60 TfiE YOEKSHIEE CAYES. 



master for fifty-four years. A curious object of interest in this 

 neighbourhood is the Ebbing and Flowing Well, a spring of an 

 intermittent character, flowing at irregular intervals into a stone 

 basin at the roadside. A quaint old local rhyme says, 



" Thence to Giggleswick most steril, 

 Hemna'd with shelves and rocks of peril, 

 Near to the way as a traveller goes, 

 A fine fresh spring both ebbs and flows, 

 Neither know the learn'd that travel, 

 What procures it, salt or gravel." 



The poet Drayton describes the fountain as a sometime nymph 

 with silver hair, who, flying from a satyr, was changed into a 

 spring — 



" At Giggleswick, where I a fountain can you show, 

 That eight hours a day is said to ebb and flow, 

 Who sometime was a nymph, and on the mountains high 

 Of Craven, whose blue heads for caps put on the sky, 

 Amongst the Oreads there and sylvans made abode, 

 (It was ere human foot upon the hills had trod) 

 Of all the mountain kind and since she was most fair ; 

 It was a satyr's chance to see her silver hair 

 Flow loosely on her back, as up a cliif she clame, 

 Her beauties noting well, her features and her frame. 

 And after her he goes ; who when she did espy, 

 Before him like the wind the nimble nymph did fly ; 

 They hurry down the rocks, o'er hill and dale they drive, 

 To take her he doth strain, to outstrip him she doth strive. 

 Like one his kind that knew, and greatly feared his rape. 

 And to the topick gods by praying to escape, 

 They turned her to a spring, which as she then did pant. 

 When wearied with her course, her breath grew wondrous scant ; 

 Even as the fearful nymph, then thick and short did blow, 

 Now made by them a spring, so doth she ebb and flow." 



Modern science suggests a less poetic explanation in the 

 syphon-like character of the channels and reservoirs of the lime- 

 stone rock, in which the water of the well is stored. But the 

 great attraction of Settle for ns was the Victoria Cave, and, 

 accordingly, on the evening of our arrival, we visited the Museum 

 attached to the Giggleswick Grammar School, in which most of 



