NORTH RIDING OF YORKSHIRE, YORK AND THE AINSTY SUPERSTITIONS AND FOLK CUSTOMS

By: Eliza Gutch

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

No stripling of Storyland ever set forth with lighter heart to fulfil the strange behest that should win the hand of the Princess, than did I, when I undertook to bring together such record as had been made in print, concerning the folk-lore of the North Riding. I cheerfully included in my list the Mother-City of “ the shire of broad acres,” and with her, the wapentake named from old-time in the same breath—the Ainsty; which as Canon Isaac Taylor ventures to surmise , 1 may signify her «z'« = own, sti — enclosure, or place set apart; the latter being the O.N. word familiar to us in pig -sty. If after having had this charge for more than seven years upon my hands, and but few less upon my conscience, I feel less assurance of success than I did in the beginning, those only should be astonied who have not laboured in a like emprise, or who know too little of the topographic riches of North Yorkshire. It has a fine array of annalists of the graver sort, and its scenes are so inspiring, and the brains of its sons so constituted, that though there may be some men who can take a long walk, without writing book or article to describe it, I think they must be but few. In spirit, I have tramped over many a picturesque mile with the chatty pedestrians, listening to local traditions that they have heard, or read, and can tell unweariedly, and pricking my ears now and then, at the mention of bits of curious lore, which the gaffers and gammers still stand by, and my informants themselves regard from a discreetly agnostic standpoint. The gratitude of our Society is due to these, and to all other recording angels of congenial tastes; and if a collector’s pen should sometimes flag as it transcribes their pages, it ought not to be forgotten that though he who has a style may chance to lose it in the work, he who has none is not unlikely to carry one away: it is even possible to become infected by the periods of a standard local historian.