You now come to Yewdale Bridge, and, crossing it, enter Church Conistone; but here I wish you to turn off the road, and passing between some houses on your left, walk down the beckside for about 150 yards, and you reach a very primitive-looking bridge, formed of two huge flags laid upon piers of ancient and substantial mason-work, and named, with manifest propriety, “Bannockstone bridge.” It was not this I brought you out of your way to see; but I want you to bestow especial notice upon a large stone lying in the beck-bottom, just to the lower side of the bridge. Though it is covered by from two to three feet of water, Yewdale beck is so pure that you have no difficulty in discovering that the otherwise flat surface of this stone is interrupted by a ridge or elevation, some inches in height, occupying one of its corners, and in the edge of that elevation nearest to you is the deep, perfect, and unmistakeable imprint of a very large heel. Convinced, from the time I first noticed it, that some story might be ferretted out, to account for the production of this large heel-mark, I took considerable pains, for which I expect your gratitude, to collect the following facts in explanation of its traditionary origin, and now, without amplification or comment, I retail them for your satisfaction.
FRUITS OF REPENTANCE.
In those pious and enlightened times, when the profession and practice of witchcraft were so common that very few women could grow old and ugly, especially if they were also poor, without being suspected of having sold their immortal part to the Father of evil, a very old woman whose name has not been preserved, but the certainty of whose commerce with the devil no one ever doubted, dwelt in a hut upon the point of land which runs into the lake near the mouth of this brook. After practising the ordinary routine of a witchwoman’s life for several years, it is said that, as the time drew near for the fulfilment of her short-sighted bargain, she was seized with terror and remorse, and resolved to try whether she might not find a means of nullifying the agreement and evading payment of the fearful penalty to be exacted from her in return for the evil power with which her master had endued her old age; and, with this object, she visited a holy man, one of the Monks of Saint Mary of Furness, who was stationed at the place now called Bank Ground, which stands pleasantly upon the opposite side of the lake. He, when made aware of all the bearings of the case, offered some hope of redemption from the consequences of her contract, on the conditions of teetotal abstinence from any future indulgence in the evil art, abnegation of the devil, his works A MIRACLE. and devices, and a course of penance so severe and protracted, as to make the penitent witch think the cure almost as bad as the disease; but concern for “her pore sole,” as Winifred Jenkins pathetically designates it, determined her to accept of Father Brian’s terms, provided he could secure her against the power of Satan in the interim. Being instructed to flee for her life, and to call loudly upon Father Brian and Saint Herbert for aid, should Beelzebub come, as was likely, to claim his own before the completion of her saving penance had rescued her from his dreaded clutches, she returned home, and turned over a new leaf, beginning to lead a tolerably exemplary life. As might be expected, the other contracting party was not long in hearing of this unpardonable breach of faith, and, one evening, he startled his quondam disciple by making his appearance at the door of her domicile, when she, remembering the Monk’s instructions, darted through the open window, and fled, with the speed of light, directly up the course of this beck, screaming loudly enough for succour as directed. She had reached the site of this bridge, and her pursuer was just about to lay his claws upon her, when the Saint, or the Monk, or both heard her, and the devil’s foot, not the cloven one,—for neither dead Saint nor living Priest can be supposed to have power over that,—but his other foot, was set upon that stone, the heel sank into the ridge upon its surface, and the stone hardening, he was held fast by the heel, and thus, by the miraculous intervention of the dead Saint or the living Monk—I cannot learn exactly whether—the penitent witch escaped; and, moreover, ere the devil was released, Father Brian, being well versed in this particular line of business, succeeded in obtaining possession of the document on which the claim upon the old woman’s soul was founded, and so was able to remit a considerable portion of her heavy penance. The print, much too large to be produced by any human heel, is, as you see, still there to testify to the truth of the history I have collated for your special behoof, and, therefore, I hope that you will readily recognise its perfect credibility.
CHURCH CONISTONE.
“WHERE GOD ERECTS, &c. &c.”
You will now return to the road, and move on towards the village by the Crown Inn, a very commodious, respectable, and well-conducted house of entertainment for man and beast, with unexceptionable accommodation, and a more than unexceptionable hostess. Immediately beyond it, in a level green enclosure, having handsome iron rails on one side and low stone walls on the other, stands an oblong barn-like building, with a few blunt-arched windows in its dirty yellow walls, and over-topped at its western extremity by an unsightly black superstructure of rough stone, which some might call a small square tower badly proportioned, and others, with apparently equal correctness, the stump of a large square chimney. The oblong building is the church, and the level enclosure is the church-yard, in which the almost total absence of tombstones and the paucity of mounds lead you to the correct inference that death is rather a rare visitant at Conistone.
If you have any desire to explore the interior of the sacred edifice, the parish clerk, who, by the bye, is a poet of no mean pretensions, lives in one of these cottages close at hand, and he will readily open the doors and admit you. The only objects possessing even the smallest interest are—first, the antique oak-chest, with its curious padlock, which stands in the southern entrance, and in which the ancient parochial records were deposited—and second, a plate of copper fastened upon the wall over the Conistone Hall pew, engraven upon which in old, but very legible characters, are the following commemorative notice and quaint epitaph. You will perceive that there is probably an error in the dates:—
CHURCH AND SCHOOLS.
“To the living memory of Alice Fleming, of Coningston Hall, in the County Palatine of Lancaster, widow (late wife of William Fleming, of Coningston Hall aforesaid, Esq., and eldest daughter of Roger Kirkby, of Kirkby, in the said county, Esq.,) and of John Kirkby, gentleman, her second brother, was this monument, by her three sorrowful sons, Sir Daniel Fleming, Knight, Roger Fleming and William Fleming, gentlemen, to their dear mother and uncle, here erected. The said John Kirkby (having lived above thirty years with his sister, and having given to the churches and poor of Kirkby and Coningston the sum of £150), died a bachelor at Coningston Hall aforesaid, September 23, A.D., 1680, and was buried near unto this place the next day. And the said Alice Fleming died also (having outlived her late husband about 27 years, and survived five out of her eight children,) at Coningstone Hall aforesaid, Feb. 26, 1680, and was buried in this church, close by her said brother, Feb. 28, 1680; in the same grave where ye Lady Bold (second wife to John Fleming, Esq., deceased, uncle to ye said W. Fleming,) had, about 55 years before, been interred.
Epitaph.
Spectator, stay and view this sacred ground;
See, it contains such love on earth scarce found;
A brother and a sister—and you see
She seeks to find him in mortality.
First he did leave us, then she stayed and tryed
To live without him—liked it not, and died.
Here they ly buried whose religious zeal
Appeared sincere to Prince, Church, Commonweal;
Kind to their kindred, faithful to their friends,
Clear in their lives, and cheerful at their ends.
They both were dear to them, whose good intent
Makes them both live in this one monument.
So dear is sacred love, though th’ outward part
Turn dust, it still shall linger round the heart.”