We bade them both "Good night!" and were walking away, when he shouted back, "Hey! aw say! Dun yo know Ned o' Andrew's?" "No." "He's the very mon for yo! Aw've just unbethought mo! He knows moor cracks nor onybody o' this side—an' he'll sit a fire eawt ony time, tellin' his bits o' tales. Sper ov anybody at Hooley Bridge, an' they'n tell yo wheer he lives. So, good neet to yo!"
Leaving the two old cottagers, and their boggart-haunted hamlet, we went over the fields towards Simpson Clough. The steep sides of this romantic spot are mostly clothed with woods of oak and birch. For nearly a mile's length, the clough is divided into two ravines, deep, narrow, and often craggy—and shady with trees. Two streams flow down from the moors above, each through one of these gloomy defiles, till they unite at a place from whence the clough continues its way southward, in one wider and less shrouded expanse, but still between steep and rocky banks, partly wooded. When the rains are heavy upon the moors, these streams rush furiously through their rock-bound courses in the narrow ravines, incapable of mischief, till they meet at the point where the clough becomes one, when they thence form a strong and impetuous torrent, which has, sometimes, proved destructive to property lower down the valley. Coming to the western brink of this clough, we skirted along in search of an opening by which we could go down into it with the least difficulty. A little removed from the eastern edge, and nearly opposite to us, stood Bamford new hall, the residence of James Fenton, Esq., one of the wealthy cotton-spinners in this locality. A few yards from that mansion, and nearer to the edge of the clough, stood, a few years ago, the venerable hall of the Bamfords of Bamford, one of the oldest families belonging to the old local gentry; and, probably, among the first Saxon settlers there. Thomas de Bamford occurs about 1193. Adam de Bamford granted land in villa de Bury, to William de Chadwick, in 1413; and Sir John Bamford was a fellow of the Collegiate Church of Manchester, in 1506.[52] A William Bamford, Esq., of Bamford, served the office of High Sheriff of the county, in 1787. He married Ann, daughter of Thomas Blackburne, Esq., of Orford and Hale, and was father of Ann, lady of John Ireland Blackburne, Esq., M.P. He was succeeded by Robert Bamford, Esq., who, from his connection with the Heskeths of Cheshire, took the name of Robert Bamford Hesketh, Esq., and married Miss Frances Lloyd, of Gwrych Castle. Lloyd Hesketh Bamford Hesketh, Esq., of Gwrych Castle, Denbighshire, married Emily Esther Ann, youngest daughter of Earl Beauchamp.[53] The old hall of the Bamfords was taken down a few years ago. I do not remember ever seeing it myself, but the following particulars respecting it have been kindly furnished to me by a native gentleman, who knew it well:—"It was a fine old building of the Tudor style, with three gables in front, which looked towards the high road; it was of light-coloured ashler stone, such as is found in the neighbourhood; with mullions, and quaint windows and doors to match; and was, I think, dated about 1521. Such another building you will certainly not find on this side of the county. Castleton Hall comes, in my opinion, nearest to it in venerable appearance; but Bamford Hall had a lighter and more cheerful aspect; its situation, also, almost on the edge of the rocky chasm of Simpson Clough, or, as it is often called, Guestless, i.e. Grislehurst Clough, gave an air of romance to the place, which I do not remember to have noticed about any ancient residence with which I am acquainted."
Stillness was falling upon the scene; but the evening wind sung lulling vespers in Grislehurst wood; and, now and then, there rose from the rustling green, the silvery solo of some lingering singer in those leafy choirs, as we worked our way through the shade of the wood, until we came to the bed of "Nadin Water," in the shrouded hollow of the clough. The season had been dry, and the water lay in quiet pools of the channel,—gleaming in the gloom, where the light fell through the trees. We made our way onward, sometimes leaping from stone to stone in the bed of the stream, sometimes tearing over the lower part of the bank, which was broken and irregular, and scattered with moss-greened fragments of fallen rock, or slippery and swampy with lodgments of damp, fed by rindles and driblets of water, running more or less, in all seasons, from springs in the wood-shaded steep. In some parts, the bank was overgrown with scratchy thickets, composed of dogberry-stalks, wild rose-bushes, prickly hollins and thorns, young hazles and ash trees; broad-leaved docks, and tall, drooping ferns; and, over all, hung the thick green of the spreading wood. Pushing aside the branches, we laboured on till we came into the opening where the streams combine. A stone bridge crosses the water at this spot, leading up to the woody ridge which separates the two ravines, in the upper part of the clough. Here we climbed from the bed of the stream, and got upon a cart-road which led out of the clough, and up to the Rochdale road, which crosses the lower end of it, at a considerable elevation. The thin crescent of a new moon's rim hung like a silver sickle in the sky; and the stars were beginning to glow, in "Jove's eternal house!" whilst the fading world below seemed hushed with awe, to see that sprinkling of golden lights coming out in silence once more from the over-spanning blue. We walked up the slope, from the silent hollow, between the woods, and over the knoll, and down into Hooley Clough again, by the way we came at first. Country people were sauntering about, upon the main road, and in the bye-lanes, thereabouts, in twos and threes. In the village of Hooley Bridge, the inhabitants were lounging at their cottage doors, in neighbourly talk, enjoying the close of a summer day; and, probably, "Ned o' Andrew's" was sitting in some quiet corner of the village, amusing a circle of eager listeners with his quaint country tales.
A short walk brought us to the end of our ramble, and we sat down to talk over what we had seen and heard. My visit to Grislehurst had been all the more interesting that I had no thought of meeting with such a living evidence of the lingering superstitions of Lancashire there. I used to like to sit with country folk, hearkening to their old-world tales of boggarts, and goblins, and fairies,
That plat the manes of horses in the night,
And cake the elf lock in foul, sluttish airs;
and I had thought myself well acquainted with the boggart-lore of my native district; but the goblin of Grislehurst was new to me. By this time I knew that in remote country houses the song of the cricket and the ticking of the clock were beginning to be distinctly heard; and that in many a solitary cottage these were, now, almost the only sounds astir, except the cadences of the night wind, sighing around, and making every crevice into a voice of mystic import to superstitious listeners; while, perhaps, the rustle of the trees blended with the dreamy ripple of some neighbouring brooklet. The shades of night would, by this time, have fallen upon the haunted homesteads of Grislehurst, and, in the folds of that dusky robe, would have brought to the old cottagers their usual fears, filled with
Shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends;
and I could imagine the good old pair creeping off to repose, and covering up their eyes more carefully than usual from the goblin-peopled gloom, after the talk we had with them about Grislehurst Boggart.