Google Book : Valley of the Yore

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=knRJAAAAMAAJ&dq=valleye+yore&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=i7NKlFoIY0&sig=y9Bv_gvT2ayLQJA7fkuOsf89saQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result

Transcripts talking about Yore River name :

"In this district a variety of scenery exists, unsurpassed in beauty by any in England. Mountains, clothed at their summits with purple heather interspersed with huge crags, and at their bases with luxuriant herbage, bound the view on either hand. Down the valley's centre flows the winding Yore, one of the most serpentine rivers our island boasts ; now boiling and foaming in a narrow channel over sheets of limestone—now forming cascades only equalled by the cataracts of the Nile—and anon spreading out into a broad smooth stream, as calm and placid as a lowland lake. On the banks lie rich pastures, occasionly relieved at the eastern extremity of the valley by cornfields. Other streams, mere mountain torrents, increase the waters of the Yore during their course; and below Ulshaw, in the lands of East Witton, the Cover, which gives name to an adjacent dale, becomes united with them.

The briefest, but perhaps the best historian of Wensleydale, Maude, after speaking of the Yore being differently named Ure, Eure, and Jore—losing its title below Borough- bridge, where it receives the insignificant Ouse—and when afterwards augmented by the Derwent becoming the mighty Humber—justly says of its changed appellation, that it" is a circumstance that provokes the poet's ire and exclamation. At what period this reform took place, we have not been able to determine; but there is a strong presumption that the river which now washes the walls of York, was anciently called Eure or Yore, whence the city seems to have derived its name;" as also did the county.

"Long before, Leland had been puzzled as to where the Isis and the Ure mingled their waters. In reality, the Yore was the Roman Tsis.

Michael Drayton in his " Polyolbion" makes " the proud North Riding" call Yore her "sovereign flood," and reproachfully speak of the waters of the West, because they only unite with hers when she no longer needs them, adding of the northern streams—

-for my greater grace

These floods of whieh I speak, I now intend to trace
From their first springing founts, beginning with the Your,
From Morvil's mighty foot which rising with the power
That Bant from Sea-mere brings, her somewhat more doth fill,
Near Bishops-dale at hand, when Cover, a clear rill,
Next cometh into Your, whereas that lusty chase,
For her loved Cover's sake, doth lovingly embrace
Your as she yields along, amongst the parks and groves,
In Middleham's amorous eye, as wand'ringly she rovos."

No epithet could possibly be selected more applicable to the Yore than " wandering,."(2)


"I have invariably adopted, "Yore," as the most correct orthography, tut it is proper to observe, that much controversy has arisen at different periods, on this subject. In October, 1847, a writer in the " Leeds Mercury," signing himself " Clerlcus," maintained that the Romaus named the river " Urus," as being descriptive of the stream's rapidity, especially when swollen from the west; the Latin word " Urus" signifying a beast like a bull, remarkable for tts swiftness, and therefore applicable to such a river. He proceeds—" this word has been written in three different forms: " Urus," the Romau name; the Saxon form of this would be written with the initial " J," rather from the sound than from the orthography. The latter form is seen in " Jervaulx," and still more evidently in the inscriptions on tombs in that Abbey, as " Jorevallis." The termination " vallis" has been changed into the Norman form "vaulx," or "vaux." When again,we have the third form "Yore," as in "York," we have merely another mode of spelling "Jore," for the German pronunciation of "Jore" would be " Yore." Whan, therefore, the name " Ure" is given to the river, it is the Roman name ; and when it is called " Yore," it is actually the more modern manner of spelling the Saxon form of the first name. Roman, "Urns;" Saxon, "Jore;" modern, " Yore." W. Hylton Longstaffe, Esq., says he adopts " Eure" for many reasons. Ure is inelegant, and does not show how it was that (by a similar conversion to that which so frequently converted the family name of Eure into Ever, both in spelling and pronunciation) this noble river gave the name to Eboracum, Everwik or York, as well as to Isurium or Aldborough. Yore is neither ancient nor modern, it wants the e of the ancient varieties, and is not used by the Tudor topographers."