A Month in Yorkshire Part 16

Looking across the dale, somewhat to the right of Bainbridge, we see Nappa Hall, long the seat of the Metcalfes. In Queen Mary's time, Sir Christopher Metcalfe was sheriff, and he met the judges at York at the head of three hundred hors.e.m.e.n, all dressed alike, and all of his own name and family. The name is still a common one in the North Riding, as you will soon discover on the front of public-houses, over the door at toll-bars, and on the sides of carts and wagons. The present Lord Metcalfe had a Guisborough man for his father. A Metcalfe, born at Coverhead, is said to have made Napoleon's coffin at St. Helena. One of the fighting men who distinguished themselves at Agincourt was a Metcalfe. The Queen of Scots' bedstead is still preserved at Nappa.

Raleigh once visited the Hall, and brought with him--so the story goes--the first crayfish ever seen in the dale. Another visitor was that cruel pedant, Royal Jamie, who scrupled not to cut off Raleigh's head--a far better one than his own--and concerning him we are told that he rode across the Ure on the back of one of the serving-men. Perhaps the poor serving-man felt proud all his life after.

If to dream about the Past by the side of a spring be one of your pleasures, you may enjoy it here in Wensleydale with many a change of scene. Besides Diana's Bath, already mentioned, St. Simon's Spring still bubbles up at Coverham, St. Alkelda's at Middleham, and the Fairies'

Well at Hornby. To this last an old iron cup was chained, which a late local antiquary fondly thought might be one of those which King Edwin ordered to be fastened to running springs throughout his territories.

Celt and Northman have left their traces. The grandmothers of the children who now play in the village could remember the Beltane bonfires, and the wild dances around them. The Danes peopled the gloomy savage parts of the glen with their imaginary black alfs. An old couplet runs:

"Druid, Roman, Scandinavia Stone Raise, on Addleboro'."

So we sat and talked, and afterwards scrambled up the rocks to the summit. Here is, or rather was, a Druid circle of flat stones: but my companion screamed with vexation on discovering that three or four of the largest stones had been taken away, and were nowhere to be seen. The removal must have been recent, for the places where they lay were sharply defined in the gra.s.s, and the maze of roots which had been covered for ages was still dense and blanched. And so an ancient monument must be destroyed either out of wanton mischief, or to be broken up for the repair of a fence! Whoever were the perpetrators, I say,

"Oh, be their tombs as lead to lead!"

We walked across the top to Stain-Ray, or Stone Raise, a great cromlech or cairn 360 feet in circ.u.mference. You would perhaps regard it as nothing more than a huge irregular mound of lumps of gritstone bleached by the weather, with ferns and moss growing in the interstices, but within there are to be seen the remains of three cysts, of which only one retains a definite form. It is said that a skeleton was discovered therein. Tradition tells of a giant who once travelling with a chest of gold on his back from Skipton Castle to Pendragon, felt weary while crossing Addleborough, and let his burden slip, but recovering himself, he cried,

"Spite of either G.o.d or man, To Pendragon castle thou shalt gang."

when it fell from his shoulders, sank into the earth, and the stones rose over it. There the chest remained, and still remains, only to be recovered by the fortunate mortal to whom the fairy may appear in the form of a hen or an ape. He has then but to stretch forth his arm, seize the chest, and drag it out, in silence if he can, at all events without swearing, or he will fail, as did that unfortunate wight, who, uttering an oath in the moment of success, lost his hold of the treasure, and saw the fairy no more as long as he lived.

We descended into the hollow between Addleborough and Stake Fell, crossing on the way the natural terrace that runs along the southern and western sides of the hill, to look at a cl.u.s.ter of heaps of stone, and low, irregular walls or fences, the plan of which appears to show a series of enclosures opening one into the other. My friend had long made up his mind that these were the remains of an ancient British village.

For my part, I could not believe that a village old as the Roman conquest would leave vestiges of such magnitude after the lapse of nearly two thousand years; whereupon, arguments, and learned ones, were adduced, until I half admitted the origin a.s.signed. But a few days later I saw an enclosure in Wharfedale identical in form with any one of these, used as a sheepfold, and all my doubts came back with renewed force. In the ordnance maps, the description is "ancient enclosures;"

and, to give an off-hand opinion, it appears to me probable that this outlying hollow may have been chosen as a safe place for the flocks in the troublous days of old.

Stake Fell is 1843 feet in height, rising proudly on our left. Beneath us, in the valley Ray or Roedale, a branch of Wensleydale, spreads Simmer Water, a lake of one hundred and five acres. Shut in by hills, and sprinkled with wood around its margin, it beautifies and enlivens the landscape. It abounds in trout, moreover, and bream and grayling, and any one who chooses may fish therein, as well as in the Ure, all the way down to Bainbridge, and farther. The river trout are considered far superior to those of the lake. We made haste down, after a pause to observe the view, for dinner awaited us in a pleasant villa overlooking the bright rippling expanse.

When we started anew, some two hours later, our hospitable entertainer would accompany us. We walked round the foot of the lake, and saw on the margin, near the break where the Bain flows out, two big stones which have lain in their present position ever since the devil and a giant pelted one another from hill to hill across the water. To corroborate the legend, there yet remain on the stones the marks--and prodigious ones they are--of the Evil One's hands. To me the marks appeared more like the claws of an enormous bird, compared with which Dr. Mantell's _Dinornis_ would be but a chicken.

Long, long ago, while the Apostles still walked the earth, a poor old man wandered into Raydale, where a large city then stood, and besought alms from house to house. Every door was shut against him, save one, an humble cot without the city wall, where the inmates bade him welcome, and set oaten bread and milk cheese before him, and prepared him a pallet whereon to sleep. On the morrow the old man p.r.o.nounced a blessing on the house and departed; but as he went forth, he turned, and looking on the city, thus spake:

"Semer Water rise, Semer Water sink, And swallow all the town Save this little house Where they gave me meat and drink."

Whereupon followed the roar of an earthquake, and the rush of water; the city sank down and a broad lake rolled over its site; but the charitable couple who lodged the stranger were preserved, and soon by some miraculous means they found themselves rich, and a blessing rested on them and their posterity.

Besides the satanic missiles, there are stones somewhere on the brink of the lake known as the 'Mermaid Stones,' but not one of us knew where to look for them, so we set our faces towards Counterside, the hill on the northern side of the vale and trudged patiently up the steep ascent in the hot afternoon sun, repaid by the widening prospect. We could see where waterfalls were rus.h.i.+ng in the little glens at the head of the dale, and the shadow of hills in the lake, and the remotest village, Stalling Busk, said to be a place of unusual thrift. Even in that remote nook, you would find the dalesmen's maxim kept from rusting, as well in the villages lower down and nearer the world: it is--"I don't want to chate, or to be chated; but if it must be one or t'other, why, then, I wouldn't be chated." It is no scandal to say that money-grubbing in the dale is proverbial. "Look at that man," said my Quaker friend at Bainbridge, pointing out what looked like a labourer driving a cart; "that man is worth thousands." I did not hear, however, that he made an offensive use of his talent, as certain money-grubbers do in the neighbourhood of large towns. "He's got nought," exclaimed a coa.r.s.e, rich man near Hull, slapping his pocket, of a poor man who differed from him in opinion: "he's got nought--what should he know about it?"

We went down on the other slope of Counterside with Hawes in sight, and Cam Fell, a long ridgy summit more than 1900 feet high. I preferred to double it rather than go over it, and having s.h.i.+fted the knapsack to my own shoulders, shook hands with my excellent friends, and choosing short cuts so as to avoid the town, came in about an hour to the steep lonely road which turns up into Widdale, beyond the farther end of Hawes.

We shall return to Wensleydale a few days hence; meanwhile, good-natured reader, Widdale stretches before us, the road rising with little interruption for miles. Two hours of brisk walking will carry us through it between great wild hill slopes, which are channeled here and there by the dry, stony bed of a torrent. The evening closes in heavy and lowering, and Cam Fell and Widdale Fell uprear their huge forms on the right and left in sullen gloom, and appear the more mountainous. Ere long thick mists overspread their summits, and send ragged wreaths down the hollows, and much of the landscape becomes dim, and we close our day with a view of Nature in one of her mysterious moods. We ascend into the bleak region, pa.s.s the bare little hamlet of Redshaw, catch a dull glimpse of Ingleborough, with its broad flat summit, and then at six miles from Hawes, come to the lonesome public-house at Newby Head.

Of such wild land as that we have traversed. Arthur Young once bought a large tract, having in view a grand scheme of reclamation, but was diverted therefrom by his appointment as Secretary to the Board of Agriculture. "What a change," he says, "in the destination of a man's life! Instead of entering the solitary lord of four thousand acres, in the keen atmosphere of lofty rocks and mountain torrents, with a little creation rising gradually around me, making the desert smile with cultivation, and grouse give way to industrious population, active and energetic, though remote and tranquil; and every instant of my existence, making two blades of gra.s.s to grow where not one was found before--behold me at a desk, in the smoke, the fog, the din of Whitehall!"

The public-house is a resort for cattle-dealers from Scotland, and head-quarters for shepherds and labourers. The fare is better than the lodging. Three kinds of cakes, eggs, and small pies of preserved bilberries, were set before me at tea; but the bed, though the sheets were clean, had a musty smell of damp straw.

CHAPTER XXI.

About Gimmer Hogs--Gearstones--Source of the Ribble-- Weathercote Cave--An Underground Waterfall--A Gem of a Cave-- Jingle Pot--The Silly Ducks--Hurtle Pool--The Boggart--A Reminiscence of the Doctor--Chapel-le-Dale--Remarkable Scenery --Ingleborough--Ingleton--Craven--Young Daniel Dove, and Long Miles--Clapham--Ingleborough Cave--Stalact.i.te and Stalagmite-- Marvellous Spectacle--Pillar Hall--Weird Music--Treacherous Pools--The Abyss--How Stalact.i.te forms--The Jockey Cap--Cross Arches--The Long Gallery--The Giant's Hall--Mysterious Waterfall--A Trouty Beck--The Bar-Parlour--A Bradford Spinner.

On the way hither, I had noticed what was to me a novel mode of bill-sticking; that is, on the sharp spines of tall thistles by the wayside. The bills advertised _Gimmer Hogs_ for sale, a species of animal that I had never before heard of, and I puzzled myself not a little in guessing what they could be. For although _Gimmer_ is good honest Danish, signifying a ewe that has not yet lambed, the connexion between sheep and swine is not obvious to the uninitiated. However, it happened that I sat down to breakfast with a Scottish grazier who had arrived soon after daybreak, and he told me that sheep not more than one year old are called Gimmer Hogs; but why the word hogs should be used to describe ewes he could not tell.

The morning was dull and drizzly, and by the time I had crossed to Ingleton Fell, from the North to the West Riding, a swift, horizontal rain came on, laborious to walk against, and drove me for shelter into the _Gearstones Inn_. Of the two or three houses hereabouts, one is a school; and in this wild spot a Wednesday market is held. Ingleborough is in sight; the hills around form pleasing groups, and had we time to explore them, we should find many a rocky glen, and curious cave, Catknot Hole, Alum Pot, Long Churn, and d.i.c.ken Pot; and many a sounding ghyll, as the folk here call it--that is, a waterfall. Not far from the inn is Gale beck, the source of the Ribble; and as we proceed down the now continuous descent, so do the features of the landscape grow more romantic.

For more than an hour did the rain-storm sweep across the hills, holding me prisoner. At length faint gleams of suns.h.i.+ne broke through; I started afresh, and three miles farther was treading on cla.s.sic ground--Chapel-le-Dale. Turn in at the second gate on the right beyond the public-house, and you will soon have speech with Mr. Metcalfe, who keeps the key of Weathercote cave. Standing on a sheltered valley slope, with a flower-garden in front and trees around, his house presents a favourable specimen of a yeoman's residence. No lack of comfort here, I thought, on seeing the plenteous store of oaten bread on the racks in the kitchen. Nor is there any lack of attention to the visitor's wishes on the part of Mr. Metcalfe. He unlocks a door, and leads the way down a steep, rude flight of steps into a rocky chasm, from which ascends the noise of falling water. A singularly striking scene awaits you. The rocks are thickly covered in places with ferns and mosses, and are broken up by crevices into a diversity of forms, rugged as chaos. A few feet down, and you see a beautiful crystalline spring in a cleft on the right, and the water turning the moss to stone as it trickles down. A few feet lower and you pa.s.s under a natural bridge formed by huge fallen blocks. The stair gets rougher, twisting among the big, damp lumps of limestone, when suddenly your guide points to the fall at the farther extremity of the chasm. The rocks are black, the place is gloomy, imparting thereby a surprising effect to the white rus.h.i.+ng column of water. A beck running down the hill finds its way into a crevice in the cliffs, from which it leaps in one great fall of more than eighty feet, roaring loudly. Look up! the chasm is so narrow that the trees and bushes overhang and meet overhead; and what with the subdued light, and mixture of crags and verdure, and the impressive aspect of the place altogether, you will be lost in admiration.

To descend lower seems scarcely possible, but you do get down, scrambling over the big stones to the very bottom, into the swirling shower of spray. Here a deep recess, or chamber at one side, about eight feet in height, affords good standing ground, whence you may see that the water is swallowed up at once, and disappears in the heap of pebbles on which it falls. Conversation is difficult, for the roar is overpowering. After I had stood some minutes in contemplation, Mr.

Metcalfe told me that it was possible to get behind the fall and look through it, taking care to run quickly across the strong blast that meets you on starting from the recess. I b.u.t.toned my overcoat to my chin, and rushed into the cavity, and looked upwards. I was in a pit 120 feet deep, covered by a tumultuous curtain of water, but had to make a speedy retreat, so furiously was I enveloped by blinding spray. To make observations from that spot one should wear a suit of waterproof.

Through the absence of suns.h.i.+ne I lost the sight of the rainbow which is seen for about two hours in the middle of the day from the front of the fall. It is a horizontal bow with the convex side towards the water, s.h.i.+fting its position higher or lower as you mount or descend.

Although it might now be properly described as a pit, the chasm gives you the impression of a cave of which the roof has fallen in. If this be so, the fall was once entirely underground, roaring day and night in grim darkness. It may still be regarded as an underground fall, for the throat from which it leaps is more than thirty feet below the surface.

In the cleft above this throat a thick heavy slab is fixed in a singular position, just caught, as it seems, by two of its corners, so that you fancy it ready to tumble at any moment with the current that shoots so swiftly beneath it. As you pause often on returning to look back at the roaring stream, and up to the impending crags, you will heartily confirm Professor Sedgwick--who by the way is a Yorks.h.i.+reman--in his opinion, that if Weathercote Cave be small, it is a very gem. Nor will you grudge the s.h.i.+lling fee for admission.

The extreme length of the pit is about 180 feet. In rainy weather it becomes a sink-hole into which the streams pour from all the slopes around, at times filling it to the brim and running over. Mr. Metcalfe shewed me the stem of a tree entangled in the crevices near the top, which had been floated there by the floods of the previous winter. While coming slowly up, I could not fail to notice the change of temperature, from the chill damp that made me s.h.i.+ver, to a pleasant warmth, and then to the heavy heat of a dull day in July.

A little way below the house, going down the narrow dale, you come to another mossy crevice in the rocks among the trees to which the country folk have given the name of Gingle, or Jingle Pot, because of a certain jingling sound produced by stones when thrown therein. To my ear there was no ring in the sound. It is quite dry, with a bottom sloping steeply and making a sudden turn to a depth of eighty feet. Mr. Metcalfe had let himself down into the Pot by a rope, two days before my arrival, to look for a young cow that had fallen in while on the gad, and disappeared in the lowest hole. He saw the animal dead, and so tightly wedged in under the rock, that there he left it. This was his second descent. The first was made in winter some years ago to rescue his ducks, which, perhaps deceived by the dark crevice, that looked like a deep narrow pond when all the ground was white with snow, took all together a sudden flight to settle on it, and of course went to the bottom. Mr. Metcalfe was driving them home at the time; he looked over the edge of the Pot, and invited the silly birds to fly out. But no, they would not be persuaded to use their wings, and remained crowded together on the highest part of the slope, stretching their necks upwards. So there was nothing for it but to fetch them out. Their owner let himself down; yet after all his trouble the ungrateful creatures refused as long as possible to be put into the bag.

Farther down again, and you come to Hurtle Pot, a gloomy cavity overhung by trees, and mantled with ivy, ferns, and coa.r.s.e weeds. At the bottom rests a darksome pool, said to be twenty-seven feet deep, which contains small trout, and swallows up rocks and stones, or whatever may be thrown into it, without any perceptible diminution of the depth. You can get down to the edge of the water by an inconvenient path, and feel the gloom, and find excuses for the rustics who believe in the existence of the Hurtle Pot Boggart. In olden time his deeds were terrible; but of late years he only frightens people with noises. Both this and Jingle Pot are choked with water from subterranean channels in flood time, and then there is heard here such an intermittent throbbing, gurgling noise, accompanied by what seem dismal gaspings, that a timorous listener might easily believe the Boggart was drowning his victims. One evening a loving couple, walking behind the trees above the Pot, heard most unearthly noises arise from the murky chasm; never had the like been heard before. Surely, thought the turtle-doves, the Boggart is coming forth with some new trick, and they fled in terror. A friend of Mr.

Metcalfe's was playing his flute down on the edge of the pool.

Again farther, and there is the little chapel from which the dale takes its name. As I have said, we are here on cla.s.sic ground. That is the edifice, and this is the place described by Southey. Here dwelt that worthy yeoman, Daniel Dove's father, and his fathers before him, handing down their six-and-twenty acres, and better yet, an honest name, from one to the other through many generations--yea, from time immemorial.

One of those good old families which had ancestors before the Conquest.

Give me leave, good-natured reader, to complete my sketch by the description as it appears, with masterly touches, in _The Doctor_.

"The little church called Chapel-le-Dale, stands about a bowshot from the family house. There they had all been carried to the font; there they had each led his bride to the altar; and thither they had, each in his turn, been borne upon the shoulders of their friends and neighbours.

Earth to earth they had been consigned there for so many generations, that half of the soil of the churchyard consisted of their remains. A hermit who might wish his grave to be as quiet as his cell, could imagine no fitter resting-place. On three sides there was an irregular low stone wall, rather to mark the limits of the sacred ground, than to enclose it; on the fourth it was bounded by the brook, whose waters proceed by a subterraneous channel from Weathercote Cave. Two or three alders and rowan-trees hung over the brook, and shed their leaves and seeds into the stream. Some bushy hazels grew at intervals along the lines of the wall; and a few ash-trees as the winds had sown them. To the east and west some fields adjoined it, in that state of half cultivation which gives a human character to solitude: to the south, on the other side the brook, the common with its limestone rocks peering everywhere above ground, extended to the foot of Ingleborough. A craggy hill, feathered with birch, sheltered it from the north.

"The turf was as soft and fine as that of the adjoining hills; it was seldom broken, so scanty was the population to which it was appropriated; scarcely a thistle or a nettle deformed it, and the few tombstones which had been placed there, were now themselves half buried.

The sheep came over the wall when they listed, and sometimes took shelter in the porch from the storm. Their voices and the cry of the kite wheeling above, were the only sounds which were heard there, except when the single bell which hung in its niche over the entrance tinkled for service on the Sabbath day, or with a slower tongue gave notice that one of the children of the soil was returning to the earth from which he sprung."

Is not that charming?--a word-picture, worthy of a master's pen. One error, however, has slipped in. There is no porch, nor any sign that one has ever been. The chapel will hold eighty persons, and is, as Mr.

Metcalfe, informed me, "never too small."

A week or more might be spent in explorations in this neighbourhood.

Five miles down towards Kirkby Lonsdale, there is Thornton Force. Near it is Yordas Cave--once the haunt of a giant; Gatekirk Cave is distant about half an hour's walk; Douk Hole is in the neighbourhood of Ingleton; and in all the region, and over the Westmoreland border, there is a highly picturesque succession of caves, ravines, glens, and torrents das.h.i.+ng through rocky chasms, and of all the magnificent phenomena only to be seen amid the limestone. Many a tourist hurries past on his way to the Lakes all unmindful of scenery which, in its kind, surpa.s.ses any that he will see between Windermere and Ba.s.senthwaite.

I went up to the public-house and dined with the haymakers, and enjoyed the sight of sunburnt rustics eating smoking mutton-pie without stint, as much as I did my own repast. The host's daughter brought me a book, which had only recently been provided to receive the names of visitors.

Among them was the autograph of a Russian gentleman who had called within the week, and who, as I heard, did nothing but grumble at English customs, yet could not help praising the scenery. He was on foot, and with knapsack on shoulder. I crossed his track, and heard of him sundry times afterwards, and hoped to meet him, that I might ask leave to enlighten him on a few points concerning which he appeared to be distressingly ignorant.

I had planned to ascend and cross Ingleborough, and drop down upon Clapham from its southern side; but when a hill is half buried in mist, and furious scuds fly across its brow, it is best to be content with the valley. So I took up my route on the main road, and continued down the dale, where the limestone crags breaking out on each side form a series of irregular terraces, intermingled green and gray, pleasing to the eye.

In the bottom, on the right, the subterranean river bursts forth which Goldsmith mentions in his _Natural History_.

The height of Ingleborough is 2361 feet. Its name is supposed to be derived from _Ingle-burg_--a word which embodies the idea of fire and fortress. It is a table-mountain, with a top so flat and s.p.a.cious that an encampment of more than fifteen acres, of which the traces are still visible, was established thereon, probably by the Brigantes, if not by an earlier race. It is a landmark for vessels on the coast of Lancas.h.i.+re. St. George's Channel is visible from the summit; and one who has looked on the eastern sea from Flamborough Head may find it convenient to remember that Yorks.h.i.+re, on its westernmost extremity, is but ten miles from the western sea.

In a short hour from Weathercote you come to the end of the fells, an abrupt descent, all rough with crags and boulders, where the view opens at once over the district of Craven, and the little town of Ingleton is seen comfortably nestled under the hill. Craven lies outspread in beauty--woods, hills, fields, and pastures charming the eye of one who comes from the untilled moors, and suggestive of delightful rambles in store. The Ribble flows through it, watering many a romantic cliff and wooded slope. And for the geologist, Craven possesses especial interest, for it is intersected by what he calls a 'fault,' on the southern side of which the limestone strata are thrown down a thousand feet.