Crumbeclive itself. The name has been shortened into Crunkley, 
 where the kley represents the ancient dive (or clift), just as in the 
 
440 Appendices 
 
 Guisborough place-name Kemplali there is the survival of the older 
 form Kempclive, the element cliff itself being retained in the name 
 Cliflf Wood, the alternative of Kemplah Wood. And between 
 Crumbeclive and the part indicated hy the still extant name 
 Hankton there intervenes, besides a portion of common (along the 
 length of which runs the roadway called Lealholm. Lane), the 
 stream now called Buskey Beck, the bed of the latter being more 
 than 125 feet lower than the site of the existing farmstead and 
 probable mansio of Domesday date. And, beyond even this, it is 
 to be observed that close to Hankton Hill or Farm or House (for 
 all three names are applied) is a farm now called — and for the last 
 three centuries also^Wind Hill, the lands of which mainly face 
 north, while those of Hankton face south. These two tenements 
 then may well supply the diKB Hanechetonm. 
 
 But besides this there would appear to be evidence still avail- 
 able adequate to show that the five carucates in question must of 
 necessity be found in the localities indicated, for the good and 
 sufficient reason that, if we admit the identity of Crunkley with 
 Crumbeclive, there was no space for them elsewhere. Because the 
 lands in question were in reality environed on all sides save the 
 north — where there is the precipitous clifF, of over 200 feet in 
 height^by lands that were not only uncultivated then, but 
 remained as undivided, rough woody pasture down to less than a 
 century and a half since. These rough woody pastures were 
 severally called the Low Wood and Glaisdale Lawns. 
 
 I think then that the case for the assumed subdivision of the 
 original Crumbeclive manerium into the later Crumbeclive section 
 and the two Hanktons section is a fairly strong one ; especially as 
 it is an ascertained fact that Hankton is a name of very old stand- 
 ing. It was extant, and as the established name, in 1656 ; and 
 how much earlier we may not venture to guess except by referring 
 to the old Hanechton of 1087-88. 
 
 But there is another matter to which a brief reference may be 
 here made. I mean the transference of the manorial dignity or 
 status from Crumbeclive to Danby. 
 
 It is to be observed that there is, in respect of the notice 
 touching the Brus fee at the end of the Yorkshire Domesday, an 
 indefiniteness as to the date thereof in reference as to all but the 
 
Attempt to clear up a Dandy difficulty 44 1 
 
 past. The fee had not been given when the Book of Winchester 
 was written. It is, however, generally assumed that it was given by 
 the Conqueror : an assumption which is perhaps probable, although 
 it seems to be open to question whether it can be absolutely main- 
 tained. If it could be, the date of the grant would of course be 
 ascertained within a few months, inasmuch as William's death in 
 1088 decides the question. 
 
 But still the date of the writing under mention would not be 
 settled even then and so ; and there axe reasons, palseographic and 
 other, for assuming that the writing is sensibly later in date than 
 that of the writing in the actual Liber de Wintonia itself. And 
 for my own part I am inclined to think that, in the matter specially 
 under notice, or the transference of the manorial status from 
 Crumbeclive to Danby, there may be found internal evidence that 
 the date in question is distinctly later than the date of the grant. 
 Because not only is Robert de Brus spoken of as de facto tenens in 
 the case of the lands and lordships mentioned, but it is self-evident 
 that some little time must have elapsed before such changes in our 
 Danby manorial lands could have been effectually brought about. 
 Less than this indeed, on any adequate consideration of the circum- 
 stances involved, could scarcely be conceded by even a grudging 
 questioner. 
 
 For there is no question that Robert de Brus placed the then 
 head of his Cleveland barony at Danby. The castle and manor 
 there might be overshadowed some twenty or twenty-five years 
 later by the superior importance of the castle and manor of 
 Skeltou ; but the importance of Danby in the first Bruce's eyes is 
 attested by the strong as well as massive ^ castle he built there ; 
 and the estimate formed by his successors in the barony of its value 
 and importance may be realised by aid of the recollection that 
 when it had been forcibly abstracted — although with the substitu- 
 tion of more valuable lands and manors elsewhere — by the king, 
 
 1 The walls on the north side of it were fully eleven feet thick, and water- 
 defences outside the strong mason-work bulwarks thus supplied were of a 
 singularly elaborate nature. Strong as the site was by nature— it occupied 
 the end of a ridge with a decisive slope to the north and east, on which sides 
 also there were moats as well as on the landward side — it was elaborately 
 defended on the other sides also. 
 
442 Appendices 
 
 and doubtless under the strong influence of political motives and 
 considerations, still the succeeding barons never rested until they 
 succeeded in re-acquiring both castle and manor, and that too not- 
 withstanding the enormous amount of the fine levied by the 
 monarch in consideration of such concession on his part. 
 
 But as still tending towards the same general conclusion as 
 touching the superior claims of Danby and the transference to it 
 of the previous manorial importance of Orumbeclive, there are 
 other considerations yet remaining to claim a measure of our 
 attention. 
 
 Brus, as a man of war from his youth, mu.st have been fully 
 competent to the selection of the fittest site for the strong fortress 
 he intended to erect, whether at once or after some inevitable 
 delay. A moment's thought about the relative fitness of the site 
 supplied at Danby and that available at Orumbeclive for such a 
 purpose cannot but suggest to us that, while one of these sites was 
 absolutely worthless from a strategical point of view, the other was 
 characterised by the presence of singular advantages. Danby com- 
 manded the route from Tees Mouth to Kirkby Moorside, and 
 beyond doubt controlled all similar passage along the line of the 
 Esk on its eastern flank. Orumbeclive had no such command or 
 control. In fact a stronghold like Danby made its occupant the 
 arbiter of all ingress or egress from the north and west as regards 
 the whole Dales district, and was a position to be valued ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
 No wonder then Orumbeclive had to yield the precedence, and 
 to become subsidiary where once she had been paramount. 
 
 Perhaps even it might be possible to enhance some of the con- 
 siderations involved in what has been last advanced, and especially 
 as regards the control to be exercised over any traffic across the 
 valley of the Esk for several miles to the east of the then Danby 
 Castle. There are reasons for thinking the whole of the Esk 
 valley from some point not a great way below Castleton, at one 
 time formed the bed of what was a long narrow sheet of water with 
 such a current through it as might be supplied by the volume and 
 force of the Esk as it was then. And there is, if not equal, at least 
 sufficient, reason for assuming that in the earlier days preceding 
 Domesday, and quite down to the period of Domesday itself, a great 
 
Attempt to clear up a Danby difficulty 443 
 
 proportion of the lower part of that which had once been the 
 bottom of the said long sheet of water, consisted mainly of swamp, 
 thicket, scroggy brush, and sparse timber-growth ; that, in fact, it 
 was a district such as was not calculated either to invite or to 
 facilitate transit. And yet, the simple facts that the quasi-table- 
 land between Danby Beck on the west and the Ainthorpe ridge on 
 the east, starting from the line of the Howe to Ainthorpe as the 
 northern boundary, and going no farther south than the church — 
 on which plateau the ancient vill of Danby unquestionably was 
 placed — actually furnishes very much more than the carucatal area 
 specified by Domesday, and that the swampy overgrown bottoms 
 just referred to remained ■wild pasture-grounds, and nothing better, 
 down to the end of the sixteenth century, are quite sufficient to 
 establish all that is advanced above. 
 
 It would seem then, on the whole, that there are adequate 
 reasons for considering the displacement of Crumbeclive by Danby 
 explained, and for thiixking that the former was thereupon dis- 
 membered, and for considering the Au<z Hanechetonm fairly ac- 
 counted for as one of the results of such dismemberment. 
 
 One other remark touching this assumed displacement of Crum- 
 beclive by Danby may be ventured here. With the old or original 
 Castle of Danby, situated where it was, to accentuate the said dis- 
 placement, one necessary inference is that the earliest solid bridge 
 thrown across the Esk would be built on a site equally dominated 
 and protected by the fortress. And it is thoroughly worth more 
 than passing notice that the ancient bridge, locally known as 
 Castle ton Bow Bridge, not only occupied just such a site, but was 
 such in its architectural features and details as to postulate a date 
 not later than the last quarter of the 12th century. The bridge in 
 question, of which a faithful representation is given in the frontis- 
 piece, was as needlessly as unhappily destroyed only a few years 
 aco. I am glad to be able to preserve this memento of it. 
 
APPENDIX F 
 TOUCHING ROBERT DE THWENG 
 
 As connected with this personage there is note of a mandate from 
 the king to the sheriff, dated in 1244, which by no means explains 
 itself. The injunction given is to "make an extent of aU lands 
 belonging to Robert de Thweng within his jvirisdiction, and to cause 
 a valuation of all his chattels (all of which are in the king's hands) 
 to be made." But de Thweng is not spoken of as deceased, 
 although it is more than probable that he was, because at that date 
 his son Marmaduke was almost certainly still a minor. Eor, if we 
 recall the circumstances, Matilda de Kilton was still the wife of 
 de Alta-ripa in 1221. Eight years later, it is true, she had become 
 Robert de Thweng's wife ; but some portion of that interval of 
 eight years must be allowed for Alta-ripa's demise and Matilda's 
 widowhood, and if we suppose Robert and Matilda married as early 
 as 1225, it is perhaps all that can reasonably be assumed. But if 
 this is conceded, the 1242 deed of endowment of the young bride 
 of Marmaduke de Thweng receives a remarkable illustration. 
 Supposing his parents married in or about 1225, and himself bom 
 a year later, we have him a lad of sixteen at the utmost in the 
 latter part of 1241 or early in 1242, and so wanting four years of 
 his stipulated majority ; and it is very possible that he may have 
 been younger still. But what makes the first surmise even more 
 reasonable is, that in certain deeds preserved in the Harleian MSS., 
 and assigned by Mr. Loiigstaffe to circa 1245, we find Marmaduke 
 making grants of lands at Kilton Thorpe, or, in other words, acting 
 as having attained his legal majority, and, in any wise, having 
 succeeded to his father's lordships. 
 
APPENDIX G 
 
 BLACK LAND 
 
 I ASKED one of our farmers the other day if he could give me any" 
 sort of an estimate of what the amount of " black land " in the 
 parish might possibly sum up to. " Black land," said he musingly ; 
 " why, there's a vast. So-and-so has two fields, all black land ; 
 So-and-so else has three ; why, I have three myself, and — there's 
 amaist nane but has some, more or less." 
 
 But I could not get any estimate of the total amount, all through 
 the parish, out of him. He had not been accustomed to consider 
 the matter in that way. 
 
 Let me try and give an idea of what " black land " really is, 
 and how it comes to be black land. 
 
 Near upon forty years £^o, soon after I came into the occupa- 
 tion of this house, at the request of the patron of the living I 
 bought seven or eight acres of land, some of which lay close up to 
 the immediate precincts of the house itself, and might chance, in 
 the hands of an unfriend, to become a very sore nuisance to the 
 inmate or inmates of the house, and, that is, to any parson of the 
 pariah and his family. I had a good deal of trouble over the 
 bargain, and had to pay a heavy price for the land, as regarded 
 only from the " agricultural value " point of view. 
 
 When the bargain was an accomplished fact, and the land 
 turned over to the patron, I became the tenant of it ; and one 
 of the first things to be done was to drain it. This was, for 
 the most part, a straight-on-end piece of work ; but when we 
 got to the far side of the farther field matters did not arrange 
 themselves quite so readily. For there was about an acre there 
 that never had been ploughed, and did not promise to yield 
 
446 Appendices 
 
 too readily to the processes of tlie ordinary drainer. For if you 
 walked over it the whole surface quaked under the impulses of 
 your moving weight. Indeed, in seasons of long-continued wet 
 the very cattle seemed to be chary of trusting themselves too con- 
 fidingly to its undulating level. But I had led my main drain as 
 near to the superficially-covered quagmire as I dared, and then the 
 process adopted had been to drive outside — or skirting — drains in 
 either direction, as close as it was possible to go to the treacherous 
 swamp. In this way a considerable amount of water was per- 
 mitted to ooze and " sipe " out and away. At last we thought it 
 was safe, as it had certainly become necessary, to carry the work 
 into the morass itself ; and we approached as warily as we could, 
 carrying drains as far as was possible wherever there seemed to 
 be most promise of solidity. In this way we found it feasible, 
 with the adoption of the ordinary precautions available to careful 
 drainers, to carry the work continuously forward and to approach 
 its completion. 
 
 One day as I was with the men, and talking to the one who was 
 charged with the nicer or more critical part of the work, and who 
 at that moment was engaged in taking out the third "graft" 
 below the surface, and was congratulating himself on the freedom 
 from disaster which might quite possibly have befallen, all at once, 
 without a moment's warning, he sank down bodily to a depth of 
 at least three feet below that at which he had been working a 
 moment before. As he sank a quantity of thick, black, puddly 
 liquid gushed up all round him, with the effect of giving him 
 a most uninviting-looking bath far above his hips. The dis- 
 mayed look of the man, and the utter mystery of the mishap which 
 had befallen him, and the uncertainty as to how far it might pro- 
 ceed even yet, presented a mixture of the ludicrous with the 
 startling which miay be imagined but can hardly be described. It 
 was a relief, however, to find that the man — Ditchburn was his 
 name — after the first rapid subsidence, sank no lower. But he 
 could do little or nothing towards extricating himself without 
 assistance. From his feet to half-way up his thigh he was confined 
 in a narrow cylinder ; while above that was the narrow trench of 
 the commenced drain, about two feet six inches deep, and present- 
 ing nothing at all in the way of what Archimedes modestly asked 
 
Black Land 4^7 
 
 for, by availing himself of which he could, as his fellow-worker 
 phrased it, "mak' hissel' a lahtle help." However, we soon 
 extricated him, each of ua giving him a hand ; but giving him also 
 at the same time as wide a berth as we very weU could ; for up 
 to his armpits nearly, he was as black and as capable of blacking 
 any person or thing he came into contact with as if he had been 
 carefully and liberally painted down with the dregs of a few score 
 blacking bottles. 
 
 The explanation of his sudden descent, and of the foully- 
 besmirched plight in which he revisited the surface, was that a 
 large tree-stump, still standing where the tree had originally grown, 
 had been situate immediately beneath his feet at the instant he 
 began to sink, and that more than two feet of its original roofing 
 having been removed by the previous processes of the drain-cutting, 
 the thin stratum left above the hollow stump had proved unequal 
 to supporting th« weight of the man, augmented as it was by the 
 vigorous impulses of his digging exertions, and so had given way, 
 and quietly let him through into the equally unexpected and 
 undesirable bath of the black blood of the morass it stood in. 
 
 For this morass was the site of what once had been a section 
 of primsBval forest ; the tree, whose stump remained there firmly 
 rooted five or six feet below the present surface, was one of many 
 such trees. The piece of land on which my men were at work 
 was the southernmost and lowest or last section of a considerable 
 area of land of the same quality and consistency with itself — the 
 skirting piece, indeed, to and through which all the semi-stagnant 
 drainage of the whole area naturally worked its sluggish way, and 
 the whole of it was, and is, full of the d/bris of former forest growth. 
 The deeper the men drove their tools the more obtrusively evident 
 all this became — hazel-nuts, the leaves of divers kinds of trees and 
 shrubs, as easily identifiable as on the day they finally sank to the 
 stagnant depths of what was then a vast pool (but not long before 
 had been one of Nature's loveliest play -places) ; twigs, sprays, 
 branches, limbs, trunks, all lay strewed about there in the veriest 
 profusion. " As the tree falls, so must it lie " is true in a fuller 
 sense than perhaps the writer of that pathetic hymn actually 
 realised. The trees here had fallen, but not as uprooted by the 
 irresistible hurricane, or as yielding to the slower but equally 
 
44 8 Appendices 
 
 irresistible influence of natural decay, but they had fallen under 
 the insidious action of stagnant water. One season in the far-away 
 ages of the past had seen these monarchs of the woodland standing 
 in all their pride and beauty side by side with clumps of hazel, 
 thorn, holly, brier, bramble, and what not (all attested by the re- 
 mains left at our feet) ; and the next, by reason of the formation 
 by natural means — and who shall say how or by what agencies 
 employed ? — of a natural dam sufficient to head back the waters 
 which threaded their way through the glades and along the natural 
 slope, had beheld a sheet of water, of some thirty or five-and-thirty 
 acres in extent, laving the trunks of the trees for some three or 
 four feet of their height, and, while drowning all the lower growths, 
 holding the bases of all the higher clumps in its watery embrace. 
 And the death of all the sturdy timber-trees, tangled thicket, 
 upthrusting sapling, branching bracken, frondy male -fern and 
 shield-fern, had resulted almost as soon as the flopd had succeeded 
 in establishing its permanence. And after death came decay, as 
 always ; only, as regards the timber-trees under such circumstances, 
 the decay commenced not at the bottom nor at the top, but just 
 where the water-line of the destroying flood ringed the' trunk. It 
 was there that fungus and rot and insect were most busily and 
 most effectively at work, and it was there that the consequent 
 weakness of the great strong trunk first showed itself ;i and when 
 
 ^ TMs is a well-ascertained fact ; the instances in which it has heen illus- 
 trated are literally innumerable. Some of the cases recorded as occurring in 
 the coal-measures are of singular interest, as tending to prove not only the 
 general fact stated in the text, but as proving also that, although all the wood 
 proper from the interior of the stumps left in the ground had decayed away, 
 yet the bark itself had remained standing and firm, and with sufficient con- 
 sistency to reveal its nature to the observant eyes which were noting it. And 
 it had been the same in this swampy piece I was draining, when poor Ditch- 
 burn began his unlooked-for and unwelcome descent towards the lower world. 
 It was the bark which was left in its consistency, and had formed the tub 
 in which he had taken his entirely undesired bath. Indeed, I saw the life- 
 destroying energies of water on living trees, under the circumstances noted, 
 well illustrated in the course of the formation of the North Yorkshire and 
 Cleveland line of railway. A little short of the Lealholm Bridge Station, on 
 its west side, is a very heavy embankment, underneath which runs a small 
 stream called Park Head Beck. To permit the proper passage of this stream 
 a culvert was built, but the masonrwork put in had not been strong enough to 
 
Black Land 449 
 
 the pressure of storm and tempest bore heavily upon them, it was 
 there that the resisting strength first gave way. The tree broke oflE 
 short, and as it fell, there it lay, anchored by its branches, until at 
 last, in the course of time, all fashion as of a tree had fleeted 
 away, and the woody constituents of its ancient substance had 
 gone to form indistinguishable ingredients in the soil of the 
 " black land." 
 
 That is the history of the black land as it is read in the unfal- 
 tering, undeceiving, and as yet indelible records of God's earth ; 
 and the black land lies all over the dales, and even in many places 
 where one would not have thought of looking for it, for here and 
 there it creeps up the slopes at the foot of the moor, up steeply- 
 ascending moor-banks, or rather hill-sides. And wherever one finds 
 the black land, there may usually be found too ample evidence 
 to testify to the fact of primaeval woody growth there. No doubt 
 there are variations in the application of this general rule, and one 
 of these variations is, that the lower the level, or, in other words, 
 the nearer the level of the main system of the drainage of the 
 dales themselves, the more numerous and the more impressive 
 become the black-land-covered forest growths. One of my oldest 
 acquaintances in the parish — dead a few months ago only — told me 
 that, having occasion to drive a very deep drain through a part of his 
 property not very far distant from the banks of the stream running 
 along the length of Danby Dale, he had to "cut through three 
 forests." There they lay, one above the other, at three different 
 and distinct, but severally, perfectly continuous and weU-defined 
 levels. Three slow and gradual growings of the trees, three cata- 
 clysms, three periods of decay and falling, and mouldering and 
 becoming "bogwood"; and then time for the conversion of the 
 stagnant pool enveloping the still standing butts into bog first, 
 
 bear the superincumbent pressure, and the culvert failed ; consequently the 
 waters of the stream were headed back, and a pool of some dimensions on the 
 higher side of the embankment formed. The work of reconstructing the cur- 
 vert, and allowing the pent-back waters to run off, was one of diffioulty and 
 time ; and consequently several ash and other trees growing on the verge of 
 the little stream interfered with had from two to four feet of their trunks 
 (nearest the ground) under water for the time — a period of three or four 
 months or more. Every such tree was killed, and has long since been 
 removed. 
 
 2g 
 
45° Appendices 
 
 into swamp next, into oarr-land last, witli a consistency which was 
 that of the " earth above " rather than that of the " waters beneath 
 the earth." 
 
 For all this peaty soil that constitutes the upper two to three, 
 or from that to five or six, feet of the black-land fields has taken 
 its origin ia this way. Water-plants of various sorts and water- 
 mosses have grown up and died down year by year, forming thin, 
 layers, as each successive season rolled on its way ; and these layers 
 were permeated by the roots of other plants and mosses, and the 
 slow process of growth and accretion narrowed the skirting margins 
 first, and raised the shallower portions of the bottom nearer the 
 surface, and so what was in a sense dry land began to appear, but 
 land that almost all the way through, from margin to margin and 
 from bottom to surface, was of vegetable growth that had blackened 
 with decay, and had had its hues further intensified by chemical 
 action. The " Moss-litter Companies " may bring us brown peats 
 of superficial and comparatively recent formation, but our black 
 earth took longer to form, and the hue is distinctly black, and not 
 brown, not even a dark brown. 
 
 The fact is, there are trunks of trees lying about at from just 
 level with the surface to eight, ten, or twelve feet below it in all 
 directions, and to an extent that is hardly suspected by not a few 
 among those who are supposed to know something about such 
 matters ; and the dimensions of these trees are such as to open 
 the eyes of those who see the present growths of timber in the 
 dales, and have come to have their notions modified by what they 
 have thus observed. For instance, some fifteen or eighteen years ago 
 I was far up in Danby Head one day on some parish errand, and I 
 chanced to hear the sound of hard and continued chopping in a 
 direction which I could only associate with an area of ploughed 
 fields, separated each from the other by stone walls in lieu of 
 hedges, and totally innocent of bushes and much more of timber. 
 I went a little out of my way to see what it could be that was 
 being chopped. It turned out that the woodman was one of my 
 old friends, the small farmers living in the Dale-head ; and as soon 
 as I entered the field in which he was at work — it was one of the 
 blackest of black-land fields, even in that black-land part of my 
 parish — I saw him, with his plough-team and bright-breasted 
 
Black Land 451 
 
 plough, all idle and vacuous, close by, hacking away with mighty 
 strokes at something not rising up from the ground but laid within 
 it ; for there was nothing whatever visible to strike at, as I saw 
 him, on the palpable surface. On going up to him I saw it 
 was a bit . of a great black tree he was hacking at. The fact was 
 that by reason of the gradual settlement of the soil through drain- 
 age and other agricultural causes, the tree had come to be in the 
 way of the plough, and he was chopping the intrusive part away. 
 " You see, sir," was his explanation to me, " thoase au'd tree-trunks 
 vMl work oop." And so he had bared about ten or twelve feet of 
 its length — for it lay slopingly in the ground, and as it grew 
 thicker it was seen to lie deeper — and was hacking with might 
 and main to remove so much of it as was actually within scraping 
 distance of his plough-sole. Now that tree, where the farmer was 
 cutting it through towards its upper part, was stiU eighteen inches 
 in diameter, and allowing only six inches for the waste occasioned 
 by decay, what a tree it must have been, with such a diameter at, 
 probably, at least flve-and-twenty feet above the point at which it 
 had first decayed and then broken short off. 
 
 Another specimen I saw taken out of the ground in a field in 
 Fryup Head. This was little more than the six-inch-thick shell 
 of less than the longitudinal half of a tree which, in its decayed 
 condition, attested a diameter of at least four feet. It was more 
 than twenty feet in length, and, shell as it was, it took two horses 
 to " snig " it — that is, to trail or drag it along the ground by aid 
 of a "chain and other tackle. The diameter of that tree where it 
 broke across must have been nearly or quite six feet, and the 
 length — who shall even estimate it ? 
 
 Another, and of hardly inferior dimensions, was partly bared 
 by the action of a smaU black stream on the moors, about a mile 
 north of Danby or Dale End. More and more of it was disclosed 
 from year to year during the first decade of my residence in the 
 parish ; and, first and last, I saw fully forty feet of it laid bare. 
 What the total dimensions were I failed to ascertain ; for one fine 
 day some enterprising person cleared it out, or, at least, as much 
 of it as he could get ; but from what I saw of it, it must have been 
 originally some sixty or seventy feet from the ground before it 
 ceased to be timber that might be squared. 
 
452 Appendices 
 
 All three of the trees thus mentioned were firs of some sort — 
 I believe, Scotch pines. 
 
 As to the oaks I have seen taken out of these repertories of great 
 trees, not a few of them showed signs of having formed portions of 
 fine, well-grown, even if not magnificent, specimens of forest growth ; 
 but they were, almost invariably, very much more decayed than 
 the pines, and it was difficult to meet with blocks of such size and 
 quality as to admit of being put to any practical use. 
 
 But the noble trunk I mentioned as occurring in the course of a 
 small moorland stream was far from being an isolated instance of 
 the former growth of trees on what is now, and long has been, 
 bare and treeless moor. To mention but one case : in the peat- 
 moor used by the Lealholm community there used to be, and 
 probably are still, large quantities of the stumps of fir-trees, afford- 
 ing a close analogy to that one which gave the black bath to my 
 luckless drainer, except that they were so much more recent that 
 the woody character had by no means entirely forsaken them ; on 
 the contrary, they were hacked up for fuel by such as went to the 
 pits to cut peat. 
 
 It is indeed entirely impossible to define exactly the proportion 
 of what has long been treeless moor, which in remote times has 
 been demonstrably under wood at some period ; but I believe the 
 space is enormously larger than is usually allowed for or even 
 suspected. And if so, what with the testimony of the black land in 
 the bosoms of the dales ; what with the forest-clothed slopes of every 
 moor-bank in the district down to less than a century and a half ago ; 
 and what with the hundreds and hundreds of acres of the " thwaits," 
 " launds," " lawns," or scrubby wood pastures, of the seventeenth 
 century, — what is the reasonable conclusion as to the extent of forest 
 and swamp throughout the whole district called Danby now that 
 must have presented itself on all sides in even slightly prehistoric 
 times ? 
 
INDEX 
 
 Bakkow, near Freeturgh Hill, 147 
 called Herdhowe, 135 
 on Skelton moors, 145 
 Barrow-digging, 135 
 
 a zealous helper in, 135-137 
 compared to fox-hunting, 136 
 interest of, 136, 138 
 Barrows, construction of, 146-150 
 contents of, 253, 257 
 date of, 257 
 great numbers of, 258 
 opened in search of treasure, 139 
 successive deposits in, 146, 150 
 Bees, customs connected with, 126, 127 
 put into mourning at their owner's 
 
 death, 127 
 unlucky to huy, 126 
 Begging, a system of, 249 
 Belief in fairies, 53, 57, 58, 68 
 
 witches, 73, 75 
 Birds, destruction of rare, 329, 332 
 double-brooded, 317 
 eggs, occasional peculiarities in, 
 
 342, 343 
 fed in the winter, the various ways 
 
 of, 323-326 
 formerly seen here — 
 
 bam owl, 329 
 
 black grouse, 347 
 
 dabchick, 333 
 
 dipper, 343 
 
 eagle, 38 
 
 golden eye, 333 
 
 goosander, 332 
 
 grebe, red-necked, 333 
 
 harrier and buzzard, 38 n., 330 
 
 kestrel, 330 
 
 kingfisher, 329 
 
 kite, 38 n. 
 
 mandarin drake, 332 
 
 Birds, formerly seen here — 
 merlins, 330 
 quails, 327 
 raven, 38 »., 329 
 screech owl or barn owl, 330 
 shrike, 330 
 
 spotted woodpecker, 329 
 tufted duck, 333 
 water-rail, 333, 334 
 White's thrush, 328 
 imitations of their calls, 338 
 shamming dead, 335-337 
 stockdoves, increased numbers of, 
 347 
 Boxing-matches, 27 
 Bride-ale, 207, 208 
 Bride-wain, 207, 210 
 
 contents of, 21 1 
 Bridges, old — Castleton Bow Bridge, 
 443 ; Duck or Castle Bridge, 
 291, 292 n. 
 British village, the, at Danby, 161 
 or Roman village iu Glaisdale, 169, 
 
 170 
 village at Goathland, 170 
 at Westerdale, 171 
 British villages, so called, 163, 161, 
 169-171, 176 
 investigations of, 163, 164, 175 
 Ord's descriptions of, 162, 176 
 real purpose of, 168-177 
 Brus, last male of the family of, 272 
 
 Eobert de, grants to, 269, 270 
 Burial customs — 
 
 avril or arvel bread, 227 
 bearing of the cofEn, 231 
 bidding to a burial, 226 
 entertaining at a burial, 226, 228 
 hats worn in church by relatives at 
 a burial, 225 
 
 2g2 
 
454 
 
 Index 
 
 Burial customs — 
 
 necessity of passing o¥er church 
 road, 130, 220, 230 
 
 singing at a "burial, 232 
 Burial places, Quakers', 223 
 
 speech at a Quaker's, 225 
 By, its meaning, 264 
 
 Calf, burial of an abortive, 62, 132 
 Caruoate, variations in the, 407 
 Celt (bronze) found in Glaisdale, 254 
 Odtic Britain quoted, 258 n. 
 Charm against a witch, 95, 104, 106 
 Charm for bewitched land, 238 
 Church, baptisms not solemnised in 
 the, 45 n. 
 
 hats worn in, by mourners, 225 
 
 want of reverence in, 44, 45 
 Church rates, payment of, by Quakers, 
 
 224 
 Churchway, cof^ns conveyed only by 
 
 the, 130, 220, 230 
 Churchyard, charcoal found in, 214 ; 
 its purpose, 219, 221, 432 
 
 flint found in, 157 
 
 pottery found in, 213, 221 
 Class differences, absence of, 5, 12 
 Clay beds, structure of, 190, 193, 395 
 Cleveland, Danish names in, 263, 265 
 
 whinstone dike in, 148 
 Climb, a toilsome, 220 
 Common rights, 10, 307 
 
 encroachment on, 307 
 Congregations in winter, 362, 360, 365 
 Conveyances of Danby lands, 306, 
 
 391 
 Coums, Danby, description of, 194, 
 196 
 
 subsidence at, 195 
 " Country, a devil of a," 190, 191 
 Coursing witches, 83, 85 
 Crag wood at Danby, 181 
 Crops, rotation of, 9 
 Crunkley or Crximbeclive, 185, 439 
 
 Dales, configuration of the, 185, 
 396, 399 
 scenery, 42, 185, 372, 400 
 
 the, apparently submerged, 188 
 wedding, a typical, 205 
 Dalesmen, thrift of the, 112 
 Danby, area of district of, 184, 405 
 changes at, 4, 5 
 political, 17 
 
 Danby, condition of, at the Conquest, 
 266, 391, 402, 408 
 configuration of the district around, 
 
 182, 185 
 Danes, marks left by the, at, 263, 
 
 425, 429, 432 
 earls of, 293, 294, 299 
 early settlers at, 260, 425 
 first piano in, 14 
 how I came to, 37 
 my first ride to, 38 
 site of the ancient vill of, 387, 429 
 the name, 264, 265 
 Agricultural Show, origin of the, 11 
 
 speech at the first, 112 n. 
 Beacon, 38 »., 40, 161, 375 
 Botton, 397 
 
 Castle, destruction of the old, 279 
 jury-room at the present, 295 
 old materials of, possibly used 
 
 for the church, 281 
 old, strength of, 270, 271, 311, 
 441 
 Church, condition of, 44, 45 
 Forest, extent of, 404, 409 
 Lords of — • 
 
 Brus, Adam de, deprived of part 
 of his lands, 273-275 
 Peter de, 274, 390 n. 
 
 lands restored to, 275 
 Robert de, 269 
 Danvers, Sir Henry, 293 
 Sir John (Dauntsey), 293 
 Sir John (Chelsea), 297-300 
 sale of estate by, 298, 301- 
 303 
 PitzBaldric, Hugh, 266-269, 402 
 Latimer, William le, 286 
 
 jun., 289 
 Nevill, John, Lord, 292 
 jun., 293 
 Richard, 293 
 Orm, 266, 434 
 
 Thweng, Marmaduke de, 283 
 Robert de, 285, 444 
 Dawnay, John, purchase of lands at 
 
 Danby by, 304-306 
 Daytal-man or day-labourer, 43 n. 
 Decency, increase of the sense of, 5, 
 
 12, 27, 212 
 Defensive works, ancient, 154, 257 
 probable date of, 260 
 their purpose, 156, 160, 259 
 at Eston Nab, 159 
 
Index 
 
 455 
 
 Dialect, decay of the, 31-34 
 District of surprises, a, 373-375 
 Dog-whipper, the, discomfited, 247 
 
 his attire, 246 
 Domesday, entries touching Danby in, 
 
 401, 434 
 Double broods, occasions among birds 
 
 of, 317 
 Draining, discoveries of forest-growth 
 
 In, 415, 447, 449 
 Drunkenness, decrease of, 28, 29, 31 
 Dunsley, ancient chapel at, 223 
 
 Fairies, faith in, 53, 57, 58, 68 
 
 stories of, 52-55 
 Fairy butter, 53 
 
 Cross Plains, 51 
 
 dwellings, 52, 53 
 
 rings, 52 
 Farmers, industry of the, 12-14 
 Farms occupied by the same family 
 for generations, 9 
 
 size of the, 7, 62 
 Fieldfares in severe winters, 32-35 
 Fighting, 27 
 
 FitzBaldric, Hugh, Sherifif of York- 
 shire, 267 
 Flint implements discovered, 157 
 Fog, lost in a, 376, 380 
 Folklore, 51 
 
 customs, faith in, 61-63 
 
 topics, unwillingness to enter on, 58, 
 61 
 Forest-growth, evidences of former, 
 
 159, 412-416, 443, 447, 450 
 Fox-hunters not such fools, 138 
 Free school at Danby, 46-48 
 Friends, the Society of, 223 
 
 burial-places of, 223 
 
 in church, 225 
 
 their manner of paying church 
 rates, 224 
 Fryup Head undercliff, 186, 187 
 
 Gakden, mischief done by birds in, 
 
 318-322 
 Ghosts, fear of, 130 
 Gill, Stonegate, 39, 40, 185 
 Glacial action, evidences of, 397-399 
 Golden plover, stalking, 340 
 Graves, desecration of, 130 
 
 Hartas, William, 112 n., 224 
 
 Hartas, William, his speech at 
 Agricultural Show, 112 m. 
 his speech at a funeral, 225 
 Hart Hall Hob, 54, 64, 65 
 might of, 65 
 not mischievous, 65 
 Haunting, precautions against, 130, 
 
 217-221, 230 
 Hawks, consequence of destruction of, 
 
 332 
 Heathen usages, persistency of, 237 
 Henry VIII, his legendary visit to 
 
 Danby, 293 n. 
 Herdhowe tumulus, 135, 139 
 
 finds at, 140, 141 
 High Stone-dike, 154 
 Hoar-frost, beautiful effects of, 370, 
 
 371 
 Hob, Danish story of a, 67 
 legends, antiquity of, 68 
 Houes, see Bairows 
 Houses, some old, 23-26 
 Housing of the working classes, 18-25 
 
 Immorality of manners half a century 
 
 since, 20 
 Inclosure, causes of, 388 
 
 progress of, 387-394 
 Iron furnaces at Fryup, 167 
 
 in Glaisdale, 169, 170 
 
 at Goathland, 170 
 
 at Westerdale, 171 
 
 mine-pits below Danby Beacon, 162 
 Ironstone, " Julius Csesar " band of, 
 169 
 
 Juries at the Quarter Sessions, non- 
 appearance of Danby men on, 296 
 Jury, functions of the, 392 
 room at the Castle, 295 
 
 Kern or Mell, derivation of the words, 
 
 243 
 Kern-baby, 240, 242 
 sheaf, 240 
 
 probable origin of, 245 
 supper, 239 
 Kestrel, alleged delinquencies of, 331 
 Killing pits on Goathland moors, 170 
 King John, contests of the barons 
 
 with, 275-280 
 
 Land, improvements in management 
 of, 8, 8 n. 
 
456 
 
 Index 
 
 Landrails at the window, 326 
 Latimer, William le, his services, 288 
 William, Lord, malpractices of, 290 
 Leather breeches, 25, 112 n. 
 
 Malet, William, Sheriff of York- 
 shire, 268 
 Mark's-e'en vigil, 219 
 Meat, small consumption of, 8 
 Mell-supper, see Kern 
 Milk-stealing, 87 
 Mine-pit field in Fryup, 168, 174 
 Minister, residence of. the, 43 
 Moor sheep, clambering powers of, 39 
 Moors, ancient right of the freeholders 
 to sport over the, 82 m. 
 lost on the, 376, 380 
 Morality, advance in, 5, 12, 18, 27 
 Musical instruments, increased num- 
 bers of, 14 
 
 Neither, pronunciation of, 34 
 New-fangled ways, anticipated 
 
 of, 14, 112 n. 
 Newspapers, circulation of, 16 
 Noa-ship, 132 
 
 Odin worship, traces of, 61, 62, 132 
 Overtrow, 69 
 
 Paganism, survivals of, 61, 62, 132 
 Parish, state of the, on my arrival, 48 
 
 charges, extent of, in old days, 15 
 Park, original extent of the, 330 
 Poacher, a reclaimed, 339 
 Political views, 17, 18 
 Pottery found in the churchyard, 213 
 
 found at Dunsley, 222 
 Predecessor, visit to my, 43 
 Prophylactic ceremonies, 63, 69, 70, 
 98, 100, 218 
 
 performed without real belief in 
 their efficacy, 71, 72 
 
 Quakers, see Friends 
 
 Races for the ribbon at a wedding, 
 
 206, 209 
 Railway, difficulty of making the, 
 
 190-193 
 Repartee, an apt, 35 
 Richardson, John, 247 ; Nanny, 248 ; 
 
 Willy, 246 
 Ride over Yorkshire moors, 38 
 
 Ring- ousel or moor blackbird, effront- 
 ery of, 320 
 wasteful manner of eating fruit by, 
 321 
 
 St. Columbkill's Cieole, 238 
 Salt, danger of giving away, 121 
 Scenery, 42, 185, 372 
 in winter, 367-372 
 School attendance in winter, difScul- 
 ties of, 366 
 a resolute attender at, 367 
 first inspection of, in Danby, 47 
 Schoolmaster, reason for appointing a, 
 
 46 
 Skelton Castle, reduction of, by King 
 
 John, 278 
 Sleeping arrangements, 19-21 
 Snow, accumulations of, 348, 351, 
 357, 359 
 lights on the, 367, 368 
 on the moor at midsummer, 358 
 tunnel on the Guisborough and 
 
 Whitby road, 358 
 walks through, 348, 352, 353, 362, 
 365, 370 
 Snowstorm, going astray in a, 362, 
 
 363 
 Spirits, asked to "lay," 59 n. 
 Starling, the, an alleged bigamist, 314 
 double-brooded, 315 
 mischief in gardens done by, 318, 
 319 
 Stock kept by Dales farmers, 10 
 
 improvement in, 11, 12 
 Stormy Hall legend, 293 n. 
 Streams, change in position of, 199, 
 
 201 
 Subsidence at Coums, 195, 201 
 Superstitious observances, 69, 71 
 
 Temperance orations, intemperate, 30 
 
 societies, 29, 30 
 Thrift of the dalesmen, 112, 112 n., 
 
 212 
 Thwaites, 412 n. 
 Thweng, Lucia de, 285, 287, 289 
 
 Marmaduke de, 283 
 
 Robert de, 285 
 Toads in hollow trees, 313 
 Treasure, barrows opened in search 
 of, 139 
 
 Undeeoliff, a beautiful, 187 
 
Index 
 
 457 
 
 Unthank, John, 58, 61 m., 110, 112, 
 
 114 
 Urns, discovery of, 135, 140, 141, 146 
 
 Watbb, action of, 187, 198, 395-400, 
 
 448, 448 n. 
 Wedding parties on horsetaok, 205 
 Weddings, disuse of old customs at, 
 212 
 firing guns at, 205, 206 
 handful of money laid on the 
 
 priest's book at, 206 
 races at, 206, 207 ; origin of, 210 
 Wells, holy, 234 
 Wesleyans, influence of, 15, 48 
 WMnstone dike running through 
 
 Cleveland, 148 
 Whitby, historian of, 173 
 
 old town of, 39 
 Wise man, character of the, 108, 109, 
 113 
 a prescription by the, 124 
 failure of a trick played on the, 118 
 misrepresented, 111, 112 
 not a thoroughgoing impostor, 112j 
 
 113 
 sources of information of the, 114, 
 
 117, 123 
 stories of, 104, 106, 114, 117, 120 
 Witch antidotes, 97 
 
 belief in powers of, 73, 75, 80, 102 
 charm against, description of a, 95 
 charms against the, 99, 104, 106 
 coursing a, 83, 85 
 discomfiture of a, 92, 93, 107 
 milk abstracted by, 88-90 
 power of, due to action of mind on 
 
 mind, 78 
 shot with silver bullets, 81, 89, 91, 
 
 93 
 triumph of a, 86, 90 
 Witchcraft and animal magnetism, 
 
 75-80 
 Witch-wood, ceremony of procuring, 
 61, 97, 98 
 indispensable, 75, 99 
 Working classes, housing of the, 18-25 
 
 YoKKSHiRB dialect, decay of the, 33 
 TorksMre Gazette taken in by a com- 
 pany, 16, 84 
 Yorkshire sayings, 33, 34, 136 
 words explained — 
 
 addle, 44 
 
 aim, 112 n. 
 
 arvel or avril, 228 
 
 backbearaway, 137, 312 
 
 bank, 40 
 
 bat, 54 
 
 berry, 55, 56 
 
 brig-stone, 64 
 
 conjure, 59 ». 
 
 daytal, 43 
 
 drauglit, 39 
 
 drith, 33 
 
 fog, 10 
 
 fond, 181 n. 
 
 gabble-ratchet, 70 
 
 gam'some, 313 
 
 gill, 185 
 
 gorpins, 138 
 
 hamp, 55, 56 
 
 kitlins, 213 
 
 laiking, 207 
 
 lating, 98, 140 
 
 leading, 64 
 
 ling, 41 
 
 meat, 44 
 
 moudiwarps, 53 
 
 pankin, 137 
 
 raxing, 137 
 
 roke, 376 
 
 scattering, 324 n. 
 
 skrike, 137 
 
 squandered, 104 
 
 stamp, 55, 56 
 
 swippie, 54 
 
 teem, 65 
 
 urchins, pricky-backed, 312 
 
 warsle, 137 
 
 while, 137 
 
 wick, 313 
 
 wud, 55, 137 
 
 yabble, 209 
 words, search for, 136, 228 
 
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