Supposed miracle workers have not been lacking. About the middle of the fourteenth century the abbot and canons of Shap had licence from Bishop Kirkby to remove the body of Isabella, wife of William Langley, their parishioner, famed for having miracles done by it, to some proper place within the church or churchyard of Shap, that the reliques might be reverenced by the people with freer and greater devotion.
“Boggles” have been common in all parts of the two counties; needless to say the dreadful apparitions when inquired about in a careful manner have invariably proved to be very commonplace and harmless creatures or articles. “Boggle” is a Norse word, sometimes equal to personification of diety or saint. Natural phenomena, as ignis fatuus, account for some; the mist-mirage explains others. The mist is still called “the haut” (the haunt). Witches, too, have abounded—according to report,—and some were drowned, or otherwise persecuted because of their evil repute. Mary Baynes, the witch of Tebay, died in 1811, aged ninety. She has been described as a repulsive looking woman, with a big pocket tied upon her back, and she was blamed for witching people’s churns, geese, and goslings, so that on account of her witchcraft she became a terror to her neighbours. Many strange things which happened were laid to her charge, and thoroughly believed by the people. Ned Sisson, of the “Cross Keys Inn,” had a mastiff which worried old Mary’s favourite cat. The owner decided to have the grimalkin respectably buried in her garden, and a man named Willan dug a grave for it. Old Mary handed Willan an open book, and pointed to something he was to read. But Willan, not thinking it worth while to read anything over a cat, took pussy by the leg, and said:
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Here’s a hole, and in thou must.”
Mary grew angry, and warned her companion that he would fare no better for his levity. Soon afterwards Willan was ploughing in his field when the implement suddenly bounded up, and the handle struck one of his eyes, causing blindness. Immediately Mary Baynes was given the credit for having bewitched the plough. The old lady seems to have tried her hand also at prophesy. Once when the scholars of Tebay School were out playing, Mary predicted to them that some day carriages would run over Loupsfell without the aid of horses. The railway now goes over a portion of the land to which she referred, which was then a large stinted pasture. The best known other “witch” was “Lizzie o’ Branton,” otherwise Lizzy Batty, a remarkable woman, who, in the early years of this century, occupied a cottage on the roadside between Brampton and Talkin. She acted in a peculiar manner, dressed curiously, and generally “acted the part,” with the consequence that she was credited with many supernatural powers. She died in 1817, at the age of eighty-eight. The date of her funeral in Brampton was for long years remembered as the stormiest day the town had ever seen. Although it was in March, yet darkness came on so suddenly that lanterns were lighted at the grave-side, only to be again and again extinguished by the fury of the tempest. A tradition still lingers that those who bore the coffin to the grave solemnly affirmed that it was empty and the body gone.
The belief in the “barguest,” now practically gone, was in comparatively recent times common enough to excite but little notice. The term was generally used to denote any kind of ghostly visitant, but referred more particularly to a fearsome creation which was supposed to haunt the fells and dales, and make a horrible noise. Mr. B. Kirkby, in his “Lakeland Words” (1899), gives the definition as known in North Westmorland: “One who has the power of foretelling the demise of others; or one who makes a great din.” Mr. Anthony Whitehead says, “A barguest is a spirit known only through the sense of hearing, being a something which, during the dark hours of night, disturbed the last generations of Westmorland with its awful howling.”
There is no lack of ghostly traditions in connection with families. Perhaps the best known is that belonging to the ancient family of Machell, of Crackenthorpe Hall, near Appleby. Lancelot Machell—the same who in open court tore to pieces Cromwell’s new charter for Appleby—married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Sleddall, of Penrith. Her portrait was found on a panel in Penrith some years ago. She was executrix of her husband’s will, and for some alleged injury to her interest in the estate it used to be said that she paid the Machells ghostly visitations whenever the head of the family was about to die. The country folk used to say that she is laid under the big stone called Peg’s Stone, just below Crackenthorpe Hall, her term of incarceration being 999 years. They also say she has been seen driving along the Appleby road at a great pace with “amber leets” in the carriage, and disappear suddenly in Machell Wood, near the spot called Peg Sneddle’s Trough. Indeed, there is extant a most graphic and brilliant account of her passage of the Tollbar at Crackenthorpe, narrated by one “Brockham Dick” (Richard Atkinson, of the “Elephant Inn”), now many years deceased, who kept the gate in his youth, and who used to stick to it with much detail of thrilling circumstance, how one night in each year, when the “helm” wind was blowing, Mrs. Machell made her appearance and passed this gate in offended state. When storms come on upon the fell, Peg is said to be angry, and vice versâ in fine weather. An old tree in the neighbourhood of Crackenthorpe called Sleddall’s Oak, is also associated with Mrs. Machell’s name, and here a female figure is supposed to be seen to sit and weep when any misfortune is about to befall any member of the Machell family.
When farmers find disease among their cattle, whether it be tuberculosis, pleuro-pneumonia, or other undesirable visitation, they no longer pin their faith to the old-time observances. The progress of science has shown better methods of dealing with the disease, and now the stock owners of the northern counties would be the first to ridicule the means taken by their grandfathers for stopping an outbreak. The “needfire,” which has been witnessed by many people who are not yet old, was probably the last remnant of fire-worship in this country. “It was once,” says Mr. Sullivan, “an annual observance, and is still occasionally employed in the dales and some other localities as a charm for the various diseases to which cattle are liable. All the fires in the village are carefully put out—a deputation going round to each house to see that not a spark remains. Two pieces of wood are then ignited by friction, and within the influence of the fire thus kindled, the cattle are brought. The scene is one of dire bellowing and confusion: but the owner is especially anxious that his animals should get ‘plenty of the reek.’ The charm being ended in one village, may be transferred to the next, and thus propagated as far as it is required.”
Miss Martineau, in her “Guide to the Lakes,” tells a story of a certain farmer who, “When all his cattle had been passed through the fire, subjected an ailing wife to the same potent charm.” The last time the “needfire” was used in the Keswick neighbourhood, Mr. William Wilson says, was in 1841. In some parts of Cumberland and Westmorland there was then an epidemic amongst the cattle. It was brought over the Raise and transferred from farm to farm through the vales. But, at one farm a few miles out of Keswick, the sacred fire was allowed to become extinct, the owner, a well-known statesman, not having sufficient faith in its virtue to take the trouble to transmit it, or even to keep it alight. He told Mr. Wilson that he was severely rated at the time for his lack of faith. That, however, served to kill the popular belief in needfire, and even when the terrible ravages of the rinderpest, foot and mouth disease, and pleuro-pneumonia, were emptying the pockets and breaking the hearts of the farmers, not one of them thought of reviving the old “cure.” The last time, so far as the writer can find, the practice was reported in the newspapers was this paragraph in the Patriot of July 25th, 1834:—“A sort of murrain, or pestilential fever, is at present prevalent in the county of Westmorland, the popular remedy for which is the fumigation of the infected animals with the smoke of needfire, accompanied by certain mystic signs.” The Rev. J. Wharton, however, well remembers the fire being made at Long Marton about 1843-4, during a murrain. The term “needfire” seems to be a corruption of “neatfire,” neat cattle being an old and common term.
Among the legends relating to North-Country residences, an interesting one is concerning Corby Castle and its “Radiant Boy.” This—which corresponds to the “corpse lichten” of other countries—has been described as a luminous apparition which made its appearance with dire results, the tradition being that the member of the family who saw the “Radiant Boy” would rise to great power, and afterwards die a violent death. The only example in proof of the tradition so far made known, however, was that of Lord Castlereagh. That statesman was given a wide margin of time after seeing the spectre, as that was supposed to have happened when he was a young man, and he did not commit suicide until 1822.
The superstition as to the skulls at Calgarth, Windermere, has several parallels. Those two skulls formerly occupied a niche in Calgarth Hall, from which they could not be kept for any long time, though they were reputed to attend the banquets at Armboth Hall, Thirlmere, of their own accord! Above all, “they were buried, burned, reduced to powder, dispersed by the wind, sunk in the well, and thrown into the lake several times, all to no purpose”—truly wonderful skulls!