[25] Since the above was written, I have noticed, in Larwood and Hotten's "History of Signboards," a representation of a public-house "bush" copied from a MS. of the fourteenth century. The implement, in this instance, is evidently a common broom or besom. Hence it is not at all improbable that the Lancashire Benedicts but hang out the earliest known tavern or inn sign. The authors of the work referred to say: "The bush certainly must be counted amongst the most ancient and popular of signs. Traces of its use are not only found amongst Roman and other old world remains, but during the middle ages we have evidence of its display." Kelly says "the broom must originally have been supposed, like the sieve, to be used for some purpose or other in the economy of the upper regions." Perhaps in the brewing of the "heavenly soma," and hence its appropriateness as an emblem of "good liquor" of a terrestrial character.
CHAPTER VII.
FAIRIES AND BOGGARTS.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy!
Shakspere.
In my youthful imagination, some forty odd years ago, "boggarts," ghosts, or spirits of one kind or another, in Lancashire, appeared, to use Falstaff's phrase, to be "as plentiful as blackberries." "Boggart," by some writers is regarded as the Lancashire cognomen for "Puck" or "Robin Goodfellow." Certainly there are, or were, many boggarts whose mischievous propensities and rude practical jokings remind us very forcibly of the eccentric and erratic goblin page to the fairy king, so admirably delineated by Shakspere in his "Midsummer Night's Dream":—
Fairy—Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite,
Called Robin Goodfellow; are you not he
That fright the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometimes make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm;
Those that hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?
Puck—Thou speakest aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night,
I jest to Oberon and make him smile,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;
And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab;
And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometimes for three-foot stool mistaketh me.