124 WATERSIDE SKETCHES. 



What say you, then ? And now for the legend of Bolton 

 Priory. 



Perhaps on second thoughts it will interest us more if we 

 stroll towards it and talk as we go. The field we are now 

 crossing, and whose fine soft grass rebounds beneath our 

 footfall as if it were the turf of a well-kept lawn, was selected, 

 they say, for camping ground by Prince Rupert on his way 

 to Marston Moor, and if that impulsive freebooter acted upon 

 his customary principles he looted yonder farmyards to a 

 pretty good tune. The old priory stands in the centre of 

 a picture which has been faithfully filled in by Whitaker in 

 his " History of Craven " : — " But after all the glories of 

 Bolton are on the north. Whatever the most fastidious 

 taste could require to constitute a perfect landscape is not 

 only found here but in its proper place. In front and im- 

 mediately under the eyes is a smooth expanse of park-like 

 enclosure, spotted with native elm, ash, etc., of the finest 

 growth." 



(The "etc.,'' you will note, includes some patriarchal 

 beeches, oaks, aspens, poplars, and, half up the opposite 

 slope, there are mountain ashes that in the late autumn 

 ever gleam a ripe crimson blaze on the hillside.) 



"On the right, a skirting oak wood with jutting points of 

 grey rock; on the left, a rising copse. Still forward are 

 seen the aged groves of Bolton Park, the growth of centuries ; 

 and farther yet the barren and rocky distances of Simon's 

 Seat and Barden Fell, contrasted to the warmth, fertility, and 

 luxuriant foliage of the valley below." 



Pursuing our way upwards, the woods on either side hem 

 us in; tinkling brooks and fairy-like glens appear; the 

 Wharfe, having assumed every shape of which a river is 



