32 



Mr. Harrison Ainswortli, (Lancashire Witches,) in describing 

 a Pendle beacon, speaks of it as a quantity of logs, heaped in 

 'a circular range of stones, with openings to admit air.' 



The local legend is however as follows. One day the Devil 

 was coming with an apronful of stones for the purpose of knock- 

 ing down Clitheroe Castle. He stepped from Hambledon Hill on 

 to the side of Pendle, where he left the footmarks on Oraggs 

 Farm before alluded to. His next step was to the Apronful. 

 Here being in view of the Castle, he took one of the stones and 

 threw it towards Clitheroe ; but, just as he was in the act of 

 doing so, his " brat-strinrf " broke and all the stones he was 

 carrying were tumbled on to the ground. This disturbed his 

 aim, so that the stone he was throwing fell short of the mark, 

 and may now be seen, with the marks of his fingers on it, in a 

 field above Pendleton. 



The miraculous imprint of footmarks upon stones is of very 

 common occurrence. According to some a priest, according to 

 others, the DevU, stamped his foot into the Church wall at Brindle, 

 to prove the truth of Popery ; and George Marsh, the martyr, 

 has left his footmarks at Smithell's Hall, near Bolton, to prove 

 the truth of Protestantism. At Mount Dol in Brittany the foot- 

 print of St. Michael is to be seen ; and on the top of Adam's 

 Peak in Ceylon is a cavity in the rock which the Mohammedans 

 say is the footmark of Adam, while the Buddists declare it to be 

 the impress of Buddha himself. 



The breaking of the aproustring is a very common incident in 

 folk stories. It occurs in connection with the building by the 

 Devil of a bridge at Kirkby Lonsdale ; and in an Ormskirk legend 

 of the Devil, (contained in " Lancashire Legends'' before alluded 

 to) it was the breaking of his apronstriug when carrying sand, 

 that caused the sand-heap known as Shirley Hill. It is also to 

 be met with in Denmark, and in the Isle Kiigen in the Baltic. 



Geokge Batteksby's Mukder. 



One of the best remembered events in the history of Clitheroe 

 is this murder, which took place at the March fair, 1775. The 

 body of the victim was not discovered till three years afterwards, 

 and during this time the murderers appear to have shifted it about 

 from place to place so many times, that '• knocked about as ill 

 as owd Battersby " has passed into a proverb. Amongst other 

 places it was hidden in a culvert which passes under the Wad- 

 dington road just beyond the present railway bridge, and in one 

 of its removals it was dragged through the hedge close by. Old 

 Clitheronians used to say that every March fair day blood marks 

 appeared on the stones at the mouth of the culvert, and that at 

 the particular place, where the body was dragged through the 

 hedge, the thorns would not grow. One of the three men who 



