[EXPLORING WOOKEY HOLE]
"Where Albion's western hills slope to the sea,
There is a cave, and o'er its dismal mouth,
Whence come to quick, mysterious ears hoarse sounds
Of giant revelry, the ivy grew
And shut the old sepulchral darkness in;
And by its side a well, whence ever full
And ever overflowing, silent, deep,
And cold as death, the waters creep
Adown the broken rocks in search of day.
Above it frowns a fretted, stony brow,
And only from the setting sun e'er came
Within that place the joyfulness of light."
W. W. Smith, Angels and Men: a Poem.
Hardly anywhere else in Britain is the mind borne down with such a sense of incalculable antiquity as at Wookey Hole. Nowhere, certainly, is there anything like such a continuous record from ages inconceivably remote. To touch first of all upon periods that are historical and measurable, we have the name Wookey, which appears to be the one bestowed by the ancient Britons; for it is a recognisable corruption—especially as the people of the district sound it, "Ookey"—of the Celtic Ogo, a cavern, the same word, Ogof, as the modern Welsh still apply to several caves in the Principality. Clemens Alexandrinus, in the second century A.D., has a reference to the cavern, and there are periodical allusions in Latin and English writers from that time to the present. In the Middle Ages its fame as one of the wonders of England was great. William of Worcester has a quaint description; he says, "Its entrance is narrow, and the ymage of a man stands beside it called the Porter, of whom leave to enter the Hall of Wokey is to be obtained." What became of this janitor is now unknown, unless he be represented by the recumbent monolith still to be seen outside the portal. References to the antiquities of Wookey Hole occur in Leland's Itinerary and in Camden's Britannia, and there is incorporated in Percy's Reliques a ballad, by an eighteenth-century virtuoso, Dr. Harrington of Bath, entitled "The Witch of Wokey," recounting an old legend of the neighbourhood.
"In aunciente dayes, tradition showes,
A base and wicked elfe arose
The Witch of Wokey hight."
So it begins, and goes on to relate, in the sham antique style of the day, how a malevolent old woman was for her misdeeds changed to stone by a "lerned clerk of Glaston." The Witch, a black, aquiline profile in stone and stalagmite, is with her culinary utensils the chief attraction to sightseers in the first great chamber, or, as it is sometimes called, the Witch's Kitchen.
