The cottages in the villages are, many of them, of great age, and most of them 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.]