Chapter M: O A (10)

The colour of the green fields which lined the roads contrasted finely in the distance with the white surface of the roads, both fields and roads alike were neatly fenced in with stone walls. We wondered many times where all these stones could have come from, and at the immense amount of labour involved in getting them there and placing them in position. Their purpose in breaking the force of the wind was clear, for the greater part of the county consisted of moors, some portions of which were being cultivated, and although they were almost entirely devoid of trees, there were plenty of trees to be seen in the valleys, the Dales of Derbyshire being noted for their beauty. The River Derwent ran along the valley opposite the inn, and on the other side was the village of Eyam, which became famous in the time of the Great Plague of London in 1665. It seemed almost impossible that a remote village like that could be affected by a plague in London, but it so happened that a parcel arrived by coach from London addressed to a tailor in Eyam, who opened it with the result that he contracted the disease and died; in the same month five others died also, making a total of six for September, which was followed by 23 deaths in October, 7 in November, and 9 in December. Then came a hard frost, and it was thought that the germs would all be killed, but it broke out again in the following June with 19 deaths, July 56, August 77, September 24, and October 14, and then the plague died out--possibly because there were very few people left. During all this time Eyam had been isolated from the rest of the world, for if a villager tried to get away he was at once driven back, and for any one to go there was almost certain death. The Earl of Devonshire, who nobly remained at Chatsworth all the time, sent provisions periodically to a certain point where no one was allowed to pass either inwards or outwards. At this time even the coins of the realm were considered to be infectious, and large stones hollowed out like basins, which probably contained some disinfectant, were placed between Eyam and the villages which traded with them. Meantime the rector of Eyam, whose name was Mompesson, stood his ground like a true hero, ministering to his parishioners; and, although his wife contracted the disease and died, and though he referred to himself as "a dying man," yet was he mercifully preserved; so too was the Rev. Thomas Stanley, who had been ejected from the rectory after eighteen years' service because he would not subscribe to the Corporation Act of 1661. He stood by Mompesson and did his duty quite as nobly; and some years afterwards, when some small-minded people appealed to the Duke of Devonshire as Lord Lieutenant of the county to have Stanley removed, he indignantly refused and rebuked the petitioners very strongly.

William and Mary Howitt wrote a long poem entitled "The Desolation of Hyam," and described the village as--

Among the verdant mountains of the Peak
There lies a quiet hamlet, where the slope
Of pleasant uplands wards the north winds bleak:
Below, wild dells romantic pathways ope:
Around, above it, spreads a shadowy cope
Of forest trees: flower, foliage and clear rill
Wave from the cliffs, or down ravines elope:
It seems a place charmed from the power of ill
By sainted words of old:--so lovely, lone and still.

William Wood wrote the _Plague Chronicle_, and on his gravestone was inscribed:

Men like visions are;
Time all doth claim;
He lives who dies and leaves
A lasting name.

We had often read the wonderful epitaphs on the tombs of the nobility, but we had been warned that in former times these were often written by professional men who were well paid for their services, and the greater the number of heavenly virtues attributed to the deceased, the greater of course the fee; but those written by the poetical curate of Eyam were beyond suspicion if we may judge from the couplet he wrote to be placed on the gravestone of a parishioner:

Since life is short and death is always nigh,
On many years to come do not rely.

We were now passing through Little John's country, and we heard more about him in this neighbourhood than of his master, Robin Hood, for Little John's Well was not far away, and Hathersage, our next stage, was where he was buried. We were very much interested in Robin Hood and Little John, as my name was Robert, and my brother's name was John. He always said that Little John was his greatest ancestor, for in the old story-books his name appeared as John Nailer. But whether we could claim much credit or no from the relationship was doubtful, as the stanza in the old ballad ran:

Robin Hood did little good
And Little John did less.

In later times the name had been altered to Naylor, in order, we supposed, to hide its humble though honourable origin; for there was no doubt that it was a Nailer who fastened the boards on Noah's Ark, and legend stated that when he came to nail the door on, he nailed it from the inside!

The stanza, he explained, might have been written by the Bishop of Hereford or one of Robin Hood's other clients, whom he and Little John had relieved of his belongings; but the name Naylor was a common one in South Yorkshire, and, although our branch of the family were natives of South Lancashire, their characteristics showed they were of the same stock, since, like Little John, they were credited with having good appetites and with being able to eat and retain any kind of food and in almost any quantity. On one occasion we happened to meet with a gentleman named Taylor, and, after remarking there was only one letter different between his name and ours, my brother said, "But we are much the older family," and then named the Noah's Ark incident; when the gentleman quietly remarked, "I can beat you." "Surely not," said my brother. "Yes, I can," replied Mr. Taylor, "for my ancestor made the tails for Adam's coat! He was a Tailer." My brother collapsed!

But the greatest blow he received in that direction was when he found a much more modern story of "Robin Hood and Little John," which gave Little John's real name as John Little, saying that his name was changed to Little John because he was such a big man. My brother was greatly annoyed at this until he discovered that this version was a comparatively modern innovation, dating from the time of Sir Walter Scott's _Talisman_, published in 1825, and inserted there because the proper name would not have suited Sir Walter's rhyme:

"This infant was called 'John Little,' quoth he;
"Which name shall be changed anon.
The words we'll transpose, so wherever he goes
His name shall be called Little John."

On our way from the "Fox House Inn" to Hathersage we passed some strange-looking rocks which were said to resemble the mouth of a huge toad; but as we had not studied the anatomy of that strange creature, and had no desire to do so, a casual glance as we walked along a down gradient into Hathersage was sufficient. As we entered the village we saw a party of men descending a road on our right, from whom we inquired the way to Little John's grave, which they told us they had just been to visit themselves. They directed us to go up the road that they had just come down, and one of them advised us to call at the small inn which we should find at the top of the hill, while another man shouted after us, "Aye! and ther's a mon theere 'ats getten 'is gun!" We found the inn, but did not ask to see the gun, being more interested at the time in bows and arrows, so we called at the inn and ordered tea. It was only a cottage inn, but the back of it served as a portion of the churchyard wall, and the mistress told us that when Little John lay on his deathbed in the room above our heads, he asked for his bow and arrow, and, shooting through the window which we would see from the churchyard at the back of the inn, desired his men to bury him on the spot where they found his arrow.

We went to see the grave while our tea was being prepared, and found it only a few yards from the inn, so presumably Little John was very weak when he shot the arrow. The grave stood between two yew trees, with a stone at the head and another at the foot, the distance between them being ten feet.

The church was a very old one, dating from the early part of the fourteenth century. It was said that a search for Little John's skeleton had been made in 1784, when only a thigh-bone had been found; but as this measured twenty-nine and a half inches, a very big man must have been buried there.

On our right across the moor rose sharply what seemed to be a high, continuous cliff, which we were told was the "edge" of one of the thick, hard beds of millstone grit, and as we proceeded the edge seemed to be gradually closing in upon us.

After tea we walked slowly on to Castleton, where we selected a clean and respectable-looking private house to stay and rest over the week-end, until Monday morning.

(_Distance walked twenty-two miles_.)

_Sunday, October 29th._

We were very comfortable in our apartments at Castleton, our host and hostess and their worthy son paying us every possible attention. They were members of the Wesleyan Church, and we arranged with the young man that if he would go with us to the Parish Church in the morning, we would go to the Wesleyan Chapel in the evening with him. So in the morning we all went to church, where we had a good old-fashioned service, and saw a monument to the memory of a former vicar, a Mr. Bagshawe, who was Vicar of Castleton from 1723 to 1769; the epitaph on it described him as--

A man whose chief delight was in the service of his Master--a sound
scholar--a tender and affectionate husband--a kind and indulgent
parent--and a lover of peace and quietness, who is gone to that place
where he now enjoys the due reward of his labours.

This Vicar had kept a diary, or journal, from which it appeared that he began life in a good position, but lost his money in the "South Sea Bubble," an idea floated in the year 1710 as a financial speculation to clear off the National Debt, the Company contracting to redeem the whole debt in twenty-six years on condition that they were granted a monopoly of the South Sea Trade. This sounded all right, and a rush was made for the shares, which soon ran up in value from £100 to £1,000, fabulous profits being made. Sir Robert Walpole, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterwards Prime Minister for the long period of twenty-two years, was strongly opposed to the South Sea Scheme, and when, ten years later, he exposed it, the bubble burst and the whole thing collapsed, thousands of people, including the worthy Vicar of Castleton, being ruined.

It also appeared from the diary that, like the vicar Goldsmith describes, he was "passing rich on forty pounds a year," for he never received more than £40 per year for his services. The prices he paid for goods for himself and his household in the year 1748 formed very interesting reading, as it enabled us to compare the past with the present.

Bohea Tea was 8s. per pound; chickens, threepence each; tobacco, one penny per ounce; a shoulder of mutton cost him fifteen-pence, while the forequarter of a lamb was eighteen-pence, which was also the price of a "Cod's Head from Sheffield."

He also recorded matters concerning his family. He had a son named Harry whom he apprenticed to a tradesman in Leeds. On one occasion it appeared that the Vicar's wife made up a parcel "of four tongues and four pots of potted beef" as a present for Hal's master. One of the most pleasing entries in the diary was that which showed that Harry had not forgotten his mother, for one day a parcel arrived at the Vicarage from Leeds which was found to contain "a blue China cotton gown," a present from Hal to his mother.

Who fed me from her gentle breast.
And hush'd me in her arms to rest,
And on my cheeks sweet kisses prest?
My Mother.

Who sat and watched my infant head
When sleeping on my cradle bed.
And tears of sweet affection shed?
My Mother.

Who ran to help me when I fell,
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the place to make it well?
My Mother.

Who taught my infant lips to pray.
And love God's holy Book and day.
And walk in Wisdom's pleasant way?
My Mother.

And can I ever cease to be
Affectionate and kind to thee,
Who wast so very kind to me?
My Mother.

Ah! no, the thought I cannot bear,
And if God please my life to spare,
I hope I shall reward thy care.
My Mother.

When thou art feeble, old, and grey.
My healthy arm shall be thy stay,
And I will soothe thy pains away,
My Mother.

After dinner we decided to visit the Castle of _Peveril of the Peak_, and as the afternoon was very fine we were able to do so, under the guidance of our friend. We were obliged to proceed slowly owing to my partially disabled foot, and it took us a long time to reach the castle, the road being very narrow and steep towards the top--in fact, it was so difficult of approach that a handful of men could have defeated hundreds of the enemy. We managed to reach the ruins, and there we reposed on the grass to view the wild scenery around us and the curious split in the limestone rocks through which led the path known as the "Winnats," a shortened form of Wind Gates, owing to the force of the wind at this spot. The castle was not a large one, and there were higher elevations quite near; but deep chasms intervened, and somewhere beneath us was the largest cave in England. While we were resting our friend related the history of the castle, which had been built by William Peverell in 1068, and rebuilt by Henry II in 1176-7 after he had received here the submission of Malcolm, King of Scotland. Peverell was a natural son of William the Conqueror, who had distinguished himself at the Battle of Hastings, for which William had bestowed upon him many manors in Derbyshire. What was known as the Peak of Derbyshire we found was not one single rock, as we supposed, but a huge tableland with rising heights here and there. Our friend, whose name was William, told us a legend connected with the Peverell family. Pain Peverell, the Lord of Whittington, in Shropshire, had two daughters, the elder of whom was very beautiful, and had so many admirers that she could not decide which of them to accept. So she consulted her father on the matter, who advised her to accept only the "Bravest of the Brave," or the one who could prove himself to excel all others in martial skill. Her father therefore proclaimed a tournament, which was to take place, in the words of an ancient writer, at "Peverell's Place in the Peke," inviting all young men of noble birth to compete for the hand of the beautiful "Mellet," whose dowry was to be Whittington Castle. The contest, as might be supposed, was a severe one, and was won by a knight bearing a maiden shield of silver with a peacock for his crest, who vanquished, amongst others, a Knight of Burgundy and a Prince of Scotland. He proved to be Fitzwarren, and the Castle of Whittington passed to him together with his young bride.

Our friend was surprised when we told him we knew that castle and the neighbourhood very well, and also a cottage there where Dick Whittington was born, who afterwards became Sir Richard de Whittington, Lord Mayor of London. We again discussed the question of the desirability of returning home, as we were now much nearer than when at Furness Abbey, where we had nearly succumbed to home-sickness before; but my brother said he should continue the journey alone if I gave in, and as he kindly consented again to carry all the luggage, I agreed to complete the journey with him.

I walked down the hill supported by my brother on one side and our friend on the other, and returned to the latter's home for tea, after which our host showed us some remarkable spar stones--dog-tooth spar we were told was their name--found in the lead mines, whose white crystals glistened in the light, and I could see by the covetous look in my brother's eyes that he was thinking of the rockeries at home. His look was also seen by our worthy host, for he subsequently presented him with the stones, which my brother afterwards declared were given to him as a punishment for coveting his neighbour's goods. It was now time to fulfil our engagement to accompany our friend to the Wesleyan Chapel and to go through what proved one of the most extraordinary services we ever attended. Our host and hostess went with us, but they sat in a pew, while we three sat on a form. We remained for the "Prayer Meeting," which the minister announced would be held after the usual service. We had read that the "Amens" of the early Christians could be heard at long distances, but we never attended a meeting where the ejaculations were so loud and fervent as they were here. Each man seemed to vie with his neighbour as to which could shout the louder, and every one appeared to be in great earnest. The exclamations were not always "Amens," for we heard one man shout "Aye!" at exactly the same moment as another man shouted "Now!" and if the Leader had not been possessed of a stentorian voice he would not at times have been able to make himself heard. The primitive custom of conducting prayer meetings was evidently kept up at Castleton, as might perhaps have been expected in a place which before the appearance of the railway was so remote and inaccessible, but it was difficult to realise that "yes" and "no," or "aye" and "now," could have the same meaning when ejaculated at the same moment. Still, it might have been so in this case. Who knows!

In travelling through the country we had noticed that in the neighbourhood of great mountains the religious element was more pronounced than elsewhere, and the people's voices seemed stronger. At the close of this second service, for which nearly the whole of the congregation stayed, the conductor gave out one of Isaac Watts's well-known hymns, and the congregation sang it with heart and voice that almost made the rafters in the roof of the chapel vibrate as if even they were joining in the praises of the Lord! These were the first two verses:

Jesus shall reign where'er the sun
Doth his successive journeys run;
His Kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

People and realms of every tongue
Dwell on His love with sweetest song,
And infant voices shall proclaim
Their early blessing on His Name.

We must say we joined as heartily as any of the others, for it was sung to one of the good old Methodist tunes common to all the Churches in the days of Wesley. As we walked back through the village we felt all the better for having attended the full service, and later, when we watched the nearly full moon rise in the clear night air above the hills, our thoughts turned instinctively towards the Great Almighty, the Father and Maker and Giver of All!

SEVENTH WEEK'S JOURNEY

_Monday, October 30th._

The Scots as a nation are proverbial for their travelling propensities; they are to be found not only in every part of the British Isles, but in almost every known and unknown part of the wide world. It was a jocular saying then in vogue that if ever the North Pole were discovered, a Scotsman would be found there sitting on the top! Sir Walter Scott was by no means behind his fellow countrymen in his love of travel, and like his famous Moss-troopers, whose raids carried them far beyond the Borders, even into foreign countries, he had not confined himself "to his own--his Native Land." We were not surprised, therefore, wrhen we heard of him in the lonely neighbourhood of the Peak of Derbyshire, or that, although he had never been known to have visited the castle or its immediate surroundings, he had written a novel entitled _Peveril of the Peak_. This fact was looked upon as a good joke by his personal friends, who gave him the title of the book as a nickname, and Sir Walter, when writing to some of his most intimate friends, had been known to subscribe himself in humorous vein as "Peveril of the Peak."

There were several objects of interest well worth seeing at Castleton besides the great cavern; there was the famous Blue John Mine, that took its name from the peculiar blue stone found therein, a kind of fibrous fluor-spar usually blue to purple, though with occasional black and yellow veins, of which ornaments were made and sold to visitors, and from which the large blue stone was obtained that formed the magnificent vase in Chatsworth House, the residence of the Duke of Devonshire, and in other noble mansions which possess examples of the craft. In the mine there were two caverns, one of them 100 feet and the other 150 feet high, "which glittered with sparkling stalactites." Then there was the Speedwell Mine, one of the curiosities of the Peak, discovered by miners searching for ore, which they failed to find, although they laboured for years at an enormous cost. In boring through the rock, however, they came to a large natural cavern, now reached by descending about a hundred steps to a canal below, on which was a boat for conveying passengers to the other end of the canal, with only a small light or torch at the bow to relieve the stygian darkness. Visitors were landed on a platform to listen to a tremendous sound of rushing water being precipitated somewhere in the fearful and impenetrable darkness, whose obscurity and overpowering gloom could almost be felt. On the slope of the Eldon Hill there was also a fearful chasm called the Eldon Hole, where a falling stone was never heard to strike the bottom. This had been visited in the time of Queen Elizabeth by the Earl of Leicester, who caused an unfortunate native to be lowered into it to the full length of a long rope; when the poor fellow was drawn up again he was "stark mad," and died eight days afterwards.

We had to leave all these attractions to a later visit, since we had come to Castleton to see the largest cavern of all, locally named the "Devil's Hole," but by polite visitors the "Peak Cavern." The approach to the cavern was very imposing and impressive, perpendicular rocks rising on both sides to a great height, while Peveril Castle stood on the top of the precipice before us like a sentinel guarding entrance to the cavern, which was in the form of an immense Gothic arch 120 feet high, 42 feet wide, and said to be large enough to contain the Parish Church and all its belongings. This entrance, however, was being used as a rope-walk, where, early as it was, the workers were already making hempen ropes alongside the stream which flowed from the cavern, and the strong smell of hemp which prevailed as we stood for a few minutes watching the rope-makers was not at all unpleasant.

If it had been the entrance to Hades, to which it had been likened by a learned visitor, we might have been confronted by Cerberus instead of our guide, whom our friends had warned overnight that his attendance would be required early this morning by distinguished visitors, who would expect the cave to be lit up with coloured lights in honour of their visit. The guide as he handed a light to each of us explained apologetically that his stock of red lights had been exhausted during the season, but he had brought a sufficient number of blue lights to suit the occasion. We followed him into the largest division of the cavern, which was 270 feet long and 150 feet high, the total length being about half a mile. It contained many other rooms or caves, into which he conducted us, the first being known as the Bell House, and here the path we had been following suddenly came to an end at an arch about five yards wide, where there was a stream called the River Styx, over which he ferried us in a boat, landing us in a cave called the Hall of Pluto, the Being who ruled over the Greek Hades, or Home of Departed Spirits, guarded by a savage three-headed dog named Cerberus. The only way of reaching the "Home," our guide told us, was by means of the ferry on the River Styx, of which Charon had charge, and to ensure the spirit having a safe passage to the Elysian Fields it was necessary that his toll should be paid with a coin placed beforehand in the mouth or hand of the departed. We did not, however, take the hint about the payment of the toll until after our return journey, when we found ourselves again at the mouth of the Great Cavern, a privilege perhaps not extended to Pluto's ghostly visitors, nor did we see any of those mysterious or mythological beings; perhaps the nearest approach to them was the figure of our guide himself, as he held aloft the blue torch he had in his hand when in the Hall of Pluto, for he presented the appearance of a man afflicted with delirium tremens or one of those "blue devils" often seen by victims of that dreadful disease. We also saw Roger Rain's House, where it always rained, summer and winter, all the year round, and the Robbers' Cave, with its five natural arches. But the strangest cave we visited was that called the "Devil's Wine Cellar," an awful abyss where the water rushed down a great hole and there disappeared. Her Most Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria, visited the cavern in 1832, and one of the caves was named Victoria in memory of that event; we had the honour of standing on the exact spot where she stood on that occasion.

Our visit to the cavern was quite a success, enhanced as it was by the blue lights, so, having paid the guide for his services, we returned to our lodgings to "pack up" preparatory to resuming our walk. The white stones so kindly presented to my brother--of which he was very proud, for they certainly were very fine specimens--seemed likely to prove a white elephant to him. The difficulty now was how to carry them in addition to all the other luggage. Hurrying into the town, he returned in a few minutes with an enormous and strongly made red handkerchief like those worn by the miners, and in this he tied the stones, which were quite heavy and a burden in themselves. With these and all the other luggage as well he presented a very strange appearance as he toiled up the steep track through Cave Dale leading from the rear of the town to the moors above. It was no small feat of endurance and strength, for he carried his burdens until we arrived at Tamworth railway station in Staffordshire, to which our next box of clothes had been ordered, a distance of sixty-eight and a half miles by the way we walked. It was with a feeling of real thankfulness for not having been killed with kindness in the bestowal of these gifts that he deposited the stones in that box. When they reached home they were looked upon as too valuable to be placed on the rockeries and retained the sole possession of a mantelshelf for many years. My ankle was still very weak, and it was as much as I could do to carry the solitary walking-stick to assist me forwards; but we were obliged to move on, as we were now quite fifty miles behind our projected routine, and we knew there was some hard work before us. When we reached the moors, which were about a thousand feet above sea-level, the going was comparatively easy on the soft rich grass which makes the cow's milk so rich, and we had some good views of the hills. That named Mam Tor was one of the "Seven wonders of the Peak," and its neighbour, known as the Shivering Mountain, was quite a curiosity, as the shale, of which it was composed, was constantly breaking away and sliding down the mountain slope with a sound like that of falling water. Bagshawe Cavern was near at hand, but we did not visit it. It was so named because it had been found on land belonging to Sir William Bagshawe, whose lady christened its chambers and grottos with some very queer names. Across the moors we could see the town of Tideswell, our next objective, standing like an oasis in the desert, for there were no trees on the moors. We had planned that after leaving there we would continue our way across the moors to Newhaven, and then walk through Dove Dale to Ashbourne in the reverse direction to that taken the year before on our walk from London to Lancashire. Before reaching Tideswell we came to a point known as Lane Head, where six lane-ends met, and which we supposed must have been an important meeting-place when the moors, which surrounded it for miles, formed a portion of the ancient Peak Forest. We passed other objects of interest, including some ancient remains of lead mining in the form of curious long tunnels like sewers on the ground level which radiated to a point where on the furnaces heaps of timber were piled up and the lead ore was smelted by the heat which was intensified by these draught-producing tunnels.

When Peak Forest was in its primeval glory, and the Kings of England with their lords, earls, and nobles came to hunt there, many of the leading families had dwellings in the forest, and we passed a relic of these, a curious old mansion called Hazelbadge Hall, the ancient home of the Vernons, who still claim by right as Forester to name the coroner for West Derbyshire when the position falls vacant.

Tideswell was supposed to have taken its name from an ebbing and flowing well whose water rose and fell like the tides in the sea, but which had been choked up towards the end of the eighteenth century, and reopened in the grounds of a mansion, so that the cup-shaped hollow could be seen filling and emptying.

A market had existed at Tideswell since the year 1250, and one was being held as we entered the town, and the "George Inn," where we called for refreshments, was fairly well filled with visitors of one kind or another.

We left our luggage to the care of the ostler, and went to visit the fine old church adjacent, where many ancient families lie buried; the principal object of interest was the magnificent chancel, which has been described as "one Gallery of Light and Beauty," the whole structure being known as the Cathedral of the Peak. There was a fine monumental brass, with features engraved on it which throw light on the Church ritual of the day, to the memory of Bishop Pursglove, who was a native of Tideswell and founder of the local Grammar School, who surrendered his Priory of Gisburn to Henry VIII in 1540, but refused, in 1559, to take the Oath of Supremacy. Sampson Meverill, Knight Constable of England, also lies buried in the chancel, and by his epitaph on a marble tomb, brought curiously enough from Sussex, he asks the reader "devoutly of your charity" to say "a Pater Noster with an Ave for all Xtian soules, and especially for the soule of him whose bones resten under this stone." Meverill, with John Montagu, Earl of Shrewsbury, fought as "a Captain of diverse worshipful places in France," serving under John, Duke of Bedford, in the "Hundred Years' War," and after fighting in eleven battles within the space of two years he won knighthood at the duke's hands at St. Luce. In the churchyard was buried William Newton, the Minstrel of the Peak, and Samuel Slack, who in the last quarter of the eighteenth century was the most popular bass singer in England. When quite young Slack competed with others for a position in a college choir at Cambridge, and sang Purcell's famous air, "They that go down to the sea in ships." When he had finished, the Precentor rose immediately and said to the other candidates, "Gentlemen, I now leave it to you whether any one will sing after what you have just heard!" No one rose, and so Slack gained the position.

Soon afterwards Georgiana, Duchess of Sutherland, interested herself in him, and had him placed under Spofforth, the chief singing master of the day, under whose tuition he greatly improved, taking London by storm. He was for many years the principal bass at all the great musical festivals. So powerful was his voice, it is said, that on one occasion when he was pursued by a bull he uttered a bellow which so terrified the animal that it ran away, so young ladies who were afraid of these animals always felt safe when accompanied by Mr. Slack. When singing before King George III at Windsor Castle, he was told that His Majesty had been pleased with his singing. Slack remarked in his Derbyshire dialect, which he always remembered, "Oh, he was pleased, were he? I thow't I could do't." Slack it was said made no effort to improve himself either in speech or in manners, and therefore it was thought that he preferred low society.

When he retired and returned to his native village he was delighted to join the local "Catch and Glee Club," of which he soon became the ruling spirit. It held its meetings at the "George Inn" where we had called for refreshments, and we were shown an old print of the club representing six singers in Hogarthian attitudes with glasses, jugs, and pipes, with Slack and his friend Chadwick of Hayfield apparently singing heartily from the same book Slack's favourite song, "Life's a Bumper fill'd by Fate." Tideswell had always been a musical town; as far back as the year 1826 there was a "Tideswell Music Band," which consisted of six clarionets, two flutes, three bassoons, one serpent, two trumpets, two trombones, two French horns, one bugle, and one double drum--twenty performers in all.

They had three practices weekly, and there were the usual fines for those who came late, or missed a practice, for inattention to the leader, or for a dirty instrument, the heaviest fine of all being for intoxication. But long after this there was a Tideswell Brass Band which became famous throughout the country, for the leader not only wrote the score copies for his own band, but lithographed and sold them to other bands all over the country.

We were particularly interested in all this, for my brother had for the past eight years indulged in the luxury of a brass band himself. The band consisted of about twenty members when in full strength, and as instruments were dear in those days it was a most expensive luxury, and what it had cost him in instruments, music, and uniforms no one ever knew. He had often purchased "scores" from Metcalf, the leader of the Tideswell Band, a fact that was rather a source of anxiety to me, as I knew if he called to see Metcalf our expedition for that day would be at an end, as they might have conversed with each other for hours. I could not prevent him from relating at the "George" one of his early reminiscences, which fairly "brought down the house," as there were some musicians in the company.

His band had been formed in 1863, and consisted of about a dozen performers. Christmas time was coming on, when the bandsmen resolved to show off a little and at the same time collect some money from their friends to spend in the New Year. They therefore decided that the band should go out "busking" each evening during Christmas week. They had only learned to play five tunes--two of them belonging to well-known hymns, a third "God Save the Queen," while the remaining two were quicksteps, one of which was not quite perfectly learned.

They were well received in the village, and almost every house had been visited with the exception of the Hall, which was some distance away, and had been left till the last probably owing to the fact that the squire was not particularly noted for his liberality. If, however, he had been at home that week, and had any sense of music, he would have learned all their tunes off by heart, as the band must have been heard clearly enough when playing at the farms surrounding the mansion.

To avoid a possibility of giving offence, however, it was decided to pay him a visit; so the band assembled one evening in front of the mansion, and the conductor led off with a Psalm tune, during which the Hall door was opened by a servant. At this unexpected compliment expectations rose high amongst the members of the band, and a second Psalm tune was played, the full number of verses in the hymn being repeated. Then followed a pause to give the squire a chance of distinguishing himself, but as he failed to rise to the occasion it was decided to play a quickstep. This was followed by a rather awkward pause, as there were some high notes in the remaining quickstep which the soprano player said he was sure he could not reach as he was getting "ramp'd" already. At this moment, however, the situation was relieved by the appearance of a female servant at the door.

The member of the band who had been deputed to collect all donations at once went to the door, and all eyes were turned upon him when he came back towards the lawn, every member on tip-toe of expectation. But he had only returned to say that the squire's lady wished the band to play a polka. This spread consternation throughout the band, and one of the younger members went to the conductor saying, "A polka! A polka! I say, Jim, what's that?" "Oh," replied the conductor, "number three played quick!" Now number three was a quickstep named after Havelock the famous English General in India, so "Havelock's March played quick" had to do duty for a polka; but the only man who could play it quickly was the conductor himself, who after the words, "Ready, chaps!" and the usual signal "One-two-three," dashed off at an unusual speed, the performers following as rapidly as they could, the Bombardon and the Double B, the biggest instruments, finishing last with a most awful groan, after which the conductor, who couldn't stop laughing when once he started, was found rolling on the lawn in a kind of convulsion. It took them some time to recover their equilibrium, during which the Hall door remained open, and a portion of the band had already begun to move away in despair, when they were called back by the old butler appearing at the Hall door with a silver tray in his hand. The collector's services were again requisitioned, and he returned with the magnificent sum of one shilling! As most of the farmers had given five shillings and the remainder half a crown, the squire's reputation for generosity had been fully maintained. One verse of "God save the Queen," instead of the usual three, was played by the way of acknowledgment, and so ended the band's busking season in the year 1863.

We quite enjoyed our visit to Tideswell, and were rather loath to leave the friendly company at the "George Inn," who were greatly interested in our walk, several musical members watching our departure as the ostler loaded my brother with the luggage.

Tideswell possessed a poet named Beebe Eyre, who in 1854 was awarded £50 out of the Queen's Royal Bounty, which probably inspired him to write:

Tideswell! thou art my natal spot,
And hence I love thee well;
May prosperous days now be the lot
Of all that in thee dwell!

The sentiments expressed by the poet coincided with our own. As we departed from the town we observed a curiosity in the shape of a very old and extremely dilapidated building, which we were informed could neither be repaired, pulled down, nor sold because it belonged to some charity.

On the moors outside the town there were some more curious remains of the Romans and others skilled in mining, which we thought would greatly interest antiquarians, as they displayed more methods of mining than at other places we had visited. A stream had evidently disappointed them by filtering through its bed of limestone, but this they had prevented by forming a course of pebbles and cement, which ran right through Tideswell, and served the double purpose of a water supply and a sewer.

We crossed the old "Rakes," or lines, where the Romans simply dug out the ore and threw up the rubbish, which still remained in long lines. Clever though they were, they only knew lead when it occurred in the form known as galena, which looked like lead itself, and so they threw out a more valuable ore, cerusite, or lead carbonate, and the heaps of this valuable material were mined over a second time in comparatively recent times. The miner of the Middle Ages made many soughs to drain away the water from the mines, and we saw more of the tunnels that had been made to draw air to the furnaces when wood was used for smelting the lead.

The forest, like many others, had disappeared, and Anna Seward had exactly described the country we were passing through when she wrote:

The long lone tracks of Tideswell's native moor,
Stretched on vast hills that far and near prevail.
Bleak, stony, bare, monotonous, and pale.

The poet Newton had provided the town with a water supply by having pipes laid at his own expense from the Well Head at the source of the stream which flowed out of an old lead-mine. Lead in drinking-water has an evil name for causing poisoning, but the Tideswell folk flourish on it, since no one seems to think of dying before seventy, and a goodly number live to over ninety.

They have some small industries, cotton manufacture having spread from Lancashire into these remote districts. It is an old-fashioned place, with houses mostly stuccoed with broken crystals and limestone from the "Rakes" and containing curiously carved cupboard doors and posts torn from churches ornamented in Jacobean style by the sacrilegious Cromwellians, many of them having been erected just after the Great Rebellion.

We now journeyed along the mountain track until it descended sharply into Miller's Dale; but before reaching this place we were interested in the village of Formhill, where Brindley, the famous canal engineer, was born in 1716. Brindley was employed by the great Duke of Bridgewater, the pioneer of canal-making in England, to construct a canal from his collieries at Worsley, in Lancashire, to Manchester, in order to cheapen the cost of coal at that important manufacturing centre. It was an extraordinary achievement, considering that Brindley was quite uneducated and knew no mathematics, and up to the last remained illiterate. Most of his problems were solved without writings or drawings, and when anything difficult had to be considered, he would go to bed and think it out there. At the Worsley end it involved tunnelling to the seams of coal where the colliers were at work so that they could load the coal directly into the boats. He constructed from ten to thirteen miles of underground canals on two different levels, with an ingeniously constructed connection between the two. After this he made the great Bridgewater Canal, forty miles in length, from Manchester to Runcorn, which obtained a fall of one foot per mile by following a circuitous route without a lock or a tunnel in the whole of its course until it reached its terminus at the River Mersey. In places where a brook or a small valley had to be crossed the canal was carried on artificially raised banks, and to provide against a burst in any of these, which would have caused the water to run out of the canal, it was narrowed at each end of the embankment so that only one boat could pass through at a time, this narrow passage being known as a "stop place." At the entrance to this a door was so placed at the bottom of the canal that if any undue current should appear, such as would occur if the embankment gave way, one end of it would rise into a socket prepared for it in the stop-place, and so prevent any water leaving the canal except that in the broken section, a remedy simple but ingenious. On arriving at Runcorn the boats were lowered by a series of locks into the River Mersey, a double service of locks being provided so that boats could pass up and down at the same time and so avoid delay.

When the water was first turned into the canal, Brindley mysteriously disappeared, and was nowhere to be found; but as the canal when full did not burst its embankments, as he had feared, he soon reappeared and was afterwards employed to construct even more difficult canals. He died in 1772, and was buried in Harriseahead Churchyard on the Cheshire border of Staffordshire. It is computed that he engineered as many miles of canals as there are days in the year.

It must have been a regular custom for the parsons in Derbyshire to keep diaries in the eighteenth century, for the Vicar of Wormhill kept one, like the Vicar of Castleton, both chancing to be members of the Bagshawe family, a common name in that neighbourhood. He was a hard-working and conscientious man, and made the following entry in it on February 3rd, 1798

_Sunday_.--Preached at Wormhill on the vanity of human pursuits and
human pleasures, to a polite audience, an affecting sermon. Rode in
the evening to Castleton, where I read three discourses by Secker. In
the forest I was sorry to observe a party of boys playing at
Football. I spoke to them but was laughed at, and on my departure one
of the boys gave the football a wonderful kick--a proof this of the
degeneracy of human nature!

On reaching Miller's Dale, a romantic deep hollow in the limestone, at the bottom of which winds the fast-flowing Wye, my brother declared that he felt more at home, as it happened to be the only place he had seen since leaving John o' Groat's that he had previously visited, and it reminded him of a rather amusing incident.

Our uncle, a civil engineer in London, had been over on a visit, and was wearing a white top-hat, then becoming fashionable, and as my brother thought that a similar hat would just suit the dark blue velveteen coat he wore on Sundays, he soon appeared in the prevailing fashion. He was walking from Ambergate to Buxton, and had reached Miller's Dale about noon, just as the millers were leaving the flour mills for dinner. One would have thought that the sight of a white hat would have delighted the millers, but as these hats were rather dear, and beyond the financial reach of the man in the street, they had become an object of derision to those who could not afford to wear them, the music-hall answer to the question "Who stole the donkey?" being at that time "The man with the white hat!"

He had met one group of the millers coming up the hill and another lot was following, when a man in the first group suddenly turned round and shouted to a man in the second group, "I say, Jack, who stole the donkey?" But Jack had not yet passed my brother, and, as he had still to face him, he dared not give the customary answer, so, instead of replying "The man with the white hat," he called out in the Derbyshire dialect, with a broad grin on his face, "Th' feyther." A roar of laughter both behind and in front, in which my brother heartily joined, followed this repartee.

Probably some of the opprobrium attached to the white hat was because of its having been an emblem of the Radicals. We had seen that worn by Sir Walter Scott in his declining days, but we could not think of including him in that extreme political party, though its origin dated back to the time when he was still alive. Probably the emblem was only local, for it originated at Preston in Lancashire, a place we knew well, commonly called Proud Preston, no doubt by reason of its connection with the noble family of Stanley, who had a mansion in the town. Preston was often represented in Parliament by a Stanley, and was looked upon as a Pocket Borough. In the turbulent times preceding the Abolition of the Corn Laws a powerful opponent, in the person of Mr. Henry Hunt, a demagogue politician, who had suffered imprisonment for advocating Chartism, appeared at the Preston election of 1830 to oppose the Honourable E.G. Stanley, afterwards Earl of Derby. He always appeared wearing a white hat, and was an eloquent speaker, and for these reasons earned the sobriquet of "Orator" Hunt and "Man with the White Hat." The election contest was one of the most exciting events that ever occurred in Preston, and as usual the children took their share in the proceedings, those on Mr. Stanley's side parading the streets singing in a popular air:

Hey! Ho! Stanley for Ever! Stanley for Ever!
Hey! Ho! Stanley for Ever Ho!
Stanley, Stanley, Stanley, Ho!
Stanley is my honey Ho!
When he weds he will be rich,
He will have a coach and six.

Then followed the chorus to the accompaniment of drums and triangles:

Hey! Ho! Stanley for Ever, Ho!

In spite of this, however, and similar ditties, "Orator Hunt," by a total vote of 3,730, became M.P. for Preston, and it was said that it was through this incident that the Radicals adopted the White Hat as their emblem.

Lord Derby was so annoyed at the result of the election that he closed his house, which stood across the end of a quiet street, and placed a line of posts across it, between which strong chains were hung, and on which my brother could remember swinging when a boy.

One of our uncles was known as the "Preston Poet" at that time, and he wrote a poem entitled "The Poor, God Bless 'Em!" the first verse reading:

Let sycophants bend their base knees in the court
And servilely cringe round the gate,
And barter their honour to earn the support
Of the wealthy, the titled, the great;
Their guilt piled possessions I loathe, while I scorn
The knaves, the vile knaves who possess 'em;
I love not to pamper oppression, but mourn
For the poor, the robb'd poor--God bless 'em!

A striking contrast to the volubility of Mr. Hunt was Mr. Samuel Horrocks, also M.P. for Preston, whose connection with the "Big Factory" in Preston probably gained him the seat. He was said to have been the "quiet Member," never known to make a speech in the House of Commons, unless it was to ask some official to close a window. The main thoroughfare in Preston was Fishergate, a wide street, where on one Saturday night two men appeared walking up the middle of the street, carrying large papers suspended over their arms and shouting at the top of their voices.

"The Speech of Samuel Horrocks, Esquire, M.P., in the British House of Commons! one penny," which they continued to repeat.