Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/163

 and gestures from the crowd. Yorkshire Street, especially at its steepest and most tortuous part, in the heart of the town, consisted five-and-thirty years ago either of quaint stone houses with mullioned windows, gothic doors, and peaked gables, or of white-and-black timber-houses projecting over first a low-browed shop, then with an overhanging story, containing often a wooden oriel, and higher a gabled story, whose bolder projection invaded the upper area of the street. Smithy Door, and Old Millgate, and other streets in the neighbourhood of the Collegiate Church of Manchester, half a century ago, consisted mainly of such structures, which have now to a great extent disappeared. Chester still abounds with them in a picturesque form. In this narrow and tortuous lane of ancient houses, the procession of rush-carts almost brushed the projecting gables. The men on the crown of each cart were covered with flowers flung by fair hands from the highest windows, just too far off to be reached by a friendly grasp. Overhead, webs of coloured flannel and calico stretched across from the peaks of opposite roofs, but little above the flagstaff of each crown. There was barely room for the great banners to pass. Every window was decorated and crowded. The bray of the bands resounded in the narrow steep street. There was a confusion of gay colours, an agitation of bright forms, a tumult of rude joy, the transient frenzy of a carnival, as each long train of white-shirted ribbon-covered men dragged its cart up the hill, pausing and dancing at intervals amidst the exultation of the crowd.