Rostherne. 9 1 



is 115 statute acres ; the extreme length is 1250 yards, 

 and the extreme breadth 695 yards. 



A bit of romance clings also to Rostherne. There is 

 a legend that the mere was once connected with the 

 Irish Sea by a subterranean channel, the entrance to 

 which was somewhere near the mouth of the Mersey. 

 Up this channel, on summer evenings, (or, as some say, 

 on the morning of every Easter Sunday, in connexion 

 with another legend about the church-bells,) there used 

 to come, in days gone by, a mermaid, beautiful as Thetis 

 herself, and whose lips, 



" Uttering harmonious and dulcet breath," 



were the charm and fascination of the neighbourhood 

 during her visits. But for many years her song has not 

 been heard, and it is feared that she has gone the way of 

 the fairies, or else that the corrupted water of the river 

 disagrees with her. Modern science unweaves the rain- 

 bow, and contends that " natural selection," rather than 

 the blood of Apollo's playmate, gave us the purple hya- 

 cinth and its lettered petals ; and plain Manchester 

 prose suggests that the Rostherne mermaid was only 

 some ordinary though musical damsel of the village, who 

 knew more of milking than of the waves of the sea, and 

 possessed the usual number of feminine limbs. 



The tower of the present church, as appears by an 

 inscription upon the outside, was erected A.D. 1533. 

 Inside, near the chancel, are some greatly-admired monu- 



