tongue round the limbs of the victim, thereby symbolising the power of
eloquence. Several incidents in the following tales will be recognised
by those conversant with Scandinavian literature, thus adding another
link to the chain of certainty which unites the human race, or at any
rate that part of it from which Europe was originally peopled, in one
original tribe or family.

A work of this nature, embodying the material of our own island
traditions, has not yet been attempted; and the writer confidently hopes
that these tales may be found fully capable of awakening and sustaining
the peculiar and high-wrought interest inherent in the legends of our
continental neighbours. Should they fail of producing this effect, he
requests that it may be attributed rather to his want of power to
conjure up the spirits of past ages, than to any want of capabilities in
the subjects he has chosen to introduce.

To the local and to the general reader--to the antiquary and the
uninitiated--to the admirers of the fine arts and embellishments of our
literature, he hopes his labours will prove acceptable; and should the
plan succeed, not Lancashire alone, but the other counties, may in their
turn become the subject of similar illustrations. The tales are arranged
chronologically, forming a somewhat irregular series from the earliest
records to those of a comparatively modern date. They may in point of
style appear at the commencement stiff and stalwart, like the chiselled
warriors, whose deeds are generally enveloped in a rude narrative, hard
and ponderous as their gaunt and grisly effigies. The events, however,
as the author has found them, gradually assimilate with the familiar
aspects and everyday affections of our nature--subsiding from the stern
and repulsive character of a barbarous age into the usual forms and
modes of feeling incident to humanity--as some cold and barren region,