&c., were familiar as
household words. By knowledge, taste, and voice, they were markedly
separate from ordinary village choirs, and have been put in extensive
requisition for the solo and chorus of many an imposing festival. One
man still survives, who, for fifty years, has had one of the finest tenor
voices I ever heard, and with it a refined and cultivated taste. To him
and to others many inducements have been offered to migrate; but the
loom, the association, the mountain air have had charms enow to secure
their continuance at home. I love the recollection of their performance;
that recollection extends over more than sixty years. The attachments,
the antipathies and the hospitalities of the district are ardent, hearty,
and homely. Cordiality in each is the prominent characteristic. As a
people, these mountaineers have ever been accessible to gentleness and
truth, so far as I have known them; but excite suspicion or resentment,
and they give emphatic and not impotent resistance. Compulsion they
defy.
"I accompanied Mr. Heap on his first visit to Haworth after his accession
to the vicarage of Bradford. It was on Easter day, either 1816 or 1817.
His predecessor, the venerable John Crosse, known as the 'blind vicar,'
had been inattentive to the vicarial claims. A searching investigation
had to be made and enforced, and as it proceeded stout and sturdy
utterances were not lacking on the part of the parishioners.
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