PREFACE.

THE first collected edition of the works of EDWIN WAUGH was published in ten consecutive volumes during the years 1881-2-3.  The author was alone responsible for the selection and arrangement adopted; and no other hand could have accomplished the task so well.  His various contributions to literature had been sent forth during the course of more than thirty years in numberless leaflets, broadsides, pamphlets, and volumes by many publishers, and in continually changing forms, the contents being often recast and adapted to fresh uses.  It was almost impossible to compile a complete bibliography of his writings, and his admirers never knew whether they possessed all that he had written or not.  The collected edition, therefore, was received with much pleasure and satisfaction.  It contained, in well-ordered form, all that he considered worthy of preservation among that which he had produced up to the year 1883.  In 1889 he issued a second series of "Poems and Songs" uniform with the previous ten volumes.  These eleven volumes were published in "large paper" and in "small paper" form; and it is a gratifying and almost unexpected proof of his popularity in Lancashire—if not over a wider area—that so soon after his death both these editions should have become so scarce as to command very high prices—a "small paper" copy having been recently sold for £9.

    In the present edition the eleven volumes are reduced to eight.  In the interests of the author and his fame, no less than of the reader, this curtailment is desirable.  The eight volumes, it is believed, will contain all his best and most characteristic work.  No abridgement of separate papers, sketches, or poems has been attempted.  The Editor is responsible for such omissions as occur, but in all that does appear the author's own text has been scrupulously retained.

    In the two volumes entitled "Lancashire Sketches," the whole of the papers originally published under that title have been reproduced, together with a few others which seem to come naturally under the same designation.  The little cluster of stories—full of the finest pathos and humour—which circle round the homely character of Besom Ben, have been given complete and in one volume.  In this form they furnish the best instance of Waugh's power in the art of sustained and consecutive story-telling.  The "Chimney Corner Stories" and the two series entitled "Tufts of Heather," are practically complete.  In the volume which appears in this edition as "Rambles in the Lake Country and other Travel Sketches," [Ed.―this online copy is Waugh's original edition] will be found a selection of his best pieces in purely descriptive writing.  The papers in that class which are not reprinted are inferior to his other works in merit as well as in general interest.  To this volume of "Rambles" an index and a map have been added.  The small book called "Factory Folk," which was written in 1862, has not been reproduced, but two articles from it, "Among the Preston Operatives" and "Wails of the Workless Poor," have been given with the object of preserving some record of the Lancashire Cotton Famine [Ed.―that presented here is believed to be Waugh's edition, but with (a) the addition of contemporary illustrations (e.g. from the Illustrated London News of the time) and (b) some reformatting of Waugh's very lengthy paragraphs.]

    The Editor's most difficult task has been to deal with the Poems [Ed.―that reproduced here is Vol. 10 of the 1883 edition], which in the last edition filled two volumes.   He felt that one volume—larger indeed than either of the other two—should be made to contain all that might be expected to live.  The selection of poems now offered has been made with as much care and discrimination as the Editor was able to supply; and, although it is too much to expect that every reader's taste will be satisfied, it is hoped that few, if any, pieces will be missed among those which have made themselves dear to the hearts of Lancashire people.

G. M.

INTRODUCTION.

THE publication of the works of Edwin Waugh in a form so extended as to occupy eight volumes may seem to need justification.  The distinction between national and provincial literature has never been clearly laid down.  That distinction is probably incapable of anything like accurate definition.  It is not merely a question of subject.  There are writers who have taken rank with the highest, notwithstanding the essentially local character of their material; on the other hand, there are men who will always be classed as provincial although their themes are of the most general and cosmopolitan character.  It is the power which a writer displays, rather than the particular character of his subject, which determines acceptance; and, in the long-run, it is acceptance mainly which fixes his position in the open field of letters.  Waugh's case, however, is peculiar.  Any valid estimate of his merits must proceed upon the assumption that he is provincial.  He never regarded himself as anything else.  He is intentionally and deliberately local.  His subjects all spring, so to speak, from his native soil; and he is always at his best when he uses the dialect of the county in which he was born.  In short, he asked for no higher honour than to be entered on the roll of Lancashire writers; and among these he holds a place of undisputed eminence.

    I am not disposed to admit that what is now being said should be regarded as, in any sense, a depreciation.  In choosing his line he acted wisely.  In all honesty of purpose he delivered the message that was in him, after such fashion as was natural to his genius and, granting this standpoint, he did his work well.  To do this, and to have taken high rank among local men, is surely better than to have passed into the unnumbered and undistinguished throng of third-rate writers.  But there is another consideration.  Such books as his are not without their influence on the literature of the country; for, just as the rural population gives bone and sinew to the dwellers in the city, so those ideas which are often sneered at as provincial, and those dialectal forms of speech which are ignorantly regarded as vulgar, bring the qualities of freshness and vigour into writing which has become enervated by a too assiduous cultivation of what are called the graces of style.  It would be invidious to specify modern instances, but we are all familiar with certain literary exquisites who, if they only knew what was good for them, would take a short course of study in the rugged and nervous dialect of Lancashire.

    It is worth while, therefore, it seems to me, to re-issue the prose and verse of Edwin Waugh.  We know how valuable, for instance, is a good county history, not only to those who belong to the county itself, but also to the general reader, and to the national historian.  Of equal value, at least, are the tales, sketches, and poems of Waugh; for there one may find, in irregular form it is true, and with certain limitations, a singularly accurate picture of what rural Lancashire was like during the middle third of the nineteenth century—a period of stress and storm and change.

    I am quite conscious that in the eight volumes which follow this Introduction much inferior matter will be found.  Waugh often wrote for bread and against time; and his profuse use of padding, as well as his constant repetitions, are often of the most provoking character.  To get rid of these excrescences, however, it would be necessary to pull all his work to pieces.  Such a course would be most undesirable.  The articles, therefore, which have been selected for final issue must stand as he wrote them, and the reader may be assured for his consolation that he will often find embedded in a common-place and unpromising page some vivid delineation of character, some quaint and pithy proverb, some suggestive piece of folk-lore, some world-wide touch of nature, or some richly humorous story told in few and simple words.

    In estimating the value of his prose I should say that its first characteristic is its obvious sincerity and genuineness.  He is fond of quoting long passages of antiquarian history, but he never describes either nature or man at second-hand.  The thing he writes down is the thing he saw or felt.  He does not seem to think about style except, perhaps, when he is describing a sunset; he exercises but little art in the arrangement of his material; and his usual error is on the side of redundance, for he sets down everything with an almost youthful love of minute detail.

    Although, as I have already said, his most satisfactory work is in the dialect, it must not be supposed that his literary English is without distinction.  The quality of idiomatic strength which is characteristic of all good dialectal writing communicates itself to his ordinary speech.  When he wishes, for instance, to describe the country round Manchester he calls it "The green selvedge of our toilful district."  The twilight is "the edge of dark."  "At the edge of dark I bade adieu to Tim's cottage."  A tall man is "long- limbed," and a gaunt man is "raw-boned."  The following passage is a fair specimen of his prose.

"It was in that pleasant season of the year when fresh buds begin to appear upon the thorn, when the daisy, and the celandine, and the early primrose, peep from the ground, that I began to long for another stroll through my native vale up to the top of Blackstone Edge.  Those mountain wastes are familiar to me.  When I was a child, they rose up constantly in sight, with a silent, majestic look.  The sun came from behind them in the morning, pouring its flood of splendour upon the busy valley, the winding river and its little tributaries; and oft as opportunity would allow I rushed towards them; for they were kindly and congenial to my mind." [1.]

He is familiar with all the wild flowers of Lancashire, and often makes a nosegay of them for the decoration of his pages.  The following beautiful passage occurs in the Besom Ben Stories, and is used with considerable effect as a contrast to the rough humour by which it is surrounded.

"Near the Bridge Ben left the main road, and turned up a green lane.  It was hemmed in by old sprawling hedges, thickly clothed in the wild luxuriance of the season; a rambling fretwork of many-patterned foliage, pranked all over with floral prettiness—the rich overflow of nature's festal cup of beauty.  A posied crowd of hedge-plants were gathered there at the year's great holiday.  Thyme, and mint, and mugwort; docks, and sorrel, and nettles, and cotton-flowered thistles; the purple privet; the tall, proud foxglove, with its gaudy bell; the wilding rose, and yellow agrimony; the solemn, dark crimson-tinted hound's-tongue; and the little blue forget-me-not; burdock, and the lilac-flowered mallow, and the pretty harebell, with its pendant trembling cup; the golden-flowered broom—beautiful crest of the Plantagenet kings; and the scarlet pimpernel that shuts its flower at noon, and tells the watchful farmer what sort of weather's in the wind.  Trailing honey-suckles, with their creamy, sweet-scented flowers; and the rambling bramble, with its small white rose and 'gauzy satin frill'—the fairy's nightcap—peeping out prettily on long, flexile sprays; and here and there a thick-leaved tree, growing by the lane side, hung over all its friendly robe of green."

    Of his dialectal work it is impossible to speak too highly.  There he moves without restraint, and in an element that is entirely congenial to him.  He never once strikes a false note.  His rustic dialogues are always in dramatic harmony, and are as true in sentiment and in verbal form as if they had been taken down word for word upon the spot.  His dialect is not the result of philological study; he has no preconceived notions of what it ought to be, or of how it ought to correspond with our Early English, but it is absolutely true and inevitable.  He never seeks for a dialectal word or phrase; it comes unsought because it is his native speech.  William Barnes says of himself in reference to his Dorset dialect is entirely applicable to Waugh—"To write in what some may deem a fast out-wearing speech-form may seem as idle as the writing one's name in snow of a spring day.  I cannot help it.  It is my mother tongue, and it is to my mind the only true speech of the life that I draw." [2.]  Although, as I have indicated, Waugh's dialect does not rest upon an academic base, to the philologist it is invaluable.  It is the purest form of Lancashire Folk-speech—much purer, for instance, than that of John Collier, [3.] which was adulterated by importations from Cheshire on the one hand and from Yorkshire on the other.  The words are those which are or were actually in use; the declensions are grammatically correct; and, although the spelling is never uselessly encumbered by uncouth forms, the pronunciation is as accurately rendered as it can be without the use of phonetic symbols.

    As a specimen of powerful writing and of pure dialect I would refer the reader to one of Waugh's earliest compositions—the "Ramble from Bury to Rochdale"—which appears in the Lancashire Sketches.  Embedded in this article will be found the inimitable "Birtle Carter's Story of Owd Bodle," which has been often separately printed, and which was always a favourite Reading with Lancashire audiences.  The main incident of the story is grotesque even to rudeness, but the humour is of the richest kind, and the delineation of character, as well as the reproduction of dialect, are as faithful as it is possible to make them.  If the general reader could only master the peculiar form of speech he would be surprised to find what power and pathos there is, for instance, in the dialogue about the "Corn Laws" and the "clemmin" of little children.  Take two short specimens,—

"Iv they winnot gi' me my share for wortchin' for," says Jone, the Birtle Carter, "aw'll have it eawt o' some nook,—if aw dunnot, d—— Jone! (striking the table heavily with his fist.)  They's never be clemmed at our heawse, as aw ha' si'n folk clemmed i' my time,—never whol aw've a fist at th' end o' my arm!"

The reply comes from the landlady of a roadside inn—

"Ay, ay.  If it're nobbut a body's sel', we could manage to pinch a bit, neaw and then; becose one could rayson abeawt it some bit like.  But it's th' childer, mon,—it's th' childer!  Th' little things at look'n for it reggilar; an' wonder'n heaw it is when it doesn't come.  Eh, dear o' me!  To see poor folk's bits of childer yammerin' for a bite o' mheyt,―when there's noan for 'em,—an' lookin' up i' folk's faces, as mich as to say, 'Connot yo' help me?'  It is enough to may (make) onybody cry their shoon full!"

The two sides of the old Lancashire character are here—the rudeness, the fierceness even, of the carter who, if work will not give him his share of bread, will have it by other means, and who will not see his household starve while he has "a fist at the end of his arm;" and the tenderness of the landlady, who says, that to see the children "yammerin" for meat is enough to make us cry our shoes full of tears.

    It may be observed that in these extracts two words occur which have no exact synonyms in literary English—clemmed, which means to starve from hunger, and yammering which is quite untranslatable, but which may be approximately expressed by—to cry and yearn for piteously and earnestly. The form of wortchin' for working, of shoon for shoes, the old sign of the plural in en added to the verbs look and wonder, and the addition of the aspirate to the word meat (mheyt) to express a peculiar pronunciation may also be indicated as typical instances of careful rendering and as illustrating the points which would be brought out by an intelligent study of Waugh's dialectal writing.

    I have spoken, so far, only of his prose.  Some attempt should be made to estimate his position as a poet.  Although his prose far exceeds his verse in quantity, it is upon the latter chiefly that his fame must rest.  By his songs and humorous poems he first became widely known, and it is through them that he will be longest remembered.  He had the instinct and the heart of a poet.  His love of nature was intense and genuine.  The moorland hills "haunted him like a passion," and that alone would have compelled him, whether successfully or not, to seek expression in verse.  With regard to his poems in ordinary English it may be admitted at once that they are sometimes common-place; and that, even when they rise to a higher level, all that we can venture to say of them is, that they are graceful and pleasing.  But in the dialect it is altogether different.  There, as one might expect, the thought finds adequate and congenial expression though singing-robes are on, and though his muse may never be singing-robes but homely, still the inspiration is genuine; and, without allowing partiality to silence the voice of criticism,. we may claim for him that in the dialect, at least, he is entitled to the name of a true poet.  Of course to write in a dialect is to narrow one's audience; but so much attention has been paid of late to the nature and importance of folk-speech in relation to the study of English in general, that one may reasonably expect the number of those who are willing to master the difficulties of a dialect will increase rather than diminish.  It is quite certain that sounder views have come into vogue; and one does not often meet now (at least among educated people) with the opinion, once so freely expressed, that all dialectal writing is necessarily synonymous with coarseness and vulgarity.

    In speaking of Waugh it is natural to think of Burns, and to ask in what relation they stand towards each other.  There are several minor Scottish poets—Tannahill is one of them—who have written single pieces of a finer character than anything to be found in Waugh; but, if we take the whole body of Waugh's dialectal poetry, and compare it with that of Burns, I think we may say that, although the distance between them is confessedly great, our Lancashire moorland poet comes next in rank—not, of course, as poet pure and simple, but as dialectal poet—to his great Scottish predecessor.  Burns, by his fiery passion and his wide sympathies both with man and with the brute creatures, compelled, not Scotland only, but all English-speaking people to accept his Doric verses as their own.  Waugh, of course, has neither accomplished nor attempted anything so ambitious; but he has made himself the poet of ,Lancashire, and, consequently, of no small or unimportant section of England.  We may venture to go farther, and say that the more his verses are studied in the light of recent research, the more they will be found worthy of English consideration, providing always that the reader will rid himself, first, of the prejudice to which we have already alluded, namely, that there is some innate vulgarity in a dialectal word; and, second, of the equally erroneous impression that the Lancashire dialect is not capable of expressing poetic conceptions with delicacy or force.  What holds good, singular as it may seem, is, in fact, the very opposite of this, for any really fine poem, dealing with the elementary emotions, is capable of translation, without loss, into the dialect; whereas a spurious or artificial piece of verse would inevitably refuse to come within the limits of folk-speech.

    Leaving out of consideration the occasional and experimental poems in the Lincolnshire dialect by Tennyson (which, by the way, are as strong as anything he ever wrote), there is no English writer in dialectal verse who comes near to Waugh except William Barnes.  But Barnes is inferior to Waugh.  He is more idyllic, but he has less humour; and the dramatic element in his poems is not sustained.  The language is philologically correct, but the ideas expressed and the images used are often such as would not be used by the rustic persons supposed to be speaking, although they would be quite proper to the poet himself.  Into this error Waugh never falls.  While Barnes frequently gives you the impression of a poet expressing himself by intention, and with great skill, in a dialectal form, Waugh seems to be setting forth the ideas natural to his characters in the only language which either he or they had at command.

    No writer could possibly have grown more naturally out of his surroundings than Waugh.  Granted some native genius, some impulse in the blood, and the rest is obvious.  The sequence of his development is transparent; he offers you no surprises, and there are in his career no unexplained triumphs.  Out of the life he lived there came inevitably the books he wrote.  He was born in Rochdale on the 29th of January, 1817.  All his paternal ancestors were Border-men.  His great-grandfather, John Waugh, was what is known in the north country as a "statesman," and farmed his own land at Coanwood, near the village of Haltwhistle, in Northumberland.  William Waugh, being a younger son of John, was apprenticed to a shoemaker and leather-dealer.  At the end of his apprenticeship he travelled south, intending to reach London but, calling in Rochdale, where he had friends, he lingered there, became attached to a Miss Grindrod, married, settled in the Lancashire town, and ultimately began business as a leather-dealer on his own account.  He built houses, was a man of substance, and brought up a family of three daughters and seven sons.  He is described as "a quaint, staid, and persevering man, stout and square built, dressed in brown cloth coat and breeches of the Queen Anne cut, with large buckles on his shoes, and wearing a brown wig with long curls flowing down into the neck behind."  The records which remain give you the impression that these Waughs were all men of some mark, strong both in body and mind, but with a vein of eccentricity running through them.  Of the seven sons, some were of a "bookish'' and mentally speculative turn.  One listed as a marine, and was killed at the battle of Trafalgar.  He is said to have been "as strong as a lion and as broad as a pack of wool."  This simile of the wool-pack is noticeable, for the words "broad as a pack of wool" would be no inapt description of Edwin Waugh, the poet.  Of William's seven sons, the youngest was Edward, the father of Edwin.  He followed the trade of a shoemaker, and, though a poor man, he had received a good elementary education at the Rochdale Grammar School.

    Waugh's maternal ancestors all came from the hills of South Lancashire.  His mother was a Howarth, and was born on the moorland between Bury and Rochdale.  This particular locality I have always regarded as the one place where the purest Lancashire dialect might be found, and there is very little doubt that Waugh's admirable dialect was that which his mother used, rather than that which he heard abroad; and that more than half of the shrewd sayings and pithy proverbs for which he was so famous were those which came from his mother's lips.  Two things are conspicuous with regard to his relatives on the mother's side—they were remarkable for musical ability and for attachment to the doctrines of John Wesley.  Among them was James Leach, who published a fine set of tunes which are popularly known as Leach's Psalmody, and John Leach, who was one of Wesley's earliest preachers, and about whom there is a note in Southey's Life of Wesley.  Waugh's own mother used to tell with pride of Wesley's visits to her father's cottage, and of how the great man had spoken kindly to her and stroked down her hair.  Among these uncles on both sides—the Waughs, and Howarths, and Leaches, will be found, I think, the originals of the men who are so graphically described in the well-known poem of "Eawr Folk."

    Edwin Waugh was between two and three years old at the time of Peterloo, and he could just remember the coronation of George IV.   He was but nine years old when his father died.  Of him he had but few reminiscences, but he cherished the recollection of walking out with him at night, and being taught the names of the constellations.  Up to this time the family appears to have been in fairly comfortable circumstances, but when the widowed mother was left to struggle with the business of the shoe-shop alone they soon began to feel what he calls himself, quoting from John Collier, "the iron teeth of penury."  For three years they were driven to reside in a cellar-dwelling, and knew what it was to eke out their scanty food with nettles and passion-dock, or "poor man's cabbage," as it is often called in Lancashire, "boiled, strained, and eaten with bacon or bacon dripping."  This poverty, however, never meant squalor or untidiness.  In after life he spoke of his mother as "the most cleanly woman he had ever known, both in house and person and attire."  No reader of his works would need to be told this.  Nothing comes out more strongly than his inbred hatred of dirt, and his keen sympathy with all poor, struggling, and clean persons.

    Waugh had no schooling before he was seven years of age, but his mother taught him to read very early, and the books which his father had left were always handy on the window sill—the usual bookcase in a poor man's cottage.  In "An Old Man's Memories"—to which I am indebted for many of the facts included in this sketch—Waugh gives a list of these books—"The Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, 'Wesley's Hymns,' 'Baxter's Saints' Rest,' 'Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress,' 'Fox's Book of Martyrs,' a 'Compendium of the history of England,' 'Culpepper's Herbal,' a large quarto copy of 'Barclay's Dictionary,' and a few small elementary books."  All these, he says, he read with avidity, except the 'Saints' Rest,' which he neglected.  "Barclay's Dictionary" he studied more or less every day, and upon the "Book of Martyrs" he pored so long and earnestly that he often "imagined himself living in the reign of Queen Mary."  Many of Wesley's hymns he learned by heart, a venerable and kindly Welshman having offered him a penny for each hymn which he would commit to memory.  Subsequently the boy's modest library was increased by the addition of an "Enfield's Speaker."  This he regarded as a delightful book, probably because it would reveal for the first time something of what awaited him in the field of general literature.  He carried it about with him, he says, in the daytime, and took it to bed at night.

    The Rochdale in which the growing lad lived was, it should be remembered, a very different place to the town as we know it now.  It was still small and picturesque.  The moorland ridges were close at hand, and had not to be approached through long streets of houses; the green country could always be seen, and in the woods, within a few hundred yards of his mother's house, he could gather posies and acorns, and hear the church bells ringing curfew and chime.  Quite within the town itself there was still standing the old haunted manor house of the Byrons (the author of "Childe Harold" was the last lord of the manor), a place which Waugh describes as being for him as a child "steeped in romance."  Like Wordsworth, he owed much to the river of his birthplace.  The Roche was his Derwent, and―
 

To him it was "the fairest of all rivers."  It could not be said to "blend its murmurs with his nurse's song," for no nurse watched over his gambols; but on long summer days, when yet a mere infant, he angled and paddled in it untrammelled from morning till night.  Not less attractive or fruitful were the human aspects of the place.  As might be expected, he came into contact with all sorts of striking and original personages—old-fashioned tradesmen—bakers, chandlers, barbers, nail-makers, reed-makers, and innkeepers ancient squires, local preachers, working botanists, and self-taught mathematicians.  Among such scenes and characters his earliest years were spent.  Of the scenery he said "my heart warms to those wild hills as I write about them now; for I loved them when I was a lad, a love so strong and constant that I cannot account for it on any other ground than the fact that my forefathers on both sides for many generations had been born and bred among pastoral scenery of a similar kind."  His opinion of the human society among which he was thrown is expressed in the following words:―"I never knew better or happier people than the poor hardworking folk among whom I lived."  The town itself, and its inhabitants, and the moorland by which they were surrounded, are all touched with a loving hand in one of the best of his songs—"I've worn my bits o' shoon away."
 

    After he was seven years of age he seems to have received a little intermittent teaching at various schools, private, national, and commercial,—his mother evidently struggling to give him some sort of education.  In what he calls the "exact sciences" he made no progress, but he was quick in all other kinds of learning.  From school, however, he was often a truant, the attractions of the moorland and the wood being too strong for him.  As was almost invariably the case with boys of his class, at the time of which we are writing, the Sunday school and the night school were called in to make up for deficiencies in day school training.  At this time his mother had a shoe-stall in Rochdale market, and he often had to give his help there,—standing in frost and rain, as he painfully remembers, on Saturdays till nearly midnight.  At twelve years of age he entered into regular employment, becoming an errand boy with a Mr. John Walker, a local preacher and printer.  It was the opening of a new era in his life when he took two shillings to his poor mother, that being the amount of his first week's wage.  Twelve months later his services were transferred to Mr. Thomas Holden, another Rochdale bookseller and printer.  At fourteen he was apprenticed to Mr. Holden, and began to learn the art and mystery of printing.  His duties were not light, for long hours of labour were then the rule.  Mr. Holden's shop was opened at six in summer and seven in winter, and the hour of closing was nine at night.  As junior apprentice it was his business to open the shop.  To be late was an unpardonable offence, and once in his boyish anxiety he awoke in the middle of a winter's night and made his way through snow-covered lanes to his master's shop at half-past one in the morning.

    Early in his apprenticeship his range of reading widened.  His appetite for knowledge had become insatiable, and he read everything he could lay his hands on, but especially histories of England and books relating to his native county.  His attendance in the shop of Mr. Holden not only brought him into contact with books, but also with book-lovers.  Among these was a young curate who afterwards became "Canon Raines," the well-known antiquary.  In subsequent years the canon reminded Waugh that he once found him in the shop reading by stealth the poems of George Herbert.  About this time he began to read the works of John Collier and Roby's Traditions of Lancashire.  Probably these two books, more than anything else, would determine the precise line on which his own literary work was to run.  He had always been fond of athletic exercises, and of long moorland walks, but the Traditions of Lancashire put a method into his rambles, and he visited, one after another, all the localities mentioned in Roby's volumes.  These walks were taken often alone, but sometimes with a companion, at the end of the week, and extended to twenty or thirty miles, and even, on occasions, to fifty miles.  Soon after the beginning of his apprenticeship he ran away to sea in the orthodox manner, walked to Liverpool with his Sunday clothes in a bundle, starved about the docks for two or three days, and then sorrowfully tramped home again, starting at eight o'clock on a Saturday night and walking straight on eighteen miles to Warrington, eighteen more to Manchester, and eleven to Rochdale.  As he passed through Salford he heard the bells ringing for morning service.  The last three miles of his journey he accomplished sitting behind a coach, which was driven by a friend, but all the rest he had walked.  When he reached home his mother said he "looked ten years older,—thin, tanned, and wild-eyed as a gipsy."  She put him to bed, and he slept seventeen hours.  The next day, sadder and wiser, he went humbly back to his master's shop.

    During these early years he remembers the passing of the Reform Bill, the riots of the handloom weavers (being himself an eye-witness when eight men were shot), and the inception of the co-operative movement in Rochdale.  He heard Robert Owen lecture, and had something to do with the founding of a working men's institute, where lectures and founding working classes were mingled with fencing, tea-parties, and dancing, and in connection with which a manuscript magazine was started, Waugh being appointed editor.  When he was little more than fourteen there came the inevitable "first-love."  The object of the young poet's affection was a country girl who lived on the edge of the town in a small cottage which was to him "a little heaven of bright cleanliness and sweet, simple, virtuous life."  There is no need to tell the story.  It is unmistakably written out in his beautiful poem—"The Sweetheart Gate."

    The later portion of Waugh's life may be more briefly summarised.  To gain some idea of what those early years were like seemed to me essential, because it is easy to reach the conclusion that, by the time he was twelve years of age, he had seen and registered almost every character which he afterwards delineated, and that at twenty he had practically completed his literary equipment so far as material was concerned.

    Waugh's apprenticeship ended about 1839.  For a time he travelled through the country as a journeyman printer, in search of work, finding temporary employment at Warrington, Much Wenlock, Wolverhampton, and elsewhere.  He then spent five or six years in the printing offices of London and the provinces, and subsequently returned to his old employer in Rochdale with whom he remained for about three years.  During this period he lived at an old farmhouse called Peannock or Pea-nook, close by the western shore of Hollingworth Lake, under Blackstone Edge.  This entailed a three miles walk out and in, morning and evening; but he felt himself repaid for this labour by the lonely beauty of the locality, and by the quaint, old-fashioned, superstitious people with whom his residence at Peanock brought him in contact.

    About 1847 Waugh gave up his work as an operative printer and came to Manchester, having obtained the post of Assistant Secretary to the Lancashire Public School Association, Mr. Francis Espinasse, the author of Lancashire Worthies, being his chief.  Shortly after this time he made his first appearance as a professional writer, being engaged to contribute a series of articles to the columns of a Manchester newspaper.  In 1855 he issued his first volume of prose, under the title of Sketches of Lancashire Life and Localities.  It was in 1856, when he was nearly forty years of age, that he wrote his most popular song—"Come whoam to the childer an' me."  It was the outcome of a happy inspiration, and the first sketch of it was scribbled on the leaves of a pocket-book in the coffee-room of the old Clarence Hotel, in Spring Gardens, Manchester.  This original draft is in the possession of the Manchester Literary Club.  The song was first published in the Manchester Examiner.  Subsequently Davie Kelly, a bookseller with literary tastes, printed it upon a card, and gave it to the customers who frequented his shop.  Its popularity was immediate and almost unparalleled.  Issued as a broadsheet, and sold at a penny, the demand for it was enormous, not in Lancashire only, but all over England and in the Colonies.  Miss Burdett-Coutts ordered some ten or twenty thousand copies for gratuitous distribution, and The Saturday Review spoke of it as "one of the most delicious idylls in the world—so full of colouring, yet so delicate, so tender, and so profoundly free from artifice."  At one bound the writer found himself famous; and, impelled by his unexpected success, he produced during the following two or three years his best songs in the dialect.  These were collected and published in 1859.  Before this time a second edition of his Lancashire Sketches had been issued.  For some years after relinquishing the secretaryship of the Lancashire School Association, he acted as "townsman" or "traveller" for a well-known printing firm in Manchester.  With this avocation he combine the selling of his own books, carrying them about with him in a large blue bag.  Ten years before, Sam Bamford, the author of Passages in the Life of a Radical, had done the same thing, offering his wares with a stalwart independence which was very amusing.

    During the years with which we are now dealing a small but notable Club was founded in Manchester under the name of the "Shandeans."  It lived for four or five years, and Waugh was one of its most conspicuous members.  Besides the daily dinner, there were small meetings in the evening between five and seven, and a larger gathering on Saturday night from six to ten.  The practice of the Club was "plain living and high thinking," and the first rule was that every man should pay his own reckoning.  I am indebted to Mr. Johan H. Nodal for the following graphic sketch of the Club and its members.

"The Shandeans never numbered more than twelve, among whom were Francis Espinasse, then editor of the Manchester Weekly Advertiser; Edwin Waugh, our aboriginal genius' as Espinasse used to call him; John Stores Smith, author of Mirabeau and Social Aspects; James Cancan; Frank Tewsbury, brother of Mrs. Fletcher and Miss Geraldine E. Jewsbury, the novelist; John H. Nodal; William H. Currie, an impetuous and perfervid Scot, who, like Thomas Carlyle, was a native of Ecclefechan, and immensely proud of the fact; Theophilus Pattisson, secretary of the Cobden Testimonial Fund; and Thomas, always called Tom, Henderson when he wasn't called 'Chalks Tom,' an artist who made a modest competency by his portraits drawn in coloured chalks.  He was the honorary secretary of the Club, and a most remarkable personality.  Many notable men of letters from London dropped in from time to time, and were made welcome to the modest fare of the Shandeans.  It was a delightfully happy time, for most of the men were in the heyday of youth and spirits.  Manchester then was a comparatively quiet place.  There were no suburbs to speak of; music had not taken the start which dated from the Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857; and local artists were very few.  Waugh was our chief singer.  'Brave Chanticleer salutes the Morn' was one of his favourite ditties in those days; and when he came to the chorus―

raising his churchwarden, and flourishing it like a baton, he led a rolling response of amazing volume and vigour.  Then later, about 1854 or 1855, when we were in the midst of the Crimean War, he wrote a couple of patriotic songs, 'God bless thee, Old England' and 'Yea Gallant Men of England,' and he was wont to be often called upon to chant the last-named, ending

always to the accompaniment of a stormy chorus.  There were other singers, of course, but Waugh was our chief in that line.  I am often reminded, when I recall those days and nights, of Thackeray's description in The Newcomes of the Haunt in the Soho, frequented by Pendennis and Clive and Fred Bayham, and a dozen or score of the newspaper men, authors, and artists of that time."

Only three of the Shandeans now remain—Francis Espinasse, James Cancan, and John Nodal.

    In a few years after the extinction of the Shandeans, namely, in 1862, the Manchester Literary Club was started on somewhat similar lines, Waugh being one of the six being founders.  The others were Joseph Chatwood, Charles Hardwick, John Page, Benjamin Brierley, and R. R. Bealey.  Among those who attended the early meetings of the Club there may be mentioned the patriarchal Bamford, Charles Swain, the polished poet, John Harland, the antiquary, and John Cameron, the author of many poems and philosophical essays.  In 1876 Waugh became a vice-president, and remained in that office until his death.  Several of his papers and poems were read before the Club, but his contributions more frequently took the form of humorous monologue, or snatches of song deliciously rendered from his own published poems.

    The old complaint about the neglect of genius and the withholding of recognition until it has become too late is not applicable in Waugh's case.  In Rochdale, his native town, he had a few detractors, but even there he had many old acquaintances who were loyal in their attachment; and in Manchester, where he made his home for the greater part of his mature life, honour and "troops of friends " always awaited him.  This was creditable alike to himself and to his contemporaries.  From about the year 1860 Waugh's income depended entirely upon his pen, and upon occasional public readings from his own works.  The uncertainty of such labour is too well known, and it became apparent to those who knew him most intimately that the strain had begun to tell upon his health.  At this juncture (in 1876) a committee was formed which took over his various copyrights and guaranteed him in return a fixed annual income.  The advantages of this arrangement were obvious.  It assisted him on the purely commercial side of authorship, relieved him from anxiety, and left him at liberty to pursue the various literary projects upon the accomplishment of which he had set his mind.  The present Lord Derby was a liberal contributor to this fund, and the response, which all over Lancashire was made, to the appeal of the committee was of such a character as to prove the high estimation in which Waugh was held in his own county.  In 1880 he was invited as the chief guest to the Christmas Supper of the Literary Club.  On that occasion he found himself surrounded by an enthusiastic gathering of old friends, and his health was drunks with every demonstration of sincere regard.  In 1882 Mr. Thomas Reed Wilkinson offered to the Corporation of Manchester a fine portrait of the poet painted by Mr. William Percy.  "It is fitting" said the donor, in writing to the Mayor, "that the municipality of Manchester, beginning, as it is, to manifest an interest in art, should possess a portrait of this man of genius, whose name will descend to posterity, honoured not here only, but wherever Lancashire people make their homes."  The portrait was gratefully accepted, and hung in the public gallery of the city.  In the following year a Memorial on behalf of Waugh, promoted by the Literary Club and supported by all the members for Lancashire, irrespective of political opinion, was presented to Mr. Gladstone, with the result that Waugh's name was placed on the Civil List and a yearly pension of £90 awarded to him.  In 1887 the poet reached his seventieth birthday, and the event was celebrated by a dinner at the Queen's Hotel in Manchester.  Mr. T. A. Wilkinson presided over a large and brilliant gathering.  In responding to the toast of his health Waugh said—

"He found himself surrounded by many of his oldest and best friends—men whose kindness to him through a long course of years had 'known no winter,' and he could assure them that such a gathering at his time of life was a thing that would touch any heart that was at all capable of emotion.  A meeting like that made amends for many of the struggles and difficulties of early life.  He had no disposition, however, to look back over his shoulder complainingly into the past, or to recall the struggles of the earlier time.  They were gone, but they had left no bitterness with him."

From these slight records it will be seen how completely Waugh escaped the prophet's proverbial fate.  Even in his own country he was abundantly honoured.

    From 1881 to 1883 he was occupied (in conjunction with the Copyright Committee already mentioned) in carrying through the press a complete edition of his works in ten volumes.  After this date he wrote little in verse for several years; but about 1888 a second spring seemed to fall upon his muse, and he sent forth in quick succession a new series of poems.  These were first published singly in the columns of the Manchester Guardian, and in 1889 they were issued, along with a few earlier verses, in a volume which formed the eleventh of the collected edition.  Taken as a whole these later poems were by no means equal to his earlier work, but there were some fine pieces among them which showed that the old hand had not entirely lost its cunning.

    When Waugh was about sixty his health began to show signs of serious failure.  I remember his complaining to me that the close air of the street in Manchester where he resided felt as if it would choke him in the night.  He pined for the breeze of the hills, and removed to Kersal Moor, a suburb of the city, where he found the nearest approach to the kind of scenery which he loved so much.  Here he remained for some years.  He had comfortable apartments in an hotel, and seemed fairly happy among his books and papers, but his nerves were unstrung, and he fell into a despondent mood.  At this time he regarded his death as imminent; and, as a last resource, he determined to try the neighbourhood of the sea, which had always had for him a fascination second only to that of the moorland.  He removed to New Brighton on the estuary of the Mersey.  Here he secluded himself from all society, and for months walked along the sands for seven hours a day silent and solitary.  This self-directed course of treatment, as he told me, saved his life for a time and re-invigorated his mind.  A new and serious trouble, however, arose.  He complained of an affection in the tongue.  Ultimately it- proved to be cancer, and incurable.  More than one operation was performed, but with only partial success.  He suffered intense pain, but he bore up bravely, and was even cheerful and jocose.  In 1886 he wrote to his old friend, John Page—"I am mending a little every day; and I can hobble about for two or three hours together in the sunshine—when there is any.  As my friend, Professor Taylor, says, I used to give them a bit of my tongue now and then, but they have taken a bit this time.  I can't talk much now, certainly; but I dare say I shall be able to make myself sufficiently disagreeable with a slate and pencil."  In his distress many friends came closely round him, and did all that was possible to alleviate his sufferings.  Dr. Sam Buckley took charge of his case, and provided gratuitously not only surgical attendance, but a room and a skilled nurse in his own house, so that he might have his patient constantly under his immediate care.  The late John Bullough, of Accrington, was also unremitting in his kindness, and removed him as often as was possible to his fine Highland estate, in Glenlyon.  During these visits to Scotland I had many letters from him which showed that, although he was gradually sinking, his delight in mountain scenery, and his appreciation of the humorous side of character as he found it in Highland shepherds, fishermen, and game-keepers, was as keen as ever.

    At length he came home to die.  Mr. T. R. Wilkinson and myself saw him a few days before the end.  Loving hands were doing all that was possible to smooth his last hours.  He was unable to speak, but he wrote frequently on tablets.  His last words to me were—"Write me a bit of a note now and then—not a long one—and let it be delivered here first thing in a morning.  It cheers me up for the day."  There was little opportunity after this visit for the sending of letters.  He died on the 30th of April, 1890, in the seventy-third year of his age.  His remains were brought back to Manchester.  It was well that it should be so, for his wish was to lie at last among us.  Though the seashore at New Brighton added much happiness to his later years, his thoughts were always in Manchester.  When near the end, and when his mind began to wander a little, he said, imperatively, "Dress me, and take me to Manchester."  Alas! he was destined to come no more, except in his last robes.  He was buried on Saturday, May 3rd, at Kersal Church.  The public funeral which was accorded him was especially gratifying to his large and deeply-attached circle of personal friends, as well as to all those who were interested in local literature.  The great success of the demonstration was hardly anticipated.  "We must not expect a large gathering," it was said, "for the number of persons who have any interest in poets, and particularly in provincial poets, is, after all, very small."  But apparently there were more who cared about our dear old singer than we thought.  The crowd was large, representative, and sympathetic, at the railway station, on the line of route, and at Kersal.  It was pleasant to see Manchester represented in its corporate capacity by the Mayor.  The Mayor of Salford also joined the procession, and all the surrounding towns sent their contingents—Rochdale, Oldham, Ashton, and Saddleworth.  The workman was there conspicuously.  I noticed one rough-looking labourer who followed all the way—some two or three miles—with a child holding by either hand.  Such men as he felt that the poet was one of their own class, that he knew their lives from within, and that, inarticulate themselves, in his pages their sorrows, their simple joys, their limited aspirations found a voice.  The services at the church and at the graveside were conducted by Canon Crane and Prebendary Macdonald, assisted by the organist and choir of the Manchester Cathedral.  One of the hymns was the same as that which was sung at Samuel Bamford's funeral in Middleton Church; and several of those who acted as pall-bearers for the older poet performed the same sad office for Edwin Waugh.  Canon Crane's address struck the right note—it was that of a man speaking to men.  The scene at the grave was very impressive.  Conspicuous among those veterans whose eyes were wet with tears as the solemn words of sorrow—sorrow not without hope—were tenderly chanted by the choir was Mr. Alexander Ireland, who had ever been a most kindly and sympathetic helper.  The poet's old friend, John Page, had brought sprigs of rosemary for the mourners, and when all was over and each had cast his bunch of herbs upon the coffin, with the familiar words—"That's for remembrance," we turned to face a world which seemed colder and darker for the loss of dear Edwin Waugh.

    No better resting place could have been found for him than Kersal.  He lies on the edge of the moorland.  The sun will shine freely on his grave and the moorland wind will blow over it; and that is well, for, as we have already said, no description fits him better than that of "The Moorland Poet."  The love of the moorland was in his blood, and very curiously its characteristics were reproduced in his personality.  His nature was large and healthy, broad and breezy, robust and strong.  Sturdy independence was the note of his appearance.  To use one of his own phrases—"He had not much bend in his neck."  He walked with a slow, firm step, and with his large hands spread out.  He affected huge sticks, of which he had an immense collection, and he liked to throw a shepherd's plaid over his shoulders.  His face, which was marked by quiet humour, was always ready to take a genial expression even when at its saddest; and, in a mirthful mood, it beamed all over with laughter.  Like Bamford, he had the ease and natural manners of a born gentleman—a gentleman of the older sort, and his bearing showed no timidity or restraint in the presence of persons who were socially his superiors.  No man had less of the morbid and puling poet about him.  He was fond of clothing himself in honest homespun of the thickest texture, and of wearing huge broad-soled boots, guiltless of polish.  It was not often that he attempted to get into evening dress, and when he did the attempt was only partially successful, and the result ludicrous.  He was too large for such things, and always looked as if his next breath would burst his sable fetters.  It used to be said that some one who went into his bedroom one morning found his tweed suit standing up on end in the middle of the floor without support; and I have heard him convulse a quiet household by giving, in a vein of richest humour, elaborate instructions overnight to the maid about not having his boots spoiled with blacking.

    Some years ago, while his voice yet remained to him, he was a fine reader of his own works.  He never dramatised, but his intonation of the dialect, and his sympathy with the character he was delineating, were always perfect.  Those who heard him sing were fortunate; though not a musician, he had a good ear for music, and a voice which, if it was not strong, was sweet and bird-like in its warbling.  I feel sure that somebody must have sung old ballads to him when he was a child.

    However fine his humour was, as shown in his printed works, it was as nothing when compared to his power as a story-teller with the living voice.  I have never known his superior in this when the fit was on him and the surroundings congenial.  He would take a slight hint or some bald anecdote, and work upon it extemporaneously, by the process which is best described as "piling-on," and yet with artistic suppression, until his hearers were almost suffocated with insupportable laughter.  He had a large amount of very vigorous English at his disposal, and for purposes of objurgation it was particularly handy.  His power of picturesque phrasing, both in conversation and with his pen, was very striking.  Curious felicity of expression was certainly one of his gifts.  He could always hit the right word, and often he could concentrate a page into a single happy sentence.  I was once walking with him and other friends on the slopes of Pendle, and, coming to a gate which must be climbed or crept through, a member of the party, who was distinguished for his knowledge of antiquities, chose to draw his slender body through the bars rather than run the risk of mounting.  While the feat was proceeding Waugh, standing a little distance away, struck an attitude, and, spreading out his large hands, as his manner was, said: "Look at him!  By the mass, he's like an antiquarian ferret wriggling through a keyhole!"

    I have already spoken of the books which most largely influenced him in his youth.  To the list should be added Anderson's Cumberland Ballads.  He says himself that these "rare and racy songs" gave a strong fillip to the natural inclination which he had in the direction of such things.  I do not think he had read widely in modern literature, but he knew well his Shakespeare and his Milton, the Border Ballads, and Robert Burns.  His literary method was peculiar.  Nearly all his sketches centre round a story.  The story was the germ, not the decoration.  At one time the walls of the room he worked in were covered all over with stories, and hints for stories, in type and in manuscript.  These were stuck up with pins.  He knew exactly where each of them was, and as he used them up they were taken from the wall.  If any of his friends made him the recipient of a good story it was certain to come back to them in print before long, embellished with characteristic additions.

    Waugh never attempted a continuous or regularly-constructed story, but among his papers I find a pretty elaborate sketch for a projected novel.  The time is laid early in the nineteenth century; the scene is the town of Rochdale; and the historical subject is the struggles and sufferings of the working-class in the early period of the cotton manufacture.  Among the real characters to be introduced were John Bright, John Roby, Sam Bamford, and several of Wesley's early preachers.  A few of Waugh's personal friends are also included under thin disguises.  Among his unaccomplished projects I find, in addition, a sketch of a little play called "The Cobbler's Bottle," which was evidently intended to be a Lancashire version of The Taming of the Shrew.

    His best written instance of what I have called "piling-on" will be found in the "Lancashire Volunteers."  His best piece of rough humour is "The Birtle Carter's Story of of Owd Boodle," but "Besom Ben" is incomparably his finest all-round piece of prose.  In it humour and pathos, tenderness and rollicking fun alternate, and are artistically heightened by the introduction, as a background, of quiet sketches of inanimate nature, done with a master-hand, and in polished English.

    The serious side of his character and his intense love of the quiet country are best seen, I think, in the sketch called "Heywood and Its Neighbourhood."  It is in this piece that a beautiful passage about his mother and his early days may be found—

"Through the parlour window I watched these little companies of country children—so fresh, so glad, and sweet-looking—and as they went their way I thought of the time when I, too, used to start from home on a Sunday morning dressed in my holiday suit, clean as a new pin from top to toe, and followed to the door with a world of gentle admonitions.  I thought of some things I learned when standing at my mother's knee; of the little prayer and the blessing at bedtime; of the old solemn tunes which she used to sing when all the house was still, whilst I sat and listened, drinking in those plaintive strains of devotional melody never to forget them more."

With this pleasant picture we may close our slight record.  The child was father of the man, and the influence of his mother's simple piety is unmistakable in his work.  Through all his passages of boisterous humour there is never found either immoral taint or sinister suggestion.  His books, like his bodily presence and his better self, are conspicuously clean and healthy.  His real worth may be estimated by the number of those who loved him when living, and who honour him now that he is gone.  Few men possessed in a higher degree the faculty of gaining friends; but he had also that much rarer gift, which enables a man to keep them when they have been gained.

    It may be added that his executors, Mr. T. R. Wilkinson and Mr. T. W. Gillibrand, have arranged for the erection over his grave of a large runic cross in rough grey granite.  The memorial is as appropriate as it will be lasting.  That the present edition of Waugh's Works may also prove to be an enduring monument of the man and of the poet is the Editor's earnest desire.

G. M.

 
FOOTNOTES.

 
1.    Lancashire Sketches. "Rochdale to the Top of Blackstone Edge."

2.    Preface to Proems of Rural Life by William Barnes. Third Collection. Second Edition.

3.    The early Lancashire writer who is best known as "Tim Bobbin."