greedy for new boggarts to associate with every dark and lonely 

 corner of the land, and iu their clumsy haste they robbed the 

 story which the boggart should have represented of every trace of 

 the original pathos and meaning. The boggart that haunted the 

 cross roads under the dark shadow of Hambledon, though asso- 

 ciated only in the vulgar mind with the dishonoured grave of a 

 suicide, like the spectral horror that the old folks would have 

 lingered at midnight about the spot on the moor over Catlow 

 Delph, where once a gibbet stood, got their name of evil, by the 

 rapid popular degradation of what at the outset were doubtless 

 the yearnings of pure affection. " When Nero died some hand 

 strewed flowers upon his grave," and no poor wretch who in the 

 stress of mental agony committed " what Cato did and Addison 

 approved," though buried without Christian rites at midnight with 

 a stake through his body where the byways met, ever altogether 

 lacked a mother's or a sister's love potent to make them see him 

 with the eyes of their soul, as they passed his dishonoured resting- 

 place, not as " crowner's quest law" had painted him, but as 

 they knew him in his young and happy days. Yet the angel 

 motherly and sisterly affection called forth to hover over the 

 hapless scene, the gross or spiteful crowd transformed into a 

 restless spirit baneful in all its doings. The carrion frame that 

 swung to and fro in the wmd-rocked gallows tree in days when 

 every venial ofi'ence was capital, seldom inspired enough of, 

 revenge to suggest a boggart of mahgn intentions, but, on the 

 other hand, as often as the withered body was seen or thought of 

 some fond heart deeply cursed the legahsed atrocities of the time, 

 and sympathised with this their hapless victim until in dreams 

 he " revisited the glimpses of the moon " in the oriel glory of 

 golden innocence that clothed him as a boy. These boggarts, 

 then, so gruesome and ridiculous in the mass, when examined 

 in detail are often found to be reflections of human love search- 

 ing the dark places of life and death for a loved and lost one — or, 

 to vary the simile, echoes of the cry, as old as earthly bereave- 

 ment, so choicely expressed by Tennyson, " 0, for the touch of 

 a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still." 



Historical Boggaets. 



, Some of our East-Lancashire boggarts are so fortunate as to 

 have historical credentials, Eowley Hall, near Burnley, it was 

 said within the memory of most of us, received visits from one of 

 its ancient residents, who, attired in a ball costume of Queen 

 Elizabeth's reign, was frequently seen beyond midnight. We 

 have heard it averred that William Chaffer, a Worsthome joiner, 

 while employed in making a coffin iu one of the Eowley barns, 

 where he had been working all night, received a silent but unmis- 

 t&keable visit from this, Elizabethan lady boggart. . Another maBi, 



