A Month in Yorkshire. Walter White
drift round by the set of the current, and gradually the heavier portions and pebbles follow, and the supply being inexhaustible, a phenomenon is produced similar to that of the Chesil Bank, on the coast of Dorsetshire, except that here the pebbles are for the most part masked by sand.
I looked northwards for Flamborough Head, but Dimlington Hill, which lies between, though not half the height, hides it completely. Beyond Dimlington lies Withernsea, a small watering-place, the terminus of the Hull and Holderness Railway, to which the natives of the melancholy town betake themselves for health and recreation, tempted by a quadrille band and cheap season-tickets. Adjoining Withernsea is all that remains of Owthorne, a village which has shared the doom of Kilnsea. The churches at the two places were known as ‘sister churches;’ that at Withernsea yet stands in ruins; but Owthorne church was swept into the sea within the memory of persons now living. The story runs that two sisters living there, each on her manor, in the good old times, began to build a church for the glory of God and the good of their own souls, and the work went on prosperously until a quarrel arose between them on the question of spire or tower. Neither would yield. At length a holy monk suggested that each sister should build a church on her own manor; the suggestion was approved, and for long years the Sister Churches resounded with the voice of prayer and praise, and offered a fair day-mark to the mariner.
But, as of old, the devouring sea rushed higher and higher upon the land, and the cliff, sapped and undermined, fell, and with it the church of Owthorne. In 1786, the edge of the burial-ground first began to fail; the church itself was not touched till thirty years later. It was a mournful sight to see the riven churchyard, and skeletons and broken coffins sticking out from the new cliff, and bones, skulls, and fragments of long-buried wood strewn on the beach. One of the coffins washed out from a vault under the east end of the church contained an embalmed corpse, the back of the scalp still bearing the gray hairs of one who had been the village pastor. The eyes of the villagers were shocked by these ghastly relics of mortality tossed rudely forth to the light of day; and aged folk who tottered down to see the havoc, wept as by some remembered token they recognised a relative or friend of bygone years, whom they had followed to the grave—the resting place of the dead, as they trusted, till the end of time. In some places bodies still clad in naval attire, with bright-coloured silk kerchiefs round the neck, were unearthed, as if the sea were eager to reclaim the shipwrecked sailors whom it had in former time flung dead upon the shore.
But, to return to the lighthouse. According to Smeaton’s survey this extremity of the spoon comprehends ninety-eight acres. It slopes gently to the sea, and is somewhat altered in outline by every gale. At the time of my visit, rows of piles were being driven in, and barriers of chalk erected, to secure the ground on the outer side between the tower and the sea; and a new row of cottages for the life-boat crew, built nearer to the side where most wrecks occur than the old row, was nearly finished. Beyond, towards the point, stands a public-house, in what seems a dangerous situation, close to the water. There was once a garden between it and the sea; now the spray dashes into the rear of the house; for the wall and one-half of the hindermost room have disappeared along with the garden, and the hostess contents herself with the rooms in front, fondly hoping they will last her time. She has but few guests now, and talks with regret of the change since the digging of ballast was forbidden on the Spurn. Then trade was good, for the diggers were numerous and thirsty. That ballast-digging should ever have been permitted in so unstable a spot argues a great want of forethought somewhere.
The paved enclosure around the tower is kept scrupulously clean, for the rain which falls thereon and flows into the cistern beneath is the only drinkable water to be had. “It never fails,” said the keeper, “but in some seasons acquires a stale flavour.” He was formerly at Flamborough, and although appointment to the Spurn was promotion, he did not like it so well. It was so lonesome; the rough, trackless way between, made the nearest village seem far off; now and then a boat came across with visitors from Cleathorpes, a seven miles’ trip; there had been one that morning, but not often enough to break the monotony. And he could not get much diversion in reading, for the Trinity Board, he knew not why, had ceased to circulate the lighthouse library.
The lesser tower stands at the foot of the inner slope, where its base is covered by every tide. Its height is fifty feet, and the entrance, approached by a long wooden bridge, is far above reach of the water. This is the third tower erected on the same spot; the two which preceded it suffered so much damage from the sea that they had to be rebuilt.
About the time that ambitious Bolingbroke landed, a good hermit, moved with pity by the number of wrecks, and the dangers that beset the mouth of the estuary, set up a light somewhere near Ravenser. But finding himself too poor to maintain it, he addressed a petition to the “wyse Commons of Parliament,” for succour, and not in vain. The mayor of Hull, with other citizens, were empowered “to make a toure to be up on daylight and a redy bekyn wheryn shall be light gevyng by nyght to alle the vesselx that comyn into the seid ryver of Humbre.”
In the seventeenth century, Mr. Justinian Angell, of London, obtained a license to build a lighthouse on the Spurn. It was an octagonal tower of brick, displaying an open coal fire on the top, which in stormy weather was frequently blown quite out, when most wanted. Wrecks were continually taking place; and it is only since Smeaton completed his tower, and the floating-light was established in the offing, and the channel was properly buoyed, that vessels can approach the Humber with safety by night as well as by day.
It was full tide when I returned along the chalky embankment, and the light spray from the breakers sprinkled my cheek, giving me a playful intimation of what might be expected in a storm.
I was passing a tilery near Welwick, when a beery fellow, who sat in the little office with a jug before him and a pipe in his mouth, threw up the window and asked, in a gruff, insolent tone, “A say, guvner, did ye meet Father Mathew?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say to ye?”
“He told me I should see a fool at the tileworks.”
Down went the window with a hearty slam, and before I was fifty yards away, the same voice rushed into the road and challenged me to go back and fight. And when the owner of the voice saw that the stranger took no heed thereof, he cried, till hidden by a bend in the road, “Yer nothin’ but t’ scram o’ t’ yerth!—yer nothin’ but t’ scram o’ t’ yerth!”
Thinking scram might be the Yorkshire for scum, I made a note of it for the benefit of philologists, and kept on to Patrington, where I arrived in time for the last train to Hull, quite content with six-and-twenty miles for my first day’s walk.
CHAPTER IV
Northern Manners—Cottingham—The Romance of Baynard Castle—Beverley—Yorkshire Dialect—The Farmers’ Breakfast—Glimpses of the Town—Antiquities and Constables—The Minster—Yellow Ochre—The Percy Shrine—The Murdered Earl—The Costly Funeral—The Sister’s Tomb—Rhyming Legend—The Fridstool—The Belfry.
Journeying from Hull to Beverley by ‘market-train’ on the morrow, I had ample proof, in the noisy talk of the crowded passengers, that Yorkshire dialect and its peculiar idioms are not “rapidly disappearing before the facilities for travel afforded by railways.” Nor could I fail to notice what has before struck me, that taken class for class, the people north of Coventry exhibit a rudeness, not to say coarseness of manners, which is rarely seen south of that ancient city. In Staffordshire, within twenty miles of Birmingham, there are districts where baptism, marriage, and other moral and religious observances considered as essentials of Christianity, are as completely disregarded as among the heathen. In some parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire similar characteristics prevail; but rude manners do not necessarily imply loose morality. Generally speaking the rudeness is a safety-valve that lets off the faults or seeming faults of character; and I for one prefer rudeness to that over-refinement prevalent in Middlesex, where you may not call things by their right names, and where, as a consequence, the sense of what is fraudulent, and criminal, and wicked, has become weakened, because of the very mild and innocent words in which ‘good society’ requires that dishonesty and sin should be spoken of.
If we alight at Cottingham and take a walk in the neighbourhood we may discover the scene of