Strange, indeed, and, as it were, prophetic, must have been the dumbness of the busy fields and workshops by the Skell. The sound of distant voices from peopled valleys comes to us upon the hillside with an unthought-of thrill of sympathy and consciousness of kind; but in the lonely chapel on Michael-How" only the bells of the parent church broke the stillness, while at that sound shepherds would kneel among their sheep, and ploughmen by their resting oxen, to join in spirit with their brethren chanting the office in the Abbey choir.

With a last and very different thought we must turn from this memory-haunted scene. On the south side of the stream is a well that still bears the name of Robin Hood, in memory, it is said, of the outlaw's famous fight with "the curtall friar of Fountains." 1

"Robin he took a solemn oath

It was by Mary free

That he would neither eat nor drink

Till that friar he did see."

1

66

Tradition," says Mr. Walbran, "points to the figures of a large bow and arrow and hound, graven on the north-east angle of the Lady Chapel, as a record of this dire affray. They bear no affinity to the symbols used by the masons; but have, I fancy, induced the report, mentioned by Ritson, that Robin's bow and arrow were preserved at Fountains Abbey."

So Robin and the friar met and fought, till at last the friar had the best of it, and threw Robin into the Skell. Then Robin wound his horn, and brought fifty of his followers to his aid; and, in his turn,

"The fryar he sit his fist to his mouth,

And whuted him whutes three;

Half a hundred good bay dogs

Came running over the lea."

So that, if "Little John" had not "shot with might and main," it would still have gone hard with Robin. Mr. Walbran tells us that when Sir Walter Scott visited Fountains, he was much struck with this legend; and not only induced Mrs. Lawrence, the then owner of the Abbey, to build an arch over the spring, but also presented her with the following "Inscription for Robin Hood's Well":

"Beside this crystal font of old

Cooled his flushed brow an outlaw bold.

His bow was slackened while he drank,

His quiver rested on the bank,
Giving brief pause of doubt and fear
To feudal lords and forest deer.
Long since the date-but village sires
Still sing his feats by Christmas fires,
And still Old England's free-born mood
Stirs at the name Robin Hood."

VI

KIRKSTALL

The

IN the middle of the twelfth century a small town in Airedale was struggling into importance. devastations of the Danes, which had almost swept away the "Loidis" of Bede, had long been forgotten, and the losses and miseries of the Norman Conquest were fast sinking into oblivion. But the Conqueror's feudal system still had its grip relentlessly upon the country, and the vills and towns were working out their own deliverance by humble steps, thankful the while for mercies which to modern Leeds would sound but small. Half a century or so before Ilbert di Laci had granted his vill of Leeds-a mere drop in the ocean of his vast estates-to Ralph Paganel, and the Paganels had since built themselves a castle and made a park which survives only in the names of Park Place, Park Row, Park Square, and Park Lane. To the protection of this castle and the

comparative security enjoyed by burgesses in times of turbulence and rapine the town of Leeds is thought to have owed its early prosperity. Already there is evidence of the exportation of grain and other commodities, and the Aire must have been navigable, at least for small vessels, and under favourable circumstances. And so, when in 1207 Maurice Paganel granted a charter to his burgage tenants at Leeds, creating a local court of justice, and conferring other valuable privileges and immunities, the town had evidently attained considerable importance, and the Domesday estimate of something under 1000 for the number of its inhabitants, and about £115 for its total value, must have been left far behind. Yet in this charter we are still face to face with serfdom and even slavery, for women sold into slavery are exempted from paying custom in the borough; and though Yorkshire wool was now being sent from Leeds to Flanders, to return to England in the form of cloth, there is still the Paganel oven, in which the burgesses aforesaid "shall continue to bake as they have been accustomed," and the King's mill at which they must grind their corn. Meanwhile the De Lacys had granted their neighbouring manor of Newsham to the Templars and founded and built the monastery of Kirkstall.