EY HUGH MILLEE. 349 



devil as at Birtley, or basins formed by Queen Mab and her train 

 for bathing in, as tradition pleasingly narrates, at Eothley. 

 The soul has almost gone out of such legends now, but time was 

 when they were of earnest import to mankind.^' 



It is perhaps to the well-known group of pot-holes which on 

 Shaftoe Crags is associated with ''the Devil's Punchbowl," that 

 we must look for the strongest suggestion of the former sacred- 

 ness of these cavities. The cap of rock bearing them, which 

 borders a plot of ground upon the crag ' ' defended by a double 

 ditch and dyke," and resembling in character the numberless 

 ancient British enclosures of this district, projects almost over 

 the entrance of a rude cavern, still retaining, according to 

 Hodgson, the marks of tools and wedges in its interior. The 

 suggestiveness of the combination did not escape the historian. 

 ''Is it not very probable," he asks, "that we have here a cave 

 and a rock-altar of that primitive heathen worship which pre- 

 vailed all over the world from India to Britain ; that the rock 

 basins on the top of the altar were once dedicated to the myste- 

 ries of the Pruidical Hu ?" As to the cave I venture no opinion, 

 but the rock-altar, with its one large round artificial basin, and 

 its many scooped and guttered natural excavations, seems won- 

 derfully like a relic of primitive worship. f 



* The Rev. G. R. Hall, F.S.A., has told the Birtley legend in n, former Volume of these 

 Transactions. A wandering demon, once upon a time, was unwary enough to drink at 

 the Holy Well. But the sacred wafer disagreed with him like molten lead, and 

 dashing his hoofs upon the stone he leaped a full mile from the spot. He alighted upon 

 the rock bQside the Leap Crag Pool in the North Tync; in which deep black hole " tradi- 

 tion averreth he was drowned." At the Holy Well the tracks are about the size of a 

 small donkey's, if I dare use the comparison, and consist of several pairs as if the misera- 

 ble being had waxed fidgctty; beside the pool they swell to the size of an elephant's. 



t Has the able historian ignored the following passage in Sykes' Local Records, — under 

 date September 20th, 1825? Upon the occasion of the marriage of the Sir Wm. Blackett 

 of that time, it ts stated that " Shaftoe Vaughan, Esq., a gentleman of the neighbourhood 

 of Wallington, ordered Shaftoe Craggs to be illuminated by a great number of largo fires, 

 which were placed on the most conspicuous parts of the Craggs. A largo punch-bowl was 

 cut in the most elevated rock, which was filled with such plenty of liciuor ns was more 

 than sullicient for the vast crowds of neighbouring inhabitants who (locked thither at so 

 uncommon an appearance." This passage may seem to render all theorizing supcrfiuous. 

 Hut need it take uuich to make one distrust the j)lirasing of a stalomcnt which uuist have 

 run the gauntlet of surroundings so very unfavourable to accuracy? — this roysterlng 

 crowd, and such "plenty of liquor?" It seems very Improbable that so capacious a basin 

 should have been laboriously hewn out of the solid rock for a mere freak, when the largo 



