Transcriber's Note: Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. Archaic, dialect and variant spellings remain as printed. Greek text appears as originally printed, but with a mouse-hover transliteration, Βιβλος. Missing chapter titles have been included to match the Contents listing for readers' convenience.

LANCASHIRE
FOLK-LORE:
ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE
SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEFS AND PRACTICES,
LOCAL CUSTOMS AND USAGES
OF
THE PEOPLE OF THE COUNTY PALATINE.

COMPILED AND EDITED BY
JOHN HARLAND, F.S.A.
AND
T. T. WILKINSON, F.R.A.S.

LONDON:
FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.
BEDFORD STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
NEW YORK: SCRIBNER AND CO.
1867.

PREFACE.

"Folk-lore," though a term that will not be found in our standard dictionaries, from Johnson down to Webster, is nevertheless simply a modern combination of two genuine old English words—Folc, the folk, the people, "the common people;" and Lár, Laer, Lora, learning, doctrine, precept, law. In the earlier days of our English tongue, folk-land, folk-gemote, folk-right, &c., were terms in common use, and amongst this class of compound words our fore-elders had folc-lare, by which they denoted plain, simple teaching suited for the people, what we should now call "popular instruction," and hence folk-lare also meant a sermon. Folk-Lore, in its present signification—and for its general acceptance we are largely indebted to the Editor of that valuable periodical Notes and Queries,—means the notions of the folk or people, from childhood upwards, especially their superstitious beliefs and practices, as these have been handed down from generation to generation, in popular tradition and tale, rhyme, proverb, or saying, and it is well termed Folk-Lore in contradistinction to book-lore or scholastic learning. It is the unlearned people's inheritance of tradition from their ancestors, the modern reflection of ancient faith and usage. This Folk-Lore has not been wholly without record in our literature. Hone in his delightful Every-Day Book, Year Book, and Table Book, has preserved many a choice bit of England's Folk-Lore; and his example has been ably followed in Chambers's Book of Days. Brand's Popular Antiquities, Aubrey's Miscellanies, Allies's Antiquities and Folk-Lore of Worcestershire, and other like works, have noted down for the information and amusement of future generations the prevalent superstitions, and popular customs and usages of the people in particular districts, during a past age, and at the present time. But the greatest and best depository and record of the Folk-Lore of various nations is that excellent periodical Notes and Queries, from which a charming little volume entitled "Choice Notes from Notes and Queries,—Folk-Lore," was compiled and published in 1859.

But Lancashire has hitherto been without adequate record, at least in a collected form, of its Folk-Lore. This has not been because of any lack of such lore. The North of England generally, and Lancashire in particular, is remarkably rich in this respect. Possessed and peopled in succession by the Celts of ancient Britain, by the Angles and other Teutonic peoples, by the Scandinavian races, and by Norman and other foreign settlers at early periods,—the result of the respective contributions of these various peoples is necessarily a large mass of traditionary lore. To bring this together and present it in a collected form is the object of this little volume. Its editors have been long engaged, apart,—distinctly, and independently of each other,—in collecting particulars of the superstitions in belief and practice, and of the peculiar customs and usages of the people of Lancashire. One of them, born in one of its rural districts, still rich in these respects, is thus enabled to remember and to preserve many of those customs and usages of his childhood and youth, now rapidly passing into decay, if not oblivion. The other, conversant from his earliest remembrances with the Folk-Lore of East Yorkshire, and with that of Lancashire for the last thirty-five years, is thus enabled to compare the customs and usages of both, and to recognise the same essential superstition under slightly different forms. Similarity of pursuit having led to personal communication, the Editors agreed to combine their respective collections; and hence the present volume. They do not pretend herein to have exhausted the whole range of Lancashire Folk-Lore; but simply to have seized on the more salient features of its superstitious side, and those of popular custom and usage. Part I. comprises notices of a great number of superstitious beliefs and practices. Part II. treats of various local customs and usages, at particular seasons of the year; during the great festivals of the church; those connected with birth and baptism; betrothal and wedding; dying, death-bed, and funeral customs; as well as manorial and feudal tenures, services, and usages.

Should the present volume find favour and acceptance, its Editors may venture hereafter to offer another, embracing the fertile and interesting subjects of popular pageants, maskings and mummings, rushbearings, wakes and fairs, out-door sports and games; punishments, legal and popular; legends and traditions; proverbs, popular sayings and similes; folk-rhymes, &c. &c.

September, 1866.

But for unavoidable delay, consequent on the preparation of a large-paper edition, this volume would have been published prior to "Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders," by Wm. Henderson. As that work has appeared, it may be as well to state that, notwithstanding similarity of subject, the two books do not clash. Mr. Henderson's work relates chiefly to the three north-eastern counties,—Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire,—with large notices not only of the Scottish borders, but of Scotland generally, and many details as to Devonshire folk-lore. Its notices of Cumberland and Westmorland are fewer than of the three counties first named; and Lancashire is only two or three times incidentally mentioned. The field of this county palatine is therefore left free for the present volume.

January, 1867.

CONTENTS.

LANCASHIRE FOLK-LORE.

PART I.

SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEFS AND PRACTICES.

INTRODUCTION.

"'Tis a history
Handed from ages down; a nurse's tale
Which children open-eyed and mouth'd devour,
And thus, as garrulous ignorance relates,
We learn it and believe."

In this large section of the Folk-lore of Lancashire we propose to treat of all the notions and practices of the people which appear to recognise a supernatural power or powers, especially as aids to impart to man a knowledge of the future. An alphabetical arrangement has been adopted, which is to some extent also chronological. Beginning with the pretended sciences or arts of Alchemy and Astrology, the succeeding articles treat of Bells, Beltane fires, Boggarts, Charms, Demons, Divination, &c.

Many of these superstitions are important in an ethnological point of view, and immediately place us en rapport with those nations whose inhabitants have either colonized or conquered this portion of our country. In treasuring up these records of the olden times, tradition has, in general, been faithful to her vocation. She has occasionally grafted portions of one traditional custom, ceremony, or superstition, upon another; but in the majority of cases enough has been left to enable us to determine with considerable certainty the probable origin of each. So far as regards the greater portion of our local Folk-lore, we may safely assert that it is rapidly becoming obsolete, and many of the most curious relics must be sought in the undisturbed nooks and corners of the county. It is there where popular opinions are cherished and preserved, long after an improved education has driven them from more intelligent communities; and it is a remarkable fact that many of these, although composed of such flimsy materials, and dependent upon the fancies of the multitude for their very existence, have nevertheless survived shocks by which kingdoms have been overthrown, and have preserved their characteristic traits from the earliest times down to the present.

As what are called the Indo-European, or Aryan, nations—viz., the Celts, Greeks, Latins, Germans (Teuton and Scandinavian), Letts, and Sclaves—as is now generally acknowledged, have a common ancestry in the race which once dwelt together in the regions of the Upper Oxus, in Asia; so their mythologies, however diverse in their later European developments, may be regarded as having a common origin. Space will not allow us to enlarge on this great subject, which has been ably treated by Jacob Grimm, Dr. Adalbert Kuhn, and many other German writers, and of which an excellent résumé is given in Kelly's Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-lore.

When we refer to the ancient Egyptians, and to the oldest history extant, we find some striking resemblances between their customs and our own. The rod of the magician was then as necessary to the practice of the art as it still is to the "Wizard of the North." The glory of the art of magic may be said to have departed, but the use of the rod by the modern conjuror remains as a connecting link between the harmless deceptions of the present, and that powerful instrument of the priesthood in times remote. The divining rod, too, which indicates the existence of a hidden spring, or treasure, or even a murdered corpse, is another relic of the wand of the Oriental Magi. The divining cup, as noticed in the case of Joseph and his brethren, supplies a third instance of this close connexion. Both our wise men and maidens still whirl the tea-cup, in order that the disposition of the floating leaves may give them an intimation of their future destiny, or point out the direction in which an offending party must be sought. We have yet "wizards that do peep and mutter," and who profess to foretell future events by looking "through a glass darkly." The practice of "causing children to pass through the fire to Moloch," so strongly reprobated by the prophet of old, may be cited as an instance in which Christianity has not yet been able to efface all traces of one of the oldest forms of heathen worship. Sir W. Betham has observed, in his Gael and Cymbri, pp. 222-4, that "we see at this day fires lighted up in Ireland, on the eve of the summer solstice and the equinoxes, to the Phœnician god Baal; and they are called Baal-tane, or Baal's fire, though the object of veneration be forgotten." Such fires are still lighted in Lancashire, on Hallowe'en, under the names of Beltains or Teanlas; and even such cakes as the Jews are said to have made in honour of the Queen of Heaven, are yet to be found at this season amongst the inhabitants of the banks of the Ribble. These circumstances may appear the less strange when we reflect that this river is almost certainly the Belisama of the Romans; that it was especially dedicated to the Queen of Heaven, under the designation of Minerva Belisamæ; and that her worship was long prevalent amongst the inhabitants of Coccium, Rigodunum, and other Roman stations in the north of Lancashire. Both the fires and the cakes, however, are now connected with superstitious notions respecting Purgatory, &c., but their origin and perpetuation will scarcely admit of doubt.

A belief in astrology and in sacred numbers prevails to a considerable extent amongst all classes of our society. With many the stars still "fight in their courses," and our modern fortune-tellers are yet ready to "rule the planets," and predict good or ill fortune, on payment of the customary fee. That there is "luck in odd numbers" was known for a fact in Lancashire long before Mr. Lover immortalized the tradition. Our housewives always take care that their hens shall sit upon an odd number of eggs; we always bathe three times in the sea at Blackpool, Southport, and elsewhere; and our names are called over three times when our services are required in courts of law. Three times three is the orthodox number of cheers; and we still hold that the seventh son of a seventh son is destined to form an infallible physician. We inherit all such popular notions as these in common with the German and Scandinavian nations; but more especially with those of the Saxons and the Danes. Triads of leaders, or ships, constantly occur in their annals; and punishments of three and seven years' duration form the burden of many of the Anglo-Saxon and Danish laws.

A full proportion of the popular stories which are perpetuated in our nurseries most probably date their existence amongst us from some amalgamation of races; or, it may be, from the intercourse attendant upon trade and commerce. The Phœnicians, no doubt, would impart a portion of their Oriental Folk-lore to the southern Britons; the Roman legions would leave traces of their prolific mythology amongst the Brigantes and the Sistuntii; and the Saxons and the Danes would add their rugged northern modifications to the common stock. The "History of the Hunchback" is common to both England and Arabia; the "man in the moon" has found his way into the popular literature of almost every nation with which we are acquainted; "Cinderella and her slipper" is "The little golden shoe" of the ancient Scandinavians, and was equally familiar to the Greeks and Romans; "Jack and the bean-stalk" is told in Sweden and Norway as of "The boy who stole the giant's treasure;" whilst our renowned "Jack the giant-killer" figures in Norway, Lapland, Persia, and India, as the amusing story of "The herd boy and the giant." The labours of Tom Hickathrift are evidently a distorted version of those of Hercules; and these again agree in the main with the journey of Thor to Utgard, and the more classical travels of Ulysses. In Greece the clash of the elements during a thunderstorm was attributed to the chariot wheels of Jove; the Scandinavians ascribed the sounds to the ponderous wagon of the mighty Thor; our Lancashire nurses Christianize the phenomenon by assuring their young companions, poetically enough, that thunder "is the noise which God makes when passing across the heavens." The notion that the gods were wont to communicate knowledge of future events to certain favoured individuals appears to have had a wide range in ancient times; and this curiosity regarding futurity has exerted a powerful influence over the minds of men in every stage of civilization. Hence arose the consulting of oracles and the practice of divination amongst the ancients, and to the same principles we must attribute the credulity which at present exists with respect to the "wise men" who are to be found in almost every town and village in Lancashire. The means adopted by some of the oracles when responses were required, strangely remind us of the modern feats of ventriloquism; others can be well illustrated by what we now know of mesmerism and its kindred agencies; whilst these and clairvoyance will account for many of those where the agents are said by Eustathius to have spoken out of their bellies, or breasts, from oak trees, or been "cast into trances in which they lay like men dead or asleep, deprived of all sense and motion; but after some time returning to themselves, gave strange relations of what they had seen and heard."

The ancient Greeks and Romans regarded dreams as so many warnings; they prayed to Mercury to vouchsafe to them a night of good dreams. In this county we still hold the same opinions; but our country maidens, having Christianized the subject, now invoke St. Agnes and a multitude of other saints to be similarly propitious. There are many other points of resemblance between the Folk-lore of Lancashire and that of the ancients. Long or short life, health or disease, good luck or bad, are yet predicted by burning a lock of human hair; and the fire is frequently poked with much anxiety when testing the disposition of an absent lover. Many persons may be found who never put on the left shoe first; and the appearance of a single magpie has disconcerted many a stout Lancashire farmer when setting out on a journey of business or pleasure. In the matter of sneezing we are just as superstitious as when the Romans left us. They exclaimed, "May Jove protect you," when any one sneezed in their presence, and an anxious "God bless you" is the common ejaculation amongst our aged mothers. To the same sources we may probably attribute the apprehensions which many Lancashire people entertain with respect to spilling the salt; sudden silence, or fear; lucky and unlucky days; the presence of thirteen at dinner; raising ghosts; stopping blood by charms; spitting upon, or drawing blood from persons in order to avert danger; the evil eye; and a multitude of other minor superstitions. We possess much of all this in common with the Saxons and the Danes, but the original source of a great, if not the greater portion, is probably that of our earliest conquerors.

Divination by means of the works of Homer and Virgil was not uncommon amongst the ancients; the earlier Christians made use of the Psalter or New Testament for such purposes. In Lancashire the Bible and a key are resorted to, both for deciding doubts respecting a lover, and also to aid in detecting a thief. Divination by water affords another striking parallel. The ancients decided questions in dispute by means of a tumbler of water, into which they lowered a ring suspended by a thread, and having prayed to the gods to decide the question in dispute, the ring of its own accord would strike the tumbler a certain number of times. Our "Lancashire witches" adopt the same means, and follow the Christianized formula, with a wedding-ring suspended by a hair, whenever the time before marriage, the number of a family, or even the length of life, becomes a matter of anxiety.

Most nations, in all ages, have been accustomed to deck the graves of their dead with appropriate flowers, much as we do at present. The last words of the dying have, from the earliest times, been considered of prophetic import; and according to Theocritus, some one of those present endeavoured to receive into his mouth the last breath of a dying parent or friend, "as fancying the soul to pass out with it and enter into their own bodies." Few would expect to find this singular custom still existing in Lancashire; and yet such is the fact. Witchcraft can boast her votaries in this county even up to the present date, and she numbers this practice amongst her rites and ceremonies.

A very large portion of the Lancashire Folk-lore is identical in many respects with that which prevailed amongst the sturdy warriors who founded the Heptarchy, or ruled Northumbria. During the Saxon and Danish periods their heathendom had a real existence. Its practices were maintained by an array of priests and altars, with a prescribed ritual and ceremonies; public worship was performed and oblations offered with all the pomp and power of a church establishment. The remnants of this ancient creed are now presented to us in the form of popular superstitions, in legends and nursery tales, which have survived all attempts to eradicate them from the minds of the people. Christ, his apostles, and the saints, have supplanted the old mythological conceptions; but many popular stories and impious incantations which now involve these sacred names were formerly told of some northern hero, or perhaps invoked the power of Satan himself. The great festival in honour of Eostre may be instanced as having been transferred to the Christian celebration of the resurrection of our Lord; whilst the lighting of fires on St. John's eve, and the bringing in of the boar's head at Christmas, serve to remind us that the worship of Freja is not extinct. When Christianity became the national religion, the rooted prejudices of the people were evidently respected by our early missionaries, and hence the curious admixture of the sacred and the profane, which everywhere presents itself in our local popular forms of expression for the pretended cure of various diseases. The powers and attributes of Woden and Freja are attributed to Jesus, Peter, or Mary; but in all other respects the spells and incantations remain the same.

Our forefathers appear to have possessed a full proportion of those stern characteristics which have ever marked the Northumbrian population. Whatever opinions they had acquired, they were prepared to hold them firmly; nor did they give up their most heathenish practices without a struggle. Both the "law and the testimony" had to be called into requisition as occasion required; and even the terrors of these did not at once suffice. In one of the Anglo-Saxon Penitentiaries, quoted by Mr. Wright in his Essays, we find a penalty imposed upon those women who use "any witchcraft to their children, or who draw them through the earth at the meeting of roads, because that is great heathenishness." A Saxon Homily, preserved in the public library at Cambridge, states that divinations were used, "through the devil's teaching," in taking a wife, in going a journey, in brewing, when beginning any undertaking, when any person or animal is born, and when children begin to pine away or to be unhealthy. The same Homily also speaks of divination by fowls, by sneezing, by horses, by dogs howling, and concludes by declaring that "he is no Christian who does these things." In a Latin Penitentialia now in the British Museum, we find allusions to incantations for taking away stores of milk, honey, or other things belonging to another, and converting them to our own use. He who rides with Diana and obeys her commands, he who prepares three knives in company in order to predestine happiness to those born there, he who makes inquiry into the future on the first day of January, or begins a work on that day in order to secure prosperity during the whole of the year, is pointed out for reprobation; whilst hiding charms in grass, or on a tree, or in a path, for the preservation of cattle, placing children in a furnace, or on the roof of a house, and using characters for curing disease, or charms for collecting medicinal herbs, are enumerated, for the purpose of pointing out the penances to be undergone by those found guilty of "such heinous sins." Nearly all these instances may be said to belong to the transition state of our Folk-lore, and relate at once both to the ancient and the modern portions of our subject. We have seen that much the same practices were used by the Greeks and Romans; and it is a curious fact that many of the more important are still in vogue amongst the peasantry of Lancashire. Many persons will still shudder with apprehension if a dog howl during the sickness of a friend: dragging a child across the earth at "four lane ends" is yet practised for the cure of whooping-cough: fern seed is still said to be gathered on the Holy Bible, and is then believed to be able to render those invisible who will dare to take it. We still have prejudices respecting the first day of the new year; black-haired visitors are most welcome on the morning of that day; charms for the protection of families and cattle are yet to be found; and herbs for the use of man and beast are still collected when their "proper planets are ruling" in the heavens. More copies of Culpepper's Herbal and Sibley's Astrology are sold in Lancashire than all other works on the same subjects put together, and this principally on account of the planetary influence with which each disease and its antidote are connected. Old Moore's Almanac, however, is now sadly at a discount, because it lacks the table of the Moon's signs; the farmers are consequently at a loss to know which will be healthy cattle, and hence they prefer a spurious edition which supplies the grave omission.

Several lucky stones for the protection of cattle have, within a few years past, been procured by the writer from the "shippons" of those who, in other respects, are not counted behind the age; and it would have been easy to collect an ample stock of horse-shoes and rusty sickles from the same sources. However, during the last forty years the inhabitants of Lancashire have made rapid progress both in numbers and intelligence. They have had the "schoolmaster abroad" amongst them, and have consequently divested themselves of many of the grosser superstitions which formed a portion of the popular faith of their immediate predecessors; but there is yet a dense substratum of popular opinions existing in those localities which have escaped the renovating influences of the spindle or the rail. As time progresses many of these will become further modified, or perhaps totally disappear; and hence it may be desirable to secure a permanent record of the customs and superstitions of the county.

As to the most ancient forms of religious belief or cult, we may surely assume that the simple must of necessity precede the complex, and consequently the idea of one supernatural Being must be anterior in point of time to that of two or more. Under this view, the good and the evil principles would form the second stage of development—a necessary consequence of increased observation—and, accordingly, we find the Great Spirit and his Adversary among the prevailing notions of some of the least civilized communities. A gradual progression from one to many gods appears to have been the natural process by which all known mythologies have been formed. The tendency of observation to multiply causes, real or ideal, and to personify ideas, may be ranked as one of the tendencies of unassisted human nature; and the operation of this natural force must have been equally efficient at all times and in all countries. In the early stages of social improvement, man would be very forcibly affected by natural phenomena. The regular succession of day and night—the order of the seasons—the heat of summer—the cold of winter—storms and tempests on sea and land—the sensations of pleasure and pain, hope and fear—would each impress him with ideas of effects for which he could assign no adequate causes; but having become susceptible of supernatural influences, the addition of imaginary beings to his mythology would keep pace with his experience, until every portion of the heavens, the earth, and the sea, was peopled with, and presided over, by its respective deity or demi-god. Thus it was that the rolling thunder and the "lightning's vivid flash" suggested the idea of a Jupiter grasping his destructive bolts, or of a Thor wielding his ponderous hammer. The "raging tempest" and the "boiling surge" gave birth to a Neptune or Njörd, each endowed with attributes suited to the aspects of the locality where the observations were made, and specially adapted to the intellectual condition of the community which first deified the conception. As society progressed in civilization, so did the study of philosophy and religion. The poets and the priests, however, did not entrust their speculations to the judgment of the people; they were too sensible of the power which secrecy conferred upon their occult pursuits, and hence they allegorized their conceptions of supernatural agencies, and also their ideas of the ordinary operations of nature and art. The elements were spoken of as persons, and the changes which these underwent were regarded as the actions of individuals; and these in the lapse of ages, by losing their esoteric meaning, came to be considered as realities, and so passed into the popular belief. This is eminently the case with the northern mythology, respecting which we are at present more particularly concerned; for by far the greater portion of these highly poetical, though rugged myths, admit of a very plausible and rational explanation on astronomical and physical principles.[1] Whether this was equally the case with the Greek and Roman mythologies is now, perhaps, more difficult to determine. Enough, however, remains in the etymology of the names to prove that both these and the northern systems had much in common. The fundamental conceptions of each possess the same leading characteristics; and both are probably due to the conquering tribes who migrated into Europe from the fertile plains of Central Asia.[2]

During these early ages, war was considered to be the most honourable occupation. Valour constituted the highest virtue; and in the absence of all written records, tradition, in course of time, would add considerably to the prowess of any daring chieftain. A mighty conqueror would be considered by his followers as something more than human. The fear of his enemies would clothe him with attributes peculiar to their conceptions of inferior deities; and this, together with the almost universal "longing after immortality" which seems to pervade society in all its stages, sufficiently accounts for the origin of the heroes and heroines—the demi-gods and goddesses of every mythology. Hence Hercules—the younger Odin—and a numerous train of minor worthies to whom divine honours were decreed in the rituals of Italy and of the north.

On the introduction of Christianity, a powerful reactionary force was brought into the popular belief, and many of its grosser portions were speedily eliminated. The whole of the mythological creations were divided into two distinct classes, according to the attributes for which they were more particularly distinguished. Those whose tendencies inclined towards the benefit of mankind were translated to heavenly mansions, with God as supreme; whilst the wickedly disposed were consigned to the infernal regions, under the dominion of the Devil. The festivals of the gods were transformed into Christian seasons for rejoicing, their temples became churches, and the names of Christ, his apostles, the Virgin Mary, and the saints, took the places of those of Jupiter, Mercury, Thor, Freja, and Woden. All the inferior deities that presided over the woods, the mountains, the seas, and the rivers, were degraded into demons, and were classed amongst those fallen spirits who are employed by the evil one to harass and deceive mankind. Our early missionaries, however, had studied human nature too well to attempt too violent a change. They contented themselves, for the most part, with diverting the current of thought into different channels; they gave new names to old conceptions, and then left their more rational and more powerful faith to produce its known effects upon the superstitions of the masses. But the habits and opinions of a people who have long been under the influence of any mythological system, have become too deeply rooted to admit of easy eradication; and hence, in our own country, as in others, the transition from heathenism to Christianity was effected by almost imperceptible steps.

There are, however, many points of resemblance between the early Scandinavian and the Roman mythologies. Both had probably a common origin, but each became modified by increased civilization and the character of the localities occupied by each succeeding wave of a migratory population. "Every country in Europe," says the learned editor of Warton's History of Poetry, "has invested its popular belief with the same common marvels: all acknowledge the agency of the lifeless productions of nature; the intervention of the same supernatural machinery; the existence of elves, fairies, dwarfs, giants, witches, wizards, and enchanters; the use of spells, charms, and amulets." The explosions and rumbling sounds occasionally heard in the interior of Etna and Stromboli were attributed, in ancient times, to the rage of Typhon, or the labours of Vulcan: at this day, the popular belief connects them with the suffering souls of men in the infernal regions. "The marks which natural causes have impressed upon the unyielding granite were produced, according to the common creed, by the powerful hero, the saint or the god, and large masses of stone, resembling domestic implements in form, were the toys or the tools of the demi-gods and giants of old. The repetition of the voice among the hills of Scandinavia is ascribed by the vulgar to the dwarfs mocking the human speaker; in England the fairies are said to perform the same exploits; while the more elegant fancy of Greece gave birth to Echo, a nymph who pined for love, and who still fondly repeats the accents that she hears. The magic scenery occasionally presented on the waters of the Straits of Messina is ascribed by popular opinion to the power of the Fata Morgana; the gossamer threads which float through the haze of an autumnal morning are [in Lancashire also] supposed to be woven by the ingenious dwarfs; the verdant circlets in the dewy mead are traced beneath the light steps of the dancing elves; and St. Cuthbert is said to forge and fashion the beads that bear his name, and lie scattered along the shores of Lindisfarne."[3] If we draw our parallels a little closer, we shall find, as has been well observed, that "the Nereids of antiquity are evidently the same with the Mermaids of the British and northern shores: the inhabitants of both are placed in crystal caves, or coral palaces, beneath the waters of the ocean; they are alike distinguished for their partialities to the human race, and their prophetic powers in disclosing the events of futurity. The Naiades differ only in name from the Nixens of Germany, the Nisses of Scandinavia, or the Water-elves of the British Isles. The Brownies are of the same kindred as the Lares of Latium [and these agree exactly with the Portuni mentioned by Gervase of Tilbury in his Otia Imperialis]. The English Puck [the Lancashire Boggart], the Scotch Bogle, the French Goblin, the Gobelinus of the Middle Ages, and the German Kobold, are probably only varied names for the Grecian Khobalus, whose sole delight consisted in perplexing the human race, and evoking those harmless terrors that constantly hover round the minds of the timid. So, also, the German Spuck, and the Danish Spogel, correspond with the more northern Spog; whilst the German Hudkin, and the Icelandic Puki, exactly answer to the character of the English Robin Goodfellow."[4] Our modern devil, with his horns and hoof, is derived from the Celtic Ourisk and the Roman Pan.

Some of our elves and satyrs are arrayed in the costumes of Greece and Rome; and the Fairy Queen, with her attendants, have at times too many points of resemblance to escape being identified as Diana and her nymphs. The Roman Jupiter, by an easy transformation, becomes identical with the Scandinavian Thor—the thunderbolt and chariot of the former corresponding to the hammer and wagon of the latter. Odin takes the place of Mercury. Loki is the same as Lucifer, for, like him, he was expelled from heaven for disobedience and rebellion. Hother encountered Thor, as Diomede did Mars. "The Grendels of the north answer to the Titans of the south; they were the gods of nature to our forefathers—the spirits of the wood and wave." Jupiter's eagle, the war-sign of the Romans, is similar in character to Odin's raven among the Danes; both nations considered that if the bird appeared to flutter its wings on the banners, conquest was certain; but if they hung helplessly down, defeat would surely follow. Warcock Hill, on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire, has probably derived its name from the unfurling of this terrible ensign during the conflicts between the Saxons and the Danes for the possession of Northumbria;—the local nomenclature of the district attests the presence of colonists from both nations, and extensive traces of their fortifications still remain as evidence that our slopes and hill-tops formed at once the battle-fields and the strongholds of the country.

The power of the Devil, his personal appearance and the possibility of bartering the soul for temporary gain, must still be numbered among the articles of our popular faith. Repeating the Lord's Prayer backwards is said to be the most effectual plan for causing him to rise from beneath; but when the terms of the bargain are not satisfactory, his exit can only be secured by making the sign of the cross and calling on the name of Christ.[5]

When we come to examine the miscellaneous customs and superstitions of the county, we find many remarkable traces of a former belief. Tradition has again been true to her vocation; and in several instances has been most careful to preserve the minutiæ of the mode of operation and supposed effects of each minor spell and incantation. The principal difficulty now lies in the selection; for the materials are so plentiful that none but the most striking can be noticed. Among these we observe that, a ringing in the ears; shooting of the eyes; throwing down, or spilling the salt; putting on the left shoe first; lucky and unlucky days; pouring melted lead into water; stopping blood by means of charms; the use of waxen images; enchanted girdles; and lovers' knots, are all observed and explained almost exactly as amongst the Greeks and Romans. The details in many have been preserved to the very letter, whilst the supposed effects are exactly the same both in the ancient and modern times. Our marriageable maidens never receive knives, or any pointed implements, from their suitors, for the very same reason that such presents were rejected by their Scandinavian ancestors—they portend a "breaking off" in the matrimonial arrangements, and are notorious for "severing love."

"If you love me as I love you,
No knife shall cut our love in two."

We never return thanks for a loan of pins. A "winding sheet" on the candle forebodes death; and dogs howling indicate a similar calamity.[6] Almost every one is aware that cuttings of human hair ought always to be burnt; that if thirteen sit down to dinner one of them will die before the end of the year; that it is unlucky to meet a woman the first thing in the morning; and that a horse-shoe nailed or let into the step of the door will prevent the entrance of any evil-disposed person. We have probably derived nearly the whole of these notions from the Scandinavian settlers in the North of England. They considered it quite possible too to raise the Devil by the same means now practised by our "wise men;" and after their conversion to Christianity they are known to have marked their dough with a cross in order to ensure its rising—a practice which many of our country matrons still retain. Sodden bread is always considered to be bewitched, provided the yeast be good, and hence the necessity for the protection of the cross.

We always get out of bed either on the right side, or with the right foot first; we take care not to cross two knives on the table; mothers never allow a child to be weighed soon after its birth; our children still blow their ages at marriage from the tops of the dandelion; and all these for similar reasons, and with similar objects, to those of the peasantry of Northumbria during the period of Danish rule. They supposed that the dead followed their usual occupations in the spirit-world, and hence, probably, the weapons of war and the implements of domestic life which we find amongst the ashes of their dead. They were also of opinion that buried treasure caused the ghosts of the owners to haunt the places of concealment; and many of our country population retain the same opinions without the slightest modification.

The Folk-lore of dreams is an extensive subject, and would require a series of essays for its full elucidation. The Royal Dream Book, and Napoleon's Book of Fate, command an extensive sale amongst our operatives, and may be consulted for additional information. Our country maidens are well aware that triple leaves plucked at hazard from the common ash, are worn in the breast for the purpose of causing prophetic dreams respecting a dilatory lover. The leaves of the yellow trefoil are supposed to possess similar virtues; and the Bible is not unfrequently put under their pillows with a crooked sixpence placed on the 16th and 17th verses of the first chapter of Ruth, in order that they may both dream of, and see, their future husbands. "Opening the Bible for direction" is still practised after any troublesome dream, or when about to undertake any doubtful matter. To dream of the teeth falling out betokens death, or the loss of a lawsuit. Other signs of death are dreaming of seeing the Devil; or hearing a sound like the stroke of a wand on any piece of furniture. The proverb that "lawyers and asses always die in their shoes," is invariably quoted when any sudden calamity befalls one of the profession.

Like the ancients, the folk of Lancashire have various superstitious observances and practices connected with the moon, especially with the new moon. Christmas thorns are said to blossom only on Old Christmas Day; and persons will go considerable distances at midnight in order to witness the blossoming. Oxen, too, are supposed to acknowledge the importance of the Nativity of Christ, by going down on their knees at the same hour; and this is often quoted as a proof that our legislators were wrong in depriving our forefathers of their "eleven days" when the new style was enforced by Act of Parliament.[7]

Some of our farmers are superstitious enough to hang in the chimney a portion of the flesh of any animal which has died of distemper, as a protection from similar afflictions; they also preserve with great care the membrane which sometimes envelopes a newly born foal, in the hope that it will ensure them good luck for the future. Sailors do not like to set sail on a Friday. Servant girls will rarely enter upon a new service either on a Friday, or on a Saturday: should they do so, they have an opinion that they will disagree with their mistresses and "not stay long in place." Most females entertain strong objections against giving evidence, or taking oaths, before the magistrates, when enceinte. At Burnley, not long ago, a witness in a case of felony was threatened with imprisonment before she would comply with the necessary forms. All children that are born in the twilight of certain days are in consequence supposed to be endowed with the faculty of seeing spirits; and some of our "wise men" take advantage of this, and persuade their dupes that they were so circumstanced at birth.

Such instances might be multiplied to an almost indefinite extent, did space permit; but the preceding will suffice to prove both the probable origin and prevalence of many of our popular superstitions. To a greater or less extent their influence pervades all classes of society; and he who would elevate the intellectual condition of the people must not neglect this thick stratum of common notions which underlies the deepest deposits of mental culture. As a recent writer in the Quarterly Review reports of Cornwall, so we may state of Lancashire:—"Pages might be filled, not with mere legends wrought up for literary purposes, but with serious accounts of the wild delusions which seem to have lived on from the very birth of Pagan antiquity, and still to hold their influence among the earnest and Christian people of this portion of England.... Superstition lives on, with little abatement of vitality, in the human heart. In the lower classes it wears its old fashions, with very slow alterations—in the higher, it changes with the rapidity of modes in fashionable circles. We read with a smile of amusement and pity, the account of some provincial conjuror, who follows, with slight changes, the trade of the Witch of Endor; and we then compose our features to a grave expression of interest—for so society requires—to listen to some enlightened person's description of the latest novelties in table-turning or spirit-rapping; or to some fair patient's account of her last conversation with her last quack-doctor."

The labours of Croker, Keightley, Thorpe, and Kemble, following in the wake of the Brothers Grimm, have added considerably to our knowledge of the Folk-lore of the North of Europe; but much yet remains to be collected before the subject can be examined in all its bearings.

It is hoped that in the following pages the facts collected will suffice to prove that the superstitious beliefs, observances, and usages of Lancashire are by no means unworthy of the attention of the antiquary, the ethnologist, or the historian.

LANCASHIRE ALCHEMISTS.

Alchemy (from al, Arab. the, and χημεία, chemistry), the pretended art of transmuting the inferior metals into gold or silver, by means of what was called the Philosopher's Stone, or the powder of projection, a red powder possessing a peculiar smell, is supposed to have originated among the Arabians; Geber, an Arabian physician of the seventh century, being one of the earliest alchemists whose works are extant; but written so obscurely as to have led to the suggestion that his name was the origin of our modern term gibberish, for unintelligible jargon. A subsequent object of alchemy was the discovery of a universal medicine, the Elixir Vitæ, which was to give perpetual life, health, and youth. The Egyptians are said to have practised alchemy; and Paulus Diaconus, a writer of the eighth century, asserts that Dioclesian burned the library of Alexandria, in order to prevent the Egyptians from becoming learned in the art of producing at will those precious metals which might be employed as "the sinews of war" against himself.[8] The earliest English writer on alchemy was probably St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the tenth century. "He who shall have the happiness to meet with St. Dunstan's work, 'De Occulta Philosophia' [that on the 'Philosopher's stone' is in the Ashmole Museum], may therein read such stories as will make him amazed to think what stupendous and immense things are to be performed by virtue of the Philosopher's Mercury."[9] A John Garland is also said to have written on alchemy and mineralogy prior to the Conquest.[10] Alchemy was much studied in conventual establishments[11] and by the most learned doctors and schoolmen, and the highest Church dignitaries—nay, even by kings and popes. Albertus Magnus, a German, born in 1282, wrote seven treatises on alchemy; and Thomas Aquinas "the angelic doctor" (said to have been a pupil of Albert), wrote three works on this subject. Roger Bacon ("Friar Bacon"), born at Ilchester in 1214, though he wrote against the folly of believing in magic, necromancy, and charms, nevertheless had faith in alchemy; and his chemical and alchemical writings number eighteen. Of his Myrrour of Alchemy, Mr. J. J. Conybeare observes, "Of all the alchemical works into which I have been occasionally led to search, this appears the best calculated to afford the curious reader an insight into the history of the art, and of the arguments by which it was usually attacked and defended. It has the additional merit of being more intelligible and more entertaining than most books of the same class."[12]

Raymond Lully, born at Majorca in 1235, is said to have been a scholar of Roger Bacon, and to have written nineteen works on alchemy. Arnoldus de Villa Nova, born in 1235, amongst a number of works on this subject, wrote The Rosarium, a compendium of the alchemy of his time. He died in 1313, on his way to visit Pope Clement V. at Avignon. Another pope, John XXII., professed and described the art of transmuting metals, and boasts in the beginning of his book that he had made two hundred ingots of gold, each weighing one hundred pounds. Among English alchemists of the fourteenth century may be mentioned Cremer, abbot of Westminster (the disciple and friend of Lully), John Daustein, and Richard, who both practised and wrote upon the "hermetic philosophy," as it was termed. In the fifteenth century was born George Ripley, a canon registrar of Bridlington, who wrote the Medulla Alchymiæ (translated by Dr. Salmon in his Clavis), and another work in rhyme, called "The Compound of Alchemie," which was dedicated to Edward IV. Dr. John Dee (born 1527), the warden of Manchester College, and his assistant, or "seer," Edward Kelly (born 1555), were both avowed alchemists. Dee wrote a Treatise of the Rosie Crucian Secrets, their excellent methods of making Medicines and Metals, &c. Ashmole says of him, that "some time he bestowed in vulgar chemistry, and was therein master of divers secrets: amongst others, he revealed to one Roger Cooke 'the great secret of the elixir' (as he called it) 'of the salt of metals, the projection whereof was one upon a hundred.'[13]

"'Tis generally reported that Dr. Dee and Sir Edward Kelly were so strangely fortunate as to find a very large quantity of the elixir in some parts of the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey." It had remained here, perhaps, ever since the time of the highly gifted St. Dunstan, in the tenth century.[14] The great Lord Bacon relates the following story in his Apothegms:—

"Sir Edward Dyer, a grave and wise gentleman, did much believe in Kelly, the alchemist, that he did indeed the work, and made gold; insomuch that he went into Germany, where Kelly then was, to inform himself fully thereof. After his return he dined with my Lord of Canterbury, where at that time was at the table Dr. Brown, the physician. They fell in talk of Kelly. Sir Edward Dyer, turning to the archbishop, said—'I do assure your Grace that that I shall tell you is truth: I am an eye-witness thereof; and if I had not seen it, I should not have believed it. I saw Master Kelly put of the base metal into the crucible; and after it was set a little upon the fire, and a very small quantity of the medicine put in, and stirred with a stick of wood, it came forth, in great proportion, perfect gold, to the touch, to the hammer, and to the test.' My Lord Archbishop said, 'You had need take heed what you say, Sir Edward Dyer, for here is an infidel at the board.' Sir Edward Dyer said again pleasantly, 'I would have looked for an infidel sooner in any place than at your Grace's table.' 'What say you, Dr. Brown?' said the archbishop. Dr. Brown answered, after his blunt and huddling manner, 'The gentleman hath spoken enough for me.' 'Why,' saith the archbishop, 'what hath he said?' 'Marry,' saith Dr. Brown, 'he said he would not have believed it except he had seen it; and no more will I.'"

Professor De Morgan observes that "Alchemy was more than a popular credulity: Newton and Boyle were amongst the earnest inquirers into it." Bishop Berkeley was of opinion that M. Homberg made gold by introducing light into the pores of mercury. Amongst the works of the Hon. Robert Boyle (vol. iv. 13-19), is An Historical Account of a Degradation of Gold, made by an anti-Elixir: a Strange Chemical Narrative, in which he says—"To make it more credible that other metals are capable of being graduated or exalted into gold, by way of projection, I will relate to you, that by the like way, gold has been degraded or imbased.... Our experiment plainly shows that gold, though confessedly the most homogeneous and the least mutable of metals, may be in a very short time (perhaps not amounting to many minutes), exceedingly changed, both as to malleableness, colour, homogeneity, and (which is more) specific gravity; and all this by so very inconsiderable a portion of injected powder," &c.

"When Locke, as one of the executors of Boyle, was about to publish some of his works, Newton wished him to insert the second and third part of Boyle's recipes (the first part of which was to obtain 'a mercury that would grow hot with gold'), and which Boyle had communicated to him on condition that they should be published after his death."[15] "Mangetus relates a story of a stranger calling on Boyle, and leaving with him a powder, which he projected into the crucible, and instantly went out. After the fire had gone out, Boyle found in the crucible a yellow-coloured metal, possessing all the properties of pure gold, and only a little lighter than the weight of the materials originally put in the crucible."[16]

From these proofs of the credulity of great men, let us turn to the encouragements vouchsafed to alchemy and its adepts by the Kings and Parliaments of England. Raymond Lully visited England on the invitation of Edward I.; and he affirms in one of his works, that in the secret chamber of St. Katherine, in the Tower of London, he performed in the royal presence the experiment of transmuting some crystal into a mass of diamond, or adamant, as he calls it; on which Edward, he says, caused some little pillars to be made for the tabernacle of God. It was popularly believed, indeed, at the time, that the English king had been furnished by Lully with a great quantity of gold for defraying the expense of an expedition which he intended to make to the Holy Land. Edward III. was not less credulous on this subject than his grandfather, as appears by an order which he issued in 1329, in the following terms:—"Know all men that we have been assured that John of Rous, and Master William of Dalby, know how to make silver by the art of alchemy; that they have made it in former times, and still continue to make it; and considering that these men, by their art, and by making the precious metal, may be profitable to us and to our kingdom, we have commanded our well-beloved Thomas Cary to apprehend the aforesaid John and William wherever they can be found, within liberties or without, and bring them to us, together with all the instruments of their art, under safe and sure custody." The first considerable coinage of gold in England was begun by Edward III. in 1343: and "The alchemists did affirm, as an unwritten verity, that the rose nobles, which were coined soon after, were made by projection or multiplication alchemical, by Raymond Lully, in the Tower of London." But Lully died in 1315; and the story only shows the strength of the popular faith in alchemy. That this pretended science was much cultivated in the fourteenth century, and with the usual evil results, may be inferred from an Act passed 5 Hen. IV. cap. 4 (1404), to make it felony "to multiply gold or silver, or to use the craft of multiplication," &c. It is probable, however, that this statute was enacted from some apprehension that the operations of the multipliers might possibly affect the value of the king's coin. Henry VI., a very pious, yet very weak and credulous prince, was as great a patron of the alchemists as Edward III. had been before him. These impostors practised with admirable success upon his weakness and credulity, repeatedly inducing him to advance them money wherewith to prosecute the operations, as well as procuring from him protections (which he sometimes prevailed upon the Parliament to confirm) from the penalties of the statute just mentioned.[17] In 1438, the king commissioned three philosophers to make the precious metals; but, as might be expected, he received no returns from them in gold or silver.[18] His credulity, however, seems to have been unshaken by disappointment, and we next find him issuing one of these protections, which is too long to print entire, granted to the "three famous men," John Fauceby, John Kirkeby, and John Ragny, which was confirmed by Parliament May 31, 1456. In this document the object of the researches of these "philosophers" is described to be "a certain most precious medicine, called by some philosophers 'the mother and empress of medicines;' by some, 'the inestimable glory;' by others, 'the quintessence;' by others, 'the philosopher's stone;' by others, 'the elixir of life;' which cures all curable diseases with ease; prolongs human life in perfect vigour of faculty to its utmost natural term; heals all healable wounds; is a most sovereign antidote against all poisons; and is capable of preserving to us and our kingdom other great advantages, such as the transmutation of other metals into the most real and finest gold and silver."[19] Fauceby, here mentioned, is elsewhere designated the king's physician.[20] We have not traced the position of the other two adepts named. Fauceby, however, notwithstanding his power of gold-making, did not refuse to accept a grant from the king, in 1456, of a pension of 100l. a year for life.[21]

We come now to the two most distinguished of Lancashire alchemists, both knights, and at the head of the principal families of the county. They seem to have been actively engaged together in the delusive pursuit of the transmutation of metals; and, self-deceived, to have deluded the weak king with promises of wealth which never could be realised. These Lancashire adepts were Sir Edmund de Trafford, Knight, and Sir Thomas Ashton [of Ashton], Knight. The former was the younger of two sons of Henry de Trafford, Esq., and Elizabeth his wife, daughter of Sir Ralph Radcliffe, Knight. The elder son, Henry, dying at the early age of twenty-six years, this Edmund succeeded as his heir about King Henry V. (1414), and he was knighted by Henry VI. at the Whitsuntide of 1426. He married Dame Alice Venables, eldest daughter and co-heir to Sir William Venables, of Bollyn, Knight. Their only son, Sir John Trafford, knighted about 1444, in his father's life-time, married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Ashton, of Ashton-under-Lyne, Knight; whilst Sir Edmund's youngest daughter, Dulcia, or Douce, married Sir John Ashton, a son of Sir Thomas, in 1438; so that the two families were connected by this double alliance. Sir Thomas Ashton, the alchemist, was the eldest son of Sir John de Ashton (Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Henry IV. in 1399, Knight of the Shire in 1413, and Constable of Coutances in 1417), and of his first wife, Jane, daughter of John Savile, of Tankersley, county York. Sir Thomas married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Byron. The date of his death is not known. Sir Edmund Trafford died in 1457. Their supposed power of transmuting the baser metals into gold had great attractions for a weak king, whose treasury was low, and who was encumbered with debt. They were not mere adventurers, but men descended from ancient families, opulent, and of high estimation in their native county. Fuller found in the Tower of London, and copied,[22] a patent granted to these two knights by Henry VI., in the twenty-fourth year of his reign (1446), of which he gives the following translation:—"The King to all unto whom, &c., greeting—Know ye, that whereas our beloved and loyal Edmund de Trafford, Knight, and Thomas Ashton, Knight, have, by a certain petition shown unto us, set forth that although they were willing by the art or science of philosophy to work upon certain metals, to translate [transmute] imperfect metals from their own kind, and then to transubstantiate them by their said art or science, as they say, into perfect gold or silver, unto all manner of proofs and trials, to be expected and endured as any gold or silver growing in any mine; notwithstanding certain persons ill-willing and maligning them, conceiving them to work by unlawful art, and so may hinder and disturb them in the trial of the said art and science: We, considering the premises, and willing to know the conclusion of the said work or science, of our special grace have granted and given leave to the same Edmund and Thomas, and to their servants, that they may work and try the aforesaid art and science lawfully and freely, without any hindrance of ours, or of our officers, whatsoever; any statute, act, ordinance, or provision made, ordained, or provided to the contrary notwithstanding. In witness whereof, &c., the King at Westminster, the 7th day of April" [1446.][23] Fuller leaves this curious document, which might fitly have been dated the first instead of the 7th April, without a word of comment. The two knightly alchemists, doubtlessly imposing on themselves no less than on their royal patron, kept the king's expectation wound up to the highest pitch; and in the following year he actually informed his people that the happy hour was approaching when by means of "the stone" he "should be able to pay off his debts!"[24] It is scarcely necessary to add that the stone failed, and the king's debts must have remained unpaid, if his majesty had not pawned the revenue of his Duchy of Lancaster, to satisfy the demands of his clamorous creditors. Henry VI. was deposed by Edward IV. in March, 1461, and though he was nominally restored to the throne in October, 1470, he lost both crown and life in May, 1471, being found dead (most probably murdered) in the Tower on the evening or the morrow of the day on which Edward IV. entered London after his victory at Barnet. Such are some of the most notable facts in the practice of alchemy as connected with Lancashire. It will naturally be asked if alchemy is still practised in this county? We can only say, that if it be it is in very rare instances, and with the greatest secrecy. The more chemistry is known—and the extent to which it has been developed within the last twenty years is truly marvellous—the more completely it takes the ground from under the feet of a believer in alchemy. It is not like astrology, which accepts the facts of the true science of astronomy, and only draws false conclusions from true premisses. Alchemy could only have sprung up at a period when all the operations of the chemist's laboratory were of the most rude, imperfect, and blundering character; when the true bases of earths and minerals and metals were unknown; when what was called chemistry was without analysis, either quantitative or qualitative; before the law of definite proportions had been discovered; when, in short, chemistry was a groping in the dark without the help of any accurate weight or measure, or other knowledge of the countless substances which are now so extensively investigated, and so accurately described in the briefest formulas. A man, to become an alchemist in the nineteenth century, must study only the hermetical writings of past ages, shutting both eyes and ears to all the facts of modern chemistry. It is scarcely possible at this day to find such a combination of exploded learning and scientific ignorance. Hence we conclude that alchemy is in all probability, from the very nature of things, an obsolete and forgotten lore.

LANCASHIRE ASTROLOGERS.

Astrology (literally the Science of the Stars), is now understood to signify the mode of discovering future events by means of the position of the heavenly bodies, which has been termed judicial astronomy. This quasi science found universal belief among all the nations of antiquity except the Greeks. Among the Romans it was eagerly cultivated from the time of the conquest of Egypt. In the second century the whole world was astrological. All the followers of Mohammed have ever been, and still are, believers in it. The Church of Rome has repeatedly condemned the art, but popes and cardinals rank amongst its votaries. Cardinal d'Ailly (about 1400), calculated the horoscope of Jesus Christ; and in the fifteenth century Pope Calixtus III. directed prayers and anathemas against a comet which had either assisted in or predicted the success of the Turks against the Christians. The establishment of the Copernican system was the death of astrology. The last of the astrologers was Morin, best known as the opponent of Gassendi. The latter in youth had studied and believed in the art, but afterwards renounced and written against it. Morin, who worked thirty years at a book on astrology, and who disbelieved in the motion of the earth, repeatedly predicted the death of Gassendi, but was always wrong, as he was in foretelling the death of Louis XIII. Since his death, in 1656, the pseudo-science has gradually sunk, and has not since, it is believed, been adopted by any real astronomer. Roger Bacon and other early English philosophers were believers in astrology, no less than in alchemy. In Lancashire the most remarkable practisers of the art were Dr. John Dee, warden of Manchester College, his friend and "seer," Sir Edward Kelly, and John Booker, of Manchester. Dee was the son of a wealthy vintner, and was born in London in 1527. At the age of fifteen he was entered at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he seems to have devoted himself to the study of mathematics, astronomy, and chemistry; displaying great assiduity and industry. At twenty he made a year's tour on the Continent, chiefly in Holland, and on his return was made one of the fellows of Trinity College on its foundation by Henry VIII., in 1543. In 1548 he was strongly suspected of being addicted to "the black art," probably from his astrological pursuits; and having taken his degree of A.M., he again went abroad to the university of Louvaine and to Rheims, and elsewhere in France; returning to England in 1551, when he was presented by Cecil to King Edward VI., who assigned him a pension of one hundred crowns, which he subsequently relinquished for the rectory of Upton-on-Severn. Shortly after the accession of Mary, he was accused of "practising against the queen's life by enchantment;" the charge being founded on some correspondence between him and "the servants of the Lady Elizabeth." He was long imprisoned and frequently examined, but as nothing could be established against him he was set at liberty by an order of the church in 1555. On the accession of Elizabeth, Dee was consulted by Lord Robert Dudley respecting "a propitious day" for the coronation. He says, "I wrote at large and delivered it for her Majesty's use, by the commandment of the Lord Robert (afterwards Earl of Leicester), what in my judgment the ancient astrologers would determine on the election day of such a time as was appointed for her Majesty to be crowned in." He was presented to the queen, who made him great promises (not always fulfilled); amongst others, that where her brother Edward "had given him a crown, she would give him a noble" [one-third more—viz., from 5s. to 6s. 8d.]. Nothing can better mark the belief in astrology than the fact that Queen Elizabeth's nativity was cast, in order to ascertain whether she could marry with advantage to the nation. Lilly, some eighty years later, declares[25] that he received twenty pieces of gold, in order that he might ascertain where Charles I. might be most safe from his enemies, and what hour would be most favourable for his escape from Carisbrooke Castle.

In 1564 Dee again visited the Continent, and was presented to the Emperor Maximilian, probably on some secret mission; for Lilly says, "he was the Queen's intelligencer, and had a salary for his maintenance from the Secretaries of State. He was a ready-witted man, quick of apprehension, and of great judgment in the Latin and Greek tongues. He was a very great investigator of the more secret hermetical learning (alchemy), a perfect astronomer, a curious astrologer, a serious geometrician; to speak truth, he was excellent in all kinds of learning."[26] Dee was repeatedly and urgently sent for one morning "to prevent the mischief which divers of her Majesty's privy council suspected to be intended against her Majesty, by means of a certain image of wax, with a great pin stuck into it, about the breast of it, found in Lincoln's Inn Fields." For some years Dee led a life of privacy and study at Mortlake in Surrey, collecting books and MSS., beryls and magic crystals, talismans, &c. So strong was the popular belief in his neighbourhood that he had dealings with the devil, that in 1576 a mob assembled, broke into his house, and destroyed nearly all his library and collections; and it was with difficulty that he and his family escaped the fury of the rabble. In October, 1578, by the Queen's command, he had a conference with Dr. Bayley, her Majesty's physician, "about her Majesty's grievous pains, by reason of toothache and the rheum," &c.; and the same year he was sent on a winter journey of about 1500 miles by sea and land, "to consult with the learned physicians and philosophers [i.e., astrologers], for her Majesty's health-recovering and preserving." Passing over his more useful and valuable services to the State and to the world, as we are only noting here his doings as an astrologer, &c., we may remark that most of his proceedings and writings in this pseudo-science or art were accomplished after he had passed his fiftieth year. It was in 1581 that he took into his service, as an assistant in his alchemical and astrological labours, an apothecary of Worcester named Edward Kelly, born in 1555, and who was called "The Seer," because, looking into magic crystals or speculæ, it was said he saw many things which it was not permitted to Dee himself to behold. Kelly also acted as Dee's amanuensis, and together they held "conversations with spirits." They had a black speculum, it is said "a polished piece of cannel coal," in which the angels Gabriel and Raphael appeared at their invocation. Hence Butler says—

"Kelly did all his feats upon
The devil's looking-glass—a stone."

In 1583 a Polish noble, Albert Lasque, palatine of Siradia [? Sieradz] being in England, Dee and Kelly were introduced to him, and accompanied him to Poland. He persuaded them to pay a visit to Rodolph, king of Bohemia, who, though a weak and credulous man, is said to have become disgusted with their pretensions. They had no better success with the king of Poland, but were soon after invited by a rich Bohemian noble to his castle of Trebona, where they continued for some time in great affluence, owing, as they asserted, to their transmuting the baser metals into gold. Kelly is said to have been sordid and grasping, without honour or principle. Lilly asserts that the reason of many failures in the conferences with spirits was because Kelly was very vicious, "unto whom the angels were not obedient, or willingly did declare [answers to] the questions propounded." Dee and Kelly quarrelled and separated in Bohemia; Dee returning to England, while Kelly remained at Prague. He died in 1595. In 1595 the Queen appointed Dee warden of Manchester College, he being then sixty-eight years of age. He resided at Manchester nine years, quitting it in 1604 for his old abode at Mortlake, where he died in 1608, aged eighty-one, in great poverty, and leaving a numerous family and a great many printed works and forty unpublished writings behind him. The catalogue of Dee's library at Mortlake shows that it was rich in the works of preceding astrologers and alchemists, especially those of Roger Bacon, Raymond Lully, Albertus Magnus, Arnold de Villa Nova, &c.

John Booker, a celebrated astrologer of the seventeenth century, was the son of John Bowker (commonly pronounced Booker), of Manchester, and was born 23rd March, 1601. He was educated at the Manchester Grammar School, where he acquired some acquaintance with Latin. From childhood he showed an inclination for astrology, and amused himself with studying almanacks and other books on that subject. After serving some time to a haberdasher in London, he practised as a writing-master at Hadley, Middlesex; and was subsequently clerk for some time to the aldermen at Guildhall. Becoming famous by his studies, he was appointed Licenser of Mathematical Publications, which then included all those relating to the "celestial sciences." Lilly tells us that he once thought him the greatest astrologer in the world; but he afterwards came to think himself a much greater man. George Wharton, who had been one of his astrological acquaintances, quarrelled with him, and in consequence published at Oxford in 1644, in answer to one of Booker's pamphlets, what he called "Mercurio-Cœlica-Mastyx; or an Anti-caveat to all such as have heretofore had the misfortune to be cheated and deluded by the great and treacherous impostor, John Booker; in an answer to his frivolous pamphlet, entitled 'Mercurius-Cœlicus, or a Caveat to all the People of England.'" Booker died of dysentery in April, 1667, and was buried in St. James's Church, Duke's Place, London, where the following monument was erected to him by Ashmole, who was one of his greatest admirers:—"Ne oblivione conteretur Urna Johannis Bookeri, Astrologi, qui Fatis cessit 6 idus Aprilis, A.D. 1667. Hoc illi posuit amoris Monumentum, Elias Ashmole, Armiger." Lilly, in his Life and Times, gives the following character of Booker:—

"He was a great proficient in astrology, whose excellent verses upon the twelve months, framed according to the configurations of each month, being blest with success according to his predictions, procured him much reputation all over England. He was a very honest man; abhorred any deceit in the art he studied; had a curious fancy in judging of thefts; and was successful in resolving love questions. He was no mean proficient in astronomy; understood much of physic; was a great admirer of the antimonial cup; not unlearned in chemistry, which he loved, but did not practise; and since his decease I have seen a nativity of his performance, exactly directed, and judged with as much learning as from astrology can be expected. His library of books came short of the world's approbation, and were sold by his widow to Elias Ashmole, Esq., who most generously gave far more than they were worth."

Lilly and Booker were frequently consulted during the differences between the king and the parliamentary army, and were once invited by General Fairfax, and sent in a coach-and-four to head quarters at Windsor, to give their opinions on [i.e., their predictions as to] the prosecution of the war. Booker became famous for a prediction on the solar eclipse of 1613, in which year both the king of Bohemia and Gustavus, king of Sweden, died. Booker's works (chiefly tracts or pamphlets) were about fifteen or sixteen in number. The only work now worth notice is his Bloody Irish Almanack (London, 1646, quarto), which contains some memorable particulars relative to the war in Ireland.[27]

Another Lancashire astrologer was Charles Leadbetter, who was born at Cronton, near Prescot, and was the author of a Treatise on Eclipses of the Sun and Moon, commencing A.D. 1715, and ending A.D. 1749; in which he gives the horoscope of every eclipse of importance; and, from the aspects of the stars, predicts the principal occurrences that may be expected within limited periods. He failed, however, to predict the Rebellion of 1715, or that of 1745; and though under the years 1720 and 1721 he predicated "Sea Fights and Death of Fish," no hint of the "South Sea Bubble," the great event of those years, can be found amongst his prophecies. He entertained no doubt of an "eclipse of the moon, moving subjects to seduction [? sedition], servants to disobedience, and wives to a disorder against their husbands." Yet Leadbetter's Works on Astronomy, &c., were held in able repute, and he taught the "Arts and Sciences Mathematical" with much success, "at the Hand and Pen, Cock Lane, near Shore Ditch, London."

If we close here our notices of Lancashire Astrologers, it is not because we suppose the class to be wholly extinct. But those to whom we have so far referred, were well acquainted with astronomy, and erred only in superadding the delusions of astrology to the truths of that real science. The class still remaining in Lancashire, chiefly in country districts, are (with very few exceptions) greatly inferior in knowledge, and, mixing up the arts of the so-called sorcerer or conjuror with the deductions of the so-called "astral science" (of which they are blundering smatterers, often ignorant of the very elements of astronomy), they do not merit the name of astrologers, but should be classed with the numerous "wise men," "cunning women," and other varieties of fortune-tellers, who have not even the negative merit of being self-deluded by the phenomena of a supposed science; but are in their way mere charlatans and cheats, knowingly cozening their credulous dupes of as much money as they can extort. Some notices of this class will be found in later pages.

BELLS.

It is not with Bells generally, but only with Church Bells, and not with all their uses, but only such of them as are superstitious, that we are called upon to deal here. The large church bells are said to have been invented by Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, in Campania (whence the low Latin name of Campana), about A.D. 400. Two hundred years afterwards they appear to have been in great use in churches. Pope John XIII., in A.D. 968, consecrated a very large newly-cast bell in the Lateran Church at Rome, giving it the name of John. This is the first instance known of what has since been called "the baptising of bells," a Roman Catholic superstition of which vestiges remain in England in the names of great bells, as "Tom of Lincoln," "Great Tom of Oxford," &c. The priests anciently rung them themselves. Amongst their superstitious uses, were to drive away lightning and thunder; to chase evil spirits from persons and places; to expedite childbirth, when women were in labour; and the original use of the soul-bell or passing-bell was to drive away any demon that might seek to take possession of the soul of the deceased. Grose says that the passing-bell was anciently rung for two purposes: one, to bespeak the prayers of all good Christians for a soul just departing; the other, to drive away the evil spirits who stood at the bed's foot and about the house, ready to seize their prey, or at least to molest and terrify the soul in its passage. By the ringing of the bell they were kept aloof, and the soul, like a hunted hare, gained the start, or had what sportsmen call "law." Hence the high charge for tolling the great bell of the church, which, being louder, the evil spirits must go further off to be clear of its sound, by which the poor soul got so much the more start of them; besides, being heard further off, it would likewise procure the dying man a greater number of prayers. Till about 1830, it was customary at Roman Catholic funerals in many parts of Lancashire, to ring a merry peal on the bells, as soon as the interment was over. Doubtless the greater the clang of the bells, the further the flight of the fiends waiting to seize the soul of the departed. There are some monkish rhymes in Latin on the uses of church bells, some of which are retained in the following doggerel:—

Men's deaths I tell
Lightning and thunder
On Sabbath all
The sleepy head
The winds so fierce
Men's cruel rage

By doleful knell;
I break asunder;
To church I call;
I raise from bed;
I do disperse;
I do assuage.

The following verses (the spelling modernized) further illustrate the subject:[28]—

"If that the thunder chance to roar, and stormy tempest shake,
A wonder is it for to see the wretches how they quake;
How that no faith at all they have, nor trust in any thing,
The clerk doth all the bells forthwith at once in steeple ring;
With wondrous sound and deeper far than he was wont before,
Till in the lofty heavens dark the thunders bray no more.
For in these christen'd bells they think doth lie much pow'r and might
As able is the tempest great and storm to vanquish quite.

I saw myself at Nurnberg once, a town in Toring coast,
A bell that with this title bold herself did proudly boast:
By name I 'Mary' called am, with sound I put to flight
The thunder-cracks and hurtful storms, and every wicked sprite.
Such things when as these bells can do, no wonder certainly
It is, if that the papists to their tolling always fly,
When hail, or any raging storm, or tempest comes in sight,
Or thunderbolts, or lightning fierce, that every place doth smite."

Wynkin de Worde[29] tells us that bells are rung during thunder-storms, to the end that the fiends and wicked spirits should be abashed, and flee, and cease the moving of the tempest.[30] Bells appear to have had an inherent power against evil spirits, but this power was held to be greatly increased by the bells being christened. There is a custom in some Lancashire parishes, in ringing the passing-bell, to conclude its tolling with nine knells or strokes of the clapper, for a man, six for a woman, and three for a child; the vestiges of an ancient Roman Catholic injunction.[31] In an Old English Homily for Trinity Sunday,[32] it is stated that "the form of the Trinity was found in man; that was, Adam our forefather, on earth, one person, and Eve of Adam, the second person; and of them both was the third person. At the death of a man three bells should be rung, as his knell, in worship of the Trinity, and for a woman, who was the second person of the Trinity, two bells should be rung." Two couplets on the passing-bell may be inserted here:—

"When the bell begins to toll,
Lord have mercy on the soul!

When thou dost hear a toll or knell
Then think upon thy passing-bell."[33]

The great bell which used to be rung on Shrove-Tuesday to call the people together for the purpose of confessing their sins, or to be "shriven," was called the "Pancake Bell," and some have regarded it simply as a signal for the people to begin frying their pancakes. This custom prevails still in some parts of Lancashire, and in many country places throughout the North of England. Another bell, rung in some places as the congregation quits the church on Sunday, is popularly known among country people as the "pudding-bell," they supposing that its use is to warn those at home to get the dinner ready, as, in homely phrase, "pudding-time has come." A Lancashire clergyman[34] states that this bell is still rung in some of the old Lancashire parish churches; but he does not suggest any more probable reason for tolling this bell. The Curfew Bell [couvre feu, cover-fire] is commonly believed to be of Norman origin; a law having been made by William the Conqueror that all people should put out their fires and lights at the eight o'clock (evening) bell, and go to bed. In one place the sexton of a parish was required to lie in the church steeple, and at eight o'clock every night to ring the curfew for a quarter of an hour. The curfew-bell is still rung at Burnley, Colne, Blackburn, Padiham, and indeed in most of the older towns and many of the villages of Lancashire. It has nearly lost its ancient name, and is a remarkable instance of the persistence of an old custom or usage, long after all its significance or value has ceased. It is now merely called "the eight o'clock bell." A morning bell, rung anciently at four, now more commonly at six o'clock, is also to be heard in Burnley and other places, and is called "the six o'clock bell." Of what maybe called "the vocal ghosts of bells" many stories might be told. Opposite the Cross-slack, on the sands near Blackpool, out at sea, once stood the church and cemetery of Kilgrimol, long since submerged. Many tales are told of benighted wanderers near this spot being terrified with the sound of bells pealing dismal chimes o'er the murmuring sea.[35]

BEAL-TINE OR BELTANE FIRES; RELICS OF BAAL WORSHIP.

Among the dim traces of an extinct worship of Bel, or Baal, the ancient sun-god, perceptible still among Celtic peoples, especially in Ireland and Scotland, are the three festival periods when fires are kindled on eminences in honour of the sun. The Bel, or Belus, the chief deity of the Babylonians and the Assyrians, seems to have been identical with the Baal of the Phœnicians and Carthaginians. The Chaldee Bel and the Hebrew Baal alike mean "Lord;" and under these names worship was paid by the old Asiatics to the sun, whose light and heat-giving properties were typified by fires kindled on the tops of high hills. In parts of Lancashire, especially in the Fylde, these traces of a heathen cult still linger. "From the great heaps of stones on eminences, called Cairns, from the Toot-hills (i.e., the hills dedicated to the worship of the Celtic god, Tot, or Teut, or Teutates, the same with the Egyptian Thoth), and the Belenian eminences, whereon was worshipped Bel, or Belus, or Belenus, the sun-god; from these three kinds of heights the grand sacred fires of the Bel-Tine flamed thrice a year, at three of the great festivals of the Druids, in honour of Beal, or the Sun—viz., on the eve of May-day, on Midsummer Eve, and on the eve of the 1st November. Two such fires were kindled by one another on May-day Eve in every village of the nation, as well throughout all Gaul as in Britain, Ireland, and the outlying lesser islands, between which fires the men and the beasts to be sacrificed were to pass; from whence came the proverb, 'Between Bel's two fires,' meaning one in a great strait, not knowing how to extricate himself. One of the fires was on the cairn, and the other on the ground. On the eve of the 1st of November all the people, out of a religious persuasion instilled into them by the Druids, extinguished their fires. Then every master of a family was religiously obliged to take home a portion of the consecrated fire, and to kindle the fire anew in his house, which for the ensuing year was to be lucky and prosperous. Any man who had not paid all his last year's dues to the Druids was neither to have a spark of this holy fire from the cairns, nor dared any of his neighbours let him take the benefit of theirs, under pain of excommunication; which, as managed by the Druids, was worse than death. If, therefore, he would live the winter out, he must pay the Druids' dues by the last day of October. The Midsummer fires and sacrifices were to obtain a blessing on the fruits of the earth, now becoming ready for gathering; as those on the 1st of May, that they might prosperously grow; and those on the last of October were a thanksgiving for finishing their harvest. But in all of them regard was had to the several degrees of increase and decrease in the heat of the sun. At the cairn fires it was customary for the lord of the place, or his son, or some other person of distinction, to take the entrails of the sacrificed animal into his hands, and walking bare-foot over the coals thrice, after the flames had ceased, to carry them to the Druid, who waited in a whole skin at the altar. If the fire-treader escaped harmless, it was reckoned a good omen, and welcomed with loud acclamations; but if he received any hurt, it was deemed unlucky both to the community and to himself."[36] In Ireland, May-day is called la na Beal tina, and its eve, neen na Beal tina—i.e., the day and eve of Beal's fire, from its having been in heathen times consecrated to the god Beal, or Belus. The ceremony practised on May-day Eve, of making the cows leap over lighted straw or faggots, has been generally traced to the worship of this deity.[37]

The Irish have ever been worshippers of fire and of Baal, and are so to this day. The chief festival in honour of the sun and fire is upon the 21st [24th] June, when the sun arrives at the summer solstice, or rather begins its retrograde motion. "At the house where I was entertained, in the summer of 1782, it was told me that we should see at midnight the most singular sight in Ireland, which was the lighting of fires in honour of the sun. Accordingly, exactly at midnight, the fires began to appear; and, going up to the leads of the house, which had a widely-extended view, I saw, on a radius of thirty miles all around, the fires burning on every eminence. I learned from undoubted authority that the people danced round the fires, and at the close went through these fires, and made their sons and daughters, together with their cattle, pass the fire; and the whole was conducted with religious solemnity."[38] Bonfires are still made on Midsummer Eve in the northern parts of England and in Wales. The 1st of November was considered among the ancient Welsh as the conclusion of summer, and was celebrated with bonfires, accompanied with ceremonies suitable to these events, and some parts of Wales still retain these customs. Dr. Jamieson, in his Dictionary of the Scottish Language, mentions a festival called Beltane or Beltein, annually held in Scotland on Old May Day (May 13th). A town in Perthshire is called Tillee Beltein—i.e., the eminence or high place of the fire of Baal. Near it are two Druidical Temples of upright stones, with a well adjacent to one of them, still held in great veneration for its sanctity. The doctor describes the drawing of bits of a cake, one part of which is made perfectly black with charcoal, and he who draws the black bit is considered as "devoted to Baal, and is obliged to leap three times through the flame." Pennant, in his Tour in Scotland, gives a like account, with other ceremonies. The custom existed in the Isle of Man on the eve of the 1st of May, of lighting two fires on a hill-top, in honour of the pagan god Baal, and of driving cattle between those fires, as an antidote against murrain or any pestilent distemper for the year following. It was also customary to light these fires on St. John's Eve (June 23rd), and up to the present time a stranger is surprised to see on this day, as evening approaches, fires springing up in all directions around him, accompanied with the blowing of horns and other rejoicings.[39] Macpherson notices the Beltein ceremonies in Ireland, and adds, "Beltein is also observed in Lancashire." On Horwich Moor are two heaps of stones, or cairns, which are called by the country people "The Wilder Lads." It is believed that on May Day Eve the Druids made prodigious fires on cairns, situated as these are, on lofty eminences, which being every one in sight of some other like fire, symbolized a universal celebration. These fires were in honour of Beal, or Bealan, latinized into Belenus, by which name the Gauls and their colonies denoted the sun; and to this time the first day of May is by the Irish called La Bealtine, or the Day of Belen's Fire. It bears a like name among the Highlanders of Scotland, and in the Isle of Man.[40]

The last evening in October was called the "Teanlay Night," or "The Fast of All Souls." At the close of that day, till of late years, the hills which encircle the Fylde shone brightly with many a bonfire; the mosses of Marton, &c., rivalling them with their fires, kindled for the avowed object of succouring their friends, whose souls were supposed to be detained in purgatory. A field near Poulton in which the mummery of the "Teanlay" was once celebrated (a circle of men standing with bundles of straw, raised on high with forks), is named "Purgatory" by the old inhabitants. Formerly this custom was not confined to one village or town of the Fylde district, but was generally practised as a sacred ceremony.[41]

BOGGARTS, GHOSTS, AND HAUNTED PLACES.

What is a Boggart? A sort of ghost or sprite. But what is the meaning of the word Boggart? Brand says that "in the northern parts of England, ghost is pronounced gheist and guest. Hence bar-guest, or bar-gheist. Many streets are haunted by a guest, who assumes many strange appearances, as a mastiff-dog, &c. It is a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon gast, spiritus, anima." Brand might have added that bar is a term for gate in the north, and that all the gates of York are named "bars," so that a bar-gheist is literally a gate-ghost; and many are the tales of strange appearances suddenly seen perched on the top of a gate or fence, whence they sometimes leaped upon the shoulders of the scared passenger. Drake, in his Eboracum, says (Appendix, p. 7), "I have been so frightened with stories of the barguest when I was a child, that I cannot help throwing away an etymology upon it. I suppose it comes from Anglo-Saxon burh, a town, and gast, a ghost, and so signifies a town sprite. N.B.—Guest is in the Belgic and Teutonic softened into gheist and geyst." The "Boggart Hole" therefore means the hollow haunted by the bar-gheist or gate-ghost.

BOGGART HOLE CLOUGH.

"Not far from the little snug, smoky village of Blakeley or Blackley, there lies one of the most romantic of dells, rejoicing in a state of singular seclusion, and in the oddest of Lancashire names, to wit, the 'Boggart Hole.' [In the present generation, by pleonasm, the place is named 'Boggart Hole Clough.'] Rich in every requisite for picturesque beauty and poetical association, it is impossible for me (who am neither a painter nor a poet) to describe this dell as it should be described; and I will, therefore, only beg of thee, gentle reader, who, peradventure, mayst not have lingered in this classical neighbourhood, to fancy a deep, deep, dell, its steep sides fringed down with hazel, and beech, and fern, and thick undergrowth, and clothed at the bottom with the richest and greenest sward in the world. You descend, clinging to the trees, and scrambling as best you may, and now you stand on haunted ground! Tread softly, for this is the Boggart's Clough, and see, in yonder dark corner, and beneath the projecting mossy stone, where that dusky sullen cave yawns before us, like a bit of Salvator's best, there lurks that strange elf, the sly and mischievous Boggart. Bounce! I see him coming; oh no, it was only a hare bounding from her form; there it goes—there!"—Such is the introduction to a tale of a boggart, told by Crofton Croker, in Roby's Traditions of Lancashire; but which, if memory serve us faithfully, is but a localized version of a story told of an Irish sprite, and also of a Scotch brownie; for in all three tales when the farmer and his family are "flitting" in order to get away from the nocturnal disturbance, the sprite pops up his head from the cart, exclaiming, "Ay, neighbour, we're flitting!" Tradition, which has preserved the name of the clough selected by the Lancashire boggart for his domicile, has failed to record any particular pranks of this individual elf, and we can only notice this charming little clough, as conveying by its popular name the only remaining vestige of its lost traditions. Perhaps the best story of this clough is that graphically told by Bamford[42] of three friends seeking by a charm (consisting in gathering three grains of St. John's fern seed there), to win for one of them the love of a damsel who was indifferent to him.

BOGGARTS OR GHOSTS IN OLD HALLS.

There is scarcely an old house, or hall, of any antiquity in Lancashire, that cannot boast of that proud distinction over the houses of yesterday, a ghost or boggart. Radcliffe Tower was haunted by a black dog; perhaps in commemoration of the Fair Ellen of Radcliffe, who, by order of her stepmother, was murdered by the master cook, and cut up small, and of her flesh a venison pasty made for her father's dinner!

Smithells Hall, near Bolton, was formerly haunted by the ghost of the martyr George Marsh, whose stamped footstep indenting a flagstone, is still shown there.

Ince Hall stands about a mile from Wigan, on the left-hand of the high road to Bolton. It is a very conspicuous object, its ancient and well-preserved front—one of those black and white half-timbered façades now almost confined to the two counties palatine of Lancashire and Cheshire—generally attracting the notice and inquiry of travellers. About a mile to the south-east stands another place of the same name, once belonging to the Gerards of Bryn. The manor is now the property of Charles Walmsley, Esq., of Westwood, near Wigan. The two mansions Ince Hall and Ince Manor House, are sometimes confounded together in topographical inquiries; and it is not now certain to which of them properly belongs a tradition about a forged will and a ghost, on which Mr. Roby has founded a very graphic story, in his Traditions of Lancashire. There are the Boggart of Clegg Hall, near Rochdale; the Clayton Hall Boggart, Droylsden; the Clock House Boggart, in the same neighbourhood; the Thackergate Boggart, near Alderdale; and many others: indeed they are too numerous for us to attempt a full enumeration. Mr. Higson observes[43] that few sombre or out-of-the-way places, retired nooks and corners, or sequestered by-paths, escaped the reputation of being haunted. Many domiciles had their presiding boggart, and feeorin' [fairies] swarmed at every turn of the dark old lanes, and arch-boggarts held revel at every "three-road-end." After dusk, each rustle of the leaves, or sigh of the night wind through the branches, to the timid wayfarer heralded the instant and unceremonious appearance of old wizards and witches, "Nut Nans," and "Clapcans," or the terrific exploits of headless trunks, alias "men beawt yeds," or other traditionary "sperrits," hobgoblins, and sprites, or the startling semblances of black dogs, phantoms, and other indescribable apparitions. Aqueous nymphs or nixies, yclept "Grindylow," and "Jenny Green Teeth," lurked at the bottom of pits, and with their long, sinewy arms dragged in and drowned children who ventured too near. On autumnal evenings, the flickering flame (carburetted hydrogen, spontaneously ignited) of the "Corpse Candle," "Will-o'-th'-Wisp," or "Jack" or "Peg-a-Lantern" (for the sex was not clearly ascertained), performed his or her fantastic and impossible jumps in the plashy meadows near Edge Lane, to the terror of many a simple-minded rustic. Fairies, also, were believed to commit many depredations; such as eating the children's porridge, nocturnally riding out the horses, loosing the cows in the shippon, or churning the milk whilst "calving," by the fireside, and stealing the butter; and hence, behind many a door, as yet observable in Clayton, both of dwelling and shippon, was carefully nailed a worn horse-shoe, believed to be a potent counter-charm or talisman against their freaks and fancies. There were certain localities in the township of Droylsden notorious as the rendezvous or favourite promenades of boggarts and feeorin', which after nightfall few persons could muster pluck sufficient to linger in, or even pass by, for—

"Grey superstition's whisper dread,
Debarr'd the spot to vulgar tread."

Manifestly pre-eminent was "th' owd Green Lone," which "Jem Hill, th' king o' Dreighlesdin," used to assert "swaarmt wi' fairees, witches, un' boggerts, un' which nob'dy could mester bur hissel'." The boggart located at Thackergate, near Alderdale, has well-nigh scared many a sober person out of his senses. Herds of four-footed boggarts used to issue from a pit at East End, in form resembling "great big dhogs, wi' great glarin' een, as big as tay-cups." The boggart at the croft-tenter's lodge (South) Clock-house, as fancy dictated, stalked through the chamber and stripped the bedclothes off the sleepers; or, assuming gigantic proportions and snow-white vestments, perched in the solemn yew-tree, a startling object by contrast. At last, being exorcised by an array of divines, it was laid for a time, beneath its favourite tree. A field-path from Fairfield to Ashton Hill-lane was nightly traversed by a being of another world, mostly representing a shadowy lady, draped according to whim, either in a loose white robe, or in rustling black silk. For a certain distance she glided in advance of the pedestrian, and then, by suddenly vanishing, most likely left his hair standing on end. At one of the Greenside farms a murder was said to have been committed in the shippon; and the exact spot was supposed to be indicated by the impossibility of securely fastening a cow in one particular boose; for, however carefully its occupant was chained overnight, next morning she was sure to be found at large, and once was actually discovered on the shippon balks. Thither, it was believed, the cow had been carried by supernatural agency; but, be that as it may, it was necessary to lower her cautiously down, with the aid of ropes and blocks. At a cottage adjoining, a boggart varied its amusements by drumming on the old oaken chest, still preserved; or, growing emboldened, shook the hangings of the bed, or rustled amongst the clothes; the alarmed occupants sometimes in despair rolling up the coverlet, and unavailingly whirling it at their invisible tormentor. At a neighbouring farm-house, amongst other vagaries, the boggart would snatch up the infant, whilst asleep between its parents, and, without awakening them, would harmlessly deposit it on the hearthstone, downstairs. "Clayton Ho'" [Hall] was of course honoured with a boggart, which at dead of night diversified its pranks by snatching the clothes from the beds, trailing heavy iron weights on the floors, or rattling ponderous chains through the crazy apartments. These pranks becoming insufferable, the help of a clergyman from the parish church was obtained; and fortunately, with the aid of counter-spells and incantations, he succeeded in laying the spirit for ever, declaring that,

"Whilst ivy climbs and holly is green,
Clayton Hall Boggart shall no more be seen."

Even yet one room in the mansion is named "the Bloody Chamber," from some supposed stains of human gore on the oaken floor planks; which, however, in reality are only natural red tinges of the wood, denoting the presence of iron. Even since the formation of the new road, J. W——, the last of the ancient race of boggart-seers in the township, used to combat with feeorin' between East End and Droylsden toll-gate; but as he died a few years ago without bequeathing his gift, he (happily) carried with him his mantle to the grave. At a period just within memory, oft, after sunset, has the weary and tardy pedestrian quickened his speed on approaching some lonely place, by remembering how its tutelar spirit or Boggart could assume at will the shape of a rabbit, dog, bear, or still more fearful form. On its appearance, of course, the wayfarer fled in affright, and from fear and unwonted exertion, often reached home utterly exhausted. Next day the story would be widely circulated through the thinly populated district, detailing at length (and of course gathering minuteness and improvement in its transmission), how "Owd Yethurt o' Grunsho," or "Lung Tum woife," "th' neet afore wur welly ta'en by a great black Boggart, wi' great lung hurms, un' a whiskin' tail, un' yure as black as soot, un' rowlin' e'en as big as saucers." The decadence of all these old superstitions is to be attributed to a variety of causes. Straight, well-paved roads; increased intellectual activity in useful channels, informing the minds of one locality with the ideas of another, the publication of scientific works; and lastly, according to one aged unbeliever, the introduction of "Owd Ned [the steam-engine], un' lung chimblies; fact'ry folk havin' summat else t'mind nur wanderin' ghosts un' rollickin' sperrits." The same authority archly declared as a clincher, "There's no Boggarts neaw, un' iv ther' were, folk han grown so wacken, they'd soon catch 'em."[44]

HOUSE BOGGARTS, OR LABOURING GOBLINS.

These humbler classes of boggarts are by turns both useful and troublesome to the farmers of the district where they choose to reside. Syke Lumb Farm, near Blackburn, is reputed to be still visited by one of these anomalous beings, and many of his mad pranks are still talked of and believed in the neighbourhood. When in a good humour, this noted goblin will milk the cows, pull the hay, fodder the cattle, harness the horses, load the carts, and stack the crops. When irritated by the utterance of some unguarded expression or mark of disrespect, either from the farmer or his servants, the cream-mugs are smashed to atoms; no butter can be obtained by churning; the horses and other cattle are turned loose or driven into the woods; two cows will sometimes be found fastened in the same stall; no hay can be pulled from the mow; and all the while the wicked imp sits grinning with delight upon one of the cross-beams in the barn. At other times the horses are unable to draw the empty carts across the farm-yard; if loaded, they are upset; whilst the cattle tremble with fear, not at any visible cause. Nor do the inmates of the house experience any better or gentler usage. During the night the clothes are said to be violently torn from off the beds of the offending parties, whilst invisible hands drag these individuals down the stone stairs by the legs, one step at a time, after a more uncomfortable manner than we need describe. Hothershall Hall, near Ribchester, was formerly the scene of similar exploits; but the goblin is understood to have been "laid" under the roots of a large laurel tree at the end of the house, and will not be able to molest the family so long as the tree exists. It is a common opinion in that part of the country that the roots have to be moistened with milk on certain occasions, in order to prolong its existence, and also to preserve the power of the spell under which the goblin is laid. None but the Roman Catholic priesthood are supposed to have the power of "laying an evil spirit," and hence they have always the honour to be cited in our local legends. Sometimes, too, they have the credit of outwitting the goblins; and many an old farm residence has the reputation of having thus been freed from these imps of darkness till they can spin a rope from the sands of the Ribble. The mansion at Towneley does not escape the imputation of having its "Boggart," although its visits are now limited to once in seven years, when its thirst for vengeance has to be satisfied by the untimely death of one of the residents at the Hall. A Sir John Towneley is supposed to have injured the poor of the district, nearly four hundred years ago, by "laying-in" a considerable portion of common to his park, and, as a punishment for this offence, his soul is said to haunt the scenes of his oppression. The peasantry still aver "that the old knight's spirit, being unable to rest, wanders about the mansion, and may be heard over the very parts taken in, crying, in most piteous tones—

"Be warned! Lay out! Be warned! Lay out!
Around Hore-law and Hollin-hey clough:
To her children give back the widow's cot,
For you and yours there is still enough."[45]

The popular story of "The Boggart Flitting" is common to both Lancashire and Yorkshire; and indeed to most of the nations in the North of Europe.

Of boggarts the Rev. William Thornber observes,[46] that there were several different kinds, having their haunts in that part of the Fylde near Blackpool; as, for instance, the wandering ghost of the homicide or the suicide; that of the steward of injustice, or that of the victim of a cruel murder; again, the lubber-fiends, the horse-boggarts, and the house-boggarts, or industrious, yet mischievous imps, haunting dwellings. He names, "The headless Boggart of White-gate Lane," as a sample of the first class. So was "The Boggart of Staining Hall," near Blackpool, said to be the wandering ghost of a Scotchman who was murdered there near a tree, which has since marked the deed by perfuming the soil around with a sweet odour of thyme. Of another kind were those whose appearance was the forerunner of death in some families. The Walmsleys, of Poulton-le-Fylde, he adds, were haunted by a boggart of this description, always making its appearance with alarming noises before the decease of one of the family.

Of the lubber-fiends, house-boggarts, or brownies, so strikingly described by Milton,[47] Mr. Thornber mentions the ancient one of Rayscar and Inskip, which at times kindly housed the grain, collected the horses, and got them ready for the market; but at other times played the most mischievous pranks. The famous "Boggart of Hackensall Hall" had the appearance of a huge horse, which was very industrious if treated with kindness. Every night it was indulged with a fire, before which it was frequently seen reclining; and when deprived of this indulgence by neglect, it expressed its anger by fearful outcries.

HORNBY PARK MISTRESS AND MARGARET BRACKIN.

The following story is told and believed by some persons in Hornby. The Park Mistress may be supposed to be the ghost of Lady Harrington, who committed murder three hundred years ago. Margaret Brackin was born in 1745, and died in 1795. The dialect is that of the locality:—

"In days that oud folks tell on still,
Meg Brackin went up Windy Bank;
Shou lated kinlin' on the hill,
Till owr t' Lake Mountains t' sun it sank.

Nat lang at efter t' sun was set,
And shou hed fill'd her brat wi' sticks,
Shou sid aside at t' Park wood yett,
A woman stan'in mang the wicks.

T' leaves on t' trees, they owm'ered t' land,
And fadin' was the summer light,
When Marget sid that woman stand
Donn'd like a ghoost o' oor i' white.

Marget was fear'd, but spak and ex'd,
'Hey Missis! let me gang wi' ye,
I hope as that ye'll nut be vext,
But it is gitten dark and dree.'

T' Park Mistress e'en shin'd o' wi' leet;
Shou whyatly cam te Marget's side;
T' gerss didn't bend underneath her feet;
Shou seem'd in t' air te float and glide.

As soon's shou cam whare Marget stood,
Shou gript a tight houd on her hand;
Shou led her first intul t' Park wood,
Then back and forret o' owr t' land.

They kept na road, they kept na path,
They went thro' brackins, scrogs, and briar,
Marget shou soon was out of breath,
But t' lady didn't seem te tire.

They baath com down te Wenning's brink,
And Marget's throat was dry wi' dread,
But shou dursn't ex te stop and drink,
Saa forret still that woman led.

Owr shillar and rough staans they trod,
Intu t' Wenning, then out fra t' stream;
Surlie their walkin' wasn't snod,
T' way they travell'd was naan saa weam.

Marget lous'd t' strings of her brat,
And trail'd it gerss and bushes through,
Till deg'd and damp and wet it gat;
Then suck'd it out for t' cooling dew.

Fra Weaver's Ayr they went up t' wood,
Now gaain' straight and then aslant,
They niver stopt, they niver stood,
But raac'd up t' brow saa rough and brant.

Marget could niver gradely say
Where nesht wi' t' ghoost shou went that neet;
On Windy Bank, when it was day,
They fun' her liggin, spent wi' freet.

Marget hed been stout and throddy,
But t' walk she tuk that summer neet,
Left lile fatness on her body;
At efter shou was thin and leet."

BOGGARTS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Having fallen into conversation with a working man on our road to Holme Chapel, we asked him if people in those parts were now ever annoyed by beings of another world. Affecting the esprit fort, he boldly answered, "Noa! the country's too full o' folk;" while his whole manner, and especially his countenance, as plainly said "Yes!" A boy who stood near was more honest. "O, yes!" he exclaimed, turning pale; "the Boggart has driven William Clarke out of his house; he flitted last Friday." "Why," I asked; "what did the Boggart do?" "O, he wouldn't let 'em sleep; he stripp'd off the clothes." "Was that all?" "I canna' say," answered the lad, in a tone which showed he was afraid to repeat all he had heard; "but they're gone, and the house is empty. You can go and see for yoursel', if you loike. Will's a plasterer, and the house is in Burnley Wood, on Brown Hills."[48]

Edwin Waugh, in his story of "The Grave of Grislehurst Boggart,"[49] says, the most notable boggart of the hilly district towards Blackstone Edge, was the Clegg Ho' Boggart, still the theme of many a winter's tale among the people of the hills above Clegg Hall. The proverb, "Aw 'm heere agen, like Clegg Ho' Boggart," is common there, and in all the surrounding villages.... Boggarts appear, however, to have been more numerous than they are now upon the country side, when working people wove what was called "one lamb's wool" in a day; but when it came to pass that they had to weave "three lambs' wools" in a day, and the cotton trade arose, boggarts, and fairies, and feeorin' of all kinds, began to flee away from the clatter of shuttles. As to the Grislehurst Boggart, here is part of the story as told to Waugh, or by him:—"Whau it isn't aboon a fortnit sin' th' farmer's wife at the end theer yerd seed summat i' th' dyhed time o' th' neet; an' hoo war welly thrut eawt o' bed, too, besides—so then" ... "Th' pranks 'at it's played abeawt this plaze at time an' time, 'ud flay ony wick soul to yer tell on ... unyawkin' th' byes, an' turnin' carts an' things o'er i' th' deep neet time; an' shiftin' stuff up and deawn th' heawse when folk are i' bed; it's rayther flaysome yo may depend."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Thorpe's Northern Mythology, vol. i. pp. 118-231.

[2] See Mallet's Northern Antiquities, Keightley's Mythology of Greece and Rome, and Kelly's Indo-European Tradition and Folk-lore.

[3] Keightley's Fairy Mythology, pp. 2, 3.

[4] Roby's Traditions of Lancashire, p. xiv.

[5] It may be stated that this introductory essay is abridged from two papers read before the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, in 1859 and 1860, which were written long before the writer saw any of the almost identical general deductions and conclusions in Dr. Dasent's introduction to his Popular Tales from the Norse.

[6] This popular opinion appears to be very ancient and wide-spread; for it has been noticed by Moses as prevailing in Egypt.—Exodus xi. 5-7.

[7] The use of the old style in effect, is not yet extinct in Lancashire. The writer knows an old man, R. H., of Habergham, about 77 years of age, who always reckons the changes of the seasons in this manner. He alleges the practice of his grandfather and father in support of his method; and states with much confidence that—"Perliment didn't change t' seeasuns wen thay chang'd t' day o't' munth."

[8] Conybeare, p. 242.

[9] Charnock's Breviary of Natural Philosophy in Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum, p. 297.

[10] Companion to Almanac for 1837, p. 22.

[11] Maier's Symbola Ameæ Mensæ.

[12] Thomson's Annals of Philosophy, n. s., vol. vi. p. 241.

[13] Ben Jonson, in his play of the Alchemist, has the following lines:—

"But when you see th' effects of the Great Medium,
Of which one part projected on a hundred
Of Mercury, or Venus, or the Moon,
Shall turn it to as many of the Sun;
Nay to a thousand, so ad infinitum,
You will believe me."

[14] Godwin's Lives of Necromancers, Art. Dee. Dr. Dee's Diary (Camden Soc.) contains many references to his alchemical pursuits.—See pp. 7, 22, 25, 27, 28, 37, and 63.

[15] Brewster's Life of Sir Isaac Newton, vol. ii. p. 376.

[16] Preface to Bibl. Chem. Curiosa, quoted by Thomson, p. 18. For a list of Boyle's works connected with alchemy, see the Philosophical Epitaphs, by W. C.

[17] Pictorial History of England, vol. ii. p. 207.

[18] Baines's Lancashire.

[19] Fœdera, vol. ix. p. 379.

[20] Rot. Parl., vol. v. p. 314a.

[21] Rot. Parl., vol. v. p. 314a.

[22] Worthies, &c., p. 122.

[23] For a copy of this patent in the original Latin, see Baines's Lancashire, vol. i. p. 406.

[24] Pennant's London.

[25] History of his Life and Times.

[26] Lilly's Life and Times, p. 224.

[27] Whatton's Memoir in Baines's Lancashire, vol. ii. p. 367.

[28] From Barnaby Googe's Translation of the Regnum Papisticum (or Popish Kingdom) of Naogeorgus, fol. 41 b.

[29] Golden Legend.

[30] Hone's Every-Day Book, p. 141.

[31] See Durand's Rationale.

[32] Strutt's Manners and Customs, vol. iii. p. 176.

[33] Ray's Collection of Old English Proverbs.

[34] P. P., in Notes and Queries, vol. ix. p. 569.

[35] Thornber's History of Blackpool, p. 342.

[36] Toland's History of the Druids.

[37] Hone's Every-Day Book, vol. i. p. 594.

[38] Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1795.

[39] Mr. William Harrison's notes on Waldron's Description of the Isle of Man, p. 125.

[40] Hampson's Medii Ævi Kalendarium, vol. i. p. 252.

[41] Rev. W. Thornber's History of Blackpool.

[42] Passages in the Life of a Radical, vol. i. p. 130.

[43] History of Droylsden, p. 67.

[44] Mr. John Higson's Notices of Droylsden.

[45] See Pictorial History of Lancashire, p. 189, and Whitaker's History of Whalley, p. 342.

[46] History of Blackpool, p. 332.

[47] In his L'Allegro, where he

"Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn the cream-bowl duly set,
When, in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shad'wy flail had thresh'd the corn,
That ten day-labours could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber-fiend,
And stretch'd out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And, cropful, out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings."

[48] Pictorial History of Lancashire.

[49] Sketches of Lancashire Life, p. 192.

CHARMS AND SPELLS.

These may be placed in two classes—those directed against evil beings, witchcraft, &c., and those which may be termed in their object curative of "all the ills that flesh is heir to." First as to

CHARMS AND SPELLS AGAINST EVIL BEINGS.

These are usually supplied for a consideration by the fortune-tellers, astrologers, or "wise men" of a neighbourhood. The following is a correct copy of one of these documents which was found over the door of a house in the neighbourhood of Burnley. Its occupier had experienced "ill luck," and he thus sought protection from all evil-doers:—

"Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Trine, Sextile, Dragon's Head, Dragon's Tail, I charge you all to gard this hause from all evils spirits whatever, and gard it from all Desorders, and from aney thing being taken wrangasly, and give this famaly good Ealth & Welth."

Another individual, well known to the writer, was so far convinced that certain casualties that happened to his cattle arose from the practice of witchcraft, that he unconsciously resorted to Baal-worship, and consumed a live calf in the fire, in order to counteract the influences of his unknown enemies. At the same time, almost every door about his house had its horse-shoe nailed to it as a charm, to protect all within it from demons and witches.

A CHARM, WRITTEN IN CYPHER, AGAINST WITCHCRAFT AND EVIL SPIRITS.

Early in the nineteenth century, some men engaged in pulling down a barn, or shippon, at West Bradford, about two miles north of Clitheroe, were attracted by seeing a small square piece of wood fall from one of the beams, and from it dropped a paper, folded as a small letter, but measuring, when opened, 7¼ by 6 inches. A sort of superscription was in large and unknown characters, and inside the paper was nearly covered with a species of hieroglyphics, mixed with strange symbols; and in the top left corner a table or square of thirty-six small squares, filled with characters in red ink, the great bulk of the writing being in black ink. The charm belongs to Jeremiah Garnett, Esq., of Roefield, Clitheroe, and it was first deciphered by his brother, the late Rev. Richard Garnett, of the British Museum, in May, 1825. It is this gentleman's explanation, with a very few additions and corrections by the present writer, the substance of which is now appended:—The table in the top corner is a sort of magic square, called by astrologers "The Table of the Sun." It consists of six rows of six small squares each, and is so arranged that the sum of the figures in every row of six squares, whether counted vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, amounts to 111, and the sum total of the table to 666—a favourite magical number, being that of "the beast."[50] To mystify the thing as much as possible the numerals are expressed by letters, or rather by a sort of cypher, chiefly formed from the Greek alphabet. Thus 1 is represented by a; 2 = e; 3 = i; 4 = o; 5 = u; 6 = l; 7 = m; 8 = n; 9 = r; and 0 = z. In a tablet, or space at the top of the paper, flanking this table, are five mystical characters, or symbols, in red ink. The first consists of the symbols of the sun, and of the constellation Leo, which, in astrology, is "the sun's own house," and where, of course, he is supposed to have the greatest power. A word in black-ink cyphers, under these symbols, is Machen, the cabalistic name of "the third [or fourth] heaven;" and the Archangel Michael being supposed to preside over the sphere [and to be the "Angel of the Lord's Day">[, his seal, or cypher, is introduced below these symbols—a series of joined lines and swirls, like some long word written in one of the older English shorthands. [This figure will be found under "The Lord's Day," in the Heptameron of one Peter de Abano.] In cyphers below, in black ink, is written his name, "Michael." The next cabalistic character represents "the Intelligence of the Sun," and over it, in cypher or Greek letters, is written "intelligence." Under this is another cabalistic symbol, denoting the "Spirit of the Sun," the word "spirit" being written within it. In astrology, every planet is supposed to have two beings, or spirits, attached to it, and called its Intelligence and its Spirit. The last figure (which contains in a sort of quartering the word sigil, seal) is "the seal of the Sun" himself, in astrological language. All these symbols show that the charm was meant to be put in operation on a Sunday, that being the day of the Archangel Michael, as well as of the sun. These symbols and table occupy the upper third of the paper, the remaining two-thirds being filled with the words of the charm itself, in fourteen lines, of a sort of cypher-writing, in which the five vowels are represented by a sort of arbitrary character, as are most of the consonants, g, l, m, n, and p, being written as Greek letters. The fourteen lines may be thus rendered in ordinary letters; and it may be supposed that whoever pronounces the incantation, makes the sign of the cross wherever it is indicated in the writing:—

Line 1. "apanton [or awanton] + hora + camab. + naadgrass + pynavet ayias + araptenas.

2. "+ quo + signasque + payns [or pagns ? pagus] + sut gosikl + tetragrammaton +

3. "inverma + amo + θ [apparently an abbreviation for Theos, God] + dominus + deus + hora + [here a hole in the paper has destroyed a word] + fiat + fiat + fiat +

4. "ut dicitur decimo septimo capitulo Sancti Matthæi a vigesimo carmine

5. "fide demoveatis montes, fiat secundum fidem, si sit, vel fuerit

6. "ut cunque fascinum vel dæmon habitat vel perturbat hanc

7. "personam, vel hunc locum, vel hanc bestiam, adjuro te, abìre

8. "Sine perturbatione, molestia, vel tumultu minime, nomine

9. "Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sanctu. Amen. Pater noster qui es

10. "in cœlis, sanctificetur nomen tuum, veniat regnum tuum, fiat voluntas

11. "tuo, sicut in cœlo etiam in terra, panem nostrum quotidianum da

12. "nobis in diem, et remitte nobis peccata nostra, etenim ipsi

13. "remittimus omnibus qui nobis debent; et ne nos inducas in tentat-

14. "-ionem, sed libera nos a malo. Fiat."

It will be seen that the first three lines of this charm are a sort of gibberish, with an admixture of Greek and Latin words, constituting in itself a charm, supposed to be efficacious in expelling or restraining evil spirits. With the fourth line, then, we begin our translation.

"As it is said in the seventeenth chapter of St. Matthew, at the twentieth verse, 'By faith ye may remove mountains: be it according to [my] faith,'[51] if there is, or ever shall be, witchcraft [or enchantment] or evil spirit, that haunts or troubles this person, or this place, or this beast [or these cattle], I adjure thee to depart, without disturbance, molestation, or trouble in the least, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." [Then follows the Lord's Prayer in Latin, ending with the word "Fiat" (be it done), instead of Amen.] These words are endorsed or written outside the paper in two lines:—

"Agla + On [or En] Tetragrammaton."

In a charm cited in the Heptameron, or Mercurial Elements of Peter de Abano, these are called "the three secret names." The first two are names given to the Deity by the Jewish cabalists. The third (which is also the last word in the second line of the charm) is one also frequently in use amongst Talmudists and Jewish writers, meaning literally "four-lettered," as descriptive of the sacred and unpronounceable name ("Jehovah," written in Hebrew by four letters). The word is here endorsed, as if to authenticate the whole charm, and to show that it is the production of an artist who understood his business; for "tetragrammaton," and "fiat," are words of such potency, that a charm without them would be of no efficacy whatever. The Rev. Richard Garnett adds to his account of this charm (in May, 1825):—"I should think that the document is of no great antiquity, probably not more than thirty or forty years old. It was doubtless manufactured by some country 'wise man,' a regular dealer in such articles. There are, I believe, several persons within twenty miles of Blackburn, who still carry on a trade of this sort."

[In the Heptameron, already quoted, is "The Conjuration of the Lord's Day," which runs thus:—"I conjure and confirm upon you, ye strong and holy angels of God ... [here follow various names of angels, including those 'who rule in the fourth heaven'], and by the name of his star, which is Sol, and by his sign, and by the immense name of the living God, and by all the names aforesaid—I conjure thee, Michael, O! great angel, who art chief ruler of the Lord's Day," &c.].

Amongst other charms against evil may be named that of our ancestors, who, when eating eggs, were careful to break the shells, lest the witches should use them to their disadvantage. We do the same for a similar reason; it is accounted unlucky to leave them whole. They avoided cutting their nails on a Friday, because bad luck would follow; but we have improved upon their practice, and lay down the whole theory as follows:—

"Cut your nails on a Monday, cut them for news;
Cut them on Tuesday, a new pair of shoes;
Cut them on Wednesday, cut them for health;
Cut them on Thursday, cut them for wealth;
Cut them on Friday, cut them for woe;
Cut them on Saturday, a journey you'll go;
Cut them on Sunday, you cut them for evil,
For all the next week you'll be ruled by the Devil."

Most grandmothers will exclaim, "God bless you!" when they hear a child sneeze, and they sum up the philosophy of the subject with the following lines, which used to delight the writer in days of his childhood:—

"Sneeze on a Monday, you sneeze for danger;
Sneeze on a Tuesday, you kiss a stranger;
Sneeze on a Wednesday, you sneeze for a letter;
Sneeze on a Thursday, for something better;
Sneeze on a Friday, you sneeze for sorrow;
Sneeze on a Saturday, your sweetheart to-morrow;
Sneeze on a Sunday, your safety seek,
The Devil will have you the whole of the week."

These lines may be taken either as charms or spells to produce the effect predicted; or as omens or warnings of the results to follow. In most parts of Lancashire it is customary for children to repeat the following invocation every evening on retiring to bed, after saying the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed:—

"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on;
There are four corners to my bed,
And four angels overspread,
Two at the feet, two at the head.

If any ill thing me betide,
Beneath your wings my body hide.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on. Amen."[52]

The influence of the "evil eye" is felt as strongly in this county as in any other part of the world, and various means are resorted to in order to prevent its effects. "Drawing blood above the mouth" of the person suspected is the favourite antidote in the neighbourhood of Burnley; and in the district of Craven, a few miles within the borders of Yorkshire, a person who was well disposed towards his neighbours is believed to have slain a pear-tree which grew opposite his house by directing towards it "the first morning glances" of his evil eye.[53] Spitting three times in the person's face; turning a live coal on the fire; and exclaiming, "The Lord be with us," are other means of averting its influence.

In Lancashire our boys spit over their fingers in order to screw up their courage to the fighting point, or to give them luck in the battle. Sometimes they do this as a sort of asseveration, to attest their innocence of some petty crime laid to their charge. Travellers and recruits still spit upon a stone and then throw it away, in order to insure a prosperous journey. Hucksters, market-people, &c., always spit upon the first money they receive in the morning, in order to insure ready sale and "good luck" during the day. "Hansell (they say) is always lucky when well wet."

The ancients performed certain rites and ceremonies at the changes of the moon; and hence that luminary has added some curious items to the popular creed. Old Mother Bunch's Garland is an authority on these matters, and amongst many other things it teaches expectant females who desire to pry into futurity, to cross their hands on the appearance of the new moon, and exclaim—

"All hail! new Moon; all hail to thee!
I pray thee, good Moon, declare to me
This night who my true love shall be."

We have noticed, in the introductory chapter, various other minor charms and spells to avert evil, or "bad luck," and to secure "good luck" or fortune for a coming period, usually a year.

THE CROW CHARM AND THE LADY-BIRD CHARM.

The following charms are repeated by children throughout Lancashire and Yorkshire:—

Crow Charm.

"Crow, crow, get out of my sight,
Or else I'll eat thy liver and lights."

Lady-Bird Charm.

"Lady-bird, lady-bird, eigh [hie] thy way home,
Thy house is on fire, thy children all roam;
Except little Nan, who sits in her pan,
Weaving gold laces as fast as she can."

I remember as a child sitting out of doors on an evening of a warm summer or autumn day, and repeating the crow charm to flights of rooks, as they winged home to their rookery. The charm was chanted so long as a crow remained in sight, their final disappearing being to my mind strong proof of the efficacy of the charm. The lady-bird charm is repeated to the insect (the Coccinella septempunctata of Linnæus), the common Seven-spotted Lady-bird, to be found in every field and garden during summer. The lady-bird is placed upon the child's open hand, and the charm is repeated until the insect takes to flight. The warmth and moisture of the hand no doubt facilitate this, although the child fully believes in the moving power of the charm. The lady-bird is also known as lady-cow, cow-lady, and is sometimes addressed as "Cusha-cow-lady."[54]

One of the present editors has often joined in the lady-bird charm, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, where it ran—

"Cusha-coo-lady, fly away home,
Thy house is a-fire and all thy bairns gone," &c.

PIMPERNEL.

According to a MS. on Magic, preserved in Chetham's Library, Manchester, "the herb pimpernel is good to prevent witchcraft, as Mother Bumby doth affirm;" and the following lines must be used when it is gathered:—

"Herb pimpernel I have thee found
Growing upon Christ Jesus' ground;
The same gift the Lord Jesus gave unto thee,
When He shed his blood upon the tree.
Arise up, pimpernel, and go with me,
And God bless me,
And all that shall wear thee. Amen."

Say this fifteen days together, twice a day; morning early fasting, and in the evening full.—(MS. Ibid.)

THE MOUNTAIN ASH, OR WICKEN OR WIGGEN TREE.

The anti-witching properties of this tree are held in very high esteem in the northern counties of England. No witch will come near it; and it is believed that its smallest twig crossing the path of a witch, will effectually stop her career. To prevent the churn being bewitched, so that the butter will not come, the churn-staff must be made of the wiggen-tree. So cattle must be protected from witchery by sprigs of wiggen over or in the shippons. All honest people wishing to have sound sleep must keep the witches from their beds by having a branch of wiggen at their bed-heads.[55]

The charms against the malevolence of witches and of evil beings were very numerous. A horse-shoe nailed to the door protected the family domicile; a hag-stone, penetrated with a hole, and attached to the key of the stable, preserved the horse within from being ridden by the witch; and when hung up at the bed-head, was a safeguard to the master himself. A hot heater, put into the churn, kept witches and evil beings from spoiling the cream or retarding the butter. The baking of dough was protected by a cross, and so was the kneading-trough barred against fiendly visitation. Another class of charms was of those used by and amongst the witches themselves.

In the "Confession of James Device, prisoner at Lancaster," charged with being a witch and practicing witchcraft, before "William Sands, James Anderton, and Thomas Cowell, Esqrs.," we have the following "charm" to get "drink within one hour after saying the said prayer:"—

"Upon Good Friday I will fast while I may,
Untill I heare them knell
Our Lord's own bell.
Lord in his messe
With his twelve Apostles good;—
What hath he in his hand?
Ligh in leath wand:
What hath he in his other hand?
Heaven's doore keys.
Steck, Steck Hell door,
Let Chrizun child
Goe to its mother mild.
What is yonder that casts a light so farrandly?
Mine own dear Sonne that's naild to the tree.
He is naild sore by the head and hand;
And Holy harne Panne.
Well is that man
That Friday spell can,
His child to learne:—
A cross of Blue and another of Red,
As Good Lord was to the Roode.
Gabriel laid him down to sleep
Upon the ground of Holy weepe:—
Good Lord came walking by,
Sleepest thou, wakest thou, Gabriel?
No, Lord, I am sted with stick and stake,
That I can neither sleepe nor wake.
Rise up, Gabriel, and go with me,
The stick nor the stake shall never deere thee.
Sweet Jesus. Our Lord. Amen."

But James Device's charm was not the only one brought to light in this memorable trial;—the witches themselves were liable to be bewitched by others of superior power, nor were their domestic preparations altogether free from the malevolent effects of an envious practitioner. In these cases counter charms were of frequent necessity, and none of these seem to be of greater efficacy than the following one from the "Examination of Anne Whittle, alias Chattox witch], before Roger Nowell, Esq., of Read, April 2nd, 1612." "A charm to help drink that is forespoken or bewitched."

"Three biters hast thou bitten.
The Heart, ill Eye, ill Tongue.
Three bitter shall be thy Boote,
Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost:—a God's name.
Five Paternosters, five Avies and a Creede,
In worship of five woundes of our Lorde."

The Scotch appear to have held similar notions on these subjects with ourselves, for in Sinclair's "Satan's Invisible World Discovered" we find the following charm, "To preserve the house and those in it from danger at night:"—

"Who sains the house the night?
They that sains it ilk a night,
Saint Bryde and her brate;
Saint Colme and his hat;
Saint Michael and his spear;
Keep this house from the weir—
From running thiefe—
And burning thiefe—
And from and ill Rea:—
That be the gate can gae:—
And from an ill wight:—
That be the gate can light.
Nine reeds about the house;
Keep it all the night.
What is that what I see,
So red, so bright, beyond the sea?
'Tis he was pierced through the hands,
Through the feet, through the throat,
Through the tongue,
Through the liver and the lung.
Well is them that well may
Fast on Good Friday."

CHARMS TO CURE SICKNESS, WOUNDS, CATTLE DISTEMPER, ETC.

Many are the charms and spells which operate against disease or sickness in two ways—they either ward it off, if it threaten; or if too late for that, they dispel its virulence, and effect a marvellous cure. No medical man, we are told, will rub ointment on a wound with the forefinger of his right hand, because it is popularly accounted venomous. A dead man's hand is said to have the power of curing wens and other excrescences of the neck. Three spiders, worn about the neck, will prevent the ague. A string with nine knots tied upon it, placed about the neck of a child, is reported to be an infallible remedy for the whooping-cough. The same effect also follows from passing the child nine times round the neck of a she-ass, according to the popular creed of the county. Formerly silver rings, made from the hinges of coffins, were worn as charms for the cure of fits, or for the prevention of cramp, or even of rheumatism. The superstition continues, though the metal is of necessity changed, few coffins having now hinges of silver. The stranger in Lancashire can be nowhere, in town or country, amongst any considerable number of the humbler classes, without seeing on the fingers of women chiefly, but occasionally of men, what are called galvanized rings, made of two hoops, one of zinc, the other of copper, soldered together. Many wear a belt to charm away rheumatism; brimstone carried about the person is regarded as a sure remedy against cramp; so also is placing the shoes under the bed, the toes peeping outwards. These are the modern charms or cure-alls against disease. Fried mice are yet given to children in some parts of Lancashire, to cure non-retention of urine during sleep.

CHARMS FOR THE TOOTHACHE.

"The following," says the Rev. W. Thornber, of Blackpool, "is a foolish charm, yet much accredited amongst us [in the Fylde] for the toothache:"—

"Peter sat weeping on a marble stone.
Jesus came near and said, 'What aileth thee, O Peter?'
He answer'd and said, 'My Lord and my God!'
He that can say this, and believeth it for my sake,
Never more shall have the toothache."

Our "wise men" still sell the following charm for the cure of continued toothache, but it must be worn inside the vest or stays, and over the left breast:—

"Ass Sant Petter sat at the geats of Jerusalm our Blessed Lord and Sevour Jesus Crist Pased by and Sead, What Eleth thee hee sead Lord my Teeth ecketh hee sead arise and folow mee and thy Teeth shall never Eake Eney moor. Fiat + Fiat + Fiat."[56]

VERVAIN, FOR WOUNDS, ETC.

A magical MS. in Chetham's Library, Manchester, of the time of Queen Elizabeth, supplies the following metrical prayer, to be said in gathering this herb:—

"All-hele, thou holy herb, Vervin,
Growing on the ground;
In the Mount of Calvary
There wast thou found;
Thou helpest many a grief,
And stanchest many a wound.
In the name of sweet Jesus
I take thee from the ground.
O Lord, effect the same
That I do now go about."

The following lines, according to the same authority, were to be said when pulling it:—

"In the name of God, on Mount Olivet
First I thee found;
In the name of Jesus
I pull thee from the ground."

CHARMS TO STOP BLEEDING.

In an ancient 8vo. MS. volume, described by Dr. Whitaker, in his History of Whalley, entitled Liber Loci Benedicti de Whalley, commencing with the translation of the convent from Stanlaw (in 1296) and ending about the year 1346, are the following monkish charms (in Latin) for stopping hæmorrhage:—

"For staunching bleeding from the Nostrils, or from Wounds, an approved remedy.—O God, be Thou merciful to this Thy servant N., nor allow to flow from his body more than one drop of blood. So may it please the Son of God. So his mother Mary. In the name of the Father, stop, O blood! In the name of the Son, stop, O blood! In the name of the Holy Ghost, stop, O blood! In the name of the Holy Trinity.

"To staunch Bleeding.—A soldier of old thrust a lance into the side of the Saviour: immediately there flowed thence blood and water,—the blood of Redemption, and the water of Baptism. In the name of the Father + may the blood cease. In the name of the Son + may the blood remain. In the name of the Holy Ghost + may no more blood flow from the mouth, the vein, or the nose."

To particular persons was attached the virtue of stopping bleeding by a word; and a woman of Marton, near Blackpool, whose maiden name was Bamber, was so celebrated for her success, that she was sought for to stop hæmorrhage throughout a district of twenty miles around.

TOUCHING FOR THE KING'S EVIL.

The records of the Corporation of Preston contain two votes of money, to enable persons to go from Preston to be touched for the evil. Both are in the reign of James II. In 1682, the bailiffs were ordered to "pay unto James Harrison, bricklayer, 10s. towards the carrying of his son to London, in order to the procuring of his Majesty's touch." And in 1687, when James was at Chester, the council passed a vote that "the bailiffs pay unto the persons undermentioned each of them 5s. towards their charge in going to Chester to get his Majesty's touch: Anne, daughter of Abel Mope, —— daughter of Richard Letmore."[57]

CURES FOR WARTS.

Steal a piece of meat from a butcher's stall or his basket, and, after having well rubbed the parts affected with the stolen morsel, bury it under a gateway at four lane ends, or, in case of emergency, in any secluded place. All this must be done so secretly as to escape detection; and as the portion of meat decays, the warts will disappear. This practice is very prevalent in Lancashire, and two of my female acquaintances having tried the remedy, stoutly maintain its efficacy.[58]

The following superstition prevails in the neighbourhood of Manchester: Take a piece of twine, making upon it as many knots as there are warts to be removed; touch each wart with the corresponding knot; then bury the twine in a moist place, saying at the same time, "There is none to redeem it besides thee." As the process of decay goes on [in the twine] the warts gradually disappear.[59]

A snail hung upon a thorn is another favourite spell against warts; as the snail wastes away, so do the warts. Again, take a bag of stones, equal in number with the warts to be destroyed, and throw them over the left shoulder; the warts soon quit the thrower. But whoever chances to pick up one or more of these stones, takes with them as many of the warts, which are thus transferred from the loser to the finder of the stones.

CURE FOR HYDROCEPHALUS IN CATTLE.

Dr. Whitaker mentions what he designates as "one practical superstition" in the district about Pendle, and peculiar to that neighbourhood. "The hydrocephalus (he says) is a disease incident to adolescent animals, and is supposed by the shepherds and herdsmen to be contagious; but in order to arrest the progress of the disease, whenever a young beast had died of this complaint, it was usual, and it has, I believe, been practised by farmers yet alive, to cut off the head and convey it for interment into the nearest part of the adjoining county. Stiperden, a desert plain upon the border of Yorkshire, was the place of skulls." Whitaker thinks the practice may have originated in some confused and fanciful analogy to the case of Azazel (Numbers xvi. 22), an analogy between the removal of sin and disease—that as the transgressions of the people were laid upon the head of the scape-goat, the diseases of the herd should be laid upon the head of the deceased animal.[60]

CATTLE DISORDERS.—THE SHREW TREE IN CARNFORTH.

On an elevation in the township of Carnforth, in the parish of Warton, called Moothaw [? Moot Hall], the ancient Saxon courts were held. Near this place stood the "Shrew Tree" mentioned by Lucas, which, according to rustic superstition, received so much virtue from plugging up a number of living shrews, or field-mice, in a cavity prepared for their reception in the tree, that a twig cut from it, when freely applied to the backs of disordered cattle, would cure them of their maladies.[61]

CHARMS FOR AGUE.

"Casting out the ague" was but another name for "casting out the devil," for it was his possession of the sufferer that caused the body to shiver and shake. One man, of somewhat better education than his neighbours, acquired a reputation for thus removing the ague by exorcism, and was much resorted to for many years for relief.

STINGING OF NETTLES.

This was at once removed by the saying aloud of some charm in doggerel verse.

JAUNDICE.

Persons in the Fylde district suffering from this disorder were some years ago cured at the rate of a shilling per head, by a person living at the Fold, who, by some charm or incantation, performed on the urine of the afflicted person, suspended in a bottle over the smoke of his fire, was believed to effect most wonderful cures.

TO PROCURE SLEEP BY CHANGING THE DIRECTION OF THE BED.

There are two superstitions respecting restlessness. One is that it is caused by the bed standing north and south, and that it will be cured if the bedstead be so moved as to stand east and west. The other goes further, and says that to effect a perfect remedy, not only must the bedstead range east and west, but that the head must be towards the east. One informant stated that this was because the earth revolved from west to east, or in an easterly course.

FOOTNOTES:

[50] Revelation xiii. 18.

[51] This is not a literal quotation. The verse runs thus in the ordinary version: "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you."

[52] This is noticed by the Rev. W. Thornber in his History of Blackpool, p. 99; also in the Oxford Essays, 1858, p. 127; and the late Rev. James Dugan, M.A., T.C.D., informed the writer that the Irish midwives in Ulster use a very similar formula when visiting their patients. They first mark each corner of the house, on the outside, with a cross, and previously to entering repeat the following words:—

"There are four corners to her bed,
Four angels at her head:
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
God bless the bed that she lies on.
New Moon, new Moon, God bless me,
God bless this house and family."

[53] See Carr's Craven Glossary, vol. i. p. 137.—"Look, sir," said Mr. Carr's informant, "at that pear-tree, it wor some years back, sir, a maast flourishin' tree. Ivvry mornin, as soon as he first oppans the door, that he may not cast his ee on onny yan passin' by, he fixes his een o' that pear-tree, and ye plainly see how it's deed away."

[54] Mr. Robert Rawlinson in Notes and Queries, vol. iv. p. 55.

[55] See Hone's Table Book, vol. i. p. 674.

[56] Carr's Glossary, vol. ii. p. 264.

[57] Wm. Dobson, in Notes and Queries, 2nd series, vol. iv. p. 287.

[58] T. T. W., ibid., vol. ii. p. 68.

[59] H., ibid.

[60] History of Whalley.

[61] Baines's Lancashire.

THE DEVIL, DEMONS, &c.

THE DEVIL.

The power of the devil, his personal appearance, and the possibility of bartering the soul for temporary gain, must still be numbered among the articles of our popular faith. Repeating the Lord's Prayer backwards is said to be the most effectual plan for "raising the devil;" but when the terms of the bargain are not satisfactory, his exit can only be secured by making the sign of the cross and calling on the name of Christ. In the neighbourhood of Blackburn a story prevails that two threshers once succeeded in raising him through the barn floor; but on their becoming alarmed at their success, he was summarily dismissed by means of a vigorous thrashing on the head with the flails. His partiality for playing at cards has long been proverbial, both in Lancashire and elsewhere. A near relative of the writer firmly believed that the devil had once visited their company when they had prolonged their play into Sunday. How he joined them they never rightly knew, but (as in the Danish legend respecting a similar visit) his presence was first suspected in consequence of his extraordinary "run of good luck;" and a casual detection of his cloven foot completed the dispersion of the players. It is not always, however, that he obtains the advantage; for he has more than once been outwitted by a crafty woman or a cunning priest. In the Lancashire tradition we find the poor tailor of Chatburn stipulating for three wishes, and, on the advice of his wife, consulting the "holy father of Salley" in his extremity. When the fatal day arrived, he freed himself from the bond by expressing as his last wish, that his tormentor "were riding back to his quarters on a dun horse, never to plague him more." The devil, it is said, gave a yell which was heard to Colne, on finding that he had lost his man. Mr. Roby in his Traditions, and the author of the Pictorial History of Lancashire, give humorous engravings of this noted ride; and the sign of "The Dule upo' Dun," over the door of the wayside inn, attests the popular belief in the local tradition. From these and many other instances it is evident that we have derived many of these superstitions from the Saxon and Danish settlers in Northumbria. The essential parts of each are identical, and as regards these particular bargains, it may be added as a curious circumstance, that in no case is the bond held to be binding unless it be signed with the blood of the person contracting.[62]