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ence, and, being raised up by pillows, lay there enjoying the 

 deadly strife. There is a legend attached to Osbaldeston Hall, 

 which avers that a murder once took place there, and that in 

 consequence the boggart of the murdered person still hovers about 

 the neighbourhood and troubles the residents with frequent un- 

 welcome visits. One of the rooms of the Hall used to be some- 

 times shown as the scene of the murder, and as the apartment 

 specially, favoured by the ghost on its visits. The ghost of the 

 murdered one used to come, it was said, in a way to make night 

 hideous by uttering unearthly groans and exposing a wound in his 

 chest from which blood flowed. Here, again, we find that the 

 popular fancy of the boggart has an historical basis, for Dobson, 

 in his delightful " Eambles by the Eibble," tell us that during the 

 reign of Queen Elizabeth the eldest son and heir of the then 

 Squire of Osbaldeston married the daughter and co-heiress of 

 John Bradley, of Bradley Hall, near Chipping, and the husband 

 and one of the daughters of that marriage was killed by one of 

 the lady's brothers, Thomas Osbaldeston, in a family quarrel, he 

 being tried for the crime at Lancaster Assizes in 1606 ; though he 

 contrived to cheat the hangman at last by escaping abroad. In 

 all these cases the boggart has been a creature of love, or passion 

 or revenge, or jealously, arising out of love matches disapproved 

 by relatives. Such incidents naturally and easily burn themselves 

 deeply into the popular sympathy, and there is no room to wonder 

 at it. But when we find that a boggart is created in order to show 

 forth the horrible hatred of the common people against selfishness 

 and greed, we can easUy see how intensely sordid miserUness were 

 disliked by the untutored generations of mediaeval Lancashire. 

 There are many, both old and young, who walk with quickened 

 pace past Sykes's Lumb Farm in Mellor, whenever they are 

 belated, fearful lest they should once more be confronted with the 

 dreaded form of Old Sykes's wife, a most miserly dame of the 

 ancient time who was suddenly cut off from the hoards she had 

 buried in the ground around her dweUing, as she thought, for 

 greater safety. The boggart of the miserable woman, unable to 

 rest at being parted from what Sykes's wife thought so much of 

 in her lifetime, used to come and wander about the premises, 

 alarming her old neighbours by her midnight appearances. This 

 went on for some generations, when the farmer of the land, 

 having more courage than usual on a particular night when he 

 was fortified by an extra glass of John Barleycorn, ventured to 

 ask this boggart outright why it came. The ghost of the wrinkled 

 old woman then took him to a venerable apple tree, beneath which 

 the treasure was hidden, and from underneath which the wily 

 farmer took it, whereupon an unearthly smile passed over the face 

 of the boggart, the bodily form became less and less distinct, and 

 Old Sykes's wife has slept in her grave in peace ever since. 



