Top (44) A few notes on Lancashire legends
N.B. The following notes were written many months (sometimes years) ago and not all incorporated above.
Recent interest in traditions seems to be confirmed by facsimile reprints of Harland and Wilkinson (1993 by Llanerch Publishers, Felinbach, ISBN 1 897853 06 8) and a whole series of reprints of Frank Hird's Lancashire Tales, selected by Cliff Hayes (by Aurora Publishing, Bolton ). Frank Hird published 900 pages in two volumes at the beginning of the 20th century (no date, but c. 1910). No publication date is given in these reprints (I presume during the 1990s), but the ISBN number of 1 85926 040 3 should allow the location of this one. Others in the series are Stories and Tales of Old Lancashire , Stories and Tales of Old Manchester and Stories and Tales of Old Merseyside . William E. A. Axon's A Lancashire Treasury has also been reprinted by the same publisher, albeit containing mainly later stories.
The earlier stories were presumably well known to A.S. and his contemporaries - and Shakespeare in his Lancashire days. There are enough ghosts, fairies, witches, magic potions, statues with magic powers, pacts with the devil, and sundry other standard folklore ingredients to allow someone a field day in trying to relate any of these to Shakespeare. Most Lancashire stories refer to specific people in specific places and therefore presumably contain at least one kernel of truth. One piece of information that struck me rather forcibly is that earlier research into Warwickshire folklore produced not a single jot of local folklore or memorable local events finding their way into Shakespeare's works (Michell, p. 103 ff.)
een noted in 1954 one Lancashire story as a potential inspiration for Shakespeare, that of 'Fair Ellen of Radcliffe', who appears in a Snow White type story with a wicked step-mother and ended up as minced meat fed to her father (echoes of Titus Andronicus ?) (Keen, pp. 67-8). At the very least we can be fairly sure that A.S. knew this one as he had so many Radcliffes in his family. Harland, eighty years earlier, reported that the story of Sir Tarquin of Manchester, a combatant against Sir Lancelot of the Lake, 'has been alluded to by Shakspeare [ sic ] in the second part of his Henry IV' (Harland and Wilkinson, p. 273). This allusion might, of course, have come from the same story reported by Chaucer and in Morte d'Arthur , which was obviously known all over the country and not confined to knowledge in Lancashire of the story and ballad (given in full by Harland, p. 273 ff.). What, one might wonder, was Sir Lancelot doing in Manchester ? Well, other local traditions place four of Arthur's battles in the Wigan area. Maybe they did happen there?