John Harland

“ As the year advances, with such misadventures, apprehension grows. Is there some evil eye on the house? Will the hay be spoiled in the field? Will the oats ripen, or must they be cut green and given to the cattle? Or, if they ripen, will the stormy autumn wrap its mantle of mist and rain so closely about them, that they cannot be housed before they have sprouted, or have spoiled? The cold, [167] bitter damp benumbs the strength of the feeble. Appetite and health fail; a fear creeps into the life. ”

“ England has ever been full of the favourite haunts of those pleasantest of all the supernatural sprites of childhood and superstition—elves and fairies. Volumes might be filled with the stories of their feats and pranks in all parts of England; and our greatest poet has for ever embalmed this superstition in the richest hues of poetic imagery and fancy—especially in his Midsummer Night's Dream. The Fairies, or "Hill Folk," yet live amongst the rural people of Lancashire. ”

“ The principal characteristics of May-day celebrations and festivities are of rejoicing that the reign of winter is at an end, and that of early summer with its floral beauties, has come. The hawthorn furnishes its white blossoms in profusion; and the tall May-poles, gaily decorated with garlands of leaves and flowers, and festoons of ribbons of the brightest colours, are centres of attraction on the village green, for the youth of both sexes to dance the May-pole dance, hand-in-hand, in a ring. ”

“ When the fire burns briskly, some lover smirks or is good-humoured. A cinder thrown out of the fire by a jet of gas from burning coals, is looked upon as a coffin, if its hollow be long; as a purse of gold, if the cavity be roundish. Crickets in a house are said to indicate good fortune; but should they forsake the chimney corner, it is a sure sign of coming misfortunes.
In the neighbourhood of Lancaster I know ladies who consider it "lucky" to find old iron: a horse-shoe or rusty nail is carefully conveyed home and hoarded up. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One of them boasted she could go over the sea in an egg-shell. It is held on all hands they adore the devil, and become his bond-slaves, to have for a term of years their pleasure and revenge. And indeed many of them are more mischievous than others in laming and destroying cattle, and in drowning ships at sea, by raising storms. But the Lancashire witches, we see, chiefly divert themselves in merriment, and are therefore found to be more sociable than the rest. ”

“ The "parting genius" of superstition still clings to the hoary hill tops and rugged slopes and mossy water sides, along which the old forest stretched its length, and the voices of ancestral tradition are still heard to speak from the depth of its quiet hollows, and along the course of its gurgling streams. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When a Canary-bird sings cheerfully, all is well with the family that keeps it; when it becomes silent, and remains so, there is calamity in store for that household. If you hear the cuckoo shout towards the east, for the first time in any year, and have gold, silver, and copper coin in your pockets, you will never want money during that year. ”

“ To refuse an alms to a haggard mendicant, was to incur maledictions soon manifest in afflictions of body, mind, and estate, in loss of cattle and other property, of health, and sometimes even of life itself. To escape from evils like these no sacrifice was thought too great. Superstitions begat cruelty and injustice; the poor and the rich were equally interested in obtaining a deliverance; and the magistrate in his mansion, no less than the peasant in his cot, was deeply interested in abating the universal affliction. The Lancashire [183] witches were principally fortune-tellers and conjurors. ”

“ 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 [33] were of the most rude, imperfect, and blundering character; when the true bases of earths and minerals and metals were unknown ”

“ 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 ”

“ Superstition is ever prone to explain the mysterious, or to account for the questionable, by hunting for some supernatural cause; and hence the popular love for and strong [132] faith in the miraculous. No church erected before the Reformation but had its miraculous legend; no well or spring of a remote antiquity but had its tradition, either connected with its origin or with its marvellous and miraculous powers of healing. The miracle of a past age, preserved to the present in the form of a legend, is equally entitled to a place in our Folk-Lore. ”

“ Days have long been parcelled out between lucky and unlucky, for any important undertaking, as a journey, taking a partner in business or for life, buying land, or even for such trivial matters as blood-letting, taking physic, cutting the hair, or paring nails. Again, the moon's age is an important element in securing future weal or woe. For the first year of an infant's life many mothers will not have its hair or nails cut, and when the year is gone these operations must be performed when the moon is so many days old, to ensure good results. ”

“ Hence, nothing is more common than to hear amongst uneducated and credulous people predications from the most trivial occurrences of daily life. A winding-sheet in the candle, spilling the salt, crossing knives, and various other trifles, are omens of evil to thousands of lore-folk to this day. Should one of your children fall sick when on a visit at a friend's house, it is held to be sure to entail bad luck on that family for the rest of the year, if you stay over New Year's-day. Persons have been known to travel sixty miles with a sick child rather than [139] run the risk. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a homage to the unseen and the unknown, in fearful contradiction with the teaching of Christianity, for it creates, like the religion of the Jezzidies, a ritual of propitiation to malignant powers, instead of the prayer of faith to the All-merciful. The solitude of the life in the moorland farm-houses does not, however, foster the influence of superstitious madness, perhaps, so much as the wild, stormy climate, which holds its blustering reign through six months of every year, in this region of morass and fog, dark clough, and craggy chasm. ”

“ It is a custom in some parts of Lancashire, as well as in Yorkshire, Northumberland, and other counties, that when an infant first goes out of the house, in the arms of the mother or the nurse, in some cases the first family visited, in others every neighbour receiving the call, presents to or for the infant an egg, some salt, some bread, and in some cases a small piece of money. These gifts are to ensure, as the gossips avow, that the child shall never want bread, meat, or salt to it, or money, throughout life. ”

“ Dogs are said to sit down and howl before the door when any one is about to be sick, or die. A death is considered certain if the dog return as often as driven away. 2. Dogs are hence considered to be somehow acquainted with the spirit world, "or else," as one said, "how should they know when a person is going to die?" This is firmly believed in about Mellor and Blackburn. In Burnley and neighbourhood equally so at present. 3. The life of a dog is sometimes said to be bound up with that of its master or mistress. When either dies the other cannot live. ”

“ I have been told in Lancashire, that at midnight on Christmas Eve the cows fall on their knees, and the bees hum the Hundredth Psalm. I am unwilling to destroy the poetry of these old superstitions; but their origin can, I think, be accounted for. Cows, it is well known, on rising from the ground, get up on their knees first; and a person going into the shippon at midnight would, no doubt, disturb the occupants, and by the time he looked around, they would all be rising on their knees. ”

“ In Lancashire we still dislike the moaning or hooting of owls and the croaking of ravens, as much as the Romans did of old. In a large class of our population few would yet defy evil fate, by beginning a journey or any important undertaking, or marrying, on a Friday; on which day Lancashire, like other sailors, have a strong repugnance to beginning a voyage. This day of the week is regarded as of evil augury, because it was the day (Good Friday) when our Saviour's blood was shed. ”

“ On Easter Monday, between Radcliffe and Bolton, we saw a number of females surround a male, whom they mastered, and fairly lifted aloft in the air. It was a merry scene. What humour in the faces of these Lancashire [234] witches! What a hearty laugh! What gratification in their eyes! ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”