"The evenings were the hours of social glee. When winter brought long nights the neighbours met together by some fireside according to appointment, varying their houses almost every night. Here the women, young and old, employed themselves with domestic duties, and sometimes with the spindle, enlivening the dreary evening with many a moving song of love and adventure. The relation of marvellous tales of ghosts and hobgoblins formed another principal source of enjoyment on such occasions. According to the fathers of the hamlet, no spirit could appear before twilight had vanished in the evening, or after it had appeared in the morning. On this account the winter nights were peculiarly dangerous, owing to the long revels which spirits could keep at that season. The belief was that ghosts could seldom appear to more than one person at once. The alleged causes of spirits appearing after death were generally three. Murdered persons came again to haunt their murderers, or to obtain justice by appearing to other persons likely to see them avenged. Persons who had hid any treasure were doomed to haunt the place where that treasure was hid; as they had made a god of their wealth in this world, the place where their treasure was placed was to be their heaven after death. Those who died with any heavy crimes on their consciences which they had not confessed, were also doomed to wander the earth at the midnight hour. YVitches and wizards were considered not only as in actual existence, but believed to be by no means uncommon. They were regarded as having the power to do mischief to those who treated them kindly, but if their intentions were suspected, and the person they were about to bewitch could draw blood of them, their power was destroyed for that time. They had no power as to anything with a cross over it; on this account the farmers' wives in Lancashire always made a cross on their dough at night. Two cross straws used to be laid on the threshold, and butter was almost invariably printed with a cross." This is still the case to some

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