NOOKS OF THE WORLD: LIFE IN THE DALES OF LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE.
 
The nooks of the world which we visited in our last chapter lay in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire; we will now change the scene a little northward. Such secluded and original spots we might indeed readily undertake to discover in almost every county of England; but I can only give a few specimens from the great whole, and leave every one to look about him for the rest. Lancashire is famous for its immense manufactures, and consequent immense population. In ranging over its wild, bleak hills, we are presently made sensible of the vast difference between the character and habits of the working class, and the character and habits of the pastoral and agricultural districts. We have no longer those picturesque villages and cottages, half buried in their garden and orchard trees; no longer those home-crofts, with their old, tall hedges; no longer rows of beehives beneath their little thatched southern sheds; those rich fields and farm-houses,[222] surrounded with wealth of corn-ricks, and herds and flocks. You have no longer that quiet and Arcadian-looking population; hedgers and ditchers, ploughmen and substantial farmers, who seem to keep through life the “peaceful tenor of their way,” in old English fulness and content. There may be indeed, and there are, such people scattered here and there; but they and their abodes are not of the class which gives the predominant character to the scenery. On the contrary, everywhere extend wild naked hills, in many places totally unreclaimed; in others, enclosed, but exhibiting all the signs of a neglected and spiritless husbandry; with stunted fences or stone walls; and fields sodden with wet from want of drainage, and consequently overgrown with rushes. Over these naked and desolate hills are scattered to their very tops, in all directions, the habitations of a swarming population of weavers; the people and their houses equally unparticipant of those features which delight the poet and the painter. The houses are erections of stone or brick, covered with glaring red tiles, as free from any attempt at beauty or ornament as possible. Without, where they have gardens, those gardens are as miserable and neglected as the fields; within, they are squalid and comfortless.
In some of these swarming villages, ay, and in the cottages of the large manufacturing towns too, you can scarcely see a window with whole panes of glass. In one house in the outskirts of Blackburn, and that, too, an alehouse, we counted in a window of sixty panes, eight-and-forty broken ones; and this window was of a pretty uniform character with its fellows, both in that house, and the neighbouring ones. It is not possible to conceive a more violent and melancholy contrast than that which the filth, the poverty, and forlornness of these weavers’ and spinners’ dwellings form to the neatness, comfort, and loveliness of the cottages of the peasantry in many other parts of the kingdom. Any man who had once been through this district, might again recognise the locality if he were taken thither blindfold, by the very smell of oatcake which floats about the villages, and the sound of the shuttles, with their eternal “latitat! latitat!” I ranged wide over the bleak hills in the neighbourhood of Padiham, Belthorne, Guide, and such places, and the numbers and aspect of the population filled me[223] with astonishment. Through the long miserable streets of those villages, children and dogs were thick as motes in the sun. The boys and men with their hair shorn off, as with a pair of wool-shears, close to their heads, till it stood up staring and bristly, and yet left hanging long over their eyes, till it gave them a most villanous and hangman look. What makes those rough heads more conspicuous, is their being so frequently red; the testimony of nature to the ancient prevalence of the Dane on these hills. The men are besides long and bony; the women often of stalwart and masculine figure, and of a hardness of feature which gives them no claims to be ranked amongst the most dangerous of the “Lancashire witches.” Everywhere the rudeness of the rising generation is wonderful. Everywhere the stare of mingled ignorance and insolence meets you; everywhere a troop of lads is at your heels, with the clatter of their wooden clogs, crying—“Fellee, gies a hawpenny!”
In one village, and that too the celebrated Roman station of Ribchester, our chaise was pursued by swarms of these wooden-shod lads like swarms of flies, that were only beaten off for a moment to close in upon you again, and their sisters shewed equally the extravagance of rudeness in which they were suffered to grow up, by running out of the houses as we passed, and poking mops and brushes at the horses’ heads. No one attempted to restrain or rebuke them; and yet, what was odd enough, not one of the adult population offered you the least insult, but if you asked the way, gave you the most ready directions, and if you went into their houses, treated you with perfect civility, and shewed an affection for these wild brats that was honourable to their hearts, and wanted only directing by a better intelligence. The uncouthness of these poor people is not that of evil disposition, but of pressing poverty and continued neglect. As is generally the case, in the poorest houses were the largest families. Ten and eleven children in one small dirty hovel was no uncommon sight, actually covering the very floor till there seemed scarce room to sit down; and amid this crowd, the mother was generally busy washing, or baking oatcakes; and the father making the place resound with the “latitat, latitat” of his shuttle. One did not wonder, seeing this, that the poor creatures are glad to[224] turn out the whole troop of children to play on the hills, the elder girls lugging the babies along with them.
The wildness into which some of these children in the more solitary parts of the country grow, is, I imagine, not to be surpassed in any of the back settlements of America. On the 5th of July, 1836, the day of that remarkable thunder-storm, which visited a great part of the kingdom with such fury, being driven into a cottage at the foot of Pendle by the coming on of this storm, and while standing at the door watching its progress, I observed the head of some human creature carefully protruded from the doorway of an adjoining shed, and as suddenly withdrawn on being observed. To ascertain what sort of person it belonged to, I went into the shed, but at first found it too dark to allow me to discover any thing. Presently, however, as objects became visible, I saw a little creature, apparently a girl of ten years old, reared very erectly against the opposite wall. On accosting her in a kind tone, and telling her to come forward, and not to be afraid, she advanced from the wall, and behold! there stood another little creature about the head shorter, whom she had been concealing. I asked the elder child whether this younger one was a girl. She answered—“Ne-a.” “Was it a boy?” “Ne-a.” “What! neither boy nor girl! was she herself a girl?” “Ne-a.” “What was it a boy that I was speaking to?” “Ne-a.” “What in the name of wonder were they then?” “We are childer.” “Childer! and was the woman in the house their mother?” “Ne-a.” “Who was she then?” “Ar Mam.” “O! your mam! and do you keep cows in this shed?” “Ne-a.” “What then?” “Bee-as.” In short, common English was quite unintelligible to these little creatures, and their appearance was as wild as their speech. They were two fine young creatures, nevertheless, especially the elder, whose form and face were full of that symmetry and free grace that are sometimes the growth of unrestrained nature, and would have delighted the sculptor or the painter. Their only clothing was a sort of little bodice with skirts, made of a reddish stuff, and rendered more picturesque by sundry patches of scarlet cloth, no doubt from their mother’s old cloak. Their heads, bosoms, and legs to the knees, were bare to all the influences of earth and heaven; and on giving them each a penny, they bounded away with the fleetness and[225] elasticity of young roes. No doubt, the hills and the heaths, the wild flowers of summer and the swift waters of the glens, were the only live-long day companions of these children, who came home only to their oatmeal dinner, and a bed as simple as their garments. Imagine the violent change of life, by the sudden capture and confinement of these little English savages, in the night-and-day noise, labour, and foul atmosphere of the cotton purgatories!
In the immediate neighbourhood of towns, many of the swelling ranges of hills present a much more cultivated aspect, and delight the eye with their smooth, green, and flowing outlines; and the valleys almost everywhere, are woody, watered with clear rapid streams, and, in short, are beautiful. But along these rise up the tall chimneys of vast and innumerable factories, and even while looking on the palaces of the master manufacturers, with their woods and gardens, and shrubbery lawns around them, one cannot help thinking of all the horrors detailed before the Committees of the House of Commons respecting the Factory System; of the parentless and friendless little wretches, sent by wagon-loads from distant workhouses to these prisons of labour and despair; of the young frames crushed to the dust by incessant labour; of the beds into which one set of children got, as another set got out, so that they were said never to be cold the whole year round, till contagious fevers burst out and swept away by hundreds these little victims of Mammon’s ever-urging, never-ceasing wheel. Beautiful as are many of those wild glens and recesses where, before the introduction of steam, the dashing rivulet invited the cotton-spinners to erect their mills; and curious as the remains of those simple original factories are, with their one great water-wheel, which turned their spindles while there was water, but during the drought of summer quite as often stood still; yet one is haunted even there, amongst the shadows of fine old trees that throw their arms athwart streams dashing down their beds of solid rock, by the memory of little tender children who never knew pity or kindness, but laboured on and on, through noon and through midnight, till they slept and yet mechanically worked, and were often awaked only by the horrid machinery rending off their little limbs. In places like these, where now the old factories, and the large houses of the proprietors stand deserted, or are inhabited by troops of poor creatures, whose[226] poverty makes them only appear the more desolate, we are told by such men as Mr. Fielden of Oldham, once a factory child himself, and now a great manufacturer, who dares to reveal the secrets of the prison-house, that little creatures have even committed suicide to escape from a life worse than ten deaths. And what a mighty system is this now become! What a perpetual and vast supply of human life and energy it requires, with all the facilities of improved machinery, with all the developed power of steam, and with all the growing thirst of wealth to urge it on! We are told that the state of the factories, and the children employed in them, is greatly improved; and I trust they are; but if there be any truth in the evidence given before the parliamentary committees, there is need of great amelioration yet; and it is when we recollect these things, how completely the labouring class has, in these districts, been regarded as mere machinery for the accumulation of enormous capitals, that we cease to wonder at their uncouth and degraded aspect, and at the neglect in which they are suffered to swarm over these hills,—like the very weeds of humanity, cast out into disregarded places, and left to spread and increase in rank and deleterious luxuriance. The numbers of drunken men that you meet in these districts in an evening, and the numbers of women that you see seated with their ale-pots and pipes round the alehouse fires, a sight hardly elsewhere to be witnessed, form a striking contrast to the state of things in the agricultural districts, such as Craven, where you may pass through half-a-dozen villages, and not find one pot-house.
It was necessary to take a glimpse at these Lancashire hills in reviewing the rural life of England; let us now pass into a tract of the country which borders immediately upon them, and yet is so totally unlike in its aspect and population. We shall now penetrate into perhaps the most perfect nook of the world that England holds. The Yorkshire dales are known to most by name, but to comparatively few by actual visitation. They lie amongst that wild tract of hills which stretches along the West Riding of Yorkshire, from Lancashire to Westmoreland, and forms part, in fact, of the great mountainous chain which runs from Derbyshire through these counties and Cumberland into Scotland. Some of these hills are of great bulk and considerable altitude. The old rhymes are[227] well known of—
Ingleborough, Pendle, and Pennegent
Are the highest hills betwixt Scotland and Trent;
and
Pendle, Pennegent, and Ingleborough
Are the highest hills all England thorough.
The Yorkshire dales stretch from the foot of Ingleborough north-east and west, over a considerable space of country. It is a wild, and, in many parts, a dreary region. Long ridges of hills covered with black heath, or bare stone,—with stony wastes at their feet of the grimmest and most time-worn character. All round Ingleborough the whole country seems to have been so tossed, shaken, and undermined by the violence which at some period broke it up into its present character, that its whole subterranean space seems to be filled with caves and passages for winds and waters that possess a remarkable connexion one with another, and present a multitude of singular phenomena. On the Craven side lie those celebrated spots Malham Cove and Gordale Scar, well known to tourists; the one, a splendid range of precipice with a river issuing from its base; the other, Gordale Scar, one of the most solemnly impressive of nature’s works. It is the course of a river which has torn its way from the top of a mountain, through a rugged descent in the solid rock, and falls into a sort of cove surrounded by lofty precipices, which make such a gloom, that on looking up, the stars are said sometimes to be seen at noon. Amongst all the magnificent scenes which the mountainous parts of these kingdoms present, I never visited one which impressed me with so much awe and wonder as this. You approach it by no regular road; you have even to ask permission to pass through the yard of a farm-house, to get at it; and your way is then up a valley, along which come two or three streams, running on with a wild beauty and abundance that occupy and delight your attention. Suddenly, you pass round a rock, and find yourself in this solemn cove, the high grey cliffs towering above you on all sides, the water dropping from their summits in a silver rain, and before you a river descending from a cleft in the mountain, and falling, as it were, over a screen, and spreading in white foam over it in a solemn and yet riotous[228] beauty. This screen is formed of the calcareous deposit of the water; and crossing the stream by the stones which lie in it, you may mount from the greensward which carpets the bottom of the cove, climb up this screen, and ascend along the side of the falling torrent, up one of the most wild and desolate ravines, till you issue on the mountain top, where the mountain cistus and the crimson geranium wave their lovely flowers in the breeze.
These scenes lie on the Craven side of Ingleborough, and as you wind round his feet, though distantly, by Settle, to the dales, your way is still amongst the loftiest fells, and past continual proofs of subterranean agency, and agency of past violence. You are scarcely past Settle, when by the road-side you see a trough overflowing with the most beautifully transparent water. You stop to look at it, and it shrinks before your eyes six or seven inches, perhaps, below the edge of the trough, and then again comes gushing and flowing over. As you advance, the very names of places that lie in view speak of a wild region, and have something of the old British or Danish character in them. To your left shine the waters distantly of Lancaster Sands, and Morecombe Bay, and around you are the Great Stone of Four Stones, the Cross of Grete, Yorda’s Cave, that is, the cave of Yorda, the Danish sorceress; Weathercote Cave, and Hurtle-pot and Gingle-pot. Our progress over this ground, though early in July, was amid clouds, wind and rain. The black heights of Ingleborough were only visible at intervals through the rolling rack, and all about Weathercote Cave, Hurtle-pot and Gingle-pot were traces of the violence of outbursting waters. We found a capital inn nearly opposite the Weathercote Cave, where one of the tallest of imaginable women presented us with a luncheon of country fare,—oatcake, cheese, and porter, and laid our cloaks and great-coats to dry while we visited the Cave and the Pots. Weathercote Cave is not, as the imagination would naturally suggest to any one, a cave in the side of a hill or precipice, but a savage chasm in the ground, in which you hear the thunder of falling waters. It is just such a place as one dreams of in ancient Thessaly, haunted by Pan and the Satyrs. When you come to the brink of this fearful chasm, which is overhung with trees and bushes, you perceive a torrent falling in a column of white foam, and with a thundering din, into a deep abyss. Down to the bottom of this[229] abyss there is a sloping descent, amongst loose and slippery stones. When you reach the bottom, a cavern opens on your left, into which you may pass, so as to avoid the mass of falling water, which is dashed upon a large black stone, and then is absorbed by some unseen channel. The huge blocks of stone which lie in this cave appear black and shining as polished ebony. I suppose this chasm is at least a hundred feet deep, and yet a few days before we were there, it had been filled to overflowing with water, which had rushed from its mouth with such violence as to rend down large trees around it. What is still more remarkable, at a few hundred yards distance is another chasm of equal depth, and of perpendicular descent, whence the torrents swallowed by the Weathercote Cave during great rains are again ejected with incredible violence. This had taken place, as we have said, a few days before our visit, and though this gulf was now dry again, the evidences of its fury were all around us. Wagon-loads of stones lay at its mouth, which had been hurled up with the torrent of water, all churned or hurtled (whence its name of Hurtle-pot) by its violence into the roundness of pebbles; and trees were laid prostrate, with their branches crushed into fragments, in the track by which the waters had escaped. This track was towards the third singular abyss—Gingle-pot. This gulf had a wider and more sloping mouth than the other, so that you could descend a considerable depth into it, but there you found a black and sullen water, which the people say has never been fathomed. It is said to contain a species of black trout, which are caught, we were told, by approaching the surface of the water with lighted torches by night, towards which they rise. Several country fellows were amusing themselves as we approached with rolling large stones into the abyss, which certainly sunk into the water with an awful sound.
Such is the region which abuts upon the Yorkshire dales. The dales themselves are the intervening spaces betwixt high fells, which run in long ranges one beyond another in a numerous succession. Some of these dales possess a considerable breadth of meadow land, as Wensley-dale, but the far greater number have scarcely more room in the bottom than is occupied by the stream and the public road. Thus every dale seems a little world in itself, being shut in by its high ranges of fell. If you ascend to the[230] ridge of one of these, you find another dale, lying at your feet, with its own little community; were you to cross to the next ridge, you would find another, and so on, far and wide. It is a land of alternating ridge and hollow, ridge and hollow, or in the language of the district, fell and dale, without any intervention of champaign country. Wordsworth’s description in Peter Bell, shows that the poet had been there, as well as the potter.
And he had trudged through Yorkshire dales,
Among the rocks and winding scars;
Where deep and low the hamlets lie,
Beneath their little patch of sky,
And little lot of stars.
Formerly, when there were no roads into these secluded dales, except some shingly ravine, down which the pedestrian, or one of their native ponies could with considerable caution, and sundry strikings of the foot against loose stones, descend, few, except the inhabitants themselves, could visit them, and they then must have possessed a primitive character indeed. Now, however, good roads run through them, and a greater intercourse with the surrounding country must have had its effect, yet I know no other corner of England where still linger so patriarchal a character and such peculiar habits.
George Fox, in his travels far and wide through the realm to promulgate his doctrines, penetrated into these dales. From the top of Pendle-hill in Lancashire, where there is an immense prospect, he tells us in his journal, that he had a vision of the triumphs of his ministry, and of the thousands that would be converted to his peculiar faith. Descending in the strength of this revelation, he marched northward, and speedily found in these dales a primitive race, ready to adopt his opinions and practices, so congenial to a simple and earnest-hearted people. There he repeatedly came, and sojourned long; and the accounts of the extraordinary meetings held, and the effect produced, have few parallels in the histories of religious reformers. There is a little Church-of-England chapel perched on the highest point of Kendal Fells, not far from Sedburgh, which is in the outskirts of this district, called Firbank Chapel, where a thousand people are said to have been collected to hear him, and at which three hundred people were convinced of[231] the truth, to use his own words, at one time,—Francis Howgill, the minister, being one of them. That little chapel is standing yet, perhaps the very humblest fabric in England belonging to the Established Church, old and dilapidated, and situated in one of the most singular and wild situations. There are the identical little windows, at which some of the old people stood within the chapel to listen to the preacher without, thinking it strange to worship anywhere but in a church or chapel. Near the door is a rock, on which he relates that he stood to preach. From its high site you look around over dreary moors, and a vast tract of outstretched country, and wonder whence the people gathered to his ministry. But his fame was that of an apostle all round this country. In Sedburgh churchyard stand two yew trees, under the shade of which, he, on one occasion, preached, drawing all the people out of the church to him. Within the dales themselves he planted several meetings, at Aysgarth, Counterside and Laygate. These meetings still remain, and a considerable number of Friends are scattered through the dales, of a primitive and hospitable character. We went, on the only Sunday which we passed in the dales, to his favourite meeting at Counterside, and could almost have imagined that the remarkable times of his ministry were yet remaining. We found the meeting situated amid a cluster of rustic cottages in pleasant Simmerdale, by Simmerdale Water. The house in which he usually lived during his visits to this valley adjoined the meeting; a true old-fashioned house, where the remains of his oaken bedstead were still preserved; and a very handsome one it must have been, and far too much adorned with the vanity of carving for so plain a man, and so homely a place. But the people were flocking from all sides, down the fells, along the dales, to the meeting, not only the Friends themselves, but the other dalespeople; and we found Mr. Joseph Pease, brother of the M.P., and his lady, from Darlington, addressing a crowded audience. The old times of Fox seemed indeed returned. The preacher’s discourse was one of an earnest and affectionate eloquence, and the audience was of a most simple and unworldly character. Almost every person, man or woman, had a nosegay in hand; nosegays in truth, for they very liberally and repeatedly applied them to the organ whence they are named. The herbs,[232] for they consisted rather of herbs than flowers, were as singular as the appearance of such a host of nosegays itself. Not one of them was without a piece of southernwood, in some instances almost amounting to a bush, and evidently there entitled to its ancient name, “lads’-love and lasses’-delight.” With this was grasped in many a hardy hand, thyme, and alecost, and, in many, mint! No doubt the pungent qualities of these herbs are found very useful stimulants in close and crowded places of worship, and especially under a drowsy preacher, by those whose occupations for the other six days lie chiefly out-of-doors, in the keen air of hills and moors. That such is the object of them was sufficiently indicated by a poor woman who offered us a little bunch of these herbs as we entered the meeting-house, saying with a smile, “they are so reviving.”
Amongst the Friends, are a considerable number of substantial people, who lead here a sort of patriarchal life, with their flocks and herds on the hills around them. And their houses, placed on the slope of the hills, yet not far above the level of the valley, with their ample gardens, must be in the summer months most agreeable abodes. Old English hospitality and kindness are found here in all their strength. We called on several of the resident proprietors, and amongst others Mr. William Fothergill, at Carr-End, since deceased. The garden of this gentleman was a perfect paradise of roses. But the fine old intellectual man himself, retaining beyond his eightieth year, and in this secluded place, all the enthusiasm of youth, the love of books, and aspirations after the spread of knowledge and freedom through the world, was a still more attractive object. He was the descendant of two well-known men, Dr. Fothergill, and Samuel Fothergill, an eminent minister in this society. Talent and liberality of sentiment seem a congenial growth of these dales, for the able and noble-minded Adam Sedgwick is a native of one of them.
To that valley, the beautiful vale of Dent, we may as well betake ourselves, for in describing these retired regions, one portion may with great propriety be taken as a specimen of the whole. Descending therefore from the moors at Newby-Head, we found this southern entrance of Dent-dale steep and narrow. As we proceeded, it wound on before us for several miles, till we beheld[233] the village of Dent lying at its northern extremity. Dent’s-Town, as they call it, has a very Swiss look, with its projecting roofs, and open galleries ascended by steps from the outside. But what strikes you with most surprise in this dale is its high state of cultivation. All the lower part of the dale is divided into small enclosures, rich with grass and summer flowers, and beautifully wooded; and amid the orchards and gardens, peep out houses of various sizes and characters. The hills nearly meet at the bottom, and ascend high, in two long ranges. The upper part, above the enclosures, appears, in some parts, black with heath, but more generally smooth and green, and dotted all over with flocks of sheep and geese. On the wilder parts of these hills graze a great number of cattle, and a shaggy race of ponies peculiar to them, with coats and manes long, and bleached by the wintry winds, till they look at a distance, more like wild bisons than horses. These dun ponies, before the progress of enclosure, used sometimes to follow the tops of the hills right away into Scotland, and have been fetched back from a distance of two hundred miles. When they have shed their wintry coats, and ceased to have such a look
As of the dwellers out of doors;
they often turn out very beautiful creatures, remarkably sure-footed, and highly prized for drawing in ladies’ pony-carriages. But we must descend into the valley: and here one of the most remarkable features is the river. It has all the character of a mountain torrent; huge stones, and masses of gravel everywhere demonstrating the occasional violence of the waters. But what has the most singular effect, its bed is one of solid stone, in some parts black or dark-grey marble, which is chafed and worn by the fury of the stream in floods, in such a manner that it looks itself like a rushing, billowy river, petrified by enchantment. A great part of this bed during the summer is dry, and therefore the more remarkable in its aspect. Here and there you may walk along it for a considerable distance; then again it descends in precipices, and amid blocks of stone of a gigantic character. One of these places is known by the name of Hell’s Cauldron, no doubt, in rainy seasons, a most appropriate name; for the river here, overhung with dark masses of trees, falls over some huge steps of the[234] stony bed into a deep and black abyss, where the rending of the rocks and washing up of heaps of debris, shew with what fury that cauldron boils. But what are still more significant of this fury, are the hollows worn into the very mass of the ledges of rocks over which it passes, one of which, overlooking the abyss, is called the Pulpit, from its form, and in which you may stand. These hollows, which are scooped out with wonderful regularity, appear to be made by the churning and grinding of stones, which get in wherever the softer parts of the rocks give way to the action of the floods. Yet fearful as this Hell’s Cauldron must be when the stream is swollen, we were told that a boy once slipped in, and was carried through it, and washed up on the bank below, unhurt; calling out to his astounded companions—“Here am I! where are you?” The public road runs along the side of the stream, down the valley. This stream is crossed by two queer little foot-bridges, called by the odd names of Tummy and Nelly, or Tummy-Brig and Nelly-Brig, having been built by two persons of these familiar names, to accommodate the inhabitants of the opposite sides of the dale. And truly, as will be shortly evident, a great accommodation they must be, not only in cases of actual business, but in those visitings which go on in the dale.
Not only the people and their houses have an old-fashioned look, but you see continually out-of-doors lingering vestiges of long-past times and ancient usages. There are sledges with which they bring stone and peat from the tops of the fells. I have often wondered at the industry of mountain-people in building up those stone walls, or dykes, as they call them, which you often see running up the mountain sides, to very distant and often very steep places; but crossing these fells, I discovered that the labour was far less than it seemed at first sight. The material has not to be carried up these lofty ascents; it abounds on their summits, and has only to be loosened, and slid down the hill sides on sledges, as they proceed, for they begin to build at the top, and not at the bottom. So their peat for fuel is found in abundance on the wet and spongy tops of these hills, and is dug, and reared on end to dry through the summer, and in the autumn is slid down on sledges. In the Scottish Highlands you see the women bringing the peat from the mountains in large creels, or baskets,[235] on their backs, while their husba............