Forest of Rossendale. 



51 



I have thought it well to give the somewhat ragmentary details 

 contained in this Chapter, relating to the district as it actually 

 existed as a Forest, because they are the only materials which a 

 true forest-history can fairly be expected to offer to the enquirer. 

 The narrative is somewhat disjointed, and there is doubtless an 

 absence, to some extent, of purely human interest in the story ; 

 but this arises from the circumstance that in those early days 

 the human inhabitant was himself all but absent ; the only repre- 

 sentatives of the species being the chief Forester (not necessarily 

 a resident), with a few stray keepers of the deer, and here and there 

 a humble cultivator of the open spaces in the higher reaches of the 

 valleys. The details, also, may serve to close the mouths of 

 certain facetious critics who have been inclined to make merry over 

 the conception that Rossendale as they see it to-day, with its smoky 

 factory chimneys, and straggling rows of cottages, could, at any past 

 time, have been entitled to the designation of " a royal forest ; " or 

 that the antlered deer and other picturesque animals could ever have 

 graced the hill sides, or slaked their thirst at the streams in the 

 valleys. Such critics are apparently oblivious of the fact that it is 

 their own narrow mental vision and restricted knowledge which are 

 at fault, and that the picture as drawn is not the mere creation of 

 the fertile brain of a too fanciful historian. 



