A Month in Yorkshire Part 7

Among the unfortunates who suffered imprisonment here, George Fox, the aboriginal Quaker, has left us a most pathetic account of his sufferings. Brought hither from Lancaster Castle, he was put into a chamber which he likened to purgatory for smoke, into which the rain beat, and after he had "laid out about fifty shillings" to make it habitable, "they removed me," he writes in his _Journal_, "into a worse room, where I had neither chimney nor fireplace. This being to the sea-side and lying much open, the wind drove in the rain forcibly, so that the water came over my bed and ran about the room, that I was fain to skim it up with a platter. And when my clothes were wet, I had no fire to dry them; so that my body was benumbed with cold, and my fingers swelled, that one was grown as big as two." For more than a year did the resolute Peacemaker endure pain and privation, and vindicate his principles on this tall cliff; and when three years later, in 1669, he again went preaching in Yorkshire, he revisited Scarborough, and "the governor hearing I was come," he writes, "sent to invite me to his house, saying, 'surely I would not be so unkind as not to come and see him and his wife.' So after the meeting I went up to visit him, and he received me very courteously and lovingly."

Five hundred years earlier, and, as the ballad tells, the merry outlaw, Robin Hood, who

"The Yorkshire woods frequented much,"

being a-weary of forest glades and fallow deer, exclaimed,

"The fishermen brave more money have Than any merchants two or three; Therefore I will to Scarborough go, That I a fisherman brave may be."

But though the "widow woman" in whose house "he took up his inn," lent him a stout boat and willing crew, he caught no fish, and the master laughed at him for a lubber. However, two or three days later, he espied a ship of war sailing proudly towards them, and then it was the master's turn to lament, for the French robbers spared no man. To him then Robin:

"'Master, tye me to the mast,' saith he, 'That at my mark I may stand fair, And give me my bent bow in my hand, And never a Frenchman will I spare.'

"He drew his arrow to the very head, And drew it with all might and maine, And straightway, in the twinkling of an eye, To the Frenchman's heart the arrow's gane.

"Then streight they boarded the French ship They lyeing all dead in their sight; They found within that ship of warre Twelve thousand pound of mony bright."

The castle is national property, and as the bluff affords a good site for offence and defence, a magazine and barracks for a company of men have been built. For all garrison, at the time of my visit, there was but one invalid artilleryman, who employs his leisure in constructing models of the ruins for sale along with bottles of ginger beer. He will talk to you about the nice water of Our Lady's Well; the cavern in the cliff, where the officers once dined; of the cannon b.a.l.l.s that Cromwell sent across from Oliver's Mount; about the last whale caught on the sh.o.r.e, and about the West Indies, where he lost his health; but he remembers little or nothing of Piers Gavestone or George Fox, and is not quite sure if he ever heard that Robin Hood went a-privateering. His duties, he told me, were not heavy; he did not even lock the gate at night, because folk came very early in the morning to fetch their cows from the pasture.

Since then, that is, in the autumn of 1857, the rains occasioned a landslip, which nearly obliterated the cavern; a whale thirty feet long was caught floundering in the shallows; and on Seamer Moor, about three miles distant, ancient gold and silver rings and ornaments, beads and broken pottery, and implements of bronze and iron and a skeleton, were found on excavating a chalky knoll.

Of course, a town of thirteen thousand inhabitants must have its newspapers. The _Scarborough Gazette_ is a curiosity for its long list of visitors, filling sometimes two pages. A cheap paper--the t.i.tle of which I have lost--was a curiosity to me in another way, for I could not have believed that Yorkshire folk would read anything so stupid as the wordy columns therein pa.s.sed off for politics.

The shadows were lengthening towards the east when, after satisfying myself with another look at the coast to the north, I took the road for Cloughton, leaving the town by the north esplanade, where Blenheim-terrace shows the sober style of the first improvements. Many visitors, however, prefer the view from those plain bay-windows to that seen from the stately houses to the south.

Cloughton is a small quiet village, with a _Red Lion_ to match, where you may get good rustic fare--cakes, bacon, and eggs--and a simple chamber. The landlord, a patriarch of eighty-five, still hale, and active, who sat warming his knees at the turf fire, opened his budget of reminiscences concerning Scarborough. The change from what it was to what it is, was wonderful. He went there at election times. Had once been to vote at York, years ago, "when there was a hard fight betuxt a Milton and a Lascelles." Had never been to London, but his niece went up to the Great Exhibition. While we talked, in came a shabby-looking fellow with a six days' beard, for a pint of beer. He had been trout-fishing all day on the moors--one of his means of living. He stayed but a few minutes, and as he went out the patriarch said, "He's a roughish one to look at, but he can make powetry." It was too late to call him back, or I might perhaps have got a specimen.

Then came in the rustics in twos and threes for their evening pint and pipe, most of them preferring hard porter to the ale, which was really good. Not one had a complaint to make of hard times: wages were one and sixpence a day, and meat, and good meat, too--beef and mutton and pies--as much as they could eat. They didn't want to emigrate; Yorkshire was quite good enough for them. While talking to them and listening to their conversation among themselves, my old conviction strengthened that the rural folk are not the fools they are commonly taken to be. Choose such words as they are familiar with--such as John Bunyan uses--and you can make them understand any ordinary subject and take pleasure in it.

And how happy they are when you can suggest an ill.u.s.tration from something common to their daily life! I would have undertaken to give an hour's lecture on terrestrial magnetism even, to that company; and not one should have wished it shorter. And once having broken through their crust of awkwardness, you find them possessed of a good fund of common sense, quick to discern between the plausible and what they feel to be true. Flattering speeches made at hay-homes and harvest-homes are taken for what they are worth; and the sunburnt throng are everywhere ready to applaud the sentiment conveyed in a reaper's reply to a complimentary toast:

"Big bees fly high; Little bees make the honey: Poor men do the work; Rich men get the money."

One of the party, lively enough to have lived when the island was "merry England," hearing that I intended to walk through Bay Town on the morrow, said, laughingly, "You'll find nought but _Tudds_ and _Pooads_ down there;" meaning that Todd and Poad were the prevalent names.

CHAPTER XI.

From Cloughton to Haiburn Wyke--The embowered Path--Approach to the Sea--Rock, Water, and Foliage--Heavy Walking--Staintondale Cliffs--The Undercliff--The Peak--Raven Hall--Robin Hood's Bay --A Trespa.s.s--Alum Works--Waterfalls--Bay Town--Manners and Customs of the Natives--Coal Trade--The Churchyard--Epitaphs-- Black-a-moor--Hawsker--Vale of Pickering--Robin Hood and Little John's Archery--Whitby Abbey--Beautiful Ruin--St. Hilda, Wilfrid, and Coedmon--Legends--A Fallen Tower--St. Mary's Church--Whitby--The Vale of Esk--Specimens of Popular Hymns.

The next morning looked unpromising; the heavy rain which began to fall the evening before had continued all night, and when I started, trees and hedges were still dripping and the gra.s.s drooping, overburdened with watery beads. Bye-paths are not enticing under such circ.u.mstances: however, the range of cliffs between Haiburn Wyke and Robin Hood's Bay is so continuously grand and lofty that I made up my mind to walk along their summit whether or not.

About half an hour from Cloughton brought me to a 'crammle gate,' as the natives call it; that is, a rustic gate with zigzaggy rails, from which a private road curves down through a grove to a farm-house on the right.

Here, finding no outlet, I had to inquire, and was told to cross the garden. All praise to the good-nature which trusts a stranger to lift the "clinking latch" and walk unwatched through a garden so pretty, teeming with fruit, flowers, and vegetables; where a path overarched by busy climbers leads you into pleasing ins and outs, and along blooming borders to the edge of a wooded glen, and that is Haiburn Wyke. The path, not trimly kept as in the garden, invites you onwards beneath a thick shade of oak, ash, and hazel; between clumps of honeysuckle and wild roses, and broken slopes hung with ferns and ivy, and a very forest of gra.s.ses; while, to heighten the charm, a little brook descends prattling confidingly to the many stones that lie in its crooked channel. The path winds, now steep, now gradual, and at the bends a seat offers a resting-place if you incline to pause and meditate.

There was another charm: at first a fitful murmur which swelled into a roar as I sauntered down and came nearer to the sea. The trees grow so thickly that I could see but a few yards around, and there seemed something almost awful in the sound of the thundering surge, all the heavier in the damp air, as it plunged on the rugged beach: so near, and yet unseen. But after another bend or two it grows lighter overhead, crags peep through the foliage on both sides, and then emerging on a level partly filled by a summer-house, you see the narrow cove, the jutting cliffs that shelter it, and every minute the tumultuous sea flinging all round the stony curve a belt of quivering foam.

I could not advance far, for the tide had but just begun to fall; however, striding out as far as possible, I turned to look at the glen.

It is a charming scene: the leafy hollow, the cliffs rounding away from the mantling green to present a bare front to the sea, yet patched and streaked with gray and yellow and white and brown, as if to make up for loss of verdure. There the brook, tumbling over stony ledges, shoots into a cascade between huge ma.s.ses of rock, and hurries still with lively noise across the beach, talking as freely to boulders of five tons' weight as to stones of a pound; heedless, apparently, that its voice will soon be drowned for ever in the mighty voice of the sea. It is a charming scene, truly, even under a gloomy sky: you will see none fairer on all the coast. On a sunshiny day it should attract many visitors from Scarborough, when those able to walk might explore Cloughton Wyke--less beautiful than this--on the way.

To get up the steep clay road all miry with the rain on the northern side of the glen, was no easy task; but the great ball of clay which clung to each of my feet was soon licked off by the wet gra.s.s in the fields above. I took the edge of the cliffs, and found the ascent to the Staintondale summit not less toilsome. There was no path, and wading through the rank gra.s.s and weeds, or through heavy wheat and drenched barley on ground always up-hill, wetted me through up to the hips in a few minutes, and gave me a taste of work. For the time I did not much admire the Yorkshire thriftiness which had ploughed and sown so close to the bank leaving no single inch of s.p.a.ce. However, I came at times to a bare field or a pasture, and the freshening breeze blew me almost dry before climbing over awkward fences for another bath of weeds and grain.

And besides, a few faint watery gleams of sunshine began to slant down upon the sea, and the increasing height of the cliffs opened wide views over land and water--from misty hills looming mountainous on one side, to the distant smoke of a coasting steamer on the other. And again there are two or three miles of undercliff, a great slope covered with a dense bush threaded here and there by narrow paths, and forming in places an impenetrable tangle. To stand on the highest point, five hundred and eighty-five feet above the sea, and look down on the precipitous crags, the ridges and hollows and rounded b.u.t.tresses decked with the mazy bush where birds without number haunt, is a sight that repays the labour. At the corner of one of the fields the bushes lean inwards so much from the wind, that the farmer has taken advantage of the overshoot to construct a bower wherein to sit and enjoy the prospect.

These tall cliffs are the sudden termination of a range of hills stretching from the interior to the coast. Taken with the undercliff, they present many combinations which would delight the eye and employ the pencil of an artist. And to the geologist they are of abounding interest, exhibiting shale, sh.e.l.ly limestone, sandstones of various qualities in which belemnites and ferns, and other animal and vegetable fossils, are embedded in surprising quant.i.ties. You can descend here and there by a zigzag path, and look up at the towering crags, or search the fallen ma.s.ses, or push into the thicket; that is, in dry weather. After about two miles the bush thins off, and gives place to gorse, and reedy ponds in the hollows, and short turf on which cattle and sheep are grazing.

The range continues for perhaps five miles and ends in a great perpendicular bluff--a resort of sea-birds. Here on getting over the fence I noticed that the pasture had a well-kept, finished appearance; and presently, pa.s.sing the corner of a wall, I found myself on a lawn, and in front of Raven Hall--a squire's residence. An embrasured wall built to represent bastions and turrets runs along the edge of the cliff, and looking over, you see beneath the grand sweep of Robin Hood's Bay backed by a vast hollow slope--a natural amphitheatre a league in compa.s.s, containing fields and meadows, shaly screes and patches of heath, cottages, and the Peak alum-works. We are on the Peak, and can survey the whole scene, away to Bay Town, a patch of red capped by pale-blue smoke just within the northern horn of the bay.

A lady and gentleman were trying in defiance of the wind to haul up a flag on the tall staff erected at the point, to whom I apologised for my unintentional trespa.s.s. They needed no apology, and only wondered that any one should travel along the cliffs on such a morning. "Did you do it for pleasure?" asked the lady, with a merry twinkle in her eye, as she saw how bedraggled I looked below the knees.

The gentleman left the flapping banner, and showed me from the rear of the premises the readiest way down to the beach--a very long irregular descent, the latter portion across the alum shale, and down the abrupt slope of Cinder Hill, where the buildings are blackened by smoke. At first the beach is nothing but a layer of small fragments of shale, of a dark slate-colour, refuse from the works; and where the cliffs reappear there you see shale in its natural condition, and feel it beneath your feet while treading on the yielding sand. Numerous cascades leap down from these cliffs; at the time I pa.s.sed swollen by the rain, and well set off by the dark precipice. One of them was a remarkably good representation of the _Staubbach_ on a small scale.

About half way I met a gig conveying visitors to the Hall at a walking pace, for the wheels sank deep. It was for them that the flag was to be raised, as a signal of welcome; and looking back I saw it flying proudly, on what, seen from below, appeared a castle on the cliff. At this moment the sun shone out, and lit up the Peak in all its magnificent proportions; and the effects of my trudge through drip and mire soon disappeared. Another mile and the rocks are thickly strewn with periwinkles, and great plashy beds of seaweed must be crossed, and then we see that the outermost houses rest on a solid weather-stained wall of boulders, through which descends a rugged incline of big stones--the foot of the main street of Bay Town.

There is no lack of quarters, for within a few yards you may count seven public-houses. It is a strange place, with alleys which are stairs for side streets, and these leading into queer places, back yards and pigstyes, and little gardens thriving with pot-herbs. Everything is on a slope, overtopped by the green hill behind. Half way up the street, in what looks like a market-place, lie a number of boats, as if for ornament. You can hardly imagine them to have been hauled up from the beach. Some of the shops are curiosities in their appearance and display of wares; yet there are traders in Bay Town who could buy up two or three of your fashionable shopkeepers in the watering-places.

"Yer master wants ye," said a messenger to a young fellow who sat smoking his pipe in the _King's Head_, while Martha, the hostess, fried a chop for my dinner.

"Tell him I isn't here: I isn't a coomin'," was the answer, with a touch of Yorkshire, which I heard frequently afterwards.

From the talk that went on I gathered that Bay Town likes to amuse itself as well as other places. All through the past winter a ball or dance had been held nearly every evening, in the large rooms which, it appears, are found somewhere belonging to the very unpretending public-houses. On the other hand, church and chapel are well attended, and the singing is hearty. Weddings and funerals are made the occasion of festivals, and great is the number of guests. Martha a.s.sured me that two hundred persons were invited when her father was buried; and even for a child, the number asked will be forty or fifty; and all get something to eat and drink. It was commonly said in the neighbourhood that the head of a Bay Town funeral procession would be at the church before the tail had left the house. The church is on the hill-top, nearly a mile away. A clannish feeling prevails. Any lad or la.s.s who should chose to wed with an outsider, would be disgraced. Ourselves to ourselves, is the rule. On their way home from church, the young couple are beset by invitations to drink at door after door, as they pa.s.s, and jugs of strong liquor are bravely drained, and all the eighteen hundred inhabitants share in the gladness. Hence the perpetuation of Todds and Poads. However, as regards names, the most numerous which I saw were Granger and Bedlington, or Bettleton, as the natives call it.

The trade in fish has given place to trade in coal; and Bay Town owns about eighty coal brigs and schooners, which sail to Edinburgh, to London, to ports in France, and one, which belongs to a man who a few years ago was a labourer, crosses the ocean to America. There are no such miserable paupers as swarm in the large towns. Except the collier crews, the folk seldom leave the parish; and their farthest travel is to Hartlepool in the steamer which calls in the bay on her way from Scarborough.

I chose to finish the walk to Whitby by the road; and in a few minutes, so steep is the hill, was above Bay Town, and looking on the view bounded by the ma.s.sy Peak. Near where the lane enters the high road stands the church, a modern edifice, thickly surrounded with tombstones.

Black with gilt letters, appears to be the favourite style; and among them are white stones, bearing outspread gilt wings and stars, and an ornamental border. The clannish feeling loves to keep alive the memory of the departed; and one might judge that it has the gift of "powetry,"

and delights in epitaphs. Let us read a few: we shall find "drowned at sea," and "mariner," a frequent word in the inscriptions:

Partner dear my life is past, My love for you was to the last; Therefore for me no sorrow take, But love my children for my sake.

An old man of eighty-two is made to say:

From raging storms at sea The Lord he did me save, And here my tottering limbs is brought To moulder in the grave.

Lancelot Moorsom, aged seventy-four, varies the matter thus:

Tho' boreas blast and neptune waves Hath toss'd me too and fro', By G.o.d's decree you plainly see, I'm harbour'd here below, But here I do at anchor ride With many of our fleet, And once again I must set sail, My Saviour Christ to meet.

Of a good old wife, we read something for which the s.e.x would be the better were it true of all:

She was not puff'd in mind, She had no scornful eye, Nor did she exercise herself In things that were too high.

Childhood claims a tender sentiment; and parents mourn thus for their little ones:

One hand they gave to Jesus, one to Death, And looking upward to their Father's throne, Their gentle spirits vanish'd with their breath, And fled to Eden's ever blooming zone.