Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/69



'What bringest thou?' the lady said,
 * 'I charge thee by the rood.'

He drew a signet from his hand;
 * 'Twas speckled o'er with blood.

"'Thy husband's grave is wide and deep;
 * In St Alban's Priory

His body lies; but on his soul
 * Christ Jesu have mercy!

GENERAL FAIRFAX BURIED IN ASHTON CHURCH. one of his MS. vols. in Chetham's Library, Thomas Barrett, the Manchester antiquary, says:—"They have long had a tradition at Ashton-under-Lyne, that in the chancel of the church, the famous General Fairfax lies buried. How this came about I am at a loss to account for, unless done through privacy, to preserve his corpse from the ill-usage of his enemies, and that it was thus secreted through the means of Colonel Dukinfield, who served in the same cause with Fairfax in the Parliamentary army. Dukinfield Hall lies very near Ashton." 

GORTON, REDDISH, AND THE NICKER DITCH. to a tradition noted in Greswell's MS. collections for a history of Manchester—"The inhabitants of Manchester are said to have behaved themselves valiantly against the Danes when they landed about A.D. 869." Whitaker says, "The house upon the Gore Brook challenged the denomination of Gore-ton." An old MS. formerly in the possession of the Rev. Joshua Brookes, A.M., chaplain of the College Church, Manchester, gives