334 Beowulf and Widsith 



The flod under foldan of Beozv. 1361 is interpreted by Brooke 

 (p. 44) as a mountain-stream which has worn a deep channel, in 

 which the descending stream has made trees grow, and which, 

 coming at length to the edge of the clifif, leaps over in a water- 

 fall. This explanation ignores a marked peculiarity of Yorkshire 

 geology, most noticeable, perhaps, in the N. W. This is noticed 

 by Drayton, Poly-Olbion 28. 348-354: 



Towards her dear-lov'd Darwent, who's not gone 

 Far from her pearly springs, but underground she goes ; 

 As up towards Craven Hills, I many have of those 

 Amongst the crannied cleeves that through the caverns creep, 

 And dimblcs hid from day, into the earth so deep 

 That oftentimes their sight the senses doth appall, 

 Which for their horrid course the people Helbecks call. 



And Mvirray tells us (p. 344) that in the vicinity of Hawes, near 

 the boundary of the North Riding and Westmorland, we may find 

 'the almost savage solitudes about the sources of the Eden and the 

 Ure. The hills here are dark and rugged, displaying, in Camden's 

 words, "such a dreary waste and horrid silent wilderness that 

 certain little rivulets that creep here are called Hellbecks — rivers 

 of hell." ' And though this is in the N. W. part of Yorkshire, there 

 are general resemblances in the Cleveland district. Thus Phil- 

 lips, p. 45 : 'Some of these dales are very short. . . . Others are 

 rocky channels ploughed some hundreds of feet deep. . . . Such 

 are the principal dales of the Derwent.^ ... In several of these 

 valleys the stream loses water, or wholly disappears, when it arrives 

 at the calcareous strata ; in approaching the Vale of Pickering, it 

 sinks into the open jointed rocks, . . . the watery currents break- 

 ing out again further down the valley.' Two objections may be 

 raised against this theory : the first, that these hell-becks — how- 

 ever appropriate, in their dark mysteriousness, to the demons- 

 of flood and fell — are not described as emptying directly, over a 

 clifif, into the sea ; and the second, that foldan is often interpreted 



severely, and afterward rose up from the bottom, and darted after his victim, 

 until Columba stayed him with the sign of the cross. This story may well 

 have been known to Aldfrith, as may that of the whale (i. 13: Reeves, 

 pp. 17-8). 



^ For these sec the maps of Phillips and of Murray. 



" Cf . Bcoiv. loi, 852, 1274. 



