Superstitions still linger among the moorland folk, and the custom of
placing a plate of salt upon the breast of one who is dying is still
continued here and there in a covert fashion. Clocks are still stopped,
fires raked out, and looking-glasses turned to the wall at the moment of
death, but such acts of deference to the world of fancy are naturally only
seen by those who have intimate experience of the cottage life of these
parts, and the casual visitor sees no traces of them.
The town at one time had a newspaper of its own. It was known as the
_Pickering Mercury_, and was started in the summer of 1857; but it perhaps
found Scarborough competition too much for it, for now it is almost
forgotten, and an evening paper produced in the big watering-place is
shouted round the streets of the town every night.
The changes that the present century may witness will possibly work
greater transformations than any that have gone before, and not many years
hence this book will no doubt be described as belonging to the rough and
ready, almost primitive times of the early part of the twentieth century.
The historian of a hundred years hence will sigh for the complete picture
of daily life at Pickering at the present day, which we could so easily
give, while he at that very moment may be failing to record the scenes of
his own time that are to him so wofully commonplace.
CHAPTER XIII
_Concerning the Villages and Scenery of the Forest and Vale of Pickering_
"Wide horizons beckoning, far beyond the hill,
Little lazy villages, sleeping in the vale,
Greatness overhead
The flock's contented tread
An' trample o' the morning wind adown the open trail.
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