Chapter IX (3)

The Ashton "Black Knight" traditions, doubtless, to some extent, influenced the colouring of Bamford's poem, "The Wild Rider." Mr. Hunt quotes from a somewhat similar modern ballad, entitled "_Tregeagle or Dozmare Poole; an Anciente Cornish Legend_," by John Penwarne, in which, however, he states the author has taken considerable liberties with the tradition. Tregeagle is transformed into a kind of Faust, and the black hunter, whose "dread voyce they hearde in wynde," is no other than the arch-fiend himself.

They heard hys curste hell houndes runn yelping behynde,
And hys steede loude on the eare!

Although, in compliance with his contract with the demon, "the rede bolte of vengeaunce shot forth wyth a glare, and strooke him a corpse to the grounde,"

Stylle as the traveller pursues hys lone waye
In horroure at nighte o'er the waste,
He hears Syr Tregeagle with shrieks rushe awaye,
He hears the Black Hunter pursuing his preye,
And shrynkes at his bugle's dread blasts.

Here we find Odin (the spectre huntsman), by successive degrees, transformed into Sir Tregeagle, with a black knight attendant. The pair does not inaptly represent the Sir Ashton, of Bamford's poem, and the "Black Lad" of the Ashton Legend. The term "Th' Owd Lad" is a common expression in several parts of Lancashire, and means literally "Old Nick," or the devil.[32]

Both knights were baffled in affairs of the heart, and the doom of the one resembles that of the other. Bamford concludes his poem with the following stanzas:--

But strangest of all, on that woe-wedding night,
A black horse was stabled where erst stood the white;
The grooms, when they found him, in terror quick fled,
His breath was hot smoke, and his eyes burning red;
He beat down a strong wall of mortar and crag,
He tore his oak stall as a dog would a rag,
And no one durst put forth a hand near that steed
Till a priest had read Ave, and pater, and creed.

And then he came forth, the strange beautiful thing,
With speed that could lead a wild eagle on wing;
And raven had never spread plume on the air
Whose lustrous darkness with his might compare.
He bore the young Ashton--none else could him ride--
O'er flood and o'er fell, and o'er quarry pit wide;
The housewife, she blest her, and held fast her child,
And the men swore both horse and his rider were wild.

And then when the knight to the hunting field came,
He rode as he sought rather death than his game.
He halloo'd through woods where he wandered of yore,
But the lost Lady Mary he never saw more!
And no one durst ride in the track where he led,
So fearful his leaps, and so madly he sped;
And in his wild phrenzy he gallop'd one day
Down the church steps at Rochdale, and up the same way.

The practice of giving a local name and local significance to this tradition and its hero has been previously shown to be by no means unusual. At Fontainebleau Odin is transformed into Hugh Capet; the ancient British king, Hegla, rode at the head of the hunt on the banks of the Wye, in the reign of Henry II.; King Arthur, in Normandy, Scotland, and other places, is elevated to the post of honour; in Sleswig it is the Duke Abel; and at Danzig it is Theordoric the Great. Wordsworth, in the lines quoted at the head of this chapter, designates the personage who hunts with Gabriel's hounds as an "impious lord."

The mythical connection between unwearied but unwilling toil and arrogance and presumption is referred to by the Rev. G. W. Cox in the following terms:--"The myth of Ixion exhibits the sun as bound to the four-spoked wheel which is whirled round everlastingly in the sky.[33] In that of Sisyphos we see the same being condemned to the daily toil of heaving a stone to the summit of a hill from which it immediately rolls down. This idea of tasks unwillingly done, or of natural operations as accomplished by means of punishment, is found also in the myth of Atlas, a name which like that of Tantalos denotes endurance and suffering, and so passes into the notion of arrogance and presumption." In a note he adds,--"The Hellenic Atlas is simply the Vedic Skambha."

The story of the "spectre huntsman," under various modifications, is found in different parts of the country. They seem invariably to suggest the common origin to which I have referred, however much it may be obscured by relatively modern additions or poetic embellishments.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] QUERY:--May not the "marks of the comb" be, in reality, striae resulting from glacial action?

[30] Since this was written, I have been told in a public company, in Manchester, by an intelligent man, that the squeaking of a pig did give the name to Winwick. My suggestion that the old name of the brook, the "Wynwede," with the common suffix "wick," a village, was sufficient to explain the etymology, was, of course, laughed at as a relatively very prosaic affair indeed.

[31] See the following chapter.

[32] Mr. Roby's version of the tradition states that a half-witted lad met Sir Ralph Ashton, when driving a cow towards the Knight's residence. The boy, who was unacquainted with his superior, in answer to questions, said his father was dead, and he was driving the cow to Sir Ralph's as the heriot due under the circumstance. He further asked if the stranger did not think that, on Sir Ralph's death, the devil, his master, would demand his soul as heriot. The question so astonished the Knight that he sent the cow back to the poor widow. Dr. Hibbert Ware mentions a similar tradition, but the Knight's name is not Ralph, but Robert Ashton.

[33] "This wheel reappears in the Gaelic story of the Widow and her Daughters, Campbell, ii. 265, and in Grimm's German tale of the Iron Stove. The treasure house of Ixion, which none may enter without being either destroyed like Hesioneus or betrayed by marks of gold or blood, reappears in a vast number of popular stories, and is the foundation of the story of Bluebeard."