For many of the superstitions which still cling to him the Lancashire
man of the present day is indebted to his Celtic and Scandinavian
ancestors. From them the Horse and Worm stories, and the Giant lore of
the northern and southern mountains and fells, have come down, while
the relationship of the 'Jinny Greenteeth,' the presiding nymph of the
ponds and streams, with allusions to whom the Lancastrian mother
strives to deter her little ones from venturing near the pits and
brooks; to the water-spirits of the Gothic mythology, is too evident
to admit of any doubt. The source of the 'Gabriel Ratchets,' the
hell-hounds whose fear-inspiring yelps still are heard by the
benighted peasant, who finds in the dread sound a warning of the
approach of the angel of death; in the Norse Aasgaardsveia, the souls
condemned to ride about the world until doomsday, and who gallop
through the midnight storm with shrieks and cries which ring over the
lonely moors; or in that other troop of souls of the brave ones who
had died in battle, being led by the storm-god Woden to Walhalla, also
is undeniable.
Striking, however, as are the points of similitude between some of the
Lancastrian traditions and those of the north of Europe, others seem
to be peculiar to the county, and that these are of a darker and
gloomier cast than are the superstitions of districts less wild and
mountainous, and away from the weird influence of the sea, with its
winter thunderings suggestive of hidden and awful power, may in a
great measure be correctly attributed to the nature of the scenery.
It is easy to understand how the unlettered peasant would people with
beings of another world either the bleak fells, the deep and gloomy
gorges, the wild cloughs, the desolate moorland wastes two or three
thousand feet above the level of the sea, of the eastern portion of
the county; or the salt marshes where the breeze-bent and
mysterious-looking trees waved their spectral boughs in the wind; the
dark pools fringed with reeds, amid which the 'Peg-o'-Lantron'
flickered and danced, and over which came the hollow cry of the
bittern and the child-like plaint of the plover; and the dreary glens,
dark lakes, and long stretches of sand of the north and west.
To him the forest, with its solemn Rembrandtesque gloom,
Where Druids erst heard victims groan,
the lonely fir-crowned pikes, and the mist-shrouded mountains, would
seem fitting homes for the dread shapes whose spite ended itself in
the misfortunes and misery of humanity. Pregnant with mystery to such
a mind would be the huge fells, with their shifting 'neetcaps' of
cloud, the towering bluffs, the swampy moors, and trackless morasses,
across which the setting sun cast floods of blood-red light; and
irresistible would be the influence of such scenery upon the lonely
labourer who would go about his daily tasks with a feeling that he was
surrounded by the supernatural.
And wild as are many parts of the county to-day, it is difficult to
conceive its condition a century or two ago, when much of the land
was not only uncultivated, but was, for at least a portion of the
year, covered by sheets of water, the highways being little more than
bridle roads, or, if wider than usual, very sloughs of despond, the
carts in several of the rural districts being laid aside in winter as
utterly useless, and grain and other commodities, even in summer time,
being conveyed from place to place on the backs of long strings of
pack-horses.
Living in lonely houses and cottages shut out from civilisation by the
difficulties of communication, and hemmed in by floating mists and by
much that was awe-inspiring, with in winter additional barriers of
storm, snow and flood, it is easy to imagine how in the fancy of the
yeoman, shepherd, farmer, or solitary lime burner, as 'th' edge o'
dark' threw its weird glamour over the scene, boggarts and phantoms
would begin to creep about to the music of the unearthly voices heard
in every sough and sigh of the wandering wind as it wailed around the
isolated dwellings.
In everything weird they found a message from the unknown realms of
death. The noise of the swollen waters of the Ribble or the Lune, or
the many smaller streams hurrying down to the sea, was to them the
voice of the Water Spirit calling for its victim, and the howling of
their dogs bade the sick prepare to meet 'the shadow with the keys.'
All around them were invisible beings harmful or mischievous, and to
them they traced much of the misfortune which followed the stern
working of nature's laws.
The superstitions which date from, as well as the actual annals of the
Witch Mania in Lancashire, in some slight degree confirm this theory,
for whereas in the flat and more thickly-populated districts the hag
contented herself with stealing milk from her neighbour's cows,
spoiling their bakings, and other practical jokes of a comparatively
harmless kind, in the wilder localities--the region of pathless moors
and mist-encircled mountains--the witch ever was raising terrible
storms, bringing down the thunder, killing the cattle, dealing out
plagues and pestilence at will, wreaking evil of every conceivable
kind upon man and beast, and, hot from her sabbath of devil-worship,
even casting the sombre shadows and dread darkness of death over the
households of those who had fallen under the ban of her hate.
Lancashire has, however, an extensive ghost lore to which this theory
has no reference, consisting as it does of stories of haunted houses
and churchyards, indelible blood-stains, and all the paraphernalia of
the
Shapes that walk
At dead of night, and clank their chains and wave
The torch of hell around the murderer's bed.
The sketch in this volume, 'Mother and Child,' for the skeleton of
which tradition I am indebted to the late Mr. J. Stanyan Bigg, may be
considered a fair specimen of these stories. In most cases these
legends are not simply the vain creations of ignorance and darkness,
although they fade before the light of knowledge like mists before the
sun, for under many of them may be found a moral and a warning, or a
testimony to the beauty of goodness, hidden it is true beneath the
covering of a rude fable, just as inscriptions rest concealed below
the moss of graveyards. The well-known legend of the Boggart of
Townley Hall, with its warning cry of 'Lay out, lay out!' and its
demand for a victim every seventh year, is a striking example of
traditions of this class--emphatic protests against wrong, uttered in
the form of a nerve-affecting fable. In more than one of the stories
of this kind to which I have listened, the ghost of the victim has
re-visited 'the pale glimpses of the moon,' and made night so hideous
to the wrong-doer, that, in despair and remorse, he has put an end to
himself; and trivial as these things may seem to Mr. Gradgrind and his
school, they have, like other and nobler parables, influenced minds
impervious to dry fact.
To the devil lore of the county, however, the theory certainly will
apply, for surely it is in a gloomy gorge, through which forked
lightnings flash and chase each other, and the thunder rolls and
reverberates, or on a dark and lonesome moor, rather than upon the
shady side of Pall Mall, one would expect to meet the Evil One.
Yet, undoubtedly, other causes contributed to enrich the store of
tales of fiends with which the county abounds.
In Lancashire many of the old customs, even such as the riding of the
wooden Christ on Palm Sunday, continued to be kept up at a later
period than was the case in other parts of England; and,
notwithstanding the prohibitory edicts of the commissioners appointed
by Queen Elizabeth, Miracle Plays and Moralities doubtless were
performed there even during the early part of the reign of James I.,
for the Reformation, rapidly as its principles took root and spread in
other parts of the country, did not make rapid headway in Lancashire,
where great numbers of the people remained true to the faith of their
forefathers. In fact, in many parishes, long after the Church of
England had been by law established, Catholic priests continued to be
the only officiating ministers. Probably the people loved their church
not only on account of its doctrines, of which it may be presumed most
of them knew but little, and of its impressive ceremonies, but also
because of its recognition of the holy days and fair days, wakes, and
games it was powerless to suppress; and perhaps of all the amusements
thus winked at or even patronised by the church, that of dramatic
representations, rude and grotesque as they undoubtedly were, was the
most important. In many places the members of the various guilds and
brotherhoods were the performers, but in the majority of cases the
entertainments were given by the priests and other ecclesiastical
functionaries.
What part the Devil played in these amusements is well known to the
antiquary, the old accounts containing particulars of the expenditure
upon not only hair for the Evil One's wig, but also for canvas, of
which to construct black shirts for the Satanic tag-rag, or, as the
old scribes plainly put it, 'for the damned.' It is evident from the
old records that Satan left the hands of his dresser an object
compared with which the most hideous jack-in-the-box of the modern toy
shop would be a vision of loveliness; and, as his chief occupations
were those of roaring and yelling, and of suffering all sorts of
indignities at the hands of the Vice, as does the pantaloon at the
hands of the clown in a pantomime of to-day, it is easy to see that
his _role_ was not a very dignified one. Everywhere the stage devil
was simply the stage fool. Even in France, where the drama ever has
been submitted to precise rules, 'there was,' as Albert Reville has
remarked (_Histoire du Diable, ses origines, sa grandeur et sa
decadence._ Strasbourg: 1870), 'a class of popular pieces called
devilries (_diableries_), gross and often obscene masquerades, in
which at least four devils took part.... In Germany also the devil
was diverting on the stage. There exists an old Saxon Mystery of the
Passion, in which Satan repeats, like a mocking echo, the last words
of Judas who hangs himself; and when, in accordance with the sacred
tradition, the traitor's bowels fall asunder, the Evil One gathers
them into a basket, and, as he carries them away, sings a
little melody appropriate to the occasion.' Undoubtedly these
misrepresentations of the apostate angel helped to familiarise the
popular mind with the idea of a personal devil going about veritably
seeking whom he might devour; and although, when with the crowd in the
presence of the Thespian ecclesiastics, people might feel quite at
home with, and really enjoy, the company of the Evil One, away again
on the dreary moor, or in the lonely hillside cottage, with the night
wind howling at the door, fear would resume its wonted supremacy, and
the feeling would be deepened and intensified by the memory of the
horrid appearance of the stage Satan.
It is possible that in a great measure we owe to these performances
the somewhat monotonous frequency with which, in the purely local
Lancashire devil stories, the Evil One, who generally in the most
stupid manner permits himself to be overreached, comes oft second
best, for doubtless many of the traditions were moulded in accordance
with the lot of Satan in the miracle plays, as, in their turn, these
were, although perhaps indirectly, based upon the teachings of the
church, and that, in its turn, upon the writings of the Fathers, some
of whom, and notably Origen, did not hesitate to speak of the
Redemption even as due in no small degree to Satanic stupidity, a view
so lastingly predominant in the Church that as Reville has said, 'la
poesie ecclesiastique, la predication populaire, des enseignements
pontificaux meme le repandirent, le dramatiserent, le consacrerent
partout.'
An interesting chapter in the history of religious beliefs might be
written upon the views of the early Fathers with reference to Satan
and his legion, and the student is not inclined to be quite so severe
upon the superstitions of the unlettered peasant when he finds Jerome
recording it as the opinion of all the doctors in the church, that the
air between heaven and earth is filled with Evil Spirits, and
Augustine and others stating that the devils had fallen there from a
higher and purer region of the air. The early Christian Church too had
its order of _Exorcists_, who had care of those possessed by Evil
Spirits, the _energumeni_, and the Bishops, departing from the
original idea that laymen had the power of exorcism, ordained men to
the office and called upon them to exercise their functions even
before the rite of baptism, to deliver the candidates 'from the
dominion of the power of darkness.'
Of the lighter superstitions in Lancashire, that of belief in fairies
appears to be almost extinct, and it is to be lamented that forty
years ago folk lore was considered of so little importance, for the
slight and vague references in a rare little 'History of Blackpool,'
by the Rev. W. Thornber, upon two of which the sketches entitled 'The
Silver Token,' and 'The Fairy's Spade' are founded, show that the task
of gathering a goodly store of such vestiges of ancient faiths would
at the time when that volume was written have been a comparatively
easy one. To-day, however, the case is different. Even my friend, the
late Mr. John Higson, of Lees, to whose kindness I owe the tradition
upon which the story of 'The King of the Fairies' is based, and whose
labours in out-of-the-way paths dear to antiquaries were for some
years as untiring as successful and praiseworthy, was not able to
gather much bearing upon the fairy mythology of the Lancashire people.
Most of the fairy and folk stories it was my good fortune to hear in
the county and moorland districts were of a conventional kind, lubber
fiends, death warnings, fairy ointment, and fairy money being as
plentiful as diamonds in Eastern tales, and for that reason it was not
thought necessary to reproduce them in this volume.
The darker forms of superstition, like lower organisms, are more
tenacious of life, and in many a retired nook of Lancashire there
still may be found small congregations of believers in all the mystic
lore of devildom and witchcraft. Readers of Mr. Edwin Waugh's
exquisite sketches of north country life will at once call to mind, in
the 'Grave of the Griselhurst Boggart,' an illustration of that dim
fear of the supernatural which is yet so all-powerful, while the
valuable collection of Folk Lore from the pens of the late Mr.
Wilkinson and Mr. John Harland is full of testimony to the vitality of
many of these offshoots from old-world creeds.