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sight. As to the spectral horse, that is only one of the Protean 

 forms that the Bugga, which in the Middle Ages came to mean 

 literally the Evil One, assumed. In those days he was a very 

 Proteus, generally a horse, but often an eagle. Such spectral 

 brutes were naturally greatly dreaded by the people of those 

 bygone days. 



BOGGAETS AND NaTUEE MyTHS. 



When recapitulating these East Lancashire Boggart tales we 

 have so far said nothing about how they were "laid" — that is, 

 about how they were supposed to have been induced to cease 

 from troubling. The "laying of boggarts " is, however, a very 

 interesting and a very large subject. In the first place, in all the 

 country side tales it was always the Roman Catholic priest who 

 put the unwelcome visitor from spirit-land to rest. That this 

 particular pretension is of venerable origin is tolerably plain from 

 the fact that the statute book bears testimony to the necessity 

 for restraining it by law soon after the Reformation. If, how- 

 ever, the Roman Catholic priest was always the principal actor 

 in the scenes where East Lancashire boggarts were effectually 

 laid, the play itself had come down from a time long anterior to 

 the arrival of the first Christian monk or missionary in England. 

 When Augustine landed in this island his orders from Rome were 

 not to destroy existing temples, but to press them into the service 

 of the Christian Church. He and his followers impressed other 

 things than temples, though of pagan origin, into the service of 

 the Church. The Britons of these parts, like the Celts every- 

 where else, were greatly wedded to the awful and the mysterious. 

 The rites and ceremonies of All Hallows Eve, as we call it, of 

 Hallowe'en as the Scotch name it, are very plainly only an adapt- 

 ation of what Chi'istian teachers found said and done here on 

 that particular night when they first came in contact with our 

 heathen forefathers. The earliest observers of All Hallows Eve 

 — known by quite another name then — must in every part of 

 East Lancashire have been a simple, wild, and ardent-minded 

 people. With them the feast was one of fire, to the kindly sun 

 in acknowledgment of the gathering in of the harvest of wood 

 and field. Pretty and fanciful, but altogether characteristically 

 Pagan myths, gathered round the occasion, dark and shuddering 

 legends of the unseen world were grafted on it, till after a lengthy 

 interval what we call the last night of October became a night of 

 superstitions so incongruous that it is almost impossible to account 

 for their association with each other. There are parts of Lancashire 

 where you now and then come across a field in a country place 

 which bears the name of "Purgatory." When you make in- 

 quiries " the oldest inhabitant " can only tell you that his grand- 

 father called it so in his day, and that he supposed it was called 



