DECEMBER AND JANUARY. As the wild air stirs and sways The tree-swung cradle of a child, January grey is here, Like a sexton by her grave; March with grief doth howl and rave, And April weeps-but, O ye hours! P. B. SHELLEY, A Dirge for the Year. XLVII.-THE MOSS. Moston, December 4. THESE Notes have been taken, as the reader will have seen, chiefly within the fences of my own garden, where, indeed, I find variety enough and the pleasure of constant change. I have also, in order to give some idea of the neighbouring country, gone a little farther afield and sketched the Glen and the Clough. Another characteristic feature of the place is the Moss. In ancient times the parish was probably divided be tween open moss-land and thick woods of oak; from the former it took its name. In the first year of the fourteenth century it is spoken of as a 'hamell,' or hamlet of the manor of Manchester, and is on some account exempted from the payment of certain tribute to Thomas de Grelle, the lord of the manor. The proper designation of that which we speak of familiarly as 'The Moss' is the 'Whytemosse.' It is so called in a Survey taken in 1322. To reach the Moss we go due north by sundry devious lanes and field-paths. After we leave our own homestead there are but few trees; probably most of them were cut down in the early part of the present century. We get no rich landscape, therefore; no deep pasture or umbrageous wood; and no wealthy and well-ordered farms. Yet the country is picturesque because it is broken. Even in its bareness we find, as upon the mountain-side, that quality which braces at once both mind and body. The land is, in fact, like the hardy stock, now passing away, but which for many centuries has lived upon it—a rude, stern, sagacious race; reserved, yet full of mother-wit and overcharged with rough humour. We turn first by what we know as the Lily Lane. On one side is a pond where I remember to have T seen the lilies growing, and where, when a boy, I have many a time plunged into the water to capture them. Within the last few days snipe have been shot near this pond. Looking back we see that we are upon high ground, for a great part of the city is visible some three or four miles away. Standing here we look south-west, and on a clear summer's evening we have proof of what a glorious thing a great city may become when the sun is sinking behind it. In the early morning, before the smoke has risen, the hills are visible all round from Holcolme to Kinder Scout and Odermann; nor is the scene less attractive to me if I steal out here after dark. Then I look abroad over what is apparently a vast and trackless waste, at the farther edge of which strange lights glimmer and are reflected in the sky. As we leave the lane and pass into the fields, we catch a sight of Lightbowne Hall. It has been much modernised; but some of the old mullions remain, and there is still untouched a fine room panelled in oak from floor to ceiling. A local tradition relates that when the young Pretender was making his retreat from Derby, one of his officers, being at Lightbowne, was surprised. He attempted to secrete himself in the angle of a large chimney which formerly stood by one of the gables. He was discovered, however, by the Hanoverians and shot dead in his hidingplace. The path now winds through a few fields, usually sown with grain, and comes out into an old road, by which, if we were to follow it, we might reach the moorland hills. The Moss is now in front of us, and we are standing at Shackerley Green. Shackerley is a corruption of Shacklock, that being the name of an ancient family whose mansion was on the Green in the reign of Henry VIII. At a very short distance are the halls of Great and Little Nuthurst. At Nuthurst lived the Chaddertons, the Chethams, and the Sandfords. One of the Sandfords was Bishop of Lincoln in 1595. The Green is the place where Moston used to disport itself. Here in winter the great bonfires were made, and in summer the Rushbearings were held. I have often seen the tall Rush-cart, as it was called, swaggering along the rough-paven road preceded by its band of Morrice-dancers. Bamford gives in his 'Early Days' the simple song which was usually sung on these occasions: My new shoon they are so good, I will dance Morris with the best. The Rush-cart festival is generally connected in Lan cashire with the Dedication of the Parish Church; and had its origin, no doubt, in the practice of strewing the floor of the sacred edifice with new rushes for the winter; but in other counties the ceremony seems to have accompanied the Harvest Home, the cart being crowned with sheaves of corn instead of with rushes. Allowing for this difference, Herrick's description of the Hock-cart would answer for our ceremony of Rushbearing: Crown'd with the eares of corne, now come, The horses, mares, and frisking fillies, The harvest swaines and wenches bound Considering how near we are to a great town the country hereabouts is curiously primitive and secluded. The scattered farms are mostly small. Each of them will be found to have about four acres of land attached to it, an ancient law forbidding a house to be erected on a smaller plot of ground unless it was intended for the cote or cottage of a forester, a herdsman, or a miner. The buildings also very closely resemble each other, including in nearly every case, a farmstead |