CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PEOPLE 71 very interesting relics of the Bronze Age. They consisted of flint flakes, two small cups or thuribles, and three urns. The largest of the urns proved to contain incinerated bones and charcoal ashes surrounding a smaller vessel, resembling the thuribles in shape, which had been inverted over a bronze spear head attached to a wooden handle by rivets. There was no trace of iron in these discoveries, and the learned folk who examined them accordingly came to the conclusion that they belonged to the Bronze Age, and were relics of some race or other which peopled these hills and moors long before history begins. NEAR HEPTONSTALL The people who inhabit this district at the present time are in certain respects widely different from West Riding folk in general. They speak a dialect which sounds strange to men who hail from parts of the Riding where the speech is supposed by strangers to be as broad and uncouth as it is possible for speech to be. In comparison with their daily vernacular, the speech of Leeds or Bradford, even of Halifax or Batley, is as the Latin of Horace compared to the Latin in which the mediæval monks wrote their canticles. They say "Aw" instead of "I," but with a very much broader accent than even a well-trained Yorkshire tongue can put into it, and "yo" instead of "you," with a curious inflection of the "o" to which nobody but a native could do justice. Occasionally they use idioms and terms which are absolutely unintelligible to the outsider, even if he has happened to live in the West Riding all his life. Also they are possessed of a formidable wit, and if occasion should serve, can turn the tables on an opponent with an ease which the most accomplished master of repartee might envy, or put forth an apposite remark which goes to the point with wonderful directness. There are many stories told in this neighbourhood which illustrate the native wit and humour of its inhabitants, but none of them more characteristic of their native ability to say the right word on any subject than the following:-A former vicar of Rochdale, who was a doctor of divinity, and a member of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, came to Todmorden one day to preach a sermon, and at the close of the service proceeded to the inn to dine with some of the principal parishioners, amongst whom was a blunt old farmer. During the meal the conversation happened to turn on the respective merits of Oxford and Cambridge, and one of the company remarked that the former seemed to be in higher repute than the latter. To this the doctor assented, but added, somewhat boastingly, "You must remember that I am of both Universities," whereupon the old farmer naïvely observed, "Then yoan both mucked an' limed. Aw once had a coaf that seawked two keaws, an' th' more it seawked th' bigger coaf it grew." It is said that this witty observation gave great amusement to the ecclesiastic, which is a sure proof that he was learned in the peculiar speech and strange idioms of this corner of a county famous for the broadness and so-called uncouthness of its dialect. CHAPTER XXIX The Wharfe from Nun Appleton to Wetherby CHARACTER AND COURSE OF THE WHARFE-ITS JUNCTION WITH THE OUSE -NUN APPLETON-RYTHER-ULLESKELF-BOLTON PERCY-GRIMSTON PARK-TADCASTER AND ITS HISTORY-THE RIVER COCK-BARWICK-INELMET - ABERFORD -PARLINGTON PARK- - LOTHERTON HALL-LEAD HALL SAXTON TOWTON HEATH AND ITS BATTLE IN 1461-HAZLEWOOD-STUTTON-BILBOROUGH AND THE FAIRFAX FAMILY-HEALAUGH BRAMHAM SCARCROFT AND ITS PRIORY-WIGHILL--WALTON-THORP ARCH-BOSTON SPA- THORNER F all the Yorkshire rivers there are none so beautiful as the Wharfe. In its course of seventy-five miles it winds through every variety of scenery, from the wild mountainous districts in the midst of which it has its source, to the level plains of the Vale of York, through which it glides at slow pace to join the Ouse. Nothing can be more delightful to the lover of the picturesque, and nothing more profitable to the searcher after health, than a desultory journey along its banks taken at a leisurely pace and with no hard-and-fast rules as to COURSE OF THE WHARFE 73 strict adherence to definite routes and pathways. Unlike some of the Yorkshire rivers of great original beauty spoiled by the gradual increase of manufactures and mining operations on their banks, the Wharfe is at no point of its course robbed of its charm or its purity by the presence of the mill or the workshop. There are few towns of any size situate on its banks -its adjacent towns are all chiefly ancient market-boroughs as picturesque and delightful as its own vagaries. The villages which surround it at almost every point are full of interesting features to the student of history and the lover of folk-lore, and there is not a mile along its banks on either side of which it may not be said that it possesses some value to the artist or the topographer. From its source under Cam Fell, at an elevation of some 1200 feet above sea-level, the Wharfe descends through the midst of magnificent hill scenery, wild and solitary in nature, to the green valley to which it has given its name. All along its winding ways its surroundings are continually changing. The mighty rocks which frown upon it at first soon give place to the pastoral beauty of Grassington and Burnsall, which in its turn is superseded by the romantic scenery of wood, rock, and heathclad hill that makes the neighbourhood of Bolton Abbey the most picturesque and beautiful corner of Yorkshire. From the ancient religious house by the Wharfe its course winds through the heart of a wide dale, the high ground of which is covered by vast moorlands whereon there is no sound or sign of life save the calling of the birds or the bleating of mountain sheep. Bold rock scenery at Ilkley, and the rugged crags and luxuriant hillside coppices of the Chevin at Otley, give it a new character as it sweeps onward from Upper to Lower Wharfedale. It loses little of its beauty as it draws nearer to the Ouse. Its surroundings from Harewood to Boston Spa are little less romantic than at Otley, and when it reaches Tadcaster and becomes a tidal river, winding through low banks heavily overhung by willow and sedge, it has features and charms as beautiful in their way as the bolder and wilder scenes nearer its source. Of all the rivers which flow into the Ouse there are none so full of romantic scenes and associations as the Wharfe, or so alluring to the lover of nature. I Where the Wharfe joins the Ouse, a little distance above Cawood, on the west bank of the latter river, the land is of the flat character which distinguishes the whole country lying within the confines of the vale of York. It stretches away on all sides in a dead level which is only relieved from absolute plainness and monotony by the exceeding richness of the vegetation and the pleasant pastoral landscapes which present themselves from every standpoint. At the very outset of his wanderings along its banks the traveller finds a historic house looking out upon the Wharfe near the point where it glides unobtrusively into the Ouse. On its north VOL. II. K bank stands Nun Appleton, one of the most interesting country seats in Yorkshire, which was for a long period the home of the Fairfax family and afterwards of the Milners. The surroundings of this ancient mansion are full of charm and beauty, and the gardens and terraces present a fine aspect, seen from the banks of the river. Nun Appleton derives its name from the fact that on the site of the present house there originally stood a convent of nuns of the Cistercian Order, founded in the twelfth century by Adeliza de St. Quintin. This religious house is said to have numbered amongst its inmates members of some of the best families in Yorkshire during mediæval times, but like the convent at Nun Monkton it gained a very unenviable reputation, and various ancient papers and documents would seem to show that its inmates were exceedingly lax in their keeping of rules and vows. It became necessary at one time for the ecclesiastical authorities to enact that they should give up their frequenting of the banks of the Wharfe and of the neighbouring alehouses, where it would appear they had been in the habit of meeting the young gallants of the district, and further that they should not take any man, priest or layman, into their chambers or secret places by night or day. According to Dugdale, the value of the convent at the time of the Dissolution was £73, 9s. 1od., and it then supported a prioress and fourteen nuns. It was granted by Henry VIII. to one Robert Darknal in 1542, and ten years later its owner alienated it, by royal permission, to Sir William Fairfax, whose successors built the original brick mansion on the site of the nunnery. Sir Thomas Fairfax spent his leisure moments here after the troublous times of the Civil War, and here for two years Andrew Marvell was engaged as tutor to some younger members of the family. After Sir Thomas became Lord Fairfax he kept great state at Nun Appleton, entertaining various famous folk-amongst them Charles II. and George Villiers, Duke of Bucking ham, who married Mary, Fairfax's only daughter-with lavish hospitality, until his death in 1671. At Ryther, a little hamlet on the opposite bank of the Wharfe, there are several interesting memorials of some of the old families of the neighbourhood. The church is ancient, and rich in monuments, and a considerable BOLTON PERCY 75 portion of its architecture dates back to the eleventh century. The south aisle is almost entirely filled with effigies and altar-tombs, many of which are much worn by time, or were despoiled by the Parliamentarians during the Civil War. Most of them are supposed to commemorate members of the Ryther family, who had here a castle, all trace of which has been lost for a long period, during the first three centuries after the Norman Conquest. At the end of the aisle are the effigies of a crusader and his lady. An altar-tomb of alabaster marble, in the carving of which there is some very fine Italian work, is supposed to be the memorial of a Ryther who fought at Towton, and whose effigy is here depicted clad in full armour. Another tomb, resting under an arch in the wall, presents a female figure in the dress of the thirteenth century, clasping a heart in its hands. Several generations of the Ryther family were interred in this church, but their monuments are so worn and defaced that it is impossible to procure definite information concerning them. There are some interesting fragments of Saxon work in the church at Grimston, near Ulleskelf, a short distance from Ryther on the south bank of the Wharfe. They have presumably formed parts of a cross, and were discovered some time ago beneath the flooring. There is also in this church a Norman font. Ulleskelf was at one time an inland port from whence stone was sent by the Vavasours to York for the building of the Minster, but it has now no signs of life or business, and is chiefly dear to anglers who come there to fish in the Wharfe. Grimston Park, on the west of the village, was once a seat of the Earls of Londesborough, and is famed throughout the district for the luxuriance of its vegetation and foliage, and for the size and antiquity of the trees which shut it in from the surrounding country. Across the Wharfe from Ulleskelf the traveller will find a delightful old-world village and an extremely interesting church at Bolton Percy, a cluster of picturesque houses and cottages, embowered amongst gardens and orchards, which stands on a small stream flowing into the river from the neighbourhood of Healaugh and Wighill. Here the lover of village life will find much to interest him. Many of the houses, like those of the Ouse-side villages and hamlets, are topped by red tiles, but there are also some roofs of thatch. The church is one of the finest village churches in Yorkshire, and has near it an ancient tythe-barn and a picturesque rectory. There was a church and a priest here in Saxon times, and the present edifice, which is said to be the largest and finest in the Ainsty of York, was built in the early years of the fifteenth century, and consecrated July 8, 1424, by the Bishop of Dromore. It is in the Perpendicular style, and consists of nave, with north and south aisles, chancel, with vestry, south porch of modern work, and a tower, with pinnacled battlements, at the west end. On the north side of the chancel there is a very fine sedilia surmounted by crocketed canopies, with a piscina close by, and above the east window, which contains five lights, is an ancient stone crucifix, which |