Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/302

 THE EAGLE AND CHILD. (See page 19.) Probably the most curious version of this legend is that contained in Hare's MSS., vol. ii.; which has been printed by the Lancaster Herald in the seventh volume of the Journal of the British Archæological Association. As the orthography is almost unintelligible to most readers the spelling is here modernised. "."—When the war was 'twixt the Englishmen and the Irishmen, the power of the English so sore assaulted the Irishmen, that the king of them, being of Ireland, was constrained to take succour, by flight, into other parts for his safeguard; and the queen, being pregnant and great with child, right near her time of deliverance, for dread of the rudeness of the commonalty, took her flight into the wilderness, where her chance was to suffer travail of child; bringing forth two children, the one a son, the other a daughter; when after by natural compulsion, she and such gentlewomen as were with her was constrained to sleep, insomuch that the two children were ravished from the mother; and the daughter, as it is said, is kept in Ireland with the fairies. Insomuch that against the time of death of any of that blood of Stanleys, she maketh a certain noise in one quarter of Ireland, where she useth [to stay]. The son was taken and borne away with an eagle, and brought into Lancashire, into a park called Lathom Park, whereas did dwell a certain Lord named the Lord Lathom; the which Lord Lathom walking in his park heard a child lament and cry, and perceived the skirts