A Month in Yorkshire

by Walter White

Wensleydale enjoys a reputation for cheese and fat pastures and wealth above the neighbouring dales, and appears to be fully aware of its superiority. The folk, moreover, consider themselves refined, advanced in civilization in comparison with the dwellers on the other side of Buttertubs: those whom we talked with yesterday. “Mr. White, if you had wanted a wife, do you think you could choose one out of Swaledale?” was the question put to me by a strapping village lass before I had been three hours in Bainbridge.

Fortune favoured me. I found here some worthy Quaker friends of mine, who had journeyed from Oxfordshire to spend the holidays under the paternal rooftree. It was almost as if I had arrived at home myself; and although I had breakfasted at Hawes, they took it for granted that I would eat a lunch to keep up my strength till dinner-time. They settled a plan which would keep me till the morrow exploring the neighbourhood—a detention by no means to be repined at—and introduced me to a studious young dalesman, the village author, who knew every nook of the hills, every torrent and noteworthy site, and all the legends therewith associated for miles round, and who was to be my guide and companion.

Away we rambled across the Ure to a small wooded hollow at the foot of Whitfell, in the hills which shut out Swaledale. It conceals a Hardraw Scar in miniature, shooting from an overhanging ledge of dark shale, in which are numerous fossil shells. From this we followed the hill upwards to Millgill Force, a higher fall, on another beck, overshadowed by firs and the mountain elm, and which Nature keeps as a shrine approachable only by the active foot and willing heart. Now you must struggle through the tall grass and tangle on the precipitous sides high among the trees; now stride and scramble over the rocky masses in the bed of the stream. To sit and watch the fall deep under the canopy of leaves, catching glimpses of sunshine and of blue sky above, and to enjoy the delicious coolness, was the luxury of enjoyment. I could have sat for hours. Wordsworth came here during one of his excursions in Yorkshire; and if you wish to know what Millgill Force is, as painted by the pen, even the minute touches, read his description.

But there is yet another—Whitfell Force—higher up, rarely visited, for the hill is steep and the way toilsome. My guide, however, was not less willing to lead than I to follow, and soon we were scrambling through the deepest ravine of all, where the sides, for the most part, afford no footing, not even for a goat, but rise in perpendicular walls, or lean over at the top. Here again the lavish foliage is backed by the dark stiff spines of firs, and every inch of ground, every cranny, all but the impenetrable face of the rock, is hidden by rank grasses, trailing weeds, climbers, periwinkle, woodbine, and ferns, among which the hart’s-tongue throws out its large drooping clusters of graceful fronds. For greater part of the way we had to keep the bed of the stream; now squeezing ourselves between mighty lumps of limestone that nearly barred the passage, so that the stream itself could not get through without a struggle; now climbing painfully over where the crevices were too narrow; now zigzagging from side to side wherever the big stones afforded foothold, not without slips and splashes that multiplied our excitement; now pausing on a broad slab to admire the narrowing chasm and all its exquisite greenery. My companion pointed out a crystal pool in which he sometimes bathed—a bath that Naiads themselves might envy. In this way we came at length to a semicircular opening, and saw the fall tumbling from crag to crag for sixty feet, and dispersing itself into a confused shower before it fell into the channel beneath. We both sat for a while without speaking, listening to the cool splash and busy gurgle as the water began its race down the hill; and, for my part, I felt that fatigue and labour were well repaid by the sight of so lovely a dell.

Then by other paths we returned to the village, and mounted to the flat-topped grassy mound, which Professor Phillips says, is an ancient gravel heap deposited by the action of water. The Romans, taking advantage of the site, levelled it, and established thereon a small camp. A statue and inscription and some other relics have been found, showing that in this remote spot, miles distant from their main highway, the conquerors had a military station, finding it no doubt troublesome to keep the dalesmen of their day in order.

Then we looked at a very, very old millstone, which now stands on its edge at the corner of a cottage doing motionless duty as one end of a kennel. The dog creeps in through the hole in the middle. There it stands, an unsatisfactory antique, for no one knows anything about it. Of two others, however, which we next saw, something is known—the old horn and the old hornblower. Bainbridge was chief place of the forest of Wensleydale—of which the Duke of Leeds is now Her Majesty’s Ranger, and at the same time hereditary Constable and Lord of Middleham Castle—and from time immemorial the “forest horn” has been blown on the green, every night at ten o’clock, from the end of September to Shrovetide, and it is blown still; for are not ancient customs all but immortal in our country? The stiff-jointed graybeard hearing that a curious stranger wished to look at the instrument, brought it forth. It is literally a horn—a large ox-horn, lengthened by a hoop of now rusty tin, to make up for the pieces which some time or other had been broken from its mouth. He himself had put on the tin years ago. Of course I was invited to blow a blast, and of course failed. My companion, however, could make it speak lustily; but the old man did best, and blew a long-sustained note, which proved him to be as good an economist of breath as a pearl-diver. For years had he thus blown, and his father before him. I could not help thinking of the olden time ere roads were made, and of belated travellers saved from perishing in the snow by that nightly signal.

Now it was tea-time, and we had tea served after the Wensleydale manner—plain cakes and currant cakes, cakes hot and cold, and butter and cheese at discretion, with liberty to call for anything else that you like; and the more you eat and drink, the more will you rise in the esteem of your hospitable entertainers. And after that I went down to the hay-field, for it was a large field, and the farmer longed to get the hay all housed before sunset. They don’t carry hay in the dales, they ‘lead’ it; and the two boys from Oxfordshire were not a little proud in having the ‘leading’ assigned to them, seeing that they had nothing to do but ride the horse that drew the hay-sledge to and fro between the barn and the ‘wind-rows.’ Another difference is, that forks are not used except to pitch the hay from the sledge to the barn, all the rest—turning the swath, making into cocks—is done with the rake and by hand. So I took a rake, and beginning at one side of the field at the same time with an old hand, worked away so stoutly, that he had much ado to keep ahead of me. And so it went on, all hands working as if there were no such thing as weariness, load after load slipping away to the barn; and I unconsciously growing meritorious. “You’re the first cockney I ever saw,” said the stalwart farmer, “that knew how to handle a rake.” Had I stayed with him a week, he would have discovered other of my capabilities equally praiseworthy. We should have accomplished the task and cleared the field; but a black cloud rose in the west, and soon sent down a heavy shower, and compelled us to huddle up the remaining rows into cocks, and leave them till morning.

Must I confess it? Haymaking with the blithesome lasses in Ulrichsthal is a much more sprightly pastime than haymaking with the Quakers in Wensleydale.

The hay harvest is an exciting time in the dales, for grass is the only crop, and the cattle have to be fed all through the long months of winter, and sometimes far into the backward spring. Hence every thing depends on the hay being carried and housed in good condition; and many an anxious look is cast at passing clouds and distant hill-tops to learn the signs of the weather. The dalesmen are expert in the use of the scythe; and numbers of them, after their own haymaking is over, migrate into Holderness and other grain-growing districts, and mow down the crops, even the wheat-fields, with remarkable celerity.

Many a hand had I to shake the next morning, when the moment came to say farewell. The student would not let me depart alone; he would go with me a few miles, and show me remarkable things by the way; and what was more, he would carry my knapsack. “You will have quite enough of it,” he said, “before your travel is over.” So I had to let him. We soon diverged from the road and began the ascent of Addleborough (Edel-burg,) that noble hill which rises on the south-east of Bainbridge, rearing its rocky crest to a height of more than fifteen hundred feet. We took the shortest way, climbing the tall fences, struggling through heather, striding across bogs, and disturbing the birds. The curlews began their circling flights above our heads, and the grouse took wing with sudden flutter, eight or ten brace starting from a little patch that, to my inexperience, seemed too small to hide a couple of chickens.