Boggart-hole Clough. 159 



in the Literary Gazette for 1825. There is yet another 

 surmise, that ' k boggart" in this particular instance is a 

 mistake for " Bowker," a family of which name is said 

 to have once occupied the hall. Possibly. Admit- 

 ting either explanation to be the true one and finally 

 established, the received idea still goes abreast of that 

 beautiful old tendency of the universal human heart to 

 assign spiritual beings to every part of physical nature, 

 the basis of all the primitive religions, and which will 

 endure when etymology is dead. Mrs. Banks supplies 

 yet another version, referring us to the time of Prince 

 Charles Edward, the Pretender, one of whose unfortunate 

 followers was constrained to hide himself in the clough, 

 friends who were in the secret giving out, in order to 

 hinder search by the enemy, that the place of refuge was 

 the abode of demons. 



The path through the fields referred to as the best for 

 approaching the clough from Manchester, turns up when 

 near Blackley through a little wood, and thence into 

 meadows, which very agreeably abridge the distance 

 homeward, especially if we go at that best season of all 

 for visiting Boggart-hole, when the newly-cut hay is 

 scenting the air, and tiny hands are trying to help the 

 great rakes and forks of the farmer's troop, and the 

 beautiful crescent of the young moon hangs golden in 

 the sky, and the bright reluctant twilight almost lasts to 

 another day, lingering like a lover at the hand of his 

 betrothed. The stream, it may be added, that winds 

 its way along the bottom of the clough is a tributary of 



