In following up the history of a people we find that each age had its characteristic superstitions, and supernatural appearances. The remote inhabitants believed in the transmigration of souls, and the return of the spirit to haunt its earthly tomb; these and the later Scandinavian races, imaginative to a high degree, and whose religion gave to every object and event a presiding spirit, have peopled our hills and bye-places with boggles, which for ages have kept in awe the minds of many successive generations. To such means, and the native wild and superstitious feelings descended from our forefathers, may we ascribe the belief in apparitions such as the reappearance of those dead, the lady in white, black swine, wraiths, &c. From the older religions we have the Barghast, the ghost of the tomb, whose unearthly lamentations warn mortals of fell mishaps, the Taisteral, a mischievous spirit of evil; the dobbies, brownies and fairies. In these mysterious spirits of the night do we trace the imaginings of a people long gone, whose works are almost lost; yet tradition has never failed to hand them down and down from father to son, yet each time ebbing weaker and weaker, till now the advance of the nineteenth century has marked the bounds "Thus far shall they go and no further"; now no longer the ingle newk resounds with the dread tales of a grandfather, and by the next generation all this will be forgot. During the Roman sway Christianity was introduced into Britain, but it is highly probable that it took but little root in the North. The faint gleam of the true faith, if ever it existed, would be completely extinguished by the introduction of the Pagan creed of the Gothic nations, to the deities of which we are indebted for the names of the days of the week, and for several local names throughout the country. This wild religion, however, eventually gave way before the advance of Christianity, for about the year 630 when Edwin was king of Northumbria, the true light of the cross was first introduced into the north by Paulinus, who is said to have converted the Northumbrians. He probably followed the example of Augustine, who, to bring from the old idolatry and not to offend the feelings of the people, consecrated the heathen temples, and observed the heathen festivals; but dedicated to the observance of Christian saints. The next advance was to erect rallying places of truly Christian origin; these were crosses of wood or stone, which to this day remain in reality or in name in almost every village. One has been erected at Crosby by some devoted to the reformation of the people around, which would assemble the new converts to hear discourses on the blessings and comforts of the new religion. But this was not all straightforward. The country became subject to the incursions of the Danes, who brought back the old religion in its wildest and most erratic form. The infant Christianity fell before them, and Paganism was again in the ascendancy.