Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/330

 308, too, by the aurora borealis; and myriads of fighting men were seen in the sky night after night, all through the county of Durham, before the French Revolution. The late Canon Humble informed me that he had heard people declare they had distinctly heard the cries of the combatants and groans of the wounded. Again, before the rising of either 1715 or 1745, appearances were seen in the sky as of encountering armies, which were, however, subsequently explained by a refraction in the atmosphere, causing something like the Fata Morgana. A few Jacobite gentlemen raised certain troops of horse, and exercised them on some of the high ground in Lancashire, and, these being seen reflected in the clouds, formed the apparition. Still, without doubt, wars have been ushered in by such aërial appearances. Armies were seen contending in the clouds before the destruction of Jerusalem, as well as before the battle of Ivry and the persecutions of the Waldenses in the seventeenth century.

But further: Our great battles have left an abiding impress on the imagination and heart of the Northern.

Thus to this day “a Nevell” means in Durham a knock-down blow, doubtless from the battle of Neville’s Cross.

The following incident, which occurred to my fellow-worker, is a further witness of this. She was teaching in a Sunday-school in the city of Durham, and the chapter (from the first book of Samuel) having been duly read in class, one of the pupils observed that he did not like that chapter as well as last Sunday’s, because there were no battles in it. On this the teacher thought fit to dilate on the blessings of peace and the horrors of war; to all which, like a truculent young northern as he was, the boy turned a deaf ear, only observing that there had been a great battle close to Durham once. “And where was it fought?” asked she. “At Neville’s Cross,” answered the lad, promptly. “I go there very often of an evening to see the place; and if you walk nine times round the Cross, and then stoop down and lay your head on the turf, you’ll hear the noise of the battle and the clash of the armour.” These were the young fellow’s exact words. The walking round the Cross I believe to be purely local; but the sites of other great battles of the world