CHAPTER IV.
CONDITION, CUSTOMS, AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE PEOPLE.

There is little to be remarked, because little is known, respecting the social and moral aspects of the untutored race which, in the earliest historic age, sought a domicile or refuge amidst the forests of the Fylde, or invaded its glades in search of prey. The habits of the Setantii were simply those of other savage tribes who depended for their daily sustenance upon their skill and prowess in the chase, and whose intercommunion with the world beyond their own limited domains, was confined to hostile or friendly meetings with equally barbarous races whose frontiers adjoined their own. Certain disinterred roots were necessary adjuncts to their repasts, and indeed, on many occasions, when outwitted by the wild tenants of the woods, formed the sole item. Their Druidical faith and the supreme power of the priesthood over their almost every action, both secular and religious, have already been referred to in an earlier page. The remorseless sacrifice of fellow beings on their unhallowed altars, and the general spirit of cruelty and inhumanity which pervaded all their rites, are not to be regarded as disclosing a naturally callous and brutal disposition on the part of the Setantii, but as indications of the deplorable ignorance in which they existed, and the blind obedience which they yielded to the principles indoctrinated by the Druids. That the Setantii, however submissive to the dictates and requirements of their priests, were far from passively allowing the encroachments of others on their liberties is shown by the promptitude and fierceness with which they combatted the progress of the Roman legions through their territory. No portion of the British conquest cost the conquerors more trouble, time, and bloodshed, than did the land peopled by the hardy and valorous Brigantes with their comparatively small, but equally intrepid, neighbours and allies the Setantii. The two most striking characteristics of the aboriginal Fylde inhabitants were their ignorance and bravery, and whilst the former rivetted the chains which held them in subjection to the priesthood, the latter incited them to oppose to the death the usurpations of the stranger. There is nothing of local interest to recount during the period the Romans held the soil, but after their abdication, when the Anglo-Saxons violated their faith and traitorously seized a land which they had come professedly to protect, the Fylde began to evince symptoms of greater animation; villages sprang up in different spots on the open grounds or clearings in the woods; the solitary Roman settlement at Kirkham was appropriated and renamed by the new arrivals, and, perhaps, for the first time a population of numerical importance was established in the district.

During the earlier part of this era the inhabitants were graziers rather than agriculturists or ploughmen. Three quarters, even, of the entire kingdom were devoted to rearing and feeding cattle, so that the grain produce of the country must have been extremely small when compared with the superabundance of live stock, and as a consequence of such a condition of things, those animals which could forage for themselves and exist upon the wild herbage of the waste lands or the fallen fruits of the trees, as acorns and beech-mast, were to be purchased at prices almost nominal, whilst others which required the cultivated products of the fields, as corn and hay, for their sustenance, were disproportionately dear; thus about the end of the tenth century the values of the former were:—

One Ox7s.0½d.
” Cow5s.6d.
” Pig1s.10½d.
” Sheep1s.2d.
” Goat0s.5½d.

The latter commanded these comparatively high prices—

One Horse£15s.2d.
” Mare, or Colt£13s.5d.
” Ass, or Mule£014s.1d.

Trees were valued not by the circumference or magnitude of their trunks, but by the amount of shelter their branches would afford to the cattle, which seem to have lived almost entirely in the open pastures; and bearing that in mind we are not surprised to read in the Saxon Chronicle of periodical plagues or murrains breaking out amongst them. “In 1054,” says that journal, “there was so great loss of cattle as was not remembered for many winters before.” This, however, is only one extract from frequent entries referring to similar misfortunes in different years, both before and after the date quoted. Swine were kept in immense herds throughout the kingdom, and there is every probability that in a locality like the Fylde, where trees would still abound and provender be plentifully scattered from the oaks and beeches, hogs would be extensively bred. Indeed immediately after the close of the Saxon empire, Roger de Poictou conveyed his newly acquired right to pawnage (swine’s food) in the woods of Poulton, amongst other things, to the monastery of St. Mary, in Lancaster, a circumstance strongly favourable to the existence of swine there in considerable numbers. Kine, also, are usually reported to have been a favourite stock with the breeders of Lancashire, whilst sheep were rare in proportion, although in other places they were exceedingly popular and profitable, chiefly from the sale of their wool.