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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 he was
surrounded by the supernatural.

And wild as are many parts of the county to-day, it is difficult to
conceive its condition a century or two ago, when much of the land
was not only uncultivated, but was, for at least a portion of the
year, covered by sheets of water, the highways being little more than
bridle roads, or, if wider than usual, very sloughs of despond, the
carts in several of the rural districts being laid aside in winter as
utterly useless, and grain and other commodities, even in summer time,
being conveyed from place to place on the backs of long strings of
pack-horses.

Living in lonely houses and cottages shut out from civilisation by the
difficulties of communication, and hemmed in by floating mists and by
much that was awe-inspiring, with in winter additional barriers of
storm, snow and flood, it is easy to imagine how in the fancy of the
yeoman, shepherd, farmer, or solitary lime burner, as 'th' edge o'
dark' threw its weird glamour over the scene, boggarts and phantoms
would begin to creep about to the music of the unearthly voices heard
in every sough and sigh of the wandering wind as it wailed around the
isolated dwellings.

In everything weird they found a message from the unknown realms of
death. The noise of the swollen waters of the Ribble or the Lune, or
the many smaller streams hurrying down to the sea, was to them the
voice of the Water Spirit calling for its victim, and the howling of
their dogs bade the sick prepare to meet 'the shadow with the keys.'
All around them were invisible beings harmful or mischievous, and to
them they traced much of the misfortune which followed the stern
working of nature's laws.

The superstitions which date from, as well as the actual annals of the
Witch Mania in Lancashire, in some slight degree confirm this theory,
for whereas in the flat and more thickly-populated districts the hag
contented herself with stealing milk from her neighbour's cows,
spoiling their bakings, and other practical jokes of a comparatively
harmless kind, in the wilder localities--the region of pathless moors
and mist-encircled mountains--the witch ever was raising terrible
storms, bringing down the thunder, killing the cattle, dealing out
plagues and pestilence at will, wreaking evil of every conceivable
kind upon man and beast, and, hot from her sabbath of devil-worship,
even casting the sombre shadows and dread darkness of death over the
households of those who had fallen under the ban of her hate.

Lancashire has, however, an extensive ghost lore to which this theory
has no reference, consisting as it does of stories of haunted houses
and churchyards, indelible blood-stains, and all the paraphernalia of
the

                            Shapes that walk
    At dead of night, and clank their chains and wave
    The torch of hell around the murderer's bed.

The sketch in this volume, 'Mother and Child,' for the skeleton of
which tradition I am indebted to the late Mr. J. Stanyan Bigg, may be
considered a fair specimen of these stories. In most cases these
legends are not simply the vain creations of ignorance and darkness,
although they fade before the light of knowledge like mists before the
sun, for under many of them may be found a moral and a warning, or a
testimony to the beauty of goodness, hidden it is true beneath the
covering of a rude fable, just as inscriptions rest concealed below
the moss of graveyards. The well-known legend of the Boggart of
Townley Hall, with its warning cry of 'Lay out, lay out!' and its
demand for a victim every seventh year, is a striking example of
traditions of this class--emphatic protests against wrong, uttered in
the form of a nerve-affecting fable. In more than one of the stories
of this kind to which I have listened, the ghost of the victim has
re-visited 'the pale glimpses of the moon,' and made night so hideous
to the wrong-doer, that, in despair and remorse, he has put an end to
himself; and trivial as these things may seem to Mr. Gradgrind and his
school, they have, like other and nobler parables, influenced minds
impervious to dry fact.

To the devil lore of the county, however, the theory certainly will
apply, for surely it is in a gloomy gorge, through which forked
lightnings flash and chase each other, and the thunder rolls and
reverberates, or on a dark and lonesome moor, rather than upon the
shady side of Pall Mall, one would expect to meet the Evil One.

Yet, undoubtedly, other causes contributed to enrich the store of
ta