Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/72

 applicable to a little dene, hollow, or valley. And so the invading Danes may disappear from these etymologies; and without them, what becomes of the battle? So as to Reddish, so far from being the red ditch, the etymologies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are Re-dich or dyche, i.e., the reed or reedy ditch. As to the Nicko or Nicker ditch, the old MS. quoted above gives us an alternative, "Micko," which we think guides to the true etymology. In deeds of the fourteenth century this was always called the Michel, Mikel, or Muchil Diche (from the Anglo-Saxon micel, mucel, pronounced mickle, muckle), and, of course, meaning the great ditch. There was an estate in the neighbourhood called the Milk Wall Slade, and this name may have been a corruption of Mickle, or Muckle, into Milk-wall; but there is not the slightest warrant in old deeds and charters for the Nicker or Nicko Ditch; so that the Scandinavian myth must depart with the Danes themselves.]

HABERGHAM HALL AND THE LADY'S LAMENT. , near Burnley, was long the residence of a respectable family of the same name. In the year 1201 Alina and Sabina de Habringham litigated the possession of four bovates of land, about eighty acres, against their sister Eugenia. Roger de Lacy was on good terms with this family, and, in 1204, gave to Matthew de Hambringham two bovates of land in Hambringham. The last heir-male was John Habergham, Esq., who was born in the year 1650, and died without legitimate issue in the beginning of the last century. Where he died, and where he was buried, are not known; for during the latter portion of his life he wandered about as a vagabond,