Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/350

328 there were plenty of ghosts or bogles about the village of Melsonby, a district with which he used to be well acquainted. A well there, called the Lady Well, was haunted by a lady without a head, and Berry Well by a bogle in the form of a white goose. Not far off was a conical hill, called Diddersley Hill, on Gatherley Moor, where an old farmer declares the fairies used to dance in his young days. And near this hill an arch spanned the road, not of any great antiquity, certainly; still a mounted horseman was to be seen upon it in the early morning light, to the great terror of the farmers’ lads who had to pass beneath, starting before dawn with carts for coals into “Bishoprig,” i. e. the county of Durham.

The village of Calverley, near Bradford, in Yorkshire, has been haunted since the time of Queen Elizabeth by the apparition of Master Walter Calverley, now popularly called Sir Walter. It is averred that this man murdered his wife and children, and, refusing to plead, was subjected to the “peine forte et dure.” In his last agony he is said to have exclaimed, “Them that love Sir Walter, loup on, loup on!” which accordingly became the watch-word of the apparition, which frequented a lane near the village of Calverley. There is no fear, however, of meeting it at present;the ghost has been laid, and cannot reappear as long as green holly grows on the manor. My friend, Mr. Barmby, however, informs me that his grandfather, when a child, and riding behind his father on horseback, saw the apparition, and was terrified by it; while the father, to allay his boy’s fears, said “It’s only Sir Walter.” This Master Walter Calverley is the hero of “The Yorkshire Tragedy,” one of the plays attributed by some to Shakespeare.

The late Canon Humble informed me that a house at Perth, let in tenements, was considered haunted on account of the strange and unaccountable sounds heard there. Sometimes music was heard, proceeding apparently from a fixed spot in the wall. It was always heard in the same place and the same time, i. e. between seven and eight in the evening and one and two in the early morning, but sometimes for a longer, sometimes for a shorter, period of time. Again, there were unaccountable