CHAPTER XXIII.
A Walk—Carperby—Despotic Hay-time—Bolton Castle—The Village—Queen Mary’s Prison—Redmire—Scarthe Nick—Pleasing Landscape—Halfpenny House—Hart-Leap Well—View into Swaledale—Richmond—The Castle—Historic Names—The Keep—St. Martin’s Cell—Easby Abbey—Beautiful Ruins—King Arthur and Sleeping Warriors—Ripon—View from the Minster Tower—Archbishop Wilfrid—The Crypt—The Nightly Horn—To Studley—Surprising Trick—Robin Hood’s Well—Fountains Abbey—Pop goes the Weasel—The Ruins—Robin Hood and the Curtall Friar—To Thirsk—The Ancient Elm—Epitaphs.
My friend had for some time wished to look into Swaledale; he therefore accompanied me the next morning, as far as the route served, through the village of Carperby, where dwells a Quaker who has the best grazing farm in the North Riding. We passed without calling, for he must be a philosopher indeed, here in the dales, who can endure interruptions in hay-time, when all who can work are busy in the fields. Ask no man to lend you a horse or labourer in hay-time. Servants give themselves leave in hay-time, and go toiling in the sunshine till all the crop is led, earning as much out of doors in three or four weeks as in six months in-doors. What is it to them that the mistress has to buckle-to, and be her own servant for a while, and see to the washing, and make the bread? as I saw in my friend’s house, knowing that in case of failure the nearest place where a joint of meat or a loaf of bread can be got is at Hawes, eight miles distant. What is it to them? the hay must be made, whether or not.
A few light showers fell, refreshing the thirsty soil, and making the trees and hedgerows rejoice in a livelier green. It was as if Summer were overjoyed:
“Even when she weeps, as oft she will, though surely not for grief,
Her tears are turned to diamond drops on every shining leaf.”
so our walk of four miles to Bolton Castle was the more agreeable. The old square building, with its four square towers rising above a mass of wood, looks well as you approach from the road; and when you come upon the eminence on which it stands, and see the little village of Bolton, little thatched cottages bordering the green, as old in appearance as the castle, it is as if you looked on a scene from the feudal ages—the rude dwellings of the serfs pitched for safety beneath the walls, as in the days of Richard Lord Scrope, who built the castle four hundred years ago. A considerable portion of the edifice is still habitable; some of the rooms look really comfortable; others are let as workshops to a tinker and glazier, and down in the vaults you see the apparatus for casting sheet-lead. We saw the room in which the hapless Mary was confined, and the window by which, as is said, she tried, but failed, to escape. We went to the top, and looked over into the inner court; and got a bird’s-eye view of the village and of Bolton Park and Hall, amid the wooded landscape; and then to the bottom, down damp stone stairs, to what seemed the lowest vault, where, however, there was a lower depth—the dungeon—into which we descended by a ladder. What a dismal abode! of gloom too dense for one feeble candle to enliven. The man who showed the way said there was a well in one corner; but I saw nothing except that that spot looked blacker than the rest. To think that such a prison should have been built in the “good old times!”
On leaving the village, an old woman gave me a touch of the broadest dialect I had yet heard: “Eh! is ye boun into Swawldawl?” she exclaimed, in reply to my inquiry. We were going into Swaledale, and, taking a byeway above the village of Redmire, soon came to a road leading up the dale to Reeth, into which my friend turned, while I went on to the northern slope of Wensleydale. You ascend by a steep, winding road to Scarthe Nick, the pass on the summit, and there you have a glorious prospect—many a league of hill and hollow, of moor and meadow. From Bolton Castle and its little dependency, which lie well under the eye, you can look down the dale and catch sight of the ruined towers of Middleham; Aysgarth Force reveals itself by a momentary quivering flash; and scattered around, seven churches and eight villages, more or less environed by woods, complete the landscape. The scene, with its wealth of quiet beauty, is one suggestive of peace and well-being, dear to the Englishman’s heart. To one coming suddenly upon it from the dreary moorlands which lie between Wensleydale and Richmond, there would be something of enchantment in the far-spreading view.
I turned my back on it at last, and followed the road across the moors, where the memory of what you have just left becomes fairer by contrast. The route is solitary, and apparently but little frequented, for in ten miles I met only a man and a boy; and the monotony is only relieved after a while by a falling away of the brown slopes on the right, opening a view of the Hambleton Hills. There is one public-house on the way, the Halfpenny House, down in a hollow, by no means an agreeable resting-place, especially for a hungry man with a liking for cleanliness. Not far from it is Hart-Leap Well, sung by Wordsworth:
“There’s neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep,
Will wet his lips within that cup of stone;
And oftentimes when all are fast asleep,
This water doth send forth a dolorous groan.”