EAST LANCASHIRE SUPERSTITION.
Strong minds often are unable to escape the thraldom of tradition and custom, with the help of liberal education and social intercourse. How then are the solitary farmers on the skirts of moorland wastes, to free themselves from hereditary superstition? The strength of such traditions is often secret and unacknowledged. It nevertheless influences the life; it lurks out of sight, ready to assert its power in any great crisis of our being. It is a homage to the unseen and the unknown, in fearful contradiction with the teaching of Christianity, for it creates, like the religion of the Jezzidies, a ritual of propitiation to malignant powers, instead of the prayer of faith to the All-merciful. The solitude of the life in the moorland farm-houses does not, however, foster the influence of superstitious madness, perhaps, so much as the wild, stormy climate, which holds its blustering reign through six months of every year, in this region of morass and fog, dark clough, and craggy chasm. Night shuts in early. The sun has gone down through a portentous gulf of clouds which have seemed to swallow up the day in a pit of darkness. The great sycamores stagger in the blast which rushes from the distant sea. The wind moans through the night like a troubled spirit, shakes the house as though it demanded admittance from the storm, and rushes down the huge chimney (built two centuries ago for the log fires, and large, hot heap of wood ashes), driving down a cloud of smoke and soot, as though by some wicked cantrip the witches careering in the storm would scatter the embers and fire the building. The lone watcher by some sick bed, shudders as the casements are battered by the tempest; or the bough of some tree, or a branch of ivy, strikes the panes like the hand of some unseen thing fumbling at the casement latch; or, awake from pain or care, restless with fever or fatigue, or troubled with superstitious horror, the lone shepherd waits for the day, as for a reprieve to conscious guilt, and even trembles while he mutters some charm to exorcise the evil that rides exulting on the storm. A year of ill-luck comes. The ewes are barren; the cows drop their untimely calves, though crooked sickles and lucky stones have been hung in the shippons. The milk is "bynged," or will not churn, though a hot poker has been used to spoil the witchery. The horses escape from the stable at night, though there is a horse-shoe over the door, and the hinds say they were carefully "heawsed an' fettled, and t'dooers o weel latched, bur t'feeorin (fairies) han 'ticed 'em eawt o' t' leawphooles, an' flown wi' em' o'er t'stone dykes, wi' o t'yates tynt (gates shut), an' clapp'd 'em reet i' t' meadow, or t' corn, just wheer tey shudna be." As the year advances, with such misadventures, apprehension grows. Is there some evil eye on the house? Will the hay be spoiled in the field? Will the oats ripen, or must they be cut green and given to the cattle? Or, if they ripen, will the stormy autumn wrap its mantle of mist and rain so closely about them, that they cannot be housed before they have sprouted, or have spoiled? The cold, bitter damp benumbs the strength of the feeble. Appetite and health fail; a fear creeps into the life. Fate seems to have dragged the sufferer into a vault of gloom, to whisper foreboding and inspire dread. These traditions of mischief wrought by malignant men inheriting the wicked craft and vindictive spite of the sorcerers, are uttered at the fireside, or if not so uttered, are brooded upon by a disturbed fancy.[116]
SUPERSTITIOUS FEARS AND CRUELTIES.
John Webster, the great exposer of shams and denouncer of superstitions in his day, and author of the "Discovery of pretended Witchcraft," speaking of a clear head and sound judgment as necessary to competent witnesses, says:—"They ought to be of a sound judgment, and not of a vitiated and distempered phantasy, nor of a melancholic constitution; for these will take a bush to be a bugbear, and a black sheep to be a demon; the noise of the wild swans flying high in the night, to be spirits; or, as they call them here in the north, 'Gabriel Ratchets;' the calling of a daker hen in the meadow, to be the Whistlers; the howlings of the female fox in a gill or clough for the male, to be the cry of fairies." The Gabriel Ratchets seem to be the same with the German Rachtvogel or Rachtraven. The word and the superstition are still known in Lancashire, though in a sense somewhat different; for the Gabriel Ratchets are supposed to be something like litters of puppies yelping in the air. Ratch is certainly a name for a dog in general (see Junius, in voce). The whistlers are supposed to be the green or whistling plovers, which fly very high in the night, uttering their characteristic note. Speaking of the practices of witch-finders, Webster says:—"By such wicked means and unchristian practices, divers innocent persons have lost their lives; and these wicked rogues wanted not greater persons (even of the ministry too) that did authorize and encourage them in their diabolical courses. And the like in my time happened here in Lancashire, where divers, both men and women, were accused of supposed witchcraft, and were so unchristianly and inhumanly handled, as to be stripped stark naked and laid upon tables and beds to be searched for their supposed witch-marks; so barbarous and cruel acts doth diabolical instigation, working upon ignorance and superstition, produce."[117]
SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEFS IN MANCHESTER IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
At no period in the history of Manchester was there a greater disposition to believe in witchcraft, demoniacal possession, and the occult sciences, than at the close of the sixteenth century. The seer, Edward Kelly, was ranging through the country, practising the black art. Dr. Dee, the friend and associate of this impostor, had recently obtained the appointment of warden of the Collegiate Church of Manchester, by favour of his royal patroness, Queen Elizabeth, herself a believer in his astrological calculations; and the fame of the strange doings [the alleged demoniacal possession of seven persons] in the family of Mr. Starkie, had spread far and wide. The new warden was really a learned man, of the most inquisitive mind, addicted to chemical pursuits, not wholly unconnected with those of alchemy, and not altogether detached from the practice of necromancy and magic, notwithstanding his positive asseverations to the contrary, in his petition to King James. His life was full of vicissitudes; though enjoying the patronage of princes, he was always involved in embarrassments, and was at length obliged to relinquish his church preferment at Manchester, owing to the differences that existed between himself and his ecclesiastical brethren. It does not appear that during his residence in Lancashire he encouraged the deceptions of the exorcists. On the contrary he refused to become a party in the pretended attempt to cast out devils at Cleworth, and he strongly rebuked Hartlay, the conjuror, who was afterwards executed at Lancaster for his disgraceful practices.
WELLS AND SPRINGS.
Water, everywhere a prime necessity of life, is pre-eminently so in the hot and arid plains and stony deserts of Asia and Africa. We need not be surprised, therefore, to find that in all the ancient Eastern cults and mythologies, springs and wells were held in reverence, as holy and sacred gifts to man from the Great Spirit of the universe. The great Indo-European tide of migration, rolling ever westward, bore on its bosom these graceful superstitions, which were eagerly adopted by the old church of Christendom; and there is scarcely an ancient well of any consequence in the United Kingdom which has not been solemnly dedicated to some saint in the Roman Catholic calendar.
Wells near Liverpool.—At Wavertree, near Liverpool, is a well bearing the following inscription, "Qui non dat quod habet, dæmon infra videt: 1414" (Who giveth not what he hath, the devil below, seeth—or, if the last word be not videt but ridet—laughs). Tradition says that at one period there was a cross above it, inscribed "Deus dedit, homo bibit" (God gave it, man drinks it); and that all travellers gave alms on drinking. If they omitted to do so, a devil who was chained at the bottom of the well, laughed. A monastic building stood near, and the occupants received the contributions.[118] A well at Everton, near Liverpool, has the reputation of being haunted, a fratricide having been committed there; but it is not mentioned in the local history of Syer, which merely says,—"The water for this well is procured by direct access to the liquid itself, through the medium of a few stone steps: it is free to the public, and seldom dry." Being formerly in a lonely situation, it was a haunt of pickpockets and other disorderly characters. It is now built over, and in a few years the short subterranean passage leading to the well will be forgotten.[119]
Peggy's Well.—Peggy's Well is near the Ribble, in a field below Waddow Hall, not far from Brunckerley stepping-stones, in attempting to cross by which several lives have been lost, when the river was swollen by a rapid rise, which even a day's rain will produce. These calamities, as well as any other fatal accidents that occur in the neighbourhood, are usually attributed to Peggy, the evil spirit of the well. There is a mutilated stone figure by the well, which has been the subject of many strange tales and apprehensions. It was placed there when turned out of the house at Waddow, to allay the terrors of the domestics, who durst not continue under the same roof with this mis-shapen figure. It was then broken, either from accident or design, and the head, some time ago, as is understood, was in one of the attic chambers at Waddow. Who Peggy of the Well was, tradition doth not inform us.