The Ashton "Black Knight " traditions, doubtless, to some extent, influenced the colouring of Bamford's poem, "The Wild Rider." Mr. Hunt quotes from a somewhat similar modern ballad, entitled “ Tregeagle or Dozmare Poole; an Anciente Cornish Legend," by John Penwarne, in which, however, he states the author has taken considerable liberties with the tradition. Tregeagle is transformed into a kind of Faust, and the black hunter, whose "dread voyce they hearde in wynde,” is no other than the arch-fiend himself.

They heard hys curste hell houndes runn yelping behynde,
And hys steede loude on the eare!

Although, in compliance with his contract with the demon, "the rede bolte of vengeaunce shot forth wyth a glare, and strooke him a corpse to the grounde,"

Stylle as the traveller pursues hys lone waye

In horroure at nighte o'er the waste,

He hears Syr Tregeagle with shrieks rushe awaye,
He hears the Black Hunter pursuing his preye,
And shrynkes at his bugle's dread blaste.

Here we find Odin (the spectre huntsman), by successive degrees, transformed into Sir Tregeagle, with a black knight attendant. The pair does not inaptly represent the Sir Ashton, of Bamford's poem, and the "Black Lad" of the Ashton Legend. The term " Th' Owd Lad" is a common expression in several parts of Lancashire, and means literally " Old Nick,” or the devil.*

Both knights were baffled in affairs of the heart, and the doom of the one resembles that of the other. Bamford concludes his poem with the following stanzas :

But strangest of all, on that woe-wedding night,

A black horse was stabled where erst stood the white ;
The grooms, when they found him, in terror quick fled,
His breath was hot smoke, and his eyes burning red;
He beat down a strong wall of mortar and crag,
He tore his oak stall as a dog would a rag,
And no one durst put forth a hand near that steed
Till a priest had read Ave, and pater, and creed.

* Mr. Roby's version of the tradition states that a half-witted lad meet Sir Ralph Ashton, when driving a cow towards the Knight's residence. The boy, who was unacquainted with his superior, in answer to qustions, said his father was dead, and he was driving the cow to Sir Ralph's as the heriot due under the circumstance. He further asked if the stranger did not think that, on Sir Ralph's death, the devil, his master, would demand his soul as heriot. The question so astonished the Knight that he sent the cow back to the poor widow. Dr. Hibbert Ware mentions a similar tradition, but the Knight's name is not Ralph, but Robert Ashton.

And then he came forth, the strange beautiful thing,
With speed that could lead a wild eagle on wing;
And raven had never spread plume on the air
Whose lustrous darkness with his might compare.
He bore the young Ashton-none else could him ride-
O'er flood and o'er fell, and o'er quarry pit wide;
The housewife, she blest her, and held fast her child,
And the men swore both horse and his rider were wild.

And then when the knight to the hunting field came,
He rode as he sought rather death than his game.
He halloo'd through woods where he wandered of yore,
But the lost Lady Mary he never saw more!

And no one durst ride in the track where he led,

So fearful his leaps, and so madly he sped;

And in his wild phrenzy he gallop'd one day

Down the church steps at Rochdale, and up the same way.

The practice of giving a local name and local significance to this tradition and its hero has been previously shown to be by no means unusual. At Fontainebleau Odin is transformed into Hugh Capet; the ancient British king, Hegla, rode at the head of the hunt on the banks of the Wye, in the reign of Henry II.; King Arthur, in Normandy, Scotland, and other places, is elevated to the post of honour; in Sleswig it is the Duke Abel; and at Danzig it is Theordoric the Great. Wordsworth, in the lines quoted at the head of this chapter, designates the personage who hunts with Gabriel's hounds as an "impious lord."

The mythical connection between unwearied but unwilling toil and arrogance and presumption is referred to by the Rev. G. W. Cox in the following terms :-" The myth of Ixîôn exhibits the sun as bound to the four spoked wheel which is whirled round everlastingly in the sky.* In that of Sisyphos we see the same being condemned to the daily toil of heaving a stone to the summit of a hill from which it immediately rolls down. This idea of tasks unwillingly done, or of natural operations as accomplished by means of punishment, is found also in the myth of Atlas, a name which like that of Tantalos denotes endurance and suffering, and so passes into the notion of arrogance and presumption." In a note he adds, "The Hellenic Atlas is simply the Vedic Skambha."

*This wheel reappears in the Gaelic story of the Widow and her Daughters, Campbell, ii. 265, and in Grimm's German tale of the Iron Stove. The treasure house of Ixîôn, which none may enter without being either destroyed like Hesioneus or betrayed by marks of gold or blood, reappears in a vast number of popular stories, and is the foundation of the story of Bluebeard."

The story of the "spectre huntsman," under various modifications, is found in different parts of the country. They seem invariably to suggest the common origin to which I have referred, however much it may be obscured by relatively modern additions or poetic embelishments.

AMONGST the traditionary beings which linger yet in the legends of nearly every race or tribe, few are more universal than those relating to giants or men of colossal size and superhuman power. Geoffrey of Monmouth gravely informs us that, before the arrival of his legendary Trojan, Brutus, Britain was "called Albion, and was inhabited by none but a few giants." According to the same authority, Ireland was originally peopled by a similar race of monsters. He asserts that the magician Merlin transported the materials for the building of Stonehenge from the Irish mountain Killaraus, to Salisbury Plain. Merlin assured Uther Pendragon that the stones were "mystical, and of a medical virtue," and that "the giants of old brought them from the furthest coasts of Africa, and placed them in Ireland while they inhabited that country."

The ancient Britons believed Stonehenge to have been built by giants, hence its name, in their language, Choir-gaur, which signifies the "Giant's Dance."

The earliest reliable notice of the British Islands is, however, to be found in the work "De Mundo," section three, attributed to Aristotle (B.c. 340). The writer says:-"Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean which flows round the earth. In it are two very large islands, called Britiannic; these are Albion and Ierne."

The Ramayana, which is the next Sanscrit work in point of age to the Vedas, gives a singular account of the conquest of Ceylon, in which some mythic giants and monsters appear together with monkey

warriors. Rama, by the aid of celestial weapons, conquered demons. He obtained his wife, Sita, by snapping the bow of her gigantic father. The said bow was conveyed from place to place by an eightwheeled carriage, drawn by eight hundred men! His wife having been carried off through the sky by the demon monarch of Ceylon, “at whose name heaven's armies flee," Rama entered into an alliance with Sugriva, king of the monkeys, whose general, Hanuman, at the head of his monkey army, aided Rama in the conquest of his enemy's territory. The demon king was slain, and Sita recovered. The latter successfully underwent the ordeal of walking through blazing fire, in order to demonstrate her purity.

The confusion which existed in ancient times respecting wild men, monsters, and some kind of gigantic ape or monkey, has had some little light thrown upon it by the recent experiences of M. Du Chaillu in Equatorial Africa. In his " Journey to Ashango-land," he says:"After reconsidering the whole subject, I am compelled also to state that I think it highly probable that gorillas, and not chimpanzees, as I was formerly inclined to think, were the animals seen and captured by the Carthagenians under Hanno, as related in the Periplus.' Many circumstances combine in favour of this conclusion. One of the results of my late journey has been to prove that gorillas are nowhere more common than on the tract of land between the bend of the Fernand Vaz and the seashore; and, as this land is chiefly of alluvial formation, and the bed of the river constantly shifting, it is extremely probable that there were islands here in the time of Hanno. The southerly part of the land is rather hilly, and, even if it were not then an island, the Carthagenians, in rambling a short distance from the beach, would see a broad water (the Fernand Vaz) beyond them, and would conclude that the land was an island. The passage in the 'Periplus,' which I mentioned in Equatorial Africa,' is to the following effect: On the third day after sailing from thence, passing the streams of fire, we came to a bay called the Horn of the South. In the recess was an island like the first, having a lake, and in this there was another island full of wild men. But much the greater part of them were women with hairy bodies, whom the interpreters called gorillas. But, pursuing them, we were not able to take the men; they all escaped from us by their great agility, being cremnobates (that is to say, climbing precipitous rocks and trees), and defending themselves by throwing stones at us. We took three women, who bit and tore those who caught them, and were unwilling to follow. We were obliged, therefore, to kill them,