CHAPTER XXIV.

“In summer time, when leaves grow green,And flowers are fresh and gay,Robin Hood and his merry menWere disposed to play.”

And when Robin, overjoyed at Little John’s skill, exclaims that he would ride a hundred miles to find one to match him,

“That caused Will Scadlocke to laugh,He laught full heartily:There lives a curtall fryer in Fountaines AbbeyWill beate both him and thee.”

A right sturdy friar, who with his fifty dogs kept Robin and his fifty men at bay, until Little John’s shooting brought him to terms:

“This curtall fryer had kept Fountaines daleSeven long yeares and more,There was neither knight, lord, nor earleCould make him yeeld before.”

Of old Jenkins, it is recorded that he was once steward to Lord Conyers, who used to send him at times with a message to the Abbot of Fountains Abbey; and that the abbot always gave him, “besides wassel, a quarter of a yard of roast beef for his dinner, and a great black jack of strong beer.” The Abbot of Fountains was one of three Yorkshire abbots beheaded on Tower-hill for their share in thePilgrimage of Grace.

Judging from the one to whom we were allotted, the guides are civil, and not uninformed as to the traditions and history of Studley Royal and its neighbourhood. They are instructed not to lose sight of their party, and to conductthem only by the prescribed paths. So there is no opportunity for wandering at will, or a leisurely meditation among the ruins.

I walked back to the railway-station at Ripon, and journeyed thence to Thirsk, where a pleasant stroll finished the evening. Of the castle of the Mowbrays—the rendezvous of the English troops when marching to the Battle of the Standard—the site alone remains on the south-west of the town. The chantry, founded by one of the Mowbrays in Old Thirsk, has also disappeared. And the great tree that stood on the green in the same suburb has gone too. It was under the tree on Thirsk green, and not at Topcliffe, as some say, that the fourth Earl Percy was massacred; certain it is, that the elections of members to serve in Parliament were held under the wide-spreading branches even from the earliest times. It was burnt down in 1818 by a party of boys who lit a fire in the hollow trunk. But the ugly old shambles had not disappeared from the market-place: their destruction, however, so said the bookseller, was imminent.

The church, dating from the fifteenth century, has recently been restored, and well repays an examination. Among the epitaphs on the tombstones, I noticed a variation of the old familiar strain:

Afflictions sore he long time bore,Which wore his strength away,That made him long for heavenly restWhich never will decay.

And another, a curiosity in its way:

Corruption, Earth, and worms,Shall but refine this flesh,Till my triumphant spirit comesTo put it on A fresh.

Sutton: a pretty Village—The Hambleton Hills—Gormire Lake—Zigzags—A Table-Land—Boy and Bull Pup—Skawton—Ryedale—Rievaulx Abbey—Walter L’Espec—A Charming Ruin—The Terrace—The Pavilion—Helmsley—T’ Boos—Kirkby Moorside—Helmsley Castle—A River swallowed—Howardian Hills—Oswaldkirk—Gilling—Fairfax Hall—Coxwold—Sterne’s Residence—York—The Minster Tower—Yorke, Yorke, for my monie—The Four Bars—The City Walls—The Ouse Legend—Yorkshire Philosophical Society—Ruins and Antiquities—St. Mary’s Lodge.

The morning dawns with promise of a glorious day, and of glad enjoyment for us in our coming walk. Our route will lead us through a rich and fertile region to the Hambleton Hills—the range which within the past two weeks has so often terminated our view with its long blue elevations. We shall see another ruin—Rievaulx Abbey, and another old castle at Helmsley—and if all go well, shall sleep at night within the walls of York.

A few miles on the way and we come to Sutton, a pretty village, where nearly every house has its front garden bright with flowers, with tall proud lilies here and there, and standard roses. And every lintel and door-sill is decorated with yellow ochre, and a border of whitewash enlivens even the humblest window. And the inside of the cottages is as clean as the outside, and some have the front room papered. It is truly an English village, for no other country can show the like.

Now the hills stand up grandly before us, showing here and there a scar above the thick woods that clothe their base. The road rises across the broken ground: we come to a lane on the left, marked by a limekiln, and following it upwards between ferny banks and tangled hedges, haunted by the thrush, we arrive presently at Gormire Lake, a pretty sheet of water, reposing in a hollow at the foot of Whitstoncliffe.It is best seen from the bold green bank at the upper end, for there you face the cliff and the hill which rises behind it, covered with copse and bracken. The lake is considerably above the base of the hill, and appears to have been formed by a landslip; it is tenanted by fish, and has, as I heard subsequently at York, a subterranean outlet somewhere among the fallen fragments at the foot of the cliff.

Returned to the road, we have now to ascend sharp alpine zigzags, for the western face of Hambleton is precipitous; and within a short distance the road makes a rise of eight hundred feet. The increasing ascent and change of direction opens a series of pleasing views, and as you look now this way, now that, along the diversified flanks of the hills, you will wish for more time to wander through such beautiful scenery. All that comparatively level country below was once covered by a sea, to which the hills we now stand on opposed a magnificent shore-line of cliffs; some of their summits more than a thousand feet in height.

Great is the contrast when you arrive on the brow: greenness and fertility suddenly give place to a bleak table-land, where the few patches of cultivation appear but meagre amid acres of brown ling. We have taken a great step upwards into a shrewish region. That white patch seen afar is a hunting and training colony, and there go two grooms riding, followed by a pack of hounds. What a chilly-looking place! A back settlement in Michigan could hardly be more lonely. The boys may well betake themselves for amusement to the education of dogs. Was it here, I wonder, that the Yorkshire boy lived who had a bull pup, in the training of which he took great delight? One day, seeing his father come into the yard, the youngster said, “Father, you go down on your hands and knees and blare like a bull, and see what our pup’ll do.” The parent complied; but while he was doing his best to roar like a bull, the dog flew at him and seized him by the lip. Now the man roared in earnest, and tried to shake off his tormentor, while the boy, dancing in ecstacy, cried, “Bear it, father! bear it! It’ll be the makin’ o’ t’ pup.”

By-and-by comes a descent, and the road drops suddenly into a deep glen, crowded with luxuriant woods. Many a lovely view do we get here, as the windings of the road bring us to wider openings and broader slopes of foliage. We pass the hamlet of Skawton; a brook becomes our companion, andwoods still shut us in when we cross the Rye, a shallow, lively stream, and get a view from the bridge up Ryedale.

A short distance up the stream brings us to the little village of Rivas—as the country folk call it—and to Rievaulx Abbey. The civil old woman who shows the way into the ruin, will tell you that Lord Feversham does not like to see visitors get over the fence; and then, stay as long as you will, she leaves you undisturbed. What a pleasure awaits you!—a charm which Bolton and Fountains failed alike to inspire: perhaps because of the narrowness of the dale, and the feeling of deep seclusion imparted by the high thickly wooded hills on each side, the freedom allowed to vegetation in and around the place, and to your own movements. The style is Early English, and while surveying the massive clustered columns that once supported the tower, the double rows of arches, and the graceful windows now draped with ivy of the nave, you will restore the light and beautiful architecture in imagination, and not without a wish that Time would retrace his flight just for one hour, and show you the abbey in all its primitive beauty, when Ryedale was “a place of vast solitude and horror,” as the old chronicler says.

Walter L’Espec, Lord of the Honour of Helmsley, a baron of high renown in his day, grieving with his wife, the Lady Adeline, over the death of their only son by a fall from a horse, built a priory at Kirkham, the scene of the accident, and in 1131 founded here an abbey for Cistercian monks. And here after some years, during which he distinguished himself at the Battle of the Standard, he took the monastic vows, and gave himself up to devout study and contemplation until his death in 1153. And then he was buried in the glorious edifice which he had raised to the service of God, little dreaming that in later days when, fortress and church would be alike in ruins, other men would come with different thoughts, though perhaps not purer aims, and muse within the walls where he had often knelt in prayer, and admire his work, and respect his memory.

Much remains to delight the eye; flying buttresses, clerestory windows, corbels, capitals, and mouldings, some half buried in the rank grass and nettles. And how the clustering masses of ivy heighten the beauty! One of the stems, that seems to lend strength to the great column against which it leans, is more than three feet in circumference, and bears alofta glorious green drapery. An elder grows within the nave, contributing its fair white blossoms to the fulness of beauty. The refectory, too, is half buried with ivy, and there you walk on what was once the floor of the crypt, and see the remains of the groins that supported the floor above: and there at one side is the recess where one of the monks used to read aloud some holy book while the others sat at dinner. Adjoining the refectory is a paddock enclosed by ash-trees, which appears to have been the cloister court. Now the leaves rustle overhead, and birds chirrup in the branches, and swallows flit in and out, and through the openings once filled by glass that rivalled the rainbow in colour.

For two hours did I wander and muse; now sitting in the most retired nook, now retreating to a little distance to find out the best points of view. And my first impression strengthened; and I still feel that of all the abbeys Rievaulx is the one I should like to see again. But the day wore on, and warned me, though reluctant, to depart.

A small fee to the quiet old woman makes her thankful, and prompts her to go and point out the path by which you mount zigzagging through the thick wood to the great terrace near the summit of the hill. It will surprise you to see a natural terrace smooth and green as a lawn, of considerable width, and half a mile in length; that is, the visible extent, for it stretches farther round the heights towards Helmsley. At one end stands a pavilion, decorated in the interior with paintings, at the other a domed temple, and from all the level between you get a glorious prospect up Ryedale—up the dale by which we came from Thirsk, and over leagues of finely-wooded hills, to a rim of swarthy moorland. And beneath, as in a nest, the ancient ruin and the little village repose in the sunshine, and the rapid river twinkles with frequent curves through the meadows.

The gardener who lives in the basement of the pavilion will show you the paintings and a small pamphlet, in which the subjects are described; and perhaps tell you that the family used to come over at times from Duncombe Park and dine in the ornamented chamber. He will request you, moreover, to be careful to shut the gate by which you leave the terrace at a break in the shrubbery.

The road is at the edge of the next field, and leads us in about an hour to Helmsley, a quiet rural town very pleasantlysituated beneath broad slopes of wood. It has a good church, a few quaint old houses, some still covered with thatch, a brook running along the street, a market cross, and a relic of the castle built by De Roos, when Yorkshire still wept the Conquest.

It had surprised me while on the way from Thirsk to find more difficulty in understanding the rustic dialect than in the remoter parts of the north and west. The same peculiarities prevail here in the town; and the landlord’s daughter, who waited on me at the house where I dined, professed a difficulty in understanding me. My question about the omnibus for Gilling completely puzzled her for a few minutes, until light dawned on her, and she exclaimed joyfully, “Oh! ye mean t’ boos!”

A few miles east of Helmsley is Kirkby Moorside, where the proud Duke of Buckingham died, though not “in the worst inn’s worst room;” and near it is Kirkdale, with its antiquated church, and the famous cave in which the discovery of the bones of wild animals some thirty years ago established a new epoch for geologists. From Kirkby you can look across to the hilly moors behind Whitby; and if you incline to explore farther, Castle Howard will repay a visit, and you may go and look into the gorge through which the Derwent flows, at Malton, keeping in mind what geologists tell us, that if the gorge should happen to be closed by any convulsion, the Vale of Pickering would again become a sea.

Of Helmsley Castle the remains are but fragmentary; a portion of the lofty keep stands on an eminence, around which you may still trace the hollows once filled by the triple moat. The gateway is comparatively sound, the barbican is sadly dilapidated; and within other parts of the old walls which have been repaired, Lord Feversham’s tenants assemble once a year to pay their rents. The ruin is so pleasantly embowered by trees and ivy, so agreeable for a lounge on a July day, that I regretted being summoned away too soon by “t’ boos” driver’s horn. There was no time for a look at Feversham House, about half a mile distant, nor for a few miles’ walk to Byland Abbey—another Cistercian edifice—founded in 1143 by Roger de Mowbray. I could only glance at the skirts of the park, where preparations were making for a flower-show, and at the shield on the front of the lodge, bearing the motto,Deo, Regi, Patriæ.

The Rye here is a smaller stream than at Rievaulx, owing to the loss of water by the ‘swallows’ in Duncombe Park; half a mile lower down it reappears in full current. But the driver is impatient; we shall be too late for the train at Gilling, and the steep Howardian Hills are to be crossed on the way. Fine views open over the woods; then we leave the trees for a while; a vast prospect appears of the Vale of York, and at Oswaldkirk—a picturesque village—the road falling rapidly brings us once more into a wooded region, and in due time we come to Gilling, on the branch railway to Malton.

There was not time, or I would have run up the hill behind the station to look at the noble avenue of beeches that forms a worthy approach to Fairfax Hall—the home of a family venerated by all who love liberty. I felt an emotion of regret when the station-clerk told me that the present Fairfax is an aged man and childless; for ere long the name will disappear, and the estate become a possession of the Cholmleys.

The train arrives; five miles on it stops at Coxwold, where Sterne passed seven years of his life; then two leagues more, and we have to wait ninety minutes for a train down from the north, at Pilmoor junction—a singularly unattractive spot. Luckily I had a book in my knapsack, and so beguiled the time till the bell rang that summoned us to York.

In my wanderings I have sometimes had the curiosity to try aTemperance Hotel, and always repented it, because experience showed that temperance meant poor diet, stingy appliances, and slovenly accommodations. So it was not without misgivings that I resolved to make one more experiment, and see what temperance meant in the metropolis of Yorkshire. TheHotel, which did not displease me, looks into Micklegate, not far from the Bar on which the heads of dukes and nobles were impaled, as mentioned in theLay of Towton Field.

Considering how many quartos have been filled with the history and description of York, into how many little books the big books have been condensed, every traveller is supposed to know as much as he desires concerning the ancient city, ere he visits it. For one who has but a day to spare, the best way of proceeding is of course to get on the top of the minster tower, and stay there until his memory is refreshed by the sight of what he sees below. At a height of two hundred feet above the pavement you can overlook the great cluster of clean red roofs, and single out the twenty-fivechurches that yet remain of the fifty once visible from this same elevation. Clifford’s Tower, a portion of the old castle, stands now within the precincts of the gaol; the line of the city walls can be seen, and the situation of the four Bars; there, by the river, is the Guildhall where King Charles was purchased from the Scots; there the small river Foss, that rises in the Howardian Hills, and once filled the Roman ditches, joins the Ouse. Outside the walls, Severus Hill marks the spot where the emperor, who died here in 210, was burnt on his funeral pile with all the honours due to a wearer of the purple; another hill shows where Scrope was beheaded. To the south lies Bishopthorpe, the birthplace of Guy Fawkes, and residence of the bishops. Eastward is Stamford Brig, where the hard Norwegian king, flushed with victory, lost the battle and his life—where the spoil in gold ornaments was so great, “that twelve young men could hardly carry it upon their shoulders”—whence the victor Harold marched to lose in turn life and crown at Hastings. On the west lies Marston Moor, and farther to the south-west the field of Towton. And then, from wandering afar over the broad vale, your eye returns to the minster itself, and looks down on all its properties, and comfortable residences, snug gardens, and plots of greenest turf, all covering ground on which the Romans built their camp, and where they erected a temple for the worship of heathen deities.

As regards the interior, whatever may have been your emotions of admiration or wonder in other cathedrals, they become fuller and deeper in this of York. After two long visits, I still wished for more time to pace again the lofty aisles, to hear the organ’s rolling notes, while marvelling at the glory of architecture.

In Roger North’s time, as he relates, the interior of the cathedral was the favourite resort of fashionable strollers: in an earlier time, when archery was practised keenly as rifle-shooting in our day, and the prophecy as to the pre-eminence of York was not yet forgotten, a ballad was written in praise of the city: thus

“The Maior of Yorke, with his companie,Were all in the fieldes, I warrant ye,To see good rule kept orderly,As if it had been at London.Which was a dutifull sight to seeThe Maior and Aldermen there to beeFor the setting forth of Archerie,As well as they doe at London.“Yorke, Yorke, for my monie,Of all the citties that ever I see,For mery pastime & companie,Except the cittie of London.”

“The Maior of Yorke, with his companie,Were all in the fieldes, I warrant ye,To see good rule kept orderly,As if it had been at London.

Which was a dutifull sight to seeThe Maior and Aldermen there to beeFor the setting forth of Archerie,As well as they doe at London.

“Yorke, Yorke, for my monie,Of all the citties that ever I see,For mery pastime & companie,Except the cittie of London.”

From the minster walk as far as may be along the city walls: you will see the four Bars—Monk, Micklegate, Walmgate, and Bootham; the first-named still retaining the barbican. In some of the narrow lanes near the water-side you may discover old mansions, the residences of the magnates of York two hundred years ago, now tenanted by numbers of working-people, and grand staircases and panelled rooms, looking dingy and squalid. Then go forth and take a turn under the trees of the New Walk on the bank of the Ouse, and see a much-frequented resort of the citizens, who certainly cannot boast that their environs are romantic. You would hardly believe that the stream flowing so placidly by embosoms the rapid rivers we crossed so often while in the mountains. If legends deceive not, any one who came and threw five white pebbles into a certain part of the Ouse as the hour of one struck on the first morning of May, would then see everything he desired to see, past, present, and to come, on the surface of the water. Once a knight returning from the wars desired to see how it fared with his lady-love: he threw in the pebbles, and beheld the home of the maiden, a mansion near Scarborough, and a youth wearing a mask and cloak descending from her window, and the hiding of the ladder by the serving-man. Maddened by jealousy, he mounted and rode with speed; his horse dropped dead in sight of the house; he saw the same youth ascending the ladder, rushed forward, and stabbed him to the heart. It was his betrothed. She was not faithless; still loved her knight, and had only been to a masquerade. For many a day thereafter did the knight’s anguish and remorse appear as the punishment of unlawful curiosity in the minstrel’s lay and gestour’s romance.

Return, and take a walk in that pleasant ground, half park, half garden, which we saw from the tower, and see how enviable a site has fallen to the Yorkshire Philosophical Society for their museum. To have such a scope of smoothgreen turf, flower-beds, shrubs, and trees in the heart of a city, as the shelter of remarkable antiquities and scientific collections, is a rare privilege. At one side stand the remains of St. Leonard’s Hospital—Norman and early English—sheltering, when I saw it, something far, far more ancient than itself—a huge fossil saurian. The ruins of St. Mary’s Abbey appear on the other side; and between the two the Doric edifice, containing the museum, library, and offices of the Society. In another part of the grounds, the Hospitium of the monks, which in a country village would pass for a mediæval barn, now contains the admirable collection of Roman and British antiquities for which York is celebrated. Seeing the numerous tiles stamped with Latin words and numerals, the tombs and altars, the household utensils, and personal ornaments, your idea of the Roman occupation will, perhaps, become more vivid than before; and again, while you examine the fragment of the wall and tower, supposed to have been built by Hadrian, strong and solid even after the lapse of nineteen centuries. And when you look once more at the Abbey and the Hospital, you will regret the ravages of plunderers. For years the ruins were worked as a quarry by all who wanted stone for building purposes, and, as if to accelerate the waste, great heaps were burnt in a limekiln erected on the spot; and it is said that stone pillaged from St. Mary’s at York was used for the repair of Beverley minster.

However, the spirit of preservation has prevented further dilapidation, and old Time himself is constrained to do his wasting imperceptibly. St. Mary’s Lodge, adjoining the abbey, long neglected, and degraded into a pothouse, was restored some years ago, and occupied as a residence by Professor Phillips, whose connexion with the Society will not soon be forgotten. A charming residence it is; and an evening and a morning spent within it, enable me to affirm that its chambers, though clothed in a modern dress, witness hospitality as generous as that of the monks of the olden time.

By Rail to Leeds—Kirkstall Abbey—Valley of the Aire—Flight to Settle—Giggleswick—Drunken Barnaby again—Nymph and Satyr—The astonished Bagman—What do they Addle?—View from Castleber—George Fox’s Vision on Pendle Hill—Walk to Maum—Companions—Horse versus Scenery—Talk by the Way—Little Wit, muckle Work—Malham Tarn—Ale for Recompense—Malham—Hospitality—Gordale Scar—Scenery versus Horse—Trap for Trout—A Brookside Musing—Malham Cove—Source of the Aire—To Keighley.

On the second morning of my stay in York, after a farewell visit to the minster, I travelled by rail to Leeds. I had little time, and, remembering former days, less inclination to tarry in this great, dismal, cloth-weaving town; so after a passing glance at the new town-hall, and some other improvements, I walked through the long, scraggy suburb such as only a busy manufacturing town can create, to Kirkstall Abbey. This also was an abode of the Cistercians, founded in 1152 by Henry de Lacy; and they who can discourse learnedly on such subjects pronounce it to be, as a ruin, more perfect than some which we have already visited. But it stands only a few yards from a black, much-frequented road, and within sight and hearing of a big forge, and the Aire flows past, not pellucid, but stained with the refuse liquor of dye-works. Still the site is not devoid of natural beauty; and an hour may be agreeably passed in sauntering about the ruin. It must have been a delightful haunt when Leeds was Loidis in Elmete.

I had expected to see the valley of the Aire sprinkled with the villa residences of the merchants of Leeds; but the busy traders prefer to live in the town, and in all the nine miles on the way to Bradford, you have only a succession of factories, dye-works, and excavations, encroaching on and deforming the beauty of the valley, while the vegetation betrays signs of the harmful effect of smoke.

As the afternoon drew on, I bethought myself that it was the last day of the week, and a desire came over me for one more quiet Sunday among the hills. So I turned aside to Newlay station, and took flight by the first train that came up for Settle, retracing part of my journey through Craven of the week before.

On the way from the station to the town, I made a détour to Giggleswick, a village that claims notice for its grammar-school, a fine cliff—part of the Craven fault—and a remarkable spring. Of his visit to this place Drunken Barnaby chants:

“Thence to Giggleswick most steril,Hem’d with shelves and rocks of peril,Near to th’ way, as a traveller goes,A fine fresh spring both ebbs and flows;Neither know the learn’d that travelWhat procures it, salt or gravel.”

Drayton helps us to a legend which accounts for the origin of the spring. Suppose we pause for a few minutes to read it. Coming to this place, he says:

“At Giggleswick where I a fountain can you show,That eight times in a day is said to ebb and flow,Who sometime was a nymph, and in the mountains highOf Craven, whose blue heads for caps put on the sky,Amongst th’ Oreads there, and sylvans made abode(It was ere human foot upon those hills had trod),Of all the mountain kind and since she was most fair,It was a satyr’s chance to see her silver hairFlow loosely at her back, as up a cliff she clame,Her beauties noting well, her features, and her frame,And after her he goes; which when she did espy,Before him like the wind the nimble nymph doth fly,They hurry down the rocks, o’er hill and dale they drive,To take her he doth strain, t’ outstrip him she doth strive,Like one his kind that knew, and greatly fear’d his rape,And to the topick gods by praying to escape,They turn’d her to a spring, which as she then did pant,When wearied with her course, her breath grew wondrous scant:Even as the fearful nymph, then thick and short did blow,Now made by them a spring, so doth she ebb and flow.”

It was supper-time when I came to theLionat Settle. A commercial traveller, who was in the town on his first visit, looked up from his accounts while I sat at table to tell me of a strange word which he had heard during the day, and with as much astonishment as if it had been Esquimaux. Indeed, he had not recovered from his astonishment, and could nothelp having a good laugh when he thought of the cause. Seeing a factory on the outskirts of the town, he asked a girl, “What do they make in that factory?”

“What do they addle?” replied the girl, inquiringly. And ever since he had been repeating to himself, “What do they addle?” and always with a fresh burst of laughter.

“Pretty outlandish talk that, isn’t it?” he said, as he finished his story.

Settle is a quiet little town, built at the foot of Castleber, another of the grand cliffs of Craven. To the inhabitants the huge rock is a recreative resort: seats are placed at its base; a zigzag path leads to the summit, whence the views over the valley of the Ribble are very picturesque and pleasing. On the north-west the broad top of Ingleborough is seen peeping over an intervening height; Penyghent appears in the north; and southerly, Pendle Hill rises within the borders of Lancashire. Very beautiful did the dewy landscape seem to me the next morning as I sat on the cliff top while the sunlight increased upon the green expanse.

“As we travelled,” says George Fox in hisJournal, “we came near a very great hill, called Pendle Hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it; which I did with difficulty, it was so very steep and high. When I was come to the top, I saw the sea bordering upon Lancashire. From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered. As I went down, I found a spring of water in the side of the hill, with which I refreshed myself, having eaten or drunk but little for several days before.” The spring is still there, and known in the neighbourhood as George Fox’s Well.

After breakfast I set out to walk to Malham, about seven miles distant, and was mounting the hill at an easy pace behind the town, when two men came up, and presently told me they also were going to Maum—as they pronounced it. So we joined company, all alike strangers to the road, and came soon to the bye-path of which the ostler at theLionhad advised me: “It would save a mile or more if I could only find the way.” A greater attraction for me was, that it led across the silent pastures on the top of the hills. As I got over the stile, an old man who was passing strongly urged us to keep the road; we should be sure to lose ourselves, and happen never to get to Maum at all. To which I replied, that if a Londonerand two Yorkshiremen could not find their way across six miles of hill-country they deserved to lose it; and away we went across the field. Ere long we were on breezy slopes, which, opening here and there on the left, revealed curious rocky summits beyond, and as we trod the springy turf, my companions told me they had come by rail from Bentham, and were going to Malham for no other purpose than to see a horse which one of them had sent there “to grass” a few weeks previously. They were as much amused at my admiration of the scenery as I was at their taking so long a journey to look at a quadruped. They would not go out of their way to see Malham Cove, or Gordale Scar, not they: a horse was worth more than all the scenery. And yet, judging by their dress and general conversation, they were men in respectable circumstances. Presently, as we passed a rocky cone springing all yellow and gray from a bright green eminence, I stopped and tried to make them understand why it was admirable, pointing out its form, the contrasts of colour, and its relation to surrounding objects: “Well!” said one, “I never thought of that. It do make a difference when you look at it in that way.”

Neither of them had ever been to London, and what pleased them most was to hear something about the great city. They were as full of wonder, and as ready to express it, as children; and not one of us found the way wearisome. We had taken a new departure when in sight of Stockdale, a solitary farm-house down in a hollow, as instructed, and gained a rougher elevation, when the track, which had become faint, disappeared altogether, and at a spot where no landmark was in sight to guide us. “The old man was right,” said the Yorkshiremen; “we have lost the way;” and they began a debate as to the course now to be followed. At length one strode off in a direction that would have taken him in time to the top of Penyghent. I looked at the sun, and declared for the east. But no, the other remained resolute in his opinion, and would not be persuaded. “Let him go,” I said to his companion, who sided with me; “little wit in the head makes muckle work for the heels;” and we took a course to the east.

After a while the other repented, and came panting after us; and before we had gone half a mile we saw Malham Tarn, broad and blue, at a distance on the left; then the track reappeared; then Malham came in sight, lying far down in a pleasant valley; and then we came into a rough, narrow road,descending steeply, and the Yorkshireman acknowledged his error.

“Eh! that’s Maum Cove, is it?” he said, as a turn in the road showed us the head of the valley; “that’s what we’ve heard so much talk about. Well, it’s a grand scar.” He seemed to repent of even this morsel of admiration, and helped his neighbour with strong resolutions not to turn aside and look up at the cliff from its base.

We each had a glass of ale at the public-house in the village. Before I was aware, one of my companions paid for the three, nor would he on any terms be persuaded otherwise.

“Hoot, lad,” he rejoined, “say nought about it. I’d pay ten times as much for the pleasure of your talk.” And with that he silenced me.

Although Gordale Scar is not more than a mile from Malham, they refused to go and see it. However, when we came to the grazier’s house, and they heard that the Scar lay in the way to the pasture where the horse was turned out, they thought they wouldn’t mind taking a look just, as they went. The good wife brought out bread, cheese, butter, and a jug of beer, and would have me sit down and partake with the others; regarding my plea that I was a stranger, and had just taken a drink, as worthless. A few minutes sufficed, and then her son accompanied us, for without him the horse would never be found. We followed a road running along the base of the precipitous hills which cross the head of the valley, to a rustic tenement, dignified with the name of Gordale House; and there turned towards the cliffs by the side of a brook. At first there is nothing to indicate your approach to anything extraordinary: you enter a great chasm, where the crags rise high and singularly rugged, sprinkled here and there with a small fir or graceful ash, where the bright green turf, sloping up into all the ins and outs of the dark gray cliff, and the little brook babbling out towards the sunshine, between great masses of rock fallen from above, enliven the otherwise gloomy scene. You might fancy yourself in a great roofless cave; but, ascending to the rear, you find an outlet, a sudden bend in the chasm, narrower, and more rocky and gloomy than the entrance. The cliffs rise higher and overhang fearfully above, appearing to meet indeed at the upper end; and there, from that grim crevice, rushes a waterfall. The water makes a bound, strikes the top of a rock, and, rushing down on eachside, forms an inverted /\ of splash and foam. And now you feel that Gordale Scar deserves all the admiration lavished upon it.

“Well!” exclaimed one of the Yorkshiremen, “who’d ha’ thought to see anything like this? And we living all our life within twenty mile of it! ’Tis a wonderful place.”

“So, you do believe at last,” I rejoined, “that scenery is worth looking at, as well as a horse?”

“That I do. I don’t wonder now that you come all the way from London to see our hills.”

We crossed the fall, climbed up the rock into another bend of the chasm, where the water makes its first plunge, unseen from below, shut in by crags that wear a sterner frown. You look up to the summit and see the water tumbling through a ring of rock, so strangely has the disruptive shock there broken the cliff. The effect both on ear and eye as the torrent breaks into spray and dashes downwards in fantastic channels, is surprisingly impressive.

Only on one side is the pass accessible, and there so steep that your hands must aid in the ascent. We scrambled to the top and found ourselves on the margin of a table-land sloping gently upwards from the edge of the precipice, so bestrewn with upheaved rocks and lumps of stone, that but for the grass which grows rich and sweet between, whereof the sheep bite gladly, the aspect would indeed be savage. Along an irregular furrow, as it may be called, which deepens as it nears the precipice, flows the beck—coming, as the boy told us, from Malham Tarn. There was another small stream, he said, which disappeared in a ‘swallow’ on his father’s pasture; and in that swallow he had many times found large trout, struggling helplessly in their unexpected trap. And, pointing to the highest shoulder of the cliff, he said that a fox, once hard pressed by the hounds, had leaped over, followed by a dog, and both were killed by the fall.

After a few minutes of admiration, the Yorkshiremen and their guide began to move off across the fell, in search of the horse. One of them hoped we should meet again on the way back. The other said, “Not much hope o’ that; for he won’t go away from this till he have learnt it all by heart.” Then we shook hands, and they promised to set up a pile of stones at a certain gate on their return, as a signal to me that they had passed through.

True enough, I was in no haste to depart, and there was much to admire as well as “to learn.” The sight of the innumerable shelves, with their fringe of grass, the diversity of jagged rocks thrusting their gray heads up into the sunlight, of the rugged and broken slopes, set me longing for a scramble. Hither and thither I went; now to a point where I could see miles of the cliffs, and mark how, in many places, owing to the splitting and shivering, the limestone wall resembles a row of organ pipes. Now into a gap all barren and stony with immemorial screes; where, however, you could hear the faint tinkle of hidden water, and pulling away the stones, discover small ferns and pale blades of grass along the course of the tiny current. Anon, returning to the Scar, I climbed to the top of the crag that juts midway in the rear of the chasm, surveying the scene below; then selecting a nook by the side of the beck, a little above its leap through the ring, I lay down and watched the water as it ran with innumerable sparkling cascades from the rise of the fell. Here the solitude was complete, and the view limited to a few yards of the hollow water-course patched with green and gray, and the bright blue sky above.

And while I lay, soothed by the murmur of the water, looking up at the great white clouds floating slowly across the blue, certain thoughts that had haunted me for some days shaped themselves in order in my brain; and with your permission, gracious reader, I here produce them:

A cloud of care had come across my mind;Ill-balanced hung the world: here pleasure all;There hopeless toil, and cruel pangs that fallOn Poverty, to which but death seemed kind.And so, with heart perplexed, I left behindThe crowd of men, the town with smoky pall,And sought the hills, and breathed the mountain wind.Hath God forgotten then the mean and small?I mused, and gazed o’er purple fells outroll’d;When, lo! beneath an old thatched roof a gleamThat kindled soon with sunset’s gorgeous gold:Broad panes, nor fretted oriel brighter beam.If glories thus on lattice rude unfold,Of life unlit by Heaven we may not deem.

The sun was beginning to drop towards the west before I left the pleasant hollow; and then with reluctance, for my holiday was near its close, and months would elapse before I should again hear the voice of a mountain brook, and slakemyself in sunshine. Having returned to the village, I kept along the river bank to the head of the valley, where copse and enormous boulders, scattered about the narrow grassy level and in the bed of the stream, make a fine foreground to the magnificent limestone cliff of Malham Cove. Rising sheer to a height of nearly three hundred feet, the precipice curving inwards, buttressed on each side by woody slopes, realizes Wordsworth’s description—“semicirque profound;” and while you look up at its pale marble-like surface, broken only by a narrow shelf—a stripe of green—accessible to goats and adventurous boys, you will be ready to say with the bard,

“Oh, had this vast theatric structure woundWith finished sweep into a perfect round,No mightier work had gained the plausive smileOf all-beholding Phœbus!”

At a distance you might well imagine it to be a towering ruin, from which Time has not yet gnawed the traces of fallen chambers and colonnades. And perhaps yet more will you desire to see the cataract which once came rushing down in one tremendous plunge from the summit, as is said, owing to some temporary stoppage of the underground channels. What a glorious fall that must have been! more than twice the height of Niagara.

From a low flat arch at the base of the cliff, about twenty feet in width, the river Aire rushes out, copiously fed by a subterranean source. The water sparkles as it flows forth into the light of day, and begins its course clear and bright as truth, yet fated to receive many a defilement ere it pours into the Ouse. Could the Naiads forsee what is to befall, how piteous would be their lamentations! The stream is at once of considerable volume, inhabited by trout, and you may fish at the very mouth of the arch.

Here, too, I scrambled up and down, crossed and recrossed the stream, to find all the points of view; then ascending to the hill-top I traced the line of cliff from the Cove to Gordale. It is a continuation of that great geological phenomenon already mentioned—the Craven fault—which, extending yet farther, terminates near Threshfield, the village by which we passed last Sunday on our way to Kettlewell.

My return walk was quiet enough, and favourable to meditation. The Yorkshiremen had set up the preconcertedsignal by the gate. I hope the horse did not drive the Scar quite out of their memory. Perhaps a lasting impression was made; for “Gordale-chasm” is, as Wordsworth says,

Back to Index Next