MANNKKS AND (TSTn.MS IN FLT KN( 'Kl> liV I'AUT 



CHAPTEK III. 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS INFLUENCED BY THE STATE OF 

 THE ROADS. 



WHILST the road communications of the country remained 

 thus imperfect, the people of one part of England knew 

 next to nothing of the people of the other parts. When 

 a shower of rain had the effect of rendering the high- 

 ways impassable, even horsemen were cautious in ven- 

 turing far from home, and it was only a limited number 

 who could afford to travel on horseback. The labouring 

 people journeyed a-foot, and the limited middle class 

 used the waggon or the coach. But the amount of inter- 

 course between the people of different districts then 

 exceedingly limited at all times was, in a country so 

 wet as England, necessarily suspended during the greater 

 part of the year. This slight degree of communication 

 consequently produced numerous distinct and strongly- 

 marked local dialects, local prejudices, and local customs, 

 which survive to this day, though they are rapidly dis- 

 appearing, to the regret of many, under the influence 

 of our improved facilities for travelling. Every village 

 had its witches, sometimes of different sorts, and there 

 was scarcely an old house but had its white lady or 

 moaning old man with the long beard. There were 

 ghosts in the fens which walked on stilts, whilst the 

 sprites of the hill country rode on flashes of fire. But 

 those village witches and local ghosts have long since dis- 

 appeared, excepting perhaps in a few. of the less pene- 

 trable districts, where they still survive. 



It is curious to find that down even to the beginning 

 of the seventeenth century, the inhabitants of the southern 

 districts of the island regarded those of the north as a 



