[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Danes, and which is the scene of part of "Marmion," where the girl was built up in the wall. It is a most noble ruin, of immense size,
and full of beautiful and romantic bits. There is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows. Between it and the town there
is another church, the parish one, round which is a big graveyard, all full of tombstones. This is to my mind the nicest spot in Whitby,
for it lies right over the town, and has a full view of the harbour and all up the bay to where the headland called Kettleness stretches
out into the sea. It descends so steeply over the harbour that part of the bank has fallen away, and some of the graves have been
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destroyed.
In one place part of the stonework of the graves stretches out over the sandy pathway far below. There are walks, with seats beside
them, through the churchyard, and people go and sit there all day long looking at the beautiful view and enjoying the breeze.
I shall come and sit here often myself and work. Indeed, I am writing now, with my book on my knee, and listening to the talk of three
old men who are sitting beside me. They seem to do nothing all day but sit here and talk.
The harbour lies below me, with, on the far side, one long granite wall stretching out into the sea, with a curve outwards at the end of
it, in the middle of which is a lighthouse. A heavy seawall runs along outside of it. On the near side, the seawall makes an elbow
crooked inversely, and its end too has a lighthouse. Between the two piers there is a narrow opening into the harbour, which then
suddenly widens.
It is nice at high water, but when the tide is out it shoals away to nothing, and there is merely the stream of the Esk, running between
banks of sand, with rocks here and there. Outside the harbour on this side there rises for about half a mile a great reef, the sharp of
which runs straight out from behind the south lighthouse. At the end of it is a buoy with a bell, which swings in bad weather, and sends
in a mournful sound on the wind.
They have a legend here that when a ship is lost bells are heard out at sea. I must ask the old man about this. He is coming this way . . .
He is a funny old man. He must be awfully old, for his face is gnarled and twisted like the bark of a tree. He tells me that he is nearly a
hundred, and that he was a sailor in the Greenland fishing fleet when Waterloo was fought. He is, I am afraid, a very sceptical person,
for when I asked him about the bells at sea and the White Lady at the abbey he said very brusquely,
"I wouldn't fash masel' about them, miss. Them things be all wore out. Mind, I don't say that they never was, but I do say that they
wasn't in my time. They be all very well for comers and trippers, an' the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. Them feet-folks
from York and Leeds that be always eatin' cured herrin's and drinkin' tea an' lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder
masel' who'd be bothered tellin' lies to them, even the newspapers, which is full of fool-talk."
I thought he would be a good person to learn interesting things from, so I asked him if he would mind telling me something about the
whale fishing in the old days. He was just settling himself to begin when the clock struck six, whereupon he laboured to get up, and
said,
"I must gang ageeanwards home now, miss. My grand-daughter doesn't like to be kept waitin' when the tea is ready, for it takes me
time to crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of 'em, and miss, I lack belly-timber sairly by the clock."
He hobbled away, and I could see him hurrying, as well as he could, down the steps. The steps are a great feature on the place. They
lead from the town to the church, there are hundreds of them, I do not know how many, and they wind up in a delicate curve. The
slope is so gentle that a horse could easily walk up and down them.
I think they must originally have had something to do with the abbey. I shall go home too. Lucy went out, visiting with her mother,
and as they were only duty calls, I did not go.
1 August.--I came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and we had a most interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who
always come and join him. He is evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should think must have been in his time a most dictatorial
person.
He will not admit anything, and down faces everybody. If he can't out-argue them he bullies them, and then takes their silence for
agreement with his views.
Lucy was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn frock. She has got a beautiful colour since she has been here.
I noticed that the old men did not lose any time in coming and sitting near her when we sat down. She is so sweet with old people, I
think they all fell in love with her on the spot. Even my old man succumbed and did not contradict her, but gave me double share
instead. I got him on the subject of the legends, and he went off at once into a sort of sermon. I must try to remember it and put it
down.
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"It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel, that's what it be and nowt else. These bans an' wafts an' boh-ghosts an' bar-guests an'
bogles an' all anent them is only fit to set bairns an' dizzy women a'belderin'. They be nowt but air-blebs. They, an' all grims an' signs
an' warnin's, be all invented by parsons an' illsome berk-bodies an' railway touters to skeer an' scunner hafflin's, an' to get folks to do
somethin' that they don't other incline to. It makes me ireful to think o' them. Why, it's them that, not content with printin' lies on paper
an' preachin' them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttin' them on the tombstones. Look here all around you in what airt ye will. All
them steans, holdin' up their heads as well as they can out of their pride, is acant, simply tumblin' down with the weight o' the lies
wrote on them, 'Here lies the body' or 'Sacred to the memory' wrote on all of them, an' yet in nigh half of them there bean't no bodies at
all, an' the memories of them bean't cared a pinch of snuff about, much less sacred. Lies all of them, nothin' but lies of one kind or
another! My gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they come tumblin' up in their death-sarks, all jouped
together an' trying' to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was, some of them trimmlin' an' dithering, with their
hands that dozzened an' slippery from lyin' in the sea that they can't even keep their gurp o' them."
I could see from the old fellow's self-satisfied air and the way in which he looked round for the approval of his cronies that he was
"showing off," so I put in a word to keep him going.
"Oh, Mr. Swales, you can't be serious. Surely these tombstones are not all wrong?"
"Yabblins! There may be a poorish few not wrong, savin' where they make out the people too good, for there be folk that do think a
balm-bowl be like the sea, if only it be their own. The whole thing be only lies. Now look you here. You come here a stranger, an' you
see this kirkgarth."
I nodded, for I thought it better to assent, though I did not quite understand his dialect. I knew it had something to do with the church.
He went on, "And you consate that all these steans be aboon folk that be haped here, snod an' snog?" I assented again. "Then that be
just where the lie comes in. Why, there be scores of these laybeds that be toom as old Dun's 'baccabox on Friday night."
He nudged one of his companions, and they all laughed. "And, my gog! How could they be otherwise? Look at that one, the aftest
abaft the bier-bank, read it!" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl karpacz24.htw.pl
Danes, and which is the scene of part of "Marmion," where the girl was built up in the wall. It is a most noble ruin, of immense size,
and full of beautiful and romantic bits. There is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows. Between it and the town there
is another church, the parish one, round which is a big graveyard, all full of tombstones. This is to my mind the nicest spot in Whitby,
for it lies right over the town, and has a full view of the harbour and all up the bay to where the headland called Kettleness stretches
out into the sea. It descends so steeply over the harbour that part of the bank has fallen away, and some of the graves have been
Dracula 27/169
Dracula
destroyed.
In one place part of the stonework of the graves stretches out over the sandy pathway far below. There are walks, with seats beside
them, through the churchyard, and people go and sit there all day long looking at the beautiful view and enjoying the breeze.
I shall come and sit here often myself and work. Indeed, I am writing now, with my book on my knee, and listening to the talk of three
old men who are sitting beside me. They seem to do nothing all day but sit here and talk.
The harbour lies below me, with, on the far side, one long granite wall stretching out into the sea, with a curve outwards at the end of
it, in the middle of which is a lighthouse. A heavy seawall runs along outside of it. On the near side, the seawall makes an elbow
crooked inversely, and its end too has a lighthouse. Between the two piers there is a narrow opening into the harbour, which then
suddenly widens.
It is nice at high water, but when the tide is out it shoals away to nothing, and there is merely the stream of the Esk, running between
banks of sand, with rocks here and there. Outside the harbour on this side there rises for about half a mile a great reef, the sharp of
which runs straight out from behind the south lighthouse. At the end of it is a buoy with a bell, which swings in bad weather, and sends
in a mournful sound on the wind.
They have a legend here that when a ship is lost bells are heard out at sea. I must ask the old man about this. He is coming this way . . .
He is a funny old man. He must be awfully old, for his face is gnarled and twisted like the bark of a tree. He tells me that he is nearly a
hundred, and that he was a sailor in the Greenland fishing fleet when Waterloo was fought. He is, I am afraid, a very sceptical person,
for when I asked him about the bells at sea and the White Lady at the abbey he said very brusquely,
"I wouldn't fash masel' about them, miss. Them things be all wore out. Mind, I don't say that they never was, but I do say that they
wasn't in my time. They be all very well for comers and trippers, an' the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. Them feet-folks
from York and Leeds that be always eatin' cured herrin's and drinkin' tea an' lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder
masel' who'd be bothered tellin' lies to them, even the newspapers, which is full of fool-talk."
I thought he would be a good person to learn interesting things from, so I asked him if he would mind telling me something about the
whale fishing in the old days. He was just settling himself to begin when the clock struck six, whereupon he laboured to get up, and
said,
"I must gang ageeanwards home now, miss. My grand-daughter doesn't like to be kept waitin' when the tea is ready, for it takes me
time to crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of 'em, and miss, I lack belly-timber sairly by the clock."
He hobbled away, and I could see him hurrying, as well as he could, down the steps. The steps are a great feature on the place. They
lead from the town to the church, there are hundreds of them, I do not know how many, and they wind up in a delicate curve. The
slope is so gentle that a horse could easily walk up and down them.
I think they must originally have had something to do with the abbey. I shall go home too. Lucy went out, visiting with her mother,
and as they were only duty calls, I did not go.
1 August.--I came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and we had a most interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who
always come and join him. He is evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should think must have been in his time a most dictatorial
person.
He will not admit anything, and down faces everybody. If he can't out-argue them he bullies them, and then takes their silence for
agreement with his views.
Lucy was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn frock. She has got a beautiful colour since she has been here.
I noticed that the old men did not lose any time in coming and sitting near her when we sat down. She is so sweet with old people, I
think they all fell in love with her on the spot. Even my old man succumbed and did not contradict her, but gave me double share
instead. I got him on the subject of the legends, and he went off at once into a sort of sermon. I must try to remember it and put it
down.
Dracula 28/169
Dracula
"It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel, that's what it be and nowt else. These bans an' wafts an' boh-ghosts an' bar-guests an'
bogles an' all anent them is only fit to set bairns an' dizzy women a'belderin'. They be nowt but air-blebs. They, an' all grims an' signs
an' warnin's, be all invented by parsons an' illsome berk-bodies an' railway touters to skeer an' scunner hafflin's, an' to get folks to do
somethin' that they don't other incline to. It makes me ireful to think o' them. Why, it's them that, not content with printin' lies on paper
an' preachin' them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttin' them on the tombstones. Look here all around you in what airt ye will. All
them steans, holdin' up their heads as well as they can out of their pride, is acant, simply tumblin' down with the weight o' the lies
wrote on them, 'Here lies the body' or 'Sacred to the memory' wrote on all of them, an' yet in nigh half of them there bean't no bodies at
all, an' the memories of them bean't cared a pinch of snuff about, much less sacred. Lies all of them, nothin' but lies of one kind or
another! My gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they come tumblin' up in their death-sarks, all jouped
together an' trying' to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was, some of them trimmlin' an' dithering, with their
hands that dozzened an' slippery from lyin' in the sea that they can't even keep their gurp o' them."
I could see from the old fellow's self-satisfied air and the way in which he looked round for the approval of his cronies that he was
"showing off," so I put in a word to keep him going.
"Oh, Mr. Swales, you can't be serious. Surely these tombstones are not all wrong?"
"Yabblins! There may be a poorish few not wrong, savin' where they make out the people too good, for there be folk that do think a
balm-bowl be like the sea, if only it be their own. The whole thing be only lies. Now look you here. You come here a stranger, an' you
see this kirkgarth."
I nodded, for I thought it better to assent, though I did not quite understand his dialect. I knew it had something to do with the church.
He went on, "And you consate that all these steans be aboon folk that be haped here, snod an' snog?" I assented again. "Then that be
just where the lie comes in. Why, there be scores of these laybeds that be toom as old Dun's 'baccabox on Friday night."
He nudged one of his companions, and they all laughed. "And, my gog! How could they be otherwise? Look at that one, the aftest
abaft the bier-bank, read it!" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]