A Preface before an Introduction seems sufficiently impudent. It is like popping our face in at the door for a short reconnoitre, before we introduce ourselves. Be it so! The Chronicler of the “Legends of Lancashire” has no apology to offer ... Read more

A Preface before an Introduction seems sufficiently impudent. It is like popping our face in at the door for a short reconnoitre, before we introduce ourselves. Be it so! The Chronicler of the “Legends of Lancashire” has no apology to offer, except to his palsied hands, for taking up the pen. He is not a Paul Pry, appearing before the public, with his perpetual non-intrusion plea. He imagines that his motives for writing the Legends are distinctly enough stated in the following Prospectus. “Lancashire, of all Counties in England, is the most interesting to the antiquarian. Its rivers once flowed with blood;—its houses were towers, castles, or abbeys;—its men were heroes;—its ladies were witches! But now, what a change! The county is commercial. Where the trumpet of war called Arthur to his victories, the noisy engine is roaring. The fortresses have become factories; the abbeys—workhouses;—the heroes—clerks, merchants, and bankers. The ladies, indeed, profess to be what they were in former ages, and still call themselves ‘Lancashire Witches.’ It may not be safe for the ‘Chronicler,’ aged as he is, to speak lightly of the power of their[viii] spells; they may yet be of a deadly nature to him—for witches love revenge. Report says, however, that they cannot use the broomstick on which their ancestresses were accustomed to perform their nightly wanderings in the air; but the Chronicler is not so ungallant as to conclude, that it is because they have broken it over their husbands’ shoulders. The witches of a former age were accustomed, with awful incantations, to mix their drugs:—pooh!—those of this age infuse a cup of comfortable tea—but surely not to chatter scandal over it. Less