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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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