BY S. BARING-GOULD, M.A. AUTHOR OF "MEHALAH," "ICELAND: ITS SCENES AND SAGAS," "OLD COUNTRY LIFE," ETC.
"There be such a company of wilful gentlemen within Yorkshire as there be not in all England besides."—Abbot of York to Cromwell, 1556, Rolls House MS.
FIFTH EDITION
London METHUEN AND CO. 18 BURY STREET, W.C.
1900
PREFACE.
A residence of many years in Yorkshire, and an inveterate habit of collecting all kinds of odd and out-of-the-way information concerning men and matters, furnished me, when I left Yorkshire in 1872, with a large amount of material, collected in that county, relating to its eccentric children.
A friend, when he heard that I was collecting such material, exclaimed, "What are you about? Every other Yorkshireman is a character!" Such is the case. No other county produces so much originality—and that originality, when carried to excess, is eccentricity.
I look back with the greatest pleasure to the kindness and hospitality I met with in Yorkshire, where I spent some of the happiest years of my life. I venture to offer this collection of memoirs of odd people, and narrative of strange events, as a humble contribution to the annals of the greatest, not perhaps only in extent, of our English counties, and a slight return for the pleasant welcome it afforded a migratory penman from the South.
PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION.
This book was well received in Yorkshire and elsewhere when it first appeared, and as it preserved notices of strong characters, records of whom were passing away, and some taken from Chap Books already become scarce, a new edition (the 4th) is issued thoroughly revised and only very slightly curtailed.
