TRADITIONS.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIFTH EDITION.
The Fourth Edition of the "TRADITIONS OF LANCASHIRE" was published five years ago, and the whole of the impression was ordered from the publishers before it had left the printers' hands. Owing to the difficulty in obtaining copies, it has been suggested that a re-issue, in a cheap form, is a desideratum, and the present volumes are the result. This is the only Complete Edition (except the Fourth, from which it is an unabridged reprint), of Roby's Traditions—several Legendary Tales being incorporated which were not included in any of the earlier copies of the work.
November 1871.
THE PUBLISHERS' PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION.
Roby's "TRADITIONS OF LANCASHIRE" having long been out of print—stray copies commanding high prices—it has been determined to republish the whole in a more compact and less costly form. This, the fourth and the only complete edition, includes the First Series of twenty tales, published in two volumes (1829, demy 8vo, £2, 2s.; royal 8vo, with proofs and etchings, £4, 4s.); the Second Series, also of twenty tales, in two volumes (1831, 8vo, £2, 2s., &c.); and three additional stories from his Legendary and Poetical Remains, first published after his death (1854, post 8vo, 10s. 6d.)[1] In the two volumes now presented the reader will possess not only the whole of the contents of both series, in four volumes, at one-fourth of the price of the original publication, but also three additional stories from the posthumous volume, with a memoir, a portrait, &c.
From deference to a strongly-expressed feeling that the work should be printed without any abridgment, omission, or alteration, and the text preserved in its full integrity, it has been decided to reprint it entire; and consequently various inaccuracies in the original editions have been left untouched. Two or three of the most important may be corrected here.
In the tale of "The Dead Man's Hand," Mr Roby seems to have been led by false information into some errors reflecting on the character and memory of a devout and devoted Roman Catholic priest, known as Father Arrowsmith. Mr Roby states that he was executed at Lancaster "in the reign of William III.;" that "when about to suffer he desired his right hand might be cut off, assuring the bystanders that it would have power to work miraculous cures on those who had faith to believe in its efficacy," and, denying that Father Arrowsmith suffered on account of religion, Mr Roby adds that "having been found guilty of a misdemeanour, in all probability this story of his martyrdom and miraculous attestation to the truth of the cause for which he suffered, was contrived
for the purpose of preventing any scandal that might have come upon the Church through the delinquency of an unworthy member."
What, then, are the facts, as far as they have been investigated? The Father Edmund Arrowsmith who suffered death at Lancaster was born at Haydock in Lancashire[2] in 1585, and he suffered death in August 1628 (4th Charles I.), sixty years before William III. ascended the English throne. The mode of execution was not that of capital punishment for the offence committed, but rather that imposed by the laws for treason and for exercising the functions of a Roman Catholic priest. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered, and his head and quarters were fixed upon poles on Lancaster Castle. It was in this dismemberment that the hand became separated, and it was secretly carried away by some sorrowing member of his communion, and its supposed curative power was afterwards discovered and made known.[3] Mr Roby cites no authority for this contradiction of the original tradition. The judge who presided at the trial was Sir Henry Yelverton of the Common Pleas, who died on the 24th January 1629.
In the Tradition of "The Dule upo' Dun," Mr Roby states that a public-house having that sign stood at the entrance of a small village on the right of the highway to Gisburn, and barely three miles from Clitheroe. When Mr Roby wrote the public-house had been long pulled down; it had ceased to be an inn at a period beyond living memory; though the ancient house, converted into two mean, thatched cottages, stood until about forty years ago. But the site of the house is in Clitheroe itself, little more than half a mile from the centre of the town, and on the road, not to Gisburn, but to Waddington.[4]
It only remains to add that the illustrations to the present edition comprise not only all the beautiful plates (engraved by Edward Finden, from drawings by George Pickering) of the original edition, which have been much admired as picturesque works of art, but also all the wood-engravings (by Williams, after designs by Frank Howard) which have appeared in any former edition, and which constituted the sole embellishments of the three-volume editions. To these is now first added the fine portrait of Mr Roby from the posthumous volume.