125 



BOGGAKTS OF THE BrUTE CeEATION, 



Mr. McKay referred to the Spectral Horseman, respectively 

 associated with WycoUar Hall and Eagle's Crag, and affirmed that 

 the legends of Worsthorne and district were cm-ious as bearing 

 upon this species of ghost. When the old people of that part 

 were young there was a common belief in the existence of 

 boggarts, brownies, and fairies. Brownside, in fact, has been 

 supposed to owe its name to its being frequented by brownies. 

 The ford at Brownside was alleged to be their favourite resort. A 

 woman, who lived at Bottin, when in a communicative mood, used 

 to teU how, on the occasion of fetching the doctor to her father from 

 Burnley after midnight, she saw a brownie sitting behind a hed^e 

 and taking it quite coolly. It was in size equal to a man but 

 devoid of clothing. At the bottom of the great meadow at 

 Rowley there was a sheltered and sunny spot between the wood 

 and the river Brun that was held to be the happy hunting 

 ground of the fairies. Shreds and patches of their dresses but 

 of the tmiest kind, were said to have been found. Even fairy 

 smoking pipes were said to have been seen strewn upon the 

 ground. Now how did all these strange fancies about spectral 

 horses, spectral milk-white does, fairies and brownies come to be 

 mixed up m these East Lancashire boggart tales ? We cannot 

 answer the question unless we clearly understand all that the East 

 Lancashire people of long ago understood by a boggart. The 

 people of to-day have forgotten the very meaning of the word 

 Messrs. Harland and Wilkinson's talk about the " barghist " as the 

 origin of boggarts, because boggarts were sometimes found sitting 

 on bars or gates, is, it must be said with all possible respect, mere 

 learned trifling. To come back to the point again, a boggart is a 

 ghost, a spirit, a soul of either man or brute. What we call 

 mghtmare is the survival in another form of the old belief that 

 the disembodied spirits of brutes are able to torment us in their 

 nightly rambles. Nightmare is something so terrible that its 

 very name attributes its origin to the devil, the meaning of mare 

 being an incubus, a spirit which torments persons in sleep This 

 again suggests that here in East Lancashire the population was 

 m the far remote past at that extremely low stage in which 

 dreams do much towards forming character. Spectral hounds 

 associated with the vale of Chviger remind us, that about the 

 border of the Tamar and Tavey they beHeved that such appari- 

 tions were the souls of infants who died before receiving the rite 

 of baptism, and we know that in the Cliviger district the belief 

 m Grabriel Katchetts or Gabriel's hounds long survived. Dr 

 Webster has left it on record that the people of East Lancashire 

 were satisfied that these Gabriel Eachetts were disembodied souls 

 flying through the air, and that he tried in vain to prove to them 

 that they were simply wHd swans flying above their heads out of 



