various other trifles, are omens of evil to thousands even at this day.
Should one of your children fall sick when on a visit to a friend’s
house, it is held to be sure to entail bad luck on that family for the
rest of the year, if you stay over New Year’s Day. Persons have been
known to travel sixty miles with a sick child, rather than run the
risk. A flake of soot on the bars of the grate is said to indicate the
approach of a stranger; a bright spark on the wick of a candle, or a
long piece of stalk in the tea-cup, betokens a similar event. When the
fire burns briskly some lover smirks or is good-humoured. A cinder
thrown out of the fire by a jet of gas from burning coals is looked
upon as a coffin if its hollow be long; as a purse of gold if the
cavity be round. Crickets in houses are said to indicate good fortune,
but should they forsake the chimney corner, it is a sure sign of coming
misfortune.
By this time the mixture of races in Lancashire is so complete that it
is not easy to gather at first hand fresh data as to indigenous
superstitions. This is more especially the case in the populous
districts, where immigrants from every part of the United Kingdom and
from abroad have been attracted by the great industries of the County
Palatine. These influxes have necessarily had their influence upon the
population and its beliefs. There is the danger of mistaking for a
genuine product of the Lancashire soil what is merely an exotic. This
danger exists as to oral tradition, but is still greater with regard to
what has become literature. It will be well to illustrate this by a
concrete example. In the pleasant volume of “Poems and Songs” by Thomas
Newbigging there is a poem entitled “The Story of Old Gamul,” narrating
as a Rossendale tradition one of those strange legends which are links
in the history of fiction. According to Mr. Newbigging’s story, old
Gamul had the enmity of but one man—the keeper, who determined to work
his destruction. This villain caused a pit to be dug, and cunningly
covered over with turf and branches. Thinking that the victim is
already there, the keeper goes to the place and falls into it himself.
Gamul soon after passes, and hearing a cry for help, lets down ropes,
and pulls up, first a lion, then a serpent, then an ape, and last of
all his enemy. The keeper invites Gamul to his house, and when he goes
there, knocks him down with a club, and casts him forth as dead. Gamul,
however, recovers, and when next he goes to the wood, he is aided in
his labour by the ape, the serpent brings him “the adder’s magic
stone,” and the lion shows him a cave full of treasure.
“That lucky night went Gamul home,
The richest wight in Christendom.”
The keeper finally hangs himself for vexation, and the old woodman
becomes Sir Gamul.
“Nor e’er were turned the homeless poor
Unfriended from the open door.”
A work by a German named Massenius was published at Cologne in 1657. It
was entitled “Palæstra Dramatica,” and contained, amongst other curious
narratives, one of a certain Signor Vitalis, who fell into a pit in
which a lion, a monkey, and a serpent had also fallen. They were all
rescued by an honest countryman, Massaccio, to whom Vitalis promised a
marriage-dower and his palace. Once safe, he denies all knowledge of
his deliverer. The beasts prove more grateful, but a gem which is given
to the peasant by the serpent leads to a suspicion that he has stolen
it. At the trial Vitalis again denies him, but is overwhelmed with
confusion when the beasts enter the court and force from him an
involuntary confession. A translation of this story appeared in
_Blackwood’s Magazine_ for March, 1835. The fable was, however, not
invented by Massenius, for in a slightly different form it occurs in
the “Gesta Romanorum,” that famous collection of mediæval stories. It
also attracted the notice of Gower, and is told in the “Confessio
Amantis,” in this the lion is omitted. Matthew Paris gives it as an
apologue told by Richard of the Lion Heart. Finally it is found in that
storehouse of Eastern legend, the _Calilah u Dimnah_. This was
translated by Doni into Italian, and an English rendering of his
version appeared in 1570. Massenius may have obtained the story either
from the “Gesta,” or from this book of Doni. It is very probable that
many other versions exist. But does Mr. Newbigging’s poem really
represent a Lancashire tradition? To solve this doubt the readiest way
was to put the question to him. The following is his reply:—“With some
differences my ‘reverend Grannie’ used to relate this story to amuse my
childhood. I cannot help smiling when I look back and remember the time
when, if some casualty, such as an unusually wet night, or a ‘hawket
heel,’ or any of the thousand and one ills attendant on boyhood, kept
me chained to the fireside, my invariable petition was, ‘Grannie! gie’s
auld Guy!’ (she gave the hero’s name as Guy, not Gamul, as I have given
it) and forthwith ‘Auld Guy’ was related for the fiftieth time by the
same patient lips, and to the same eager listener. I had never been
able, though I had looked long and carefully, to find anything like it
in print. My good grandam (who was a rare old Scotch woman, full of
old-world lore) heard the story from her father, and she believed that
he had read it in some old book.”
Doubtless this ancestor of Mr. Newbigging’s read the story in one of
the many editions of the “Gesta Romanorum,” which was for centuries a
favourite story-book. The name of Guido clearly indicates the source.
It is a striking instance of the passage of literature into legend. In
fifty years from now Mr. Newbigging’s poem would be considered no light
proof of the existence of a Lancashire variant of the story; yet, as we
have just learned, it has no connection with Rossendale, but came from
Scotland, and even then was a book tale, and not a genuine legend. This
instance will not have been cited in vain if it warns any too
enthusiastic student “folk-lorist” of the pitfalls that beset his path.
We can only indicate the varied interest of Lancashire folk-lore by two
or three examples. Let us take a phrase which may still be heard
occasionally, “Aw’m coming too, like th’ Clegg Ho’ Boggart.” This is an
allusion to a story told of more than one old house in the county. The
inmates are perplexed and worried by the exploits of a tricksy spirit
that upsets the furniture, makes strange noises, and generally renders
everyone uncomfortable. They decide to remove, but when the furniture
is on the cart, the “boggart” is heard to exclaim, “I’m going too,”
whereupon they decide to remain and endure as best they may the
unwelcome companionship of their household spirit. Now this story of
the “flitting boggart” is a widespread one. When Professor Worsaae was
in England, he surprised a Lancashire friend by narrating a
Scandinavian legend which is practically identical. “_See i dag flitter
vi_,” were the words of the Danish brownie. The version given by Mr.
Roby appears to be merely a literary appropriation of a Yorkshire
story, but the widespread character of the tale is undoubted. Tennyson
is familiar with it, and has thus put it into verse:—
“... his house, for so they say,
Was haunted with a jolly ghost, that shook
The curtains, whined in lobbies, tapt at doors,
And rummaged like a rat: no servant stay’d:
The farmer vext packs up his beds and chairs,
And all his household stuff; and with his boy
Betwixt his knees, his wife upon the tilt,
Sets out, and meets a friend who hails him, ‘What!
You’re flitting!’ ‘Yes, we’re flitting,’ says the ghost
(For they had pack’d the thing among the beds).
‘Oh well,’ says he, ‘you flitting with us too,—
Jack, turn the horses’ heads, and home again.’”
The late Mr. Charles Hardwick thought that the flitting boggart was of
Scandinavian origin, and the evidence seemed strong enough, but there
is evidence that he is known in Italy. In that charming book by Janet
Ross, “The Land of Manfred,” there is this interesting bit of
folk-lore:—“I observed that some of the flock the old shepherd was
guarding looked tired and hung their heads wearily. I asked whether
they were ill, and he answered, ‘No; but I must get rid of them,
because the Laùro has taken an antipathy to them.’ On further inquiry,
he told me that the Laùro was a little man, only thirty centimetres
high, always dressed in velvet, and wearing a Calabrese hat with a
feather stuck into it. The Laùro is most capricious: to some who ask
him for money he gives a sackful of broken potsherds; to others who ask
for sand he gives old coins. He took a particular dislike to a cousin
of the old shepherd’s, sitting on her chest at night and giving her
terrible dreams. At last she was so worried by the Laùro that she
determined to leave her house. All the household goods and chattels
were on the cart; nothing was left but an old broom, and when the
goodwife went to fetch it the Laùro suddenly appeared, saying, ‘I’ll
take that; let us be off to the new house.’ His antipathies or likings
are unaccountable; he will steal the corn from one horse or mule to
give it to another, twist up their manes and tails in a fantastic way,
or shave them in queer patterns. The Laùro would not allow the sheep I
had asked about to rest at night, and any animal he hated had to be
sold.”
It may, of course, be said that the flitting boggart went to Taranto
with Guiscard’s Normans in the eleventh century, but it is equally
probable that the Lancashire weaver and the Italian peasant have each
inherited their belief from a common and an earlier source.
The devil occupies a conspicuous place in folk-lore, but he is not the
fallen angel, dark, gloomy, and majestic whom Milton drew, nor is he
the accomplished Mephistophiles, the spirit that denies, whom Goethe
has painted. The devil of folk-lore is malignant but stupid, and
oftener the dupe of humanity than the slayer of souls. This is evident
in the story of the devil’s task of making a rope of sand already
named, and is equally clear in the story of the tailor who made a wager
with the devil that he would beat him at a sewing match. He succeeded
by giving the Evil One a needle with a thread in it so long that for
every stitch the demon had to fly all round the room, whilst the
tailor’s was only of the normal length. The devil of folk-lore is more
like Pan and the satyrs, than he is like the Adversary who tempted Job.
But _de mortuis nil nisi honum_, and _if_—there is much virtue in an
_if_—if the devil is drowned let him rest in peace.
When Archbishop Whately was a Fellow of Oriel, he told this story in
the Common Room:—“A cobbler in Somersetshire dreamt that a person told
him that if he would go to London Bridge he would meet with something
to his advantage. He dreamt the same the next night, and again the
night after. He then determined to go to London Bridge, and walked
thither accordingly. When arrived there, he walked about the whole of
the first day without anything occurring; the next day was passed in a
similar manner. He resumed his place the third day, and walked about
till evening, when, giving it up as hopeless, he determined to leave
London and return home. At this moment a stranger came up and said to
him, ‘I have seen you for the last three days walking up and down this
bridge; may I ask if you are waiting for anyone?’ The answer was ‘No!’
‘Then what is your object in staying here?’ The cobbler then frankly
told his reason for being there, and the dream that had visited him
three successive nights. The stranger then advised him to go home again
to his work, and no more pay any attention to dreams. ‘I myself,’ he
said, ‘had about six months ago a dream. I dreamed three nights
together that, if I would go into Somersetshire, in an orchard, under
an apple-tree, I should find a pot of gold; but I paid no attention to
my dream, and have remained quietly at my business.’ It immediately
occurred to the cobbler that the stranger described his own orchard and
his own apple-tree. He immediately returned home, dug under the
apple-tree, and found a pot of gold. After this increase of fortune he
was enabled to send his son to school, where the boy learnt Latin. When
he came home for the holidays, he one day examined the pot which had
contained the gold, on which was some writing. He said, ‘Father, I can
show you that what I have learnt at school is of some use.’ He then
translated the Latin inscription on the pot thus, ‘Look under, and you
will find better.’ They did look under, and a larger quantity of gold
was found.” This story was as current in Lancashire as in
Somersetshire. At Swaffham, in Norfolk, there is a figure of a chapman
and his dog. This pedlar popular tradition describes as founding the
church out of a treasure found in the manner already described. The
story is current also in Cornwall and in Yorkshire. It is narrated as a
matter of fact in the history of “Dost in Holland.” But it is found in
the Eastern as well as in the Western world. This will be seen from
this story which is given in E. W. Lane’s “Arabian Tales and
Anecdotes”:—“It is related that a man of Baghdád was possessed of ample
riches and great wealth; but his wealth passed away and his state
changed, and he became utterly destitute, and could not obtain his
sustenance save by laborious exertion. And he slept one night,
overwhelmed and oppressed, and saw in his sleep a person who said to
him, ‘Verily thy fortune is in Cairo; therefore seek it and repair to
it.’ So he journeyed to Cairo; and when he arrived there, the evening
overtook him, and he slept in a mosque. Now there was, adjacent to the
mosque, a house; and as God (whose name be exalted!) had decreed, a
party of robbers entered the mosque, and thence passed to that house;
and the people of the house, awaking at the disturbance occasioned by
the robbers, raised cries; whereupon the Wálee[13] came to their aid
with his followers, and the robbers fled. The Wálee then entered the
mosque, and found the man of Baghdád sleeping there: so he laid hold
upon him, and inflicted upon him a painful beating with mikra’ahst (the
thick end of a palm stick used for beating), until he was at the point
of death, and imprisoned him; and he remained three days in the prison;
after which, the Wálee caused him to be brought, and said to him, ‘From
what country art thou?’ He answered, ‘From Baghdád.’—‘And what affair,’
said the Wálee, ‘was the cause of thy coming to Cairo?’ He answered, ‘I
saw in my sleep a person who said to me, ‘Verily thy fortune is in
Cairo: therefore repair to it.’ And when I came to Cairo, I found the
fortune of which he told me to be those blows of the palm stick that I
have received from thee.’—And upon this the Wálee laughed so that his
grinders appeared, and said to him, ‘O thou son of little sense, _I_
saw three times in my sleep a person who said to me, ‘Verily a house in
Baghdád, in such a district, and of such a description, hath in its
court a garden, at the lower end of which is a fountain, wherein is
wealth of great amount: therefore repair to it and take it. But I went
not: and thou, through the smallness of thy sense, hast journeyed from
city to city on account of a thing thou hast seen in sleep, when it was
only an effect of confused dreams.’—Then he gave him some money, and
said to him, ‘Help thyself with this to return to thy city.’ So he took
it and returned to Baghdád. Now the house which the Wálee had
described, in Baghdád, was the house of that man; therefore when he
arrived at his abode, he dug beneath the fountain, and beheld abundant
wealth. Thus God enriched and sustained him; and this was a wonderful
coincidence.” This story is found in the “Masnavi,” written by
Jaláuddin, who died about A.D. 1260.
It is not always easy or even possible to trace the precise pedigree of
a popular superstition or custom, but many of them can be identified as
fragments of bygone religious and mythological systems. When an old
faith is supplanted by a new, the missionaries, as a matter of tact,
will leave untouched customs that are harmless, and will turn to better
uses those that can safely be modified or appropriated. Thus much of
folk-lore is fossil theology, and much of it is fossil science. The
wonderful “cures,” and sometimes disgusting remedies that linger in use
among the ignorant, were the recognised methods of the healing art a
few generations ago. Folk-lore, in some respect, corresponds to that
wonderful faculty of “make-believe” possessed by all children, and is
an inheritance from the mental childhood of the race. The physical
evils, the mental and moral discordances of life, are to primitive man
not the result of the operation of natural law, but abnormal phenomena,
the result of external non-human agencies. Disease is not regarded as
the result of infractions of hygienic rules, but as the possession of
the sufferer by evil spirits. When man looked around for an explanation
of the facts of nature, he found it by peopling the world with unseen
beings, who guarded the trees and the wells; who let loose the storm
and chained up the winds; who had the good and the evil gifts of human
nature; who helped and hindered; who cheated and were cheated. These
imaginary beings are sometimes merely the distortion and
personification of words. It is not every great language that has
attained to the dignity of a neuter gender, though our own possesses
one. Personification is a common enough rhetorical device. It is
possible, then, that if we could accurately analyse the notions of a
modern Lancashire mind, we should find in addition to the
deliberately-held faith of conviction fragments of the mythologies of
Greece and Rome and Scandinavia and India.
In regard to popular traditions and the household stories, so dear to
children, they have come to us by many routes, but the line has always
been from East to West. The Buddhist missionaries, going forth to
preach the faith of Gautama, made abundant use of fables and apologues
to enforce their lessons. The traders, as their caravans passed from
land to land, beguiled the tedium of the journey with such narratives.
The mediæval preachers freely employed them in their discourses to the
unlearned people. If such a phrase be permitted, these tales formed the
unwritten popular literature of the Middle Ages. The stories passed
from mouth to mouth, and were gradually associated with the place and
people best known to the narrator. In this way legends become localised.
The tendency of modern thought is to simplification. The African
savage, bowing to his fetish, has probably a more complex theory of
life than the Oxford professor, and the study of folk-lore shows how
penetrating was the influence of custom and superstition upon the life
of the people. It followed man from the cradle to the grave. There were
ceremonies to be observed at birth, at marriage, at death; at every
stage of the journey of life. It gave to clouds and birds omens that
decided human fate. It peopled the meadows with fairies, and the
mountains with witches; and made the woods and waters alive with
spirits, sometimes friendly, but often malignant. It lighted the
Beltane fires at Midsummer and the Yule-log at Christmas. The Calendar
of the Year and the Calendar of Man’s Life alike registered its
decrees. Whatever happened, good or bad, was referred alike to the
supernatural powers, who for bane or blessing were continually
intervening in the most trivial details of every home. Fairies were
sometimes friends and sometimes foes, but witches and warlocks were
entirely malicious. The dead rested not in their graves, but returned
to terrify the living. The old gods, dethroned from their eminence,
remained as demons to exercise a real and usually an evil power. Viewed
in this light the decay of folk-lore may be regarded as an advantage.
We may regret the nymphs and dryads, and even the “lubber fiend,” but
with them vanish the whole tribe of “witches and warlocks and things
that cried ‘Boh’ in the night.” We will not desire to revive or retain
the popular superstitions and customs of bygone days, but as they pass
away let us examine them with careful and patient attention, and see
what they have to tell us of the past history of the race and the
psychology of primitive man. Studied in this spirit we may sometimes
learn as much from the observation of a child’s game as from the
speculations of a philosopher.
Footnote 13:
Chief magistrate of the police.
Manchester Grammar School Mill.
In 1883 the Manchester School Mill was acquired by the Lancashire and
Yorkshire Railway Company, in order to make a new road from Long
Millgate to Victoria Station. With the destruction of the School Mill
there passed away a curious relic of ancient custom, and a link that
connected modern Manchester with the quaint old town that stood by Irk
and Irwell in the fourteenth century. In the very home of Free Trade
there existed a monopoly at least six centuries old. The School Mill
claimed the right to grind all the malt that is brewed within the
limits of the old town of Manchester. This monopoly is but a fragment
of its former privileges, which were abolished as inimical to the
general good more than a century ago.
In Roman times as a prime requisite a water mill, it is said, was
erected upon the rocky channel of the Medlock below the station and
town, on a site which in later times was called Knot Mill. If this be
correct, the situation must have been found inconvenient, for the town
mill next heard of was situated on the Irk. The right of compelling
their vassals to grind at the “lord’s mill,” and to pay such tolls as
he might fix, was a valuable privilege to the lord of the manor of a
busy and thriving place. When Randle, Earl of Chester, granted the
first charter to Salford in 1230, he said in it:—“No burgess ought to
bake bread to be sold save at my oven by reasonable custom. If I shall
have a mill there the burgesses shall grind at my mill to the twentieth
measure, and if I shall not have a mill there they may grind where they
will.” When Thomas Grelle, Baron of Manchester, in 1301, granted the
charter, by which for many succeeding centuries Manchester was
governed, he was careful to remind his burgesses that they should have
their corn ground at his mill and their bread baked at his oven,
“paying to the aforesaid mill and aforesaid oven the customs as they
ought and are wont to do.”