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Burns tells us how John Barleycorn was buried — how " they 

 took a plough and ploughed him down, put clods upon his 

 head, but in spite of everything, John Barleycorn got up again 

 and sore surprised them all." But wonderful as the resurrection 

 of a grain of barley must be admitted to be, the rising again of 

 the site of Easby into the light of the sun is almost more 

 notable. 



After the time at which the chalk was deposited there are 

 many missing chapters in the history of the neighbourhood of 

 Easby. and though much might be inferred, we will pass on 

 rapidly towards the present epoch. The land is rising from the 

 sea — probably by the most gradual stages, since He with whom 

 a thousand years are as one day never needs to hurry — must have 

 suffered very serious waste. Possibly at more than one age this 

 battling with the waves had to be carried through. And when 

 the land had risen well out of the wild waters it was still liable 

 to be acted upon by water in the shape of rain and running 

 streams not to speak of the disintegrating action of frost and 

 other atmospheric agencies. So some 100,000, or it may be 

 50,000 years ago the neighbourhood came to have pretty much 

 the same general configuration as now. Then for some reason or 

 other a period of intense cold set in. Some say the North Pole 

 changed its position. Some say the Solar System passed 

 through an intensely cold portion of space. Some say that 

 instead of the Gulf Stream which now wraps our islands as in 

 a blanket, we had frigid currents from the North. Be that as it 

 may there was continuous ice from the Scandinavia to the 

 Yorkshire Coast. Ice rivers from Scotland and Cumberland 

 flowed down to Easby bringing with them, Scotch and Cumbrian 

 rocks which even to-day you may pick up in every field in the 

 township. 



The intelligent person I have before imagined — and such 

 persons are not altogether imaginary — would naturally enquire 

 the reason why the river Leven hugs so closely the Easby hills 

 from Kildale round to Easby. The explanation is interesting. 

 I spoke before of the glacier which flowed from Scandinavia in 

 volumes so huge that it infringed on the Yorkshire Coast. It 

 pressed inland as far as about where Lealholme now is, and was 

 of such thickness that it blocked the end of Eskdale and formed 

 a lake therein. I have traced many channels formed by the 

 water which ran into and out of this lake, which I know to have 

 been so deep that there must have been an ice block at the Easby 

 end of Eskdale too. This ice we will take to have come mainly 

 from Teesdale, though there were, as the period went on , 



