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    GOBLIN TALES OF LANCASHIRE.

    BY JAMES BOWKER, F.R.G.S.I.


    AUTHOR OF 'PHOEBE CAREW, A NORTH COAST STORY,'
    'NAT HOLT'S FORTUNE,' ETC.

    _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS
    BY THE LATE CHARLES GLIDDON._

    'Of Faery-land yet if he more enquire,
    By certain signes here sett in sondrie place,
    He may itt fynd.'

    SPENSER

    'La veuve du meme Plogojovits declara que son mari depuis
    sa mort lui etait venu demander des souliers.'

    CALMET, _Traite sur les Apparitions_, 1751.

    London

    W. SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO.
    PATERNOSTER ROW


    TO

    THE MOST NOBLE
    THE MARQUIS OF HARTINGTON, P.C., D.C.L.
    THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS DEDICATED
    IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF
    MUCH KINDNESS.




    CONTENTS.


               INTRODUCTION,
           I.--THE SKRIKER,
          II.--THE UNBIDDEN GUEST,
         III.--THE FAIRY'S SPADE,
          IV.--THE KING OF THE FAIRIES,
           V.--MOTHER AND CHILD,
          VI.--THE SPECTRAL CAT,
         VII.--THE CAPTURED FAIRIES,
        VIII.--THE PILLION LADY,
          IX.--THE FAIRY FUNERAL,
           X.--THE CHIVALROUS DEVIL,
          XI.--THE ENCHANTED FISHERMAN,
         XII.--THE SANDS OF COCKER,
        XIII.--THE SILVER TOKEN,
         XIV.--THE HEADLESS WOMAN,
          XV.--THE RESCUE OF MOONBEAM,
         XVI.--THE WHITE DOBBIE,
        XVII.--THE LITTLE MAN'S GIFT,
       XVIII.--SATAN'S SUPPER,
         XIX.--THE EARTHENWARE GOOSE,
          XX.--THE PHANTOM OF THE FELL,
         XXI.--ALLHALLOW'S NIGHT,
        XXII.--THE CHRISTMAS-EVE VIGIL,
       XXIII.--THE CRIER OF CLAIFE,
        XXIV.--THE DEMON OF THE OAK,
         XXV.--THE BLACK COCK,
        XXVI.--THE INVISIBLE BURDEN,
    APPENDIX.--COMPARATIVE NOTES,




INTRODUCTION.


For many of the superstitions which still cling to him the Lancashire
man of the present day is indebted to his Celtic and Scandinavian
ancestors. From them the Horse and Worm stories, and the Giant lore of
the northern and southern mountains and fells, have come down, while
the relationship of the 'Jinny Greenteeth,' the presiding nymph of the
ponds and streams, with allusions to whom the Lancastrian mother
strives to deter her little ones from venturing near the pits and
brooks; to the water-spirits of the Gothic mythology, is too evident
to admit of any doubt. The source of the 'Gabriel Ratchets,' the
hell-hounds whose fear-inspiring yelps still are heard by the
benighted peasant, who finds in the dread sound a warning of the
approach of the angel of death; in the Norse Aasgaardsveia, the souls
condemned to ride about the world until doomsday, and who gallop
through the midnight storm with shrieks and cries which ring over the
lonely moors; or in that other troop of souls of the brave ones who
had died in battle, being led by the storm-god Woden to Walhalla, also
is undeniable.

Striking, however, as are the points of similitude between some of the
Lancastrian traditions and those of the north of Europe, others seem
to be peculiar to the county, and that these are of a darker and
gloomier cast than are the superstitions of districts less wild and
mountainous, and away from the weird influence of the sea, with its
winter thunderings suggestive of hidden and awful power, may in a
great measure be correctly attributed to the nature of the scenery.

It is easy to understand how the unlettered peasant would people with
beings of another world either the bleak fells, the deep and gloomy
gorges, the wild cloughs, the desolate moorland wastes two or three
thousand feet above the level of the sea, of the eastern portion of
the county; or the salt marshes where the breeze-bent and
mysterious-looking trees waved their spectral boughs in the wind; the
dark pools fringed with reeds, amid which the 'Peg-o'-Lantron'
flickered and danced, and over which came the hollow cry of the
bittern and the child-like plaint of the plover; and the dreary glens,
dark lakes, and long stretches of sand of the north and west.

To him the forest, with its solemn Rembrandtesque gloom,

    Where Druids erst heard victims groan,

the lonely fir-crowned pikes, and the mist-shrouded mountains, would
seem fitting homes for the dread shapes whose spite ended itself in
the misfortunes and misery of humanity. Pregnant with mystery to such
a mind would be the huge fells, with their shifting 'neetcaps' of
cloud, the towering bluffs, the swampy moors, and trackless morasses,
across which the setting sun cast floods of blood-red light; and
irresistible would be the influence of such scenery upon the lonely
labourer who would go about his daily tasks with a feeling that