Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/156

148 varied masters; there are many Norse and Danish words, and some Roman and Norman names; but in the common speech, French and Latin derivatives are conspicuous by their absence.

The people themselves are not easy to make friends with, for they are strongly suspicious of strangers; but once won over, are said to be staunch and faithful. They are grave, long-featured, and rather melancholy in face, touchy and reserved in disposition, and intensely averse to change or innovation of any sort; many of them live and die within the limits of a narrow parish, outside of which they never set foot. The younger generations are changing; but they show less disbelief in the old legends than indifference to them; they seem growing, not so much less superstitious, as less impressionable. But in some of the old people, there is still a simple serious faith that is delightful, and I do not think that elsewhere in England one could nowadays find such a childlike certainty of unseen things or such an unquestioning belief in supernatural powers.

I have given this slight outline of the district and some of its inhabitants, in order to show amid what surroundings linger these wild tales of witchcraft, and the spirit-world, in this little isolated home of folk-lore. Here, in this bleak and lonely tract, scarcely yet won over to civilization, has dwelt for ages a people, ignorant, poverty-stricken, weakened by malaria, and strongly affected by their wild home; and here still, amongst a few elders, who remember the traditions of their youth, and the beliefs of their fathers, linger tales that tell of the old pagan customs, that have perhaps existed in these parts since the very dawn of history.

I have gathered together a number of these stories—some of them were told me by devout believers, mostly aged folk, who dated from the days of universal credulity; some were repeated as "my grandad used to tell"—by younger people, and some were pieced together by scraps