“Thirst House” must strike the reader as a singular name for a cave, which, to ordinary frequenters, appears to be remarkably devoid of water. There is, however, a small spring in the valley below the entrance; and according to the lore of the country-side, Hob charms its waters on Good Friday, so that whoso quenches his thirst thereat -- with proper faith of course-- will be cured of any ailment he may be suffering from. It is obvious that this is merely a popular explanation of the name, the spring being too insignificant and distant for the name to have originated from it. The reference to Hob points to the solution.
Mr Salt [...] reports that a farmer in the district, occasionally finding small, old-fashioned tobacco-pipes when ploughing his fields, explained their presence by the tradition that Deep Dale was “a noted place for the fairies in the olden times”; and to give point to his explanation, he related how a workman, in crossing the valley one early morning, caught one of them and put it into his bag and took it part way home; but as it shrieked so pitifully he let it go, whereupon it ran back to the valley!
Hob-Hurst was a capricious elf, who, when in a good humour, made everything on the farm, particularly in the dairy, go smooth and prosperous; but when irritated made the cows go dry, the milk turn sour, the crocks smash, and generally infuse a spirit of contrariness in everything. A charm used in this district against his trickiness is given in an early volume of the Reliquary; it ran thus:--
“Churn, butter, churn!
Peter stands at our gate
Waiting for a butter-cake!
Churn, butter, churn!”[...] The credit of the discovery of archaeological remains seems to be due to Mr. Millet, a young man of Buxton, who about ten years ago was attracted, in common with his school-fellow, to the cave, through a story of money hidden in it by an old miser who died suddenly.
From ‘Recent Cave Hunting in Derbyshire’ (part 2), in Reliquary April 1897.