This is a reproduction of a library book that was digitized by Google as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the information in books and make it universally accessible. https://books.google.com Princeton University Library 32101 072858804 Princeton University Library Library of English Poetry Det Viget Sub Namine Founded and maintained by the Class of 1875 LEGENDS , BALLADS , & c . LONDON PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO . NEW - STREET SQUARE erry VISSPEL 8. PUSSEY S f 8 . x TENIS ili LUIGWA ::: 18 ! , 7 Egerton Leigh . W $ { Babies & & c LEGENDS Cheshin BUSSEY.dcz LONGMANS & CO Nou tre LONDON 1867 Dedicated TO THE MOST NOBLE THE MARQUIS OF WESTMINSTER , K.G. ONE OF CHESHIRE'S BEST FRIENDS . 3598 , 575 PREFACE . LORD RANDAL , the great enemy of Llewellyn , found himself one day surprised , in his castle of Rothlent , in Flintshire , by a very superior force ; he sent an express to his great general , Roger Lacy , Constable of Chester , desiring immediate relief . This express found Lacy at Chester , during the anniversary of the Midsummer fair . The occasion was urgent , and the general , we conclude , having no regular force at his disposal , marched im mediately to the relief of Earl Randal with a vast ( as we should say in Cheshire ) of players , fiddlers , musicians , minstrels , and any other vagabonds he could assemble , whom chance had drawn to the same focus by the load stone of the fair . Llewellyn , alarmed at the approach of this multitude , raised the siege with the utmost pre cipitation . When Earl Randal's triumphant cavalcade made its public entry into Chester , after their success viii Preface . in forcing Llewellyn to raise the siege , it is most probable that the victorious minstrels played before the Earl ; and it is known that the minstrels ( at the annual feast kept on the Midsummer commemoration of the anniversary of the day ) always headed the procession to St. John's Church , playing on their instruments before the Lord of Dutton , the Earl of Chester's representative , to whom the Constable's son , John Lacy , had transferred the minstrel prerogative given by Earl Randal to his father , with other rights and privileges , upon his return to Chester after his rescue from Llewellyn . The father of this Rafe Dutton is supposed to have marched at the head of the band of minstrels , against Llewellyn , as mentioned above . The anniversary of the solemnity was celebrated on the festival of John the Baptist , by a procession of all the minstrels to the church dedicated to this tutelary Saint in the city of Chester . After having been con stantly observed for at least five hundred and fifty years , the procession seems to have been discontinued A.D. 1758 , about a century since . To prove how some exclusive privileges ( of which the licensing minstrels granted by our Cheshire monarch was one ) were respected by the legislature , we find that the Act 29 of Elizabeth , which declares all itinerant minstrels to be vagabonds , particularly excepts the Preface . ix minstrel jurisdiction of John Dutton , of Dutton in Che shire , Esquire . It was not , then , very unnatural for me to suppose that Cheshire ( the former abode , and latest stronghold , of the minstrels of England ) would be es pecially rich in the songs , ballads , and relics of minstrels and minstrelsy , beyond any other county . The result , however ( as far as my own inquiries have extended ) , has not justified nor realised my anticipations . In my small collection I have not been able to include a single specimen that I can positively assert to be a remnant of the legitimate minstrels of Cheshire ; and with the exception of Geoffrey Whitney , Broome , and Parnell , I know of no Cheshire - born poets of the past age ; for Reginald Heber , though gone , can hardly yet rank with the past , nor like Rowland Warburton with the present age . I have seen many election squibs , personalities , & c . , of auld lang syne , but have reproduced none of them ; for if there is one thing more than another ephemeral , and incomprehensible and uninteresting even to the next generation , it is an election squib . Like a rocket or shell , its one discharge may have been fatal , but it is innocuous ever afterwards , and the débris not worth collecting . I have avoided almost all topographical descriptions , which are generally uninteresting to the mind , however the sight of the beauties of nature may delight and charm X Preface . the eye . I have steered clear of prologues , epilogues , laments , and elegies ; I have transcribed but few epitaphs ; I have rigorously excluded first views , fare wells , et hoc genus omne . My history may be proved faulty . I am aware , for instance , that , according to Hume , Edward I. on his return from the Holy Land , after hearing of his father's death at Sicily , landed in France before visiting England . I have only made him do what he ought to have done — namely , go home first ; and Grafton , in his Chronicle , corroborates my version . " Wherefore in all hast he ( Edward I. ) sped him into England , and came to London the seconde of August , & c . Sir Walter Scott observed to a friend who pointed out to him an inaccuracy in his · Bonnets of Bonny Dundee , ' We cannot always be particular in a ballad . ' It may be alleged of one of the ballads written by my talented friend Mr. John Leigh , “ The Knight's Lowe and Lady's Grave ,' that Sir Piers Legh ( of Agincourt fame ) is buried at Macclesfield ; but who shall say that he was not first buried on Knight's Lowe ? It is difficult to prove a negative , and great people's remains in former times were buried piecemeal in different places . Canova , all the dismembered saints ( and quite recently the late King of Prussia ) , are xi Preface . examples of this . Grafton , in his Chronicle , in speaking of Richard I. says : ‘ He was buried , as he himself willed , at Everard , at the feet of his father ; howbeit at his hart was buried at Roen , and his Bowelles Poytiers .' If I have been disappointed in not having met any minstrel relics , I have been equally so in the paucity of our legends ; but Cheshire , generally speaking , is a flat county , and the ideal flourishes most amongst mountains and streams ; and few even of our many castles and sites of castles have any extant traditionary lore attached to them , or it would long since have been unearthed by Mr. Beamont , or some other of our zea lous county antiquaries . I have been in correspond ence , in the course of my inquiries after the past , with many gentlemen and antiquaries , from all of whom I have met undeviating kindness ; and if I have in a great degree been unsuccessful in my researches , I believe that the actual non - existence , or I may rather say dis appearance , of material has been the cause of failure . A long hiatus elapsed between the invention of print ing and the energetic pursuit of antiquarian lore . Printing at put an end to the story - teller's occupation ; but did the time the live books were discarded , the new art oral not , whilst there was yet time , collect the stories of xii Preface . tradition , and the treasures of auld lang syne , and pre serve and pot them for posterity . Wherever I have found anything that suited my purpose , I have copied it like ' The Old Man outwitted ,' and other extracts , from Halliwell's Palatine Anthology .' Halliwell was himself . disappointed at the poverty of materials for his work to I have strictly kept to Cheshire . Had I travelled Derbyshire , Lancashire , and other adjacent counties , my , but field of material would at once have extended itself ' my object has been to collect a Cheshire Garland purely and solely . Should this collection be the means of eliciting any hitherto concealed broadsides , or bringing or from their dusty retreat any black letter curiosities , manuscript legends and ballads relating to Cheshire my trouble , or rather my amusement , may not be thrown antiquarian away . I may be the jackal to some future lion , and I may be the means of putting into the heads of efficient men the idea of collecting the ballads , legends , and odds and ends of the past , belonging to their respec tive counties , before the wave of oblivion closes over the fast disappearing materials . I have rejected some able articles on Cheshire , the source of which was entirely owing to the imagination , and not to some , however faint , traditional foundation , or which might well from their length be published alone . I believe , such as it is , Preface . xiii it is the only attempt to collect and publish an olla podrida about Cheshire that has been made ; and I may say to any reader Si quid novisti rectius istis , Candidus imperti ; si non , his utere mecum . EGERTON LEIGH . The WEST HALL , HIGH LEIGH : August 1866 . 1 CONTENTS . PAGE Legend of Constable Sands ( about 1509 ) Henry Bradshaw I A Different Version of the same Legend Egerton Leigh 5 The Spanish Lady's Love . Unknown 9 Cheshire Cavalry John Haward 15 Legend of Chester . When the Peaughter Egerton Leigh 18 , Gate ' Easter Song . Communicated by Gen. the Hon . Sir E. Cust 25 Old Mab's Curse ' . { Barlotericancelacicand Cheshire 26 John Leigh 27 Margery Leigh : a Tale of Lyme . The old Brown Forest .. R. E. Warburton 36 I ; { Hopkinson's MSS. } 41 The Mayor of Chester's Speech to James ) Recipes for Hooping - cough in Cheshire . Egerton Leigh 44 Cheshire Cheese : an Old Song . Sent by William Beamont 45 Another Version of the same . Sent by Rev. E. Coleridge 46 Another Version of the same .