Should the present volume find favour and acceptance, its Editors may venture hereafter to offer another, embracing the fertile and interesting subjects of popular pageants, maskings and mummings, rushbearings, wakes and fairs, out-door sports and games; punishments, legal and popular; legends and traditions; proverbs, popular sayings and similes; folk-rhymes, &c. &c. _September, 1866._ But for unavoidable delay, consequent on the preparation of a large-paper edition, this volume would have been published prior to "Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders," by Wm. Henderson. As that work has appeared, it may be as well to state that, notwithstanding similarity of subject, the two books do not clash. Mr. Henderson's work relates chiefly to the three north-eastern counties,--Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire,--with large notices not only of the Scottish borders, but of Scotland generally, and many details as to Devonshire folk-lore. Its notices of Cumberland and Westmorland are fewer than of the three counties first named; and Lancashire is only two or three times incidentally mentioned. The field of this county palatine is therefore left free for the present volume. _January, 1867._ CONTENTS. PART I. SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEFS AND PRACTICES. PAGE Introduction 1 Lancashire Alchemists 23 Lancashire Astrologers 33 Bells 41 Beal-tine or Beltane Fires; Relics of Baal Worship 45 Boggarts, Ghosts, and Haunted Places 49 Boggart Hole Clough 50 Boggarts or Ghosts in Old Halls 51 House Boggarts, or Labouring Goblins 56 Hornby Park Mistress and Margaret Brackin 59 Boggarts in the Nineteenth Century 61 CHARMS AND SPELLS. Charms and Spells against Evil Beings 62 A Charm, written in Cypher, against Witchcraft and Evil Spirits 63 The Crow Charm and the Lady-bird Charm 70 Pimpernel 71 The Mountain Ash, or Wicken or Wiggen Tree 72 Charms to Cure Sickness, Wounds, Cattle Distemper, etc. 74 Charms for the Toothache 75 Vervain, for Wounds, etc. 76 Charms to Stop Bleeding 77