CHAPTER II. 



" For the harmony 

 And sweet accord was so good music, 

 That the voice to angels' most was like." 



— Chaucer, " The Flower and the Leaf." 



" Compared with these, Italian trills are tame." 



— Burns. 



"An' thee, too, owd musicianer. 



Aw wish lung life to thee — 

 A mon 'at plays a fiddle weel 



Should never awse to dee !" 



— Waugh. 



TN a memorandum book or diary kept by Sir Ralph Assheton, 

 -*- a hospitable Lancashire Baronet of the seventeenth century, 

 and under date the year 1676, occurs the following entry : — 



Xtmas. [Christmas], given the Rossendale players 10/ — ." 



The Musicians of Rossendale Forest are not of yesterday's 

 growth — they are a venerable race, and can count their congeners 

 back through the centuries. Our truest of Lancashire Poets, 

 Edwin Waugh, had them vividly before his mind's eye when he 

 penned his droll story of " The Barrel Organ," over which may 

 often be seen " Laughter holding both his sides." But though they 

 may be taken at a disadvantage with the formal and new-fangled 

 " squalling boxes " which are regulated by clockwork, and troll 

 forth their music by the yard, as a carding-engine measures out its 

 sliver, — place before them the glorious choruses of Handel and 

 Haydn, and the melting melodies of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, 



