ROBIN HOOD'S BAY.
ROBIN Hood's Bay, or, as it is commonly called, Bay Town, is assuredly one of the strangest and most picturesque places on the English coast. It contains a population of fifteen hundred honest marine folk, whose homes are wedged close together in a narrow ravine running down to the sea. The amount of space between this ravine and the great cliff, which descends sheer into the water, is exceedingly small for the large number of houses standing on it, and they are built with as little symmetrical arrangement as if they were toy-houses set up by a child on any spot where they would stand. The ravine descends very rapidly, and the town—it is a very little one— descends with it. Never were such narrow streets seen before. Not only might opposite neighbours shake hands, but if a little good-will were brought to the undertaking, they might even kiss. These thoroughfares—though that is a misnomer, for they often end abruptly at a clean, well-sanded doorway—are so numerous and intricate, that a stranger might spend a whole summer in the place and never be aware of the existence of all of them ; and they twist and turn and work their way, in and out between the houses until even the natives are sometimes per- plexed. Nearly all the houses have richly-coloured red roofs, and pretty little wooden porches. The windows are clean and
bright, and the doorsteps spotlessly clean, and wherever it has been possible to secure the tiniest fragment of garden-ground, roses, lilies, and marigolds are to be seen sunning themselves in the perennial smiles of some hideous figure-head of a vessel which has been set up in the midst of them, and is always kept as bright as paint can make it.
Although the town is highly picturesque on the aide of the ravine, it is still more so on the seaward side. Here we can everywhere perceive how the cliffs are crumbling away, and bit by bit yielding themselves into the power of the mighty sea. A tolerably broad road starts from the shore on its way up through the town ; but whosoever follows it for two minutes or so, will find himself checked by some railings. When he looks over these, he will perceive that he is on the edge of a perpendicular sea-cliff. The sea is down below, and so is the road,—it fell away, and is gone for ever. A high cliff which juts forward a little further on takes up this lapsed road, but only one-half of the street, for the houses on the seaward side have been swallowed up long ago. Those that are left are splendidly picturesque, with a strange mingling of sublime and mean things. After this the road is lost altogether, save and except the merest fragment at the outskirts of the town. The same misfortune has befallen the bridle-road to Scar- borough, on the opposite cliff. All the part of it near the town has gone ; and besides that, certain landowners have been com- pelled to reconcile themselves to seeing their fields take a position twenty or thirty feet below their former level. The cows never appear able to do so, and it is touching to see them guardedly following their pasture-land, and slowly picking their way down to spots where the grass grows green and fresh, on broken and contorted hillocks where no scythe or reaping-machine would be of any avail. As a rule, people live to a good old age in Robin Hood's Bay, and fever is all but unknown. A man of seventy is a young man ; no one is thought old till he is ninety or ninety-five ; and the clergyman, who is little more than fifty, finds himself addressed as " bairn " by some of the older members of his flock.
An aroma of adventure lingers about the place, and yet life there is now tame enough. In the beginning of this century how different it must have been ! Robin Hood's Bay was then a favourite abode of sea-captains—owners of trading vessels, once called merchant adventurers—and what with the danger of encountering French cruisers during the war, and what with the perils and profits of voyages to Greenland for whales, when the war was over and such expeditions were once more possible, there can have been no lack of emotional interest. And then there was the perpetual delight of smuggling,—the hauling contraband articles up the cliffs by ropes when nights were dark, and the not infrequent conflicts with the excisemen. Worse still, there was always the fear of the press-gang swooping down and carrying off some of the men of the place to sea. Many of the houses can still show cunningly concealed hiding- places, where kegs of brandy and gin, cases of what they called
elly go long" (eau de Cologne), and bales of cotton or silk, could be and were concealed. Such places might do for articles of this kind ; but when the press-gang drew near, flight was the best chance of safety for the men. Many now alive remember their fathers hiding in the chimney, or spending a day and a night at the top of some tree in the neighbouring woods, to escape these dreaded visitants. One man well remembers all the fishermen's wives getting their knives ready to go to the top of the hill and drive back the men who were coming to snatch away their master-men. Compared with this, the feelings brought into play by smuggling must have been very inferior in intensity. Evasion of the law was briskly carried on. Gin was so common that people washed their faces in it,—a tumblerful could be bought for a penny, or a large jugful for fourpence ; and good brandy was just as cheap. It was easy enough to get as much of these things as was wanted for home consumption; but it was very difficult to turn them into money. They were generally taken to Whitby, and what was tech- nically called " delivered " at a place in the old town, near the asylum. Some widow who had no man to work for her often tried to earn a livelihood by delivering spirits or other things ; but other women took a part too. They filled bladders with brandy or gin, slung six or eight of these beneath their gowns, and then set off to walk the six miles which lay between them and Whitby. The excisemen were quite aware of what they were about, and kept a sharp look-out for them. The women did not go by the high-road,
but crept along behind the hedges. One day, two of them were on their way, when they saw the exciseman on the other side of the hedge. They tried to walk on ; but he had seen them, and soon found a gap and came into the field where they were. One of the women was now sitting down by the hedge, crying and groaning. " Now I've got you," said he ; but the woman did nothing but cry and groan.—" Can't you see what is the matter, you fool ?" said the other woman. "Don't stand there; the very least you can do is to go and get a doctor for the poor creature." He did go, and no sooner was he out of sight, than they jumped up and hurried off to get rid of their burden. Later in the day, they met the same exciseman in Flower Gate. " Well, Molly, safe delivered, lass ?" said he.—" Aye, Sir, down there by the quay," she replied, with a grin.
Most of these facts are taken down from the lips of a very fine old sailor, who has been forty-eight times across the Atlantio in sailing-vessels, and in many other parts of the world besides. He is now seventy-three, and " a young man," but incapacitated by an accident for all hard work. " Did you make a good thing of smuggling ?" we asked. "No," said he ; "I regret to say I can e into it too late." He was born in Robin Hood's Bay, and never was at school except for one week. The school was at Thorpe, hard by, and was kept by the clergyman. He was paid £70 a year, and had to keep the school for it. His method of teaching was simple and good. He had a very large tray, and every boy who attended the school was expected to bring with him a bag of sand from the beach. This was put on the tray and pressed down flat until there was a perfectly even surface. Then the master said to the first boy, "Make me a B or a T," and each in turn formed this letter as well as he could in the sand, and then the surface was smoothed again and a new letter was taken. When a boy played truant from school, a " clog " (log) weighing five or six pounds was chained to his leg, and from time to time, if the master thought that the boy was taking his punishment too lightly, he aimed a telling blow at him. It was no easy matter for a boy to get out of the way of a blow when he had a heavy log chained to his leg. This schoolmaster-parson was of the type now happily extinct. He worked hard all the week, and came down into the town every Saturday night and got tipsy. Every one was so used to this that they thought nothing of it. The parish clerk took him home. The doctor was always tipsy too. The parson would not marry any one,—that is, every one knew that he would be ill received, if he did not carry a bottle of rum to church with him. A glass of this was offered for luck to the first man whom the young couple met on their way thither; the clergyman did not like to begin the service until he had had one; and when the ceremony was performed, he, the clerk, and the sexton finished the bottle, after which it was the custom to throw it over the bride's head for lack, and break it against a tombstone. The sailor who told us these old-world scandals had, as before said, only one week's schooling, though he made up all deficiencies afterwards, when at sea. His grandmother was postmistress, and had to carry all the letters written at Robin Hood's Bay to Whitby, and bring back all those addressed to Robin Hood's Bay. The remuneration was one penny for each letter she carried. The little boy was taken from school to help the old woman to per- form this part of her duties, and many a time he walked six miles to Whitby, and six miles back, in the deep snow, carrying perhaps two letters from Robin Hood's Bay to Whitby, and bringing four back. Postage was a heavy expense in those days,—every letter cost fonrteenpence. Sailors were very shy of writing on this account ; but after a heavy gale, when they thought that their wives and sweethearts would be anxious about them, they contrived a method of making one letter do a great deal of work. One man would perhaps write :—" My dear wife,—I am all reet [right], Jack Jones is reet too, Betty's Tom is all reet, and so is Sally's John. We are all all reet." Every woman whose husband was named in this letter con- tributed to its postage.
Young folks in those days were by no means so well fed as now. Their morning beverage was tea made of mint, the mint of which mint-sauce is made. It was sweetened by a teaspoon- ful of treacle, and "was reckoned very healthful." A crust of dry bread formed the substantial portion of the meal. But so far as old folks or widow-women were concerned, there was no want in Robin Hood's Bay at that time, for there was plenty of fish in the sea, and plenty of people to get them out, and the fishermen would give fish to any poor person for nothing. When poverty really made itself felt was when a man had a large family to " fetch up," and they were too young to do anything themselves. "It is very hard work," said our sailor friend, "for a man to raise a large family of childer when there is nothing but the fish at the sea-bottom to keep them on, and one noble to get it out !" Wooing was mostly done when the women were fixing the bait. "That's when mine was done at least," said he ; " men-folk are not expected to go into the places where baiting is going on ; but I went in.' This forms an excellent contrast to the inconclusive bit of autobiography Samuel Rogers has given us of his only approach to matrimony. He very much admired a beautiful young lady, and on a certain occasion at the very end of the season, she said, " Mr. Rogers, I am going to Worthing to-morrow. Are you likely to come there ? " He quietly adds, "I never went to Worthing." Our old sailor, young then, went into the baiting- room and won a very pretty, clever, and good wife, who is alive still, and still comely. Then came hard work for the young hus- band. His father died and left him a cottage, bat there was a mortgage on it. He went to sea summer and winter until the debt was " rubbed off." What a life it must have been, even when not working double time ! As a rale, he made five or six voyages in the year, and received about 215,---E3 a voyage. He crossed the Atlantic forty-eight times, going to America, Labrador, and the West Indies. Sometimes he went "red-hot from the West Indies to Greenland." Once he fell in with pirates. " They took a cask of porter, some brandy, two or three pieces of silk, and all we had. We did not know what country they came from ; they were dark, that is all we knew. We were far too frightened of them to ask them any questions. As their captain was getting back into his boat, a dog on board our ship bit the back of his ankle, and bit the sinew clean in two. We were terribly afraid he would kill some of us to punish us for this ; but he hurried back into his own vessel to the doctor, and we were well quit of him."
A still worse adventure befell our sailor when he was wrecked in the Robin Hood's Bay lifeboat. He was one of the very few who escaped, and he saved one life while saving his own. Now that these days of stirring adventure are long gone by, his greatest grief is that his lame leg prevents him from doing any hard work. " It is a vexing thing to be laid off work in this way when one's a young man ! What's seventy-three ?" These are his own words. He earns a precarious livelihood by fishing, taking people out in his boat, helping to unload colliers, &c. Those who want to know how small a sum is needed to support life in contentment should inquire of this old sailor. "All that passed through my hands last year," said he, "was 216 Os. 8d., and when Christmas came I had 118. over ; but that's because I have a very good, careful wife. I own we bought two pounds and a half of meat for our Christmas dinner ; but on other days we never have anything but a bit of bread-and-butter and a kipper, and a basin of oatmeal porridge for our supper. It is quite enough. Look at my frame; I am quite as well nourished as any one need be."
Robin Hood's Bay is not the prosperous place it was. One hundred and five vessels, owned by men living in the place, have been "done away with by steam," and those who tried to be " upsides " with fortune by investing in steamboats, now receive no interest for their money, and see their property slowly wearing out in the river at Whitby.
The little inn on a rock by the shore is one of the most romantic abodes imaginable. Its predecessor on the same site was washed away in 1843. The new one is of stone, but it is so near the sea that in a storm the shock of the waves can be felt throbbing through the house. The windows, too, are broken by the waves, and a wrecked vessel has been known to make its presence felt by driving its mast through the sitting-room window. What views are to be seen from that same window ! It overlooks the entire bay,—a semicircle, and for the most part hemmed in by precipitous cliffs, which look as if they would last for ever, and yet are always crumbling away. It is a pastoral landscape, too. Cheerful-looking tracts of meadow- land and cornfields lie at the base of the high moorland above and slope down to the sea, and shy streams, whose existence can only be guessed at from the inn windows from the conforma- tion of the land, wind their way in deeply cut channels down- hill. Their banks are thickly set with trees, which seem to have crept into the narrow ravines to shelter themselves from the fierce winds which sweep the heights above. They grow so closely together in some places that the bright water looks dark and dull, and it is difficult to find a passage through them. No one exactly knows how the place got its name. Some say that a band of robbers once lived in a forest hard by, and that the name was Robbers' Bay ; others, that Robin Hood was at Whitby Abbey, and being asked by the monks for some proof of his mastery over the bow, sent one arrow as far as Hawsker, and another to Robin Hood's Bay ; but, as an old inhabitant of the place remarked to us, "This can hardly be true, for I am sure I have never seen any arrows lying about."
It is much to be feared that all that makes Robin Hood's Bay so delightful is doomed. A branch line from Whitby to Scarborough now connects it with the rest of the world, and gradually the inhabitants are venturing to entrust themselves to the railway. An enterprising company has bought a field or two at the top of the finest cliff, and ere long there will be new roads and terraces. The first thing to be built is a large hotel, with seventy bedrooms and everything else to match. This will be- the prominent feature in every view of the place. It will rise up in all the splendour of newness above the time-worn, red-roofed houses. There will be no escaping the sight of it from any point. "It is a very beautiful view, Sir," said a working man- to a landscape-painter, who was doing his utmost to get a picture of the scene while some beauty was left it. Busy as he was, the artist turned round in delight at finding such a strong sense of beauty among the lowly ones of the earth. "Aye, it is beautiful !" repeated the man ; "but you ought to came back again to paint it next year, when the new hotel is finished,—it will be far better worth taking then." With a sigh of discom- fiture, the artist set to work again. When that hotel is built in that place, no one need go to Robin Hood's Bay for picturesque- ness,—at least, not until the new hotel has gone the way of so many other buildings near the sea,—that is, has slowly, yet surely, found its way into it.
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