have been the silent witnesses of innumerable superstitious rites and
customs. When one thoroughly realises the degrading character of the
beliefs that so powerfully swayed the lives of the villagers and
moorland-folk of this district, as late as the first twenty years of the
nineteenth century, one can only rejoice that influences arose
sufficiently powerful to destroy them. Along with the revolting practises,
however, it is extremely unfortunate to have to record the disappearance
of many picturesque, and in themselves, entirely harmless customs. The
roots of the great mass of superstitions have their beginnings so far away
from the present time, that to embrace them all necessitates an
exploration of all the centuries that lie between us and the pre-historic
ages, and in the pages that follow, some of these connections with the
past may be discovered.

CHAPTER II

_The Forest and Vale of Pickering in Palaeolithic and Pre-Glacial Times._

The Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age preceded and succeeded the Great Glacial
Epochs in the Glacialid.

In that distant period of the history of the human race when man was still
so primitive in his habits that traces of his handiwork are exceedingly
difficult to discover, the forest and Vale of Pickering seem to have been
without human inhabitants. Remains of this Old Stone Age have been found
in many parts of England, but they are all south of a line drawn from
Lincoln to Derbyshire and North Wales. In the caves at Cresswell Craggs in
Derbyshire notable Palaeolithic discoveries were made, but for some reason
these savage hordes seem to have come no further north than that spot. We
know, however, that many animals belonging to the pre-glacial period
struggled for their existence in the neighbourhood of Pickering.

[Illustration: A plan and section of Kirkdale Cave.]

It was during the summer of 1821 that the famous cave at Kirkdale was
discovered, and the bones of twenty-two different species of animals were
brought to light. Careful examination showed that the cave had for a long
time been the haunt of hyaenas of the Pleistocene Period, a geological
division of time, which embraces in its latter part the age of Palaeolithic
man. The spotted hyaena that is now to be found only in Africa, south of
the Sahara,[1] was then inhabiting the forests of Yorkshire and preying on
animals now either extinct or only living in tropical climates. The waters
of Lake Pickering seem to have