1st October 1829.

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PREFACE TO THE SECOND SERIES.

In presenting another and concluding series of Lancashire Traditions to the public, the author has to express his thanks for the indulgence he has received, and the spirit of candour and kindness with which this attempt to illustrate in a novel manner the legends of his native county has been viewed by the periodical press.

To his numerous readers, in the capacity of an author, he would say Farewell, did not the “everlasting adieus,” everlastingly repeated, warn him that he might at some future time be subject to the same infirmity, only rendered more conspicuous by weakness and irresolution.

Rochdale, October 1831.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND SERIES.

No method has yet been discovered for preserving the recollection of human actions and events precisely as they have occurred, whole and unimpaired, in all their truth and reality.  Time is an able teacher of causes and qualities, but he setteth little store by names and persons, or the mould and fashion of their deeds.  The pyramids have outlived the very names of their builders.  “Oblivion,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “blindly scatters her poppies.  Time has spared the epitaph of Adrian’s horse—­confounded that of himself!”

Few things are so durable as the memory of those mischiefs and oppressions which Time has bequeathed to mankind.  The names of conquerors and tyrants have been faithfully preserved, while those from whom have originated the most useful and beneficial discoveries are entirely unknown, or left to perish in darkness and uncertainty.  We should not have known that Lucullus brought cherries from the banks of the Phasis but through the details of massacre and spoliation—­the splendid barbarities of a Roman triumph.  In some instances Time displays a fondness and a caprice in which the gloomiest tyranny is seen occasionally to indulge.  The unlettered Arab cherishes the memory of his line.  He traces it unerringly to a remoter origin than could be claimed or identified by the most ancient princes of Europe.  In many instances he could give a clearer and a higher genealogy to his horse.  But that which Time herself would spare, the critic and the historian would demolish.  The northern barbarians are accused of an exterminating hostility to learning.  It never was half so bitter as the warfare which learning displays against everything of which she herself is not the author.  A living historian has denied that the poems of Ossian had any existence save in the conceptions of Macpherson, because he condescendingly informs us, “Before the invention or introduction of letters, human memory is incapable of any faithful record which may be transmitted from age to age.”

The account which Macpherson gave may be a fiction, but it is admitted by those who know the native Scotch and Irish tongues, and have dwelt where no other language is spoken, that there are poems which have been transmitted from generation to generation (orally it must be, since letters are either entirely unknown or are comparatively of recent introduction), the machinery of which prove them to have been invented about the time when Christianity was first preached in these islands.