k'.-.V!*A.v XV .^-■M\ ' .■ S**«W(attWft^^ A = ^^^ ^- Am ^ ^^^ ^ = _^_ _L 1 == 3^ 3 = - 9 ^ ^^^ >■ 3 m 4 e = ^=^ CD -n b = —i 6 ^^nHni \ I ]. - H "; i i V; t^^^\■;■>>xx■:^'.^^■^y■■^<^\\\^>^;^^^^;\-■-^y.N'>\^;x■.■y»^y^'vy;^ v\\\X\-s-.'.''y.-;s;:^yv^\--\;^'" :-at : C HESHIR Gleanings ■> \ \ ! THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES n > CHESHIRE GLEANINGS. Cheshire Gleanings. BY WILLIAM E. A. AXON. MANCHESTER : TUBES, BROOK, & CHRYSTAL, ii, MARKET ST. LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., STATIONERS' HALL COURT. 1884. / DA TO JOSEPH MAYER, Esq., F.S.A., WHO GAVE TO THE VILLAGE OF BeBBINGTON ITS interesting public library, and to the City of Liverpool the contents of its MAGNIFICENT MaYER MuSEUM, THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF HIS ACQUIREMENTS AS AN ANTIQUARY, AND OF HIS PUBLIC SPIRIT AS A CITIZEN. 803S13 PREFACE, pHESHIRE has been styled the "seed plot of gentility," « and one of its homely proverbs claims, that its hardy sons are " chief of men." The county abounds in memorials of the past, and yet is fall of the vigour of the present day. Around its old halls and picturesque villages linger the memories of stern battles on hard-fought fields, of gallant struggles, of spendthrift folly, and of heroic endeavour, and the bright legends of bravery and courtly grace have too often had their shadow in stories of tyranny and crime. The volume of "Cheshire Gleanings," whilst making no pretence to be a systematic history of the county, is an effort to present some of its most salient characteristics. It contains notices of Cheshire men and women, notable for their talents or their eccentricities, memorials of byegone modes of life and thought, and of the associations, proverbs. Vlll. Preface. folk-lore, and dialect of various localities of the county. The articles, some of which have already appeared in Notes and Queries., Chambers's Journal, the Palatine Note-Book, the Academy, the Manchester Guardian, the British Architect., and various other periodical publications, are in general brief and are always independent of each other. All they have in common is their relation to the county palatine of Chester. CONTENTS rage Preface vii. Dean Stanley and Alderley i The Northwich Demoniac 9 "Warning for Fair Women" 13 John Critchley Prince 21 Richard Ramsey 28 William Hornby's Scourge of Drunkenness 37 Did Harold Die at Chester? 39 The Word Bachelor in Cheshire 42 Was Marat a Teacher at Warrington? 45 The Botanist's Funeral 48 The Cheshire Man called Evelyn 54 The Wizard of Alderley Edge 56 Was John Smith a Cheshire Man? 69 Sir John Chesshyre's Library at Halton 75 X. Contents. Page The Brereton Death Omen 84 The Fool of Chester 88 The Thin Red Line 95 A Birkenhead Newspaper in 1642 loi J. C. Prince and K. T. Korner 103 Joseph Rayner Stephens 108 On the Stalk as a Sign of Contract 114 The Genius of Avernus 122 Tennyson's "Northern Cobbler": a Cheshire Man 133 The King of the Cats i39 Mary of Buttermere 142 Old Easter Customs of Cheshire iS5 The Chester Plays 167 Sunday Observance in Cheshire i77 Early References to the Jews in Cheshire 184 Dr. Moffat as a Cheshire Gardener 190 Joseph Mowbray Hawcroft. In Memoriam i97 A Fragment of the Chester Plays 210 SiON Y BoDDiAU 213 Mark Yarwood 219 The Fight of the Thirty 226 Old Mynshull of Erdeswick 230 Nixon, the "Cheshire Prophet" 235 Contents. xi. Page Cheshire Marling 239 Cheshire Proverbs 243 The Earthquake of 1777 251 The Suspected Spy 257 Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight 261 Book Rarities of the Warrington Museum 262 The Undutiful Child Punished 279 Dr. John Ferriar 2S0 Cheshire and Lancashire Dialects in the Earlier Part of the Nineteenth Century 2S7 Samuel Hibbert-Ware 291 A Cheshire Chesterfield 295 Riding the Stang 300 William Broome, LL.D 302 Dean Arderne 306 Sir Thomas Aston 310 A Cheshire Lord Chief Justice 315 Cheshire Ballad 321 Index 323 CHESHIRE GLEANINGS. DEAN STANLEY AND ALDERLEY. And indeed he seems to me Scarce other than my own ideal knight, " Who reverenced his conscience as his king; Whose glory was, redressing human wrong; Who spake no slander, no, nor listen'd to it ; 1, Who loved one only, and clave to her." Tennyson. Idylls of the King. (Dedication.) THE Stanley family have long been connected with Alderley, and claim descent from William de Aldithley, of Thalk, in Staffordshire, who assumed the name of Stanley, and settled at Stoneley, in that county. From him descended a family which, in several generations, produced men of mark, and from which the lines of the lords of Derby and Montcagle have branched off. Sir Thomas Stanley, of Alderley, was knighted by James I., and his son, Sir Thomas, was created a baronet by Charles II. The sixth baronet was Sir John Thomas Stanley, whose eldest son, B Cheshire Gleanings. the seventh baronet, bore the same names, and was a man of literary and scientific tastes. In 1839 ^^ ^'^s created Baron Stanley of Alderley. The second son of the sixth baronet was Edward Stanley, rector of Alderley, Bishop of Norwich, and father of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, dean of Westminster. Edward Stanley had a passionate desire for the life of a sailor. This wish was not gratified, but many of the best qualities of our great English sailors were exhibited in his life. As the incumbent of the family living of Alderley and as Bishop of Norwich he showed great power of organisation, devotion to duty, and a capacity for governing men. He was far in advance of many of his more timid clerical brethren in a desire for the spread of education amongst all classes, not excluding even the poorest, and in place of the distrust which many of them showed of the increasing energies of science he was himself an ardent student of nature. When some dignitaries of the Church were denouncing the British Association, he was one of its vice presidents, and he is believed to have been one of the first clergymen who attempted to popularise the study of geology by a public lecture, which he delivered in Macclesfield. "The perversions of men," he used to say, " would have made an infidel of me but for the counteract- ing impressions of Divine Providence in the works of nature." His scientific studies were chiefly in the direction of ornithology, and his " Familiar History of Birds," which contains many observations made at Alderley, is second only in interest to White's "Selborne." The staircase of the rectory at Alderley was hung with the engravings from Dean Stanley and Alder ley. Bewick's " British Birds," which was mounted in panels, and varnished over. It was at the rectory of Alderley that Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was born on the 13th of December, 18 15. When it was proposed to erect Manchester into an epis- copal see the Rev. Edward Stanley declined to become its first bishop, but he accepted, in 1837, a nomination to the see of Norwich. The parting from Alderley was a source of great grief, for a man of his character could not have held such a charge for thirty-two years without feeling and exciting the strongest affection and sympathy. He had emphatically the courage of his opinions. When the name of Arnold of Rugby was a reproach instead of a glory he invited him to preach his consecration sermon, and later obtained for him the offer of the wardenship of Manchester. Dean Stanley's own estimate of his father's work as a bishop may be fittingly quoted :— " The general principle of his conduct has been exemplified in the prelate who of all in our later days most nearly recalls his courageous independence, and his width of sympathy — Bishop Fraser, of Manchester." The mother of Dean Stanley was Catherine, daughter of the Rev. Oswald Teycester, another of whose daughters married Augustus Hare. Of Mrs. Stanley's life at Alderley, from 1 8 10 to 1837, some interesting memorials have been preserved by her son, and show her to have been a woman of keen perceptive powers, of carefully cultivated mind, and with a genial sense of humour. Readers of the " Memorials of a Quiet Life" will remember how pleasantly her per- sonality is felt in that charming record of English domestic life. Mrs. Stanley was one of the spectators at the opening Cheshire Gleanings. of the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, and has left a vivid account of that event, and of the death of Huskisson, which gave it so mournful an interest. Another of her sketches is of the pleasant home of the Gregs at Quarry Bank, with whom the Stanleys held pleasant intercourse. When Samuel Greg's " Layman's Legacy " appeared, the Dean prefaced it with some appropriate words. " I have still," he says, " a vivid recollection of being told how the aged mother of the family was carried in the evenings by her sons up the steep hills that surrounded the deep hollow in which their house was situated, in order that she might witness from time to time the sunset, which, in the close seclusion of Quarry Bank itself, she could never have seen. The story lingered in my memory as a modern likeness to that which Herodotus tells us with so much emotion of the two Grecian youths harnessing themselves to the chariot of their mother, the priestess of Juno, to enable her to reach the temple of the Goddess in the plain of Mycenae." In later life the Dean and Mr. Greg became personally acquainted, chiefly through a sympathetic letter from the layman, which brightened some of the stormy days that marked Dean Stanley's advent to Westminster. When Mr. Greg was on his deathbed the Dean wrote : — " Few have cheered me more in my troubled course than he has. Would that any words of mine in return could cheer him, ^ where, as in the words of the Psalmist, he has himself said, the darkness shall be, we may trust, as clear as the light." The parish church of Alderley contains several memorials of the Stanleys. One of them records the memory of Dean Stanley and Alderley. 5 Bishop Stanley, " thirty-two years rector of Alderley, twelve years Bishop of Norwich, where, in the Cathedral Church, his mortal remains repose. To his beloved parishioners, with whom when absent in the body he was ever present in the spirit, so now being dead yet speaketh." Another is to the memory of Captain Charles Edward Stanley, " who died August 13, 1849, aged 30, at Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land. First of his family called to rest by a sudden and early death, which removed from evil to come the loving child of a most loving father, before either could mourn the other's loss." A third is to Captain Owen Stanley, who died March 13, 1850, aged 38, at Sydney, New South Wales, " at the close of his successful survey of the unknown coast of New Guinea, and after 23 years' arduous I service in every clime. They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided. From the ends of the earth gathered together unto Christ." The love which her children bore to Catherine Stanley is witnessed by an inscription "to the dear memory of her whose firm faith, calm wisdom, and tender sympathy, speaking the truth in love, counselled, encouraged, com- forted all who knew her, this tablet is inscribed by her three surviving children, in whose happiness she found her own." / The mother of Dean Stanley is buried in Alderley church- yard, and her grave, which stands beneath a funereal yew, is marked by a white marble cross, on whicli her son inscribed those words of the Apostle James, so often quoted as the sum of a good life, " The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, 6 Cheshire Gleanings. full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy." Dean Stanley's mother died on the Ash Wednesday of 1862, when her surviving son was absent in attendance on the Prince of Wales on a journey through Egypt and Palestine. He adds : — " On another Ash Wednesday, ist March, 1876, he stood by the deathbed of her by whose supporting love he had been comforted after his mother's death, and whose character, although cast in a different mould, remains to him, with that of his mother, the brightest and most sacred vision of his earthly experience." This was no overwrought picture of Lady Augusta Stanley. The good qualities which ensured her the friendship and esteem of the highest in the land gained her the affectionate regard of the poor of Westminster. If a wife was never so mourned, a widower never had such universal sympathy in his sorrow. That sorrow found expression in many forms, and when in the dead of night those more closely associated with the sacred fane saw a flickering light amidst the dark- ness of the Abbey they knew that the husband was seeking the grave of his wife for prayer and communion with the dead. The churchyard of Alderley contains one more memorial of this gifted family. Here on 2nd December, 1879, was buried Mary Stanley, the eldest daughter of the Bishop. The following inscription was wTritten by the Dean for the tablet in the church : — Mary Stanley, Born December 19th, 181 3. Died November 26th, 1879. Dean Stanley and Alderlcy. " By patient continuance in well doing Endeared to many, old and young. She cheered the friendless, Raised the poor. Nursed the sick and wounded At Norwich, in Westminster, And on the shores of the Bosphorus ; Through all changes, outward and inward, She clung to the home of her early years. Where, by her desire. She rests in her mother's grave." She joined the Church of Rome in 1856, but at her own earnest desire was laid in the same grave as the mother whom she had loved so well. Dean Stanley took a share in the funeral service, and in a voice marked by deep emotion committed to God "the soul of our dear sister here departed." Amongst the wTeaths which covered her coffin was one from the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, with an inscription which summed up in fitting words the story of her life : — " In tender remembrance of the gentle Christian lady, who was in life a 'good Samaritan.' May we do as Mary Stanley." Dean Stanley's early days were passed in his father's rectory, and he retained to the last a keen interest in the place and the people. His nurse, Ellen Baskerville, who / died only a few years ago, was regularly visited by him, and when, at a ripe old age, she died, he came from Westminster to conduct the funeral service. In this he showed himself 8 Cheshire Gleanings. a true son of his father, who erected a memorial to Sarah Burgess, a faithful servant of the family. To the many memorials which Alderley already possesses there will doubtless ere long be added another to the memory of Dean Stanley, the profound scholar, the earnest and fearless thinker, whose death will be sincerely lamented in the New World, as in the Old. Many interesting particulars of the home life of the Stanleys are given in an article by Augustus J. C. Hare, in the number for September, 1881, of Macmillan's Magazine (vol. xliv., p. 353). The Dean's own "Memoirs of Edward and Catharine Stanley" (London, 1879), and Dean Bradley's " Recollections of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley " (London, 1883), also contain many details. THE NORTHWICH DEMONIAC. The last kind of madness or melancholy, is that demoniacal (if I may so call it) obsession or possession of devils, which Platerus and others would have to be preternatural ; stupend things are said of them, their actions, gestures, contortions, fasting, prophesying, speaking languages they were never taught, &c. Burton. Anatomy of Melancholy, Ft. I, section i, DicDibcr i, subsection 4. IN 1602 the case of a supposed demoniac at Northwich attracted some attention. The signs of his " possession " were the wagging of the head without intermission, super- natural strength, senselessness during his fits, utterance of wonderful speech, &c. John Darrell, in his "Survey" of Deacon and Walker's " Dialogicall Discourses," 1602, men- tions Thomas Harrison, of North Wych, in Cheshire, as being " at this present very greuously vexed by Sathan, so as he that will may be an eye witness thereof" (p. 54)- I" his "Replie" to Deacon and Walker's "Answer," 1602, (p. 21-2) he says: — "Concerning the strange and present affliction of the boy of Northwitch I will say nothing. I never sawe him. How- lo Cheshire Gleanings. soever, you descant on the matter after your lying and paltry manner. Yet I think it not amiss to offer to thy view (good reader) the iudgement of the Bishop of Chester in his direc- tion to his parents, and of three other commissioners for causes ecclesiasticall, according with him therein. First we thinke it fit and doe require the parents of the said childe, that they suffer not any repaire to their house to visite him sauing such as are in authority and other per- sons of speciall regard and knowne discretion, and to have speciall care that the number always be very smal. Further, having seen the bodily affliction of the said childe, and observed in sundry fits very strange effects and operations either proceeding of naturall vnknowne causes or of some diabolical practise, we thinke it convenient and fit for the ease and deliverance of the said childe from his grieuous afflictions, that prayer be made for him publikely by the minister of the parish, or any other preacher repairing thither, before the congregation, so oft as the same assem- bleth. And that certaine preachers, namely, M. Gerrard, M. Massey, M. Collier, M. Haruey, M. Eaton, M. Pierson, and M. Brownhill, these onely and none other to repaire unto the saide childe by turnes, as their leisures will serve, and to vse their discretions by priuate prayer and fastings, for the ease and comfort of the afflicted with all requiring them to abstaine from all solemne meetings, because the calamatie is particular, and the authoritie of the allowing and prescribing such meetings resteth neither in them nor in vs, but in our superiours, whose pleasure it is fit we The Northwich Demoniac. ii should expect. Moreover, because it is by some held that the childe is really possessed of an uncleane spirit, for that there appeareth to us no certaintie, nor yet any great pro- babilitie thereof, wee thinke it also conuenient, and require the preachers aforesaid to forbeare all forms of exorcisme, which always imply and presuppose a real and actuall possession. Richard [Vaughan] Cestriensis. David Yale, Chancel. Griff. Sangham. Hughes Burghes. Hereunto I will adde a fewe lines which M. Haruey afore- said, a man of great learning and godliness, writ in his life time to a friend of his : — Grace and mercie from our only Sauior, there is such a boy as your report signifieth, whose estate from the begin- ning of February till this present hath beene so strange and extraordinarie in regard to his passions, behauiour, and speeches, as I for my part never heard nor read of the like. Few that have seene the variety of his fits, but they thinke the diuell hath the disposing of his body. Myselfe have diuers times seene him, and such things in him as are im- possible to proceed from any humane creature. The matter hath affected our whole countrey. The diuines with us generally hold that the childe is really possessed. And so much for him." It is to the credit of the bishop and his advisers that they hesitated to endorse the common belief as to the demoniacal 12 Cheshire Gleanings. nature of the disease of this unhappy boy. The physicians attributed his derangement to " an excess of some Melan- choUa." This, or a later case of witchcraft at Northwich, was the occasion of a treatise by Thomas Cooper, entitled " The Mystery of Witchcraft. Discovering the Truth, Nature, Occasions, Growth, and Power thereof." Lond. 8vo. 1617. It is dedicated to the Right Worshipful the Mayor and Corporation of the Ancient Citie of Chester, and the worthy Justices of Peace of that County Palatine, and the following passage occurs : — " I have thought it good to leave this testimony unto you of my thankful remembrance, who were many of you acquainted with the good hand of my God upon me in this behalf, especially seeing by an especial occasion at the North-wich, by a child afflicted with the power of Sathan, and (as it was conceived) through the confederacy of some witches thereabout Shall not this be a perpetual memorial of my thankfulness to those worthy magistrates, Mr. Warburton of Arley, Mr. Marbury of the Mere, and others of that parish, to quicken and encourage them in their zeal and love unto the gospel ? " (From a scarce copy of the volume in possession of Mr. J. E. Bailey.) "WARNING FOR FAIR WOMEN.' For I must talk of murdei'. Shakespere, Tihis Androjticus. IN the drawing-room of the fine old hall of Bramhall there formerly hung a jDortrait of one who, in his day, was a great magnate alike in Cheshire and Lancashire. It was a representation dated 1583, and, therefore, taken in his fifty-first year of the Earl of Derby, with his shield of twenty-eight quarters, surrounded by the Garter and the following inscription : — " Henry, Earle of Derbie, Viscount Kinton, Lord Standley, Strange, Basset, and Burnell, Lord of Man and the lies, Knight of the noble order of the garter, one of the Lordcs of hyr Matli most Honourable Priuie Councell, Lord hyghe Stewarde of hyr Math Hows- hould, Lord Lieutenant of the Counties of Lancaster and Chester, and of the Citee of Chester and Chambcrlaine of the Countic Palatyne of Chester." (Earwakcr's East Cheshire i., 447). We have now to mention a slight but hitherto unnoticed incident in the life of this nobleman. AVhcn Alexander / 14 Cheshire Gleanings. Nowell was Dean of St. Paul's he took an interest in the fate of the perpetrators of a murder that has been celebrated both in prose and verse. Mr. George Sanders, or Sandars, was a wealthy city merchant, living near Billingsgate, and his house was visited by Captain George Browne, an Irish officer, who fell in love with the citizen's wife, and obtained the aid of Mrs. Drury, a widow, who gained a not very reputable living by fortune telling and other devices. The foolish wife was easily induced to believe that fate had ordained that she should soon be a widow, and then the bride of the gay captain. The intrigue proceeded until Browne decided to anticipate fate by having Sanders murdered. After two ineffectual attempts Sanders was slain by " Trusty Roger," a servant of the fortune teller, and by Browne, who sent a bloody handkerchief to the wife as a token that her husband had been murdered. She was, however, now filled with remorse and repulsed Browne, who fled, but was arrested at Rochester and recognised by John Blane (a servant of Sanders), who had been mortally wounded in the affray that ended his master's life. Browne, whilst acknowledging his own guilt, sought to save the life of his mistress whom he declared to be innocent. Mrs. Sanders, Mrs. Drury, and "Trusty" Roger Clement were all tried, condemned, and executed after confession. Browne was sentenced on Saturday, i8th April, 1573, and executed at Smithfield on the Monday following. At the time of her husband's death Mrs. Sanders was daily expecting to be confined, and after the birth of the child and the ceremony of "churching" she was arraigned at Guildhall on May 6th of the same year " Warjiing for Fair Women." 15 along with Mrs. Drury. They were found guilty, as was " Trusty " Roger on the 8th. The protestations of in- nocence on the part of Mrs. Sanders had a curious effect upon an inmate of the prison, a broken and suspended minister, named Mell, who began by thinking her in- nocent, then fell in love with her, and tried to induce Mrs. Drury to take the whole burden of the crime upon her, so that he might sue for a pardon for the merchant's wife. She maintained this " before the Deane of Paules and others — taking the whole blame thereof to hir self." The fair sinner also grasped at the chance of life. " Mistresse Saunders also, after the laying of this platte, stoode so stoutely to hir tackling, that when the Deane of Paules gave hir godly exhortation for the clearing of hir conscience, and for the reconciling of hir self to God, as the time and case most needefuUy required (as other had done before), he coulde obtayne nothing at her hande. By meanes whereof he was fayne to leave hir that time, which was the Friday, not without great griefe and indignation of mind to see hir stubborn unrepentauntnese." Mell's plans miscarried, for the Lords of the Council, to whom he ajjplied for the woman's pardon, had information of his plot, and it was decided that the unhappy woman must die. There was a short reprieve, and by " the advice of Master Cole (who laboured very earnestly with hir to bring hir to repentance, and was come to hir verye early that [Saturday] morning, because it was thought that they should have bene executed presently) sent for the Deane of Paules agayne, and bcwayling her former stubborness, declared unto him and Master Cole, Master 1 6 Cheshire Gleanings. Clarke, and Master Yong, that shee had given her consent and procurement to hir husband's death." She had an interview with her husband's relatives, and sought and received their forgiveness. She saw also " hir owne kindred and her children, " whom she had not only berefte bothe of father and mother, but also lefte them a coarsie and shame." After a pious exhortation " she gave eche of those a booke of Maister Bradforde's meditations, wherein she desired the foresayd three preachers to write some admoni- tions as they thought good, whiche done she subscribed them with these wordes, Youre sorrozvfull tnofher, Atine Saunders^'' and so dismissed them. Mrs. Drury was like- wise in a pious frame of mind. The day of execution was fixed for the 6th of May, and by a refinement of cruelty the luckless preacher Mell was placed in the pillory at the same place. A paper was pinned on his breast with the words, For practising to colour the detestable factes of George Saunder's ivife. Mrs. Saunders, Mrs. Drury, and " Trusty " Roger were in the cart together, and each prayed with the ministers in attendance. They each confessed their guilt, and the fortune teller " kneeling doune towards the Earle of Bedforde, and other noble men that were on horssbacke on each side of the stage, tooke it upon hir death that whereas it had bin reported of hir that she had poysoned hir late husbande. Master Drewrie, and dealt with witchcraft and sorcerie, and also appeached divers merchantes wives of dissolute and unchast living, she had done none of all '&) those things, but was utterlie cleare bothe to God and the '&'^> worlde of all such manner of dealing. And then with lyke " Warnifig for Fair Wo7uen." 17 obeysance, turning hir self to the Earle of Darbie, who was in a chamber behind hir, she protested unto him before God, that whereas she had bene reported to have bene the cause of separation betwixte him and my Lady his wyfe ; she neither procured nor assented to any such thing. But otherwise, wheras in the time of hir service in his house she had offended him in neglecting or contemning hir duetie, she acknowledged his fault, and besoughte him for God's sake to forgive hir : who very honorably and even with teares accepted hir submission, and openly protested himselfe to pray hartily to God for hir." After further prayer with the preachers the two women and the servantman "were all put in a readinesse by the Execu- tioner, and at one instant (by drawing away the cart wheron they stoode) were sent togither out of this worlde unto God." The pamphlet, from which we have quoted, contains the prayer and confession of Anne Saunders, and the following pious memorandum, which was found in the study of the murdered man, "Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be (Philip, i.) thorough hfe, or else death. For Christ is to me life, death is to me advantage. These words were M. Nowels Theamc, which he preached at the buriall of my brother Haddon upon Thursday, being ye XXV. day of Januarie, Anno do., 1570, Anno Regina; Elizabeth 13. Among other things which he preached this saying of his is to be had alwayes in remembrance, that is, that we must all (when we come to pray) first accuse and condemnc ourselves for our sinncs committed against God 1 8 Cheshire Gleanings. before the seat of his justice, and then after cleave unto Him by faythe in the mercy and merites of our Savioure and Redeemer Jesus Christ, whereby we are assured of eternall Salvation." The account, from which we have quoted, has the appearance of being the compilation of the ministers who attended the criminals, and is by no means of the ordinary catchpenny description. It is entitled, "A briefe discourse of the late murther of Master George Saunders, a worshipfull Citizen of London, and of the apprehension, arraignment, and execution of the principall and accessaries of the same. Imprinted at London by Henry Bynnemann, dwelling in Knightrider Streete, at the Signe of the Mermayde, Anno 1573." It is reprinted in Mr. Richard Simpson's School of Shakspere (London, 1878, ii., 220). The murder is alluded to in Stowe's Chronicle, and in Anthony Munday's " View of Sundry Examples," which was reprinted by the Shakespeare Society. This tract contains also the following quaint passage, " Then look heer into England, at Manchester, a childe borne without ever a hed, yet soon after was the mother delivered of a goodly and sweet infant." It was also the subject of a drama entitled, " A Warning for Faire Women. . . . As it hath beene lately diuerse times acted by the right Honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruantes" (London, 1599). This has been reprinted in Simpson's "School of Shakspere" (ii., 230), and follows very closely the account from which we have already quoted. Dean Nowell is probably intended to be represented in the character of the reverend " Doctor." " Warning for Fair Women'' 19 As a specimen we may quote the farewell of the con- demned mother to her children. Home. Behold my children, I will not bequeath Or gold or silver to you, you are left Sufficiently provided in that point ; But here I give to each of you a booke Of holy meditations, Bradford's workes, • That vertuous chosen servant of the Lord. Therein you shal be richer than with gred ; Safer than in faire buildings ; happier Than al the pleasures of this world can make you. Sleepe not without them, when you go to bed, And rise a morning with them in your hands. So God send downe his blessing on you al. Farewel, farewel, farewel, farewel, farewel ! She kisses them one after another. Nay, stay not to disturbe me with your teares ; The time is come, sweete hearts, and we must part. That way you go, this way my heavy heart. John Bradford's " Meditations " were first printed in .1562, and frequently reissued. The book is a favourable specimen of the peculiar vein of piety that was born of the English reformation. The allusion made by Mrs. Drury to her doings as a servant in the Stanley household is obscure. In 1572, "with Edward, Earl of Derby's death, the glory of hospitality seemed to fall asleep." His successor, Henry, fourth Earl of Derby, was born in 1531, and in 1554 married Margaret, the daughter of Henry, Earl of Cumber- land, and of Eleanor, the daughter of Charles Brandon, J 20 Cheshire Gleanings. Duke of Suffolk, and Mary, Queen Dowager of France. In 1588 he was appointed for five years Lord Chamberlain of Chester. He died in 1593, and his funeral sermon was preached by Dr. Chaderton, Bishop of Chester, who did not fail to do justice to the virtues and good qualities of the dead nobleman. Then turning to the son — the new earl — Ferdinando, he said, "You, noble Earl, that not only inherit, but exceed your father's virtues, learn to keep the love of your country, as your father did. You have in your arms three legs, signifying three counties, Cheshire, Derby- shire, and Lancashire ; stand fast on these legs, and you need fear none of their arms." The much lauded Earl, Henry, left behind him, in addition to four sons and a daughter born in lawful matrimony, three children, whose mother was Jane Halsall, of Knowsley. One of these three was Thomas Stanley, of Eccleshall, Esq. ; and there was also Dorothy, who married Sir Cuthbert Halsall, of Halsall ; and Ursula, who married Sir John Salusbury, and was the mother of Sir Henry Salusbury, the ancestor of Lord Combermere. It is possible that the existence of this second family may give point to Mrs. Drury's reference to some domestic trouble in the Stanley household. JOHN CRITCHLEY PRINCE. In the middle leaps a fountain Like sheet lightning, Ever brightening With a low melodious thunder. Tennyson. The Poet's Mind. THE churchyard of Hyde in Cheshire contains a simple memorial recording the last resting place of John Critchley Prince, who, although a native of Lancashire, was, after the foolish fashion of his time, frequently styled the »/ " Bard of Hyde," from his long residence there. The fame of John Critchley Prince has always been distinctly provincial, though some of his verses have enjoyed fragmentary popularity from their frequent quotation in newspapers and periodicals all over the English-speaking world. Thirteen years after his death the publication of a definitive edition of his poems brought his claims to remem- brance formerly before the Hterary pubHc. ("The Life of John Critchley Prince." By R. A. Douglas Lithgow, LL.D. ; 22 Cheshire Gleanings. "The Poetical Works of John Critchley Prince." Edited by R. A. Douglas Lithgow. Manchester : Messrs. A. Hey wood and Son. 1882.) The editor, Dr. Lithgow, has done his work well. He has used diligence in collecting ; and, if there is little that has hitherto been un- published, the reason is that Prince utilised as far as possible every scrap of his own composition. The difficult task of writing the biography of Prince has also been successfully achieved. The poet was a thorough Bohemian of the shabbiest type. That vague and shadowy land is not always a gay country, as Henri Murger has already told us ; and if any further proofs were needed of the statement, Dr. Lithgow has furnished them in abundance. It is, however, only fair to say that Prince had far more excuse for his sad misuse of talent than the Schaunhards, who were his contemporaries in the capital of France. John Critchley Prince was born at Wigan in 1808, in the midst of the deepest poverty. His father's trade was that of a reed-maker — a trade which had the double disadvantage of being extremely precarious and very badly paid. The elder Prince was a drunken brute, who thrashed his boy for reading, and brought him up to his own uncertain occupation. The paternal admonitions did not prevent young Prince from being an ardent reader of such scanty literature as fell into his way. Of the course of his intellectual progress there are singularly few memoranda ; but we know that he nourished his own poetic fancy by the food he found in Byron, Keats, Southey, and Wordsworth, and traces of their influence are not infrequent in his works. These studies doubtless im- Jo Jul CritcJdey Prince. 23 proved the native gift of melody which is the most striking characteristic of his compositions. Although he certainly wrote bad verses at times, his manner is generally captivating, even when the matter is but of small account. Before he was nineteen he had married, and had the usual struggles of a poor and improvident artisan with a young wife and child- 1 ren. A somewhat unusual incident in such a life was a visit I to France in 1830 in a fruitless search for employment. He may thus have gained a knowledge of French, to which his biographer, on very slight evidence, we think, adds some acquaintance with German. (See on this point the article on Prince and Korner, in the present volume). Although he began to write verses in 1827, he did not publish a volume until 1841, when "Hours with the Muses" appeared. Mr. R. W. Procter wTOte of this period : — " In the winter of 1 840- 1 was paid my first friendly visit to Mr. Prince at Hyde. The ' Bard of Hyde,' as Mr. Prince was styled, was then a factory operative, wearing the Cheadle swinger usually worn by his class in county towns and villages. At that early time, and in that substantial garment, there was about the poet an air of sturdiness, of homely comfort, which shortly afterwards disappeared when broad cloth came to supplant velveteen. I found him engaged in the pleasant task of revising his manuscript for the press, being on the eve of publishing his maiden volume, ' Hours with the Muses.' " This brought him a troop of friends, and some of these were not over- judicious. Their admiration of the poet often took a fluid form; and the intemperance which blighted nearly all his after- life, though it did not originate in, was certainly strengthened 24 Cheshire Gleanings. by, their well-meant attentions. The remainder of his career is not a pleasant one to tell in detail. Sometimes he worked at his old trade, and frequently he " tramped " about the country in search of employment, but his chief dependence appears to have been the sale of the five successive volumes which issued from his pen. To this must be added, especially in the latter period of his life, when a deepening gloom of pov- erty and disease overshadowed him, a dependence upon the produce of begging letters, which he addressed with great pertinacity to all whom he thought likely to befriend him. An attempt was made to obtain for him a pension, but this was refused, although he received a grant from the royal bounty. Occasional windfalls appear to have had no other effect than Bohemian revelry; and, when Prince died at Hyde / in 1866, the poverty in which he lived was only saved from being abject by the exertions of his second wife, who laboured for the comfort of the poor broken-down paralytic with heroic devotion and assiduity. Turning from the record of so unsatisfactory a life to its literary results, we must frankly admit that Prince's reputation is not one that is likely to widen or endure. He came at a time when a warm welcome was certain. The English cotton kingdom was in almost the first flush of a new-born literary enthusiasm. The factory bard was as phenomenal to the mer- chants and manufacturers in the streets of Wigan and Man- chester as the ploughman poet had been amid the fields of Ayr to the farmers and squires who were his contemporaries. We do not suggest any further parallel, for Burns and Prince were essentially different. JoJin CritcJdcy Prince. 25 No tribute needs the granite well, No food the planet-flame. That which Burns uttered in song came from the depth of his own consciousness, while Prince often merely embodied that which was floating in the air, or which he had assimila- ted from those greater masters in whose writings he found the solace of a life too often wanting in the first elements of self-respect and content. His remarkable gift of versification became in itself a danger. In pieces such as the " Artisan's Song," "A Book for Home Fireside," and others, he has done little more than crystallise the commonplaces of his day ; but the fact that the verses did give expression to the common thought was an occasion of momentary, however little it may contribute to permanent, success. In his tem- perance poems he deals with the fruit of bitter personal experience, and these lyrics are among the finest that have yet been written on that topic. From the " Songs of the People " we quote a verse : — The artisan, wending full early to toil, Sings a snatch of old song by the way ; The ploughman, who sturdily furrows the soil, Cheers the morn with the words of his lay ; The man at the stithy, the maid at the wheel, The mother with babe on her knee, Chant simple old rhymes which they tenderly feel ; Oh ! the songs of the people for me. / In nearly all his poetry there is a distinct literary flavour, which is all the more remarkable in a writer whose surround- ings were never favourable to study. This is very conspicu- 26 Cheshire Glcajiings. ous in the fine sonnet in which he describes in honied words, recalling the greater singer, the delight he felt on first reading Keats. Among many other notable poems, we may name "Weeds and Flowers," "One Angel More," and "The Golden Land of Poesy." The last-named, if we may read it as Prince's opinion upon his own powers, shows far more accurate judgment than that of his more enthusiastic admirers. He describes his long voyage in " the bark Hope, all gaily dight": — At length, oh, joy ! the enchanted shore Loomed up in far-off loveliness, And I grew eager to explore The wondrous realm ; my tears ran o'er With very gladness of success. Odours of spices and of flowers Came on the breezes flowing free ; Rich branches reft from gorgeous bowers Bestrewed the wave ; — the land was ours, — The golden land of Poesy ! — Not yet ! a barrier crossed my way, — My shrinking vessel back recoiled ; I could not reach the sheltering bay, For rocks and shoals about me lay, And winds opposed, and waters boiled. Thus baffled by the Poet-god, I only brought — alas for me ! — Some waifs and strays from that bright sod Which I have seen, but have not trod, — The golden land of Poesy ! This, we think, will be the verdict of impartial critics on John Critchley Prince. 27 Prince's claims as a poet. The current aspirations after / "progress," temperance, and peace which surrounded his youth and manhood he imbibed and gave forth again, ex- pressing in musical language the dumb thoughts which, in a vague form, existed in many minds. Hence his poems became at once a platform, if not a pulpit, power. There is neither intense passion nor dramatic force in his works ; but there is a deeply reverential spirit, a genuine love of Nature, and especially of the mighty hills amid whose fastnesses he might feel secure from the sin and turmoil of city life, a tender pity for the sorrows of daily existence, an appreciation of the domestic virtues strikingly in contrast with some por- tions of his own career, and a sincere sympathy with efforts made for the ameUoration of the working class to which he belonged. RICHARD RAMSEY. / I would the gods had made thee poetical. Shakspere. As You Like It. IN 1 8 1 6 appeared a volume of poems by a then resident in Macclesfield. Although there were above 500 subscribers the book is now seldom met with, and a brief notice of it may not be without interest. The title page reads : — " Poems on Various Subjects. By Richard Ramsey. Self-taught I sing — Homer. Macclesfield : Printed by J. Wilson, at the Courier Office, and sold by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Browne ; and Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, Paternoster Row, London, 1816." i2mo., pp. viii., 215. The frontispiece of the volume is a very good silhouette of the author who, in reply to the expected charge of vanity, observes : — " Among the subscribers to these poems (whose number exceeds five hundred) no doubt there may be some admirers of the celebrated Lavater, who, perhaps, will devote a leisure hour to the pleasing task of comparing the outlines of Physiognomy with those of Intellect, and of judging with scientific precision whether Nature has or has Richard Ramsey. 29 not departed from her old custom of making the face an Index to the Mind — such readers will exculpate the Author from the charge of vanity." The biographical indicia arc not numerous. Ramsey was a native of Ireland, and thus expresses his views : — " And as to the principle of the Author — whose little volume embraces many subjects — he can assure the Reader that he is a lover of his Country and King, whom he hath had the honour to serve by sea and land (as a volunteer) — but he is no zealot, either in Religion or Politics — (save that he denies the supremacy of the Pope and the legendary tales of his miracle-working Apostles) — all he wishes is Truth from the Pulpit, Justice from the Bench, and Constitutional Liberty from the Throne." To which admirable platitude we may all say, Amen. The Macclesfield poet cannot claim to have drunk very deep of the Pierian spring, and yet there are several of his pieces that are worth naming. There is an epigram on tlie " Fall of Eve " (p. 14):— The Rev, Dr. Adam Clarke asserts It could not be a serpent tempted Eve, But a gay Monkey ! whose fine mimic arts And fopp'ries were more likely to deceive ! Dogmatic Commentators still hold out A Serpent, not a Monkey, tempted Madam ; And which shall we believe? Without a doubt, None knew so well what tempted Eve as Adam. Another is a humorous address to the Prince Regent on "Fat and Lean Subjects," in which, as a means of reforming 30 Cheshire Gleanings. " each class that's prone to riot," he advises the Government to send supplies of food, so that . . their well-nourished Frames, In time becoming Fat, shall so chain down Their factious spirits, that the Luddite host "Will grow submissive, loyal, meek, and mild. As e'en the sleekest Bishop in the land. There is an anecdote of " Broadbrim and the Wag," which shows that "Simpson" was not unknown fifty years ago. The ingenious, if not ingenuous, milk-dealer thus explains : — "Nay, friend," said Broadbrim, "folks I never bilk, Tho' I outwit them — thou mistak'st the matter ; I never do put water in the milk — I only — put the milk into the water." Amongst the reminiscences of Ramsey's sailor-life may be mentioned the tale of a sailor who had a pearl on his eye, which prevented him from closing " the visual orb." Sailor Tom was left to protect the rum on shore from the Indians at Cuba. He was soon drunk and asleep ; but when the felonious Indian approached he was frightened at the appearance of " the strange white-man," thus explaining the cause of his awe-struck alarm : — But when I in his face did peep, I found he had — one eye to sleep, And one to watch the kegs ! There is an old story of a lazy porter at Manchester (p. 62). The Lazy Porters. A gentleman, late, travelling through the town Of Manchester, for commerce famous once ; RicJiard Ramsey. 31 Beheld a group of Porters squatted down Upon the flags, and basking in the sun, As still as Indian Brahmins in a trance : He slacken 'd step, upon the squad look'd down; And thought of an expedient to arouse them ; " Here, my fine lads, if you're not in a swoon, •' The laziest of you shall have this half crown — " When most upon their bottoms bump did souse them ! They reach'd their hands ;— but, lo ! the man of fun Withheld the proffer'd gift to their surprise ! And hailing one, who still bask'd in the sun, Said, " My fine fellow, you the prize have won. Who neither mov'd your limbs, nor op'd your eyes." He op'd his eyes to show he was awake. And gave them a half-roll within their socket, Yet mov'd not, nor put forth his hand to take The gift — but whisper'd soft, " for goodness sake, ^ Sir, if it's good, do put it in my pocket ! " It appears that a Mr. Grundy has been preaching against the existence of the Devil. Since then, the poet says : — Our modern gownmen, to secure their bread, And guard against decay of trade. Use all their skill to preach the Devil up ! There is a poem on the death of that strange fanatic Joanna Southcott ; another is addressed to Mrs. Jane Davies, of Macclesfield, on reading her " Letters from a Mother to her Son on his going to Sea;" whilst a third, entitled "The Dumb Cottagers," is on a couple of deaf mutes who lived near Nantwich. These were sister and brother, and they were unable to understand or make themselves understood : 32 Cheshire Gleanings. In vain I ask'd my way — all was grimace, Dumb elocution and unmeaning sound ; Devoid of speech they could not tell the place, And much it seemed their feeling hearts to wound. How hard their lot ! descended from one womb, And from that womb the joys of speech deny'd ! What pleasures can they have, thus deaf and dumb, Save heaven some mystic language hath supply'd ? Lost to the tale of love, the song of praise. The converse that endears the social hour. To music dead, slow pass their cheerless days, To speech a stranger, and its soothing povv'r. This description of the condition of deaf mutes, though creditable to Ramsey's benevolence, is not quite accurate, for as a rule they are neither morose nor unhappy, Man / has a blessed faculty of accommodation, and even in the cases where every avenue seems closed, some method of communication between the imprisoned soul and the outer world is established. The life of Laura Bridgman, blind, deaf and dumb, and yet educated and even accomplished, is a striking proof of this. Nearly two centuries earlier than Ramsey, the learned author of several curious books, left a note of two Cheshire mutes whose condition was apparently more desperate than the Nantwich cottagers, but who were seemingly better able to make themselves understood. John Bulwer says: "A Husbandman living at Tilstone in Cheshire, about seven mile from Chester, had two daughters, Twins, that were borne deafe and dumbe, having but two eyes betweene them ; one of the eyes of each of them being originally blinde ; they lived both to be old women. Some RicJiard Ramsey. 33 Cheshire men of my acquaintance, who knew them both, affirme, that they had a very strange and admirable nimble- nesse of perception, both to understand others, and to dehver their owne mindes by signes, which happened, without doubt, unto them through the marvelous recompence that nature affordeth in such cases ; For, having but one eye, the sight of that was certainely very accurate." ("Philocophus," 1648, P- 47-) One of the most interesting of his pieces is one in blank verse referring to the Indian weed, and to one of the many controversies it has excited. With this we conclude: — Tobacco. To sage experience we owe The Indian weed unknown to ancient times, / Nature's kind Gift, whose acrimonious fume Extracts superfluous juices, and refines The Blood distemper'd from its noxious salts ; / Friend to the spirits, which with vapours bland It gently mitigates ; Companion fit Of pleasantry and wine ; nor to the bards Unfriendly, when they to the vocal shell Warble melodious their well labour'd songs. PlIILl.II'S. The poor man struggles with an ill whose sting Is felt, alas ! full oft on sea and land. Privation of a fascinating plant • ' Yclept Tobacco— total want of which, In onewho us'd it for a length of time, Will sour the sweetest temper, whether he Take snuff, or chew, or smoke the reeking tube. D / 34 Cheshire Gleanings. Happy the man who, free from want and pain, In sealskin pouch, or shining box contains A quid of fresh Tobacco ! he nor rolls In vain the restless tongue thro' tasteless mouth Nor substitutes weak liquorice, spungy root, Nor wooden pegs that bound Tobacco roll ; But when old men and wives the empty box Indignant view, and shatter on hearth stone Their useless pipes, at rates and taxes rail. And curse good Governments, he in his cheek With heart uplift the lusty quid doth cram. And feast his palate on the savoury juice. Or if transform'd to sherroot or segar, (That us'd in India, in Columbia this) Or minc'd in milk-white tube, by fire he sits And smokes, pleas'd with the taste and fragrant smell. And ev'ry whiff wafts odorous clouds on high ; While ever and anon the flowing can Of English stingo, and the jocund tale Of other days goes round the festive board. Last, tho' not least, the snuff-box, richly set With costly diamonds (such as Castlereagh, From public purse, on foreign courts late shower'd In vast profusion, and at vast expense), Opes on the golden hinge, and the huge pinch To nostril, wide expanded, close apply 'd, Infusing wisdom, clears the muddy brain Of deep-wig'd Judge, or mitred Prelate grave, Dispensing law and Gospel to mankind. ^ To thee, O Raleigh ! Europe's sons, who use The Indian Weed, can never half repay Their debt of gratitude. Of daring soul, He plough'd thro' unknown seas, scann'd distant realms. RicJiard Ramsey. . 35 And on his safe return first introduced / This soother of our woes — this pasture sweet, I That heightens friendship and the social hour, Tho' James condemned Tobacco — and a Bard, More learn'd and popular, with him took part — The famous Cowper ; though in latter days Clarke join'd their standard, and dull Combro strove To hobble in the rear ; yet greater he In sense and song who sung its deathless praise — Immortal Phillips — "splendid " son of fame. Such and so strong the force of haljit is, That Cambro's lectures, tho' in various tongues Wide spread, can never make real proselytes Of those who use Tobacco. Cambro says, " A needle dipp'd in its strong juice will kill An animal ; " but may not arrows slay And needles kill whose points were never daub'd With 'Bacco juice or poison ? but, again, " It can't guard off contagion," it hath been The second mean ; due honor to the first. In Philadelphia, when the raging plague Dealt Death around ; The Negroes, and the French, Still us'd Tobacco, and remained in Town, Yet died not ! but a vain misguided race, Who thought that smoking was quite ungenteel, And would not stain their breath, nor singe their beards With pipe, or roU'd Segar, in Hundreds fell, And choak'd up doors and Halls, and strcw'd the streets ! But mark how well this Cambro can describe , The ways men use this bless'd Virginian weed. Which helps to crush rebellion in the Stale And feuds in families — when mildly Tax'd. First, as a " sternutatory," — now who o 6 Cheshire Gleajiings. Could think this sounding phrase implied— to sneeze? Next — " Goes in form of vapour to the Lungs" — What form has vapour ? vapour here means Smoke ! Then as a " Masticatory " — in this Dark phrase we dimly recognize the — quid ! Clarke calls this precious weed a " God," our " hope " In " sorrow," and in " trouble " our "support ; " Ador'd as "pipe," as " snuff-box," or as "twist !" But Clarke and Cambro both may chew the cud Of Disappointment ; their fanatic zeal Shall make few proselytes. Heaven for the good Of man bestow'd this plant, and why not use With moderation what it freely gave ? All things were made for use of man or beast ; Beasts touch it not ! Hence Clarke and Cambro keep Your Ideal "Gods " and "potions " to yourselves, And leave us to enjoy — snuff, pipe, and quid. WILLIAM HORNBY'S SCOURGE OF DRUNKENNESS. and when You wake with head ache you shall see what then. Byron. Don Juan. OF that rare and curious work Hornby's "Scourge of Drunkenness" the earliest known copy, dated 1 6 19, is / in the British Museum, but a transcript exists of an earlier one, dated 16 14. This was reprinted in 1859 for private circulation. "The Scourge of Drunkenness; a Poem by William Hornby, a.d. 16 14. Edited by James O. Halli- well, Esq., F.R.S." London. 1859. 4to. The author, who was a reformed drunkard, dedicates his book thus : — " To his loving kinsman and approved friend, Mr. Henry Cholmely, Esquire, William Hornby wisheth all health and happiness." From this it would appear probable that Hornby was a Cheshire man. The quality of his poetry may be judged by these two verses : — 38 C lies J lire Gleanings. 'Tis great impeachment to a generous mind, A base and paltry alehouse to frequent, It best befits a tinker in his kinde, Than any man of virtues eminent : Go to an alehouse to quaffe and carouse 'Tis cousin-germane to a baudy-house. It is the receptacle of al vices, Where tinkers and their tibs doe oft repaire, Where theeves and iugglers with their slight devises, Their false-got booties, at a night doe share, Where rogues and runagates doe still resort, And every knave which is of evil report. The "Scourge" was not Hornby's only production. Mr. Halliwell mentions, amongst others, " Hornby's Hornbook," 1622. This he says "is a still rarer poem, for as far as I have been able to discover only one copy of it is preserved, and it is altogether unnoticed in the various bibliographical dictionaries." DID HAROLD DIE AT CHESTER? May 22, 1832. — We got such a treat on Friday evening, in Arthur's parcel of prizes. One copy he had iUustrated in answer to my ques- tions, with all his authorities, to show how he came by various bits of information. In this parcel he sent an Ancient Ballad, showing how Harold the King died at Chester, the result of a diligent collation of old chronicles he and Mary had made together in winter. Arthur put all the facts together from memory. [An extract from Mrs. Stanley's Diary.] Augustus J. C. Hare. Maaitillaii' s Magazine, xliv., 360, October, 188 1. THAT Harold, the last of the Saxons, died on the battlefield that brought destruction to his kingdom and power is the general, and, in all probability, the correct opinion. It is, however, to be noted that a tradition of some antiquity states that he lived for many years after the battle of Senlac, and died at last in a hermitage near Chester. According to this legend those who were seeking for their friends amongst the slain found his body with life not yet extinct. He was removed to Winchester, and there recovered chiefly by the aid of the medical skill of a woman of oriental extraction. On his recovery the moody king saw 40 CJieshire Gleanings. that the recovery of his throne was impossible without foreign aid, and with the hope of obtaining it he proceeded first to Saxony, and then to Denmark. Disappointed in his ambitious hopes he donned the Pahiier's garb, and pro- ceeded on a pilgrimage to Palestine, and thence, when an old man, returned to England. From Dover he journeyed through Kent, and settled in a place in Shropshire, called CeswTthin, where he built a cell, and stayed for ten years. Then the wandering spirit impelled him to leave, and in obedience to a dream he took possession of a cell in the chapel of St. James', in the churchyard of St. John the Baptist, a little beyond the walls of Chester. The previous occupant of this hermitage had died immediately before Harold received his supernatural intimation of the new home that had been prepared for him. The recluse lived here for seven years, and though it was shrewdly conjectured that he was one of the chiefs defeated at Hastings it was not until he lay upon his deathbed that he revealed the secret of his identity. Such is the story told in the " Vita Haroldi," to be found in the " Chroniques Anglo-Normandes." Mr. E. A. Freeman has examined the tradition with great care, but only to reject it as baseless. (History of the Norman Conquest, iii., 516). The conquered in all ages have based their hopes upon a deliverer, and have refused to believe that Death had vanquished the hero in whom centred the aspirations of the nation or of the race. The return of Arthur, of Marco, of Sebastian, to give victory and liberty were thus expected. As Harold did not return to fight for the throne of his Did Harold Die at Chester? 41 father the explanation would, in that age, be natural that he had abandoned the world for what was then regarded as the higher life of an ascetic. Hence, as Mr. Freeman points out, the very disappointment and falsification of the original hope might give rise to the later story of his adven- tures in the holy land, and his seclusion in the hermit's cell. Nor was Chester an unlikely place to be associated with such a tradition. The Minster had seen the glory of Edgar the Peaceful, when all the tributary princes rendered him homage, and it was not unfit, therefore, that in its mighty but peaceful shadow the last representative of his race and power should hide the last years of a long and unfortunate life. THE WORD BACHELOR IN CHESHIRE. When I said I would die a bachelor I did not think I should live till I were married. Shakespere. Mucli Ado About Nothing. THE increase of "girl graduates" has naturally led to a discussion as to the designation for them, especially in the earlier stages of academic distinction. " A Female Educationist " writing to the Madras Mail in February, 1883, says : — " I was agreeably surprised to learn from your journal of yesterday that two Bengalee ladies have success- fully passed the B.A. Degree Examination at the Calcutta University. This is, of course, highly satisfactory, so far as it goes, but I have a doubt as to the propriety of calling girls ' Bachelors of Arts.' It may possibly be urged that ' B.A.' indicates only the degree of proficiency ; but I am of opinion that ' B. A.' is more personal than ' F.A.' (for in- stance), which assuredly refers only to the degree of merit. I should like to see if at the next meeting of the Senate some Fellow will not stand up and move for the institution of a ' Maid of Arts degree.'" One obvious objection to such a designation would be TJie Word BacJieloj' in ChcsJdre. 43 the confusion between Maid and Master of Arts. Spinster appears to be the technical designation of an unmarried lady, and S.A. might therefore suit some cases. But the Universities that have opened their doors to women would scarcely refuse admission to a married woman who is not, even by a legal fiction, now regarded as a spinster. But where is the need for any change ? xA.pparently those who suggest some alternative designation imagine that "bachelor" is a word solely of masculine import. This is by no means the case. There has been a great deal of ingenious speculation as to its origin, which is con- fessedly obscure. The Rev. "Walter W. Skeat derives it / from the Low-Latin baccalarius^ a farm servant, originall)- a cowherd. The root of the word, he thinks, is probabl)- the Sanskrit vasa, the "lowing animal," or cow. This etymology does not appear to throw much light upon the subject, and that which suggests the derivation of the word from bacillus or bacuhini is more suggestive, for then the foundation of the word would be the idea of a shoot, push- ing forward from one stage to another of its existence. Whatever the derivation, the word has had several distinct I meanings. Thus it meant in c liivalry a person in the first I or probationary condition of knighthood. Analogously it indicated one who had taken the first degree in one of the faculties of a university. It meant in the London com- panies a person not yet admitted to the livery. In all these cases the common idea is that of ]:)robation, which is also evident in the commonest meaning of the word when it is applied to an unmarried man, — one of those who like Shy- 44 Cheshire Gleanings. lock "when he was a bachelor" would not have given the turquoise ring he had from his sweetheart Leah, not " for a wilderness of monkeys." But "bachelor" was formerly a term applied to young women as well as to young men. Of this we have an instance in the following epitaph from Prestbury churchyard : — " Here Lyeth the body of James Pickford, of Mottram, who departed this life the first day of January a.d. 1691. Alsoe Sarah Pickford sister to the above-said James Pickford, was here interred August ye 17 Anno Domini 1705, and died a Bachelour in the 48 yeare of her age." ' This is noteworthy as the word has escaped the attention . of the compilers of Cheshire Glossaries. For a time, it must be admitted, the use of the word bachelor to denote an unmarried woman was not at all general, and yet it was used in this sense by so great a master of English as Ben Jonson, for in the " Magnetic Lady," Polish, addressing the heroine, Placentia, says : — Your lady-aunt has choice in the house for you : We do not trust your uncle ; he would keep you A bachelor still, by keeping of your portion. A partial restoration of its meaning may be further justi- fied by the custom of Berry where the style of bachelicre was given to the bridesmaid at a wedding. These con- siderations, and the Cheshire instance cited, may relieve the minds of those purists who are alarmed at the proposal to call young men and women who have shown equal intellect and good memory by the common title of Bachelor of Arts. . WAS MARAT A TEACHER AT WARRINGTON? Necessity, The tyrant's plea, excused his devilisli deeds. Milton. Paradise Lost, iv. 393. IT has frequently been said that Jean Paul Marat during a portion of his stay in England, was a master at Warring- ton Academy, and that he was afterwards condemned to five years penal servitude for a theft committed in the Ashmo- lean Museum at Oxford. The story appears to have been first mentioned in a series of articles that appeared in the Monthly Repository, and are known to have been contributed by the Rev. William Turner. Mr. H. Morse Stephens having investigated this calumny has stated the result. The Academy, 23rd September, 1882, contains an account by Mr. H. Morse Stephens, of the last medical treatise by Marat; the issue of 23rd December, 1882, contains Mr. Stephens' letter on the theft from the Ashmolean Museum, and the number of 27th Jan., 1883, has some further comment by the present wTiter. The essential points are here repro- duced. From some "odd pajicrs " in the Ashmolean 4^ Cheshire Gleaniners Museum, it appears that a Norwich silversmith wrote to the authorities to say that he had bought some medals from a foreigner, who wore a gold chain "formerly belonging to Elias Ashmole." This person gave his name as Mara, and was accompanied by Mr. Rigby, who had known him at Warrington. This man, Jean Paul Le Maitre, alais Matra, alais Mara, was arrested at Dublin, convicted of the theft, and sentenced at the Oxford Assizes March 6, 1777, to five years hard labour in the hulks. This man's identity with Marat has been assumed, but is quite untenable. Mr. Stephens has shown that Marat, who had for some years been practising as a physician in London, received the degree of M.D. at St. xA.ndrews, June 30th, 1775, published a medical pamphlet dated Church Street, Soho, ist Jan., 1776, and was appointed physician to the Gardes du Corps of the Comte d'Artois, 24th June, 1777. It is clear therefore that he cannot be identical with the thief sent to the hulks three months earlier. To Mr. Stephens' satisfactory demolition it may be added that in 1858 Mr. H. A. Bright wrote "A Historical Sketch of the Warrington Academy," which may be found in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vol. xi. He had, of course, to form an opinion as to the correctness of the arguments originally adduced by the Rev. William Turner in the Monthly Repository for identifying the felonious Frenchman with the great revolu- tionary. Mr. Bright could not find the name of either Lemaitre or Mara in the minutes at all. " Lastly," he says, " Miss Aikin, to whom I applied, informs me there was an alarm about Marat, but investigation set the matter at rest : Was Marat a Teacher at IVarriiigton. 47 they were certainly different men." It thus appears that the imputation on Marat's honesty is a slander based on a mis- take. The sojourn as a teacher at the Warrington Academy must also henceforth be omitted from the biography of the "Ami du Peuple" who played so strange a part in the sanguinary epoch of the French revolution. THE BOTANIST'S FUNERAL. For I love and prize you one and all, From the least low bloom of spring To the lily fair, whose clothes outshine The raiment of a King. Phcebe Gary. Spring Floivcrs. Er Abram studies plants, — He caps the dule for moss an' ferns, An growin' polyants ; Edwin Waugh. Eaur Fowk. ^ "TTAPPY is the bride that the sun shines on, and happy AJl is the corpse that the rain rains on." We thought of the quaint old north country proverb as with the wind howHng in our ears and the rain dashing in blinding_ torrents against our face we struggled up the steep hill street of Mossley on 13th November, 1875. Many a hill side village, and many a hamlet in the doughs sent representatives to join in the last tribute of respect to one who for many years had exercised a potent influence for good upon the members of his own class. The late Mr. James Walker, of Mossley, was well-known TJie Botajiisfs Funeral. 49 to many scientific men as a notable member of the remark- able group of artisans who have been distinguished by a love of science, and by success in its pursuit. Originally employed as a mill-hand, he had afterwards been a postman, and at his death was an emigration agent. His quiet genial presence had been so constant a feature at the meetings and field rambles of the artisan naturalist societies that the news of his unexpected death caused something like a feeling of consternation. He was only sixty, an age within the three- score years and ten allotted by the Psalmist, and at which many typical Englishmen — Lord Palmerston, for instance — can only be said to be blossoming into maturity. We were not surprised, then, on reaching the rooms of the Natural History Society of Mossley, to find a goodly number assem- bled to do honour to the dead comrade who had so long marched in the van. There we met with old friends, and heard simple but heartfelt expressions of grief and regret. Many of these were not only his friends, but pupils and disciples — men whom he had drawn from more ignoble aims to the love of nature and the study of her works and laws. One, in his own rough phrase, would tell how patient the teacher had been. " Eh, heaw patient he wur ! Aw're a poor scholar, and had to ax th' same question o'er and o'er agen enough to tire a wayter wheel. Thoose jaw-breaking words would'n stop i' my mind. It took me months to larn one on 'em. But it didno matter heaw often I axd the same question ; he'd alius the same quiet gentle way o' tellin' me. Why, there's some, if I axt hauf as often, ud ha' coed eawt, ' Neaw then, blethcr-yed, heaw often does ta want tellin' ? ' " 50 Cheshire Gleanings. Gentleness was a very noticeable trait of Mr. Walker's character. He was not one of the genus irritabile, was tender to animals, and loved plants and flowers with some- thing of the love that is usually reserved for living creatures ; had an infinity of patience as a teacher, and an absolute delight in imparting knowledge, especially if in so doing he were stimulating the recipient to further research and the acquisition of greater knowledge. Living all his life in the midst of the artisan class, he knew their virtues and their failings and the potentiality for moral culture and for intellectual expansion dormant amongst them, and so far as his personal influence extended — and it was great — he sought to bring them into closer communion with our bountiful Mother Nature. And to whom should this be of greater importance than to those who, during no inconsider- able portion of their lives, must listen to the whirr of wheels and not to the song of birds ? So he enticed his companions into the open to study flowers, and ferns, and rocks; en- couraged the timid, stimulated the strong, and put fresh heart into those discouraged. Sometimes one would say, " Aw've nobbut my warty cloas ; aw'm noan fit for a Sunday ramble." In reply to this Mr. Walker would keep the man by his side, and say, " I'll answer anyone that cares about that." Another would plead, " Aw canno larn ; aw'st ha' t' give up." To this the reply would be, " Thee keep on, I'll give thee the sack when thou can't learn." It was this much enduring patience that gave Mr. Walker his deep hold on the affections of his peers. He was in the first rank by reason of his knowledge; but scientific attainments alone. The Botanisfs Funeral. 51 unaccompanied by this child-like gentleness of spirit, would not have given him the place he held in the hearts of his many friends. The only thing that seemed to move him to anger was bigotry and intolerance. Against these, displayed by whatever sect or party, he made vigorous protest. The fact that the naturalist societies hold their meetings and have their excursions on the Sunday, has excited a prejudice against them in some minds. The Sunday is the only clear day a man has to himself in England, and it is within the memory of many when even the fraction of the Saturday could not be spared by Mammon. Mr. Walker held strong views on the subject; and in July of 1875 he wrote to the Manchester Examiner and Twies, in vindication of them, in reply to a clergyman who had been wrongly reported to have described the Sunday naturalists in a manner at once inaccurate and uncharitable. r-' A true lover of nature was James Walker. After some correspondence between us on scientific topics, we made an appointment to meet each other, and that there might be no delay in recognition, he carried in his hands a small green fern. It was not an unfitting cognisance for one who loved the beautiful. One of his Mossley friends encountered at the Isle of Man some rare ferns, and sent a slight specimen in a letter. Walker was so delighted that he could hardly sleep for thinking of the more bounteous store that would be brought back by his correspondent. During the dark days of the Cotton Famine he and one of his friends found themselves happily possessed of an unlimited amount of enforced leisure and two superfluous five shilling pieces. The purchase of 52 Cheshire Gleajimgs. cheap trip tickets for Rhyl left each of them with is. 6d. in his pocket. Arrived at that not very lively watering-place they determined to see something of Wales, and cast away the return half of their excursion tickets. Having thus crossed the Rubicon and burnt the boats, they proceeded on their way rejoicing. How the adventurous pair succeeded the survivor alone could adequately relate, but aided by the freemasonry which a love of science implies, they managed to examine the coast from Rhyl to Conway, to see Llan- dudno, to examine the Vale of Clwyd up to Denbigh, and to return home almost as rich as they left, in a pecuniary sense, and richer in knowledge and in pleasant memories. Another proof of his love of Nature was afforded by his expressed wish — reverently complied with — that those who came to follow him to his last resting-place should each receive a small flower and fern. With this natural regalia displayed the members of the botanical societies led off the funeral procession. The storm of wind and rain was terrible, and the cold intense, but notwithstanding this elemental strife some two hundred persons accompanied their dead friend to his last resting-place. The church of Mossley is barren of decoration and so dimly lighted that the figure of the clergyman and the bowed heads of the congregation were scarcely perceptible. Then out into the cold church- yard and with bared heads we gathered round the grave, and as the voice of the white-robed priest uttered those words which fall upon the heart like the stroke of a sword, there arose the wail of women and the sobs of men who had known and revered that which was now only earth to be The Botanist's Funeral. 53 restored to earth. " Dust to dust and ashes to ashes " — and some stepped forward and cast within the grave the floral emblems they had carried on their breasts, and others only refrained because they wished to keep them as the bequest and memento of the dead. From the churchyard the botanists wended their way to the village inn where tea had been provided for them by the local society. This done a chairman was elected and brief unpretentious speeches made by various persons from Oldham, Ashton, Manchester, and other places. A life like this reflects honour alike upon the class and the nation that produces it. Here was a man who, in spite of adverse circumstances, struggled and attained a mastery over a branch of science as difficult as it is fascinating ; who made no pretensions to learning, but had a mind eclectic in <> tone, and sympathetic to varied forms of culture. It was a life of simplicity in an age of luxury ; a life devoted to the acquisition and the diffusion of knowledge at a time when many are sacrificing mind and soul in order to " get on in the world," and when more are unhappily without aim or object of any kind. As an example of plain living and high thinking, how much such a life is worth ! THE CHESHIRE MAN CALLED EVELYN. A jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it. Shakspere. Lovers Labour Lost. THERE is an odd anecdote in the " Mery Tales, Wittie Questions and Quicke Answeres," 1567, (usually re- garded as one of the Shaksperian Jest-books and as such re-printed) which has more local favour than is common in these tales. It is as follows : — "Ther dwelled a man in Chesshyre called Eulyn, which vsed to go to the towne many tymes, and there he wolde sytte drynkyng tyl XII. of the clocke at nyghte, and than go home. So on a tyme he caryed a lyttel boye his sonne on his shulder with him, and whan the chylde fell a slepe about IX. of the clocke, the ale wyfe brought him to bed with her chyldren. At mydnyghte Eulyn went home, and thought no more on his chylde. Assone as he came home his wyfe asked for her chyld, whan she spake of the chylde he looked on his shulder, and whan he saw he was not ther, he said he wist nat where he was. Out vpon the horson (quod she) thou hast let mi child fal in to the water (for he 55 The Cheshire Man Called Evelyn. passed ouer the water of Dee at a brige). Thou Hst here (quod he) for if he had fallen in to the water, I shuld haue hard him plump." Such were the to us pointless stories which set the table in a roar in the good old times. THE WIZARD OF ALDERLEY EDGE. Whom he reports to be a great magician. Shakspere. As Vou Like It. CONNECTED with Alderley Edge there is a curious tradition which preserves a very ancient fragment of mythological belief, and is, therefore, worthy of notice. The legend of the wizard of Alderley Edge first appeared in print in the Manchester Mail of 1805, by a correspondent who obtained it from the narration of a servant of the Stanleys, whose proper name was Thomas Broadhurst, but who was better known as " Old Daddy." According to this veteran the tradition says that once upon a time a farmer from Mobberley, mounted on a milk-white horse, was crossing the Edge on his way to Macclesfield to sell the animal. He had reached a spot known as the Thieves' Hole, and, as he slowly rode along thinking of the profitable bargain which he hoped to make, was startled by the sudden appearance of an old man, tall and strangely clad in a deep flowing garment. The old man ordered The Wizard of Alder ley Edge. 57 him to stop, told him that he knew the errand upon which the rider was bent, and offered a sum of money for the horse. The farmer, however, refused the offer, not thinking it sufficient. " Go, then, to Macclesfield," said the old man, "but mark my words, you will }iot sell the horse. Should you find my words come true, meet me this evening, and I will buy your horse." The farmer laughed at such a prophecy, and went on his way. To his great surprise, and greater disappointment, nobody would buy, though all admired his beautiful horse. He was, therefore, compelled to return. On approaching the Edge he saw the old man again. Checking his horse's pace, he began to consider how far it might be prudent to deal with a perfect stranger in so lonely a place. However, while he was con- sidering what to do, the old man commanded him, " Follow me ! " Silently the old man led him by the Seven Firs, the Golden Stone, by Stormy Point, and Saddle Boll. Just as the farmer was beginning to think he had gone far enough he fancied that he heard a horse neighing under- ground. Again he heard it. Stretching forth his arm the old man touched a rock with a wand, and immediately the farmer saw a ponderous pair of iron gates, which, with a sound like thunder, flew open. The horse reared bolt upright, and the terrified farmer fell on his knees praying that his life might be spared. " Fear nothing," spoke the Wizard, " and behold a sight which no mortal eye has ever looked upon." They went into the cave. In a long succes- sion of caverns the farmer saw a countless number of men and horses, the latter milk-white, and all fast asleep. In 58 Cheshire Gleanings. the innermost cavern heaps of treasure were piled up on the ground. From these glittering heaps the old man bade the farmer take the price he desired for his horse, and thus addressed him : " You see these men and horses ; the num- ber was not complete. Your horse was wanted to make it complete. Remember my words, there will come a day when these men and these horses, awakening from their enchanted slumber, will descend into the plain, decide the fate of a great battle, and save their country. This shall be when George the son of George shall reign. Go home in safety. Leave your horse with me. No harm will befal you ; but henceforward no mortal eye will ever look upon the iron gates. Begone ! " The farmer lost no time in obeying. He heard the iron gates close with the same fear- ful sounds with which they were opened, and made the best of his way to Mobberley. This tradition found a place in the Hon. Miss L. D. Stanley's " Alderley and its neighbourhood," and has since been often quoted. Colonel Egerton Leigh has printed two rhyming versions, the one by Mr, James Roscoe, which is the most modern, and from a literary point of view the best, names the wondrous sleepers as King Arthur and his knights. The antiquity of the tradition is not easily ascertainable, the story used to be told by Parson Shrigley, and he placed the meeting of the Mobberley Farmer and the Enchanter at about eighty years before his time. Shrigley was curate of Alderley in 1753. He died in 1776. It will be seen how closely this tradition resembles the The Wizard of Alderley Edge. 59 tales told by the peasantry of the famous Rymour of Ercil- doun, who is supposed to inhabit the interior of the Eildon Hills. "A shepherd was once conducted into the interior recesses of Eildon Hills by a venerable personage, whom he discovered to be the famous Rymour, and who showed him an immense number of steeds in their caparisons, and at the bridle of each a knight sleeping in sable armour with a sword and a bugle horn by his side. These he was told were the hosts of King Arthur, waiting till the appointed return of that monarch from fairyland." ("Poetical Remains of Dr. John Leyden," 1S19, p. 358.) Scott has printed a legend very similar to our Cheshire one. The colour of the horses in the Border tale is coal black, and a sword and a horn are pointed out to the rustic as the means of dissolving the spell. He chooses the horn. No sooner has he put it to his mouth than a dreadful tumult arises, and a whirlwind carries the unfortunate horse dealer out of the cavern, whilst loud over all the uproar he hears the stern voice of the Rymour exclaiming : — Woe to the coward that ever he was born, That did not draw the sword before he blew the horn. " This legend," says Scott, " is found in many parts of Scotland and England — the scene is sometimes laid in some favourite glen of the Highlands, sometimes in the deep coal mines of Northumberland and Cumberland, which run so far beneath the ocean. It is also to be found in Reginald Scott's book on Witchcraft, which was written in 6o Cheshire Gleanings. the i6th century." ("Waverley Novels," General Preface. See also Scott's " Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft," Letter 5.) The ballad of " Sir Guy the Seeker," by Monk Lewis, a ballad in every way superior to some others of his which have had a larger share of popularity, is founded upon a legend of Dunstanburgh Castle. According to this legend, Sir Guy was taken by a man of supernatural appearance into a large and lofty hall, where stood a hundred coal black steeds, and sleeping by their sides a hundred marble knights ; at the far end of the hall, bound in magic bonds, he sees a J maid of beauty rare and strange. A form more fair than that prisoner's ne'er Since tlie days of Eve was known, Every glance that flew from her eyes of blue, Was worth an Emj^eror's throne ; And one sweet kiss from her roseate lips, Would have melted a heart of stone. The warrior felt his stout heart melt. When he saw those fountains run. Oh ! what can I do ? he cried, for you ? What mortal can do shall be done. After the knight had thus expressed his determination the ancient wizard speaks : — See'st yonder sword, with jewels rare, < Its dudgeon crusted o'er ? See' St yonder horn of ivory fair ? 'Twas Merlin's horn of yore ! That horn to sound, or sword to draw, Now youth, your choice explain. The Wizard of Alder ley Edge. 6 1 After much hesitation the knight seizes the horn, and blows upon it a blast which goes echoing through the hall like the sound of thunder ; knights and steeds awake to life and motion and rush upon Sir Guy, who startled at his assailants, throws down the horn, and draws his sword to defend himself. And straight each light was extinguished quite Save the flame so lurid blue On the wizard's brow (whose flashing now Assumed a bloody hue), And those sparks of fire, which grief and ire From his glaring eyeballs drew ! And he stampt in rage, and he laughed in scorn, While in thundering tone he roared, Now shame on the coward who sounded a horn, When he might have unsheatht a sword. Lewis says of this ballad, " It is founded upon a tradition current in Northumberland. Indeed, an adventure nearly similar to Sir Guy's is said to have taken place in various parts of Great Britain, particularly on the Pentland Hills in Scotland (where the prisoners are supposed to be King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table), and in Lancashire, where an alehouse, near Chorley, still exhibits the sign of a Sir John Stanley following an old man with a torch, while his horse starts back with terror at the objects which are discovered through two immense iron gates — the alehouse is known by the name of the Iron Gates, which are supposed to protect the entrance of an enchanted cavern in the neighbourhood. The. female captive, I 62 Cheshire Gleanings. believe, is peculiar to Dunstanburgh Castle; and certain shining stones which are occasionally found in the neigh- bourhood, and which are called Dunstanburgh Diamonds, are supposed by the peasantry to form part of that immense treasure with which the lady will reward her deliverer." (" Lewis's Romantic Tales," quoted in the " Pictorial Book of Ballads," edited by J. S. Moore, London, 1847, p. 161. Lewis refers to Alderley in the above passage.) In Richardson's " Borderer's Table Book " (Vol. VII., p. 66), the ballad of " Guy the Seeker " is reprinted, with an introduction by Mr. J. H. Dixon, followed by an account of the castle and its former possessors. In the same volume is a paper by Mr. J. Hardy, giving legends current at Sewing- shields, of the wondrous cavern where King Arthur sleeps. The Dunstanburgh tradition stands alone in having a female for its subject, the others, it will be seen, relate to Arthur, whose reappearance was at one time an article of popular faith very devoutly believed in. Geoffrey of Monmouth's account of the hero's death is somewhat peculiar : " And even the renowned King Arthur himself was mortally wounded ; and being carried thence to the Isle of Avallon, to be cured of his wounds, he gave up the crown," &c. Of this belief in Arthur's return a writer of the 17 th century thus speaks : — " But finding of the body of Arthur, such as believed he was not dead, but carried away by fairies into some pleasant place, where he should remain a time, and then to return again and reign in as great authority as he did before, might well perceive themselves deceived in crediting so vain The Wizard of Alder ley Edge. 63 a fable." (Enderbie, "Cambria Triumphant," 1661, p. 191.) There is a Welsh legend, that in a cavern under the roots of the hazel-tree on Craig y Ddinas, King Arthur and all his knights are lying asleep in a circle : " their heads outward, every one in his armour, his sword, and shield, and spear by him ; ready to be taken up whenever the Black Eagle and the Golden Eagle shall go to war, and make the earth tremble with their affray, so that the cavern shall be shaken and the bell ring and the sleepers be awakened." Arthur is not the only Welsh hero of whom this fable has been related. Of Owen Glendower we are told that the prevalent opinion was that he died in a wood in Glamorgan, but occult chronicles assert that he and his men still live, and are asleep on their arms in a cave called Ogof y Ddinas, in the vale of Gwent, where they will continue until England becomes self-abased ; but that then they will sally forth and reconquer their country, privileges, and crown for the Welsh, who shall be dispossessed of them no more until the day of judgment, when the world shall be consumed with fire, and so reconstructed that neither oppression nor devastation shall take place any more. {Notes and Queries, IV., 120.) " And blessed will be he who shall see the time." In Ireland the hero of the legend is one of the Geraldines, who with his warriors are now sleeping in a long cavern under the Rath of Mullaghmast. There is a table running along through the middle of the cave. The earl is sitting at the head, and his troopers down along in complete armour on both sides of the table, and their heads resting 64 Cheshire Gleanmgs. on it. Their horses saddled and bridled, are standing behind their masters in their stalls at each side ; and when the day comes the miller's son that's to be born with six , fingers on his hand will blow the trumpet, and the horses will stamp and whinny, and the knights go forth to battle." Once in seven years the entrance of this wondrous cavern is visible to mortal eyes. A century ago a drunken horse dealer ventured in. Sobered by what he saw, he trembled so that " he let fall a bridle on the pavement. The sound of the bit echoed through the long cave, and one of the warriors that sat next to him, lifted his head a little, and said in a deep hoarse voice, ' Is it time yet ? ' He had the wit to say, ' Not yet, but soon will be,' and the heavy helmet sank down on the table." (Kennedy's "Legends of the Irish Celts," p. 173-4.) There are various versions of this Irish legend. Thus at Innishowen Hugh O'Neill and his warriors lie in magic sleep under the hill of AUeach, and according to Thomas Davis, the fervid Nationalist poet : — And still it is the peasant's hope upon the Cuirreach's mere, They live, who'll see ten thousand men with good Lord Edward here. So let them dream till brighter days, when not by Edward's shade, But by some leader true as he their lines shall be array' d. Maxwell's song, " The Triumph of O'Neill," also alludes to this superstition. There is a spirited ballad on this legend by Charles Gavan Duffy, printed in Barry's "Songs of Ireland;" Dublin, 1869, p. 150. Similar legends probably exist in all nations : thus The Wizard of Aldcrley Edge. 65 Mohammed was believed to be alive in his tomb, where the prayers made for him by the faithful were repeated to him by an angel posted there for that purpose. The Mohamme- dans believe that the twelfth Imaum, i.e. Hassan al Asker, the descendant of the Prophet's daughter Fatima, is still alive, and will reappear at the second coming of Jesus Christ. ("Tales of Four Durweesh," n. 9.) Olearius relates a Persian tradition, which says that a certain tyrant named Suhak having been deposed from the throne, was hung by the heels in a cavern of the mountains near Teheran, and is still living in that uncomfortable posture. ("Voyages and Travels," &c., by Olearius, 1672, p. 258.) At Carthage the peasantry believe that the " Hafasa, the ancient kings of the country," will again rule over them at the second coming of the Lord Jesus. " Only very lately, a porter was desired to carry a measure of wheat by a very respectable looking man, which he did. He followed his employer a long way out of the town, and coming to a kind of cave the man took the wheat from the porter, and presenting him a handful of gold, sud- denly vanished ; and what is more remarkable is, that the very cave too disappeared, not a trace of it was left. When the porter — who is from Gabcs, and is still alive to recount this remarkable circumstance — came to change his gold it was found to belong to the reign of the Hafasa." (Davis's "Carthage," 1861, p. 181.) So of Marko the Servian, some narrate that he was miraculously conveyed away from the field of battle to a mountain cavern, where his wounds were healed, and where he still lives. (Bowring's " Servian Popular Poetry," 1827, p. 106.) 66 Cheshire Gleanings. Similar is the legend of Holger Danske. Noises like the clashing of arms are frequently heard beneath the Castle of Kronberg. A slave, condemned to death, was induced by a promise of pardon and liberty to make an attempt at un- ravelling the mystery. Threading the deepest passages of the castle he came at length to a large iron door, which on his knocking opened of itself, and he found himself in a deep vault. In the centre was an immense stone table, around which sat steel clad warriors, bending down, and resting their heads on their crossed'arms. " He who sat at the end of the table arose. It was Holger, the Dane, but in lifting his head from his arm the stone table was burst in sunder, for his beard had grown into it. ' Reach me thy hand,' said he to the slave, but the latter not venturing to give his hand held out an iron bar instead, which Holger so squeezed that the marks remained visible. At length letting it go he exclaimed, ' It gladdens me that there are still men left in Denmark.'" (Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," II., 222.) This story of the iron bar, like most popular tales, has repeated itself; a Scotch version may be found in the " Poetical Remains of John Leyden," 1819, p. 321. The story of Holger is the subject of the well known mediaeval romance of Ogier le Danois, a notice of which is given in Dunlop's History of Fiction. L. Pio has published an essay upon the hero, which is reviewed in the Gotting gel. Aftz., 1870, s. 1290. The Germans have the same legend of Frederick Barba- rossa : — " In the Kyffhauser, in Thuringia, according to the popular tradition, sits Frederick Barbarossa in a charmed The Wizard of Alder ley Edge. 6y sleep, surrounded by his knights and squires. His beard has grown twice around the stone table before him, when it shall reach three times round he will awake ; of a shepherd who had played him a pleasing tune he inquired, ' Do the ravens still fly round the mountain?' and on the shepherd answering in the affirmative, he said, ' Then I must sleep an hundred years longer." In Hartley Coleridge's Essays, 1850, II. 252, there are some remarks on Barbarossa and the other legends of miraculous sleepers. Mr. Thorpe con- siders that the original sleeper of northern tradition is Odin, and instances this inquiry after the ravens in support of his view. " The heroes in the cave," says Mr. Kelly, " under whatever name they are known, and wherever they repose, are all representatives of Odin and his host. The great battle to which they will at last awake is that wliich will be fought before the end of the world, when heaven and earth shall be destroyed, and the ^sir gods themselves shall perish, and their places shall be filled by a new creation, and new and brighter gods. The sword concealed in the heart of the Eildon hill is that of Heimdallr, the Sverdas or sword-god, and warder of Bifrost bridge, and his is the Gjaller horn, with which he will warn the gods that the frost giants are advancing to storm Valhalla." ("Indo-European Traditions," 1863, p. 289.) In Washington Irving's charming " Tales of the Alhambra " is one entitled, " Governor Manco and tlie old Soldier ; " and the story which the old soldier relates to the governor appears to be founded upon a Spanish legend, that Bobadil instead of being dead was with his warriors and courtiers / 6S ChesJiire Gleanings. enclosed in the interior of a mountain in a state of charmed sleep. Similar legends were once current among the peasantry of Harold, the last of the Saxons ; of Charlemagne, of the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth, Don Sebastian, and many more of bygone ages. Dr. William Bell, of Niirnberg, connects the Alderley Legend with the German tradition of the duerrer bau?n, which he holds to be alluded by Shakspere in Cymbeline, act v., scene 4. (Shakspere's Puck, iii. 125.) This is the tree that Sir John Mandeville mentions as in the valley of of Mambre. It had been there since the creation of the world, but withered at the crucifixion. " And summe seyn be here Prophecyes that a Lord, a Prynce of the west syde of the World, shall wynnen the Land of Promyssioun, that is the Holy Land, with helpe of Cristene Men ; and he shalle do synge a masse undir that drye Tree, and than the Tree shall wexen grene and bene both Fruyt and Leves." (Travailes, Edited by Halliwell, chap, vi.) In most of the varying forms of this antique tradition we can see that the root idea is that of a deliverer. The people groaning in misery console their present bitterness by the hope of better times. Their affections are centred upon some typical hero of the race, who becomes the represen- tative of the national aspirations. Sometimes in place of social we have theological and moral considerations. Here the lesson is one that we can all appreciate, for the ravens are still flying round the mountains, and the Deliverer that is to be still slumbers in the heart of the Kyffhauser. WAS JOHN SMITH A CHESHIRE MAN? The tomb that guards the great one's name Shall yield to time its sacred trust ; The laurel of imperial fame Shall wither in unvvatered dust. Thomas Love Peacock. Pahnyra. THE name of Captain John Smith is indissolubly bound up with the early history of greater Britain beyond the sea, and the figure of the sometime "Governor of Virginia and Admiral of New England," as he styled himself, is still a picturesque one, although the cynical critics of the present generation have given us good reason to think that if the strength of his valour was great, it was fully equalled by the fire of his imagination. Certainly, his narrative seems to grow with each repetition and the most melo-dramatic incident of a melo-dramatic career, his rescue from death by Pocahontas, must be received with great caution. He was a typical soldier of fortune of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. His latest biographer is Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, whose ^' study" of the life and writings of Captain John Smith appeared in 1881 (New York : Henry Holt & Co.). This 70 Cheshire Gleanings. work may be safely recommended to all interested. John Smith ran away whilst a prentice lad at Lynn, and became a mercenary in the wars of France and the Low Countries. After a time spent in England he went to Hungary, and there, according to his own account, performed many won- drous feats. He was, however, he acknowledges, taken prisoner and sold as a slave by the Turks, but escaped by murdering his master and dressing himself up in the clothes of the dead man. His next attempt for fame and fortune was in connection with the attempt to colonise Virginia in 1606. He was imprisoned for a supposed conspiracy, but afterwards became a Member of the Council and President, and took part in various exploring expeditions. The best known incident of his career in Virginia is that which con- nects his name with Pocahontas. That during the Chicka- hominy expedition in 1608 he was taken prisoner by the natives is probable enough, but it was not until eight years later that he mentions the share of Pocahontas in his rescue, and it was not until 1624 that the incident was told in the manner in which it has since delighted so many lovers of the marvellous. At a great assembly of the natives " a long con- sultation was held, but the conclusion was two great stones were brought before Powhatan, then, as many as could, layd him hands on him [the narrator. Captain John Smith], dragged to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs to beate out his braines. Pocahontas, the king's dearest daughter, when no entreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laide her arme upon his to save him from death : whereat the Emperor [Powhatan] was contented he Was JoJin Sjiiith a Cheshire Man ? 71 should live to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper." Pocahontas, at this time, would be a girl of twelve or thirteen, and however greatly John Smith may have exaggerated the circumstances of his rescue, it is certain that she was very friendly to the colonists, and used to turn cart-wheels in their fort ! They abducted her in 16 13, and held her as hostage for some white men who had been enslaved. Whilst thus in friendly captivity she made capture of the heart of Mr. John Rolfe. They were married in 16 14, and in 16 16 came to England, where the Lady Rebecca, as she was now styled, excited both interest and curiosity. She died at Gravesend in 161 7, and was buried in the chancel of the parish church. Smith returned to England in 1608, somewhat under a cloud from charges brought against him by his fellow colonists, who were all quarrelling, and appear to have hated each other with great zest. He published a number of works, in which self-glorification was shown on a gigantic scale. He died in 1631, and his later years, passed in continual struggle with adverse fortune, were devoted to an ardent advocacy of a plan of colonisation. Memory and Imagination stood by his side as he wrote in his latter years, and it may be added that tlie last-named was not the least in furnishing him with inspiration. He was buried in St. Sepulchre's Church, and Stow gives a copy of a long tablet to his memory in the choir, but this memorial has long since disappeared. After all deductions have been made John Smith was a remarkable man, and of the thousands who have borne his 72 Cheshire Gleanings. name none have achieved greater fame. He has remained the John Smith for two centuries and a half. That he was of " Cheshire, chief of men," would have seemed natural, and the testimony of Fuller would, in most cases, have warranted his inclusion amongst the palatine worthies. The notice of him in the "Worthies of England" is so characteristic that it must be quoted. It is under the county of Cheshire, and is as follows : — " John Smith, Captain, was born in this county, as Master Arthur Smith, his kinsman and my schoolmaster, did inform me. But whether or no related unto the worshipful family of the Smiths at Hatherton (Camden's Britannia, in this county), I know not. He spent the most of his life in foreign parts. First in Hungary, under the emperor, fighting against the Turks ; three of which he himself killed in single duels ; and, there- fore, was authorised by Sigismund king of Hungary to bear three Turks' heads, as an augmentation to his arms. (So it is writ in the table over his tomb.) Here he gave intelli- gence to a besieged city in the night, by significant fire- works formed in the air, in legible characters, with many strange performances, the scene whereof is laid at such a distance, they are cheaper credited than confuted. From the Turks in Europe he passed to the pagans in America, where, towards the latter end of queen Elizabeth, such his perils, preservations, dangers, deliverances, they seem to most men above belief, to some beyond truth. Yet have we two witnesses to attest them, the prose and the pictures, both in his own book ; and it soundeth much to Was John Smith a Cheshire Alan ? y^, the diminution of his deeds, that he alone is the herald to publish and proclaim them. Two captains being at dinner, one of them fell into a large relation of his own achievements, concluding his discourse with this question to his fellow, ' And pray. Sir,' said he, ' what service have you done ? ' To whom he answered, ' Other men can tell that.' And surely such reports from strangers carry with them the greater reputation. However, moderate men must allow Captain Smith to have been very instrumental in settling the plantation in Virginia, whereof he was governor, as also admiral, of New England. He led his old age in London, where his having a prince's mind imprisoned in a poor man's purse rendered him to the contempt of such who were not ingenuous. Yet he / etforted his spirits with the remembrance and relation of what formerly he had been, and what he had done. He was buried in Sepulchre's Church choir, on the south side thereof, having a ranting epitaph inscribed in a table over him, too long to transcribe. Only we will insert the first and last lines, the rather because the one may fit Alexander's life for his valour, the other his death for his religion : — ' Here lies one conquer'd that hath concjuer'd kings ! ' ' Oh, may his soul in sweet Elysium sleep.' The orthography, poetry, history, and divinity in this epitaph, are much alike. He died on the 21st June, 1631." This passage has been strangely misread by the latest biographer of the Virginian hero, who says that Arthur told Fuller "that John was born in Lincolnshire." (p. 297.) The Rev. Arthur Smith, who from tliis casual mention would 74 Cheshire Gleanings. — — \ appear to have been a Cheshire man, is now only re- membered, if remembered at all, as the schoolmaster of the witty and wise Thomas Fuller. He was of the Emanuel College, of Cambridge, and took the B.A. degree in 1608, and the M.A. in 161 2. Mr. J. E. Bailey, F.S.A., conjectures, and with great probability, that he is " the raw and unskilful schoolmaster " under whom Fuller " lost some time." Arthur Smith was successively curate of Achurch (where the incumbent was the noted founder of the Brownists or Independents), and Vicar of Oundle, in Northampton- shire. Whether Arthur Smith sympathised with the colonising spirit that was then laying the foundation of a great empire, or whether he had a boastful satisfaction in proclaiming himself a kinsman of one who, like Captain John Smith, was so persistently and with such large claims before the public, must remain unknown. The testimony of Arthur Smith must, however, be set aside. A man's own statement as to the place of his birth is not always the best evidence, and there might be but little hesitation in not accepting John Smith's declaration that he was born atWilloughby in Lincolnshire if it were unconfirmed. He does not name the year, but allows it to be inferred from a portrait issued in 1616, when he was aged 37 years. Accordingly, in the Willoughby registers, there is an entry : that John, son of George Smith, was baptised Jan. 9th, 1579. And thus we are compelled to discard from our Cheshire notables this man who represented so curiously some of the highest and some of the basest characteristics of the age in which he lived. SIR JOHN CHESSHYRE'S LIBRARY AT HALTON. •' The monuments of vanished minds. Sir Wiixiam Davenant. Gondibcrt. THE little village of Halton, near Runcorn, in Cheshire, is notable for the ruins of an ancient castle and for a tiny endowed library. It is difficult to say whether the castle stands in the grounds of the hotel, or whether the hotel is built in the grounds of the castle. The feudal fortress, first built by Robert Nigel, the stout baron of Hugh Lupus, who won for his lord the Castle of Rhuddlan, in Wales, has passed almost entirely away. Amongst its lords was John of Gaunt, "time-honoured Lancaster," whose son, Henry of Bolingbroke, was the last Baron of Halton. In 1579 that once proud castle, long the head of a barony and the chief abode of the Constables of Chester which had given thrones to its possessors, declined from its palmy state, and was transformed into a prison for recusants, under Sir John Savage. Halton was visited by James I., and was captured by the Parliamentarians in July, 1644, and shortly afterwards dismantled. 76 Cheshire Gleanings. The sylvan beauty of the landscape, and the " Arcadian zephyrs" that played around the hill, when Lewes, in 181 1, composed his poem, entitled "Halton Hill," have utterly disappeared under the breath of the chemical manufactories. Then, the poet's muse essayed to "paint this heavenly view ;" now, the vegetation of the stunted trees, denuded of foliage, are like "hairs on a lep'rous skin." Not far from the castle stands a plain, square building, with a tablet over the entrance, on which we read : — Hanc bibliothecam Pro communi literatorum usu Sub cura curati capellae de Halton Proventibus ter feliciter augmentatae Johannes Chesshyre Miles D. D. D. Anno MDCCXXXni. This John Chesshyre was probably born at Hallwood, near Runcorn, nth November, 1662, and entered the Inner Temple in 1696. He received the coif in 1 705, was Queen's Serjeant in 171 1, and in 1727 became His Majesty's Premier Serjeant-at-Law. As such he was counsel for the crown against John Matthews, a youth of nineteen, who, after sundry reprieves, was finally hung for his share in the print- ing of a Jacobite pamphlet. He was also engaged in the trial of the Warden of the Fleet. (See State Trials, 8vo. ed., V. 15, p. 1383; V. 16, p. 8; v. 17, p. 311.) From 1719 to 1725 his fee book shows receipts of over ^3,000 each year. At the age of sixty-three he confined himself to the Court of Sir John CJiesshyres Library at Halton. yj Common Pleas, "contenting," he says, "to amuse myself with lesser business and smaller gain," and in 1732 he gave up regular attendance at the court. Chesterfield is said to have borrowed ;^2 0,000 from the successful lawyer. He died as he was getting into his coach, 15th May, 1738, and is buried in Runcorn Church, and on his tomb are two characteristic lines from Pope : — A wit's a feather, and a chief's a rod ; »' An honest man's the noblest work of God. His widow survived him until 1756. His portrait was painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller. There is a notice of Chesshyre in Woolrych's "Lives of eminent Serjeants-at- law," 1869, V. 2, page 504 ct seqq., and in Beamont's "History of the Castle of Halton," 1873, p. 138. Mr. J. E. Bailey writes to me that Le Neve gives the arms of Chesshire, of Shropshire : gu. 2 lion's paws in chevron arg. between 3 lures with strings upper part or, lower arg. ; and he adds " S Jo. Chesshire bears this coat Serjeant q^c his right." The custodian of Sir John Chesshyre's foundation is the Rev. John Lockwood, the present Vicar of Halton. He recognised our claim to inspect books designed " pro com- muni literatorum usu," and although it was neither Tuesday nor Thursday we were welcomed into the quaint library room, which is furnished all round with book presses, each having closed doors. The first question that occurs on visiting a strange library relates to the catalogue. An inquiry on this head led to the production of a volume of ample yS ChesJiire Gleanings. proportions, which would have had additional attractions for bibliographers of the Dibdin type, from being printed on vellum and being absolutely unique. That this almost in- destructible material should have been selected is not sur- prising, but why the edition should have been restricted to one copy is not so obvious. The title reads : — A Catalogue of Books in the Library lately built and erected by Sir John Chesshyre, Knight His Majesty's Serjeant-at-law at Halton in the Parish of Runcorne in the County and Diocese of Chester London. Printed in the year MDCCXXXIIL This volume contains not only a list of the contents of the library, but also the rules and orders made by the founder : — "To be observed for the use, service and preservation of the books." It is set forth that the Curate of Halton is to be Library-Keeper and to have free use and reading of the books, and (2) to enter into a bond of ;^5oo to the Bishop of Chester for the safe-keeping of the library and observance of the rules. The room was to be "separated to and for the use and service of a study . . . and not prostituted Sir JoJui CJiessJiyrc s Library at Hal ton. 79 to any other common or inconvenient use. However it were to be wished that the Curate . . . would make use of the said room as his study and in the winter seasons especially, use a fire therein, whereby he may air the room and closer attend to his reading and meditation, and be better freed from the interruptions of a family, or a tempta- tion to esloigne or carry any book or books out of the said library for how little time soever." The books were strictly forbidden to be read out of the library (4). The fifth rule is that of greatest importance and reads thus : — " That for the improvement of learning and that learned men may be encouraged to advance their knowledge by a friendly com- munication in their studies and labours, it is desired and intended that any divine or divines of the Church of England, or other gentlemen, or persons of letters, desiring the same, and particularly that William Chesshyre, of Halwood, near Halton, and his heirs, and the owner and inheritor of Hal- wood, for the time being, in memory of his benefaction, the Vicar of Runcorne for the time being and his successors, may, on application to, and with the consent of the Curate for the time being at any reasonable and convenient time or times, on every Tuesday and Thursday in the year, in the daytime, have access and resort into the said library, and in the presence of the Curate for the time being, have liberty to read any book or books in the said library and to take note or notes out of the same for the better security of such person or person's memory, or for his, her, or their future service or recollection ; the Curate for the time being from time to time taking care to see that the book or 8o Cheshire Gleanings. books used or read by any person or persons, be again re-placed in such manner as is above directed to be done in the Curate's own use or reading of the said books." The sixth and last rule provides that each incoming Curate is to take stock of the books and to obtain the return or value of any that may be missing. A glance at the catalogue will show the character of the collection. It reflects the sober erudition of the age in which it was instituted, and would be a fit library for a young clergyman who in the eighteenth century desired to become a godly and learned minister. There is a long array of the fathers of the Church in goodly tomes. Now-a-days fathers and folios are almost equally out of the fashion, The biblical apparatus includes Walton's Polyglot, Crabbe's Sep- tuagint, Mill's Greek Testament, the Critical Synopsis of Poole, and some minor works. In modern divinity there are the names of Seldon, Cudworth, Laud, Locke, Huet, Prideaux, Stackhouse, Scot, Fiddes, Sherlock, Beveridge, Wheatley, Leslie, Chillingworth, Bingham, Jeremy Taylor, Hall, Burnet, Usher, Pearson, Bramhall, Barrow, Tillotson, Hooker, Smalridge, Comber, Bentley, Stanhope, Fleetwood, Atterbury, Blackball, Trapp, Hammond, Wake, Andrews, Stillingfleet, Sanderson, and others. The historians, chiefly ecclesiastical, include Baronius, Sleidan, Usher, Thuanus, Spotswood, Du Pin, Father Paul, Clarendon, Collier, Strype, Speed, and Burnet. There are the Statutes at large, and a few other books on ecclesiastical law, including Wilkins' Leges Anglo-Saxonici. Amongst profane classics are Seneca, Cicero, Plutarch, Sir John Chess Jiy re's Library at Halton. 8i Sophocles, Photius, and a Corpus Poetarum, in two folio volumes. The fine copy of the Monasticon of Sir William Dugdale deserves special mention, and also that vast, f^rago, the ^ Foedera of Thomas Rymer, v/hose twenty folio volumes must often have been provocative of unmitigated despair to the hurried seeker for the needle in this literary bundle of hay. Polite literature in the vernacular is represented by sundry volumes of the British essayists, and the much debated question as to the use and demand for fiction is suggested by a well-worn folio edition of Don Quixote bear- ing evident marks of having ministered to the amusement of some hours of ease. The first thought that occurs on an inspection of this curious and, in some respects, valuable collection is that the shrewd old lawyer who founded it made an egregious mistake in placing such a library in the heart of a Cheshire village which at the commencement of the last century must have been remote indeed from the busy haunts of men. It is very likely that this library is now but seldom resorted to by divines of the Church of England or other gentlemen or persons of letters " for the advancement of their knowledge by a friendly communication in their studies and labours," and it would probably be difficult to select five hundred volumes that would present fewer attractions to the villagers of Halton. It does not appear, however, that Sir John Chesshyre's primary motive was that of founding a public library, but rather that of providing the curate of Halton with a pleasant and well-filled study, whose literary attrac- G 82 Cheshire Gleanings. tions might bring him the acquaintance of those among the neighbouring gentry and clergy possessing a tincture of learning. It is not difficult to imagine a clergyman who had stumbled over some felicitous reference to a book absent from his own shelves, saddling his Rosinante and riding forth through the pure air as yet unpolluted by manufactures, and up the hill to Halton. There his rummage through the ponderous tomes of Basil, Cyril, or Augustine would be en- livened by learned chat or local gossip with the curate of Halton, and having taken such notes as seemed needful for " future service or recollection," he would ride home again not a sadder but a wiser man. In this fashion we can im- agine this quaint out-of-the-world little library to have exercised a real and a beneficial influence. Chesshyre's will provides that "the patron of the chapel for the time being should ever have visitation and oversight of the said library and the survey and inspection of the books, and should apply to the Lord Bishop of Chester for the time being to signify any inconvenience arisen or arising, and to crave his assistance, in order to rectify abuse, mis- carriage, or defect." He gave ;^ioo for purchase of land for the repairs of the library. In 1837 the Charity Com- missioners reported that "the library does not appear to have been of that use which was contemplated by the founder, for it was stated by a very respectable person that the inhabitants were desirous that the library should be of available utility, it being at present not of the slightest ad- vantage to any one except the librarian. The books generally are of a description not likely to be of use in the Sir John Chesshyre's Library at Halton. 83 situation in which the library is placed, though many of them are of considerable value. How far the Bishop of Chester, as visitor, may have the power of making any change may be worthy of consideration, and it has been recom- mended that the matter should be submitted to him by the parties interested." (Reports xxxi. 749.) This advice does not seem to have been followed. The library was mentioned by Mr. J. F. Marsh, in his evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Public Libraries, in 1849. The library then / contained 422 volumes, chiefly in folio. Very few additions have been made since that date, or, indeed, since the day of its foundation. The trustee is Sir Richard Brooke, and the annual income ;^i2. The library has long ceased to be even a good working collection for a theological student The income is certainly small, but, if judiciously expended, would place on the shelves many of those modern books which are essential for the study of a divine who wishes to keep his mind open to the latest results of theological in- vestigation. Sir John Chesshyre's library will always be / caviare to the multitude ; but it might easily become, what it can scarcely claim to be at present, a place where learned men might advance their knowledge. THE BRERETON DEATH OMEN. When any Heir in the Worshipful Family of the Breertons in Cheshire is neer his Death there are seen in the Pool adjoyning Bodies of Trees swimming for certain days together. Increase Matter. Cases of conscience concerning Evil Spirits. 1693. THE learned William Camden, in his famous Britannia, mentions the little river Croke, which, rising out of Bagmere lake, runs by Brereton, which gave name to the knightly family of Brereton. " I have heard," says the judicious antiquary, deviating into folk-lore, " an extra- ordinary circumstance attested by many persons of credit, and generally believed, that before the death of any heir of this family trunks of trees are seen to swim on the surface of the adjoining lake." (Gough's edition, vol. iii. p. 44.) This is one of the most characteristic pieces of Cheshire folk-lore, and its picturesque aspect was seen by Felicia Hemans, who has made good use of it in her poem of " The Vassal's Lament for the Fallen Tree " : — The Brereton Death Omen. 85 Yes ! I have seen the ancient oak On the dark deep water cast, And it was not felled by the woodman's stroke, Or the rush of the sweeping blast ; For the axe might never touch that tree, And the air was still as a summer sea. I saw it fall, as falls a chief By an arrow in the fight, And the old woods shook, to their loftiest leaf, At the crashing of its might ; And the startled deer to their coverts drew, And the spray of the lake as a fountain's flew ! 'Tis fallen ! But think thou not I weep For the forest's pride o'erthrown, — An old man's tears lie far too deep To be poured for this alone : But by that sign too well I know That a youthful head must soon be low ! A youthful head, with its shining hair, And its bright quick-flashing eye ; Well may I weep ! for the boy is fair, Too fair a thing to die ! But on his brow the mark is set, — O, could my life redeem him yet ! He bounded by me as I gazed Alone on the fatal sign, And it seemed like sunshine when he raised His joyous glance to mine. With a stag's fleet step he bounded by. So full of life, — but he must die ! 86 Cheshire Glea7iings. He must, he must ! in that deep dell, By that dark water's side, 'Tis known that ne'er a proud tree fell But an heir of his fatliers died. And he, — there's laughter in his eye, Joy in his voice, — yet he must die ! I've borne him in these arms, that now Are nerveless and unstrung ; And must I see, on that fair brow, The dust untimely flung? I must ! — yon green oak, branch and crest. Lies floating on the dark lake's breast ! The noble boy ! — how proudly sprung The falcon from his hand ! It seemed like youth to see him young, A flower in his father's land ! But the hour of the knell and the dirge is nigh, For the tree hath fallen, and the flower must die. Say not 'tis vain ! I tell thee, some Are warned by a meteor's light. Or a pale bird, flitting, calls them home. Or a voice on the winds by night ; And they must go ! And he too, he ! Woe for the fall of the glorious tree ! The Brereton family have now passed away. The death omen is alluded to in Sir Philip Sidney's " Seven Wonders of England," and the late Major Egerton Leigh made it the subject of a poem which will be found in his "Cheshire Ballads." Camden points to a partially analogous story of the abbey The Brereton Death Omen. ^y of St. Maurice, in Burgundy, where the pond contained as many fishes as there were monks in the monastery. There was a close sympathy between the two communities, and when a monk was ill a fish would be seen languidly floating on the surface, and if the monk was fated to die the fish would precede him by a few days. Aubrey tells us that there was a common report that before the death of each heir of the Cliftons, of Clifton, in Nottinghamshire, "a sturgeon is taken in the river Trent by that place." Surely not an unlikely circumstance, since we are not told sturgeons were taken at no other time. Camden was too much a man of his time to laugh at these notions, but is content to say that " supposing them true," they may be the work of " the holy angels that guard our persons, or of devils who, by divine permission, have powerful influence on this lower world." Perhaps a nearer analogy is that of the Warning Pool, of North Taunton, of which John Collet, writing in the seven- teenth century, says : — " Of this pool it hath been observed that before the death or change of any prince, or some strange accident of great importance, or any invasion or insurrection, though in an hot and dry season, it will, without any rain, overflow its banks, and so continue till that bee past which it i)rognosticated. It overflowed four times between 1618 and 1648." (Thoms' "Anecdotes and Traditions," p. 122.) Mr. Thoms refers to a passage in Jacob Grimm's " Deutsche Mythologie" (s. 333), where the prophetical office of springs and rivers is further illustrated. To follow the subject would be beyond the scope of the present inquiry. THE FOOL OF CHESTER. Answer a fool according to his folly. Proverbs xxvi. 5. Fools are the game which knaves pursue. John Gay. Fables. A CURIOUS folk-tale has had a local habitation given to it by the author of the book entitled "Jack of Dover," which appeared in 1604. It is narrated in the following terms : — " Upon a time (quoth another of the jury) there was a widow woman dweling in Westchester that had taken a certaine sum of mony of two coney-catchers, to keepe upon this condition that she should not deliver it againe to one without the other : but it so hapned that, within a while after, one of these coney-catchers fayned his fellow to be dead, and came in mourning cloathes to the woman, and demaunded the money. The simple woman, thinking his words to be true, beleeved that this fellow was dead indeed, and there [u] pon delivered him the money. Now, within few dayes after commeth the other conicatcher, and of the The Fool of Chester. 89 woman likewise demaundeth the same money ; but under- standing of the dehvery thereof before to his fellow without his consent (as the bargaine was made), he arrested the poore woman to London, and brought her to great trouble ; but, being at last brought to tryall before the judges of the court, she sodainely slipt to the barre, and in this manner pleaded her owne cause. My good Lordes (quoth she), here is a fellow that troubles me without cause, and puts me to a needles charge. What need he seeke for triall, when I confesse the debt, and stand heere to deliver his money? Why, that is all, quoth the conicatcher, that I demaund. I but (quoth the woman) do you remember your condition : which is, that I must not deliver it to the one without the other ? therefore, go fetch thy fellow, and thou shalt have thy money. Hereupon the conicatcher was so astonished that he knew not what to say : for his fellow was gone, and he could not tell where to find him ; by which meanes he was constrained to let his action fall, and by the law was condemned to pay her charges, and withall great dammages for troubling her without cause. Well, quoth Jacke of Dover, this, in my minde, was pretty foolery ; but yet the foole of all fooles is not heare found, that I looke for." The story has been told in more than one fashion, but, perhaps, the best known is that which has been given by Samuel Rogers. The quotation, although somewhat lengthy, is an interesting contrast to the quaint story just cited. "There lived," says Rogers, "in the fourteenth cen- tury, near Bologna, a widow lady of the Lambertini family, called Madonna Lucrezia, who in a revolution of the state 90 Cheshire Gleanings. had known the bitterness of poverty, and had even begged her bread, kneehng day after day Hke a statue at the gate of the cathedral, her rosary in her left hand, and her right held out for charity, her long black veil conceaUng a face that had once adorned a court, and had received the homage of as many sonnets as Petrarch has written on Laura. But fortune had at last relented. A legacy from a distant relation had come to her relief ; and she was now the mis- tress of a small inn at the foot of the Apennines, where she entertained as well as she could, and where those only stopped who were contented with a little. The house was still standing when in my youth I passed that way, though the sign of the White Cross, the Cross of the Hospitallers, was no longer to be seen over the door — a sign which she had taken up, if we may believe the tradition there, in honour of a maternal uncle, a grand master of that order, whose achievements in Palestine she would sometimes relate. A mountain stream ran through the garden ; and at no great distance, where the road turned on its way to Bologna, stood a little chapel, in which a lamp was always burning before a picture of the Virgin — a picture of great antiquity, the work of some Greek artist. Here she was dwelling, respected by all who knew her, when an event took place which threw her into the deepest affliction. It was at noonday in September that three foot- travellers arrived, and seating themselves on a bench under her vine-trellis, were supplied with a flagon of Aleatico by a lovely girl, her only child, the image of her former self. The eldest spoke like a Venetian, and his beard was short The Fool of Chester. 91 and pointed after the fashion of Venice. In his demeanour he affected great courtesy, but his look inspired little con- fidence, for when he smiled, which he did continually, it was with his lips only, not with his eyes ; and they were always turned from yours. His companions were bluff and frank in their manner, and on their tongues had many a soldier's oath. In their hats they wore a medal; such as in that age was often distributed in war ; and they were evidently subalterns in one of those Free Bands which were always ready to serve in any quarrel, if a service it could be called, where a battle was little more than a mockery, and the slain, as on an opera-stage, were up and fighting to-morrow. Overcome with the heat, they threw aside their cloaks, and with their gloves tucked under their belts, continued for some time in earnest conversation. At length they rose to go. And the Venetian thus addressed their hostess : — ' Excellent lady, may we leave under }'Our roof for a day or two this bag of gold ? ' ' You may,' she replied gaily. ' But remember, we fasten only with a latch. Bars and bolts we have none in our village ; and if we had, where would be your security ?' ' In your word, lady.' 'But what if I died to-night? Where would it be then?' said she, laughing. ' The money would go to the church, for none could claim it.' ' Perhaps you will favour us with an acknowledgment ? ' * If you will write it.' An acknowledgment was written accordingly, and she signed it before Master Bartolo, the village physician, who 92 Cheshire Gleanings. had just called by chance to learn the news of the day ; the gold to be delivered when applied for, but to be delivered (these were the words) not to one, nor to two, but to the three — words wisely introduced by those to whom it belonged, knowing of what they knew of each other. The gold they had just released from a miser's chest in Perugia ; and they were now on a scent that promised more. They and their shadows were no sooner departed than the Venetian returned, saying, ' Give me leave to set my seal on the bag, as the others have done ;' and she placed it on a table before him. But in that moment she was called away to receive a cavalier, who had just dismounted from his horse ; and when she came back it was gone. The temptation had proved irresistible ; and the man and the money had vanished together. ' Wretched woman that I am ! ' she cried, as in an agony of grief she fell on her daughter's neck, ' what will become of us ? Are we again to be cast out into the wide world ? Unhappy child, would that thou hadst never been born ! ' and all day long she lamented ; but her tears availed her little. The others were not slow in returning to claim their due, and there were no tidings of the thief. He had fled away with his plunder. A process against her was instantly begun in Bologna ; and what defence could she make ; how release herself from the obligation of the bond ? Wilfully or in negligence she had parted with it to one when she should have kept it for all ; and inevitable ruin awaited her ! ' Go, Gianetta,' said she to her daughter, ' take this veil which your mother has worn and wept under so often, and The Fool of Chester. 93 implore the counsellor Calderino to plead for us on the day of trial. He is generous, and will listen to the unfortunate. But if he will not, go from door to door ; Monaldi cannot refuse us. Make haste, my child ; but remember the chapel / as you pass by it. Nothing prospers without a prayer.' Alas ! she went, but in vain. These were retained against them ; those demanded more than they had to give ; and all bade them despair. What was to be done ? No advocate, and the cause to come on to-morrow. Now Gianetta had a lover ; and he was a student of the law, a young man of great promise, Lorenzo Martelli. He had studied long and diligently under that learned lawyer Giovanni Andreas, who, though little of stature, was great in renown, and by his contemporaries was called the Arch- doctor, the Rabbi of Doctors, the Light of the World. Under him he had studied, sitting on the same bench with Petrarch, and also under his daughter Novella, who would often lecture to the scholars when her father was otherwise engaged, placing herself behind a small curtain, lest her beauty should divert their thoughts— a precaution in this instance at least unnecessary, Lorenzo having lost his heart to another. To him she flies in her necessity ; but of what assistance can he be ? He has just taken his place at the bar, but he has never spoken; and how stand up alone, unpractised and unprepared as he is, against an array that would alarm the most experienced ? ' Were I as mighty as I am weak,' said he, ' my fears for you would make me as nothing. But I will be there, Gianetta ; and may the Friend of the friend- 94 Cheshire Gleanings. less give me strength in that hour. Even now my heart fails me ; but, come what will, while I have a loaf to share, you and your mother shall never want. I will beg through the world for you.' The day arrives, and the court assembles. The claim is stated, and the evidence given. And now the defence is called for, but none is made; not a syllable is uttered. And after a short pause and a consultation of some minutes, the judges are proceeding to give judgment, silence having been proclaimed in the court, when Lorenzo rises, and thus addresses them : — 'Reverend signors. Young as I am, may I venture to speak before you ? I would speak in behalf of one who has none else to help her ; and I will not keep you long. Much has been said; much on the sacred nature of the obligation — and we acknowledge it in its full force. Let it be fulfilled, and to the last letter. It is what we solicit, what we require. But to whom is the bag of gold to be delivered ? What says the bond ? Not to one, not to two, but to the three. Let the three stand forth and claim it.' From that day (for who can doubt the issue?) none were sought, none employed, but the subde, the eloquent Lorenzo. Wealth followed fame ; nor need I say how soon he sat at his marriage feast, or who sat beside him." This incident has been dramatised • in a book with the following title, "The Bag of Gold. A true tale of Bologna." By L M. L. W. London (Wyman and Sons), 1881. THE THIN RED LINE.' The red-coat bully in his boots, That hides the march of men from us. Thackeray, Chronicle of the Drum. Of all the world's brave heroes, There's none can compare With a tow, row, row, tow, row, row, To the British grenadier. Old Song. WE are so accustomed to the red costume of our British army that it would probably surprise many, if not most people, to be told that during the greater part of the military history of this nation there was neither uniform nor uniformity in the clothing of the army, and that one of the earliest instances of its use was by some troops raised by a Bishop of Chester of days when episcopal functions were apparently even more varied than at present. Yet such is the case. Red, as a soldiers' colour, can, however, claim great antiquity, and is even said to have been the choice of Lycurgus for the Lacedaemonians. One reason for its adoption may have been that it did not so readily reveal the 96 Cheshire Gleanings. stains of blood; but probably the chief motive was its brilliant appearance. In our own country, in earlier times, uniformity of dress or colour was an impossibility. The barons and great men who led their retainers to battle would each have an individual preference or colour, traditionally associated with the fortunes of his house. There would, of course, be certain fashions in the armour then worn ; but even in this matter, uniformity was so rare as to be remarkable. Thus, we are told that when Richard of Gloucester travelled through France to Rome in 1250, he had in his retinue forty knights all equipped alike. These cavaliers, their glittering harness shining with golden ornament, "presented a won- derful and honourable show to the sight of the astonished French beholders." For the common soldiers, there was little care. The Welsh who fought at Bannockburn were conspicuous for the paucity of their clothing ; " for they well near all naked were," is the declaration of Barbour. The Welshmen were ordered to be clothed uniformly in 1338. " Naked foot " is the designation applied to some soldiers a little earlier. Some of the modern uses of uniform were attained by the adoption of badges and cognisances. In the second Crusade, the Frenchmen wore red crosses, whilst the Englishmen wore white crosses. Yet, at the battle of Barnet, the Earl of Oxford was taken for a Yorkist, and his men were beaten from the field with much slaughter by their own friends! In 15 13, Henry VIII., at the siege of Terouenne, had with him "six hundred archers of the garde" all in white gaberdines and caps. In 1526, the " The Thin Red Liner 97 yeomen of the household were clothed in red cloth. This is said by Sir Sibbald Scott — in whose work on the British Army most of these facts are recorded — to be the first time that this colour appears in the military annals of England ; but it had previously been adopted for his household by Henry V. There was an order made in the thirty-sixth year of Henry VHI. for "every man sowdyer to haue a cote of blew clothe, after suche fashion as all fotemen's cotes be made here at London, to serve His Majestic in this jorney, and that the same be garded [that is, decked or ornamented] with redde clothe, after such sorte as others be made here." The distinguishing badge, however, was the cross of St. George ; and if a soldier neglected to bear this, and was slain, " he that so woundeth or slaycth him shall bear no pane therefore." The great slaughter of the Scots at the battle of Pinkie Cleuch is said to have been due to the uniformity of dress, "wherein the Lurdein was in a manner all one with the Lord, and the Loun with the Laird ; " so that, as there was apparently little chance of ransom, tliey all suffered a com- mon death. In 1576, when some artificers were sent from Lancashire to Ireland, they were dressed in white cloth, ornamented with two laces of crewel, one of red, and the other of green. The next year there was a levy of three hundred men in that county, and their coat was a pale-blue Yorkshire broad- cloth with two stripes of yellow or red cloth, a vest of white Holmes fustian, pale-blue kersey skirts with two stripes of yellow or red. They had garters or points at the knees, H 98 Cheshire Gleanings. stockings of white kersey, and shoes with large ties. Over this dress were worn the breastplate, gorget, and headpiece that still remained of defensive armour. In 1584, sad green colour or russet is prescribed for soldiers going to Ireland. In 1585, the city of London equipped a body of red-coated soldiers for service in the Low Countries. A few years earlier, in 1580, the Bishop of Chester, in conjunction with the dean and chapter, furnished some cavalry for Irish service, and these were furnished with red cloaks. The buff coat, made of tough leather, from its hue gave rise to the name, and was much worn in the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries. In the Civil War, various colours were in use. Sir John Suckling's men wore a white doublet, a scarlet coat, and a hat with a scarlet feather. John Hampden's men wore green coats ; and so did those of Lord Northampton, who belonged to the same county. Lord Robarts' red coats, Colonel Meyrick's gray coats. Lord Saye's blue coats, may all be cited. A red regiment of the Parliamentary army was surprised by the king at Brentford, and then the gray coats showed themselves "most exquisite plunderers." King Charles and Prince Rupert had each a body-guard in red coats. In a letter written by Lawrence Oliphant, laird of Gask, 6th November, 1777, he describes a relic of the old costume of the Royal Scotch Archers : " It is pretty odd if my coat be the only one left, especially as it was taken in the '46 by the Duke of Cumberland's plunderers; and Miss Annie Graeme, Inchbrackie, thinking it would be regretted by me. ^^The Thin Red Lme." 99 went boldly out among the soldiers and recovered it from one of them, insisting with him that it was a lady's riding- habit ; but, putting her hand to the breeches to take them too, he, with an anathema, asked if the lady wore breeches. They had no fringe, only green lace, as the coat ; the knee buttons were worn open, to show the white silk puffed out as the coat-sleeves ; the garters green. The officers' coats had silver lace in place of the green silk, with the silver fringe considerably deeper ; white thread stockings, as fine as could be got. All wore blue bonnets (the officers, velvet), tucked up before, on which was placed a cockade of, I think, a green and white ribbon by turns, the bughts kept out with wire, and in the middle a white iron plate with the St. Andrew's cross painted on it." The great Duke of ^Vellington was interested in this branch of miUtary antiquities. Lord Mahon wrote to Macaulay, asking : " Pray, when was the British army for the first time clothed in red? That was the inquiry addressed to me yesterday by no less a person than the Duke of Wellington. I answered that I did not know exactly, but imagined it to be in the reign of Charles II. The Duke seemed to think that it was earlier, and that Monk's troops, for example, were redcoats. AV' hat say )ou ? " Macaulay replied in tlie following brief but characteristic note : — Albany, May 19, 185 1. Dear Mahon, — The Duke is certainly right. The army of the Commonwealth was clothed in red. Remember Hudibras : — lOO Cheshire Gleanings. So Cromwell with deep oaths and vows Swore all the Commons out of th' House; Vowed that the redcoats would disband, Ay, marry, would they, at command ! And trolled them on, and swore, and swore, Till the army turned them out of door. Ever truly yours, T. B. Macaulay. The correspondence is printed in Earl Stanhope's " Mis- cellanies." Macaulay scarcely makes out his case, for, as we have seen, in the Civil War the regiments varied in the colour of their costume. There was a "red royalist" regiment, as well as one of "red republicans." Red, it is clear, was not regarded either as a royal or national colour in any exclusive sense. Red appears to have been definitely adopted both for the guards and the line in the reign of Queen Anne. The black cockade was added under George II. The red stripe on the sides of the trousers dates only from 1834. As late as 1693, the infantry were clothed in gray, and the drummers in scarlet. Hence, the change now proposed to be made in the colour of the regimental uniforms, and which has lately been the subject of much discussion, is, after all, only reverting to an older fashion. Another proof is thus afforded of the fact that there is nothing new under the sun. A BIRKENHEAD NEWSPAPER IN 1642 Bring me no more reports. Shakspere. Macbeth. MR. James Grant's History of the Newspaper Press was the subject of some unfavourable comments on its appearance. Perhaps its most extraordinary mistake escaped the notice of its critics. At p. 193 of vol. 3 we read : — " The next newspaper which has any claims to belong to the category of provincial journalism was called Menurius Aulicus. Those who know what an obscure and insignificant place Birkenhead was at that time will be surprised when informed that this newspaper, brought out in 1642, was printed in that locality. But, though printed in Birkenhead, the Mcrcurius Aulicus was not published there. It was avowedly printed for a bookseller near Queen's College, Oxford, and published by him in the latter town." The notion of scholarly Oxford being unable to print a news pamphlet like the Mercurius Aulicus^ and sending it to Birkenhead, 169 miles away, to be put in type, is a rich one. Probably every one interested in the fourth I02 Cheshire Gleanings. estate, with the solitary exception of the historian of the newspaper press, knows that the Mercurius Aulicus was both printed and published at Oxford once a week, and sometimes oftener, from 1642 to 1645. Its chief author was John Birkenhead, a Cheshire man, who for this and similar services was knighted in 1642 by Charles II. J. C. PRINCE AND K. T. KORNER. Now's the day, and now's the hour, See the front of battle lour. Burns. Bannockbum. DR. DOUGLAS LITHCxOW says that John Critchley Prince had a knowledge of French, and also some acquaintance with German. In support of the latter state- ment, he refers to Prince's paraphrases from the German. Two of these claim to be from Schiller. The first is a version of his well-known poem on the Partition of the Earth. The other, which may be quoted in full, is entitled "The Patriot's Battle Prayer, paraphrased from the German of Schiller : " Father of Life ! to Thee, to Thee I call — The cannon sends its thunders to the sky ; ^ The wingW fires of slaughter round me fall ; Great God of Battles ! let thy watchful eye Look o'er and guard me in this perilous hour, And in my cause be just, oh ! arm me with Thy power ! Oh ! lead me, Father, to a glorious end, To well-won freedom, or a martyr's death ; 104 Cheshire Gleanings. I bow submissive to Thy will, and send A soul-felt prayer to Thee in every breath : Do with me as beseems Thy wisdom, Lord, But let not guiltless blood defile my maiden sword ! God, I acknowledge Thee, and hear Thy tongue In the soft whisper of the falling leaves, As well as in the tumult of the throng Arrayed for fight — this human mass that heaves Like the vexed ocean, I adore Thy name. Oh, bless me, God of grace, and lead me unto fame ! Oh ! bless me, Father ! in Thy mighty hand I place what Thou hast lent — my mortal life ; I know it will depart at Thy command. Yet will I praise Thee, God, in peace or strife ; Living or dying, God, my voice shall raise To Thee, Eternal Power, the words of prayer and praise ! I glorify Thee, God, I come not here To fight for false ambition, vainly brave ; I wield my patriot sword for things more dear, — Home and my fatherland ; the name of slave My sons shall not inherit. God of Heaven ! For Thee and Freedom's cause my sacred vow is given ! God, I am dedicate to Thee for ever ; Death, which is legion here, may hem me round ; Within my heart the invader's steel may quiver. And spill my life-blood on the crimson ground : Still am I Thine, and unto Thee I call, — Father, I seek the foe — forgive me if I fall ! Now, a very slight acquaintance with German literature will suffice to show that this is not translated from Schiller y. C. Prince and K. T. Korner. 105 at all, but is based upon the famous " Gebet wahrend der Schlacht" of the patriot-poet Theodor Korner. This we give :— Vater, ich rufe dich ! Briillend umwolkt mich der Dampf der Geschiisze, Spriihend umzucken mich rasselnde Blisze. Lenker der Schlachten, ich rufe dich ! Vater du, fiihre mich ! Vater du, fiihre mich ! Fiihr' mich zum Siege, fiihr' mich zum Tode : Herr, ich erkenne diene Gebote ; Herr, wie du willst, so fiihre mich, Cott, icli erkenne dicli ! Gott, icli erl'Lcnne dicli ! So im herbstlichen Rauschen der Blatter, Als im Schlachtendonnerwetter, Urquell der Gnade, erkenn' ich dich ! Vater du, segne mich ! Vater du, segne mich ! In deine Hand befehl' ich mein Leben Du kannst es nehmen, du hast es gegeben ; Zum Leben, zum Sterben segne micli. Vater, ich preise dich ! Vater, ich preise dich ! 'S ist ja kein Kampf fiir die Gliter der Erde ; Das rieiligste schliszen wir mit dem Schwerte, Drum, fallend, und sicgcnd, prcis, ich dich. Gott, dir ergeb' ich mich ! io6 Cheshire Gleanings. Gott, dir ergeb' ich mich ! Wenn mich die Donner des Todes begriiszen, Wenn meine Adern geoffnet flieszen, Dir mein Gott, dir ergeb' ich mich ! Vater, ich rufe dich ! The best translation of this glowing poem is that which, in the same metre as the original, was contributed by F. C. H. to "Notes and Queries" for August 27, 1870 (4th Ser. vi. 167):- Father, I call on thee ! Where the deep cannon i-oars dreadful around me, Where the red lightning of battle has found me ; Ruler of armies, I call on thee ! Father, O guide thou me ! Father, O guide thou me ! Lead me to triumph, or lead me to perish, Teach me thy will in submission to cherish ; Lord, as thou wilt, so guide thou me ! God, I bow down to thee ! God, I bow down to thee ! As when the oaks part in tempests asunder, So 'mid the roar of the cannon's dread thunder, Fountain of Mercy, I call on thee ! ' Father, look down on me ! Father, look down on me ! Thine is my being, O thou best can shield it ; Thou didst bestow it, and freely I yield it ; Living or dying, look down on me ! Father, I trust in thee ! y. C. Prince and K. T. Korner. 107 Father, I trust in thee ! Not for earth's treasures our blood are we spending ; All that is sacred our swords are defending ; Falling or conquering, I hope in thee — All I resign to thee ! All I resign to thee ! When all around me in mist shall be clouded, When in the dark robe of death I am shrouded, Father, I yield my soul to thee ! Father, look down on me ! It is instructive to compare the spirited and yet almost literal version of Dr. Husenbeth with the diffuser paraphrase of Critchley Prince, whose linked sweetness long drawn out certainly misses the fire and intensity of Korner's poem. JOSEPH RAYNER STEPHENS. Skilful alike with tongue and pen, He preached to all men everywhere The Gospel of the Golden Rule, The new commandment given to man, Thinking the deed and not the creed, Would help us in our utmost need. Longfellow. Tales of the Wayside Inn. IN the quiet churchyard of Dukinfield, the busy Cheshire sister of Ashton-under-Lyne, and yet rich with many memories of the olden time, peacefully rests the mortal remains of Joseph Rayner Stephens, once a leader in the lost cause of Chartism. Chartism, once a terror to the middle classes and a hope to the masses of the poor, is now but a memory, and awaits an impartial historian and a measured verdict, uninfluenced by the passions and prejudices which gave it the rosy tint seen by disciples and the sable hue visible to its opponents. The materials for such a chronicle are accumulating, for, as the actors in the stormy scene pass off the stage, memorials of them are issued which enable us to see the events as they jfoseph Rayncr Stephens. 109 appeared to those most actively concerned. It is a matter for regret that no biography of Ernest Jones has yet appeared ; but of William Lovett, Joseph Barker, and Thomas Cooper — still hale and active — there are notices biographical and autobiographical ; and in 1881 Mr. Holyoake added a fine sketch of another of the old Chartist leaders. (" Life of Joseph Rayner Stephens, Preacher and Political Orator." By George Jacob Holyoake. London : Williams and Nor- gate.) The portrait, in some respects a difficult one for the biographer, is drawn with skill and good taste. It is least successful where it deals, or fails to deal, with Stephens as a student, and most successful where it portrays him as political leader and orator. This is, doubtless, part of the eternal fitness of things, since for one who thought of Stephens as a scholar a thousand probably knew him as gifted with a facile eloquence that sways the stormy democ- racy. Joseph Rayner Stephens was born in Edinburgh in 1805, where his father was then resident as a Wesleyan minister, in which capacity he afterwards came to Manchester. This led to the boy being placed at the Grammar School of that town. He made the acquaintance of Mr. Llarrison Ains- worth, and took part in some private theatricals set on foot by a number of clever youths at the home of the future novelist. The late Mr. James Crossley, F.S.A. (one of the band), in an article which escaped Mr. Holyoake's notice, says that Ainsworth was well supported by his companions, among whom he signalises Stephens — who was styled " Fainwell " in the playbill — as having wTitten the prologue no Cheshire Gleanings. and " enacted three characters, two of which were Fusbos and a Bandit." {Manchester Guardian^ June 5, 1876). His love of literature and of acting did not prevent him from following in his father's steps ; and at the age of twenty he became a Wesleyan minister at Beverley, but next year was sent to the mission-station at Stockholm. Here he applied himself to the study of the Scandinavian languages and literature, and was probably the first Wesleyan who preached in Swedish. His abilities attracted the interest of Lord Bloomfield, then the representative of England, who appointed him chaplain to the embassy. He also became a friend of Montalembert. Mr. Holyoake prints a very curious letter from the last-named. Stephens returned to England in 1830, and began to speak in favour of the separation of Church and State. For this dreadful heresy in a dissenting preacher he was, in 1834, suspended by the wiseacres of the Wesleyan Conference ! They might have left him alone, for he died a fervent advocate of the Establishment. He had already begun to take part in the factory agitation which led to the passage of the Ten Hours Bill. Many real friends of the working classes opposed this measure as an interfer- ence with matters beyond the sphere of Government, and which could properly be dealt with only by individual action. The necessity for such a measure is a startling proof of the tyranny of one class and of the abjectness of another. There is no room left to contest the evil. The factory ' children were worked for twelve, fourteen, eighteen hours, and even longer a-day. They had no regular meal-times, and they were brutally flogged and ill-treated by their task- Joseph Rayner Stephens. Ill masters. Those who hved grew up through a childhood of despair to a maturity of disease, ignorance, and poverty. But, whenever a tiny victim sank into the merciful tomb, parents were ready to offer fresh children to take the empty place. Yet even the basest of the working people desired to be protected against themselves, and in this, at all events, they were wiser than their social superiors. Stephens had a passionate sense of justice, and the sights and scenes around him moved him to the sternest indignation. It was a time of wild excitement, and he was not the man to use stinted phrases. He would echo and intensify the cry of the children : — " ' How long,' they say, ' how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world on a child's heart, — Stifle down with mailed heel its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart ? ' " This strong human sympathy gave a vital force to his words where the most ornate eloquence would have failed to im- press. As a speaker, he had that impalpable quality which marks the orator born not made ; and the native endowment had been rendered more opulent by long study, by foreign experience, and by familiarity with the language and litera- ture of many lands. It may be doubted if an)- men ever wielded more powerful personal influence over tlie workfolk of the North tlian l-Yngus O'Connor, Richard Oastler, and the Rev. J. R. Stephens : and it might be a matter of difficulty to decide which of them was the most perfervid denouncer of those in authority. Stephens, who was a " little giant," 112 Cheshire Gleanings. with a voice that could reach — and influence — a crowd of 20,000 persons, was arrested in December, 1838, for sedi- tious language. He was not tried until August, 1839 ; and his speech in defence, which for five hours held the attention of a crowded court, did not avail to save him from a sentence of eighteen months' imprisonment, and the further necessity of finding sureties for his good behaviour in the five following years. The prosecution appears to have been a somewhat mean affair ; and Stephens did not fail to show that between his own language and that of his political prosecutors there was not much to choose. In reality, he was less a Radical than a Tory-Democrat, and the " Tribune of the Poor," when the factory laws were amended, allied himself chiefly with the Conservative party. He never lost his hold upon the affections of the factory population, and during the Cotton Famine he came into prominence again, and was the stormy petrel of that troublous time. He cared but Httle for the machinery of politics ; the passion of his life was for social justice. The people, among whom he laboured, loved and respected him ; and in February, 1879, there were thou- sands of mourners in the Ashton district because this man was going to his long home. As we have already hinted the scholarly aspect of Stephens' many-sided character is not shown in Mr. Holyoake's biography, and the loss or destruction of his extensive correspondence will prevent any adequate estimate of the variety and extent of his literary sympathies. It must not be forgotten that it was Joseph Rayner Stephens who inspired his younger brother with that love of Northern Joseph Rayner Stephens. 113 literature which has borne such solid results in the great labours and enduring renown of Professor George Stephens, of Copenhagen. It is proposed to erect a statue to Stephens in the park of Stalybridge. We have no wish to discourage the free expression of gratitude or respect ; but surely to a man like Stephens, whose memory, if it lives at all, must live in the affections of those for whom he laboured, we may apply the words of Leopardi : — Che saldi men che cera e men ch' arena Verso la fama die di te lasciasti Son bronzi e marmi. ON THE STALK AS A SIGN OF CONTRACT. La, la paille docile Prend mille aspects nouveaux sous un main agile. "— ' Delille. Imannation. AMONGST the ancient deeds belonging to Captain Egerton Leigh, of the West Hall, High Leigh, which are being arranged by Mr. J. P. Earwaker, M.A., and some of which were exhibited at a meeting of the Manchester Literary Club in April, 1883, there is one dated 1413, of which this description is given : — " The seal attached to a deed dated 141 3 is curious in this respect, that it is not heraldic, but seems to represent a sort of primitive beacon or iron cage mounted on a stand to hold a fire in, and round the seal, embedded in the wax, is twisted a portion of a reed. This," adds Mr. Earwaker, "is an example I have not previously met with, and I do not know the object for which this was done. I find, however, in the Arley charters that Mr. Beamont has met with one example of what he calls 'a straw seal,' which he states is number six in box nine, but unfortunately in his calendar of the deeds, this particular deed is not mentioned, so that the date Oji the Stalk as a Sign of Contract. 115 cannot be given. In the 'Eighth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts,' p. 638, I see that Mr. J. H. Bennett, writing of the deeds, &c., belonging to Bishop Bubwith's Almshouses at Wells, in Somersetshire, says, ' several of the seals of the fifteenth century have the peculiarity of a ring or twist of grass impressed into the wax around the edge of the impression.' The only explanation I have hitherto met with is that this piece of grass or weed was placed there to protect the seal, which is obviously incorrect, because it would be placed on all seals, which is not the case. The deed to which this curious seal is attached is a grant from William de Venables of Kynderton to Geoffrey de Mascy of Wymyncham (Wincham) of an annual rent of twenty shillings, payable during his life out of the lands of the grantor in Lacheford, dated 3rd July, I Henry V. [141 3]." It seems probable that this stalk or reed has some con- ii6 Cheshire Gleanhigs. nection with the old use of the stipula as a sign of sale or agreement. There has been some doubt and speculation as to the origin of the word "stipulation," but folk-lore has come to the aid of etymology, and offered a reasonable solution. The word stip2ilatio is used to signify a contract by question and answer. From an article in the New York Nation (Nov. 23, 1882) it appears that some of the Roman writers regarded it as derived from stips^ a piece of money, although that certainly formed no necessary part of the contract. Justinian and Julius Paulus trace it to an adjective stipuhis, meaning firm — a word of which there appears to be no other evidence. Isidorus, however, says that the Romans, when they made a solemn promise, broke a stipula (straw, or corn- stalk), and by joining the pieces together acknowledged the bargain. "How often," asks Canon Farrar, "do people, when they 'make a stipulation,' recall the fact that the origin of the expression is a custom, dead for centuries, of giving a straw (stipula) in sign of a completed bargain ? " The custom of using a stalk as a sign of sale is wide-spread. It is found, says the writer in the Nation^ " preserved amongst the Franks, Bavarians, and Alemanni in the phrases : ' Mit mund und halm,' ' mit mund, hand und halm ! ' Where halm corresponds to the breaking of the stipula, hand points to a Frankish ' There's my hand upon it,' and mund corre- sponds to the ifiterrogatio et responsis, '■ Spotidesne ? spondeoj' which was all that in Justinian's time was left of the early ceremony." The authority for these statements is Grimm's " Worterbuch." The same fact is evidently alluded to in the phrase, " Rompre le festu." To " break a straw " had the On the Stalk as a Sign of Contract. Wj meaning of a quarrel in England formerly. Thus in Udal's translation of the apophthegms of Erasmus we read : — " I prophecie (quoth he) that Plato and Dionysius wil erre many daies to an end break a strawe between them." (Davies : "Supplementary English Glossary," 1881, p. 629.) Dr. J. S. Warren, in an essay published at Dordrecht in 1881, has pointed out the former, if not the present, existence of the custom in India. Harijkandra, when he had lost everything, is represented as selling himself ; and in offering himself for sale he places a stalk on his head (j'irasi \.ri?iam dattva). This can hardly be taken in the sense of tr/z/ikar, vilipendcre, for he asks a lakh of gold pieces as his price. Dr. Warren thinks it is simply a sign that the king is a bond fide article of sale. This essay was noticed in the Academy, whence the above is taken. Haris/C'andra's adventures are told in their fullest form in the Marka«deya Purawa (Dowson's "Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology," 1879, p. 11 8). A correspondent of the Nation has pointed out an inter- esting passage in Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" which seems to imply the existence of a similar custom here in quite recent times. " The French ecclesiastic, in suggesting to Crusoe to marry the English sailors left on the island to the Indian women they were living with, is made to say ' yet a formal contract before witnesses and confirmed by any token they had all agreed to be bound by, though it had been but the breaking of a stick between them, engaging the men to own these women as their wives.' " The writer further adds : — " In a picture of Raphael's (I believe), of which engraved Ii8 Cheshire Gleanings. copies are common enough, representing the marriage of the Virgin and St. Joseph, a young man who assists at the cere- mony is represented as breaking a stick across his knee. I remember when a boy, fifty years ago, being told in explana- tion of this act that the breaking of a stick was an ancient form of attesting a contract, and the introduction of it into the picture points pretty clearly to such a custom in use, or at least well known in the painter's time and country." {Nation, No. 914, January 14, 1883.) There are still traces of the survival of a form of the old stipulation, for Mr. Robert Brown says " that in the manor of Winteringham, North Lincolnshire, this custom, far from being dead, obtains at the present time. A straw is always inserted, ' according to the custom of the manor,' in the top of every surrender (a paper document) of copyhold lands there ; and the absence of this straw would render the whole transaction null and void" (Academy, No. 498, November 19, 1881). Dr. Augustus Jessop communicates the following curious document to Notes and Queries (6th S., vi., 534) : — " The Bill of Surrender made the Thirtieth day of April in the twentieth yeare of the raigne of our soveraigne Lord James by the grace of God King of England France and Ireland defender of the fayth &c., and of Scotland the five and fiftieth Witnesseth that Gilbert Nunnes of Leeds in the countie of Yorke Shomaker hath by the hands of George Cockill customarie tenant of the Mannor of Altoft surren- dered and given up with a strawe into the hands of the Lord one rode of Arrable land more or lesse lyinge in a certain On the Stalk as a Sign of Contract. 119 feild called Twenetownes with all and singular the appur- tenances in Altoft aforesayd being of the yeerly rent of two pence halfepenny of intent to make courting thereof To the use and behoofe of W^ of Freson of Altoft in the sayd countie of Yorke Esq''^ and Margaret his wife and to theire heires and assignes for ever." This has been supplemented by another correspondent, who says that " this is the custom to this day in the manor of Tupoates-with-Myton, which comprises much of the western part of the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, and belongs to the corporation of that town. The straw is affixed to the top of the paper on which the form of surrender is written, and the tenant surrendering holds the straw by the natural knot in the middle of it, for a straw having such a knot is always chosen. The new tenant receives possession by taking hold of one end of a rod offered to him by the deputy steward. In practice this rod is an office ruler." (6th S., vii., 218). The straw as a sign of surrender is shewn in this extract from Caxton's "Reynard the Fox": — "Then the King taking a strawe from the ground, pardoned the Fox of all his trespasses which cither hee or his Father had euer com- mitted : If the Fox now began to smile it was no wonder, the sweetness of life required it : yet he fell downe before the King and Queene, and humbly thanked them for mercy, protesting that for that fauour he would make them the richest Princes in the world. And at these words the Fox took up a straw, and profferred it to the King, and said to him : — My dread Lord, I beseech your Maiesty receive this pledge, as a surrender vnto your Maiesty of all the Treasure I20 Cheshire Gleanings. that the great King Ermerike was maister of, with which I freely infeofe you, out of my meare voluntary and free motion. At these words the King received the straw., and smiling, gaue the Fox great thankes for the same." {Notes and Queries., 6th, s. vii., p. 253.) An unpleasant reminiscence of the same form of contract is probably the origin of the phrase a " man of straw," which now denotes merely a worthless individual, either in a moral or a pecuniary sense, but at no very distant date indicated one who had descended to the lowest deeps of degradation. A man of straw was one who stood in the vicinity of the law courts ready to be bought sometimes as bail, some- times as a witness, and to perjure himself by swearing whatever he was instructed to say. As a sign that he was on sale he wore a straw in his boot — not quite so prominent a symbol as that borne by Hariskanda, and yet equally significant ; and, indeed, the mark of a baser slavery. A writer in the Quarterly Review says: — "We have all heard of a race of men who used in former days to ply about our own courts of law, and who, from their manner of making known their occupation, were recognised by the name of " straw shoes." An advocate or lawyer who wanted a con- venient witness, knew by these signs where to find one, and the colloquy between the parties was brief, 'Don't you remember ! ' said the advocate (the party looked at the fee and gave no sign ; but the fee increased, and the powers of memory increased with it), ' To be sure I do.' ' Then come into court and swear it.' And Straw Shoes went into court and swore it. Athens abounded in straw shoes " (vol. xxxiii.. On the Stalk as a Sig7i of Contract. 121 p. 344). Men waiting to be hired for farm service at statute fairs displayed a straw as a sign that their labour was on sale. It seems possible, then, that the reed in the seal to this Cheshire document of four centuries ago may be connected with the ancient and widespread use of the stalk as a symbol of contract between two persons. THE GENIUS OF AVERNUS. Al Sirat, the bridge, of breadth less than the thread of a famished spider, over which the Mussuhnans must skate unto Paradise, to which it is the only entrance ; but this is not the worst, the river beneath being hell itself, into which, as may be expected, the unskilful and tender of foot contrive to tumble with a facilis descensus Avcrni, not very pleasing in prospect to the next passenger. Byron. Giaoiir. ABOUT 1850 a small domestic altar was found in digging for sand at Great Boughton, Chester. The inscription was deciphered by Mr. C. Roach Smith, and is " Genio Averni Ivl Qvintilianvs." Of this Julius Quinti- lianus, who, by the side of British Dee, dedicated an altar to the Genius of Avernus, a lake far-off in Italian Campania, there is no other record. The name he bore is that of a patrician gens, whose memories went back to the earliest days of Rome. Curiously enough, although" dedications to the genii and local deities are amongst the commonest, no other instance is known of one inscribed to the presiding spirit of Avernus. Close by the place where this altar was found was another / The Genhis of Avernus. 123 offered by the valiant and victorious twentieth legion to the nymphs and fountains. The gods of the fields, and of the roads and ways, are invoked in other inscriptions found else- where. Near a clear spring, at the ancient Habitancum, an altar was found with a poetic dedication, which showed that its erection was due to a soldier's dream. Somnio praemonitus miles banc ponere jussit, Aram quae Fabio nupta est nymphis venerandis. There are altars at Chester and elsewhere to the genio loci. J The genius of Rome, of the land of Britain, of the Prae- torium, &c., &c., have also been invoked, and there is one inscription dedicated " to the good of the human race." Notwithstanding the facility with which the Romans adopted and manufactured divinities, the Genius of Avernus is known, as we have said, only by this solitary inscription. What would be the nature of this demi-god or supernatural being ? The Genius of the Classical world was a protecting spirit — not unlike the guardian angel familiar not only to the Christian, but to the Mohammedan world. Spencer has described the two forms of the Genius (Faerie Queen, II., xii., 47, and III., vi., 31):— xlxvii. They in that place him .Genius did call : Not that celestial power to whom the care Of life, and generation of all That lives, perteines in charge paiticularc, Who wondrous things concerninge our welfare, 124 Cheshire Gleanings. And straunges phantomes doth leit us ofte forsee, And ofte of secret ill bids us beware : That is our Selfe, whom though we do not see, Yet each in him selfe it will perceive to bee. xlviii. Therefore a God him sage Antiquity Did wisely make, and good Agdistes call ; But this same was to that quite contraiy, The foe of life, that good envoyes to all, That secretly doth us procure to fall Through guileful! semblants which he makes us see : He of this Gardin had the governall, And pleasures Porter was devized to bee, Holding a staffe in hand for mere formalitee. They seem, however, to have been associated vaguely with ancestral spirits, watching over the fortunes of their des- cendants. Every man had his attendant genius, or perhaps even a good and bad genius. The birthday festivities included the worship of the personal genius. The Genius of the Roman People is portrayed on the coins of Trajan. / Places, as well as persons, had their genii. The genius of a place, when he made his appearance, took the form of a serpent. This is a relic of a very old form of symbolic worship. The dedication — Genio Averni — would, therefore, be to the ancient Lacus Avernus, now known as Lago d' Averno. It is a small lake in the Campagna, occupying the crater of a now silent volcano. Its sides rise steeply above the waters, and in bygone ages were covered with dark and gloomy trees. This dismal and funereal aspect may have TJie Genius of Avermis. 125 helped the fancy that caused it to be regarded as the entrance to the infernal regions. The legend may have been localised by the Greeks, who settled at Cumae. It is first mentioned in a fragment of Ephorus that is cited by Strabo. The sulphureous vapours arising from the lake were said to be destructive of all animal life, even the birds as they flew over its surface were killed by the fumes. Hence the fanciful derivation of the name, "Aopvos — as indicative of its influence upon bird life. " The surface of the lake," as Daubeny has observed, " screened from the access of the winds in every quarter, must have been covered with a thick stratum of unrespirable gas, which would be very slowly dissipated." (Description of Volcanoes, I 2nd edition, 1848, p. 199). "There are now," he adds, "no ( mephitic exhalations, and the birds resort freely to the lake." "** The ancient inhabitants of the lake are said to have been the Cimmerians of Homer, and the statement that they never saw the light of the sun is somewhat lamely explained as meaning that they lived in caves made in the rocks. Such habitations would be easily made out of the volcanic tufa. The road from the lake to Cumae was through a tunnel or grotto carved out of the tufa hill. On the southern side of the lake is a cave known as the Grotta della Sibilla. This will recall the passage in Virgil, which Conington has rendered thus : — There when you land at Cumae's town, Where forests o'er Avernus frown, Your eyes shall see the frenzied maid Who spells the future in the shade 126 Cheshire Gleanings. Of her deep cavern, and consigns To scattered leaves her mystic lines. These, when the words of fate are traced, She leaves within her cavern placed : Awhile they rest in order ranged, The sequence and the place unchanged. But should the breeze through chance-ope'd door, Whirl them in air 'twixt roof and floor, She lets them flutter, nor takes pain To set them in their rank again : The pilgrims unresolved return, And her prophetic threshold spurn. So do not you : nor count too dear The hours you lavish on the seer. But, though your comrades chide your stay, And breezes whisper hence away. Approach her humbly, and entreat Herself the presage to repeat, And open of her own free choice The prisoned flow of tongue and voice. The martial tribes of Italy, The story of your wars to be. And how to face, or how to fly Each cloud that darkens on your sky, Her lips shall tell, and with success The remnant of your journey bless. When -^neas saw the Cumean Sibyl, he entreated her to aid him in his desire to see his father in the world of shades. She replies in a passage which either embalms or has given rise to a proverb : — Sate sanguine Divum, Tros Anchisiada, facilis descensus Averno ; The Genii IS of Avernus. 127 Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis ; Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad aures, Hoc opus, hie labor est. (^neid vi., 201.) The Sibyl, however, gives him directions that he may succeed if he can pluck the golden branch that is concealed in the wood : — For so has Proserpine decreed That this should be her beauty's meed. One plucked, another fills its room, And burgeons with like precious bloom. The mystic tree is pointed out to the hero by his mother's mystic birds — two snow-white doves, and he hastens with the spray to the sibyl. Offerings of bulls, rams, and lambs are made to Hecate, Earth, Night, Proserpine, and Pluto, and as the morning dawns they hear the baying of the hell- hounds. The Sibyl now leads the way, and they enter the Nether World. He sees the disembodied ghosts waiting for the century that must elapse before Charon ferries them to the further shore, ^neas and his companion are taken over the river Styx, and he sees many of the heroes of the past in the Lugentes Campi, or Fields of Tears, a sort of purgatorial preface to the Elysian plains. He sees Dido, whom his faithless love had killed. Tartarus he did not enter, but the Sibyl gave him a vivid picture of the punishment inflicted by Rhadamanthus : — Discite justitiam moniti ct non tcmnere Divos. Thence he is taken to the more genial regions of the 128 Cheshire Gleanings. Elysian Fields, where the flowers bloom, and the trees give I fruit, and a grateful odour fills the air. Here the immortals j amuse themselves according to their several fancies. This is the home of the righteous dead. Here sees he the illustrious dead Who, fighting for their country bled ; Priests, who while earthly life remained Preserved that life unsoiled, unstained ; Blest bards, transparent souls and clear, Whose song was worthy Phoebus' ear ; Inventors, who by arts refined The common life of human kind, With all who grateful memory won By services to others done ; A goodly brotherhood, bedight With coronals of Virgin white. (^neid, Book vi.) |! ■j Fmally, the pious son sees his father Anchises, and from !, him hears in prophetic vision the fate of his descendants. '' It is needless to give further details of the Sixth Book of the ^neid, for common consent has declared it to be the ,^ masterpiece of Virgil's cunning hand. Warburton regarded the narrative of the descent of Aver- nus as a figurative account of an initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries, a view rightly opposed by Gibbon. M. Eugene Leveque compares it with the descent of Youdhichthira into the kingdom of Yama, as described in the Mahabharata, and some of the parallel incidents are certainly striking. (" Les Mythes de I'lnde." Paris, 1880. P. 382.) Their considera- tion would however lead us too far afield. The Genius of Avcnuis. 129 The Sixth Book of the ^neid is sufficient to show that the name of Avernus was a word of deep significance to a 1 Roman mind. It was the seat of an oracle, and the lake I itself was sacred to Proserpine or Hecate, to whom sacrifices I* were offered. Livy has recorded the visit of Hannibal to Avernus, the pretence, as he seems to think, being sacrifice, and the real object a descent upon Puteoli. (xxiv. 12-13.) Of the Oracle, we are told that the inhabitants had underground dwellings communicating with each other by subterranean passages through which they conducted the strangers who came to consult the Oracle, which was built far below the surface of the earth. These servants of the Oracle were all slain by a king whom its vaticinations had deceived or disappointed. (Strabo.) The fact that the lake was sacred to Hecate and Proser- pine would not prevent it from having a local genius. This may be illustrated by an extract from that elegant writer, the Rev. John Eustace, who says :— " At length, in the reign of Augustus, the formation of the Portus Julius dispelled the few horrors that continued to brood over the infernal lake ; the sacred groves that still shaded its banks and hung over its margin were cut down ; the barrier that separated it from the Lucrinus was removed, and not only the waters of the. latter but the waves of the neighbouring sea were admitted into the stagnant gulph of Avernus. This enterprise, however, was contemplated with some awe and apprehension : and the agitation of the waters of the lake, occasioned possibly by the descent of those of the former lake into the lower basin of the latter, was magnified into a tempest, and ascribed to J 130 Cheshire Gleanings. the anger of the infernal deities; The statue of one showed by a profuse sweat either its fear or its indignation ; that of another leaped, it was said, from its pedestal ; and recourse was had, as usual, to sacrifices in order to appease the Manes. In the meantime the port was finished, and Avernus was stripped of its infernal horrors, and ever afterwards ranked among ordinary lakes. Stagna inter celebrem nunc mitia." Sil. Ital. On the southern bank stands a large and lofty octagonal edifice, with niches in the walls, and with halls adjoining. It is vaulted, and of brick, and is supposed by some to be the temple of Proserpine, by others that of Avernus itself, whose statue, as appears from the circumstance mentioned above, stood in the immediate vicinity of the lake." (" Classical Tour," ii., 399.)* To the Roman soldier or settler, far away from his southern home, the name of Avernus would recall many of the most characteristic features of his religion. He would see again in imagination the grim and terrible lake, over whose bosom no bright winged bird could fly, the steep, stern hillsides with their burden of funereal trees, whose gloomy boughs hid in their luxuriant growth the golden branch of Proserpine, and * Mr. W. Thompson Watkin, the learned author of " Roman Lancashire," writes to me that the inscription to the genius of Avernus indicates that "the dedicator seems to have had a dread of impending doom, and has been highly anxious to avert it." Dr. J. C. Bruce concurs in this idea. TJie Genius of Avermts. 131 secluded the mighty ehii that marked and yet concealed the entrance to the under-world. At Orcus' portals hold their lair Wild Sorrow and avenging Care ; And pale Diseases cluster there, ■J And pleasureless Decay, Foul Penury, and Fears that kill, And Hunger, counsellor of ill, A ghastly presence they ; Suffering and Death the threshold keep. And with them Death's blood-brother. Sleep : 111 Joys with their seducing spells, And deadly War are at the door ; The Furies crouch in iron cells. And Discord maddens and rebels. Her snake-locks hiss, her wreaths drip gore. Nor would his quick thoughts linger at this fearful gate, but rather would he the more earnestly follow the eager steps of ^neas into the land of pale and bloodless ghosts and the further regions beyond the parting of the ways, the one that skirts the walls of Dis, and leads to the Blissful Fields where dwell those favoured by the gods, and the other that conducts the sinners to Tartarus, the kingdom of pain. J In the worship offered at the humble domestic altar of the Genius of Avernus there was a recognition of a supernatural influence in the affairs of the world ; of the moral responsi- bility of human nature for the evil and for the good of its actions. There was also some hope of immortality and peaceful rest in the asphodel valleys beyond the dark river of Death. / 132 Cheshire Gleanings. " To the Roman," says Mr. W. R. Alger, " death was a grim reality. To meet it himself he girded up his loins with artificial firmness. But at its ravages among his friends he wailed in anguished abandonment. To his dying vision there was indeed a future, but shapes of distrust and shadow stood upon its disconsolate borders ; and when the prospect had no horror, he still shrank from its poppied gloom." (" History of the Doctrine of a Future Life." loth ed. New York, 1878. P. 196.) Whatever we may believe as to this our Cestrian Julius Quintilianus all these centuries ago seems to have recognized that — There is no death ; what seems so is transition. This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call death. TENNYSON'S "NORTHERN COBBLER": A CHESHIRE MAN. / f It's what they call the dileck as is spoke hereabout, sir. George Eliot. Adam Bede. THERE are still a few superfine critics who disapprove of any representation of the common colloquial talk of the people, and who would restrict all literary representation of conversation to the most conventional book-English. For- tunately, our great writers have often, if not always, been disobedient to such pedantic regulations, and have felt as George Eliot puts it, that they were " not bound to respect the snobbish ignorance of those who do not care to know more of their native tongue than the vocabulary of the drawing-room and the newspaper." The dialect-writers have found a powerful ally in the Poet Laureate. It is an evidence of Mr. Tennyson's superiority to vulgar prejudice that he, whose ordinary diction is marked by a curious felicity of expression, should have resolved also upon displaying the rough diamonds of provin- 134 Cheshire Gleanings. cial talk. There are gems in the folk-speech, and Mr. Tennyson has placed some of them in a setting of fine gold. Amongst the dialect poems of the Poet Laureate the most dramatic in form and the most intense in human interest is the "Northern Cobbler." The Methodist Shoe- maker, who after a sad lapse into intemperance has found safety in total abstinence, is a fine and not altogether un- familiar figure. The very energy of such a nature, when not wisely directed, is a source of temptation and weakness. After courtship and marriage he neglects his wife and child for the public-house, and his drunken habits are intensified by the reproaches of his sharp-tongued wife, who has developed into a scolding sMtern, whilst he has been degenerating into a sot. As a matter of course, he loses custom by his drinking and fighting ways, and one night goes home in an alcoholic fury, and after smashing the furniture of his cottage kicks his wife, and then falls into maudlin slumbers. An' when I waaked i' the murnin' I seead that our Sally went laamed Cos' o' the kick as I gied 'cr, an' I wur dreadful ashaamed ; An' Sally wur sloomy an' draggle-taail'd in an owd turn gown, An' the babby's faace wurn't wesh'd an' the 'ole 'ouse hupside down. An' then I minded our Sally sa pratty an' neat an' sweeat, ' her elbow at the church-door," which, says Ray, is "spoken of a housewifely maid who grows idle after marriage." Different in other fashion from the dame of whom we arc told, " She hath been to London to call a strea a straw, and a waw a wall." The country folk are — or were — conservative of their folk-speech, and resent the pretensions of those who, although " to the manner born," profess to despise it. Lady Done, too, was an example of the good result of following the Cheshire proverb that bids lads and lasses to marry at / home, "rather over the ipixon than over the mire." This advice has been largely followed, so that the Cheshire gentry are all akin. " Marry come up, my dirty cousin," we are told is " spoken by way of taunt to tliose who boast themselves of their birth, parentage, or the like." A 250 CJicsJiire Gleanings. Cheshire aUiance has given rise to a Welsh proverb : — " Efe a aeth ya Glough " ; i.e., He is become a Clough, a very rich Cheshire family descended from Sir Richard Clough, a merchant in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and a friend of Sir Thomas Gresham. Lady Done was as virtuous as she was beautiful, and would, we may suppose, avoid all scandal, and " Well, well, word of malice." As a thrifty house-wife she would not in her well ordered household have " Nichils [nothing] in nine pokes, or nooks." THE EARTHQUAKE OF 1777. An earthquake reeled unheededly away. Byron. Don Juan. ON Sunday, 14th Sept.,- 1777, the worshippers at various churches and chapels in the two counties of Lancaster and Chester were disturbed from their devotions by the unwonted experience of a shock of earthquake. The vibration of the earth was sufficiently strong to set the bells ringing at the parish church of Manchester, and at St. Mary's in the same town. In the Manchester Mercury it is stated to have been felt, not only in Manchester, but "at Preston, Warrington, Wigan, Chapel-le-frith, Macclesfield, Stockport, Chawesworth, Mottram, Staley-Bridge, Knutsford, Middle- ton, and Ashton-under-Lyne. At all these places the shocks were equally violent and attended with nearly the same effect." Mr. John Poole, a farmer whose MS. journal, extending from 1774 to 1778, is now in the Manchester Free Library, writes under the date of Sept. 14th: — "Fair and very fine wind cast, but very mild and hot. At a few minutes before eleven I was attending divine service in 252 Cheshire Gleanings. Middleton Church, just as the Rev. Mr. Ashton was making prayer in the pulpit prior to the text, when a most sudden and violent trembling of the floor, which encreasing shooke the whole fabrick in a terrable manner, so that the church was expected to fall upon and burie us all in the ruins. Most of the congregation ran into the church-yard. It lasted 10 [?] seconds, half [deleted] a minute. Thank God, Httle or no damage was done. This was the most terrable earth- quake that can be remembered. Betwixt nine and ten there was seen in the element streamers darting and clashing in a most surprising manner to the great astonishment of the beholders. The element was very serene at after this dismal catastrophe ; such dismal looks appeared in every one's countenance attended with a stupifaction." The interest excited was great, and the opportunity was too striking to be allowed to pass by " unimproved." Both lay and clerical exhortations appeared. The lay voice took form in a pamphlet whose title page is here transcribed : — " Observations and Reflections on the late Earthquake ; or, more properly called, an Airquake ; which happened in this Town and Neighbourhood, on Sunday, the 14th day of September, 1777, and an attempt to investigate the Causes of these dreadful Harbingers of divine Vengeance to Man- kind. By a Gentleman of this Town. Manchester : Printed by Charles Wheeler, 1777. Price Six-pence." From this essay we may quote the following passage : — " The dismal Catastrophe which happened here on Sunday the 14th Inst, during the Time of divine Service impressed the Minds of all Ranks of People with the most awful The Earthquake of I'j'j'j. 253 Anxiety and Distress, and presented a Scene truly deplor- able and affecting ! But while Humanity contemplates the remembrance of this terrible Day, let us not forget to be thankful to the Almighty for his kind Care and Protection over us, who so little deserve this partial Deliverance in the Hour of Distress. Agitated with the gloomy idea of im- mediate Dissolution, every one sought safety from Flight by which many Accidents happened. The Churches being much crowded, increased the Confusion, and for a while the Mind seemed depressed by an insensible Surprise, and to be lost in the dreadful Apprehension of a general ruin. Words can but faintly describe the Feelings of the Heart in such Distress, and very few can recollect their disordered sensi- bility in this critical Moment. The Soul eclipsed with horror had lost the Power of Thought, and for awhile shrunk back on herself, and startled at the secret Dread of falling into nought ! Earth felt the wound, and Nature, from her Seat, Sighing, thro' all her works, gave Signs of Woe. Milton. Let not the Father forget his Feelings on this Occasion, nor the fond Mother her anxious Solicitude and Distress : and while Children remember it with every Idea of Terror, let the Sinner begin an early Repentance and Virtue. So severe a Shock of an Earthquake was never before remembered in this Town and Neighbourhood, and though wc have escaped the present Calamity, who can insure his future Safety ; or from former Examples not feel every Emotion of Pity for 254 Cheshire Gleariings. the ruin of some distant Part of the Globe ? Whether the late Convulsion was local, and confined to this Town and Neighbourhood, is not yet ascertained, though from all Enquiries it seems to have extended to no great Distance from us. Easterly it was not felt at Liverpool, and to the West, Sheffield prescribed its limits. To the North, Halifax and Leeds felt the Shock more slightly, though at Preston it was severe, and Southerly beyond Derby they were scarce sensible of it. Still this is no Proof that the effect was confined to this Neighbourhood, since we find that the dreadful Earthquake, which destroyed the City of Lisbon in the Year 1755, and buried in Ruins so many other Cities and Villages in Europe and Africa, was but slightly felt at London, and not at all in this Neighbourhood, though they were sensible of the Shock in several other Parts of England and Ireland." The clerical utterance was of a higher order, for the earthquake was followed by a communication from the Bishop of Chester, who addressed "A Letter to the Inhabit- ants of Manchester, Macclesfield, and adjacent parts, on occasion of the late earthquake in those places." This epistle general is dated loth October, 1777, and was printed at Chester by J. Poole, Foregate-street, in an octavo pamphlet of twenty-four pages. Naturally enough this tract was bought with avidity and read with curiosity and interest. It f ran through eight editions, and is included in the collected */ "Tracts on various Subjects" of Bishop Beilby Porteous. In this epistle he endeavours to "improve" the unwonted occurrence. After arguing that the earthquake was a direct TJie EartJiquakc of 1777. 255 interposition of the " Great Governor of the World," he proceeds : — " Let me not, however, be understood to infer from hence, that, because the earthquake was principally felt in your towns and neighbourhood, you are therefore more wicked than the rest of your countrymen ; such a conclusion would be equally rash and unchristian. We are told, that even those ' upon whom the tower in Siloam fell,' were not sinners above all others. But we are all of us, God knows, sinners great enough to stand in need of frequent warnings and corrections ; and whether your present situation may not peculiarly require such dreadful monitors as you have lately had, it behoves you very seriously to consider. By the flourishing state of your trade and manufactures, you have for many years been advancing rapidly in wealth and population. Your towns are every day growing in size and splendour, many of the higher ranks among you live in no small degree of opulence ; their inferiors, in ease and plenty. What the usual fruits of such affluence as this are, is but too \ well known. Intemperance and licentiousness of manners, a wanton and foolish extravagance in dress, in equipage, in houses, in furniture, in entertainments ; a passion for luxur- ious indulgences and frivolous amusements ; a gay, thought- less indifference about a future life, and everything connected with it ; a neglect of divine worship, a profanation of the day peculiarly set apart for it, and, perhaps, to crown all, a disbelief and contempt of the gospel ; these are the vices and the follies which riches too often engender, and which, I am sorry to add, they have with a fatal profession dissemi- / nated over this kingdom. What proportion of these may 256 Cheshire Gleanings. have fallen to your share, I have hitherto had no opportunity of knowing ; and it would therefore be as unjust, as I am sure it would be painful, for me to become your accuser. Let me rather, with the sincerity of a friend, and the tender- ness of a guardian over you, entreat you to be your own judges in this important question. You have had a loud call to recollection. ' Judge therefore yourselves, brethren, that ye be not judged of the Lord.' Examine your own hearts thoroughly, look well, extremely well, if there be any wickedness in you, that if there be you may turn from it into the way everlasting." The literature of the earthquake of 1777 however credit- able to the piety of the writers says but little for their scientific knowledge. THE SUSPECTED SPY. / 'Tis pleasant sure to see one's name in print ; j A book's a book although there's nothing in't. Byron . English Bards. AMONGST the minor rarities of Cheshire literature may be classed the " Suspected Spy," a little volume of which a brief retrospective review may not be without nterest.* The story opens with the address beneath the village oak of the schoolmaster, who shared and expressed the discontent of the time with the ruling powers. One of the auditors, a stranger to the place, reproved him for the man- ner in which he had spoken of the army, and the complacent pedagogue immediately begged pardon, having a shrewd suspicion that the unexpected hearer was a spy, such as the government was then known to send from time to time to such assemblies of the people. He, however, gladly * The Suspected Spy, or, The Mysterious Stranger. By William Axon. Chester : Printed by E. Bellis, Newgate Street, and may be had of all Booksellers. 1844. i2mo, pp. 132. R 258 Cheshire Gleanings. accepted the stranger's invitation to drink, and the pair adjourned to the Trotters Arms, where they drank each other's health in champagne. After the schoolmaster has gone home, and narrowly escaped being thrashed by his termagant wife, the story takes a step backwards for ten years, when the village was electrified by a fire at the vicar- age. The minister had escaped from death by the somewhat hazardous expedient of leaping from the bedroom window, but his son was still inside, and for a time no one would risk life and limb in an endeavour to rescue him ; but at last this was accomplished by Joseph Welter, the future school- master, who was dreadfully scorched in accomplishing his heroic act. The fire was believed to be the work of an incendi- ary, and suspicion fell on Frederick HopefuU; and the general opinion of his guilt was confirmed by his abrupt departure from the place. A reward was offered for his apprehension, but without avail. Some years later, an old man on his death-bed confessed that he, and not Hopefull, was the per- petrator of the crime. Meanwhile the persecuted youth had enlisted, and by good conduct had gained the sergeant's stripes, and was afterwards presented with a lieutenant's com- mission by the colonel of the regiment, whom he saved from drowning. Whilst serving in the Peninsular war he rescued a Spanish lady from a French assailant. This damsel, Donna Estifania de Bonilla, he afterwards marries, and his bride brings both beauty and wealth as her dower. His possessions were further increased at the death of the Colonel, who, having no near relatives, left his money to the lucky Hopefull. Anxious to see again the home of his infancy he The Suspected Spy. 259 returned to England with his wife and child, and was in fact the stranger who had interrupted the schoolmaster's treason- able oration, and whom the foolish villagers regarded as a spy. He learned from the gossip of the pedagogue that the real origin of the fire had been brought to light, and that the cloud formerly resting on his good name had, in his absence, been dissipated. He rescued his parents from the poor- house, bought an estate in the neighbourhood, and became the model Squire of the district. Such is a rough outline of " The Suspected Spy," and it may at once be admitted that many of the volumes to be found at Mr. Mudie's are not much nearer the modesty of nature in the structure of their plots. The chief peculiarity of this novelette, however, is the extraordinary style in which it is written. From the preface we learn that it was the work of a boy of sixteen, and he appears to have industriously rummaged the dictionary for words of portentous length and unfamiliar sound. The following long-winded sentence is a favourable example of th^s sesquipedalian genius : — ■ " Now, since preface writing is considered by some as an indispensable duty on a young author, and by others, as an obligation he is under to his kind patrons and subscribers, I, a mere scribbler, have been induced to write this preface with the intention of informing my readers a few data con- nected with the work, and, if possible, to prove the incon- gruity of certain animadversions, which have, so unfeelingly, been propagated throughout this city, by several ill-natured and malicious youths, who grieved that they are not compe- tent to undertake even a work of this kind, have mutually 26o Cheshire Gleanings. resolved to tarnish my fair fame, and do all in their power to impede its circulation, by stating that it is not of my com- position, but is merely a compilation, or a series of extracts, taken from the writings of various authors, and by me analytically described ; after which, they say, I conglobated the analects into a readable form, and hence, kind reader, the strange, and, I may truly add, wonderful manner in which a few doltish youths of common place abilities, alledge the 'Suspected Spy' was written." This charge of plagiarism is indignantly denied and was doubtless baseless. The book is unique in its style, and cannot have been copied from any other. Amongst the words and phrases which the author uses with a conscious delight, are " stultiloquence," "serine," "brown peepers," " pearl-like masticators," " obstropulous," " cognomination," "opiparous," and so forth. The moon behind a cloud is thus described : — " This discovery was attended with fresh evils ; for the storm had before considerably abated, and the ' pale orb of night' had once more appeared in the spangled Heavens, and with reflected light illumined the path our weary tra- veller was plodding. " But this refulgence, like most terrene things, was but transitory ; for soon, alas ! it was hid beneath the film of a passing cloud, and instantly all was dark and dreary. Now, the rain descended with redoubled violence, and then the storm burst out afresh, and with devastating powers, vented its fury on the unsheltered head of our belated friend — HopefuU." SIR GAWAYNE AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. The gentle Gawain's courteous lore. Sir Walter Scott. Bridal of Triermain, IT has not been noticed by local antiquaries that the "Grene Knight," the doughty adversary of Sir Gawayne, was a Cheshire man. In Sir F. Madden's " Sir Gawayne " he prints a text in which this verse occurs after a description of the arming of the " Greene Knight " before his quest of Gawayne at Arthur's Court : — Yt time at Cavleile lay our K[ing] : Alt a castle of Flatting was his dwelling In the forrcst of Delamore ; For sooth he rode, the sooth to say. To Carleile he came on Christmas day Into yt fayre countrye. Dr. Ormerod has nothing to say of the castle of Flatting. Probably it is a chaiitea en Espagne. BOOK RARITIES OF THE WARRINGTON MUSEUM. Every library should try to be complete on something if it were only the history of pinheads. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Poet at the Breakfast Table. THERE are few provincial libraries of the same limited extent which possess so many notabilities as the Warrington Museum. It has been fortunate in the addition to its stores of the interesting collections made by the late Mr. John Jackson and Dr. Kendrick, but the general library is, itself, well worthy of examination. The following rough notes are the result of an opportunity afforded by the librarian, Mr. Charles Madeley, of seeing many of its more note-worthy possessions. First, as to the books relating to Warrington itself. " Let every man adorn his own Sparta " is the significant admonition of one of the first of living bibliographers. He would be pleased to see how faithfully the injunction has been acted upon at Warrington. It seems appropriate and fitting that each library should mirror the intellectual activity of the locality to which it ministers. Book Rarities of the Warriitgto7i Mtiseiim. 263 should conserve the fame of its great men, should preserve the high strains of the real poets, and the wayside songs of the humbler bards. Yet in very few cases has this been done in any systematic fashion. The founders of the noble Chetham Library in Manchester missed the opportunity of making it the repository of all the local literature of Lanca- shire, and some modern foundations show an equal careless- ness which future generations and students will lament. It is therefore gratifying to see that Warrington is mindful of the names that have given it lustre, and has a corner of its library devoted to the literary history of the town. It has a history which justifies honourable pride in the past, and should be provocative of excellence in future. The interval between Friar Penketh and Mr. Beamont is filled by the names of the Aikins, Belsham, Carpenter, Ferriar, Percival, Mrs. Gaskell, Owen, Gilbert Wakefield, Priestley, Kendrick, Robson, Marsh, and many others. Few persons will care to test now Penketh's claim to understand the writings of Duns Scotus better than the writer himself. Those adventurous spirits will find something "craggy to break their minds upon" in the fine old folio, which leads off the show of the Warrington books : " Duns Scoti Qu^stiones Quodlibe- tales, purgatas per Thomam Penketh." — (Venetis?) 1474. ■^ Penketh is the only Warrington man named by the " im- mortal bard," who has preserved his infam)^ by naming him in conjunction with Dr. Shaw, another tool of the wily, and ambitious Richard III. Equally interesting and more intelligible is a Warrington book of much later date, in which John Howard exposed the state of our English 264 Cheshire Gleanings. prisons when the last century was waxing elderly, and when the votaries of social science, who take an aesthetic delight in testing treadmills and taste prison fare as an experimental addition to a luxurious dinner, were as yet unheard of. It needed courage then to enter the abodes of darkness, into which laws singularly harsh and sanguinary thrust poor wretches who were as often sinned against as sinning. There are many works relating to the history of the district generally. Here, for instance, is an interesting volume for the local antiquary :— " The Difference of Hearers ; or an Exposition of certaine Sermons, at Hyton, in Lancashire. By William Harrison, His Majesties preacher there. Together with a postscript to the Papists in Lancashire." London, 1614. His Majesty's preacher shows us that ever as one goes further back the "good old times " still recede. He grows eloquent over the degeneracy of the times, groans with Puritan fervour over the singing and piping then to be heard on the " Sabbath," and laments — "That it is not consecrated as holy to the Lord, but kept as a feast of Bacchus and Venus." There is also the "Castra BoreaHa" of Beamont, the "Characteristic Strictures" of Seddon (1779), the English edition of Abbadie's account of the Lancashire Plot (1696), the books on Furness, by Beck and West, the publications of the Chetham Society ; the publications of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire ; Hardy's " Charters of the duchy of Lancaster"; the " Ducatus Lancastrise " ; Aikin's " Country round Manchester." The Cheshire His- tory of Dr. Ormerod, should also be named. There is also Book Rarities of the Warrington Museum. 265 the original edition of one of the rare Amicia tracts of Sir Thos. Mainwaring. The works relating to art are not specially numerous. First among them we should name the "Galeria Giustiniana," two splendid folios of plates showing the glories of that ancient collection. There are Bewick's ever delightful volumes in which the British Birds and Quadrupeds are delineated with the spirit of an artist and the fidelity of a naturalist. Here we may name the " Picturae Virgiliani Codicis Vaticani," (Romae 1782.) Fergusson's remarkable work on " Tree and Serpent Worship " is notable. Mr. Ruskin's " Modern Painters," an uncut copy of the original issue, and "Stones of Venice," should not be omitted. Hamerton's " Etching and Etchers " (first edition) and " Graphic Arts " claim mention. Amongst the scientific books are the publications of the Ray Society and of the British Museum. There are many books which may be claimed equally by Science and Art. Thus we have Sowerby's " Botany," Baxter's " British Flowering Plants " ; the " Flora Londinensis," of Curtis ; the "Flora Peruviana," of Ruiz and Pavon ; the "Thesaurus Imaginum Testaceorum," of Rumphius, and other works. The only shorthand book is the following: — "The New Testament, with Dr. Guyse's Recollections, &c., written in Dr. Byrom's shorthand, by John Lloyd, Bath, 1782." This is a small but curious MS. showing that there were students of Stenography long ago in Bath, which, now the residence of Mr. Isaac Pitman, may be looked upon as the Mecca of that labour saving art. " There is no Shorthand but Phono- 266 CJicsJiire Gleanings. graphy and Isaac Pitman is its prophet." The warm praise which is due to Byrom can be given without disparagement of Pitman's great service in giving philosophical accuracy and simplicity to vStenography. An enthusiastic notice of Byrom, in which justice is done to his piety, literary abilities, and genial temper, has been written by Mr. J. E. Bailey, F.S.A., and appears in the second volume of the Papers of the Manchester Literary Club. The antiquary and the historical student will find an ex- tensive series of the works of Graevius and Gronovius, the " Harleian Miscellany," the Rolls and Record publications, and the books of the Surtees Society. There is also a series of interesting publications relating to the trials of Coleman, Ireland, Pickering, and Grove (1679) ; of Sir J. Fenwick for high treason (1606) ; of Father Garnett, (1606); of Green, Berry, and Hill, for the murder of Sir Edmond- bury Godfrey (1679) and of the Earl of Strafford (1640). Perhaps a completer notion of the riches of the library will be afforded by a brief list of the books it possesses which were printed before the beginning of the last century. ^fredi Magni Vita \ Spelman, 1678. Allot (R.) England's Parnassus, 1600. This is a memora- ble volume of elegant extracts from Chapman, Churchyard, and other Elizabethan poets, amongst them Shakespere. Ammianus Marcellinus a M. Accursio mendis quinque millibus purgatus. — Augsburg, 1533. The first complete edition of this author. Angler's Vade Mecum, n.d., and 1689. Arcana Aulica, or Walsingham's Manual, 1652. Book Rarities of the Warrington Museum. 267 Argumentum Anti-Normanicum, 1682. The author seeks to prove that WilHam the Norman's title was not by con- quest, but from the election of the people. This, when the book was written, had more than a speculative interest, for the right divine of Kings to govern wrong was strenuously asserted. Aristoteles de Poetica, 1696. Art of Contentment, 1694. Bacon (Lord). Essays, 1639. Essays and Wisdom of the Ancients, 1696; History of Henry VII., 1641 ; Speeches, 1657 ; Sylva Sylvarum, 1635 and 1658. Bacon (Nicholas). Uniformity of the Government, 1647. Baron (R). Mirza, a tragedie. Bate (John). Mysteries of Nature and Art, 1654. This work was first printed in 1634, and, being popular, was re-issued in 1635, 1638, and 1654. In some limping verses addressed to the " ingenious J. B.," by Jas. Bernard, we are told that the book served a seven years' apprenticeship, in which the author's " wrong " blasted the buds of his " rathe- ripe nature," — a Shakespearian word. J. B. leads off with water works, and tells us how the ingenious artist may con- struct a " conceited pot out of which, being just filled with wine and water, you may drink pure wine apart, or pure water, or else both together," and if none of these " three courses " suit, then must you be hard to please. He teaches, moreover, a device " whereby several voyces of birds cherp- ing may be heard," and another, " wliereby the figure of a man, standing on a basis, shall be made to sound a trumpet." There are directions for making a "conceited" lamp. 268 Cheshire Gleanings. weather glasses, a water clock with a skeleton pointing to the hour with a dart, water mills, windmills, and " calls " for imitating various birds and animals. These " calls " were then imported from France, and usually sold in " long white boxes," each box containing instruments for imitating the sounds made by a " cuckoo, a peacock, a bittern, a levrat, a stag, a quail, a small bird, a hare, a drake, a hedge- hog, and a fox." J. B., fired with a patriotic ardour, tells how each of these may be made. " An Irishman I have seen, which I much wonder at, imitate with his mouth the whistling of a blackbird, a nightingale, and lark, yea, almost every small bird as exquisitely almost as the very birds themselves ; and all by his cunning holding the artificial blade of an onyon in his mouth." Escaping from the watery division of his book we are next invited to behold J. B.'s fireworks, and wheels, drakes, balloons, &c., are seen fizzing away. Then taking us into his studio, he shows ingenious persons the art of " drawing, limning, colouring, painting, and graving." The tools for the last were to be made of "good crossebow Steele." The work is illustrated with woodcuts, some of them poor enough, but others vigorous alike in design and execution. We turn to see what J. B. has to say on wood engraving. He complains that it is tedious, and has many difficulties, but " for those incon- veniences an artist may finde in the practice thereof, this one commodity he shall gaine : he shall be private in his designes ; for he himself may print them when they are cut ; nor shall they be exposed to the view of every stationer that frequent upon all occasions the housen of common Book Rarities of the Warrijigton Museum. 269 workmen, whereby one receiveth much injury and vexation." The last section, teaching the "manner of printing your wooden pieces " looks as though it were addressed not to artists, but to amateur poets or dramatists. The fourth part is called the " Booke of Extravagants." These are recipes and suggestions of every sort. One recommends a candle fixed in a glass vase and sunk under water. The effect of this is supposed to be that "all the fishes neere unto it will resort about it, as amazed at so glorious a sight," and so are easily taken with "a cast net or other." Another tells "how to make birds drunk so that you may take them with your hands." For bleeding at the nose a live toad may be hung about the patient's neck : he will then (not unnaturally) " be in a sodain fear." If you happen to wear a felt hat, and also happen to cut yourselves, the remedy is easy ; a piece of your hat burnt to a coal and beaten to a powder will staunch the bleed, if we may credit J. B. For rupture he recommends powder made from nine snails baked alive. J Ignorance and quackery are always cruel. Bede. History of the Church of Englande. Antwerp, 1565- Biondi (Sir Francis — i.e., Gio Fr. Biondi) History of the Civill Warres of England between the two Houses of Lan- caster and Yorke, WTitten in Italian in three volumes. Englished by the Right Honourable Henry Earl of Mon- mouth. Lond., 1 64 1, folio. The author was a Dalmatian prot^gt^ of James I., and came into England with Marc Antonio de Dominis. Biondi was the author of other works which were thought worthy of being Englished. Like their 2/0 Cheshire Gleanings. author, whose conversion was rewarded by a pension, they have passed out of the sight of the busy world. Blondel (David), Pindar and Horace compared, 1696. This is the translation by Sir Edward Sherburne. Blount, (Sir T. P.) Remarks upon Poetry, 1694. Boate, (G.) Ireland's Natural History, 1652. Boethius. Consolations of Philosophy, 1695. Boyle (Hon. R.) Motives to the Love of God, 1661 ; Style of the Holy Scriptures, 1663. Burnet (Gilbert). Four Discourses, 1694. Burnet (T.) Theory of the Earth, 1691. Casaubon (M.) De Quatuor Linguis, Part I., 1650. Casimir's Odes. Translated by G. H. Hils, 1646. Few readers will now obey the injunction : — " List then to the all quickening lyre Of Horace and of Casimire." So far as the last-named is concerned, Horace lives, but the name of Casimir, as his equal in poetry, will not occur to many. Matthias Cassimir Sarbiewski was a Jesuit of the sixteenth century, whose " Odes " led Urban VIII. to select him for the task of correcting the hymns in the new Breviary. He became a professor at Wilna, and at his reception as doctor, Ladislas V., who was there, took a ring from his finger and presented it to the poet, who soon after became the King's preacher. His conversational powers made him a great favourite with the prince. His poems are sometimes ridiculous, and his epigrams appear pointless. He died in 1640, fortunately before completing a projected epic in twelve Book Rarities of the Warrington Museitm. 271 books. The former reputation of an indifferent versifier like Casimir, and the utter forgetfulness of posterity regard- ing him are suggestive. How many of the popular literary idols of the present day will escape for two centuries from the surging waves of oblivion ? Charles I. Eikon Basilike, n.d., Pious Politician, 1684. Chaucer (G.) Works, 1602. This is the second issue of the edition put forth by Thomas Speight. Clarke (S.) Lives of eminent persons, 1683. fo. Coke (Sir E.) Institutes, pt. 3., 1660. Cressy (H. P. S. de) Church History of Brittany, 1668. Dennis (John) Remarks on Blackmore's "Prince Arthur," 1694. An equal fate has come upon the stupid epic poetaster and his irate critic. Drake (Thomas). Bibliotheca Scholastica Instructissima, or a treasury of ancient adagies and sentatious proverbs, selected out of the English, Greeke, Latine, French, Italian, and Spanish, 1654. It was first issued in 1633, and though not of such value as the work of Florio is still a very interest- ing collection. Drayton (Michael). Poems, 1630. Polyolbion, 161 3. Dryden (J.), of Dramatick Posie, 1688. Duns Scotus. Questiones Quodlibetales purgatse per T. Penketh, 1474. This has already been mentioned. Euclid. Elements. Rudd, 165 1. Eusebius. Chronicon, latine, Venetiis, 1483. Fairfax (E.) Godfrey of Bulloigne. 1600. — This is the first edition of the finest translation of Tasso. Fanshaw (Sir R.) II Pastor Fido of Guarini. 1647. 2/2 C he s J lire Gleanings. Fenwick (Sir J.) Proceedings against, 1698. Fer (N. de) Introduction a la Fortification, fo. [1691.] Florio Second Frutes, London. 1591- — Good John Florio is said to figure in Shakspere's Love's Labours Lost as Holoferness, the delightful pedantic Dominie ingenuously boasting that he has " simple, simple ; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehen- sions, motions, revolutions ; these are begot on the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion." There must in the conversation of that golden age have been many "mel- lowing of occasions " for some of the six thousand Italian proverbs of this volume. One of the very few authentic autographs of Shakspere is on a copy of Florio's translation of Montaigne : from which the great dramatist, it is supposed, took one of the passages in the " Tempest." Florio was also the author of a dictionary notable for its copiousness. Foord (Emanuel.) Famous History of Montelion, 1695. Ford (J.) Broken Heart, 1633. — This is the first edition of this famous play. Gazophylacium Anglicanum, 1689. — This has been the autograph of Narcissus Luttrell, who was its owner in 1691. The book is one of the earliest of our English Etymological Dictionaries. Gerarde (J.) Herball, 1636. — This fine work, although belonging to an age when scientific botany scarcely existed, will always have an enduring interest. It contains careful woodcuts and striking word paintings of many of the plants, and all kinds of information respecting their folk lore and uses. Book Rarities of the Warrington Miisenm. 273 Glanvil (R.) Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus regni Anglie, n.d, Gr^vius (J. G.) Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanorum, 1694-9. — With the companion work of Gronovius on Greek Antiquities and continuations respecting Italy and Sicily, making altogether 47 volumes in folio. Greene (R.) Never too late, [16 16.] Grotius (H.) Rights of Peace and War, 1682. Truth of Christian Religion, 1686. This famous treatise 'done' into verse ! Harrison (W.) Difference of Hearers, 16 14. Already named. Harvey (G.) Anatomy of Consumptions, 1666. Head (R.) Proteus Redivivus : or the Art of Wheedling, 1765 — The subject matter of this work has by no means passed, as my Lord Verulum phrases it, from the bosoms and businesses of men. De Quincey wrote a suggestive essay on murder as one of the fine arts, but how much more striking are the claims of wheedling to that distinguished position. Who has not recognised the fact when the subject of some skilful operation of a master hand ? Heinsius (D.) Histoire du Siege de Bolduc, 163 1. — This is one of the few examples of the Elzevir press in the library. In place of being one of the pretty little books which they delighted in printing it is a folio. Herle (C.) Wisdomes Tripos, 1655. Herrick (R.) Hesperides, 1648. Historians Guide, [circa, 1690.] Hollar's (W.) Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus, or the 2/4 Cheshire Gleanings. Severall Habits of English Women, from the Nobilitie to Country Woman, as they are in these times, 1640. — This is Sayer's re-issue of Wenceslaus Hollar's famous plates. Like all the work of the engraver it is full of character, and apart from its artistic interest it shows us our great-great-great grandmothers in their habit as they lived. The persistent attempts of the daughters of Eve to disguise their beauty by unbecoming dress are not more conspicuous than the manner in which Nature defeats their efforts. The plates show us the use of the mask as a not unusual article of costume. These black vizards call up fair Hero or Rosalind, and the Princess of France, wittily flouting their disguised lovers. Homer. — Chapman's translation, 161 6; Hobbes' transla- tion, 1686. Hooke (R.) Microgaphia, 1665. Horace. — Poems, 1666; translated by Fanshaw, 1652. Howel (W.) History of the World, 1680-5. Hugo de S. Victore de Sacramentis. Argentine, 1483. James I. Works, 1620 (?) Jenkin (D.) Works, 1648. Juvenal and Persius — translated by Holyday, 1673. Keepe (H.) Monumenta Westmonasteriensia, 1682. Kyd (T.) Spanish Tragedy, 1633. Lucan. Pharsalia — translated by May, 1631. Luther on Galatians, 1602. Mainwaring (Sir T.) Reply to an Answer to the Defence of Amicia, 1673. Marzioli (F.) Precetti Militari, n.d. Book Rarities of the Warrington Musenm. 275 May (T.) Reign of Edward III, 1635. Meres (F.) Wits Commonwealth, n.d. Miege (G.) Great French Dictionary, 1687. Milton (J.) Paradise Lost, 1678; Poems, ^^-j/ edition 1645, 1673; Defence of the People of England, 1692; History of England, 1670. The library has also some interesting works relating to Milton. There are the fine edition printed by Baskerville, the impudent publication in which Lauder, on the evidence of forged documents, brought a ridiculous charge of plagiarism against the dead poet, and the books by Toland. Monro (R.) Expedition with the Scots Regiment, 1637. Nalson (I.) State Affairs, 1682-3. Negociation de la Paix, Avril et Mai, 1575. Paris, 1576. Nuntius a Mortuis : or a Messenger from the dead. That is a stupendious [sic] and dreadfull colloquie distinctly and alternately heard by divers, betwixt the ghosts of Henry the Eighth and Charles the First, both kings of England, who lye entombed in the Church of Windsor. Wherein (as with a pencill from heaven) is liquidly from head to foot set forth, the whole series of the judgment of God upon the Sinnes of these unfortunate Islands. Translated out of the Latin copie by G. T., and printed at Paris MDCLVIL— This curious title may bring to mind the ample promise to be seen outside the dramatic booth of a country fair. The tract is one however of considerable interest, and has been reprinted in the quarto edition of the Harleian Miscellany. The imprint is fictitious. Novum Tcstamentum Bczac, 16S6, 2/6 Cheshire Gleanings. Osborne (F.) Works, 1683. Otway (T.) Venice Preserved, 1681. Ovid. Metamorphosis, translated by G. Sandys, 1656. Paul. Historic of the Council of Trent, 1620. Plautus. Comedies, translated by Echard, 1694. Pliny. Historic of the World, 1601, Poole (J.) English Parnassus, 1677. Quarles (F.) Enchiridion, n.d. Raleigh (Sir W.) Arts of Empire, 1692. History of the World, 1 62 1, 1666. Ross (A.) History of the World, 1652. Muse's Inter- preter, 1648. View of all Religions, 1653. Rushworth's Historical Collections, 1689. Rymer (T.) Short View of Tragedy, 1693. Sadeur (J.) New Discovery of the Southern World, 1693. Sandys (G.) Travels, 1673. Scobell (H.) Acts and Ordinances of Parliament, 1658. Selden (J.) Table Talk, 1689. Seneca. Morals, translated by L'Estrange, 1688. Shakspere. Poems, 1640. Shirley (J.) Poems, 1646. Sheppard (W.) Office and Duties of Constables (circa 1650.) Speed (J.) Historie of Great Britain, 1623. Whole Practice of Chirurgery, 1687. Tacitus. Opera, 1629. Annales, translated by Greene- way, 1598. End of Nero, &c., by Savile, 1598. Tamerlane the Great, Life of, 1653. Taylor (J.) Holy Dying, 165 1. Book Rarities of the Warrington Mnseuin. 277 Talor (T.) Works, 1659. The Way to Make all People Rich ; or Wisdom's Call to Temperance and Frugality.— By Philotheus Physiologus. London, 1685. — We may well ask is Saul among the prophets when we find the value of the book has received a glowing testimonial ft-om Mrs. Aphra Behu, who is not usually reckoned as one of the Wise Virgins. Her Muse declares regret for That happy golden age when man was young, When the whole race was vigorous and strong; When nature did her wondrous dictates give, And taught the noble salvage how to live. The " noble salvage " we have come in this Iron Age to regard as an impostor, nor are we much more charitable to Mrs. Aphra, whose books, it is credibly asserted, were once read by ladies without blushing. Very different was tlie character of the enthusiast whom the " fair moralist " com- mends. Thomas Tryon was almost as great a puzzle to his contemporaries as Roger Crab, the English Hermit, and like him, was a modern Pythagorean of the vegetarian school. Of course the destructive critics assert that the great Greek did not avoid flesh meat. At all events, Tryon did, and wrote many books, most of them wise according to the wisdom of the time, and some of them beyond it. Ussher (J.) Body of Divinitie, 1647. Venables (R.) Experienced Angler, 1638. Vindication of the Friendly Conference against Ellwood, 1678. 2/8 Cheshire Gleanings. Virgil's Eclogues Translated into English. By W. L. Gent, 1628. — This version is attributed to William LTsle, who avers that he kept it in MS for three times the Horatian period. This would place its execution at the commence- ment of the 17th century. Waller (E.) Poems, 1668. Walton (I.) Life of Sanderson, 1678. Warrington (Earl of) Works, 1694. Winstanley (W.) Lives of English Poets, 1687. Wither's Motto, 1650. Wotton (Sir H.) Reliquiae Wottonianae, 165 1. The oldest relic of the typographic art in the Museum dates from 1461, and consists of two leaves from the Bible, supposed to have been printed in that year. The list is one which will be read with varying interest. Some of these books are pure ephemerals, and are now of value only so far as they indicate the manner in which our forefathers thought and expressed their thoughts. Others have an abiding interest for all lovers of our mother tongue, and the glories of literature which it contains. The least imaginative may find something to move the great deeps of thought when holding in his hands a volume which Milton or Shakspere may have held in the same manner. It is well then that libraries should aim at possessing books in those forms in which they are the living voices of the age, but also in their original dress. Some of these children of the brain have survived their creators four hundred years. Being dead they yet speak. THE UNDUTIFUL CHILD PUNISHED. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land. Exodus xx. 12. HERE is a greatly promising title, given in Mr. Halliwell's "Notices of Fugitive Tracts," p. 52 :— "The Afflicted Parents, or the Undutiful Child Punished, showing how a gentleman living in the city of Chester had two children, a son, and a daughter who was about two years younger than the son ; how the girl gave good advice to her brother, how he rejected it, and knocked her down, left her for dead, and then went away; how an angel appeared to him, and how he discovered the murder, was taken up, tried, cast, and condemned to die ; showing how he was executed with two highwaymen, hung, cut down, put into his coffin, carried home, and, preparing for his funeral, how he came to life again ; how he sent for a minister, and discovered to him several strange things, which, after he had related, was executed a second time for a warning to all disobedient children." Let us hope they all took warning by his sad fate. The prospect of two hangings must have been the strongest form of the " deterring influence " of capital punishment. DR. JOHN FERRIAR. By medicine life may be prolonged, yet Death will seize the doctor too. Shakespere. AMONGST those born or adopted sons of the cotton metropolis who have shed lustre upon Manchester, and redeemed it from the guilt of an utter Philistine pursuit of gold, we may give an honourable place to Dr. John Ferriar. He was born at Chester in 1764, and died at Manchester in 18 1 5, annus mirabilis. When we add that he was for many years physician to the Manchester Infirmary, the biographical details remaining to us of his busy career are almost exhausted. The real life of our author must be sought for, and will be found in his books. From these we may picture him to have been a man of well-balanced mind, with a keen practical intellect, and a memory well stored with learning, much of which was of a recondite nature. He was the author of a drama published or printed about 1788. This we have never seen ; but, as it was merely an adaptation of " Oronooko," it cannot have had any very great importance. Dr. John Ferriar. 281 His "Theory of Apparitions" appeared in 1813, and is a sensible essay on a subject which, by its obscurity, has been an El Dorado to designing individuals who have traded upon the credulity of mankind. The illusions of "pro- phets," visionaries, and seers ; " of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire," are intelligently and intelligibly explained. His "Essay on Foxglove" (Manchester, 1799) has only a medical interest. His "Medical Histories" (i 792-1 798, 3 vols.) were of course chiefly intended for the members of his own profession, but incidentally they are valuable as showing the commencements of sanitary science. The epidemic fevers arising from the wretched manner in which the poor were housed at a time when cellar dwellings were the refuge of improvidence and impecuniosity, and when factories were managed with little or no attention to the physical well-being of those employed in them. The kind- hearted doctor saw and deplored the evils around him, and some of his suggestions have since been advantageously carried out. His essay on the treatment of the dying (vol. iii., p. 191) may well be epitomised in the words he has selected as its motto : — " Disturb him not — let him pass '' peaceably." Like Montaigne, he doubts the terrors of death, and thinks that with many dissolution is preluded by a wish for absolute rest. Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life doth greatly please. There is an odd opinion of the vulgar that it is necessary for 282 Cheshire Gleanings. the happy despatch of a lingering patient " to drag the bed away, and to place him on the mattrass." The " Medical Histories" were reprinted in 1810, Ferriar courted the muse, and is one of the first amongst the poets of the Bibliomania. The epistle which he addressed to Richard Heber, the famous collector, will long retain a warm corner in the hearts of collectors. The quality of his verse, on a theme so dear to bookish men, may be judged from the following lines ; — Ye towers of Julius, ye alone remain Of all the piles that saw our nation's stain, When Harry's sway opprest the groaning realm, And Lust and Rapine seiz'd the wav'ring helm. Then ruffian bands defaced the sacred fanes, Their saintly statues and their storied panes. Then from the chest, with ancient art embost, The Penman's pious scrolls were rudely tost ; Then richest manuscripts, profusely spread. The brawny churl's devouring oven fed ; And thence collectors date the heavenly ire, That wrapt Augusta's domes in sheets of fire. (The Bibliomania. An epistle to Richard Heber, Esq. London, 18 10. 4to.) The book by which he is best known is the " Illustrations of Sterne," which originated in a series of papers read before the Literary and Philosophical Society. (Several interesting papers of his, relating to Science and Archaeology, are printed in the early volumes of the Memoirs of that Society.) The Sterne papers were ex- panded, ^^and form agreeable reading, even for those who are not specially interested in tracking the thefts of Sterne, and Dr. John Ferriar. 28; restoring to their rightful owners the gems and the inde- cencies he appropriated with so Uberal a hand. They were printed in 1768, and again in 1812. We have used here the earUer edition. The essays which follow the illustrations to Sterne illus- trate the depth and variety of the author's acquirements. They unite the knowledge of the pedant to the ease of the man of the world. The paper on " Certain Varieties of Men " relates to the stories of pigmies, monsters, and tailed men, which have been the property of the Munchausens alike of ancient and modern times. The Church having affirmed or implied the existence of these human horrors it may be thought wrong to doubt. The learned Bishop Majolus determines the important question, An monstra salidis cRtertKZ capacia ? in the affirmative, on the strength of an assertion of St. Augustine, that he had "preached to a nation without heads, and with eyes in their breasts." This reference to the Acephali, Dr. Ferriar says, has been re- trenched in the modern editions of the great Latin father. On Monboddo's tail theory he has some sensible remarks, and keenly asks : " Do we not want good observers rather than new facts ? " His Menippean essay on the English histo- rians, and his short disquisition on genius, show the same measure of acuteness and learning. The volume closes with two poems, one of which claims a place in the literature of Tobacco. It is an elegy on Knaster, and is thus intro- duced : — "The following elegy was written to rally a particular friend on his attachment to German Tobacco and German 284 Cheshire Gleanings. literature. It is well known to the learned that the Tobacco chiefly smoked by philosophers in Germany is denominated Knaster ; but it may be necessary to apprise the reader that when this poem was composed the fragrant weed was sold in covers, marked as low-priced tea, for the purpose of evading the excise laws. The subject did not appear considerable enough to excite the sympathy of the public, till I found that Professor Kotzebue had founded the distress of a serious comedy on a similar incident. In his " Indians in England " (see the German Miscellany, by Mr. Benjamin Thompson) he represents an amiable baronet overwhelmed with affliction from the want of a pot of porter and a pipe of Tobacco. Convinced of my error by the approbation with which his work has been received I have ventured to draw my elegy from the heap of my papers, and to produce it, with some slight alterations, and with the sup- pression of all personal allusions. / Deep in a den, conceal'd from Phoebus' beams. Where neighb'ring Irwell leads his sable streams, Where misty dye-rooms fragrant scents bestow, And fires more fierce than love for ever glow, Damsetas sate ; his drooping head opprest By heavy care, hung sullen on his breast : His idle pipe was thrown neglected by. His books were tumbled, and his curls awry. Beneath, the furnace sighed in thicker smoke, Each loom return'd his gi'oans with double stroke ; In mournful heaps around his fossils lay, And each sad crystal shot a wat'ry ray. "Ah, what," he cry'd, "avails an honoured place. Or what the praise of learning's hectic race. Dr. John Ferriar. 285 In vain, to boast my well-instructed eyes, I dip in buckets, or in baskets rise ; Now plung'd, like Hob, to sprawl in dirty wells, Now bent, with demon forms, in murky cells. Or where columnar salts enchant the soul. Or starry roofs enrich the northern pole. Not me th' adjacent furnace can delight That cheers, with chemic gleam, the languid night ; In vain my crystals boast their angles true, In vain my port presents the genuine hue ; Nor spars nor wine my spirits can restore, ^/My Knaster's out, and pleasure is no more. To German books for refuge shall I fly ? •/ Without my Knaster these no bliss supply. Here in light tomes grave Meinirs, prone to pore. Like thin bank-notes, confines a weighty store ; Here Burgher's muse, with ghostly terrors pale, Runs " hurry-skurry " thro' her nursery tale ; Here Huon loves, while wizard thunders roll, Here Gorgon-Schiller petrifies the soul. Crell's sooty chemists here their lights impart ; Here Tallas, skilled in every barbarous art. In vain to me each shining page is spread, Without Tobacco ne'er composed, nor read ; Who Knaster loves not, be he doomed to feed With Caffres foul, or suck Virginia's weed. At morn I love segars, at noon admire The British compound, pearly from the fire ; / But Knaster, always Knaster, is my song. In studious gloom, or 'mid th' assembly's throng. Let pompous Bruce describe in boastful style, The wondrous springs of fertilising Nile. Fool ! for so many restless years to roam. To drink such water as we find at home. 286 Cheshire Gleanmgs. And know, to end his long, romantic dreams, That Nile arises— much like other streams. Far other streams let me discover here, Of yellow grog, or briskly-sparkling beer ! But more my glory, more my pride, to see My Knaster cas'd, with pious fraud, like tea ; Glad soars the muse, and crowing claps her wings, At my discovery, hid, like his, from kings. Some chase the fair, some dirty grubs employ, And some the ball, and some the race enjoy. Cooper the courting sciences denies. And from their envied love to bleaching flies. Let serious fiddling nobler mind engage, Or dark black-letter charm the studious sage ; I'd envy none their rattles, could I sit To feast on Knaster and Teutonic wz7." Lo, while I speak the furnace red decays, And coy by fits the modest moonbeam plays, Which thro' yond' threat'ning clouds that bode a shower, Just tips with tender light the old church tower; Now wlieels the doubtful bat in blund'ring rings, Now "half-past" ten the doleful watchman sings. To-morrow Bower supplies my fav'rite store — My Knaster's out, and I can watch no more. Farewell, good doctor ! If we may not admire him as a great poet, we can at least reverence him as one who did the duty nearest hand, and was earnest in his endeavour to take from the life of the poor man some of its dreariness and danger. CHESHIRE AND LANCASHIRE DIALECTS IN THE EARLIER PART OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Rude am I in my speech. Shakespere. WHEN engaged in the compilation of a bibliography of works in the Lancashire dialect I was not aware of the existence of some remarks on the differences between the folk speech of the county of Tim Bobbin, and that of Cheshire, in one of the many publications of Charles Hulbert. As his " Cheshire Antiquities " (Shrewsbury and Providence Grove, 1838) is not very common now it may be worth while to transfer his observations. " Of the Cheshire and Lancashire dialects the editor of the present work can speak experimentally, having from many years' residence in each county, a practical know- ledge of their respective peculiarities; the chief distinc- tion in the dialects of the two counties which he had observed are, viz., in the former county, Cheshire — the Hou in House is pronounced Aye very hard, as in the 288 Cheshire Gleanings. adverb Aye, being Aye-ce. In Lancashire the same is pro- nounced Heawse, the Hou being pronounced Heaw. The same difference occurs in Coiv, Now., House, &c. In the vicinity of Halton, Cows are called Keigh, or, Keye, ^ whereas they are Keaws in Lancashire ; in pronouncing Calves, Kawves, they both agree ; so in Head, Yed; Hand, Hond ; Belly, Bally ; Rightly, Gratheley ; aching, Wartch- ing ; Water, Weyter ; Father, Fey i her, &c., &c. "Their customs at Easter, Christmas, marling-time, wakes, &c., very nearly resemble each other, exhibiting much of the Saxon character, notwithstanding the great Norman influence, which for ages existed, especially in the county of Chester. " The following short dialogue between a farmer's servant maid, a native of Cheshire, and a young man, her fellow servant, but a native of Lancashire, will more particularly illustrate the distinction which exists, and also the very considerable distance each particular dialect appears to be from the present English language. But all these Provin- cialisms, and remains of Antiquity, are fast hastening to ' oblivion; education will eventually destroy the ancient distinctive character in the dialects and habits of the two I. counties. All who have seen or known but little of the lower orders in each, must have observed that a consider- able degree of archness, or rustic wit is prevalent among the labouring classes in Cheshire and Lancashire, and also in all the adjoining counties : seldom is conversation continued without some joking, or quizzing, relative to courtship and marriage. Cheshire and Lancashire Dialects. 289 Dialogue. Servatit Maid. — Hey, hey, Dick, where arr e gooink e sitch o hurry, wot connot e stop a minnit? Aye, yone bin aye-t oth Haye-ce au neet, cooarting Meg Midgley, I con see beh yor een. Servant Man. — Neaw, I anno bin eawt oth Heawse afore neaw, — aum gooink after the Keaws and Kauves, that an brocken into eawer messter's kurn feelt. Theau may cut my yed off, if e ha put my hond on Meg o Midgley, sin au dipt thee. Servant Maid. — That's lung sin — au seen o better mon than thee, — thaygh thinks Meg's feythur has Keigh and Kawves, so tha shannet tutch me ogen, goo after the Keigh. Translation. Servant Maid. — Ah, ah, Dick, where are you going in such a hurry, what, cannot you stop a minute ? Yes, you have been out of the House all night, courting Margaret Midgley, I can see by your eyes. Servant Man. — No, I have not been out of the House before now, — I am going after the Cows and Calves which have broken into my master's corn fields. You may cut my head off if I have put my hand on Margaret Midgley, since I put my arms around you. Servant Maid. — That is long since — I have seen a better man than you — and you think Margaret's father has Cows and Calves, — so you shall not touch me again — go after the Cattle:' T 290 Cheshire Gleanings. It will be noticed that the girl alludes to an old custom — now thought to be more honoured in the breach than in the observance, of courting by night. This had considerable analogy with the "bundling" formerly in vogue alike in Wales and New England. r%^ SAMUEL HIBBERT-WARE. With sharpened sight pale antiquaries pore, Th' inscription value, but the rust adore. Pope. Aloral Essay. Ep. V. AMONGST those connected by residence, though not by birth, with the county of Chester, we must include the name of Dr. Samuel Hibbert-Ware. Although his name is not familiar to the present generation he was a man whose substantial work alike in archaeology and in science deserved a memorial. He was a native of Manchester (where he was born 2ist April, 1782), but passed many years of his life in Edinburgh, when the intellectual brilliance of its social coteries earned for it the title of the Modern Athens. In the course of a long and busy life he did much — very much — to elucidate the history and archaeology of his native county; he made some important discoveries in geology, one of which proved to have commercial as well as scientific interest; and he put forth a carefully con- sidered theory of apparitions. As a wTiter he was con- 292 Cheshire Gleanings. scientious and painstaking ; and, perhaps as a consequence, much of his work has not suffered by the lapse of time, which sometimes makes such cruel havoc of that which once was highly valued. It is, therefore, satisfactory to find that a notice of his life has been undertaken by reverent and loving hands. ( " The Life and Correspondence of the late Samuel Hibbert-Ware." By Mrs. Hibbert-Ware. Man- chester : Cornish, 1882.) The first part of Mrs. Hibbert- Ware's book will be chiefly interesting to her readers in Lancashire and Cheshire. Thus she gives so much information as to the social con- dition of Manchester and its district from the close of the rebellion of 1745 to the beginning of the present century, that the birth of the hero is not recorded until we reach the ninety-third page. This is not a subject for complaint, as the matter is good and well stated. While at school, Samuel Hibbert formed the acquaintance of a man who to the visible occupation of a handloom weaver added the unstated but probably more lucrative practice of poaching. The old fellow told the boy wonderful stories, of which he had an ample store, and in return listened with intense interest to his boyish companion as he read chapter by chapter the en- trancing narrative of the " The Pilgrim's Progress." When a young man, Hibbert had thoughts of the army, and served for some years in the militia. Then he studied medicine at Edinburgh, and, after graduating, discovered the presence of chromate of iron in the Shetland Islands, which gained him the gold medal of the Society of Arts, and involved him in some unpleasant disputes. He became secretary of the Samuel Hibhcrt- Ware. 293 Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and engaged in a great variety of archaeological and scientific investigations. He was thrice married ; and in his second wife found an intelli- gent and enthusiastic fellow student, especially in his favourite science of geology. His latter years were spent at Hale Barns, in Cheshire. It was there that he had the misfortune to read in the Times of the dreadful death of his son, a young and promising surgeon in the Bombay Army. Dr. Hibbert, who assumed his mother's name of Ware, died at Hale Barns on December 30, 1848, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. Mrs. Ware's narrative is easy, flowing, and eminently readable. She succeeds in impressing the reader with the individuality of the subject of her work, so that we know him not only as the grave historian and the penetrating man of science, but as the absorbed scholar, usually as careless of the external world as Dominie Sampson himself. Of this some ludicrous examples are given. " One day he had been working very hard, quite uninter- ruptedly except at meal-times — for literary men, like all other men, must eat— and, when supper-time arrived, he was called down. Mr. Golland's family were already seated round the table when he walked into the room and took the seat left vacant for him. Mrs. Golland helped him to what he liked, and his plate was placed before him; but, instead of taking up his knife and fork, he sat gazing wistfully at the smoking viands. Mr. and Mrs. Golland looked wonderingly at him for a few moments. At last Mr. Golland said, ' Doctor, won't you put down those books and papers and take your 294 Cheshire Gleanings. supper ? ' The spell that bound him was at once broken. He had come down from his room with a lot of books and papers under his arm, and thus encumbered had sat down to supper, but so absorbed in his work was he that he could not tell what prevented him handling his knife and fork" (p. 285). Beyond his scientific papers, Dr. Hibbert-Ware's most important writings were his " Description of the Shetland Islands" (Edinburgh, 1822); "Sketches of the Philosophy of Apparitions" (Edinburgh, 1824) ; "Customs of a Manor in the North of England" (Edinburgh, 1822); " History of the Foundations of Manchester" (Manchester, 1828-48, 4 vols.); " Memorials of the Rebellion of Lancashire in 17 15." Considering that Dr. Hibbert was the friend of Sir Walter Scott, of the other great lights of the Northern capital, and of many men eminent in literature and science, the corres- pondence now printed is hardly so important as might have been expected. The letters relating to scientific subjects should have been submitted to some friendly revision. As the impression has been limited to 250 copies, the work is one that must always be, in a certain sense, rare, and it will be sought for by those who are interested in the social history of Manchester and of Edinburgh. After all critical deductions have been made, Mrs. Hibbert- Ware's book is a pleasant record of a man whose strong individuality sometimes verged on eccentricity, whose ability was shown by important work in very diverse fields, and whose life— which nearly reached the span of three score years and ten— was devoted to the advancement of science and learning. A CHESHIRE CHESTERFIELD. A moral, sensible and well-bred man Will not affront me, and no other can. CowPER, Conversation. THE inner life of society in all ages is governed by a code not less real because often impalpable and unex- pressed. New-comers and those not to the manner born inevitably betray themselves. There are common principles which must govern the intercourse of all classes from the lowest to the highest, but when the claims of courtesy and consideration have been satisfied there remain many things which in one circle are permitted and in others tabooed. The anxiety to know the " manners of good society " is sufficiently attested by the publication of numerous manuals intended to initiate the neophyte into all the niceties of the methods of that narrow section of humanity, which styles itself, and is styled, the world. Whether such publications, from Chesterfield downwards, do prevent infractions of the " social law " may perhaps be 296 CJiesJdre Gleanings. open to doubt, but they form curious documents in the history of manners. For this reason it is worth while to call attention to some hints written by a Cheshire nobleman of the last generation. It appears that some fifty years ago, Mrs. Patterson- Bonaparte, with a view to obtaining the best guidance possible, induced Lord Cholmondeley to draw up a series of rules for the guidance of those who wished to avoid what- ever was then thought, in the best English society, to be vulgarity. The document has been carefully preserved, and was printed in the New York Nation (June 28, 1883). It is as follows : — Say shooting, and not gunning ; coachman, not driver. Say drive, not ride, if it be in a carriage. Say drawing-room, not parlour. Say glass of water. Say he doesn't, not he don't ; apple tart, not apple pie. You must not say, "I have dined off ham," or off anything. Say give me some Madeira or sherry," but never add wine. It is not vulgar to say " port wine." Never utter the word victuals. Avoid the word elegant on all occasions. No one ever says genteel, dashing, or elegant — words entirely excluded from good com- pany. Be sure you never send your knife and fork when you send your plate to be served a second time. Do not put your knife into your mouth. Do not carve with your own knife. Do not put your knife into the butter or salt, or anything which is destined for another. Do not ask for a piece or slice or cut of anything ; say, " May I trouble you for some of the beef, ham, turkey," etc. Hunting means A ChesJiire Chesterfield. 297 riding after hounds ; shooting, kiUing with a gun. Never say "people of quality," but "persons or people of rank." Never say "My Lady," it is never used except by footmen. Avoid saying Sir, Ma'am, or Madam — you may say it in a public coach or in the street. Do not call a surgeon " Doc- tor," but " Mr." in speaking to him or of him ; you may call a physician "Doctor." You must not say "send for a doctor," but "send for a physician." Eat fish, fruit, and vegetables with a fork. Break your bread at dinner ; never cut it. Say a fortnight, not two / iveeks. Say autumn not fall. Say " I shall get cold," not I will, etc. Say a lady-like or gentleman-like, or nice, or agreeable person, but never use the expression genteel person. Say clergyman, never parson. Parson is never used but as a term of ridicule when applied to Methodists, etc. Say lilac, not laylock. Say a pain in the chest, not a pain in the breast. Say ill, unwell, indisposed, never sick. Direct your letters to Thomas Brown, Esq., never to Mr. Brown, unless he is a tradesman. If you do not know his Christian name make a dash, thus : Brown, Esq. Seal with wax, never with wafer, unless you are writing to low people. Use blotting-paper, never sand. Do not ask people how their brother, father, mother, son, sister, daughter is. Speak of them by their names or titles. Say hall, not passage, unless it be a back one. Say street door, not front door. Do not laugh loud or rub your hands or show turbulent symptoms of any kind. Never use the word God ; do not say devil or devilish. Do not spit on the floor or in the chimney ; if obliged to spit let it be in your pocket-handkerchief. Do 298 Cheshire Gleanings. not pick your nose. Do not sit dose to or touch any one in any way. " May I trouble you ? " or " I will trouble you " for the salt. Never say " Please help me " to anything. Never say " I guess," or " I expect," for believe or suppose. Do not empty your egg into a glass. Do not crowd different things on to your plate. Expression of wonder or any great show of emotion is ungentlemanlike. Never pour your tea or coffee into the saucer. Do not put your spoon mto your tea-cup to signify you have done. Say James not Jeames. Never say old Mr. or old Mrs. Anybody. Do not speak through your nose, as most Americans do. The WTiter in the Nation very pertinently observes, that " Many of these instructions cannot have been of much use to Mrs. Bonaparte or her friends ; and most of them relate to such minute points that no one could possibly remember them all, unless they came to him as part of an inherited tradition. Some have no meaning out of England, as the distinction between physician and surgeon, and the instance upon apple " tart." Such rules could not have been applied as practical tests of good manners here, and cannot now. Most of them would not be recognised in England as furnishing infallible criteria. No Lord Cholmondeley of the present day would ever dream of sketching out such hard- and-fast tests as to details of behaviour. Refined people clearly perceive that vulgarians have rights in society which should be respected, and one of these is that their lives shall not be made miserable over such contemptible trifles as the trick of asking for 'a drink of water,' confusing ' will ' with A CJiesJiire Chesterfield. 299 ' shall,' or of putting their spoon in their tea-cup to show that they are 'through.' " There is happily less disposition now to insist upon unim- portant matters as the criteria of good manners, and greater play of individuality is tolerated, if not encouraged. The root of the matter lies in that fine saying of Emerson's, " good dues, 162 ; festivities and education, 166 Eaton, Samuel, his sermons on church government answered by Sir Thomas Aston, 312 Ebranke, King of Britain, 174 326 Index. Edgar, the Peaceful, 41 Edward I. lifted, 159 Egerton crest, 243 Elbows broken at church, 249 Elysian fields, 128 Epigram on Dr. Ogden, 318 Episcopacy, Cheshire petition against, 312 Epitaph on Dame Magdalene Aston, 311; on Sir John Chesshyre, 76 ; on Dean Ar- derne, 308 Evelyn, a Cheshire name, 54 Factory system, no Farquhar, George, quoted, 310 Ferriar, Dr. John, biographical notice, 280 Fight of the Thirty, 226 Fishing with a candle, 269 Florio and Shakspere, 272 Fool of Chester, 88 Football in Cheshire, 164, 165 " Fou faces and fancies," 162 Frances, Sir Henry, 169 Eraser, Dr., Bishop of Manchester, 3 Freeman, E. A., 40 French national convention, 183; revolution, 47 Fuller's account of Capt. Smith, 72 Furnivall, F. J., 210 Gambling houses open on Sunday, 182 Gardener who became a mission- ary, 190 Gaunt, John of, 75 Gawayne and the Green Knight, 261 Gay, John, quoted, 88 Genii of the classical world, 122 Genius of Avernus, 122 George and the Dragon stories, 216 Gerai-de's Herball, 272 Geraldines, legend of, 63 Giraldus Cambrensis' anecdote of a Jew, 184 Girl graduates, 42 Glendower, Owen, 63 Goldsmith quoted, 300 Grandmagne, Charles, born with- out arms, 222 Grant, James, curious mistake in his " Newspaper Press," loi Green Knight and Sir Gawayne, 261 Greg, Samuel, " Layman's Le- . gacy," 4 Grimm's "Deutsche Mythologie," 87 Hades and the lake of Avernus, Halifax waits, 177 Halliwell, James O., 37, 38, 68 Hallwood, birthplace of John Chesshyre, 76 Halsall, Dorothy, 20 Halsall, Jane, of Knowsley, 20 Halsall, Sir Cuthbert, 20 Halton ale, 173 Halton Library founded by Sir John Chesshyre, 75 Halton pass, 245 Hands, persons born without, 219 Hare, Augustus J. C , 3, 8, 39 Hariskandra selling himself, 1 17 Harold, Did he die at Chester? 39 Harold Legend, 68 Harrington's coterie, 306 Harrison, Thomas, 9 Harrison, William, of Hyton, 264 Hatfield, John, and the Beauty of Kuttermere, 142 Hawcroft, Joseph Mowbray. In Memoriam, 197 Hawker, Rev. R. S., plagiarism from his ballad of " Sir Beville," 230 Hay hanged, 247 , Index. 2>27 Heap, Rev. James, 315 Hemans, Felicia, 84 Hibbert-Ware, see Ware. Higgenett, Randall, and the Ches- ter plays, 212 Hilarius, the dramatist, 168 Holger, Danske legend, 66 Holmes, O. W., quoted, 262 Holt lions, 244 Holyoake, G. J., 109 Hornby's, William, scourge of drunkenness, 37; hornbook, 38 "Hudibras," 301 Hulbert, Charles, on Cheshire and Lancashire dialect, 287 ; on riding the stang, 300 Hull manorial custom, 119 Husenbeth, F. L., translation of Korner's Battle prayer, 106 Huskisson, W., death of, 4 Hyde, Bard of. J. C. Prince, 21 Iron, chromate of, 292 Irving, Washington, 67 "Jack of Dover," 88 Jacobites in Chester, 307-8 James I. entertained by Sir John Done, 178 " Jannacke of Lancashire," 173 Jews, early references, 1 84 John of the thumbs, 214 Johnson, Dr., on Broome's poetry, 303 Johnson, Ben, 44 Johnston, James Irving, born without arms, 225 Judgments for Sabbath-breaking, Julius Quintilianus, 122 Justin Martyr quoted, 177 Keats, John, 22, 26 Kingston, William, born without arms, 222 Knaster elegy, 283 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 77 KnoUes, Sir Robert, 228 Korner, K. T., and J. C. Prince, 103, 23 Kotzebue : Curious subjects of one of his plays, 284 Kronberg Castle, legend, 66 Lambertini, Madonna Lucrezia, 89 Lancashire and Cheshire dialects compared, 287 Lancashire soldiers, 97 Law, Bishop, 316 Lawyer's career, 316 Leigh deeds, 114 Leigh, Colonel Egerton, 58 Leigh, Major Egerton, 86 Leveque, Eugene, on the descent of Avernus, 128 Lewis, Monk, 60 Leycester, H., 319 Leycester, Rev. Oswald, 3 Leyden, Dr. John, 59 Ley, John, takes part in the Sunday controversy, 181 Library founded byDean Arderne, 308 ; founded by Sir John Cheshyre, 75 ; of Warrington Museum, 262 Lifting in Cheshire, 159 Lithgow, R. A. Douglas, 21, 22 Livingstone marries a daughter of Dr. Moffat, 195 Llwyd, Humphry, 214 Lockwood, Rev. John, vicar of Halton, 77 Longfellow quoted, 108, 1S4, 190, 321 Lupus, Hugh, 75 Lymm from Warburton, 245 Lymon hay, 245 Macaulay, Lord, and the colour of the army's clothing, 99 Macclesfield, 28, 31 ; figlit, 313 Mackie, Dr., 195 Madeley, C, 262 328 Index. Mahabharata, 128 Mahomet, 173 ; legend, 65 Mahon, Lord, on colour of the army's clothing, 99 Maid of Arts degree, 42 Malpas, a Jewish joke, 185 Manchester, Bishop of, 3 Manchester Crichton Club, 201 Manchester, Duke of, and the Lord's Day Act, 182 Manchester Free Library, frag- ment of Chester plays, 210 Manchester Grammar School, some distinguished scholars, 315 Mandeville, Sir John, 68 Man of straw, 120 Manx glen, 204 Marat. Was he a teacher at Warrington ? 45 Marco's return, 40, 65 Marling customs, 239 Marlowe quoted, 197 Marriages in Cheshire, 249 Marsh, J. F., 83 Martindale, Adam, and Sabbath observance, 180 Mary of Buttermere, 142 Mary, Queen Dowager of France, 20 Matthews, John, 76 Maxfield measure, 245 Medical practices, strange, 269 Middlewich fight, 313 Miller of the Dee, 245 Milton, John, quoted, 45, 155 Miracle plays, 158 Mi-Voie battle, 227 Moffat, Dr. Robert, a Cheshire gardener, 190 Monmouth, Duke of, legend, 68 Montfort, Jean de, 227 Mossley, a botanist's funeral at, 48 Mumphazard, 249 Munday, Anthony, 18 Murger, Henri, 22 Myddeltons, of Whitchurch, 214 MynshuU of Erdeswick, 230 Mysteries, 167 Namaqualand mission, 192 Nantwich players, 177 ; deaf mutes, 31 Nation, Miss, marries Hatfield, 144 Natural History Society of Moss- ley, 49 Newall, William, ' clarke of the Pendice,' 169 Newspaper, curious mistake, loi Newton, Thomas, ' Cestrienses,' ?78 Nichils in nine pokes, 250 Nigel, Robert, 75 Nixon the Cheshire prophet, 235 Nonconformist principles in Che- shire, 311-313 Northern Cobbler, Tennyson's, 133 Northenden, riding the stang, 300 Northwich demoniac, 9 Norwich, Bishop of, 2 Nowell, Alexander, 13, 14, 18 Oak of Mi-Voie, 228 Oldmixon, John, and Nixon's prophecies, 235 Ogden, Dr. Samuel, epigram on him, 318 O'Neil, Hugh, 64 Ortelius, maps lent for a lifetime, 308 Over, Mayor of, 248 Oxford, Earl of, at the battle of Barnet, 96 Pace eggs, 155 Padiham piper, 177 Parker, Henry, the northern cob- bler, 136 Peacock, Thomas Love, 69 Peche, Richard, archdeacon of Malpas, 184 Index. 329 Penketh, Friar Thomas, of War- rington and Richard III., 263 Pepper-gate legend, 164, 246 Peter of Wood, 248 Petitions, a collection of, by Aston, 313 Pilgrims and Jews, 185, 186 Piper of Padiham, 177 Pitt, William, friendship with Arden, 317 Plays acted on Sunday, 177 ; at Chester, 167 Poacher and the ' Pilgrim's Pro- gress,' 292 Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, 70 Politician's career, 316 Poole, John, account of the earth- quake of 1777, 252 Pope, Alexander, 77, 239, 291 ; and Broome, 303 Porteous, Bishop B., and the Lord's Day Act, 181 ; on the earthquake of 1777, 254 Porters, lazy, 30 Poulteney, Magdalene, epitaph on her, 311 Presbytery, remonstrance against, 312 Prince, J. C, and biographical notice, 21 ; and Korner, 103 Procter, R. W., 23 Prophet of Cheshire — Nixon, 235 Proverbs, Cheshire, 243 Pulford, 313 Quakers and Sabbath observance, 181 Rain at Easter, 162 Ramsey, Richard, notice of his poems. 28 Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin, 118 Remonstrance against Presbytery, 312 Reynard the Fox, 119 Rhuddlan castle, 75 Richard of Gloucester, 96 Richard III. and Friar Penketh, 263 Riding the stang, 300 Ring game, 160 Rivers and dragon myths, 2l8 Robert of Sicily, 174 Roby, Dr., 191 Rogers, Samuel, 89 Rolfe, John, and Pocahontas, 71 Rosebud, 304 Rushbearing, 178 Sabbath desecration, 264 — see also Sunday Salemon, Robert, 186 Salusbury, Sir Henry, 20 ; Sir John, 20, 215,216; Ursula, 20 Sandnrs, George, murdered, 14 Sandars, Mrs., trial and execution, Sarbiewski, Cassimir, 270 Savage, Sir John, 75 Scots at battle of Pinkie Cleuch, 97 Scott, Reginald, book on witch- craft, 59 Scott, Sir Sibald, 97 Scott, Sir Walter, 59, 261 quoted Seal with a reed, 114 Sebastian's return, 40 Senlac, battle of, 39 Sermons, 307 Shakespere, 13, 28, 42, 54, 56, 68, loi, 167, 213, 219, 280, 287 Shakespere and Florio, 272 Shenstone quoted, 226 Sherivlan, R. B., quoted, 230 Sheriff's Easter breakfast at Ches- ter, 163 Shooting for the Sheriff's break- fast, 163 Shorthand MS., 265 Shrove Tuesday football, 164 330 Index. Sibyls, 126 Sidney, Sir Philip, 86 Sion y Boddiau, 213 'Sir Beville,'23i Skeat, Rev. Walter W., 43 Skimmington riding, 300 Smith, C. Roach, reading of the Boughton altar, 122 Smith, Capt. John, Was he a Cheshire man ? 69 Smith, George, 74 Smith, Rev. Arthur, 73 Smith, Sir Lawrence, mayor of Chester, 175 Smyth, William, quoted, 306 Society and its laws, 295 Southey, Robert, quoted, 22, 142 Stalk as a sign of contract, 1 14 Stalybridge park, 1 13 Stang-riding, 300 Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, and Alderley, 2 Stanley, Lady Augusta, 6 Stanley, Catherine, 3 Stanley, Captain Charles Ed- ward, 5 Stanley, Rev. Ed., Bishop of Nor- vi'ich, 3; and tlie see of Manchester, 3 ; British As- sociation, 2 Stanley, Sir John, 61 Stanley, Sir John Thomas, I Stanley, Hon. Miss L. D., 58 Stanley, Mary, 6, 7 Stanley, Captain Owen, 5 Stanley, Thomas, 20 Stanley, Sir Thomas, I Stanley of Alderley, Baron, 2 Stanley family at Alderley, 2 Stephens, W. Morse, 45 Stephens, Professor George, 1 13 Stephens, Rev. Joseph Rayner, biographical notice, 108 Sterne's plagiarisms, 283 Stipula as a ^^ign of sale, 116 ' Stipulation,' etymology of the word, 116 Stockport chaise, 244 Straw seals, 114 Straw shoes, 120 Suffolk, Duke of, 20 Sunday observance, 177 ' Suspected Spy,' 257 Sutton, C. W., 210 Synagogue Well, 188 Tailed men, 283 Turner, Rev. William, 45 Tarvin wakes and the preachers, 179 Tennyson, Alfred, i quoted, 21; Northern cobbler, 133 Thackeray, W. M., 95 " Thin Red Line," 95 quoted Thirty : " Fight of the Thirty," 226 Thurlow, Lord, and Lord Alvan- ley, 318 Tindal, William, and Sabbath observance, 183 Tobacco, 33, 283 Travis, Archdeacon, 316 Trottet, Jean, born without hands or feet, 225 Trow Gill, 201 Tryon, 1 homas, 277 Turk's Head coterie, 306 Twm o'r Nant, 214 Undutiful Child punished, 279 Universal Songster, 321 Usury denounced, 174 Venables, William de, 115 Virgil's description of the descent of rEneas into the under- world, 125 Virginia, attempt to colonise, 70 Wag and Broadbrim, 30 Waits, 177 Wakes, 178 Wales, Prince of, journey through Egypt and Palestine, 6 Index. 331 Walker's "Dialogicall discourses," 9 Walker, James, the botanist, bio- graphical notice of, 48 Warburton on the descent of Avernus, 128 Ware, Samuel Hibbert, bio- graphical notice, 291 Ware, Hibbert S., his account of Mark Yarwood, 220 Warner, Charles Dudley, 69 "Warning fur fair women," 13 Warning, pool of Taunton, 87 Warren, Dr. J. S., 117 Warrington Academy, 45 ; Mu- seum book-rarities, 262 Waugh, Edwin quoted, 48 Wedding dresses worn on Easter Sunday, 161 Wellington, Duke of, on the colours worn in the army, 99 Welsh Army costume, 96 Welsh legend of King Arthur, 63 Westminster, Dean of, 2 Wheedling art, 273 Wilbraham, Anne, 319; Dorothy, 249 Wilkes, John, 182 Wilkins, John, Bishop of Chester, 307 Willoughby, Anne, 31 1 Wincham deed, 1 15 Winchester, Harold's body at, 39 Wmteringham manorial custom, 118 Wither, George, quoted, 139 Wizard of Alderley Edge, 56 Womens' costume, 274 Women, warning for fair, 13 Wood engraving, 268 Words, curious, 260 Wordsworth, William, 22 ; des- cription of Mary of Butter- mere, 152 Yale, David, 11 Yama and Avernus, 128 Yarwood, Mark, a boy without hands, 219 Yew-bow, 247 Youdhichthira, 128 LIST CDF -^Aroi^-Kis LATELY PUBLISHEO BY TUBES, BROOK, AND CHRYSTAL, 11. MARKET STREET, MANCHESTER. Lancashire G-leanings: in History, Biog jy, and FoJk-Lore. By W. E. A. Axon, F.R.S.L. Archseoloy rapliy, Cloth, Nanny Cutler, i " Dinah Bede " The Mosley Family The Extraordinary Memory of the Rev. Thomas Threlkeld Sunday in the Olden Time Tim Bobbin as an Artist Ann Lee, the Manchester Pro- phetess Master John Shawe Traditions Collected by Thomas Barritt Did Shakspere Visit Lancashire ? The Lancashire Plot Sherburnes in America Curiosities of .Street Literature Thomas and John Ferriar Turton Fair in 17S9 The Story of the Three Black Crows Lancashire Beyond the Sea Murders Detected by Dreams The Black Knight of Ashton Robert Tannahdl in Lancashire Population of Manchester A Sermon of the Sixteenth Century Prince Charles Edward Stuart's Supposed Visit to Manchester CONTENTS. Lancashire Congregationalism at Farnworth near Bolton Cliurch Goods in 1552 The Estates of Sir Andrew Chad- wick Early Art in Liverpool The Story of Burger's " Lenore" Manchester in 1791 Early References to the Jews in Lancashire Whittington and his Cat "Fair Em" The Father of Thomas de Quincey Origin of the Word "Teetotal " Robert Wilson and the Invention of the .Steam Hammer Ralph Sandiford Eli.is, the Manchester Prophet Westhoughton Factory Fire Peter Annet Some old Lancashire Ballads, Broadsides and Chap-books George Fox's First Entry into Lancashire The Legend of Mab's Cross The Lintlsays in Lancashire The Liverpool Tragedy Lancashire Proverbs Index OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. "Mr. Axon is well known as an industrious student in the byways of history. Manchester can boast not a few antiquaries and bil>liogriii)her.s ; but we doubt if it has any by whom its libraries have been more diligently ransacked. In this Tnbbs, Brook, and Chrysial, volume, which is handsomely printed and furnished with a copious Index, Mr. Axon has collected forty odd papers, linked together by some association with the county of Lancashire. As an example of good work in a department where the materials are almost unlimited, we can heartily recommend ' Lancashire Gleanings ' both as pleasant reading in itself and as worthy of imitation by others. " — Academy. "Few counties are richer in local associations or antiquarian interest than Lancashire, and few are better skilled in its lore than Mr. Axon. The author has selected from the plenteous materials at his command many interesting stories and incidents which will be relished by all who take pleasure in the byways of local historv, and are interested in the relics of olden time. The book is very well printed, and its form is altogether very neat."— T/ie Bookseller. " The volume preserves in a handy form a good deal of curious local history and biography, and the author adopts the excellent plan of telling the reader where he may go for more abundant details if he wishes to pursue his researches. It is almost superfluous to say of one of Mr. Axon's books that its index is a model compilation of its kind." — Manchester City News. "This volume contains records of facts and superstitions which cannot fail to appeal to the feelings and imagination of Lancashire people. The histories of old families, the legends connected with them, and the anecdotes relating to places will have a lively interest for readers of antiquarian tastes, and many of them will also please the student of human nature. ^ No recom- mendation from us is necessary to take the reader to Mr. Axon's attractive pages. " — Manchester Examiner. "In these 'Gleanings,' IMr. Axon has collected between forty and fifty articles, some of which have appeared in various periodicals, and others are now published for the flist time. They deal with topics of local interest, both old and new, and show throughout a taste for curious out-of-the-way reading, through which he has gathered materials for graphic pictures of Lancashire life, manners, and customs at different points of its history." — Manchester Courier. " ' Lancashire Gleanings ' comprises much curious information, and throws considerable light on the past history of the county. Tlie work is carefully printed, and has an excellent Index." — Palatine Note-Boole. "Much curious information, on which it would be difficult to comment, will be found scattered through the volume.'' — Saturday Review. " Of principally local importance, this is an interesting and valuable book for Lancashire people, wherever they may be, and capable of affording entertainment and instruction to readers of any class. It consists of about fifty disconnected papers, of the variety and character which might be expected— some of them having been read before societies, others printed in periodicals, and others now appearing for the first time. Several of these have a more or less close connection with this country." — New York Nation. John Buskin : His Life and Teachings. By Kev. J. M. Mather. Cloth, gilt top, 2s. 6(3. "A book which is sure to receive a hearty welcome from thousands who want a brief exposition of the teachings of Mr. Ruskin." — Sheffield and Rothcrham Independent. 11, Market Street, Manchester. " Mr. Mather has been a careful stuflent of Ruskin's writings, and has in his book given a well-condensed resume of them, as well as the principles which Ruskin inculcates in his art teaching, and tlie theories which he holds in regard to education, social science, and jjolitical economy." — Manchester Courier. "Mr. Mather writes with the enthusiasm of a disciple, and after sketching Ruskin's career, presents some account of the more salient features of his doc- trines on social science, education, and art. Those who are not already familiar with these will find in Mr. Mather a careful and trustworthy guide." — Manchester Guardian. "We may say of the entire book that it is admirably written, and cannot fail to satisfactorily attain the useful object for which it was written."— T/ie Book- seller. "His review and recapitulation and methodized arrangement will be found very useful to all who may wish to obtain a general notion of Mr. Ruskin's writings before entering upon the study of any particular work." — Manchester City A'eics. Porches of the Temple. By Thomas Green, M.A. Cloth, 2<. 6cl. ; gilt edges, 3s. 6d. " A thoiightful suggestive book, written for girls and boys. Homely and racy in expression, earnest in purpose, and felicitous in illustration, it conveys in a happy way much serious instruction. The chapters appear to have been originally delivered in the form of lectures ; and the author's purpose, like that of many a good writer gone before him, is to gain from the things seen in this universe, which is God's temple, lessons that may be turned to spiritual uses. _ In doing this Mr. Green makes use of the latest discoveries in science, and describes them so as to reach the understamling of every intelligent boy or girl. The simplicity of the little book makes it easy reading,^ but to_ write in a strain so direct and forcible must have been no holiday task." — The Banner. "A budget of addresses and lessons for young people, some of which have been read or delivc red at children's services, and others, the author tells us, have been published in the Cniigregationalist. All God's works Mr. Green regards as being in a certain sense temples worthy of notice and interest, and as the porches are the entrances to the temple, so he asks his readers to look at these works of God from ditfeient points of sight. He treats of a wide variety of subjects in a very genial and spirited way." — Publishers' Circular. "This, we learn, is ' a book for Sundays and week-days, for girls and boys, and for those who teach them.' Mr. Green, in a very modest prefatory note, says it ' is intended for young folks who have arrived at the nge at which they begin to love knowledge.' They will find much here to satisfy that love. In an easy, chatty, occasionally humorous, and at all times intei-esting manner, the author treats of a wonderful variety of subjects, directing the ' lads and lasses of curious and eager minds' to objects around them and within their daily experience, and pointing out the great lessons which are to be leanit from things apparently in.significant and common place. 'Worms,' 'light,' ' the sun,' 'flag.s,' 'comets,' 'crowns,' 'fruit,' and 'the birthday' are the headings of a few of the chapters selected at random, and mav be taken a.s an indication of the variety of the subjects treateil. We notice that the book is described as the ' first series, and we are glad to recogni^e this as an indication that Mr. Green intends to publish other volumes of a similar kind. We have not for a long time seen any book for the young people which has ;;iven us more pleasure, and which has more nearly attained its object." — Ashton-nnder-Lijne Reporter. Tubbs, Brook, and Chrystal, MancJiester. "Mr. Green discourses on Worms, serpents, sun spots, flags, the moon, musical instruments, comet*, flowers, and otln-r subjects in a most charming and in- structive fashion. Happy, indeed, are the boys and girls who listen to addresses like these. We liave seen more tlian one eminent t'reacher who could enchant up-grown people reduced to a state of almost helpless temporary imbecility, on attempting to address a schoolroom full of children, whose inattention soon proved to him that his worst fears as to his incompetence were fully justified. Mr. Green puts the results of his study and the intellectual .wealth of a more than usually richly furnished mind before young people in language which they can understand, i.e., good, plain English, and our regret is that, through some carelessness, for which neither of us is responsible, either he was bom too late or we were born too soon. He is the preacher we used to long for when a boy, and, as the hymn says, 'Sought but never found.'" — Sheffield and Botherham Inde- pendent. Later-Life Jottings in Verse and. Prose. By R. R. Bealey. Cloth, gilt edges, 2s. 6(1. "The portrait of ' Sam o' Joan' is well drawn." — Manchester Guardian. "The whole volume is eminently creditable both to the head and the heart of the author. It is well printed and nicely bound." — Derby Mercury. " (Jontains two poems in the Lancashii-e dialect — 'Little Sally' and 'Sam o' Joan,' which will at least maintain his high reputation as a writer of this class of verse. This book will certainly find a welcome from all who care with him to ' vary bargaining with song.' " — Nottiiu/ham Journal. " His versification is always characterized by a melodious ring and much tender feeling. " — Manchester Courier. " Mr. Bealey is already well known to a large circle of the public by his excel- lent little Ijook entitled, 'After Business Jottings,' and others of his works. In this new volume there is much that is interesting, and a very great deal that is pretty and pathetic."— j.Vewcas/^e Weekly Chronicle. "There is not an unkind expression or morbid sentiment in the whole of the writings of our pleasant ' laycoek." — Nottimiham Daily Guardian. " Always readable, often tender and pathetic, sometimes full of higher thought and imagination. ... A song or a poem will lift the care-worn ledger-ridden man from bis cramping desk work to a more elevated region of thought and fancy, and carry him away from his figures, with a figure of speech, to other and purer scenes, acting to the inner man as a substitute for that free breath of nature on mountain-tops for which the town dweller sighs amidst brick and mortar. And those who are disposed to try the ' medicine for the mind,' could not do better than take a dose as ofi'ered in these jottings— a poem at a time." — Durham Chronicle. " Mr. Bealey sings most happily in the Lancashire dialect, and has the eye to see the pathetic and the tragic in common life among the poor. There are strains of true song to be found among these verses, and one would gather that he must be esteemed among his neighbours as somewhat of a poet, as he deserves to be. Readers who are not over fastidious may find many a wholesome and heartening thought, and many a quaint and arresting fancy among these ' Later-Life Jottings. ' " — Bradford Observer. Tubbs, Brook, and Chrystal, Printers, Manchester. :^- UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. REC'D' MAY VSrWasrai ay mi NOV 111981 NON-REK; to .1- ^ «. .• MAY '^ 1991 DUE 2 WKS FROM ibATE RECEIVED ■ 'M Form L9-100m-9,'52(A3105)444 3 1158 00013 8197 UC SOUIHI Wi Rl (,ll)"JAl LIBRAHY ^AUUn AA 000 393 405 6