Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/248

 soup watery, their tea washy, their porridge thin, or their toddy weak, will say—"It's hot and wet, like Seathwaite broth; "implying, of course, that this is all that can be said in its praise. Another saying, "We've no back-doors in Seathwaite," indicates the primitive character of their domestic arrangements, as well as their intolerance of modern household conventionalities. It is quoted by their neighbours to illustrate these wants, and is used also when any person, of homely manners and habits, is expected to observe some unaccustomed requirement of a more advanced state of civilisation. It is said to have had its birth in a Seathwaite youth taking a basket of provision to the front door of a gentleman at Coniston; and on being desired by a servant to go to the back, replying, in a tone of remonstrance, "We've neah back-dooars i' Seeathet!" The road from Cumberland to Furness winds sharply round the foot of the mountain called Black Combe. The people of Broughton-in-Furness hold that nothing good ever came round that nook. Mr W. Dobson, of Preston, says—"It is a very common expression to say of a person having two houses, even if temporarily, that he has 'Lathom and Knowsley..' [sic] These were formerly the Lancashire seats of the Earls of Derby. Lathom, on the death of the ninth Earl in 1702, passed by descent to his daughter Lady Ashburnham, and ultimately by sale to the Booth family, the representative of which now owns it. Knowsley passed with the earldom to the heir-male, and is now the seat of the head of the Stanley family. Though separate possessions for above a hundred and fifty years, the expression 'Lathom and Knowsley' still survives. Another proverb relates to one of these houses—'There's been worse stirs than that at Lathom,' alluding, no doubt, to the havoc