Part 12

[C] Only since these notes were in type have I seen the excellent paper from the pen of Mr. Grant Allen (_Cornhill Magazine_, March 1881), on the Genesis of the Myth of the Fairies. See also the same charming writer's _Vignettes from Nature_, p. 206, and papers by B. Melle and F. A. Allen, in _Science Gossip_ for 1866, 'The Track of the Pigmies.'

11.

My friend, Mr. W. E. A. Axon, in his interesting _Black Knight of Ashton_, tells a story of a 'Race with the Devil,' the hero of which was one of a party of _pace-eggers_, who, waking up after a doze by a farm-house fire, beside which the party had been permitted to sleep on a wild night, and, feeling cold, had put on his Beelzebub dress, to the terror of another member of the company, who awoke afterwards, and seeing, as he supposed, the Devil seated airing himself by the fire, fled into the darkness and the storm, his equally terrified companions following him, and the no-less-frightened Beelzebub bringing up the rear.

The Mid and South Lancashire stories, as will at once be seen, do not resemble each other in any way, however; and I refer to Mr. Axon's legend for the sake of directing my readers' attention to a valuable note appended to it, in which Mr. Axon points out that there is a similar old Hindoo story of such a chase, which was translated from the Sanscrit into Chinese not later than the year 800.

It seems hardly probable that the Lancashire pace-egging story, so exquisitely narrated by my friend, could have had an Aryan origin, yet the resemblance is a striking and remarkable one.

12.

Many are the traditions of submerged bells told along the Lancashire coast. 'Here,' says the Rev. W. Thornber in the scarce _History of Blackpool_ (1844), 'or out at sea opposite this spot, once stood the cemetery of Kilgrimol, mentioned in the above-quoted chapter of the Priory of Lytham. Of this fact, tradition is not silent, and the rustic who dwells in the neighbourhood relates tales of fearful sights, and how many a benighted wanderer has been terrified with the sounds of bells pealing dismal chimes.' In Wales, too, the superstition is a common one. It is by no means improbable that there may be more in these faint whispers than would at first appear, and that underneath these dim traditions of churches swallowed by the sea there may rest a faint stratum of the old Scandinavian superstition that sweet singing and beautiful music could be heard by any who stood to listen on an Elf hill; for, although the idea of submerged cities may be found floating in the lore of all Celtic peoples, and in some places the submersion is a matter even of history,[D] in others, as at Kilgrimol, it is doubtful whether the sounds come from the sea or the earth. It is, therefore, more than likely that the traditions of submersion have received the addition of pealing bells from natural causes. There is an Indian superstition which in another way illustrates this theory. Manitobah Lake, in the Red River region, derives its name from a small island, upon which is heard, whenever the gales blow from the north, a sound resembling the pealing of distant church-bells, and which is caused by the waves beating on the shore at the foot of the cliffs and the rubbing of the fallen fragments against each other. This island the Ojibeways suppose to be the home of Manitobah, 'the speaking god,' and upon it they dare not land.

[D] _Vide_ Lyell's _Principles of Geology_, Chapter on _Encroachments of the Sea_, for many instances of submerged villages and churches along the English coast.

There is in Normandy a singular tradition of a submerged bell, dating back to the time of the English occupation, along with others of buried and hidden treasure. It is said that, as the English soldiers were abandoning the country, they destroyed the abbey of Corneville, and were taking away with them the principal bell, when the barge capsized. As they were trying to recover the prize, the French came upon them, and they were obliged to hurry away, leaving the bell behind. Since that time, whenever the bells of the churches in the district ring out their joyous peals upon solemn festival days, the submerged bell also can be heard joining in the carillon. (_Essai sur l'arrondissement de Pont-Audemer_.)

A story somewhat similar to this is told of a bell from St. David's, Pembrokeshire, carried off by Cromwellian troops whose vessel afterwards was wrecked in Ramsay Sound, from the moving waters of which the pealing can be heard when a storm is rising.

13.

For the sake of those who are not 'native and to the manner born,' Roger's story is not given in his vernacular, a mixture of the Mid-Lancashire and the Furness dialects, trying even to those who are acquainted with the expressive Doric of other parts of the County Palatine.

14.

Mr. Henderson, in his _Notes on the Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders_, states that Mr. Wilkie maintains that the _Digitalis purpurea_ was in high favour with the witches, who used to decorate their fingers with its largest bells; hence called Witches' Thimbles. Mr. Hartley Coleridge has more pleasing associations with this gay wild-flower. He writes of 'the fays

That sweetly nestle in the foxglove bells;'

and adds in a note, 'popular fancy has generally conceived a connection between the foxglove and the good people.' In Ireland, where it is called _lusmore_, or the great herb, and also Fairy Cup, the bending of its stalks is believed to denote the unseen presence of supernatural beings. The Shefro, or gregarious fairy, is represented as wearing the corona of the foxglove on his head, and no unbecoming head-dress either. In Wales, that the elves wear gloves of the bells of _Digitalis_ is a common fancy.

15.

This conventional circle seems to be universally common to such stories of summoning the Evil One. Even in China, as Mr. Dennys has stated, the ring is drawn round the summoner, and the incantation uttered, as in our own stories.

16.

In Lancashire, Old Nick (afterwards St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors) is considered the patron saint of the wind, just as in the Scandinavian mythology it is Odin, also termed Nick and Hold Neckar, who raises storms.

In Normandy, near Aigle, there is a superstition respecting a Mother _Nique_, doubtless, says Vaugeois, of Scandinavian origin.

17.

Instances of generous treatment of opponents on the part of the Evil One are by no means rare. Readers of Mr. Roby will remember that Satan gave a loophole of escape to Michael Waddington, the hero of 'Th' Dule upo' Dun' legend, by granting him an extra wish, although the poor wretch's time was up.

18.

The Cockerham schoolmaster appears to have lacked originality, for in the Scottish legend of 'Michael Scott' it is recorded that when the fairies crowded round his dwelling crying for work, he bade them twine ropes of sand to reach the moon, and tradition has it that traces of their unsuccessful attempts may yet be found. A more recent instance is told in a sketch of Dr. Linkbarrow, a Westmoreland wizard, who lived about a hundred years ago, quoted from the _Kendal Mercury_ by Mr. Sullivan, in his _Cumberland and Westmoreland, Ancient and Modern_. The Doctor, who was disturbed at church by a terrible storm, hurried home, and on the way met the devil, who asked for work. He immediately set him to make 'thumb symes' of river sand. Imitating the Israelites, perhaps not unconsciously--for Satan's knowledge of Scripture is proverbial--the Evil One asked for straw, which was refused him. On his arrival at home, the Doctor found his servant prying into his black-letter book, which imprudence had caused the storm and Satan's pilgrimage.

Several similar stories, illustrating the danger of tampering with books of magic, are told in Normandy. In one of them it is recorded that the servant of a village curé, moved by curiosity, read a page or two of one of his master's volumes, when suddenly Satan appeared. The domestic fled, but the Evil One captured him, and was making away with him when the curé arrived and simply read a few other words from the book, upon which Satan dropped his prey. In another one Satan keeps his victim three years, but at length is obliged to let him go.

In the last story of this kind, however, which has come under my notice--a French one by the way--the incautious student has scarcely read a line of the open book when Satan appears and strangles him. The sorcerer, quietly returning home, sees devils perched on the house, and, surprised, beckons them to approach. One does so, and tells him the story, and he thereupon rushes to his study and finds the student stretched dead upon the floor. Afraid of being accused of murder, he orders the devil who had assassinated the scholar to pass into the body of his victim. The demon obeys, and goes to promenade in the street at the point most frequented by the students, but suddenly, upon another order, he quits the body, and the corpse falls in the midst of the terrified promenaders.

In Cornwall, instead of the devil, it is the ghost of Tregeagle, the wizard, that is doomed to make trusses of sand in Genvor Cove, and to bear them to the top of Escol's Cliff. Having once succeeded in carrying a truss, after having first brought water from a neighbouring stream and frozen the sand, he is now condemned to make the trusses without water.

19.

Another version of this story, which is still told in the lonely farm-houses of the district, gives the scholars the credit of having raised the devil during the absence of their master. Similar tasks were given to the infernal visitor by a sharp-witted lad, who feared lest his should be the soul the Evil One threatened to take back with him; and not many years ago a flag, said to have been broken by the outwitted Satan in his passage across the floor, used to be triumphantly exhibited to any daring and irreverent sceptic who expressed doubts as to the truthfulness of the narrative.

At Burnley Grammar School a black mark on a stone was at one time exhibited in proof of a state visit of the same kind, and a similar ignominious flight.

The Grammar School of Middleton, near Manchester, also can boast of the patronage of the Evil One; and Samuel Bamford has recorded that in his youth a hole in the school flags was shown as an impression of the Satanic hoof. The Middleton legend credits the lads with the unenviable honour of having called up the fiend and afterwards innocently wishing him to withdraw, which he sternly declined to do without having received his usual fee of a soul. As at Cockerham, he was requested to make a rope of sand; and he was rapidly completing the task, when, to the joy of the urchins, the schoolmaster came upon the scene, and quickly exorcised the visitor, who, in his disgusted and disordered flight, broke down nearly half of the building.

20.

Stories of headless beings may be found in the lore of most countries of Europe, and are of the same class as those of the men, women and horses 'beawt yeds,' common to the hilly districts of both North and South Lancashire. As a general rule, in South Lancashire, the head is not seen at all, whereas in the northern part of the county the spectre almost invariably carries it under the left arm, as is done by the wandering beings in similar Danish stories. A Scotch legend, alluded to by Sir Walter Scott, credits the ghost of a Duchess of Queensberry with an innovation, as the spectre is said to wheel its head in a barrow through the galleries of Drumlanrick Castle. In Glamorganshire there is a tradition of a headless woman, who appears every sixty years, and many are the terrible stories told of her dreadful visitations.

Although tales of headless horses are not rare in Lancashire, there does not appear to be any tradition of hearses, or other conveyances drawn by them, similar to the Northumberland legend of the midnight cavalcade along the subterraneous passage between Tarset and Dalby Castles, or to the stories told by the Irish peasants.

It is more than probable that many of the legends and stories of headless beings of both sexes had their origin in the old Saxon belief that if a person who was guilty of a crime for which he deserved to lose his head, died without having paid the penalty, he was condemned after death to travel over the earth with his head under his arm.

21.

Not very long ago it was commonly believed at Warrington, on the authority of many persons who declared they had seen the apparition, that a spectral white rabbit haunted Bank Quay, its appearance invariably foretelling the early death of a relative of the person whose misfortune it was to behold the animal.

'In Cornwall,' says Mr. Hunt, 'it is a very popular fancy that when a maiden who has loved not wisely but too well, dies forsaken and broken-hearted, she comes back in the shape of a white hare to haunt her deceiver. The phantom follows the false one everywhere, mostly invisible to all else. It sometimes saves him from danger, but invariably the white hare causes the death of the betrayer in the end.'

22.

Can this tradition be an offshoot of the legend of Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, the man who, standing at his door, refused the cup of water for which the Saviour, bowed down beneath the burden of the cross, begged, but who bade the Lord walk quicker, and was answered, 'I go, but thou shalt thirst and tarry till I come'? In one shape or another most European countries have the weird myth of this restless being. In none of the stories, however, have I found any reference to an animal accompanying the wanderer.

23.

The belief in the efficacy of fairy ointment appears to have been somewhat generally held in England. A Northumberland tradition tells of a midwife who was fetched to attend a lady, and who received a box of ointment with which to anoint the infant. By accident the woman touched one of her eyes with the mixture, and at once saw that she was in a fairy palace. She had the good sense, however, to conceal her astonishment, and reached her home in safety. Some time afterwards she saw the lady stealing bits of butter in the market-place, and thoughtlessly accosted her, when, after an inquiry similar to that of the Lancashire legend, the fairy breathed upon the offending eye and destroyed the sight. Other versions still current in Northumberland make the thief a fairy stealing corn. Similar stories are told in Devonshire and in both the Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland. In Scotland, however, the fairy spits into the woman's eye. The Irish fairy (Co. Wexford), a vindictive being, uses a switch.

In Cornwall a fairy bantling has to be put out to nurse, and has to be washed regularly in water and carried to its room by its invisible relatives. The nurse receives the marvellous sight after some of the liquid has splashed upon her eyes, and the usual result follows. She sees a thief in the market-place--that of St. Ives; and after he has muttered--

'Water for elf, not water for self! You've lost your eye, your child, and yourself!'

she becomes blind. In another Cornish legend a green ointment, made with four-leaved clover, gathered at a certain time of the moon, confers the wondrous gift. In Lancashire the four-leaved clover does not require any preparation; the mere possession of it being supposed to render fairies visible.

The Scandinavian belief appears to have been that, although the hill folk could bestow the gift of this sight upon whom they chose, all children born on Sunday possessed the faculty. This superstition seems to survive in a slightly altered form in the Lancashire one that children born during twilight can see spirits and foretell deaths, the latter faculty, probably, having been substituted for the prophetic power of the chosen of the elves in the Northern mythology.

It is more than probable that these ointment stories came from the East. Who does not remember the charming history of the blind man, Baba Abdalla, whose sight was destroyed by a little miraculous ointment, and afterwards as wonderfully restored by a box on the ear?

24.

An old farm-labourer pointed out to me a place where the Evil One used to meet the witches, and gambol with them until cock-crow. It was at the junction of four cross-roads, between Stonyhurst and Ribchester; and as I stood there at 'th' edge o' dark,' when the wind was whispering through the fir woods on either hand, with that mysterious sound so like the gentle wash of waves upon a sandy shore, the spot seemed indeed a suitable one for such gatherings.

My informant, however, although very circumstantial in his account of what had transpired at the nocturnal assemblies, scouted the idea of anything of the sort taking place in these times, and remarked drily: 'Ther's too mich leet neaw-a-days, Mesthur, fur eawt o' that mak'. Wi' should hev' th' caanty police after um afooar they'd time to torn raand!'

25.

Until recently, there was an ancient British tumulus by the side of the highway from Darwen to Bolton, where the road passes through the domains of White Hall and Low Hill. This spot, long before the urns of bones were disinterred, was looked upon by the country people as being haunted by various boggarts, and Mr. Charles Hardwick says that children were in the habit of taking off their clogs and shoes, and walking past the heap barefooted when compelled to traverse the road after nightfall.[E]

[E] _Vide_ Footnote [C]

26.

Mag did not wander far, for her grave is shown in the churchyard at Woodplumpton, in which village her memory still is green. But few people venture to rest themselves upon the huge stone which marks the spot where her spirit was laid.

A strangely jumbled tradition tells how a priest managed to 'catch' her and 'lay her spirit.' In Cornwall and other counties a clergyman of the Establishment was considered qualified to 'lay' a ghost; but in Lancashire it was believed that only a Roman Catholic priest had the wondrous power. In Wales the magical number three is brought in, for three clergymen are necessary to exorcise a spirit. In Normandy, as a matter of course, only the priests have the power.

27.

Witchen or quicken, old English names of the rowan or mountain ash. Mr. Kelly (_Indo-European Tradition and Folklore_) accounts for the reputation of the 'wiggin' by connecting it with the Indian Palasa, the tree that, according to the Vedas, sprang from the feather which, together with a claw, fell from the falcon bringing the heavenly _soma_ to earth. The same writer also compares it with the Mimosa, and quotes a singular passage from Bishop Heber, to the effect that the natives of Upper India are in the habit of wearing sprigs of it in their turbans, and of suspending pieces of it over their beds, as security against wizards, spells, the Evil Eye, etc. Naturally enough the Bishop expresses his surprise at finding the superstitions, which in England and Scotland attach to the rowan, applied in India to a tree of similar form, and he asks, 'From what common centre are these common notions derived?' The Mimosa is popularly supposed to have sprung from the claw alluded to above.

On account of its reputed power against the 'feorin,' a rowan tree was almost invariably planted near the moorland or mountain side farm-house.

'Rowan, ash, and red thread Keep the devils from their speed,'

says the old distich.

In some parts of Scotland ash sap still is given to infants as a preservative against fairies.

28.

It was firmly believed in Lancashire, says Mr. Harland, that a great gathering of witches assembled on this night at their general rendezvous in the Forest of Pendle--a ruined and desolate farm-house called the _Malkin Tower_ (Malkin being the name of a familiar demon in Middleton's old play of _The Witch_, derived from _maca_, an equal, a companion). This superstition led to another, that of _lighting_, _lating_, or _leeting_ the witches (from _leoht_, A.-S., light). It was believed that if a lighted candle were carried about the fells or hills from eleven to twelve o'clock at night, and it burned all the time steadily, it had so far triumphed over the evil power of the witches, who, as they passed to the Malkin Tower, would employ their utmost efforts to extinguish the light, that the person whom it represented might safely defy their malice during the season; but if by any accident the light went out, it was an omen of evil to the luckless wight for whom the experiment was made. It was also deemed inauspicious to cross the threshold of that person until after the return from leeting, and not then unless the candle had preserved its light. Mr. Milner describes the ceremony as having been recently performed.

29.

Mr. Sullivan quotes this quaint old carol at length in his _Cumberland and Westmoreland, Ancient and Modern_; and adds, 'This song is still sung at Penrith, having replaced one called "Joseph and Mary," in the early part of the century. Yet its antiquity is undoubted, and it has probably come here from Lancashire, where it is well known.'

As, however, it is by no means so widely known as Mr. Sullivan supposes, we may be pardoned if we reproduce it here. The second and remaining verses are as follows:--

'I met three ships come sailing by, Come sailing by, etc.

Who do you think was in one of them? In one of them? etc.

The Virgin Mary and her Son, And her Son, etc.

She combed His hair with an ivory comb, An ivory comb, etc.

She washed His face in a silver bowl, A silver bowl, etc.

She sent Him up to heaven to school, To heaven to school, etc.

All the angels began to sing, Began to sing, etc.

The bells of heaven began to ring, Began to ring, etc.'

30.

Mr. Samuel Bamford says that Middleton Parish Church was the scene of a procession similar to that described in the above legend, the observer being an avaricious old sexton who was anxious to know what fees he should receive in the following year. This worthy, on All Souls' night, stationed himself in the sacred building, and counted the spirits he saw enter and walk about, until he observed a double of himself. Of course, soon afterwards there was a vacancy for a gravedigger at Middleton, the sight having been too much for 'Old Johnny.'

A similar superstition reigns in various parts of England and in Wales, where, at Christmas-time, says Mr. Croker, quoting from a Welsh authority, the relatives of the deceased listen at the church door in the dark, 'when they sometimes fancy they hear the names called over in church of those who are destined shortly to join their lost relatives in the tomb.'

In Cornwall, strange to say, it is a young unmarried woman who, standing in the church porch at midnight on Midsummer's-eve, sees the strange gathering. 'This is so serious an affair,' says Professor Hunt, 'that it is not, I believe, often tried. I have, however, heard of young women who have made the experiment. But every one of the stories relate that they have seen shadows of themselves coming last in the procession; that pining away from that day forward, ere Midsummer has again come round they have been laid to rest in the village graveyard.'

Mr. Sikes says that it is a Hallow-Een custom in some parts of Wales to listen at the church door in the dark to hear shouted by a ghostly voice in the edifice the names of those who are shortly to be buried in the adjoining churchyard. In other parts, he says, 'the window serves the same purpose,' and, he adds, 'there are said to be still extant outside some village churches steps which were constructed in order to enable the superstitious peasantry to climb to the window to listen.' These steps in several places seemed to me to be merely old mounting blocks, but they may have been made use of for the less practical purpose in question.

31.