A lad whose fame did resound
Through every village and town around;
For fun, for frolic, and for whim.
And, certainly, the hamlet of Urmston is a spot quite in keeping with all we know of the general character, and all we can imagine of the earliest training of a man who owed so much to nature, and who described the manners of the country folk of his day with such living truth, enriched with the quaint tinge of a humorous genius, which was his, and his only. Fortune, and his own liking, seem to have made him a constant dweller in the country. He was, by fits, fond of social company, and business led him into towns, occasionally; but whenever he visited towns, he seems to have always turned again towards the chimney-corner of his country home with an undying love, which fairly glows in every allusion he makes to his dwelling-place at the village of Milnrow, and even to the honest, uncouth hinds, who were his neighbours there; and whose portraits he has drawn for us, so inimitably, in his celebrated story of "Tummus and Mary." He was "a fellow of infinite jest; of most excellent fancy." May his soul rest "in the bosom of good old Abraham!"
Here, then, in green Urmston, John Collier is said to have been born; and the almost unrecorded days of his childhood were passed here. Even now, the scattered dwellers of the place are mostly employed in agriculture, and their language and customs savour more of three centuries ago than those which we are used to in manufacturing towns. From the cottage homes, and old-fashioned farmhouses, which are dropped over the landscape, like birds' nests, "each in its nook of leaves," generation after generation has come forth to wander through the same grass-grown byeways, and brambly old lanes; to weave the same chequered web of simple joys and sorrows, and cares and toils; and to lie down at last in the same old churchyard, where the "rude forefathers of the hamlet" are sleeping together so quietly. It is a country well worth visiting by any lover of nature, for its own sake. Its natural features, however, are those common to English rural scenery in districts where there are no great elevations, nor anything like thick woodlands; and though such scenery is always pleasing to my mind, it was not on account of its natural charms, nor to see its ancient halls, with the interesting associations of past generations playing about them; nor the ivied porches of its picturesque farmhouses; nor to peep through the flower-shaded lattices of its cottage nests; nor even to scrape acquaintance with the old-fashioned people who live in them, that I first wandered out to Flixton; though there is more than one quaint soul down there that I would rather spend an hour with than with any two fiddlers in the county. Particularly "Owd Rondle," the market-gardener, who used to tell me the richest country tales imaginable. He had a dog, which "wur never quiet, but when it wur feightin." He was a man of cheerful temper, and clear judgment, mingled with a warm undercurrent of chuckling humour, which thawed away stiff manners in an instant. The last time I saw him, a friend of his was complaining of the gloom of the times, and saying that he thought England's sun had set. "Set;" said Rondle, "not it! But iv it wur set, we'd get a devilish good moon up! Dunnut be so ready to mout yor fithers afore th' time comes. Noather me nor England mun last for ever. But Owd Englan's yung yet, for oather peace or war, though quietness is th' best, an' th' chepest; if they'n let us be quiet, on a daycent fuuting. So, keep yor heart up; for th' shell shall be brokken; an' th' chicken shall come forth; an' it shall be a cock-chicken; an' a feighter, with a single kom!" But "Rondle" was not always in this humour. He could doff his cap and bells at will; and liked, what he called, "sarviceable talk," when any really serious matter was afoot. Yet, it was not to see curious "Old Rondle" that I first went down to Flixton. The district is so far out of the common "trod," as Lancashire people say, that I doubt whether I should ever have rambled far in that direction if it had not been for the oft-repeated assertion that Urmston, in Flixton, was the birthplace of John Collier. And it was a desire to see the reputed place of his nativity, and to verify the fact, as far as I could, on the spot—since the honour has been claimed by more than one other place in Lancashire—that first led me out there.
In my next chapter, gentle reader, if thou art minded so far to do me pleasure, we will ramble down that way together: and, I doubt not, that in the course of our journey thou wilt hear or see something or other which may haply repay thee for the trouble of going so far out of thy way with me.
CHAPTER II.
By the crackling fire,
We'll hold our little snug, domestic court,
Plying the work with song and tale between.
It was on a cold forenoon, early in the month of April, that I set off to see Urmston, in Flixton. The sky was gloomy, and the air chill; but the cold was bracing, and the time convenient, so I went towards Oxford Road Station in a cheerful temper. Stretford is the nearest point on the line, and I took my ticket to that village. We left the huge manufactories, and the miserable chimney tops of "Little Ireland," down by the dirty Medlock; we ran over a web of dingy streets, swarming with dingy people; we flitted by the end of Deansgate (the Ratcliffe Highway of Manchester), and over the top of Knott Mill, the site of the Roman Station,—now covered with warehouses and other buildings connected with the Bridgewater Trust; we left the black, stagnant canal, coiled in the hollow, and stretching its dark length into the distance, like a slimy snake. We cleared the cotton mills, and dyeworks, and chemical manufactories of Cornbrook. Pomona Gardens, too, we left behind, with the irregular carpentry of its great picture sticking up raggedly in the dun air, like the charred relics of a burnt woodyard. These all passed in swift panorama, and the train stopped at Old Trafford, the site of the "Art Exhibition," just closed. Three years ago the inhabitants did not dream that this was to be the gathering-place of the grandest collection of works of art the world ever saw, and the scene of more bustle and pomp than was ever known on any spot in the north of England, before. The building was up, but not opened, and as we went by we had a good view of the shapeless mass, and of many curious people tooting about the enclosure to see what was going on. Old Trafford takes its name from the Trafford family, or rather, I believe, gives its name to that family, whose ancient dwelling, Old Trafford Hall, stands in part of its once extensive gardens, near the railway. Baines says of this family, "The Traffords were settled here (at Trafford) at a period anterior to the Norman conquest, and ancient documents in possession of the family show that their property has descended to the present representative, not only by an uninterrupted line of male heirs, but without alienation, during the mutations in national faith, and the violence in civil commotions. Henry, the great-grandson of Ranulphus de Trafford, who resided at Trafford in the reign of Canute and Edward the Confessor, received lands from Helias de Pendlebury; in Chorlton, from Gospatrick de Chorlton; and in Stretford, from Hamo, the third baron of that name, of Dunham Massie; and from Pain of Ecborn (Ashburn) he had the whole of the lordship of Stretford." The whole of Stretford belongs to the Traffords still. "In the reign of Henry VI. Sir Edmund Trafford, of Trafford, assisted at the coronation of the king, and received the honour of Knight of the Bath on that occasion." A certain poet says truly—