The West Riding of Yorkshire

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22389, 30 April 1938, Page 18

The West Riding of Yorkshire

"Wharfedale" is the third of Miss Ella Pontefract's delightful books about, the Yorkshire dales; and again, as in "Swaledale" and "Wensleydale," she has had the collaboration of Miss Marie Hartley; whose wood-engravings appear as frontispiece and as chapterheadings and tail-pieces. (Besides, there are nine admirable photographs, with a plan of Bolton Priory and, on the end-papers, maps of Wharfedale.) The course of the river Wharfe, from Cam Fell to Bolton Bridge, regulates the progress of the book; but the stream is of ten., left to run on its own way, while' Miss Pontefract's turns, say, up the Skirfare and Lowside Beck to the great rise of Fountain's Fell. The names that are scattered

through this book are themselves beguiling. In one chapter, for example, appear Great Whernside and Buckden Pike, Coverdale, Kettlewell, Leyburn, Coverham Abbey, Cob Castle, Kilnsey, Conistone, Hunter's Stone, Hay Tongue House, Nidderdale, Caseker Gill, and Douk Cave. Sometimes Miss Pontefract pauses to revive the forgotten origin of a name, or to leave it in pleasant uncertainty. Oftener, and regularly, she tells what historians and archaeologists know of the past of these places; and again it is what local legend alone preserves that she recalls. Such is the story of the inn-keeper, Mrs Taylor, who. avoided paying for a licence "by selling penny and halfpenny parkins, and giving beer or ale with them." Readers in a sheep country like

New Zealand, especially those among the Canterbury hills, perhaps, will enjoy, glimpses of another, older sheep country: "Come oh, let's see what's deuin' wid teups" is the same music at Addington as at Kilnsey, in different voices. The author's eye takes in wide views and close detail evenly well. It is a romantic's eye, but the romance is not gush. It is a realist's eye, with a steady, affectionate regard for the small facts, small ways, that distinguish and individualise a people grown into unity with their own portion of earth... Miss Pontefract's writing is, for its purpose, almost perfect; and the intimacy of a travel book like this, whose sweep is over a strip of country perhaps 25 miles long, flavours every sentence.—J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. 229 pp. (6/- net.)