There are two jokes belonging to Garstang. One is the parish church, situated a mile and a half away, in a lonely situation, and the other is the railway that here crosses the road. To-day, those of the inhabitants upon whose hands time hangs heavily haunt the street with fell intent to inflict the Great Railway Joke upon the unsuspecting stranger who, maybe, halts to examine the cross. They fix him, as did the Ancient Mariner the Wedding Guest, with their glittering, or rheumy, eye, as the case may be, and with hoarse voice and pointing finger ask him if he sees that railway. Assured that he does, comes then the answer, with weird chuckles: “the longest railway in England, the ‘Garstang and Not End.’” Now the “Garstang and Knott End Railway” is probably the very shortest, being not quite seven miles in length: hence this stupendous funniment. Where it does end, however, is at Pilling. Some day, when the long-projected five-miles’ extension to Fleetwood, and a junction with the railway there, is accomplished, the joke will be extinct and the humour of Garstang dowsed in blackest night. [Sidenote: “_BAY HORSE_”] Beyond Garstang, the Bleasdale Fells appear, away to the right. The old importance of the road, before the railway that now runs so swift and frequent a service, is seen in the various inns on the way. There are the “New Holly,” “Middle Holly,” and “Old Holly,” or “Hamilton Arms,” inns. The “New Holly,” at Forton, replaces an older house of the same name, still standing, at Hollins Hill, on the left, on the old road that went out of use in 1825. Even the wayside “Bay Horse” railway station takes its name from an inn that was once a change-house for the coaches. In 1825 the “Bay Horse” inn was closed, and re-opened in 1892. Galgate and Scotforth demand no notice, except that the former is thought to have obtained its name from “Gael-gaet,” a passage for the Gaels, or Scots, and that the name of Scotforth carries a similar meaning. For we are come now within hail of the land that was in the old times always seething in Border raids: the district that Lancaster Castle, at the easy passage of the Lune, was built to defend. XV Lancaster is a fine name, if it is but pronounced as it should be; but the traveller who may chance to be something of a connoisseur in fine old place-names is a little shocked to find the town locally known as “Lankystir” and the county as “Lankyshire.” The old stirring history of the place wilts and droops in that horrible pronunciation. There is, after all, a very great deal in a name. A “Lancashire man” has a commercial sound: you detect the chink of coin in it, and it has, in truth, a modern appropriateness, for Lancashire is nowadays nothing if not commercial. Call him, however, a “Lancastrian,” and he becomes at once to the imagination an embattled warrior worthy of figuring, with all the circumstances of chivalry, in the Wars of the Roses. [Illustration: LANCASTER.] [Sidenote: _THE NORMAN WAY_]