H  !  how  delightful  are  the  quiet  shades  of  Beamsley  on
a  still  summer's  day  !  Nothing  seems  to  disturb  the
wonted  tranquillity  of  the  place  save  the  murmur  of
bees,  the  music  of  birds,  and  the  mellowed  laughter  of
the  fresh  rivulet  leaping  child-like  athwart  the  village
from  its  cradle  on  the  moors.  The  rustic  houses  with  their  posied
gardens  stand  anywise  beside  the  road,  while  the  unmolested
songsters  from  field  and  grove  hop  in  at  the  open  doors,  conscious
of  the  frugal  fare  that  awaits  their  temerity  on  table-top  or  chair.*
What  happy  memories  of  freedom  and  of  innocence  such  pleasant
scenes  awake !  Boyhood's  days  are  once  more  recalled  when  about
the  old  ancestral  domains  the  rhyme  used  to  be  sung : —

Hey  diddle,  diddle,  the  cat  and  the  fiddle.
The  cow  jumped  over  the  Moon,

as  a  parody  on  some  old  family  names,  yet  the  Heys  never  got  the
best  of  the  Moons,  although  the  several  old  local  families  of  Hey,
Moon,  Petyt,  and  Moorhouse  have  intermarried  time  after  time.
The  Heys  are  an  old  race  of  wheelwrights,  who  lived  in  a  thatched
house  that  stood  here  up  to  1875,  ^"^  ^^^  huge  oak-crocks  that
supported  the  well-seasoned  cross-rafters  of  the  heavily-turfed  roof,
were  I  should  say  planted  as  long  ago  as  the  days'  of  strife  between
the  White  Rose  and  the  Red.  I  present  a  picture  of  the  vanished
homestead  {see  next  page),  shewing  old  Joseph  busy  at  his  work,  a
work  that  is  still  carried  on  by  his  son,  George  Hey.  The  smaller
house  near  it  was  also  a  very  old  building,  which  had  evidently  been
restored,  and  was  dated  1675.
