206 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



barbarism, though Barnoldby on the Beck was probably no 

 worse herein than its neighbours. " Lasses " ran races down 

 the road for " gownpieces," and every i; Pharson's Tuesday' 7 

 (Shrove Tuesday) cock-fighting went on in the pinfold from 

 morning to night, all the population sitting round it with their 

 feet inside, the " bairns " doing their best to get an occasional 

 peep. " I mind," said an old inhabitant, " a farmer's wife in 

 particular who used, early every Pharson's Tuesday, to put on 

 her red cloak and take her seat upon the wall to watch the 

 mains. She would cry out I seem to hear her now ' A 

 guinea on the black 'un ! a guinea on the black 'un ! ' ' 



The beck now enriches deep meadows and wide arable fields 

 with its even streams in the steady beneficent flow of manhood, 

 having long put away childish graces, infantile prattle, and the 

 music dear alike to poet or dreamer. It has cut its way through 

 the chalk of the wolds into the post-tertiary deposits at their 

 feet, which are almost level with the sea line, and are plentifully 

 sprinkled with the boulders of the glacial drift. Brigsley, the 

 first of these low-lying villages, is chiefly remarkable for the 

 phonetic attrition of its old Saxon name, Brigeslai, in Domes- 

 day and the Norman-French name, Brichelai, into the Northum- 

 brian Brigsley, the bridge on the lea.* Waithe, the next parish, 

 contains a very curious early Norman or, it may well be, Saxon 

 church tower, one of a group found in this neighbourhood. 

 This tower is placed between the nave and chancel. There the 

 beck straggles onwards in great loops, each with its pool where 

 the fish collect and the lovely pink spikes of the amphibious 

 persicaria float to gladden the wandering angler's eye. It would 

 almost lose itself in wide meadows, running away to the horizon, 

 were it not for two landmarks, the well-proportioned church 

 tower of Tetney and afar within a forest of masts the tall water- 

 tower from which the hydraulic cranes of the docks at Great 



* In Ashby Church close at hand is the cross-legged effigy of a Templar, 

 its supposed founder. 



