A Month in Yorkshire Part 4

"Yat witen all yat ever been Yat yis charter heren and seen Yat I ye King Athelstan Has yaten and given to St. John Of Beverlike yat sai you Tol and theam yat wit ye now Sok and sake over al yat land Yat is given into his hand."

CHAPTER VI.

The Great Drain--The Carrs--Submerged Forest--River Hull-- Tickton--Routh--Tippling Rustics--A Cooler for Combatants--The Blind Fiddler--The Improvised Song--The Donkey Races--Specimens of Yorks.h.i.+remen--Good Wages--A Peep at Cottage Life--Ways and Means--A Paragraph for Bachelors--Hornsea Mere--The Abbots'

Duel--Hornsea Church--The Marine Hotel.

About a mile from the town on the road to Hornsea, you cross one of the great Holderness drains, broad and deep enough for a ca.n.a.l, which, traversing the levels, falls into the sea at Barmston. It crosses the hollow lands known as 'the Carrs,' once an insalubrious region of swamp and water covering the remains of an ancient forest. So deep was the water, that boats went from Beverley to Frothingham, and some of the farmers found more profit in navigating to and fro with smuggled merchandise concealed under loads of hay and barley than in cultivating their farms. For years a large swannery existed among the islands, and the "king's swanner" used to come down and hold his periodical courts.

The number of submerged trees was almost incredible: pines sixty feet in length, intermingled with yew, alder, and other kinds, some standing as they grew, but the most leaning in all directions, or lying flat. Six hundred trees were taken from one field, and the labourers made good wages in digging them out at twopence a piece. Some of the wood was so sound that a speculator cut it up into walking sticks. Generally, the upper layer consists of about two feet of peat, and beneath this the trees were found densely packed to a depth of twenty feet, and below these traces were met with in places of a former surface: the bottom of the hollow formed by the slope from the coast on one side, from the wolds on the other, to which Holderness owes its name. The completion of the drainage works in 1835 produced a surprising change in the landscape; green fields succeeded to stagnant water; and the islands are now only discoverable by the 'holm' which terminates the name of some of the farms.

A little farther, and there is the river Hull, flowing clean and cheerful to the muddy Humber. Then comes Tickton, where, looking back from the swell in the road, you see a good sylvan picture--the towers of the minster rising grand and ma.s.sy from what appears to be a great wood, backed by the dark undulations of the wolds.

In the public-house at Routh, where I stayed to dine on bread-and-cheese, the only fare procurable, I found a dozen rustics antic.i.p.ating their tippling hours with noisy revelry. The one next whom I sat became immediately communicative and confidential, and, telling me they had had to turn out a quarrelsome companion, asked what was the best cure "for a lad as couldn't get a sup o' ale without wanting to fight." I replied, that a pail of cold water poured down the back was a certain remedy; which so tickled his fancy that he rose and made it known to the others, with uproarious applause. For his own part he burst every minute into a wild laugh, repeating, with a chuckle, "A bucket o'

water!"

There was one, however, of thoughtful and somewhat melancholy countenance, who only smiled quietly, and sat looking apparently on the floor. "What's the matter, Ma.s.sey?" cried my neighbour.

"Nought. He's a fool that's no melancholy yance a day," came the reply, in the words of a Yorks.h.i.+re proverb.

"That's you, Tom! Play us a tune, and I'll dance."

"Some folk never get the cradle straws off their breech," came the ready retort with another proverb.

"Just like 'n," said the other to me. "He's the wittiest man you ever see: always ready to answer, be 't squire or t' parson, as soon as look at 'n. He gave a taste to Sir Clifford hisself not long ago. He can make songs and sing 'em just whenever he likes. I shouldn't wunner if he's making one now. He's blind, ye see, and that makes 'n witty. We calls 'n Ma.s.sey, but his name's Mercer--Tom Mercer. Sing us a song, Tom!"

True enough. Nature having denied sight to him of the melancholy visage, made it up with a rough and ready wit, and ability to improvise a song apt to the occasion. He took his fiddle from the bag and attempted to replace a broken string; but the knot having slipped two or three times, three or four of his companions offered their aid. The operation was, however, too delicate for clumsy fingers swollen with beer and rum, and as they all failed, I stepped forward, took the fiddle in hand, and soon gave it back to the minstrel, who, after a few preliminary flourishes, interrupted by cries of "Now for 't!" struck up a song. With a voice not unmusical, rhythm good, and rhyme pa.s.sable, he rattled out a lively ditty on the incidents of the hour, introducing all his acquaintances by name, and with stinging comments on their peculiarities and weaknesses.

The effect was heightened by his own grave demeanour, and the fixed grim smile on his face, while the others were kicking up their heels, and rolling off their seats with frantic laughter.

"Didn't I tell ye so!" broke in my neighbour, as he winced a little under a shaft unusually keen from the singer's quiver.

I was quite ready to praise the song, which, indeed, was remarkable. The cleverest 'Ethiopian minstrel' could not chant his ditty more fluently than that blind fiddler caught up all the telling points of the hour. He touched upon the one who had been turned out, and on my hydropathic prescription, and sundry circ.u.mstances which could only be understood by one on the spot. Without pause or hesitation, he produced a dozen stanzas, of which the last two may serve as a specimen:

"Rebecca sits a sh.e.l.lin' peas, ye all may hear 'em pop: She knows who's comin' with a cart: he won't forget to stop: And Frank, and Jem, and lazy Mat, got past the time to think, With ginger-beer and rum have gone and muddled all their drink.

With a fol lol, riddle, liddle, lol, lol, lol!

"Here's a genelman fro' Lunnon; 'tis well that he cam' doun; If he'd no coom ye rantin' lads would happen had no tune: Ye fumbled at the fiddle-strings; he screwed 'em tight and strong; Success to Lunnon then I say, and so here ends my song.

With a fol lol, riddle, liddle, lol, lol, lol!"

l.u.s.ty acclamations and a drink from every man's jug rewarded the fiddler, and a vigorous cry was set up for "The Donkey Races," another of his songs, which, as lazy Mat told me, "had been printed and sold by hundreds." The blind man, nothing loth, rattled off a lively prelude, and sang his song with telling effect. The race was supposed to be run by donkeys from all the towns and villages of the neighbourhood: from Patrington, Hedon, Hull, Driffield, Beverley, and others, each possessed of a certain local peculiarity, the mention of which threw the company into ecstacies of merriment. And when the "donkey from York" was introduced along with his "sire Gravelcart" and his "dam Work," two of the guests flumped from their chairs to laugh more at ease on the floor.

The fiddler seemed to enjoy the effect of his music; but his grim smile took no relief; the twinkle of the eye was wanting. He was now sure of his game, for the afternoon at least.

While looking round on the party, I had little difficulty in discerning among them the three princ.i.p.al varieties of Yorks.h.i.+remen. There was the tall, broad-shouldered rustic, whose stalwart limbs, light gray or blue eyes, yellowish hair, and open features indicate the Saxon; there was the Scandinavian, less tall and big, with eyes, hair, and complexion dark, and an intention in the expression not perceptible in the Saxon face; and last, the Celt, short, swarthy, and Irish looking. The first two appeared to me most numerous in the East and North Ridings, the last in the West.

On the question of wages they were all content. Here and there a man got eighteen s.h.i.+llings a week; but the general rate was fifteen s.h.i.+llings, or "nine s.h.i.+ll'n's a week and our meat" (diet), as one expressed it.

Whatever folk might do in the south, Yorks.h.i.+re lads didn't mean to work for nothing, or to put up with scanty food. "We get beef and mutton to eat," said lazy Mat, "and plenty of it."

The road continues between fat fields and pastures, skirts a park bordered by n.o.ble trees, or tall plantations, in which the breeze lingers to play with the branches: here and there a few cottages, or a hamlet, clean in-doors, and pretty out of doors, with gay little flower-gardens. Frequent thunder-showers fell, and I was glad to shelter from the heaviest under a roof. Always the same cleanliness and signs of thrift, and manifest pleasure in a brief talk with the stranger. And always the same report about wages, and plenty of work for men and boys; but a slowness to believe that sending a boy to school would be better than keeping him at work for five s.h.i.+llings a week. I got but few examples of reading, and those far from promising, and could not help remembering how different my experiences had been the year before in Bohemia.

One of the cottages in which I took shelter stands lonely in a little wood. The tenant, a young labourer, who had just come home from work, "not a bit sorry," as he said, "that 'twas Sat.u.r.day afternoon," entered willingly into conversation, and made no secret of his circ.u.mstances.

His testimony was also favourable as regards wages. He earned fifteen s.h.i.+llings a week, and didn't see any reason to complain of hard times, for he paid but three pounds a year for his cottage, which sum he recovered from his garden in vegetables and flowers, besides sundry little advantages which at times fall to the lot of rustics. He eat meat--beef or mutton--"pretty well every day," and was fully persuaded that without enough of good food a man could not do a fair day's work.

While we talked his wife was putting the finis.h.i.+ng touch to the day's cleaning by was.h.i.+ng the brick floor, and without making herself unclean or untidy, as many do. Her husband had shown himself no bad judge of rustic beauty when he chose her as his helpmate, and her good looks were repeated in their little daughter, who ran playfully about the room. I suggested that the evening, when one wished to sit quiet and comfortable, was hardly the time to wet the floor. "I'd rather see it wet than mucky" (_mooky_, as he p.r.o.nounced it), was the answer; and neither husband nor wife was ready to believe that the ill-health too plainly observable among many cottagers' children arises from avoidable damp. To wash the floor in the morning, when no one had occasion to sit in the room, would be against all rule.

"Stay a bit longer," said the young man, as I rose when the shower ceased; "I like to hear ye talk."

And I liked to hear him talk, especially as he began to praise his wife.

It was such a pleasure to come home when there was such a la.s.s as that to make a man comfortable. n.o.body could beat her at making a s.h.i.+rt or making bread, or cooking; and he opened the oven to show me how much room there was for the loaves. Scarcely a cottage but has a grate with iron oven attached, and in some places the overpowering heat reminded me of my friend's house in Ulrichsthal. Then we had a little discourse about books. He liked reading, and had a Bible for Sundays, and a few odd volumes which he read in the evenings, but not without difficulty; it was so hard to keep awake after a day out of doors.

Meanwhile I made enticing signs to the merry little la.s.sie, and at last she sat without fear on my knee, and listened with a happy smile and wondering eyes to my chant of the pastoral legend of _Little Bopeep_.

Such good friends did we become, that when at length I said "good-bye,"

and shook hands, there was a general expression of regret, and a hope that I would call again. I certainly will the next time I visit Holderness.

Often since has this incident recurred to my mind, and most often when the discussion was going on in the newspapers concerning the impropriety of marriage on three hundred a year. I wished that the writers, especially he who sneered at domestic life, could go down into Yorks.h.i.+re, and see how much happiness may be had for less than fifty pounds a year. As if any selfish bachelor enjoyments, any of the talk of the clubs, were worth the prattle of infancy, the happy voices of childhood, the pleasures and duties that come with offspring! Sandeau deserved to be made _Academicien_, if only for having said that "un berceau est plus eloquent qu'une chaire, et rien n'enseigne mieux a l'homme les cotes serieux de sa destinee."

A mile or two farther and water gleams through the trees on the right.

It is Hornsea Mere, nearly two miles in length, and soon, when the road skirts the margin, you see reedy shallows, the resort of wild-fowl, and swans floating around the wooded islands; and at the upper end the belts and ma.s.ses of trees under which the visitors to Hornsea find pleasant walks while sauntering out to the sylvan scenery of Wa.s.sand and Sigglesthorne. The lake, said a pa.s.sing villager, averages ten feet in depth, with perhaps as much more of mud, and swarms with fish, chiefly pike and perch. He added something about the great people of the neighbourhood, who would not let a poor fellow fish in the mere, and ordered the keeper to duck even little boys poaching with stick and string. And he recited with a gruff chuckle a rhyming epitaph which one of his neighbours had composed to the memory of a clergyman who had made himself particularly obnoxious. It did not flatter the deceased.

In Henry the Third's reign, as may be read in the _Liber Melsae_, or Chronicle of the Abbey of Meaux, the Abbot of St. Mary's at York quarrelled with him of Meaux, about the right to fish in the mere, and not being able to decide the quarrel by argument, the pious churchmen had recourse to arms. Each party hired combatants, who met on the appointed day, and after a horse had been swum across the mere, and stakes had been planted to mark the Abbot of St. Mary's claim, they fought from morning until nightfall, and Meaux lost the battle, and with it his ancient right of fishery.

In Elizabeth's reign, the Countess of Warwick granted to Marmaduke Constable the right to fish and fowl for "the some of fyftye and five pounds of lawful English money." This Marmaduke, who thus testified his love of fin and feather, was an ancestor of Sir Clifford Constable, the present "Lord Paramount," upon whom the blind fiddler exercised his wit.

Hornsea church stands on an eminence at the eastern end between the mere and the village. Its low square tower once bore a tall spire, on which, as is said, the builder had cut an inscription:--

Hornsea steeple, when I built thee, Thou was 10 miles off Burlington, Ten miles off Beverley, and 10 miles off sea;

but it fell during a gale in 1773. The edifice is a specimen of fifteenth-century architecture, with portions of an earlier date. The crypt under the chancel was at one time a receptacle for smuggled goods, and the clerk was down there doing unlawful work when the tempest smote the spire, and frightened him well-nigh to death. The memory of the last rector is preserved by an altar tomb of alabaster, and of William Day, gentleman, who "dyed" in 1616, by a curious epitaph:

If that man's life be likened to a day, One here interr'd in youth did lose a day By death, and yet no loss to him at all, For he a threefold day gain'd by his fall; One day of rest in bliss celestial, Two days on earth by gifts terrestryall-- Three pounds at Christmas, three at Easter Day, Given to the poure until the world's last day.

This was no cause to heaven; but, consequent, Who thither will, must tread the steps he went.

For why? Faith, Hope, and Christian Charity, Perfect the house framed for eternity.

Hornsea village is a homely-looking place, with two or three inns, a post-office, and little shops and houses furbished up till they look expectant of customers and lodgers. Many a pair of eyes took an observation of me as I pa.s.sed along the street, and away up the hill, seeking for quarters with an open prospect. Half a mile farther, the ground always rising, and you come to the edge of a clay cliff, and a row of modern houses, and the _Marine Hotel_ in full view of the sea.

Even at the first glance you note the waste of the land. As at Kilnsea, so here. A few miles to the south, between us and Owthorne, stands the village of Aldborough, far to the rear of the site once occupied by its church. The sea washed it away. That church was built by Ulf, a mighty thane, in the reign of Canute. A stone, a relic of the former edifice, bearing an inscription in Anglo-Saxon, which he caused to be cut, is preserved in the wall of the present church. This stone, and Ulf's horn, still to be seen in York Minster, are among the most venerable antiquities of the county.

Hornsea is a favourite resort of many Yorks.h.i.+re folk who love quiet; hence a casual traveller is liable to be disappointed of a lodging on the sh.o.r.e. There was, however, a room to spare at the hotel--a top room, from which, later in the evening, I saw miles of ripples twinkling with moonlight, and heard their murmur on the sand through the open window till I fell asleep.

CHAPTER VII.

Coast Scenery--A waning Mere, and wasting Cliffs--The Rain and the Sea--Encroachment prevented--Economy of the Hotel--A Start on the Sands--Pleasure of Walking--Cure for a bad Conscience-- Phenomena of the Sh.o.r.e--Curious Forms in the Cliffs--Fossil Remains--Strange Boulders--A Villager's Etymology-- Reminiscences of "Bonypart" and Paul Jones--The last House-- Chalk and Clay--Bridlington--One of the Gipseys--Paul Jones again--The Sea-Fight--A Reminiscence of Montgomery.

I was out early the next morning for a stroll. The upper margin of the beach, covered only by the highest tides, is loose, heavy sand, strewn with hardened lumps of clay, fatiguing to walk upon; but grows firmer as you approach the water. The wheels of the bathing-machines have broad wooden tires to prevent their sinking. The cliffs are, as we saw near the Spurn, nothing but clay, very irregular in profile and elevation, resembling, for the most part, a great brown bank, varying in height from ten feet to forty. The hotel stands on a rise, which overtops the land on each side and juts out farther, commanding a view for miles, bounded on the north by that far-stretching promontory, Flamborough Head; and to the south by the pale line, where land and water meet the sky. The morning sun touching the many jutting points, while the intervals lay in thin, hazy shadow, imparted something picturesque to the scene, which vanished as the hours drew on, and the stronger light revealed the monotonous colour and unclothed surface of the cliffs.