May-games, Whitsun-ales, and morris-dances, with rush-bearings,
bell-ringings, wakes, and feasts, were as much practised as before the
passing of the obnoxious enactment of Elizabeth. The Puritans and
Precisians discountenanced them, it is true, as much as ever, and would
have put them down, if they could, as savouring of papistry and
idolatry, and some rigid divines thundered against them from the pulpit;
but with the king and the authorities in their favour, the people little
heeded these denunciations against them, and abstained not from any
"honest recreation" whenever a holiday occurred.

If Lancashire was famous for wakes, the wakes of Whalley were famous
even in Lancashire. The men of the district were in general a hardy,
handsome race, of the genuine Saxon breed, and passionately fond of all
kinds of pastime, and the women had their full share of the beauty
indigenous to the soil. Besides, it was a secluded spot, in the heart of
a wild mountainous region, and though occasionally visited by travellers
journeying northward, or by others coming from the opposite direction,
retained a primitive simplicity of manners, and a great partiality for
old customs and habits.

The natural beauties of the place, contrasted with the dreary region
around it, and heightened by the picturesque ruins of the ancient abbey,
part of which, namely, the old abbot's lodgings, had been converted into
a residence by the Asshetons, and was now occupied by Sir Ralph
Assheton, while the other was left to the ravages of time, made it
always an object of attraction to those residing near it; but when on
the May-day in question, there was not only to be a wake, but a May-pole
set on the green, and a rush-bearing with morris-dancers besides,
together with Whitsun-ale at the abbey, crowds flocked to Whalley from
Wiswall, Cold Coates, and Clithero, from Ribchester and Blackburn, from