Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/154

146 carries the waters of the district to the sea, the original river meandering now on one side now on the other, a mere brook of but a few feet wide, often dried up in summer. Drained cars like these lie along the wide shallow valley of the Ancholme, between the parallel ranges of the Wolds and the Cliffs; the original Ancholme, a tiny twisted stream, being replaced, both in name and use, by a broad canal, which runs northwards for some thirty miles, as straight as an arrow, to join at last the wide Estuary of the Humber.

Were this the place, might speak of the elaborate system for regulating the outlet of the water; of the yawning dykes that border or cross the roads, making them by no means safe on dark nights, holding, as they do, from two to ten feet of water and many more of shiny treacherous mud; or of the lonely dwellings along the Ancholme banks, only to be reached by a narrow bridle-path, with bewildering lanes of water on either hand, where a horse must be blindfolded before it will cross the frail wooden bridges over the noisy water gates at the joining of the dykes with the main Canal; but I am more concerned at present with memories of the Cars as they once were, a wild desolate dreary marsh, full of strange sights and sounds, than as they now exist.

Nevertheless they are still worth seeing, and have a beauty, or rather an attraction of their own. Stunted willows mark the dyke-sides, and in winter there are wide stretches of black glistening peat-lands and damp pastures; here and there great black snags work their way up from submerged forests below. When the mists rise at dusk in shifting wreaths, and the bleak wind from the North Sea moans and whistles across the valley, it is not difficult to people the Cars once more with all the uncanny dwellers, whose memory is preserved in the old stories. Then in summer, with its charm of wide vision, and something of the amplitude and serenity of the sea, in its stretching levels and far-off horizon, it seems to hold the brightness