6.
Many are the old sacred piles in Lancashire with the building of which it is believed that goblins had something to do. The parish church of Rochdale, the old church of Samlesbury, that of St. Oswald's at Winwick, near Warrington, and the parish church of Burnley, may be instanced as a few of those which are popularly supposed to have been interfered with by superhuman labourers. At Rochdale the unexpected workpeople took the form of 'strange-looking men;' in other cases, as in those of Winwick and Burnley, pigs removed the materials, it being traditional that their cry of 'we-week' gave its name to the former place; while at Newchurch, in Rossendale, although the interloping builders were invisible, a little old woman with a bottle was not only seen, but was fraternised with by the thirsty watchers who had been appointed to guard the foundations. Similar stories of changed site are told of numerous churches throughout Britain. The legend of Gadshill church, near Ventnor, like that of Hinderwell, Yorkshire, attributes the removal of the foundations to supernatural means, the stones having hopped after each other from their original place at the foot of the hill to that in which they were afterwards found, the shins of the watchers having been 'barked' in the most unceremonious manner by certain little blocks of somewhat erratic tendencies. It is, however, by no means improbable that at Gadshill, as at Rochdale, the fact of the building having been erected in a position so difficult of access, and so trying to aged and infirm parishioners, may have caused a testy and irreverent, and perhaps asthmatic, worshipper to invent the Satanic theory. In one case, that of Bredon, in Leicestershire, the objectors appear to have taken the form of doves. Loth as one may be to think harm of such sweet messengers, Mr. Kennedy, after telling the story of the building of the cathedral of Ardfert, in Kerry, by St. Brendain, and the trouble caused by a large crow, which took the measuring line in its bill and flew across the valley with it, adds, 'The bird was a fairy in disguise. If the messenger had been from another quarter, he would have made his appearance under snowy plumes.'[B]
[B] The foundations of the priory church of Christchurch, Hampshire, were, tradition says, removed by unseen hands, down from the lonely St. Catherine's Hill to the present site in the valley. The beams and rafters, too short on the hill, were too long in the vale. In the valley, too, an extra workman, Christ, always came on the pay-night.
7.
This work of art was one of the gargoyles of the old building, and was purchased by Mr. Ffarington, the father of the present lady of the manor, when the church was rebuilt. It bore the name of 'the Cat Stone.'
Another version of this tradition, of but limited circulation, and little known even in the immediate locality, credits an angel with the removal of the foundations and with the utterance of the following anything but angelic strain:—
Here I have placed thee,
And here shalt thou stand;
And thou shalt be called
The church of Leyland!
8.
This legend appears to have had a Teutonic origin. Mr. Kelly, in his chapter on the 'Wild Hunt,' quotes a somewhat similar story from a German source: 'The wild huntsman's hounds can talk like men. A peasant caught one of them, a little one, and hid it in his pack. Up came the wild huntsman and missed it. "Where are you, Waldmann?" he cried. "In Heineguggeli's sack," was the answer.'