Lancashire Humour

Turning to look at the stranger who had performed such a marvellous feat, they espied – what they had not observed before – the cloven hoof and barbed tail (just visible from underneath the coat) of his Satanic Majesty! The effect of this unexpected discovery on the onlookers may be imagined. Had the wall round the field been twelve feet high instead of four it could hardly have prevented their exit. As for the cause of their sudden dispersion, he vanished in a blaze of fire, and the smell of the brimstone fumes produced by his disappearance was felt in the village for many weeks after.

Another story of the same personage is the following: At the corner of the field between Stacksteads and the railway is a large irregularly-shaped mound made up of earth, clay and coarse gravel. The debris of which it is composed has probably been washed down out of "Hell Clough," a depression in the hills immediately opposite, and deposited at this place at a remote period of time. But there is a legend connected with it. It is said that before the river Irwell had scooped out its present channel through the Thrutch Glen – a narrow gorge about eighty feet wide, through which the river, the road and the railway run side by side – the whole of the valley extending thence up to Bacup foot was covered by a vast sheet of water – a great lake embanked by the surrounding hills. At Hell Clough it is said that his Satanic Majesty had a country seat and was accustomed to perform his ablutions in the lake in question. One day the water, swollen by heavy rains, and lashed into fury by the wind, overflowed its banks at the Thrutch, ploughing out a passage through the rock and shale which hitherto had barred its progress. His Majesty of the cloven foot, who stood upon the edge of the lake enjoying the storm himself had raised, began to perceive the sudden withdrawal of the water from his feet. Divining the cause, he slipped on a large apron, and, hastily filling it with soil and gravel, made with all speed to repair the breach. But, just as he reached the place where the mound described is situated, his apron strings broke, and the mass of rubbish which he carried fell to the ground, where it has lain to this day.

It is some such tradition of the close proximity of the devil to the district which has given rise to the saying, quoted by Samuel Bamford: "There's a fine leet i' th' welkin, as th' witch o' Brandwood said when th' devil wur ridin' o'er Rossenda."

The "witch o' Brandwood" was probably concerned in the following incident. It would appear that the intention of the founders of the old Church at Kirk was to build it on a site at Mitchellfield-nook, and that the materials for the structure were deposited at that place – when one morning it was discovered that the whole had been transported overnight by some unseen power to the hillside on which the Church stands.

Not to be diverted from their purpose, the inhabitants again conveyed the materials to the place which they had originally fixed upon, and appointed a watch to frustrate any further attempts at removal. But one night as the sentinel slumbered at his post – an enchanted sleep, probably – the unseen hands had again been busy, with similar results.

A third time the materials were deposited on the chosen site, and, on this occasion, three of the inhabitants appointed to keep watch and ward. As these sat toasting their toes at a wood fire they had kindled, an old lady with a kindly countenance, coming past, saluted them with a pleasant "good e'en," at the same time offering them each a share of some refreshment which she carried. This they had no sooner partaken of, than a profound drowsiness overtook them, ending in a deep and protracted sleep – from which in the morning they were aroused by the shouts of the bewildered rustics who came only to find that the pranks had a third time been repeated. So, yielding to the decision of a power which was not to be outmanœuvred, the builders erected the church on its present site.10

Reverting again to hand-loom days, and stepping over by Sharneyford and Tooter Hill – "th' riggin' o' th' world," as Tim Bobbin called it – the high ridge separating Rossendale from the Todmorden Valley, by way of Dulesgate (Devil's gate), where Waugh assisted at the poker weighing – we may encounter some of the finest examples of Lancashire and Yorkshire border character, their conversation overflowing with mother-wit and ready repartee. Speaking of some one who had a "good conceit of himself," said old John Howorth to me; "there's only three spoonfuls o' wit (sense) i' th' world, and yon mon has gettin' two on' em!"

One old dame, recounting the struggles of poor folk in the days when there was plenty of law, but a sad lack of justice – not to speak of mercy – dealt out to the workers, and describing the kind of men and their head servants who held the noses of the poor to the grindstone while they themselves were laying the foundations of big fortunes, spoke thus:

"Yei, it wur hard work for poor folk i' thoose days. We geet sixpence a cut for weyving cuts, and in a whool week, working long hours, we couldna' get through moore nor about nine or ten cuts – for they were twenty yards long apiece. That would mak' five shillin' a week at moast; an' when we had finished 'em, we had to carry 'em on our backs two or three mile to th' taker-in.

"I con remember my owd mon once takin' his cuts in, and he had tramped through th' weet and snow on a cowd winter's mornin', and when he had gettin' his cuts passed by th' taker-in, he axed him if he would gi'e him a penny to buy a penny moufin to eat as he wur goin' back whoam; but th' taker-in said to him: 'Eh mon! if I wur to gi'e thee a penny it would be gi'en' thee o' th' profit 'at our maisters get fro' a cut, (whereas at the time they were probably making a clear guinea by each of them). They're nearly working at a loss now by every cut yo weyving. No, it'll never do to gi'e thee pennies in that reckless fashion, Jone!'

"It wur hard work i' thoose days, I can tell thi', to get porritch and skim milk twice a day, wi' happen a bit o' bacon on Sundays. Once I had to go fro' near to Stoodley Pike, across Langfield Moor, wi' my cuts. It were a raw cowd morning, very early, before it wur gradely leet. An' when I geet to th' taker-in – eh! an' they wur hard uns, thoose takers-in! – he says when he seed me:

"'Hillo! are yo here so soon, Betty? Warn't yo fley'd o' meetin' th' de'il this morning as yo coom across Langfield Moor?'

"'Nowt o' th' soart,' I said, I wur noan feart o' meetin' th' de'il up o' th' moor, for I knew th' hangmets weel that I'd find th' de'il when I geet here!"

Saving habits, to a much greater extent than prevail in the larger towns, are a characteristic of the working people in these outlying and semi-rural districts. This is accounted for to some extent by the absence of temptation to the spending of money, and so the habit of thrift gains in strength by the daily practice of it; just as the opposite holds good where the opportunities for squandering money and the temptation to do so are multiplied.

By reason, also, of the comparative isolation, a more marked simplicity of character is observable among the people. Rambling with a friend over the moors above Walsden, we called at a lonely farmhouse to obtain such refreshments with bread and cheese as the goodwife might be able to provide. With as much gravity as he could command, my friend inquired of the damsel who waited on us, at what hour the theatre opened up there. She hesitated for a moment as though trying to realize the idea of a theatre, and then with equal gravity and greater sincerity explained that there was no theatre in their locality, though occasionally in the schoolroom, some mile and a half distant, they had Penny Readings in Winter, and at times a Missionary meeting.

The theatre is a luxury in which they do not care to indulge very largely, even if they had the opportunity of doing so. It may be that the matter-of-fact qualities of their minds have been cultivated at the expense of the imagination, like those of the youth to whom I lent a copy of the "Pilgrim's Progress," recommending him to read it, and believing it would interest him. When he brought it back I asked him how he had enjoyed the book. His answer was scarcely what I expected, and it was spoken in a contemptuous tone: "Why," said he, "it's nobbut a dreyam!" One might be justified in coming to the conclusion that in this youth there was the making of a hard-headed, practical Lancashire cotton spinner.

But the Lancashire operative class are not all lacking in imagination, as the next incident will show. Chancing to be in London one evening, and going along the Strand, I came across two old Lancashire acquaintances – working men – sauntering in the opposite direction. They had come up on a three days' cheap trip to view the sights of the Metropolis. Desiring to be of assistance to them in that direction, and to make myself agreeable, I invited them to go with me to one of the theatres. This proposal, however, did not seem to attract them – the theatre was hardly in their line; so, by way of alternative, and remembering that they were strong politicians, I suggested that they should accompany me to the "Coger's Hall," at the bottom of Fleet Street, and listen to a political discussion. This suggestion they eagerly accepted, and, strolling along, we shortly found ourselves snugly ensconsed in the discussion forum, each in an arm-chair, a pint of stout in a pewter on the table in front of each of us, and long clay pipes in our mouths. The subject of the evening was a burning political question, and the discussion went on with great animation. I saw that my friends were enjoying it immensely; at length, nudging one of them, I inquired:

"How do you like it, Jim?"

Taking his pipe from between his teeth, his face beaming with a kind of solemn satisfaction:

"Like it," he replied, "it's same as being i' heaven!"

He had in fact attained to the very acme of enjoyment; comfortably seated in his chair, enjoying his pipe, his sense of hearing charmed by the orators' well-turned periods, and, as he expressed it, "he could sup when he'd a mind!" I have often seen my friends since then, and I find that that evening spent in the discussion room at Coger's Hall is marked with a red letter in their memory.

"Drufty Ned" was well named, and he had numberless ways of raising the wind when he wanted a gill with never a bodle to pay for it. One day he called at Owd Sall o' Croppers, who kept the "Hit or Miss" beerhouse and sold oatcake baked in Lancashire fashion on a "bakstone."

"Let's ha' hauve a dozen o' yor oatcakes, Sall," said Ned, as he sat down by the fireside and leaned his elbows on the well-scrubbed table in the tap-room.

The cakes were brought. "Bring me a gill o' ale, Sall, while aw warm mi toes a bit." The ale was tabled, and Ned pretending he was short of change, hands Sall back two of the oatcakes.

"Here, Sall, take pay for th' ale wi' two o' th' oatcakes." Sall looked at him dubiously, but took the proffered payment.

Shortly, Ned knocked on the table with his empty pot, and called for another gill. This was brought, and Ned handed back two more of the oatcakes in exchange.

A third time the order was given, and shortly, Ned, having finished both his ale and the cakes, began to clunter out towards the door, calling out, "Good day, Sall."

"Here!" cried Sall, "tha hasn't paid for th' ale."

"Paid for th' ale," responded Ned, "aw paid for th' ale wi' th' oatbrade."

"Aw lippen thae did," said Sall a bit moidart, "aw lippen thae did, but aw want payin' for th' oatcakes then."

"Payin' for th' oatcakes!" replied Ned, looking at the landlady in an injured way, as though protesting that she wanted to impose upon him, "payin' for th' oatcakes! Thae's gettin thi oatcakes, hasn't thae?"

"Yai, aw have," responded Sall. "It's queer, but it'll happen be reet!"

Miss Lahee in one of her amusing sketches points out that in East and South Lancashire, parents sometimes have their male progeny named in baptism according to the profession or position they should like them to attain in after life, hence we find such names as the following applied to people for the most part in humble circumstances: – "Captain" Duckworth, "Major" Fitton, "Doctor" Hall, "Squire" Crawshaw, "Lord" Massey, and even "Canon" Ball. To these may be added "Lord" Tattersall and "Gentleman" Taylor. One aspiring mother had her hopeful son christened "Washington," but by some mistake the name in the register got set down as "Washing done"!

"What size was it?" the witness was asked when in the witness box giving evidence.

"It was about th' mickle of a piece of chalk," was the answer.11

In one of the hamlets lying beyond Todmorden, in the Burnley valley, there was a curious specimen of the Lancashire border character, Hiram Fielden, who kept a grocer's shop, and dealt also in the other commodities expected to be inquired for by a village community. In his younger days Hiram had been a cotton weaver in a mill, but his ambition was to save a little money, get married, and open a "Badger's Shop." By the exercise of great frugality, along with the help of the savings which his wife, Betty, brought him, he achieved his purpose.

He began business in a humble way at first; but gradually as his customers increased, his business grew, and instead of continuing to vend treacle from a two-gallon can, he at length ventured on giving an order for a whole hogshead at once! The arrival of this consignment created quite a sensation in the village; the like had never been seen there before, and the urchins who watched the process of unloading the precious cask, and saw it safely deposited end up in the corner of the store, smacked their lips as their imagination pictured the luscious reservoir of sweets. In the course of the day a further consignment – this time of whitewash brushes – arrived, and Betty, mounting a chair in the corner, and thence stepping on to the top of the treacle barrel, was just in the act of hanging the brushes on the hook in the ceiling, when the barrel end gave way underneath her, and down she settled gradually up to the arm-pits into the syrupy mass!

Hiram, who was busy at the back of the shop, hearing the crash, hurried in to ascertain the cause, and stood for a few moments gazing in consternation at the head of his better-half barely visible above the barrel edge. What was to be done? Ruin and disgrace and ridicule stared him in the face, but with great presence of mind he ran to the shop door, closed it, shot the bolt, and then drew down the window blind.

Mounting the barrel and securing a footing on its edge, he succeeded, by the help of a clothes-line which he looped on to the hook overhead, and which she stoutly grasped, in gradually extricating Betty from her savoury bath. Carefully he stroked the treacle from her as she rose ceilingwards, and, that no loss of merchandise might ensue, at the same time wiping her down with a cloth dipped in a bucket of water; thus all traces of Betty's misadventure were soon obliterated, and nobody but themselves was any the wiser.

Hiram, in recounting the circumstance to me, confidentially, after long years had elapsed, declared that the run on that hogshead was immense. It was relished by his customers, old and young, and was the occasion of more oatmeal being consumed in the village than had ever previously been known, so that what at first appeared to Hiram to be an irretrievable misfortune, turned out profitable in more ways than one.

"Eh! but, mon," said Hiram, shaking his head, and with a solemn countenance, "that hogshead o' treacle wur th' ruination o' me."

"Ruination!" I exclaimed in puzzled surprise. "How do you mean?"

"Well, yo' see, me and our Betty had been wed for three yer, and up to then we'd had no childer, but hoo began from that time forrud, and never once stopped till hoo had thirteen! Eh! that hogshead o' treacle wur t' ruination o' me!"

Mr Milner thus describes and explains a curious old Lancashire custom: "When a young fellow goes courting his sweetheart on a Friday night, the neighbours come out and ring a frying-pan to scare him away. The reason of the practice is clear. Friday is the especial night when in working men's houses the Penates are worshipped with pail and brush, and a fellow skulking about the place is an intrusion and a hindrance. In a quiet street the well-understood sound heard, then all the people rush to their doors, and probably catch a glimpse of the swain who loves not wisely but too well, darting down a passage or round a corner, glad to escape with his face unseen!"

"Riding the Stang," or pole, is still common in out-of-the-way Lancashire villages. It is usually resorted to in those rare instances where a wife has given her husband a thrashing. The neighbours mount a boy on a "stang," or pole, and carry him through the streets in the neighbourhood where the incident has occurred. The procession stops at intervals, and the boy recites the following doggerel rhymes to the accompaniment of the drumming of pans and kettles: —

"Ting, tong to the sign o' the pan!She has beat her good man.It was neither for boiled nor roast,But she up with her fist, an'Knocked down mesther, post!"

Some of the older two-storied houses in Bolton at one time were let out in flats, the upper floor being reached by a flight of about a dozen or fifteen steps running up outside the gable. These were generally unprotected by a handrail, and even the landing at the top was equally unprotected and dangerous. Dick Windle, noted as much for his reckless character as for his ready wit, was visiting an acquaintance whose domicile was reached by such a flight of steps as I have described. They had had a glass or two in the course of the evening, and, on leaving, Dick's head was none of the clearest; and although the night was not very dark, yet, emerging from the gaslighted room, the steps were not easily discernible. Instead of turning to the right as he came out by the door on to the landing, Dick strode clean off the landing edge in front of him, and came down with a crash to the bottom! Happily, except for a severe shaking, he was unhurt. Gathering himself up, and whilst yet on all fours, he called out to his friend, who was staring over the landing edge in consternation at Dick's sudden disappearance: "D – n it, Bill! How mony mooar steps is there o' this mak?" The prospect of a dozen more of the same depth before he could reach the street level, might well prompt the anxious question.

Journeying one day to fulfil a professional engagement at Whittingham Lunatic Asylum near Preston, I arrived at the Junction where passengers alight to reach the Asylum by the single line of railway which has been made expressly for the use of that institution.

It was a bleak winter day, the sleet was driving before a nor'-west wind, and I turned into the waiting-room at the station to warm myself at the fire until the engine with its two carriages came up the branch line. I happened to be the only passenger that had come by the train. As I sat on a chair with my feet on the fender at one side of the fire, a sturdy middle-aged man joined me, and seated himself also on a chair on the opposite side.

"Good morning," said I, by way of introduction. He looked intently at me for a second or two, as if to take stock whether I was a possible lunatic on my way to the House, and then replied: "Same to yo," bending towards the fire and warming his hands.

"I suppose that is the Lunatic Asylum that we can see over yonder," jerking my thumb towards the window through which the Asylum buildings were visible in the distance.

"Yai, it is," he replied, again looking intently in my face.

"There's a lot of mad folk in it, I suppose?"

"Ay, there is," was the answer.

"More than two thousand," I remarked.

"Ay, mooar than two thousand."

Here there was a pause for a minute in our conversation, when he blurted out with startling suddenness:

"Aw'm one o' th' mad 'uns!"

The information came upon me so unexpectedly, and was conveyed with such emphasis, and in such gruesome manner, that I could not help an involuntary start and an instinctive glance towards the waiting-room door to see whether it was open. Collecting myself, and pushing my chair back a bit to put a little more distance between us, I resumed:

"You're one o' th' mad 'uns, are you?"

"Ay, aw am."

"You don't look like it, friend," I said.

"Ay, but aw am, though!"

"Well, and how do you happen to be here?" I inquired.

"Why?" he replied, "Aw'm th' asylum poastman. Aw come to meet th' trains as brings th' poast-bags."

Just then the lilliputian train from the Asylum ran into the siding at the station, and my mad friend, shouldering the letter-bags that he had placed at the waiting-room door, got into the lunatic carriage and I into the other. The engine whistled, and away we sped down the line towards the abode of sorrow.

There was a pathetic humour in the conversation I had had with "one o' th' mad 'uns," and my reflections turned upon the varying degrees of madness that afflict not only the inmates of an asylum, but also we their more favoured brethren outside its walls.

1

In their speech, their employments, their habits and general character, there is much in common between the natives of Lancashire and their neighbours of the West Riding.

2

Two Lectures on the Lancashire Dialect, by the Rev. W. Gaskell, M.A., Chapman & Hall, 193 Piccadilly, London, 1854, p. 13.

3

Quoted from an article on "Quacks" by Mr R. J. Hampson in the East Lancashire Review for November 1899.

4

In two volumes published anonymously in 1866, but they were known to have been written by Mr Lamb, sometime Rector of St Paul's, Manchester. They consist of a number of Essays and Sketches which had been contributed by him to Fraser's Magazine and they deal chiefly with Lancashire subjects.

5

"Lancashire Memories," by Louise Potter. Macmillan & Co., London, 1879.

6

"The image-maker does not worship Buddha; he knows too much about the idol." – Chinese saying.

7

"The Use and Abuse of Epigram," Spectator, Nov. 4th, 1899.

8

Post, page 94.

9

From an Article, "Table Talk" in St Paul's (MS.) Magazine.

10

A somewhat similar legend exists in connection with the old churches at Rochdale and Burnley.

11

This is nearly as explicit as the description given by a person of the hailstones that fell during the thunder-storm. He said that they varied in size from a shilling to eighteen-pence.