My companion talked as only a dalesman can talk—as one whose whole heart is in his subject. None but a dalesman, he said, could read Wordsworth aright, or really love him. He could talk of the history of the dale, and of the ways of the people. His great-grandmother was the first in Bainbridge who ever had a teapot. When tea first began to be heard of in those parts, a bagman called on an old farmer, and fascinated him so by praising the virtues of the new leaf from China, that with his wife’s approval he ordered a ‘stean’ to begin with. The trader ventured to suggest that a stone of tea would be a costly experiment, and sent them only a pound. Some months afterwards he called again for “money and orders,” and asked how the worthy couple liked the tea. “Them was the nastiest greens we ever tasted,” was the answer. “The parcel cam’ one morning afore dinner, so the missus tied ’em up in a cloth and put ’em into t’ pot along wi’ t’ bacon. But we couldn’t abear ’em when they was done; and as for t’ broth, we couldn’t sup a drop on ’t.”
Having climbed the last steep slope, we sat down in a recess of the rocky frontlet which the hill bears proudly on its brow, and there, sheltered from the furious wind, surveyed the scene below. We could see across the opposite fells, in places, to the summits on the farther side of Swaledale, and down Wensleydale for miles, and away to the blue range of the Hambleton hills that look into the Vale of York. Bainbridge appears as quiet as if it were taking holiday; yonder, Askrigg twinkles under a thin white veil of smoke; and farther, Bolton Castle—once the prison of the unhappy Queen of Scots—shows its four square towers above a rising wood: all basking in the glorious sunshine. Yet shadows are not wanting. Many a dark shade marks where a glen breaks the hill-sides: some resemble crooked furrows, trimmed here and there with a dull green fringe, the tree-tops peeping out, and by these signs the beck we explored yesterday may be discerned on the opposite fell. Wherever that little patch of wood appears, there we may be sure a waterfall, though all unseen, is joining in the great universal chorus. Ure winds down the dale in many a shining curve, of which but one is visible between bright green meadow slopes, and belts, and clumps of wood, that broaden with the distance; and all the landscape is studded with the little white squares—the homes of the dalesmen.
Four miles below the stream rushes over great steps of limestone which traverse its bed at Aysgarth Force, and flows onwards past Penhill, the mountain of Wensleydale, overtopping Addleborough by three hundred feet; past Witton Fell and its spring, still known as Diana’s Bath; past Leyburn, and its high natural terrace—the Shawl, where the ‘Queen’s gap’ reminds the visitor once more of Mary riding through surrounded by a watchful escort; past Middleham, where the lordly castle of the King-maker now stands in hopeless ruin, recalling the names of Anne of Warwick, Isabella of Clarence, Edward IV., and his escape from the haughty baron’s snare; of Richard of Gloucester, and others who figure in our national history; past Coverdale, the birthplace of that Miles Coverdale whose translation of the Bible will keep his memory green through many a generation, and the site of Coverham Abbey, of which but a few arches now remain. It was built in 1214 for the Premonstratensians, or White Canons, who never wore linen. Where the Cover falls into the Ure, spreads the meadow Ulshaw, the place from which Oswin dismissed his army in 651. Tradition preserves the memory of Hugh de Moreville’s seat, though not of the exact site, and thus associates the neighbourhood with one of the slayers of Becket. And at East Witton, beyond Coverham, are the ruins of the Cistercian Abbey of Jervaux—Jarvis Abbey, as the country folk call it—a relic dating from 1156. Plunderers and the weather had their own way with it until 1805, when the Earl of Aylesbury, to whom the estate belongs, inspired by his steward’s discovery of a tesselated pavement, stayed the progress of dilapidation, and had the concealing heaps of grass-grown rubbish dug away. Old Jenkins, who died in 1670, remembered Jervaux as it stood in its prime: he had shared the dole given by the monks to poor wayfarers. He remembered, too, the mustering of the dalesmen under the banner of the good Lord Scroop of Bolton for the battle of Flodden, when
“With him did wend all Wensleydale
From Morton unto Morsdale moor;
All they that dwell by the banks of Swale
With him were bent in harness stour.”
At Spennithorne, a village over against Coverham, were born John Hutchinson, the opponent of Newton, and Hatfield the crazy, who fired at George III. The philosopher—who was a yeoman’s son—made some stir in his day by publishing Moses’s Principia, in opposition to Sir Isaac’s, and by his collection of fossils, out of which he contrived arguments against geologists. This collection was bequeathed to Dr. Woodward, and eventually became part of the museum in the University of Cambridge.
Looking across the dale, somewhat to the right of Bainbridge, we see Nappa Hall, long the seat of the Metcalfes. In Queen Mary’s time, Sir Christopher Metcalfe was sheriff, and he met the judges at York at the head of three hundred horsemen, all dressed alike, and all of his own name and family. The name is still a common one in the North Riding, as you will soon discover on the front of public-houses, over the door at toll-bars, and on the sides of carts and wagons. The present Lord Metcalfe had a Guisborough man for his father. A Metcalfe, born at Coverhead, is said to have made Napoleon’s coffin at St. Helena. One of the fighting men who distinguished themselves at Agincourt was a Metcalfe. The Queen of Scots’ bedstead is still preserved at Nappa. Raleigh once visited the Hall, and brought with him—so the story goes—the first crayfish ever seen in the dale. Another visitor was that cruel pedant, Royal Jamie, who scrupled not to cut off Raleigh’s head—a far better one than his own—and concerning him we are told that he rode across the Ure on the back of one of the serving-men. Perhaps the poor serving-man felt proud all his life after.
If to dream about the Past by the side of a spring be one of your pleasures, you may enjoy it here in Wensleydale with many a change of scene. Besides Diana’s Bath, already mentioned, St. Simon’s Spring still bubbles up at Coverham, St. Alkelda’s at Middleham, and the Fairies’ Well at Hornby. To this last an old iron cup was chained, which a late local antiquary fondly thought might be one of those which King Edwin ordered to be fastened to running springs throughout his territories.
Celt and Northman have left their traces. The grandmothers of the children who now play in the village could remember the Beltane bonfires, and the wild dances around them. The Danes peopled the gloomy savage parts of the glen with their imaginary black alfs. An old couplet runs:
“Druid, Roman, Scandinavia
Stone Raise, on Addleboro’.”
So we sat and talked, and afterwards scrambled up the rocks to the summit. Here is, or rather was, a Druid circle of flat stones: but my companion screamed with vexation on discovering that three or four of the largest stones had been taken away, and were nowhere to be seen. The removal must have been recent, for the places where they lay were sharply defined in the grass, and the maze of roots which had been covered for ages was still dense and blanched. And so an ancient monument must be destroyed either out of wanton mischief, or to be broken up for the repair of a fence! Whoever were the perpetrators, I say,