BOLTON BRIDGE.
THE HUMBER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.
CHAPTER VI.
THE WHARFE.
General Characteristics—The Skirfare—Langstrothdale—Kettlewell—Dowkabottom Cave—Coniston and its Neighbourhood—Rylstone and the Nortons—Burnsall—Appletreewick: an Eccentric Parson—Simon’s Seat—Barden Tower and the Cliffords—The “Strid”—Bolton Abbey and Bolton Hall—The Bridge—Ilkley—Denton and the Fairfaxes—Farnley Hall and Turner—Otley—Harewood—Towton Field—Kirkby Wharfe—Bolton Percy.
The Wharfe is typical of the broad shire. From beginning to end it is a Yorkshire stream. Having its origin on the slopes of the Cam mountain, in the north-west of the county, it traverses, in the sixty or seventy miles of its course to the Ouse, almost every description of the scenery for which this great division of England is famous. Over moorland and meadowland, rushing madly down precipitous rocks and flowing placidly along fertile plains, shut up in some parts within deep gorges and at other points spreading out to river-like dimensions, it has an ever-varying charm to all who trace its progress. And its physical characteristics are but a reflex of the incidents of the story to be gleaned along its banks. To make its acquaintance away up on the fells is to find it blending into many a choice bit of folklore and into old-world customs and superstitions. Here, in a favoured bend, it murmurs in sweet harmony with an idyll of country life; there it dashes wildly on its way, in keeping with the tragic tale of which at this particular spot it is the scene. Yonder it skirts, in a roofless monastery, a memorial of its treachery; here it has turned for generations the waterwheel of a mill that has never failed to find grist from a peaceful farming community. If in one place it sweeps round one of the great battlefields of our country, in another it flows in undisturbed seclusion between wooded slopes where the overhanging trees hide the sunlight from its waters, and dark rock-sheltered pools provide a safe retreat for the otter. Not anywhere, in fact, is the Wharfe devoid of interest or beauty. It retains throughout its freshness and its charm, and it is cheering to know that very watchful are the people who live on its banks to guard it from anything calculated to lessen its attractiveness.
A classic English river, tributes have been paid to the Wharfe from the days of the Romans. In our own time Wordsworth got from it the inspiration for some of his finest verse, and Turner found it yield subjects to him in generous abundance for his matchless drawings. Camden must have lingered by the Wharfe. He knew it better than any other early writer. There is evidence, in what he says about it, that he penetrated into those regions where its interest to the modern tourist too often ends, but where to the naturalist, the antiquary, and the artist, some of its choicest features begin to reveal themselves. In his quaint way, in his “Britannia,” he tells us that “if a man should think the name of the stream to be wrested from the word Guerf, which in British signifieth swift or violent, verily the nature of the river conspireth with that opinion.” Camden’s description of the Wharfe is proof that he saw it chiefly in its mountainous aspect. He speaks of it as “a swift and speedy streame, making a great noise as it goeth, as if it were froward, stubborn, and angry.” And he further speaks of it as being “verily a troublesome river, and dangerous even in summer time also,” which he himself had some experience of, “for it hath such slippery stones in it that our horse had no sure footing on them, or else the violence of the water carried them away from under his feet.”
The Wharfe is joined, at a point about fifteen miles from its source, by the Skirfare. Both rivers run on a parallel course from the direction of the Cam fells, and are close enough to each other to have a common interest. The Skirfare passes through what Wordsworth, in the “White Doe of Rylstone,” using the ancient name, calls “the deep fork of Amerdale.” “Amerdale” has for a long period, however, given place to “Littondale,” Litton being the name of a village on the banks of the stream. Running north of the Skirfare, and starting from a point a few miles further west, the Wharfe passes down Langstrothdale in the fell country, and then through Kettlewelldale to the point of junction with the Skirfare. The name Langstrothdale has a Celtic ring, and has not inappropriately been translated to mean the long valley. From here are supposed to have come the two scholars of Soleres Hall at Cambridge, mentioned in Chaucer’s “Reve’s Tale”—
“Of oo towne were they borne that highte Strother,