Edwin Waugh

“ The chimney tops, and thatched roofs of fishermen's cottages, greened over with wind-sown verdure, peep up from the foot of the slope, which is crowned by the terrace. It is very pleasant to saunter about, there, on a fine summer's day—or on any other day,—to one who loves nature in all her moods. It is, perhaps, better still to sit down, and look lovingly upon the scene. The witchery of peace is on all around, when the wind is still; the smoke from cottage chimneys rises idly into the pure air—idle as Ludlam's dog, that leaned against a wall to bark. ”

“ One of the favourite rambles of my youth was from Rochdale town, through that part of Butterworth which leads by "Clegg Hall," commemorated in Roby's tradition of "Clegg Ho' Boggart," and thence across the green hills, by the old farmhouse, called "Peanock," and, skirting along the edge of this quiet lake—upon whose waters I have spent many a happy summer day, alone—up the lofty moorside beyond, to this rock, called "Robin Hood Bed," upon the bleak summit of Blackstone Edge. It is so large that it can be seen at a distance of four miles by the naked eye, on a clear day. ”

“ Swarms of strange, shy, sad-looking singers and instrumental performers, in the work-worn clothing of factory operatives, went about the city, pleading for help, in touching wails of simple song,—like so many wild birds driven by hard weather to the haunts of man. There is something instructive, as well as affecting, in this feature of the troubled time. These wanderers are only a kind of representative overflow of a vast number whom our streets will never see. Any one well acquainted with Lancashire will know how wide-spread the study of music is among its working population. ”

“ It leads through a district which has always been a kind of weird region to me. And I have wandered among those lonely moorland hills above Birtle, and Ashworth, and Bagslate; up to the crest of old Knowl, and over the wild top of Rooley, from whence the greatest part of South Lancashire—that wonderful region of wealth and energy—lies under the eye, from Blackstone Edge to the Irish Sea; and I have wandered through the green valleys and silent glens, among those hills, communing with the "shapes, and sounds, and shifting elements" of nature, in many a quiet trance of meditative joy ”

“ From the cottage homes, and old-fashioned farmhouses, which are dropped over the landscape, like birds' nests, "each in its nook of leaves," generation after generation has come forth to wander through the same [Pg 72] grass-grown byeways, and brambly old lanes; to weave the same chequered web of simple joys and sorrows, and cares and toils; and to lie down at last in the same old churchyard, where the "rude forefathers of the hamlet" are sleeping together so quietly. It is a country well worth visiting by any lover of nature, for its own sake. ”

“ I can hear women talking at their doors below the slope, and upon the cottage-sprinkled hill-side, in the direction of Creag-y-N'eash, I can hear the prattle of little bare-legged lads, who are sailing their tiny, chip-built ships, and clamorously discussing their relative qualities, as they watch how they fare among the eddies and rapids of the stream which runs down the green crease about the middle of the village. ”

“ That little "crimson-tippet" companion of the lark, immortalised in the poet's loving wail! Tiny jewel of the fields of England; favourite of the child and of the bard! Daisies lay like snow upon the green landscape; and the hedges were white with the scented blossom of the thorn. To eyes a little tired of the city's hives of brick—
Where stoop the sons of care,
O'er plains of mischief, till their souls turn grey—
it was refreshing to peer about over the beautiful summer expanse, towards the blue hills rising on the edge of the horizon, solemn and serene. ”

“ Anon, when a thoughtful barber sets certain wheels spinning, and a contemplative lad takes a fine hint from his mother's tea-kettle, these slumbering powers start into astonishing activity, like an army of warriors roused to battle by the trumpet. Cloth is woven for the world, and the world buys it, and wears it. Commerce shoots up from a poor pedlar with his pack on a mule, to a giant merchant, stepping from continent to continent, over the ocean, to make his bargains. ”

“ Depart from that city in almost any other direction, and you come upon a quick succession of the same manufacturing features you have left behind, divided, of course, by many a beautiful nook of country green. But somehow, though a man may feel proud of these industrial triumphs, yet, if he has a natural love of the country, he breathes all the more freely when he comes out in this direction, from the knowledge that he is entering upon a country of unmixed rural quietness and beauty, and that the tremendous bustle of manufacture is entirely behind him for the time. ”

“ Within the memory of living men, the angler used to come down the bank, and settle himself among the grass, to fish in its clear waters. But since Arkwright set this part of the world so wonderfully astir with his practicable combination of other men's inventions, the Irk, like the rest of South Lancashire streams, has been put to work, and its complexion is now so "subdued to what it works in," that the angler comes no more to the banks of the Irk to beguile the delicate loach, and the lordly trout in his glittering suit of silver mail. ”

“ Some of these old houses have been little changed for two or three centuries; around others a little modern addition has gathered in the course of time; but the old way of living and thinking lingers in these remote corners still, like little standing pools, left by the tide of ancient manners, which has gone down, and is becoming matter of history or of remembrance. There, and in the still more lonely detached dwellings and folds, which are scattered among the hills and cloughs of the "Edge," they cling to the speech, and ways, and superstitions of their rude forefathers. ”

“ In my rambles about Norbreck, I met with many racy characters standing in relief among their neighbours, and marked with local peculiarities, as distinctly as anything that grows from the soil. In a crowded city they might be unnoticed; but, amid "the hamlet's hawthorn wild," where existence seems to glide as noiselessly as a cloud upon a summer sky—save where friendly gossips meet, like a choir of crickets, by some country fire—they are threads of vivid interest woven into the sober web of life ”

“ I have hardly ever met with a southern man able to comprehend the quaint, graphic wealth which hutches and chuckles with living fun and country humour, under the equally quaint garb of old language in which Tim clothes his story of "Tummus and Mary." But, on its first appearance, the people of his own district at once recognised an exquisite picture of themselves; and they hailed it with delight. He superintended several editions of his works during his lifetime—a time when the population of Lancashire was very scanty, and scattered over large, bleak spaces ”

“ The village looked like an island of sleepy life, with a sea of greenery around it, surging up to the very doors of its white houses, and flinging the spray of nature's summer harmonies all over the place. The songs of birds, the rustle of trees, the ripple of the brook at the foot of the meadows, and the murmur of the sea, all seem to float together through the nest of man, making it drowsy with pleasure. It was fairly lapped in soothing melody. Every breath of air brought music on its wings ”

“ If he likes you, he will sit down upon the grass beside you, quietly crooning some wild fragment of old Manx song, and looking slyly up into your face from time to time; unless he chances to spy the landlord of the hotel, or the owner of the one mansion at Port Erin. If he sees either of these anywhere about, it is a thousand to one that he will immediately leave you to your own devices and desires, for the poor fellow knows who is kind to him a great deal better than some of us do who think that we have all our wits about us. Poor Johnny! He is fond of a penny, like most of the world ”

“ About a mile on the road, I came to a green dingle, called "Gamershaw." A large brick dwelling-house now occupies the spot; which was formerly shaded by spreading trees,—a flaysome nook, of which the country folk were afraid at night-time, as the haunt of a goblin, called "Gamershaw Boggart." Every rustle of the trees at Gamershaw was big with terror to them half a century ago. Even now, when "Gamershaw Boggart" has hardly a leaf to shelter its old haunt, the place is fearful after dark, to the superstitious people of Flixton parish. ”

“ A few fields divide the high road from the water, and then slope down to its margin. From the road we could see the low, fertile expanse of Cheshire meadows and woods spread away to the edge of the horizon in one beautiful green level. When the river was swollen by long rains, the nearer part of the Cheshire side used to present the appearance of a great lake, before the embankment was thrown up to protect the fields from inundation. In past times, that rich tract must have been a vast marsh. But yonder stands Urmston Hall, upon a green bank, overlooking the river. ”

“ My own impression of the natural charms of this part of Lancashire is, perhaps, a little warmer and more accepting than that of an unbiassed stranger would be; for the wheels are beautiful which roll me towards the country where I first pulled the wild flowers and listened to the lark. In this district, there are none of those rich depths of soil which, with little labour and tilth, burst forth in full crops of grain. But the land is mostly clothed with pastoral verdure; and the farming is almost entirely of the dairy kind. ”

“ But for broad day we had the velvet glades and shady woods of Conishead to ramble in; and many a rich old lane, and some green dells, where little brooks ran whimpling their tiny undersongs, in liquid trebles, between banks [Pg 3] of nodding wild flowers. Our evening walks were more delightful still; for when soft twilight came, melting the distinctions of the landscape in her dreamy loveliness, she had hardly time to draw "a thin veil o'er the day" before sea and land began to shine again under the radiance of the moon. ”

“ The gorgeous hues which linger over his track still glow upon the wide waters; but "the line of light that plays along the smooth wave toward the burning west," is slowly retiring in the wake of the sunken sun. Let me look out, while there is yet light, for the eye has glorious scope to roam in, from the place where I am sitting.... At the head of the bay—the scattered village; and the green land—green all along the slopes of the hills, and all over the fertile undulant plain between, stretching away inland, towards Castletown. It is a pleasant nook of seaside life, at the head of the bay. ”

“ Occasionally, a predatory bird might be seen upon these hills, flitting across the lone expanse—an highwayman of the skies; and, here and there, the moorfowl sprang up from the cover, in whirring flight, and with that wild clucking cry, which, in the stillness of the scene, came upon the ears with a clearness that made the solitude more evident to the senses. A rude shepherd's hut, too, could be seen sheltering near a cluster of crags upon the hill-side, and hardly distinguishable from the heathery mounds, which lay scattered over the surface of the moor. ”

“ Distance lends some "enchantment to the view," as the eye wanders over the array of nature spread out below—green dells, waving patches of wood, broad, pleasant pastures; the clear lake of "Hollingworth" rippling below; old farm-houses, scattered about the knolls and cloughs, by the side of brooklets that shine silverly in the distance; the blue smoke curling up distinctly from each little hamlet and village; mills, collieries, tenter-fields, and manifold evidences of the native industry and manufacturing vigour of the district. ”

“ These men were the immediate sources of the manufacturing power and wealth of Lancashire. Up rose Arkwright's model mill at Cromford; and the people of South Lancashire, who were spinning and weaving in the old way, in their scattered cottages and folds, began to find themselves drawn by irresistible spells into new combinations, and new modes of living and working. Their remote haunts began to resound with the tones of clustering labour; their quiet rivers, late murmuring clear through silent vales and cloughs, began to be dotted with mills ”

“ It is a common belief now, among the natives of the hills and solitary cloughs of Lancashire, that the best way of laying a ghost, or quieting any unearthly spirit whose restlessness troubles their lonely lives, is to sacrifice a cock to the goblin, and, with certain curious ceremonies, to bury the same deep in the earth at a "four-lone-eends," firmly pinned to the ground by a hedge-stake, driven through its body. ”

“ When the waters retire, they leave a noble solitude, where a man may wander a mile or two north or south upon a floor of sand finer than any marble, "and yet no footing seen," except his own; and hear no sounds that mingle with the mysterious murmurs of the sea but the cry of the sailing gull, the piping of a flock of silver-winged tern, or the scream of the wild sea-mew. Even in summer there are but few stragglers to disturb those endless forms of beauty which the moody waves, at every ebb, leave printed all over that grand expanse, in patterns ever new. ”