From John O'Groats to Land's End / Or, 1372 miles on foot; A book of days and chronicle of adventures by two pedestrians on tour

by John Anderton Naylor; Robert Anderton Naylor

Monday, October 23rd.

We left Pateley Bridge at seven o'clock in the morning, and after walking about two miles on the Ripley Road, turned off to the left along a by-lane to find the wonderful Brimham rocks, of which we had been told. We heard thrashing going on at a farm, which set us wondering whether we were on the same road along which Chantrey the famous sculptor walked when visiting these same rocks. His visit probably would not have been known had not the friend who accompanied him kept a diary in which he recorded the following incident.

They were walking towards the rocks when they, like ourselves, heard the sound of thrashing in a barn, which started an argument between them on their relative abilities in the handling of the flail. As they could not settle the matter by words, they resolved to do so by blows; so they made their way to the farm and requested the farmer to allow them to try their hand at thrashing corn, and to judge which of them shaped the better. The farmer readily consented, and accompanied them to the barn, where, stopping the two men who were at work, he placed Chantrey and his friend in their proper places. They stripped for the fight, each taking a flail, while the farmer and his men watched the duel with smiling faces. It soon became evident that Chantrey was the better of the two. The unequal contest was stopped, much to the chagrin of the keeper of the diary, by the judge giving his verdict in favour of the great sculptor. This happened about seventy years before our visit, but even now the old-fashioned method of thrashing corn had not yet been ousted by steam machinery, and the sound of the flails as they were swung down upon the barn floors was still one of the commonest and noisiest that, during the late autumn and winter months, met our ears in country villages.

When the time came for the corn to be thrashed, the sheaves were placed on the barn floor with their heads all in the same direction, the binders which held them together loosened, and the corn spread out. Two men were generally employed in this occupation, one standing opposite the other, and the corn was separated from the straw and chaff by knocking the heads with sticks. These sticks, or flails, were divided into two parts, the longer of which was about the size of a broom-handle, but made of a much stronger kind of wood, while the other, which was about half its length, was fastened to the top by a hinge made of strong leather, so that the flail was formed into the shape of a whip, except that the lash would not bend, and was as thick as the handle. The staff was held with both hands, one to guide and the other to strike, and as the thrashers were both practically aiming at the same place, it was necessary, in order to prevent their flails colliding, that one lash should be up in the air at the same moment that the other was down on the floor, so that it required some practice in order to become a proficient thrasher. The flails descended on the barn floors with the regularity of the ticking of a clock, or the rhythmic and measured footsteps of a man walking in a pair of clogs at a quickstep speed over the hard surface of a cobbled road. We knew that this mediæval method of thrashing corn would be doomed in the future, and that the old-fashioned flail would become a thing of the past, only to be found in some museum as a relic of antiquity, so we recorded this description of Chantrey's contest with the happy memories of the days when we ourselves went a-thrashing corn a long time ago!

GENERAL VIEW OF BRIMHAM ROCKS.

What Chantrey thought of those marvellous rocks at Brimham was not recorded, but, as they covered quite fifty acres of land, his friend, like ourselves, would find it impossible to give any lengthy description of them, and might, like the auctioneers, dismiss them with the well-known phrase, "too numerous to mention."

To our great advantage we were the only visitors at the rocks, and for that reason enjoyed the uninterrupted services of the official guide, an elderly man whose heart was in his work, and a born poet withal.

THE DANCING-BEAR ROCK.