fash maselâ about them, miss. Them things be all wore out. Mind, I donât say that they never was, but I do say that they wasnât in my time. They be all very well for comers and trippers anâ the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. Them feet-folks from York and Leeds that be always eatinâ cured herrinâs anâ drinkinâ tea anâ lookinâ out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder maselâ whoâd be bothered tellinâ lies to them â even the newspapers, which is full of fool-talk.â I thought he would be a good person to learn interesting things from, so I asked him if he would mind telling me something about the whale-fishing in the old days. He was just settling himself to begin when the clock struck six, whereupon he laboured to get up, and said: â
âI must gang ageeanwards home now, miss. My grand-daughter doesnât like to be kept waitinâ when the tea is ready, for it takes me time to crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of âem; anâ, miss, I lack belly-timber sairly by the clock.â
He hobbled away, and I could see him hurrying, as well as he could, down the steps. The steps are a great feature of the place. They lead from the town up to the church; there are hundreds of them â I do not know how many â and they wind up in a delicate curve; the slope is so gentle that a horse could easily walk up and down them. I think they must originally have had something to do with the Abbey. I shall go home too. Lucy went out visiting with her mother, and as they were only duty calls, I did not go. They will be home by this.
25 July. â I came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and we had a most interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who always come and join him. He is evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should think must have been in his time a most dictatorial person. He will not admit anything, and downfaces everybody. If he canât out-argue them he bullies them, and then takes their silence for agreement with his views. Lucy was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn frock; she has got a beautiful colour since she has been here. I noticed that the old men did not lose any time in coming up and sitting near her when we sat down. She is so sweet with old people; I think they all fell in love with her on the spot. Even my old man succumbed and did not contradict her, but gave me double share instead. I got him on the subject of the legends, and he went off at once into a sort of sermon. I must try to remember it and put it down: â
âIt be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel; thatâs what it be, anâ nowt else. These bans anâ wafts anâ boh-ghosts anâ bar-guests anâ bogles anâ all anent them is only fit to set bairns anâ dizzy women a-belderinâ. They be nowt but air-blebs! They, anâ all grims anâ signs anâ warninâs, be all invented by parsons anâ illsome beuk-bodies anâ railway touters to skeer anâ scunner hafflinâs, anâ to get folks to do somethinâ that they donât other incline to. It makes me ireful to think oâthem. Why, itâs them that, not content with printinâ lies on paper anâ preachinâ them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttinâ them on the tombsteans. Look here all around you in what airt ye will; all them steans, holdinâ up their heads as well as they can out of their pride, is acant â simply tumblinâ down with the weight oâ the lies wrote on them, âHere lies the bodyâ or âSacred to the memoryâ wrote on all of them, anâ yet in nigh half of them there beanât no bodies at all; anâ the memories of them beanât cared a pinch of snuff about, much less sacred. Lies all of them, nothinâ but lies of one kind or another! My gog, but itâll be a quare scowderment at the Day of
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