At one time in his career Dick kept a beer-house, the sign over the door being a representation of the Globe, with the head and shoulders of a man projecting through it, and underneath it the legend: "Help me through this World!" By way of counteracting any bad moral effects that arose from his vending of beer on week-days, he taught a Bible-class in a room over the beer-shop on Sundays. He christened one of his sons "Gentleman," Gentleman Taylor, being determined, as he said, to have one gentleman in the family, whatever else.
Poor Dick Taylor! I always felt grateful to his personality and to the humour which girt him round. He was a link that bound us to the past; a kind of embodied poetical idea in keeping with the ancient Forest and its traditions. I have more than half a suspicion that he must have been lying dormant for centuries in the muniment-room of Clitheroe Castle, and, like Rip Van Winkle, awoke at length to resume his interrupted duties. I never conversed with him without being carried in imagination back to bygone times, and on such occasions it was with a half-resentful feeling of annoyance that the proximity of a later—should we be justified in saying, a higher?—civilization, in the guise of a smoky factory chimney, dispelled the illusion.
The post of ale-taster, though still nominally maintained, is in reality obsolete, and could not be revived, even in out-of-the-way places, without committing an anachronism. Even in Dick Taylor's day the office was looked upon as belonging to the past—a relic of a bygone age, in which a social system, different from the present, prevailed. It belonged to the days of stocks and pillories, of ducking and cucking stools and scolds' bridles; of sluggard wakeners and dog whippers. Tempora mutantur. It needed a genial humorist to assume the duties of the office in this latter half of the nineteenth century, and a vulgar imitator would find no favour.
In a wide and populous district the duties, when conscientiously performed, were more than mortal stomach could bear unharmed, even though the paunch were like that of Falstaff, which Dick's was not, and leaving out of account the temptations which beset such an official. Dick took to ale-tasting as a jest, though he fulfilled his duties with a mock gravity that enhanced the fun of the situation. Keen as was his taste for ale, he had a keener relish for the humour of the position. Alas! it was joking perilously near to the edge of a precipice. The last of the Ale-tasters died, a martyr to duty, on the 10th day of October, 1876. Sic itur ad astra.
A number of curious legends, not lacking in humour, are current in the Rossendale district. It is said that some of the youths of Crawshawbooth village were amusing themselves at football on a Sunday afternoon in the field between Pinner lodge and Sunnyside House. A gentlemanly personage, dressed in black, approached and stood looking at them for some time apparently interested in the game of the Sabbath-breakers. The ball at length rolled to his feet, and, unable, perhaps, to resist the temptation, he took it in his hand, and gave it a kick that sent it spinning into the air; but instead of the ball returning to terra firma, it continued to rise until it vanished from the sight of the gaping rustics.
Turning to look at the stranger who had performed such a marvellous feat, they espied—what they had not observed before—the cloven hoof and barbed tail (just visible from underneath the coat) of his Satanic Majesty! The effect of this unexpected discovery on the onlookers may be imagined. Had the wall round the field been twelve feet high instead of four it could hardly have prevented their exit. As for the cause of their sudden dispersion, he vanished in a blaze of fire, and the smell of the brimstone fumes produced by his disappearance was felt in the village for many weeks after.
Another story of the same personage is the following: At the corner of the field between Stacksteads and the railway is a large irregularly-shaped mound made up of earth, clay and coarse gravel. The debris of which it is composed has probably been washed down out of "Hell Clough," a depression in the hills immediately opposite, and deposited at this place at a remote period of time. But there is a legend connected with it. It is said that before the river Irwell had scooped out its present channel through the Thrutch Glen—a narrow gorge about eighty feet wide, through which the river, the road and the railway run side by side—the whole of the valley extending thence up to Bacup foot was covered by a vast sheet of water—a great lake embanked by the surrounding hills. At Hell Clough it is said that his Satanic Majesty had a country seat and was accustomed to perform his ablutions in the lake in question. One day the water, swollen by heavy rains, and lashed into fury by the wind, overflowed its banks at the Thrutch, ploughing out a passage through the rock and shale which hitherto had barred its progress. His Majesty of the cloven foot, who stood upon the edge of the lake enjoying the storm himself had raised, began to perceive the sudden withdrawal of the water from his feet. Divining the cause, he slipped on a large apron, and, hastily filling it with soil and gravel, made with all speed to repair the breach. But, just as he reached the place where the mound described is situated, his apron strings broke, and the mass of rubbish which he carried fell to the ground, where it has lain to this day.
It is some such tradition of the close proximity of the devil to the district which has given rise to the saying, quoted by Samuel Bamford: "There's a fine leet i' th' welkin, as th' witch o' Brandwood said when th' devil wur ridin' o'er Rossenda."