MY profession means that I require an extensive library of books and periodicals, some being very ancient. Despite the marvels of the internet and its amazing capacity for rapid answers to research queries, I continue to find gems in older volumes. They are sound reminders of times past but also amazing examples of the sheer quality of book production several centuries ago.

Many are still readable with their binding in place. I have a 1688 Catholic missal which could still be used at Latin masses, along with a Douai bible dated 1796 bearing the original owner’s signature and name – Mary Pearson, aged 21. Another is the massive New Law Dictionary dated 1744 which is an encyclopaedia of information relative to that period.

I have no idea of its amount of pages because they are not numbered but I would guess several hundred in a volume more than a foot long by nine inches wide and two and a half inches thick (30cm x 23cm x 7cm). A note on an inner page advises it is for the use of barristers, students and practitioners of the law, Members of Parliament and other gentlemen, Justices of the Peace, Clergymen etc.

I find it most useful as a source of information for some of my research, although it is difficult to read due to the ancient style of printing.

About two centuries more recent than that book is Beautiful Wensleydale by Edmund Bogg, published in 1925. Like many books of that time, it contains a large number of advertisements relative to the area which it features, and in fact one of them advertises the author’s name as a picture frame maker with business premises in Leeds.

Among the fascinating adverts was one for sporting footwear which featured “Golf, tennis, cricket, hockey, football etc, for tender feet”. I liked one advert for a boarding house in Hawes which had three sitting rooms, seven bedrooms, 300 yards from station, public or private apartments, bath, indoor sanitation, electric light, board optional, well recommended with good cooking, good view and home comforts. Another hotel at Carperby advertised “good sanitary arrangements”. A café in Leeds boasted a “praise-compelling service” while a furniture removal company said “We can move YOU to any part of the UNITED KINGDOM.” (The capitals are theirs!)

However, some things never change and another of my older books published in 1906, along with Bogg’s classic, are reminders that the splendour of Aysgarth Falls is ever-lasting. Bogg’s energetic prose relates the merciless power of the swirling flood as the seething, foaming coom of water leaps the channel’s lips of rock.

I was interested in this due to his use of the word coom when writing of the waters of the Ure as they hurtle down their giant staircase. Having never come across that word in any of my dialect readings, I checked Arnold Kellett’s The Yorkshire Dictionary (1994) but he does not include it and neither does my Concise Oxford English Dictionary (2008).

So was this a word created by the talented Edmund Bogg, or had it featured in his part of Yorkshire? However, I found the word coom in Sir Alfred Pease’s Dictionary of the North Riding Dialect (1928). He defines it as dust sweepings, adding that it often appears as a suffix to other words, e.g. sawcoom is sawdust, and smiddycoom is the sweepings of the parings from horses' hoofs at the blacksmith’s forge. He adds mautcooms but does not provide enlightenment about its meaning, except to add the “etc” sign!

None of my other modern reference books feature this word except for one – much to my surprise, it features in Collins’ Ultimate Scrabble Dictionary and Word List (2012) where the meaning is given as waste material such as dust from coal, grease from axles etc, and it can also mean to blacken. I wonder whether Bogg’s interpretation of the word could be applied either to the darkness of the roaring waters or perhaps to the spray they generate? Or did he have a coal mining background?

However, Bogg produces another puzzle when he describes the woodlands at Woodhall which were part of the Wensleydale Forest many years ago. Here again, his use of language is a treat because he refers to the mansion “here placed in a bowery ultra-umbrageous situation” which I interpret as being heavily placed in shadows cast by the surrounding trees. I think the noun umbrella derives from this word.

However, that is not what puzzled me. He refers to the different species of tree in this part of Wensleydale, suggesting it is a haven of interesting scents and home to a multitudinous hum of insects, adding that it is the haunt of many birds from the owl to the golden-crested wren.

To my knowledge and research in my Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe (2002), neither this country nor other parts of Europe are home to a bird known as the golden-crested wren. I think Bogg was referring to the goldcrest, which is Europe’s smallest bird and still widespread in England and Ireland. Although there are differing races of wren, I don’t know of any relationship to goldcrests or their near relations, the firecrests.

Edmund Bogg’s book is one of many guides to Wensleydale but he had a knack for identifying minor things which were of considerable interest, such as John Percival, a blind man who could find his way around the dale in a most remarkable manner, even as far as Carlton-in-Coverdale and Horsehouses.

He intrigues us by saying there were more varieties of wild rose in Freeholders’ Wood near Aysgarth than in any other district in Yorkshire and produces a photograph of Mrs Betty Webster, a Daleswoman who lived to be 106. In all, he produced a wonderful word picture of this remarkable part of Yorkshire.

Another writer was William Morris in his North Riding of Yorkshire (1906) where he refers to Aysgarth Falls in the singular, calling it Aysgarth Force. He says that, probably because Aysgarth Force (sic) is further down the dale and closer to civilisation than other falls, it has earned a greater reputation than any of the other great waterfalls of Yorkshire.

He takes us back to the time of Henry VIII when the writer John Leland toured the country for what was a precursor to modern travel guides. Morris criticised Leland for ignoring High Force and Hardraw Scar in favour of Aysgarth Falls which Leland described as “Aiskar Bridge … where the Ure Ryvver faullethe very depe betwixt scarry rokks”.

I do not know whether all this old information is stored within my computer but without those old books, it might have been difficult to trace.