80 
flying Norwegians” Ask the natives there of a battle; one 
and all will give you for an answer, “ Story, God bless you ! 
we have none to tell, sir.” The only glimmer of tradition 
that we can meet with is “ Battle flats”; hut then, alas! 
bataille is French, and could not he the language of the 
Northumbrian peasant of that day; and, if it is good for 
anything, there is a “ Battle flat ” near the Derwent, not 
far from Bicall, which it is within the reach of possibility 
might have been the scene of the conflict. It is true Kirkby’s 
Inquest , two hundred years afterwards, does speak of “ pons- 
Belli,” but the natives never would and never did own the 
word, and it was never foisted into the nomenclature of their 
home. True, the writers in the Quarterly and Freeman’s 
Norman History (370, vol. iii.) tell us that on the feast day in 
that secluded village the inhabitants make pies of pears in the 
shape of a boat or tub, in remembrance, not of Harold’s 
ships, but of a man who got into a boat and went under the 
bridge and killed the Norwegian who defended it ! Might 
not these writers, as they made their Yorkshireman talk 
French in one case, have fabled him to have done so in 
another, and have explained that pear was only broad York- 
shire for “pierre,” and that it was in memory of “ pierre,” a 
stone in connection with a stone ford at the bridge, and the 
hot fight there, that these “pear boat pies” were on the 
feast day made “ all hot ”? Why did they not tell us that as 
Harold came to that out-of-the-way place in order that he 
might enjoy the “sentiment” of sleeping in the old (auld !) 
homes of Saxon kings (vol. iii., p. 355), that it was possible 
that “Aldby” commemorated the resting of the ark, and 
that it was from a recipe of that scantily- clothed dame, 
whom children in their play call Mrs. Noah, that the pies 
were made in a “boat-like” form! Why, if “pears” have 
anything to do with it, again we cap the writer of the 
article on Yorkshire with “Pear Tree Close” adjoining 
