Lancashire Part 5

[29] The modern slang of great towns is of course quite a different thing from the ancient dialect of a rural population.

Affected misspellings, as of "kuntry" for country, are also to be distinguished _in toto_ from the phonetic representation of sounds purely dialectical.

Rochdale occupies the centre of the most distinctively Lancashire-dialect region. As ordinarily employed, the phrase vaguely denotes the rural speech of the manufacturing districts. But beyond the Ribble, and more particularly beyond the Lune, there is unmistakable variation from the genuine Lancashire of "Tim Bobbin"; and in Furness there is an echo of c.u.mberland. In genuine Lancashire we have first the old-accustomed permutations of the vowels. Then come elisions of consonants, transpositions, and condensations of entire syllables, whereby words are often oddly transformed. Ancient idioms attract us next; and lastly, there are many of the energetic old words, unknown to current dictionaries, which five centuries ago were an integral part of the English vernacular. The vowel permutations are ill.u.s.trated in the universal "wayter," "feyther," "reet," "oi," "aw,"

"neaw," used instead of water, father, right, I, now. "Owt" stands for aught, "nowt" for naught. Elisions and contractions appear in a thousand such forms as "dunnoyo" for "do you not," "welly" for "well-nigh." "You" constantly varies to thee and thou, whence the common "artu" for "art thou," "wiltohameh" for "wilt thou have me." A final _g_ is seldom heard; there is also a characteristic rejection of the guttural in such words as scratched, p.r.o.nounced "scrat." The transpositions are as usual, though it is only perhaps in Lancashire that gaily painted b.u.t.terflies are "brids," and that the little field-flowers elsewhere called birds' eye are "brid een."

The old grammatical forms and the archaic words refer the careful listener, if not to the Anglo-Saxon of King Alfred, at all events to the _Canterbury Tales_; they take us pleasantly to Chaucer, and Chaucer in turn introduces us agreeably to Lancashire, where "she" is always "hoo," through abiding in the primitive "he, heo, hit;" and where the verbs still end in _n_: "we, ye, they loven," as in the Prologue--

"For he had geten him yet no benefice."

Very interesting is it also when the ear catches the antiquated _his_ and _it_ where to-day we say _it_ and _its_. Often supposed to correspond with the poetical use of "his" in personifications (often found in the authorised version of Scripture), the Lancashire employment of _his_ is in truth the common Shaksperean one, _his_ in the county palatine being the simple genitive of the old English _hit_, as in _Hamlet_, iv. 7--

"There is a willow grows aslant the brook, That shows _his_ h.o.a.r leaves in the gla.s.sy stream."

So with the obsolete possessive _it_. When a Lancashire woman says, "Come to it mammy!" how plain the reminder of the lines in _King John_--

Do, child, go to _it_ grandam, child; Give grandam kingdom, and _it_ grandam will Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig; There's a good grandam.

Archaic words are ill.u.s.trated in many a familiar phrase. A Lancashire girl in quest of something "speers" for it (Anglo-Saxon _spirian_, to inquire). If alarmed, she "dithers"; if comely and well conducted, she behaves herself "farrantly"; if delicately sensitive, she is "nesh"--

It seemeth for love his herte is tendre and neshe.

So when the poor "clem" for want of food--"Hard is the choice," says Ben Jonson, "when the valiant must eat their arms or clem." Very many others which, though not obsolete in polite society, are seldom heard, help to give flavour to this inviting old dialect. To embrace is in Lancashire to "clip"; to move house is to "flit"; when the rain descends heavily, "it teems"; rather is expressed by "lief" or "liefer," as in _Troilus and Cresseide_--

Yet had I levre unwist for sorrow die.

_Pastimes and Recreations._--The pastimes and recreations of the Lancashire people fall, as elsewhere, under two distinct heads; those which arise upon the poetic sentiment, the love of purity, order, and beauty, and those which come of simple desire to be entertained. Where poesy has a stronghold, we have never long to wait for the "touches of sweet harmony"; hence a characteristic of working Lancashire, immemorial as to date, is devotedness to music. In all Europe it would be difficult to find a province where the first and finest of the fine arts is better understood, or more reverently practised. High-cla.s.s sacred music--German music in particular--fills many a retired cottage in leisure hours with solace and joy; and very generally in villages, as well as in the large towns, there are clubs and societies inst.i.tuted purely for its promotion. "On the wild hills, where whin and heather grow, it is not uncommon to meet working-men with their musical instruments on their way to take part in some village oratorio many miles distant.... Up in the forest of Rossendale, between Derply Moor and the wild hill called Swinshaw, there is a little lone valley, a green cup in the mountains, called Dean. The inhabitants of this valley are so notable for their love of music that they are known all through the neighbouring country as 'Th' Deign layrocks.'"[30] In many of the large country manufacturing establishments--the printworks, for instance--the operatives have regularly organised "bands,"--the employers giving encouragement,--the value of which, in regard to moral culture, is shown in the members being usually the trusted men.

[30] _i.e._ the larks, or singing birds, of Dean. Edwin Waugh, _Sketches_, p. 199.

The same primitive inclination towards the poetic would seem to underlie the boundless Lancashire love of flowers and gardens. Not that the pa.s.sion is universal. The chief seat, as of the intrinsically best of the dialect, is the south-eastern part of the county: the portion ab.u.t.ting on Yorkshire is unfavourably cold, and though in the north occur fine examples of individual enthusiasm, there is little ill.u.s.tration of confederated work. Societies strong and skilful enough to hold beautiful exhibitions are dotted all over the congenial parts of the cotton district. They attend as diligently to the economic as to the decorative; one never knows whether most to admire the onions, the beans, and the celery, or the splendid asters, dahlias, and phloxes--in many parts there is ancient renown also for gooseberries.

After the manner of the wise in other matters, the operative Lancashire gardeners, if they cannot grow the things they might prefer, give their whole hearts to liking those they have at command.

The rivalry and ambition in regard to gooseberries is unique. While the fruit is ripening upon the bushes it is sacrilege for a stranger to approach within a distance of many yards. On cold and hurtful nights the owner sits up to watch it, like a nurse with an invalid, supplying or removing defence according to the conditions, and on the show day the excitement compares in its innocent measure with that of Epsom. The exhibitors gather round a table: the chairman sits with scales and weights before him, calling in turn for the heaviest red, the heaviest yellow, and so on, every eye watching the balance; the end of all being a bright new kettle for the wife at home.

Many of the operative gardeners are a.s.siduous cultivators of "alpines," the vegetable _bijouterie_ of the mountains; others are enamoured of ferns, and these last are usually possessed of good botanical knowledge. The beginning would seem to date from the time of Elizabeth, thus from the time of Shakspere, when other immigrations of the Flemish weavers took place. Things of home too dear to leave behind them, they brought with them their favourite flowers, the tulip and the polyanthus. These early growers would doubtless for a time be shyly looked upon as aliens. Nothing is known definitely of the work of the ensuing century, but there is certain proof that by 1725 Lancashire had already become distinguished for its "florists'

flowers," the cultivation lying almost entirely in the hands of the artisans, who have never for an instant slackened, though to-day the activity is often expressed in new directions.

It is owing, without doubt, to the example of the operative Lancashire gardeners of the last century and a half that floriculture at the present moment holds equal place with cla.s.sical music among the enjoyments also of the wealthy; especially those whose early family ties were favourable to observation of the early methods. More greenhouses, hothouses, and conservatories; more collections of valuable orchids and other plants of special beauty and l.u.s.tre exist in South Lancashire, and especially in the immediate neighbourhood of Manchester, than in any other district away from the metropolis.

Orchid culture was practised here, as in Macclesfield and Birmingham, long before what orchids are was even a question in many parts. The name of one of the n.o.blest species yet discovered, the _Cattleya Mossiae_, commemorates an old Liverpool merchant, Mr. John Moss, one of the first to grow these matchless flowers; while in that of the _Anguloa Clowesii_ we are reminded of the beautiful collection formed at Higher Broughton by the Rev. John Clowes, which, after the decease of the possessor, went to Kew. A very remarkable and encouraging fact is that orchids, the queenliest and most fragrant of indoor flowers, can, like auriculas, with skilful management be brought to the highest possible state of perfection in an atmosphere in which many plants can barely exist--the smoky and soot-laden one of Manchester. The proof was supplied by the late Dr. R. F. Ainsworth of Cliff Point, to whom flower-show honours were as familiar as to Benjamin Simonite of Sheffield, that astonishing old florist whose auriculas are grown where the idea of a garden seems absurd.

These very practical proofs of the life and soundness of the poetic sentiment in working Lancashire prepare us for a county feature in its way quite as interesting and remarkable--the wide-spread and very deep-seated local taste for myth, legend, and superst.i.tion, which, in truth, is no other than the poetic sentiment uncultured and gone astray. Faith in "folklore" is by no means to be confounded with inane credulity. The folk-lore of a civilised nation is the _debris_ of the grand old spirit-worship--vague, but exquisitely picturesque, and figuratively significant, which, in the popular religion of the pre-Christian world, filled every sweet and romantic scene with invisible beings--Dryads, who loved the woodland; Naads, that sported in the stream and waterfall; Oreads, who sat and sang where now we gather their own fragrant _Oreopteris_,[31] and which a.s.signed maidens even to the sea--the Nereids, never yet lost. "Nothing," it has been well said, "that has at any time had a meaning for mankind ever absolutely dies." How much of the primeval faith shall survive with any particular race or people--to what extent it shall be transformed--depends upon their own culture, spiritual insight, and ideas of the omnipresence of the Almighty, of which the fancies as to the nymphs, etc., declared a dim recognition: it is affected also very materially by the physical character and complexion of their country.

This has been ill.u.s.trated in the completest manner as regards the eastern borders of Lancashire by the accomplished author of _Scarsdale_[32] already named: the influence of the daily spectacle of the wild moor, the evening walk homewards through the shadowy and silent ravine, the sweet mysteries of the green and ferny clough, with its rushing stream, all telling powerfully, he shows us with perennial grace, upon the imagination of a simple-hearted race, const.i.tutionally predisposed towards the marvellous, and to whom it was nourishment.

n.o.body is really happy without illusions of some kind, and none can be more harmless than belief in the mildly supernatural. The local fairy tales having now been pretty well collected and cla.s.sified,[33] it remains only to recognise their immense ethnographical value, since there is probably not a single legend or superst.i.tion afloat in Lancashire that, like an ancient coin, does not refer the curious student to distant lands and long past ages. Lancashire, we must remember, has been successively inhabited, or occupied, more or less, by a Celtic people,--by Romans, Danes, and Anglo-Saxons,--all of whom have left their footprints. No one can reside a year in Lancashire without hearing of its "boggarts"--familiar in another form in the Devonshire pixies, and in the "merry wanderer of the night," t.i.tania's "sweet Puck." Absurd to the logician, the tales and the terrors connected with the boggarts carry with them, like all other fables, a profound interior truth--the truth for which, as Carlyle says, "reason will always inquire, while half-reason stands indifferent and mocking."

The nucleus of the boggart idea is, that the power of the human mind, exercised with firmness and consistency, triumphs over all obstacles, and reduces even spirits to its will; while, contrariwise, the weak and undetermined are plagued and domineered over by the very same imps whom the resolute can direct and control. So with the superst.i.tions as to omens. When in spring the anglers start for a day's enjoyment, they look anxiously for "pynots," or magpies, _one_ being unlucky, while _two_ portend good fortune. The simple fact, so the ornithologists tell us, is that in cold and ungenial weather prejudicial to sport with the rod, one of every pair of birds always stays in the nest, whereas in fine weather, good for angling, both birds come out.

Ill.u.s.trations of this nature might be multiplied a hundred-fold, and to unabating advantage. Time is never ill-spent upon interpretation of the mythic. The effort, at all events, is a kindly one that seeks--

To unbind the charms that round slight fables lie, And show that truth is truest poesy.

[31] _Lastrea Oreopteris_, "sweet mountain-fern," abundant in South-East Lancashire.

[32] The late Sir James Philips Kay-Shuttleworth, Bart.

[33] _Lancashire Folk-lore._ By John Harland and T. T.

Wilkinson. 1867.

The dialect itself is full of metaphor, images of great beauty not infrequently turning up. Some of them seem inherited from the primevals. That light and sound are reciprocally representative needs, for instance, no saying. From the earliest ages the idea of music has always accompanied that of sunrise. Though to-day the heavens declare the glory of G.o.d silently, in the beginning "the morning stars sang together":--old Homer's "rosy-fingered morn" is in Lancashire the "skryke" or cry "of day."

Though much that is deplorably brutal occurs among the lowest Lancashire cla.s.ses, the character of the popular pastimes is in general free from stain; and the amus.e.m.e.nts themselves are often eminently interesting, since in honest and _bona fide_ rustic sports there is always archaeology. The tales they tell of the past now const.i.tute in truth the chief attraction of the older ones. The social influences of the railway system have told no less upon the village-green than on the streets of cities; any picture that may now be drawn must needs owe its best colours to the retrospective.

Contemplating what remains of them, it is pleasant, however, to note the intense vitality of customs and ceremonials having their root in feelings of _reverence_; such, for example, as the annual "rush-bearing" still current in many parts, and not unknown even in the streets of modern Manchester. That in the olden time, prior to the introduction of carpets, the practice was to strew floors and indoor pavements with green rushes every one knows. Among the charges brought against Cardinal Wolsey was his extravagance in the too frequent and ostentatious spreading of clean ones. Employed also in churches and cathedrals on the anniversary of the feast of the saint to whom the building was dedicated, when renewed it was with special solemnity. In an age when processions full of pomp and splendour were greatly delighted in, no wonder that the renewal became an excuse for a showy pageant; and thus, although to-day we have only the rush-cart, the morris-dancers, the drums and trumpets, and the flags--the past, in a.s.sociation, lives over again. Small events and great ones are seldom far asunder. In the magnificent "rush-bearing" got up for the delectation of James I. when at Hoghton Tower, Sunday, 17th August 1617, lay one of the secret causes of the Stuart downfall. Sports on the Sabbath day had been forbidden by his predecessor. James, admitting as argument that the cause of the reformed religion had suffered by the prohibition, gave his "good people of Lancashire"

leave to resume them. The Puritans took offence; the wound was deepened by Charles; and when the time of trial came it was remembered.

"Pace-egging" (a corruption of Pasche or Pasque-egging) is another immemorial Lancashire custom, observed, as the term indicates, at Easter, the egg taking its place as an emblem of the Resurrection.

Perverted and degraded, though in the beginning decorous, if not pious, the original house-to-house visitation has long had engrafted upon it a kind of rude drama supposed to represent the combat of St.

George and the Dragon--the victory of good over evil, of life over death. So with "Simnel-Sunday," a term derived from the Anglo-Saxon _symblian_, to banquet, or _symbel_, a feast, a "simnel" being literally "banquet-bread."[34] This corresponds with the Midlent-Sunday of other counties, and, particularly in Bury, is a time of special festivity. The annual village "wakes" observed everywhere in Lancashire, and equivalent to the local rush-bearings, partake, it is to be feared, of the general destiny of such things. Happily the railway system has brought with it an inestimable choice of pleasure for the rational. The emphatically staple enjoyment of the working Lancashire population to-day consists in the Whitsun-week trip to some distant place of wonder or wholesome gratification, the seaside always securing the preference. In Lancashire it is not nearly or so much Whitsun-Monday or Whitsun-Tuesday as the whole of the four following days. In the south-eastern part of the county, Manchester particularly, business almost disappears; and very delightful is it then to observe how many little parties of the toiling thrifty are away to North Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and even to France. The factory system always implies _ma.s.ses_. The people work in ma.s.ses, and suffer in ma.s.ses, and rejoice in ma.s.ses. In Whitsun-week, fifty miles, a hundred miles away, we find in a score of places five hundred, perhaps a thousand. There are salutary home-pleasures ready besides.

Manchester does wisely in holding its princ.i.p.al flower-show during this great annual holiday, drawing, in fair weather, some 50,000 visitors. The example is a good one, since with the growing disposition of the English people to enjoy their holidays, it behoves all those who have the management of places of healthy recreation to supply the most humanising that may be possible, and thus mitigate the influence of the hurtful ones. The staple game of muscular Lancashire was formerly that of bowls. A history of Manchester would be incomplete without plenty of lively chat about it; and in regard to the more modern pastime, the cricket match, it is no vaunt to add that while the chief cricketing in England lies in the hands of only nine out of its forty counties, the premiership has once at all events, say in 1879, been claimed as fairly by Lancashire as by its great rival on the banks of the Trent. Nottinghamshire, moreover, had held its position without half the difficulties in the way that Lancashire had to contend with.

[34] In the Anglo-Saxon version of the Old Testament there are many examples of derivative words. In Exodus xxiii. 15, 16, feasting-time is _symbel-tid_; xxii. 5, a feast-day is _symbel-daeg_. In Psalm lx.x.xi. 3, we have _symelnys_, a feast-day.

VII

THE INLAND SCENERY SOUTH OF LANCASTER

Scenery more diversified than that of Lancashire, taking the Duddon as its northern boundary, does not exist in any English county. For the present we shall keep to the portion south of the Lune, deferring the Lake District to the next chapter, to which may also be left the little that has to be said concerning the sh.o.r.e south of that river.

The eastern parts have attractions quite as decided as those of the north, though of a character totally different. Every acknowledged element of the picturesque may be discovered there, sometimes in abundance. The only portion of the county entirely devoid of landscape beauty is that which is traversed by the Liverpool and Southport Railway, not unjustly regarded as the dullest in the kingdom. The best that can be said of this dreary district is, that at intervals it is relieved by the cheerful hues of cultivation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BLACKSTONE EDGE]

From Liverpool northwards to the banks of the Ribble, excepting at some distance from the sea, and eastwards to Manchester, the ground is nearly level. Nothing must be expected where it borders upon the Mersey above the estuary. To quote the precise terms employed by Pennant, "The Mersey is by no means a pleasing water." The country bordering upon it, he might have added, appeals very slenderly to the imagination; and most a.s.suredly, since the old topographer pa.s.sed along, Nature has made no change for the better as regards the river, while man has done his best to efface any pretty features it may once have owned. But we have not to go far from the modern Tyre in order to find hills and the picturesque. Newborough and the vicinity present a remarkable contrast to the plains beneath. Here the country begins to grow really beautiful, and thenceforward it constantly improves. Some of the slopes are treeless, and smooth as a lawn; others are broken by deep and wooded glades, with streamlets bound for the Douglas (an affluent of the Ribble), one of the loveliest dells of the kind in South Lancashire occurring near Gathurst. On the summits, at Ashurst particularly, a sweet and pleasant air never fails to "invite our gentle senses." Here too we get our first lesson in what may be truly said, once for all, of Lancashire--that wherever the ground is sufficiently bold and elevated we are sure not only of fine air and an extensive prospect, but a glorious one. At Ashurst, while Liverpool is not too far for the clear discerning of its towers and spires, in the south are plainly distinguished the innumerable Delamere pines, rising in dark ma.s.ses like islands out of the sea; and far away, beyond the Dee, the soft swell of the hills of North Wales, Moel Vamma never wanting. This celebrated eminence, almost as well known in South Lancashire as in Denbighshire, may be descried even at Eccles, four or five miles from the Manchester Exchange.

Eastwards of the great arterial line of railway which, running from Manchester to Lancaster through Bolton and Preston, almost exactly bisects the county, the scenery is rich in the eloquent features which come of wild and interminable surges of broad and ma.s.sive hill, often rocky, with heights of fantastic form, the irregularities giving token, in their turn, of deep chasms and clefts, that subdivide into pretty lateral glens and moist hollows crowded with ferns. The larger glens const.i.tute the "cloughs" so famous in local legend, and the names of which recur so frequently in Lancashire literature. As Yorkshire is approached, the long succession of uplands increases in volume, rising at last in parts to a maximum alt.i.tude of nearly 1900 feet. Were a survey possible from overhead, the scene would be that of a tempest-ruffled ocean, the waves suddenly made solid.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LAKE AT LITTLEBOROUGH]

Very much of this vast hill-surface consists of desolate, heathery, unsheltered moorland. The amount of unreclaimed land still existing in Lancashire, and which must needs remain for ever as it is, const.i.tutes in truth one of the striking characteristics of the county. Not merely in the portion now specially under notice are there cold and savage wastes such as laugh the plough to scorn. The "fells" of the more northern districts present enormous breadths of similar character, incapable of supporting more than the poorest aboriginal vegetation, affording only the scantiest pasturage for a few scattered mountain-sheep, thus leaving the farmer without a chance. In itself the fact of course is in no degree remarkable, since there are plenty of hopeless acres elsewhere. The singular circ.u.mstance is the a.s.sociation of so much barrenness with the stupendous industries of the busiest people in the world. It is but in keeping after all with the general idea of old England,--

"This precious gem, set in the silver sea,"--

the pride of which consists in the constant blending of the most diverse elements. If we have grim and hungry solitudes, rugged and gloomy wildernesses, not very far off, be sure there is counterpoise in placid and fruitful vale and mead. Lancashire may not supply the cornfield: the soil and climate, though good for potatoes, are unfriendly to the cerealia; there is no need either to be too exacting; if the sickle has no work, there is plenty for the scythe and the spade.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WATERFALL IN CLIVIGER]

A few miles beyond Bolton the hills begin to rise with dignity. Here we find far-famed and far-seen Rivington Pike, conspicuous, like Ashurst, through ascending almost immediately out of the plain. "Pike"

is in Lancashire, and in parts of the country closely adjacent, the equivalent of "peak," the highest point of a hilly neighbourhood, though by no means implying an exactly conical or pyramidal figure, and very generally no more than considerable elevation, as in the case of the "Peak of Derbyshire." Rivington well deserves its name, presenting from many points of view one of those beautiful, evenly swelling, and gently rounded eminences which the ancient Greeks were accustomed to call [Greek: t.i.tthoi] and [Greek: mastoi], as in the case of the cla.s.sic mound at Samos which Callimachus connects so elegantly with the name of the lady Parthenia. There are spots, however, where the mamelon disappears. From all parts of the summit the prospect is delightful. Under our feet, unrolled like a carpet, is a verdant flat which stretches unbrokenly to the sea-margin, twenty miles distant, declared, nevertheless, by a soft, sweet gleam of silver or molten gold, according to the position of the sun in the heavens. The estuary of the Ribble, if the tide be in, renews that lovely shining; and beyond, in the remote distance, if the atmosphere be fairly clear, say fifty or sixty miles away, may be discerned the grand mountains that cast their shadows into Coniston. Working Lancashire, though it has lakes of its own, has made others! From the summit of Rivington we now look down upon half a dozen immense reservoirs, so located that to believe them the work of man is scarcely possible. Fed by the inflow of several little streams, and no pains taken to enforce straight margins, except when necessary, these ample waters exemplify in the best manner how art and science are able at times to recompense Nature--

"Leaving that beautiful which always was, And making that which was not."