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Lancashire Sketches.

BY
EDWIN WAUGH.

THIRD EDITION

LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO.
MANCHESTER: ALEXANDER IRELAND & CO.
1869.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

In this volume, relating to a district with which the writeris intimately acquainted, he has gathered up a few pointsof local interest, and, in connection with these, he has endeavouredto embody something of the traits of present life in South Lancashirewith descriptions of its scenery, and with such gleaningsfrom its local history as bore upon the subject, and, under thecircumstances, were available to him. How far he has succeededin writing a book which may be instructive or interesting, he iswilling to leave to the judgment of those who know the countryand the people it deals with. He is conscious that, in comparisonwith the fertile peculiarities which Lancashire presents to writerswho are able to gather them up, and to use them well, this volumeis fragmentary and discursive; yet he believes that, so far as itgoes, it will not be wholly unacceptable to native readers.

The historical information, interspersed throughout the volume,has been gleaned from so many sources that it would be amatter of considerable difficulty to give a complete and detailedacknowledgment of it. In every important case, however, this[Pg iv]acknowledgment has been given, with some degree of care, as fullyand clearly as possible, in the course of the work. Some of thishistorical matter may prove to be ill-chosen, if not ill-used—perhapsin some cases it might have been obtained in a better form, andeven more correctly given—but the writer has, at least, the satisfactionof knowing that, with such light as he had, and with suchelements as were convenient to him, he has been guided, in hisselection of that kind of information, by a desire to obtain the mostcorrect and the most applicable matter which was available to him.

A book which is purely local in its character and bearing, asthis is, cannot be expected to have much interest for persons unconnectedwith the district which it relates to. If there is anyhope of its being read at all, that hope is centred there. Thesubjects it treats upon being local, and the language used in itbeing often th