button to main menu   West's Guide to the Lakes, 1778/1821

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Page 250:-
had been alternately the habitation of giants and fairies, as the different mythology prevailed in the country, he mentioned two circumstances we paid some attention to.- About fifty or sixty years ago, a madman escaped from his friends at or near Ingleton, and lived here a week in the winter season, having had the precaution to take off a cheese, and some other provisions, to his subterranean hermitage. As there was snow on the ground, he had the cunning of Cacus (see Virgil's Eneid, b.8. l.209.) to pull the heels off his shoes, and set them on inverted at the toes, to prevent being traced - an instance, among many others, of a madman's reasoning justly on some detached part of an absurd plan or hypothesis. Since that time, he told us, a poor woman, big with child, travelling alone up this inhospitable vale to that of Dent, was taken in labour, and found dead in this cave.
We now proceeded to examine the pits and chasms apparently caused by the water after it had has run through the cave. We ascended the hill a little higher, to view the gill above the cave: a stream of water flowed down it, which entering an aperture in the rock, we could see descend from steep to steep a considerable way. We made no doubt but it was the same stream which afterwards falls down through the roof of the chapter-house. Here was also a quarry of black marble, of which elegant monuments, chimney-pieces, slabs, and other pieces of furniture, are made by Mr. Tomlinson, at Burton-in-Lonsdale. When polished, this marble appears to be made up of entrochi, and various parts of testaceous and piscosous reliques.
We were persuaded to climb up to the top of the base of Gragareth, the mountain in whose side Yordas is situated, in order to see Gingling-cave. It is on the edge of that flat base of the mountain, on a green plain by the side of a brook, looking down into the vale; Ingleborough appearing a little to the left, or north-east of Breda-Garth, which was almost opposite. This natural curiosity is a round aperture, narrow at the top, but most probably dilating in its dimensions to a profound extent. The stones we threw in made an hollow
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gazetteer links
button -- Burton in Lonsdale
button -- "Gragareth" -- Gragareth
button -- "Gingling Cave" -- Jingling Cave (?)
button -- (quarry, Thornton in Lonsdale)
button -- "Yordas Cave" -- Yordas Cave
button -- Yordas Gill

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