Traditions, Superstitions and Folk-lore / (Chiefly Lancashire and the North of England:) Their Affinity to Others in Widely-Distributed Localities; Their Eastern Origin and Mythical Significance.

Transcriber's Note : Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Archaic, dialect and variant spellings remain as printed. Greek text appears as originally printed, but with a mouse-hover transliteration, Βιβλος.
C. Potter, Delt.
W. Morton, Sculpt.
Thou has hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. — Matthew , c. xi. v. 25.
Every fiction that has ever laid strong hold of human belief is the mistaken image of some great truth , to which reason will direct its search, while half reason is content with laughing at the superstition, and unreason with disbelieving it. — Rev. J. Martineau.
MANCHESTER: A. IRELAND & CO., PALL MALL. LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO., STATIONERS' HALL COURT. 1872.
TO HIS VERY DEAR AND EVER KIND FRIEND, ELIZA COOK, THIS WORK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, AS A VERY HUMBLE BUT SINCERE TRIBUTE TO HER POETIC GENIUS AND HER PRIVATE WORTH, BY ITS AUTHOR, CHARLES HARDWICK.

Our nursery legends and popular superstitions are fast becoming matters of history, except in the more remote and secluded portions of the country. The age of the steam engine, and the electric battery, and the many other practical adaptations of the triumphs of physical science, is apparently not the one in which such waifs and strays from the mythical lore of the dim and distant Past are very likely to be much sought after or honoured. But now that the light of modern investigation, and especially that ray furnished by recent discoveries in philological science, has been directed towards their deeper and more hidden mysteries, profound philosophical historians have begun to discover that from this apparently desolate literary region much reliable knowledge may be extracted, leading to conclusions of the most interesting and important kind, with reference to the early history of our race. The labours of the brothers Grimm, Dr. Adalbert Kuhn, Professor Max Müller, the Rev. G. W. Cox, and others, have recently received considerable attention from philosophic enquirers into the origin and early development of the people from whom nearly all of the European, and some of the Asiatic, modern nationalities have sprung.