Lancashire Folklore (Part One)

Boggarts, ancient cyphers and miraculous footprints! Welcome to episode 13, part one of our journey through Lancashire Folklore, written by John Harland and Thomas Turner Wilkinson and published by Frederick Warn & Co of Covent Garden in 1867.

'The boys at the Burnley Grammar School are said to have succeeded on one occasion in raising the Devil. They repeated the Lord's Prayer backwards, and performed some incantations by which, as it is said, Satan was induced to make his appearance through a stone flag on the floor of the school-house. After he had got his head and shoulders well out, the boys became alarmed and began to hammer him down with the poker and tongs.'

Tales From Antiquaria is a podcast dedicated to exploring the legacy of work published regarding folklore and local history during the golden age of antiquarian writing in the nineteenth century.

For show notes and links, visit the episodes page at thelocalmythstorian.com

Episode written, produced and presented by Eli Lewis-Lycett. All source material taken directly from the stated publication. Main theme music by Humanoid Media. Incidental music from Restum-Anoush. 

Find Eli Lewis-Lycett Folklore and History on Facebook and Bluesky

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Boggart's ancient ciphers and miraculous footprints. My name is Eli and this is Tales from Antiquaria, Lancashire Folklore Part One. The podcast where we explore a legacy of antiquarian folklore, local history, and curious legend, spoken directly from the pages of the past. Tonight is the first of two parts we're spending with Lancashire Folklore, a work written in partnership between John Harland and Thomas Turner Wilkinson, published by Frederick Warren Co. of Covent Garden in 1867. John Harland, born in 1806, was a former editor of the Manchester Guardian, that we know as the Guardian today, and was, according to his 1868 obituary, known as Britain's leading expert of shorthand. A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, he had a lifelong interest in folklore and its related topics. Thomas Turner Wilkinson, born 1815, was a schoolmaster at Burnley Grammar School and a renowned local historian collecting many local tales in person. So loved locally was Wilkinson that his funeral had a grand procession through the centre of the town of Burnley itself. The two men met and worked together, I suspect, as both were revered figures of the Lancashire antiquarian scene of the mid-1800s. And their collaboration was described in the collection as thus Lancashire has hitherto been without adequate record, at least in a collective form, of its folklore. This has not been because of any lack of such law. The north of England generally, and Lancashire in particular, is remarkably rich in this respect, possessed and peopled in succession by the Counts of Ancient Britain and by the Angles and other Teutonic peoples, by the Scandinavian races and by Norman and other foreign settlers in early periods. The result of the respective contributions of these various people is necessarily a large chunk of traditional law. To bring this together and present it here in a collective form is the object of this little volume. Its editors have long been engaged apart, distinctly and independently of each other, in collecting particulars of the superstitions in belief and practice and of the peculiar customs and superstitions of the people of Lancashire. One of them, born in one of its rural districts, still rich in this respect, is thus enabled to remember and to preserve many of these customs and usages of his childhood and youth, now rapidly passing into decay. The other, conserving from his earliest remembrances with the folklore of East Yorkshire and with that of Lancashire for the last thirty five years, is thus enabled to compare the customs and usages of both, and to recognise the same essential superstitions under slightly different forms. Similarity of pursuit having led to personal communication, the editors agreed to combine their respective collections and hence this present volume. And what a team they proved to be. Their collection, Lancashire Folklore, or to give it its full title, Lancashire Folklore, illustrative of the superstitious beliefs and practices, local customs and usages of the people of the County Palatine is a mammoth masterwork. Published by Frederick Warren and Co. of Covent Garden in 1867 as mentioned, the book was also distributed in New York by Scribner and Co. and will spend the next two episodes of the podcast exploring its wealth of curiosities on Boggart. Not far from the little snug smoky village of Blakeley or Blackley, there lies one of the most romantic of dolls, rejoicing in a state of singular seclusion and in the oddest of the Lancashire names, to wit the Boggarthole. The present generation call this place Boggarthole Cloth. Rich in every requisite for a picturesque beauty and poetical association, it's impossible to describe this doll as it should be described, and I will therefore only beg of thee, gentle reader, to fancy a deep, deep dell, its steep sides fringed down with hazel and beech and fern, and thick undergrowth clothed at the bottom with the richest and greenest sword in the world. You descend clinging to the trees, and scrambling as best you may, and now you stand on haunted ground. Tread softly, for this is Boggot's Clough. And see in yonder dark corner and beneath the projecting mossy stone where that dusky sullen cave yawns before us, there lurks that strange alf, the sly and mischievous Boggot. Such is the introduction to a tale of the Boggot told by Croft and Croaker in Roby's Traditions of Lancashire, but which, if memory serves me faithfully, is but a localized version of a story told of an Irish sprite and also of a Scotch brownie. For in all three tales, when the farmer and his family are flitting in order to get away from their nocturnal disturbance, the sprite pops up his head from the cart exclaiming, I neighbour, we're flitting. Tradition which has preserved the name of the clough selected by the Lancashire bogger for his domicile has failed to record any particular pranks of this individual elf. And we can only notice this charming little clough as conveying by its popular name the only remaining vestige of its lost traditions. There is scarcely an old house or hall of any antiquity in Lancashire that cannot boast of that proud distinction over the houses of yesterday. A ghost or a bogot. Radcliffe's Tower was haunted by a black dog, perhaps in commemoration of the fair Alan of Radcliffe, who, by order of her stepmother, was murdered by the master cook and cut up into small pieces, and of a flesh of venison pastry was made for her father's dinner. Smithill's Hall near Bolton was formerly haunted by the ghost of the martyr George Marsh, whose stamped footprint indent in a flagstone is still shown there. A field path from Fairfield to Ashton Hill Lane was nightly traversed by a being of another world. Mostly this represented a shadowy lady, draped according to whim, either in a loose white robe or a rustling black silk. She would glide in front of a pedestrian, and then, by suddenly vanishing, leave his hair stood on end. At one of the Greensith farms, a murder was said to have been committed in the Shippham, and the exact spot was supposed to be indicated by the impossibility of securely fastening a cow in one particular noose. For no matter how carefully its occupant was chained overnight, next morning she was sure to be found at large. At a cottage adjoining, a bogget varied its amusements by drumming on the old oaken chest, shaking the hangings of the bed, and unavailingly whirling it around their invisible tormentor. At a neighbouring farmhouse, amongst other vagaries, the bogget would snatch up an infant while sleep between its parents, and without awakening them, would deposit it down on the hearthstone downstairs. A charm written in cipher against witchcraft and evil spirits. Early in the nineteenth century, some men engaged in pulling down a barn or shippen at West Bradford, about two miles north of Clitheroe, were attracted by seeing a small square piece of wood fall from one of the beams, and from it then dropped a paper, folded as small as a letter, but measuring when opened seven by six inches. A sort of superscription was in large and unknown characters, and inside the paper was neatly covered with a species of hieroglyphics, mixed with other strange symbols. In the top left corner a table or square of thirty six small squares filled with characters in red ink. The influence of the evil eye is felt as strongly in this county as in any other part of the world, and various means are resorted to in order to prevent its effects. Drawing blood above the mouth of the person suspected is the favourite anecdote in the neighborhood of Burnley. In the district of Craven, a few miles within the borders of Yorkshire, a person who was well disposed towards his neighbours is believed to have slain a pear tree which grew opposite his house by directing the first morning glances of his evil eye towards it. Elsewhere, spitting three times in a person's face, turning a live coal on the fire, and exclaiming The Lord be with us is another means of averting the evil influence of the evil eye. The Crow Charm and the Ladybird Charm The following charms are repeated by children throughout Lancashire and Yorkshire. Crow, crow, get out of my sight, or else I'll eat thy liver and lights. Ladybird, ladybird, thy way home, thy house is on fire, thy children all roam, except little Nan, who sits in her pan, weaving gold laces as fast as she can. I remember as a child sitting out of doors on an evening of warm summer or autumn day and repeating the crow charm to flights of rooks as they winged home to their rookery. The charm was chanted so long as a crow remained in sight. The final disappearing being to my mind strong proof of the efficacy of the charm. The ladybird charm is repeated to the insect, the common seven-spotted ladybird, to be found in every field and garden during summer. The ladybird is placed upon the child's open hand, and the charm is repeated until the insect takes to flight. According to an MS on magic, preserved in Cheatham's Library, Manchester, the herb pimpanel is good to prevent witchcraft, as Mother Bumby does affirm the mountain ash or wiggin tree. The anti-witching properties of this tree are held in very high esteem in the northern counties of England. To prevent the churn being bewitched so that the butter will not come, the churn staff must be made of the wiggin tree. Cattle must be protected from witchery by sprigs of wiggin over the shippens. And all honest people wishing to have sound sleep must keep the witches from their beds by having a branch of wiggin at their bedhead. The charms against the malevolence of witches and of evil beings are very numerous. A horseshoe nailed to the door protected the family. A hagstone penetrated with a hole and attached to a key of the stable preserved the horse from being ridden by the witch. A hot heater put into the churn kept witches and evil beings from spoiling the cream or retarding the butter. The baking of dough was protected by a cross, and so was the kneading of bread. Touching for the king's evil. The records of the Corporation of Preston contained two votes of money to enable persons to go from Preston to be touched for the evil. Both were in the reign of James II. The bailiffs were ordered to pay unto James Harrison a bricklayer towards the carrying of his son to London in order to see the procuring of his majesty's touch. When James was at Chester, the council passed a vote that the bailiffs pay unto the persons under mentioned, each of them up towards their charge in going to Chester to get his Majesty's touch. Raising the devil. The power of the devil, his personal appearance, and the possibility of bartering the soul for temporary gain must still be numbered among the articles of our popular faith. Repeating the Lord's prayer backwards is said to be the most effectual plan for raising the devil. But when the terms of the bargain are not satisfactory, his exit can only be secured by making the sign of the cross and calling on the name of Christ. In the neighbourhood of Blackburn, a story prevails of how two threshers once succeeded in raising him through the barn floor, but on their becoming alarmed at their success, he was summarily dismissed by means of a vigorous thrashing on the head with the flails. His partiality for playing at cards has long been proverbial, both in Lancashire and elsewhere. A near relative of the writer firmly believed that the devil had once visited their company when they had prolonged their play into Sunday. How he joined them they never rightly knew, but his presence was first suspected in consequence of his extraordinary good luck, and a casual detection of his cloven foot completed the dispersion of the players. The boys at the Burnley Grammar School are said to have succeeded on one occasion in raising the devil, and performed some incantations by which, it is said, Satan was induced to make his appearance through a flagstone on the floor of the schoolhouse. After he had got his head and shoulders well out, the boys became alarmed and began to hammer him down with a poker and tongs. With much ado they drove him back, but the hat mark he had left on the flag was shown in proof of his appearance. And it was still there until just a few years ago when the floor was boarded over and the flagstone removed. A miraculous footprint in Brindle Church. Beneath the eastern gable of the chancel lies a huge stone coffin with a cavity for the head, but its history is unknown. In the wall just above it is a small indentation, resembling the form of a foot, which according to tradition was made by a high heeled shoe of a popish disputant, who, in the ardour of debate, wished if the doctrine he advanced was not true, that his foot might sink into the stone. Much in the same way, no doubt, as the flag in Smithles Hall received the print of the foot of George Marsh the Martyr. It reminds me of some of the stories that did the rounds when I was younger about people playing and messing around with Ouija boards. And it just goes to show, I think, the fascination for groups of youngsters gathering together in the dark and playing with the mystical arts has been something that's been happening for a very long time. And we heard again plenty of this boggot lore, which um really resonates, I think, when we think of the paranormal today. The kind of tricks that these bogots were said to have gotten up to right across the country. Um sounds an awful lot like what people describe today as poltergeist activity. We'll be back soon with our next episode, the second part on Lancashire folklore. So until then, take care and may your God go with you. You can find out more about the show and about my other projects at the local mythstorian.com.