Such talk surprised me. I had heard that the Papists employ emissaries of all degrees in the endeavour to propagate their doctrines; but never met with one before who spoke out his notions so unreservedly; and I could have imagined myself thrown back some five hundred years, and the old fellow to be the spokesman in the Somersetshire ballad:
“Chill tell thee what good vellowe,
Before the vriers went hence,
A bushell of the best wheate
Was zold for vourteen pence,
And vorty egges a penny,
That were both good and newe:
And this che zay my zelf have zeene,
And yet ich am no Jewe.
“Ich care not for the bible booke,
’Tis too big to be true.
Our blessed Ladyes psalter
Zhall for my money goe;
Zuch pretty prayers, as therein bee,
The bible cannot zhowe.”
I began to defend the rights of conscience, when, as we came to the foot of the first great hill, the old packman advised me to reconsider my errors, bade me good day, and turned into a cottage; perhaps to sell calico; perhaps to sow tares for the keeper of the keys at Rome.
I made a cut-off, and came upon the road half way up the hill, leaving sultriness for a breezy elevation. Soon wide prospects opened all around me: vast green undulations, dotted with sheep and geese, swelling up into the distant hills and moorlands. That great group of heights on the right—Wild Boar Fell and Shunnor Fell—wherein Nature displays but few of her smiles, is the parent of not a few of Yorkshire’s dales, becks, and waterfalls. In those untrodden solitudes rise Swale and Ure; there lurks the spring from which Eden bursts to flow through gloomy Mallerstang, and transfer its allegiance, as we have seen, to other counties, and the fairest of Cumbrian vales. Our topographical bard, makes the forest of the darksome glen thus address the infant stream:
“O, my bright lovely brook whose name doth bear the sound
Of God’s first garden-plot, th’ imparadised ground,
Wherein he placed man, from whence by sin he fell:
O, little blessed brook, how doth my bosom swell
With love I bear to thee, the day cannot suffice
For Mallerstang to gaze upon thy beauteous eyes.”
Talk of royal tapestries, what carpet can compare with the springy turf that borders the road whereon you walk with lightsome step, happier than a king, and having countless jewels to admire in the golden buds of the gorse? It is a delightful mountain walk, now rising, now falling, but always increasing the elevation; so cool and breezy in comparison with the sultry temperature of the road we left below. And the grouping of the summits around the broad expanse changes slowly as you advance, and between the shades of yellow and green, brown and purple, the darker shadows denote the courses of the dales. Wayfarers are few; perhaps a boy trudges past pulling a donkey, which drags a sledge laden with turf or hay; or a pedlar with crockery; but for miles your only living companions are sheep and geese.
With increasing height we have less of grass and more of ling, and at ten miles from Brough we come to the public-house on Tan Hill, situate in the midst of a desolate brown upland, in which appear the upreared timbers of coalpits, some abandoned, others in work. The house shows signs of isolation in a want of cleanliness and order; but you can get oaten bread, cheese, and passable beer, and have a talk with the pitmen, and the rustics who come in for a drink ere starting homewards with cartloads of coal. Seeing the numerous family round the hostess, I inquired about their school; on which one of the black fellows—a rough diamond—took up the question. There had been a dame school in one of the adjacent cottages, but the old ’oman gave it up, and now the bairns was runnin’ wild. ’Twasn’t right of Mr. ——, the proprietor of the mines, to take away 5000l. a year, and not give back some on’t for a school. It made a man’s heart sore to see bairns wantin’ schoolin’ and no yabble to get it. ’Twasn’t right, that ’t wasn’t.
Apparently an honest miner lived beneath that coaly incrustation, possessed of good sense and sensibility. I quite agreed with him, and recommended him to talk about a school whenever he could get a listener.