Few who come hither will need to be reminded of that inspiriting voyage along the coast, when
“The Abbess of St. Hilda placed
With five fair nuns the galley graced,”
nor of the sisters’ evening talk, while
“—Whitby’s nuns exulting told,
How to their house three barons bold
Must menial service do;
While horns blow out a note of shame,
And monks cry ‘Fye upon your name!
In wrath, for loss of sylvan game,
St. Hilda’s priest ye slew.’—
This on Ascension day, each year,
While labouring on our harbour-pier,
Must Herbert, Bruce, and Percy hear.—
They told how in their convent cell
A Saxon princess once did dwell,
The lovely Edelfled;
And how of thousand snakes, each one
Was changed into a coil of stone
When holy Hilda pray’d;
Themselves, within their holy bound,
Their stony folds had often found.
They told how seafowls’ pinions fail,
As over Whitby’s towers they sail,
And sinking down, with flutterings faint,
They do their homage to the saint.”
The stately tower, the glory of the ruin, fell in 1830, at the close of a reign, during which things good and beautiful were unhappily but too much neglected. A rugged heap, with lumps of stone peeping out from tufts of coarse grass, marks the spot where the fall took place; the last, it is to be hoped, that will be permitted in so striking a memorial of the architecture of the past. Standing in private grounds and surrounded by a light iron fence, it is now safe from the intrusion of cattle and from wanton spoilers.
A few yards beyond the abbey, you cross St. Mary’s churchyard to the top of a long flight of steps, where a remarkable scene opens suddenly beneath. Whitby, lying on each side of the Esk, the river winding from a wooded vale, expanding to receive the numerous vessels of the inner harbour, and flowing away between the houses and the two piers to the sea. The declivity is so abrupt, that the houses appear strangely huddled together, tier above tier, in irregular masses, as if resting one on the other, and what with the colour and variety of forms, the shipping, the great depth of the valley, the great bluffs with which it terminates, and line upon line of breakers beginning to foam at two furlongs from the shore, make up a scene surpassingly picturesque; one that you will be in no hurry to lose sight of. If the Whitby church-goers find it toilsome to ascend nearly two hundred steps every Sunday, they have a goodly prospect for recompense, besides the service.
One wall of the church is said to be older than any portion of the abbey; but the edifice has undergone so many alterations, that meritorious architecture is not now to be looked for. A more breezy churchyard it would not be easy to find. Opposite, on the farther cliff, is a cluster of new stone houses, including a spacious hotel, built to attract visitors; an enterprise promoted by King George Hudson in his palmy days.
I lingered, contemplating the view, till it was time to look for an inn; I chose the Talbot, and had no reason to repent my choice. On the way thither, I bought two religious ballads at a little shop, the mistress of which told me she sold “hundreds of ’em,” and that they were printed at Otley. As specimens of a class of compositions which are relished and sung as hymns by a numerous section of the community, they are eminently suggestive. Do they supply a real want? Are they harmless? Are they edifying? Can they who find satisfaction therein be led up to something better? To close this chapter, here follows a quotation from The Railway to Heaven:
“O! what a deal we hear and read
About Railways and railway speed,
Of lines which are, or may be made;
And selling shares is quite a trade.