Part 1
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GOBLIN TALES OF LANCASHIRE.
BY JAMES BOWKER, F.R.G.S.I.
AUTHOR OF 'PHOEBE CAREW, A NORTH COAST STORY,' 'NAT HOLT'S FORTUNE,' ETC.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY THE LATE CHARLES GLIDDON._
'Of Faery-land yet if he more enquire, By certain signes here sett in sondrie place, He may itt fynd.'
SPENSER
'La veuve du même Plogojovits déclara que son mari depuis sa mort lui était venu demander des souliers.'
CALMET, _Traité sur les Apparitions_, 1751.
London
W. SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. PATERNOSTER ROW
TO
THE MOST NOBLE THE MARQUIS OF HARTINGTON, P.C., D.C.L. THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS DEDICATED IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MUCH KINDNESS.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION, I.--THE SKRIKER, II.--THE UNBIDDEN GUEST, III.--THE FAIRY'S SPADE, IV.--THE KING OF THE FAIRIES, V.--MOTHER AND CHILD, VI.--THE SPECTRAL CAT, VII.--THE CAPTURED FAIRIES, VIII.--THE PILLION LADY, IX.--THE FAIRY FUNERAL, X.--THE CHIVALROUS DEVIL, XI.--THE ENCHANTED FISHERMAN, XII.--THE SANDS OF COCKER, XIII.--THE SILVER TOKEN, XIV.--THE HEADLESS WOMAN, XV.--THE RESCUE OF MOONBEAM, XVI.--THE WHITE DOBBIE, XVII.--THE LITTLE MAN'S GIFT, XVIII.--SATAN'S SUPPER, XIX.--THE EARTHENWARE GOOSE, XX.--THE PHANTOM OF THE FELL, XXI.--ALLHALLOW'S NIGHT, XXII.--THE CHRISTMAS-EVE VIGIL, XXIII.--THE CRIER OF CLAIFE, XXIV.--THE DEMON OF THE OAK, XXV.--THE BLACK COCK, XXVI.--THE INVISIBLE BURDEN, APPENDIX.--COMPARATIVE NOTES,
INTRODUCTION.
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 _rôle_ 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 ecclésiastique, la prédication populaire, des enseignements pontificaux même le repandirent, le dramatisèrent, le consacrèrent 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.
GOBLIN TALES OF LANCASHIRE.
TH' SKRIKER (SHRIEKER).
On a fine night, about the middle of December, many years ago, a sturdy-looking young fellow left Chipping for his cottage, three or four miles away, upon the banks of the Hodder. The ground was covered with snow, which in many places had drifted into heaps, and the keen frost had made the road so slippery that the progress he made was but slow. Nature looked very beautiful, and the heart of the rustic even was touched by the sweet peacefulness of the scene. The noble old Parlick, and the sweeping Longridge, with its fir-crowned Thornley Height and Kemple End, stood out boldly against the clear sky, and the moon shed her soft silvery light into the long silent valley, stretching away until its virgin paleness mingled with the shadows and the darkness of the distant fells beyond Whitewell.
All was still, save when the sighing wind rustled gently through the frosted branches of the leafless trees by the roadside, and shook down upon the wayfarer a miniature shower of snow; for even the tiny stream, so full of mirth and music in the summer time, had been lulled to sleep by the genius of winter; and the cottagers, whose little houses, half-hidden by the rime, seemed hardly large enough for the dwellings of dwarfs, had been snugly sleeping for hours.
Adam was by no means a timid or nervous being, but there was a nameless something in the deathly silence which oppressed, if it did not actually frighten, him; and although he sang aloud a verse of the last song he had heard before he left the kitchen of the Patten Arms, his voice had lost its heartiness. He earnestly wished himself safely across the little bridge over the brook; but he was yet some distance from the stream when the faint chimes of midnight fell upon the air. Almost immediately after the last stroke of twelve had broken the silence a cloud passed over the face of the moon, and comparative darkness enveloped the scene; the wind, which before had been gentle and almost noiseless, began to howl amid the boughs and branches of the waving trees, and the frozen snow from the hedgerows was dashed against the wayfarer's face.
He had already begun to fancy that he could distinguish in the soughing of the wind and the creaking of the boughs unearthly cries and fiendish shouts of glee; but as he approached the dreaded stream his courage almost entirely failed him, and it required a great effort to keep from turning his back to it, and running away in the direction of the little village at the foot of Parlick. It struck him, however, that he had come a long distance; that if he did go back to the Patten Arms the company would be dispersed, and the inmates asleep, and, what was more effective than all, that if he could only cross the bridge he would be safe, the Greenies, Boggarts, and Feorin not having power over any one who had passed over the water. Influenced by this thought, yet with his knees trembling under him, he pushed forward with assumed boldness, and he had almost reached the bridge when he heard the noise of passing feet in the crunching snow, and became conscious of the presence of a ghastly thing he was unable to see. Suddenly a sepulchral howl brought him to a stop, and, with his heart throbbing loudly enough to be heard, he stood gazing fixedly into the darkness. There was nothing to be perceived, however, save the copings of the bridge, with their coverings of rime; and he might have stood there until daylight had not another cry, louder and even more unearthly and horrible than the preceding one, called him from his trance. No sooner had this second scream died away than, impelled by an irresistible impulse, he stepped forward in the direction whence the noise had come. At this moment the moon burst forth from behind the clouds which had for some time obscured her light, and her rays fell upon the road, with its half-hidden cart-tracks winding away into the dim distance; and in the very centre of the bridge he beheld a hideous figure with black shaggy hide, and huge eyes closely resembling orbs of fire.
Adam at once knew from the likeness the dread object bore to the figure he had heard described by those who had seen the Skriker, that the terrible thing before him was an Ambassador of Death.
Without any consciousness of what he was doing, and acting as though under the sway of a strange and irresistible mesmeric influence, he stepped towards the bridge; but no sooner did he stir than the frightful thing in front of him, with a motion that was not walking, but rather a sort of heavy gliding, moved also, slowly retreating, pausing when he paused, and always keeping its fiery eyes fixed upon his blanched face. Slowly he crossed the stream, but gradually his steps grew more and more rapid, until he broke into a run. Suddenly a faint knowledge of the horrible nature of his position dawned upon him. A little cottage stood by the roadside, and from one of its chamber-windows, so near to the ground as to be within his reach, a dim light shone, the room probably being occupied by a sick person, or by watchers of the dead. Influenced by a sudden feeling of companionship, Adam tried to cry out, but his tongue clave to his parched mouth, and ere he could mumble a few inarticulate sounds, scarcely audible to himself, the dwelling was left far behind, and a sensation of utter loneliness and helplessness again took possession of him.
He had thus traversed more than a mile of the road, in some parts of which, shaded by the high hedgerows and overhanging boughs, the only light seemed to him to be that from the terrible eyes, when suddenly he stumbled over a stone and fell. In a second, impressed by a fear that the ghastly object would seize him, he regained his feet, and, to his intense relief, the Skriker was no longer visible. With a sigh of pleasure he sat down upon a heap of broken stones, for his limbs, no longer forced into mechanical movement by the influence of the spectre's presence, refused to bear him further. Bitterly cold as was the night, the perspiration stood in beads upon his whitened face, and, with the recollection of the Skriker's terrible eyes and horrible body strong upon him, he shook and shivered, as though in a fit of the ague. A strong and burly man, in the very prime of life, he felt as weak as a girl, and, fearing that he was about to sink to the ground in a swoon, he took handfuls of the crisp snow and rubbed them upon his forehead. Under this sharp treatment he soon revived a little, and, after several unsuccessful efforts, he succeeded in regaining his feet, and resumed his lonely journey.
Starting at the least sough of the breeze, the faintest creak of a bending branch, or the fall of a piece of frozen rime from a bough, he slowly trudged along.